Depressing thoughts about the future of our free Republic

Haven't blogged much on politics lately as all the news is bad and getting worse. Depressing for a founding member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, as Obama/Pelosi/Reid consolidate power.

Besides, I've been busy as a one-handed paper hanger working at my new job at a gun store, where Obama's stimulus plan for gun shops shows no signs of slacking off since the election. That's so far as I know the only sector of the economy that's booming and the Good Lord opened a job for me there just in time before I got laid off as a technical writer/photography for a local industry. Proves once again how the Lord takes care of fools and drunks. I've been both and still a bit of the former.

Anyway, I had another depressing thought last night sitting in Bible study at church. We've been studying the "minor prophets," the small in quantity but not quality authors of the concluding books of the Old Testament, such unrecognizable names as Hosea, Amos, Habakkuk, Joel, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Haggai, Zephaniah, Zechariah and Malachi. I've read them all before several times in my trips through the Bible, but this is the first time I've participated in a study of these men who wrote during the closing years of the Northern and Southern Jewish kingdoms.

Their messages could be aptly summed up in four words: "The end is near." Their words were indeed prophetic as they warned of the defeat of the Northern Kingdom of Isarel first, when the Assyrians conquered and carried away the "Lost 10 Tribes" of the Jewish nation into exile.

They're called the lost 10 tribes because they never returned to Northern Israel. Gone forever.

And these minor prophets also warned of the coming collapse of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, which happened when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians conquered Judah and carried those two Jewish tribes into captivity. They were released by the Persian ruler who conquered Babylon and allowed to return to Israel, but the Southern Kingdom was never restored.

There were no further true kings in Israel following the period written about by the minor prophets. During the 400 "silent years" between Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, there was no true king in Israel, nor were there any prophets in Israel.

By the time of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, first the Greeks and then the Romans had conquered Israel and King Herod was nothing but a non-Jewish puppet/pretender placed on the throne of Israel by the Romans.

And here's the depressing thought that hit me last night during Bible study of Habakkuk. Are we in the times of the minor prophets here in America? Are the lights about to go out on our freedom as a nation as socialism is being proclaimed on the front cover of a leading magazine?

Prophets of our time have warned for the past few decades "The end is near!" but few have believed them. Seems to me the power grab under way by Obama/Pelosi/Reid could bring about the total collapse of our free-market economy and plunge America into third-world status.

That may be why you cannot find any mention of a nation that sounds even remotely like America in any of the prophetic writings about the last days before Jesus returns to earth.

The Book of Revelation and other end-time prophecies clearly describe the revived Roman empire in Europe, but have no hint of a free nation that is currently the world's sole superpower.

I fear our superpower status is soon to fall into the dustbin of history. Truly the end is near.