THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLE PROPHECY
Commentary On the Need for a Second Reconstruction
The Magnitude of Judgment is a Reflection of the Magnitude of the Sin
The magnitude of and judgment from the Lord is always a reflection of the
magnitude of the sin that produced the judgment. There are
only two national
sins of the United States big enough to have taken down the twin towers on
September 11, 2001 or produced the Katrina flood—and these are the
un-repented sins of slavery and
abortion. Sins [or works] of the flesh
(Galatians 5:19-21)
will not produce this kind of judgment, particularly when there are a host of interceding
Christians around—which America has in abundance. Only sins of the spirit will
produce this magnitude of judgment: as
are both slavery and abortion—and,
American slavery is in the eyes of God "a Christian
institution" (see
The Voice on the Lord:
The Origins of
Racism).
As a doorway to the judgment of God, abortion claims 500 lives each day in the United States, 25% of which are black. It is amazing that a judgment from the Lord for killing our unborn children has not yet come upon America, but it would appear that since the doorway to this carnage was opened in the courtroom of the United States Supreme Court, that God will allow its fix to now come in this same courtroom: given the recent appointees to the Supreme Court by President Bush. Otherwise, the judgment(s) of God will most surely come upon this a [Christian] nation that annually kills 1.5 million of its unborn children.
The Judgment-Written of James 5:1-8 Is a Sure Word of Prophesy
Back to the issue of slavery. Peter said that, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy: whereunto ye do well that ye take heed”…referring to the written Word of God (2 Peter 1:19). The written Word of God is even more reliable than the vision that Peter had when he saw Jesus, Moses and Elijah (Elias) on the Mount of Transfiguration in the Gospels (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2; and Luke 9:29). The written Word of God is thus the highest form of prophetic revelation. It is the standard by which all prophetic “revelation” must be judged. The question must constantly be asked: "Can you show me 'that' in the Word; or what does the Bible have to say about 'this' or 'that'"?
Our primary judgment should not be on the "prophet" or "messenger" with a word from the Lord; but we should focus our judgment on the actual utterance spoken by the prophet or messenger that claims to have a word from God—as God in His sovereignty is not required to speak His Word to a people or nation through one's favorite man or woman of God. In other words, we must judge the word given by the Word written—which, of course, is the Bible itself. (In 1 Kings 17:1 Elijah the Tishbite—with no credentials whatsoever and not a member of anybody's group—steps onto the pages of Scripture and in the face of King Ahab with a very potent and very accurate word from the Lord..."As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." We know from James 5:17 that according to the word of God spoken by the mouth of Elijah that it rained not for 3 ½ years.)
My initial
revelation concerning James 5:1-8 and
its application to slavery came in the year 2000. With my Bible open while I waw
reading the 5th Chapter of James, a voice from behind me (c/p. Isaiah
30:21) said, “I have not forgotten about 300 years of slavery.” (See
My first notice of Isaiah 30:25, “…in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fell”…came on September 12, 2001 (the day after the 911 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center) while watching every conceivable view of the twin towers actually falling. The TV news commentators were reporting that this verse of Scripture was being quoted with glee by Islamic fundamentalists around the world as a Bible-judgment from God on the United States.
Next, by subjecting these two passages of Scriptures to the law of first reference—which says that the first reference in the Bible to a Bible subject (or to an original language word in either Testament) controls its usage throughout the rest of the Bible—elementary Bible interpretation 101 then immediately connects Isaiah 30:25 with James 5:5 as the only two definitive references in the entire Bible to a “day of slaughter.” (See 24 Rules for Understanding Bible Prophecy#11.)
If, then, one but reads James 5:1-8 and applies this text exclusively to the United States and to its history, there is revealed immediately directly off of the pages of Scripture—without need of further commentary or theologian—a judgment from God on the last days’ wealth of some rich guys who didn’t pay their laborers for reaping down their fields, and whom they killed at will!
