Is the USA mentioned in Bible prophesy?

Question:

Is the USA ever mentioned in Bible prophesy about the end times?

Answer:

A quick Google of this question reveals that thousands of Christians are asking it these days. There’s a certain logic to it, built on the following premises:

- We are living near the end of time when God’s plans for the consummation of human history will take place.

- Those plans are spelled out in Scriptural Prophesy.

- Those plans have a global scope.

- The USA is the only global superpower left in the world.

- Any plans God has for global judgment would mention the biggest powers on earth.

- Therefore, Scriptural Prophesy must include mention of the USA.

I believe all those premises are fairly sound, except the first one which is extremely presumptuous and therefore it undermines the conclusion.

There is no guarantee that we are living within a few years of the return of Christ and consummation of history. So while it may be that we should expect any dominant power on earth to be mentioned in passages which predict the end, there is no guarantee that the USA will be around when those events take place. Therefore, we shouldn’t automatically expect the USA to appear in bible prophesy – any more than the Ottomans should have been offended when they read Revelation and realized that there was no mention of Turks anywhere! Today, the Ottoman empire is broken up and globally insignificant. Most Americans couldn’t locate it’s former terrain on a map even though they ruled the world more internationally than the USA does today. What will the USA be in 200 years? Maybe a blip in a history text.

In fact, we find no overt reference to the USA anywhere in Scripture. Since God speaks his Word through the culture and language of the inspired Biblical authors, this shouldn’t surprise us. No one in the Ancient Near East had any knowledge of the New World even existing. If God were to refer to the USA and have it be meaningful for the original authors and audience, he would have to do it through some cryptic or symbolic reference.

Therefore, many prophecy buffs do try to find such symbolic references. The problems with these attempts are two fold:

- The references usually are much better explained as references to entities known to the author in the immediate context of writing.

- The references are hopelessly contradictory.

For example, one prophesy buff assumes that every time apocalyptic passages in the bible refer to Babylon, that’s a reference to the USA. It’s true that Babylon is sometimes code, but it’s likely that the early church considered Babylon to be code for Rome. John for example, when prophesying about a prostitute, calls her Babylon and says she sits on “7 hills”. Rome has been known forever to be the “city on 7 hills”.

Another example, the goat of Daniel 8 is said by one scholar to be the USA because it comes from “the west” vs. 5. This goat defeats the ram which he says represents Islam and refers to modern events concerning the war on terror. The goat is subsequently defeated from internal strife and is broken up. It’s an intriguing bit of speculation until you realize that this is one prophesy where the explanation is not open to speculation… the interpretation is given explicitly by the angel Gabriel to Daniel! The goat is actually Greece and the ram is Media Persia (vs. 20-21).

The only way to see the USA in this prophesy is to assume both a contemporary and future layer to the prediction. This is not unusual for prophetic events to have an immediate fulfillment, and a later and usually larger fulfillment (see the prediction of Isaiah’s son, and the virgin birth of Messiah; Isa. 7:14). And it is true that Daniel says this vision relates to the very end of time (Dan 8:19). However, the burden of proof must be on the scholar to show some consistency in interpretation as to WHY a reference could ALSO be the USA.

The same scholar sees the USA as the first of the four beasts of Daniel, because the beast is a lion with eagles wings. The reason? The lion has been the national symbol for England and the Eagle for the USA, which came from England. Again the problem is this interpretation requires us to yank the text out of context and forget everything else Daniel said about it. Shouldn’t Daniel be the first to flesh out our understanding of the prophesies Daniel himself gave? In Daniel the four beasts are explained directly. They are four empires to follow each other. The first is specifically identified as Babylon. Those that follow then must be Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome (7:17). The same prediction with the same meaning is made again in a vision about a four tiered statute (2:31-44).

This really highlights a problem in prophecy circles in general, which is their habit of reading apocalyptic literature first as an “advanced newspaper” of modern events rather than first as a deeply meaningful commentary on ancient events. This is not to deny the predictive elements of Scripture at all. But even the predictive elements in Scripture clearly have relevance to the audiences being written to and about. Daniel for example, predicts the future, but his prophecies begin with Babylon, his adopted homeland. And they would have deep meaning for the entire ancient near east. They should be first read as such. Also John in Revelation writes FIRST to a church under the oppressive thumb of Roman persecution. So most of what he wrote would find some application to that first audience.

Yes, it is true that Daniel is told to “keep the vision a secret until the time of the end.” But that can’t mean that he wasn’t supposed to share it with his contemporaries since clearly he did share it. It was meant for them first, even if there were elements that could not be fully understood until much later.

The same may be true of us. There are things within prophecy that we now see clearer than Daniel did, like Daniel’s vision of the four beasts and the four tiered statue. It’s a picture of empires the author had never seen, and yet we now can see the “Iron Kingdom” as Rome and we see with perfect hindsight what Daniel only saw in foresight: how that last empire was struck by a rock – a supernatural Messiah – whose Movement would eventually crush Rome’s power. If there are events yet future in Daniel, that may refer to the USA, it may be that they are not meant to be understood until AFTER they occur. Prophecy is sometimes given, not to appease our curiosity, but to provide a witness to God’s sovereign power and plan that will bring him glory only after the fact. (John 12:16)

Therefore, it is my contention that if the USA is mentioned in scripture, perhaps in a layered prophecy that has had a prior fulfillment in another age, then we may never know it until after the fact. Modern Christians assume too often that prophecy is given only for us to set our calendars by or appease our banal curiosity. It is given most often to vindicate our amazing God, to show His sovereignty over all things, to show off his plan and his care for the human race, and to provide testimony against his detractors of the truth of all this.

Now if we accept that prophets wrote FIRST to their audience in ways that would be accessible to them, a literal reference to the USA would have to be some reference to a great nation across the sea, in the west. We find in Scripture a few references to those who dwell on “coastlands” or the “islands of the sea” but they usually look like a reference to Mediterranean sea cultures such as Tyre. And all these references don’t give us any significant prophetic role for this “coastal” land to play. The only real clear future reference that MUST refer to the United States (again assuming it’s around at the time of the end) are those that talk about what “ALL NATIONS” will do. At some point Scripture indicates that all nations will be judged, all nations will be gathered against Israel for a final battle, and all nations will bow before Messiah upon his return. So we can conclude that America will be in that number.

Whatever other role it may or may not play, if America is around when all these things happen, then it must be influencing or acting through or with the other end times players explicitly named, but whose identities remain shrouded in mystery: such as Babylon the Great, the Beast, the Prophet, the Horn that speaks boastfully, the Man of Lawlessness and others.