From the Biblical text we can readily see that money is crying out to God (that is, the withheld wages from the past that are still in the hands of the oppressors and those with whom they have done business over hundreds of years, is crying out to God for vengeance and a recompense). The text further reveals that...the laborers [and their descendants] who reaped down the fields whose wages (hire) were kept back by fraud who were killed at will are also crying out to God. And, this duel cry for vengeance has been heard by the Lord (James 5:7-8), in the same way that the voice of Abel’s blood still cries out to God from the ground (Genesis 4:10; Hebrews 12:24) and was at least partially judged in the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (c/p. Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:50-51).
What American Christians—much less all Americans—do not understand is that these cries and prayers to God of slaves and their descendants during their times of suffering are still in God’s face, and must be answered by Him before the second coming of Jesus (Luke 18:17-18; Rev. 5:8; Rev. 6:10 and Rev. 8:1). The Lord of Sabaoth [lit., the God of Armies or Capitan of the Hosts] has heard the cries of both the money and the laborers and has come to judge. Proverbs 11:31 confirms this,..."Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner" One has to have help to misunderstand this passage of Scripture.
Most Christians around the world [including me] use James 5:7-8 as a soul-winning/salvation Scripture, “Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord…for the precious fruit of the earth…until he receive the early and latter rain…for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” However, when this passage of Scripture is put back into its context—it speaks of judgment and not soul winning.
There is, therefore, no national spiritual sin concerning the United States left but slavery that is big enough for long enough in a place important enough for God to have recorded both its sin and its judgment in His Word—and in the New Covenant of His Word—two thousand years before it came to pass. James 5:1-8 is a “last days” passage of Scripture. Its application is for the "last days".
The Slavery of God's People Destroyed the Wealth of Egypt
In the Book of Exodus (Chapters 2 through 15) God’s judgment(s) of the richest nation on the earth, Egypt, for the enslavement of His people is revealed. Ten plagues of judgment destroyed the oasis of Egypt before Pharaoh got the message, and was willing to obey the voice of the Lord spoken by the prophet, Moses, to set God’s people free. In Exodus 12:36, God also judged the money of Egypt. [The initial damage estimates from the Hurricane Katrina are 100 billion dollars: only 25% of which is expected to be covered by insurance. Since Katrina, Greensburg, Kansas has been literally wiped off the map by a tornado; and at present billions of dollars are being lost in the United States through home foreclosures. James 5 is a judgment on wealth. It is the magnitude of Katrina, Greensburg, the foreclosure crisis—not to mention the cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq (which exceeds $200,000,000 each day)—that so strongly convinces me that they are connected with the continuing financial judgments of James 5.]
On the way out of Egypt and back to the land that God had promised as a covenant to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God paid the Israelites for 400 years of slave labor. In the US post-Civil War Reconstruction—which lasted only five years—American blacks got nothing (not even a thank you); and, as God spoke in an utterance to me A Second Reconstruction Is Now In Order, “…no land, no money, no guns and no butter.” Nothing!
In the eyes of God, the back wages of which James 5 makes reference to have been compounding at the maximum heavenly rate of interest for the last 140 years. In addition, in the language of a lawyer, punitive damages are owed to the descendants of America’s slaves for the willful, wanton, and malicious use of terror and terrorism—as the very institution of slavery, itself, was held together by the systematic and applied use of terror to control the subjection and forced labor of populations that often outnumbered plantation whites by ratios of 10:1, or greater.
The United States also went much far greater than any other nation in the New World in its using the Bible to justify this enslavement and terrorism, in order to “save the heathen souls.” Only a Christian that knows the Bible would be concerned as to the salvation of a soul that is introduced to Jesus during his or her enslavement, or whether Christian baptism brought with it freedom from slavery. This was the constant question raised in every land to which European Christians carried their race-based economic slavery into North and South America, and the West Indies.
American slave-masters also went so far as to raise up a generation of plantation preachers—with their more distinguished looking hand-me-downs—to preach a gospel of obedience to the master in order to minimize the greatly feared freedom strikes of slaves [also known as slave revolts]; and to keep these slaves looking toward the sweet-by-and-by for their rewards, rather than to the nasty-here-and-now for their deliverance.
For God not to judge America’s un-repented national sin slavery before the return of Jesus makes Him a respecter of persons*, as He cannot pay the Israelites for their slavery and fail to pay black people for theirs and remain God…because His Word would fail! God is in a box; and so is America.
[*c/p. Lev. 19:15; Deut. 1:17; 16:19; 2 Sam. 14:14; 2 Chr. 19:7; Pro. 24:23; Acts 10:34; Rom.2:11; Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25; Jas. 2:1-9; 1 Pet. 1:17]
America is Sitting on a Time Bomb with a Short Fuse
What the Hurricane Katrina uncovered and laid bare for the nation to see in that New Orleans convention center were the descendants of "gang slaves"—men and women who bore the burden in the heat of the day who are now disbursed throughout the entire United States—who in the slave fields were awakened at 3:00 A.M. [working during harvest time worked until midnight]; and for a lifetime were told what to do, when to do, where to do, how to do it 24/7; and whipped with a lash (or worse) if it was not being done fast enough or for any other whimsical reason—terrorized and broke from the cradle to the grave—on both sides of the Civil War.
America is sitting on a time bomb with a short fuse. Black people are angry—those who show it, and those who don’t. If Katrina had been anything but a flood which restricted mobility, there would have been rioting in the streets of New Orleans; and that rioting would have triggered similar Watts-type rioting [the Los Angeles riots of 1965] all across America. Jesus told the religious leaders of his day that they could discern the face of the sky, but could not discern the signs of the times (Matthew 16:3). Katrina should have been a wake-up call to this nation.
It is Way Past Time for a National Apology for Slavery
What must America do—admit it, and quit it! It is way past time for a national apology for slavery; and for a Godly repentance for the terror that kept the institution of slavery in place before the Civil War, and for the 100 years of lynching that kept blacks in their “place,” and took away their franchise in the South, after the Civil War. (This terror and the never-prosecuted lynchings did not actually cease until the turbulence of the 1960’s.)
The judgment of James 5:1-8 is all about money (“So the curse causeless shall not come,” (Proverbs 26:2)). It is addressed to the miserable rich who are weeping and howling because their money is becoming corrupted, cankered and rusted (corroded)…all because they did not pay their laborers, and killed them [the just] at will.
For God’s people—and the United States is a nation established by God—slavery itself is a curse (Exodus 21:16; 22:21-24; and Revelation 13:10); and false balances, unjust measures, and condemning the just are all abominations to God (Proverbs 11:1; 20:10 and 23).
The Covenant that God actually has with the United States is the Mayflower Compact, and not the Constitution—which in at least 10 places gives explicit recognition to the institution slavery, and thus to the blood and terror which held it in place. Neither does God recognize the Declaration of Independence as a covenant with Him, as its language that, “…all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…” was never intended to apply to African slaves either by Thomas Jefferson who penned most of the document [although not this particular section which is not in his handwriting] or by the other founding fathers who signed the Declaration.
What the founding fathers did and did not intend in their creation of the foundation documents of the United States, is a matter that has already been judged by the United States Supreme Court in Dred Scott vs. Sandford. 60 US 393 (1857), which can be easily pulled off of the Internet. This case was decided by a clear majority of the Court in a 7/2 decision. The Honorable Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in writing for the Court, sets forth by a host of credible evidence and argument to support the fact that the founding fathers intentionally made it impossible for even an emancipated African slave to ever become a citizen of the United States; and, as the case holds, because Mr. Scott was not a citizen of the United States (and could never become one), he had no standing to sue in the courts of the United States, for anything, much less his freedom. Case dismissed!
Mr. Justice Taney has been much criticized and maligned in history for his judicial analysis of the founding fathers’ intentions, because he was a former save owner (although he actually freed his own slaves before taking the bench). But, I have yet to read any credible arguments put forth to his analysis of the founder’s intentions, from the two dissenting opinions on the Court, or from anyone else for that matter. As a matter of historical law and fact, Scott vs. Sandford was correctly decided.
Every American that loves this nation should read the Dred Scott Decision, to gain an understanding as to why it took the Civil War, the loss of 625,000 lives (100,000 more in the North than in the South), and passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to abolished slavery. But, the mere passage of the 13th Amendment was insufficient to overturn the Dred Scott Decision; and 14th Amendment, whose opening sentence reads..."All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"...was required, not only to overrule Scott vs. Sandford, but to fix what the founding fathers intentionally did when they drafted the Constitution.
To Get God’s Judgment off of our Money, the Bill for Slavery has to be Paid
There is also a gargantuan bill that has to be paid in order to get God off of America’s case, and to prevent the curse of James 5 from further eroding the vast equity of the United States until we become a second-rate nation in the family of nations (as God said in the Prophetic Utterance A Second Reconstruction Is Now In Order). Whites, even those of good will (which is most...at least before it comes to money) believe that it is impossible for the United States to ever go broke. Most of us in the evangelical church go even further by our belief that the United States cannot go broke because God has a Covenant with it, and that we are the primary financiers of the Gospel that’s being preached around the world. This is a big time manifestation of the spirit of pride: as the Mayflower Covenant will not protect the United States any longer from this national un-repented spiritual Christian sin of slavery, and the "burning bushes" that God has been sending for the nation to repent.
God said in the above Prophetic Utterance that, “Except ye repent,” that He would put out the United State’s lamp of radiance among the nations of the world: like he did for the Church at Ephesus for their lack of repentance. As Church leaders and others evaluate whether or not God has actually spoke this Word to and through me, consider that as I write there are hundreds of pastors from New Orleans who are out of their jobs, as well as their staff’s jobs, which number into the thousands. Most have no income, can’t pay their bills, have congregations that may never recover and if they do, many of them will have no income because there is little economy left in New Orleans to support that income; and even if foreclosure-moratorium legislation is passed, as it probably will, which will prevent the immediate foreclosure of their churches, that legislation won’t pay their salaries. ”Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). We are dealing here with a curse!
The first and almost universal response of American whites to the issue of slavery when it is mentioned is, “Well Africans sold slaves,”—which is like responding to one’s Johnny or Jane, that it is OK for them to steal fruit from the corner grocery store because all the other kids are doing it. Ridiculous! Please consider what the world-renowned theologian, John Wesley, had to say on: the Christian institution of slavery, the details of its practice, the Africa that white Christians found when they first arrived; and just how it came about that Africans sold slaves [see John Wesley: Thoughts Upon Slavery, published in 1774; see also John Wesley's Last Letter (to William Wilberforce, a member of the English Parliament saved under Wesley’s ministry].
Why no Land for Slaves In a Half-empty Nation?
During Reconstruction which began in 1865, political decisions were made:
n At the insistence of President Lincoln to not break-up the land-based Southern aristocracy that owned the huge plantations; and
n To keep blacks, although now “free,” in the South—without land and working for wages that would perpetuate a lifetime of poverty—because, after all, somebody had to cultivate and harvest the cotton and tobacco. So, blacks moved from slaves to sharecroppers! [For an example of a sharecrop contract and some amazing additional information, see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/sharecrop/ps_dawson.html, last visited 02/16/2008.]
The crowing piece of domestic legislation of Abraham Lincoln’s first term of office as President (while the Civil War was raging) was The Homestead Act of 1862. Under its provisions, any free born or naturalized citizen and head of household could become the owner of 160 acres of land after only 5 years, by living on it and making “improvements” to it. The provisions of this act were only available to a white man or woman, because Indians under the Constitution were considered to be members of foreign nations; and according to the Dred Scott Decision blacks could not become citizens, either by way of emancipation or naturalization (because they were not citizens of a foreign nation because they were carried here as slaves)—which matter was not fixed until passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments, discussed above.
However, at the close of the Civil War, the Homestead Act was in place, and America was largely empty west of the Mississippi River. Four million newly emancipated slaves—called freedman—had earned the right to, were entitled to, and could have easily become major equity land-holders in America. There was, however, general agreement in Washington, D. C. that the territories out West were for poor whites from the industrial North, and for immigrants (also white) from Europe. It took the Hurricane Katrina to lay bare before the entire world the fruit of those decisions 140 years later, by this continuing catastrophic judgment on the wealth of the United States that is rooted in slavery.
September 11th was also an Attack on the Wealth of America
September 11, 2001 was also a catastrophic judgments attacking the wealth of the United States. Terror was merely the vehicle through which the curse of James 5 was manifested—the product of the Biblical law of sowing and reaping (Galatians 6:7; Genesis 1:11-12). Who would argue that the United States is the financial capital of the world; or that New York City is the financial capital of the nation; or that those twin towers more than any other American icon symbolized America’s wealth. When the "chickens" of the terror of slavery finally came home to roost, it was terror that attacked these icons of the nation’s wealth and brought the twin towers down.
New York City, like New Orleans, was also a major portal for the entrance of slaves into the country. This will come as a shock to the readers, as it also was to me, but New York City was also the site of the massacre of the largest number of freedom seeking slaves in United States history. Quoting from two incidents described by the eminently respected historian, John Hope Franklin, in his book From Slavery To Freedom:
“The ungovernable temper of New York’s Negroes flared up into a fully organized insurrection in the spring of 1712. About twenty-three slaves armed with guns, knives, and hatchets, met in an orchard near the center of the town. At the appointed time one of them set fire to an outhouse of his master. As whites hurried to the burning building the Negroes shot them, killing nine and wounding five or six…When the Negroes were captured, six had committed suicide. One man shot his wife first and then himself, while the other had cut their own throats. Twenty-one were executed: some, including a woman, were hanged; one was suspended in chains alive without food or drink until he was dead; some were burned, one of whom was to be consumed by a slow fire for eight or ten hours; one was broken on the wheel, his head and quarters being place at the Queen’s disposal.” (emphasis added)
“In 1741 the hysteria resulting from the fear of a slave uprising plunged the city of New York into the greatest orgy of Negro persecutions that appeared anywhere during the colonial period.” [At this time one-fifth of Manhattan’s population consisted of black slaves.] “On the night of February 28, 1741…a series of fires broke out…They became so numerous…that the citizens knew that they were not accidental. Panic gripped the town in a flash. Then it happened: the emergence of the rumor that Negroes and poor whites were conspiring to destroy law and order in the city and seize control.
“The city council offered generous rewards for information leading to the arrest of the conspirators…Mary Burton, an indentured servant…said that three Negroes…had evolved a plan to burn the town, kill all the white people, and establish a monarchy…This surpassed the wildest imaginations of the whites…An impartial trial was impossible, and contradictions as well as falsifications are obvious in the ‘confessions’ and other testimony that were presented. In the minds of New Yorkers the conspiracy of a great Negro insurrection had taken shape, and vengeance must be swift and complete.
“In the trials 154 Negroes and 25 whites were prosecuted. Convictions wee secured in the case of 101 Negroes, of whom eighteen were hanged, thirteen burned alive and seventy banished. Four white people, two of whom were women, were also hanged. ‘At the rate of two every week, one hanged and one burned alive, the victims were executed amid prayers, imprecations and shrieks of agony.’” (emphasis added) [From Slavery To Freedom, John Hope Franklin, Second Edition, pp. 91-93, Alfred A Knoff, Inc., 1956]
All this is from New York City—not Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, or Virginia. [See also: Slavery and Slave Trade - NY 1644-1783; 1712-19 NY Slave Revolts; and 1741 NY Slave Revolt.]
An Excerpt From New York’s First Constitution of 1683
Paragraph #27. [Religious toleration]
THAT No person or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ Shall at any time be any ways molested punished disquieted or call in Question for any Difference in opinion or Matter of Religious Concernment…[see New York's First Constitution].
The Curse of James 5 Will Return to Finish its Work on New York City
Oral Roberts, the outstanding contemporary man of God and founder of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, was given a vision of a manifestation of some sort that will set up over New York City and the Eastern part of the United States—smoke, vapor, blood accompanied with a horrific sound (c/p. Acts 2:19)—and then will be disbursed across the United States and throughout the earth. [The “Wake-up Call” can be purchased in its entirety, two weeks of television broadcasts, from the Kenneth Copeland Ministries, www.kcm.org.] The Lord has already told me that this coming manifestation from outer space when it sets up over New York City is the curse of James 5 coming back to take out the city, but whose power is stayed to give New York City and the nation additional time to repent.
As I said way back in the beginning of this message, I am anchored in the Word of God. No matter whatever the subject may be, my frame-of-reference is the Bible. Can I find it in the Word; or what does the Word have to say about this or that? The only thing that I have been able to find in the Bible that comes to the earth from outer space, other than Jesus and the angels (including Satan and his angels), is the curse of Zechariah 5:3, which Isaiah 24 says devourers the whole earth.
Because people do not know, God will stay judgment over New York to give the City and the nation a final opportunity to repent, and then to begin to make restitution for slavery. The vision was given to Dr. Roberts as a “wake-up call” concerning the second coming of Jesus; and it is, because America’s response to both the judgment written and the judgment stayed will determine the United States’ place in the end time events that are yet to precede the second coming of Jesus. It is interesting to note that God has waited until the very year that the European Economic Union was set to begin its operations (with a gross national product bigger that the U.S), to require this national repentance of the America. [Although not the subject matter here, there are a whole host of world-wide events that have not transpired and nations which are not in place for the second coming of Jesus to reign over the earth. See Coming Events In Bible Prophecy.]
A Man of God in the White House Trained in Terror
God has raised up and set in the White House a man of God who has been trained in terrorism and in the mindset of terrorists. He has also been trained in the liberation and reconstruction of the people of two nations—Afghanistan and Iraq—who were caught in the grips of terrorism and terrorists. I am persuaded that this man of God, George W. Bush, has now been commissioned by the Lord himself to lead the United States into A Second Reconstruction of major portions of the South for the deserving victims of Katrina of every race.
At the same time, the President is called by God to lead the nation in fixing of all that was lacking in the first Reconstruction of 1865, where 4 million Americans were “freed,” but at the same time “fired” from their full employment status as slaves. They were given no land, no money, and now had to pay rent on the same shack they lived in a slave for “free”. Four hundred thousand Blacks were turned out of school when the Freedman’s Bureau was abolished after only a 5-year existence. (In fact, the public education system that is taken for granted across the United States had its origin in the Freedman’s Bureau.)
Although Blacks were kept in the South, they were given no national liberation army to protect their franchise, or to protect them from the post-Civil Wars terror of the Ku Klux Klan and its friends. This southern liberation army would have had to remain and be supported by the President and the Congress until the hearts of Southerners were changed—likely a generation or more—and like Iraq, troops would have had to remain until the black male could be trained to lead, govern and protect their families, with a viable economic plan for physical self-determination that would guarantee the freedmen’s becoming a financial member of the American dream.
My Message On Behalf of Black America to George W. Bush
This is a set-up, Mr. President. In the language of the Church, you have been called, appointed, anointed, and trained by God to lead the United States into A Second Reconstruction to fix for the descendants of the African-Americans who missed out in the Reconstruction of 1865, in all that this country now knows how to do, and to which we its former slaves are entitled. You know more about every facet of this kind of national recovery of large populations of people than any president in United States’ history.
On behalf of Black Americans, I believe in you; and I thank you in advance for your willingness to be used by God to lead the United States into a season of national repentance and national reconstruction, and to put the curse of James 5 behind us for ever.
I do not hesitate to say this, because in my heart I know that each of us has the same Commander-in-chief!
Walter James Taylor
© 2008 Walter James Taylor