Is the USA Mentioned in Prophecy?

1. The attempts to discover America in prophecy:

Some expositors are more, some less, dogmatic that America is mentioned in prophecy.

a. Some identify Babylon with the USA.

Logsdon suggests that “the wealthy, powerful, wicked, God-forsaking endtime nation, spiritually called Babylon in prophecy” is the USA. (Logsdon, p.55)

b. Some identify the nation of Isaiah 18 as the USA.

Isaiah 18:1 “Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the river of Ethiopia.”

• The land in question is the land overshadowed with wings. Since our America’s emblem is the eagle, our nation must be in view.
• Only gross spiritualizing can lead to that conclusion.

The land is said to be beyond the river of Ethiopia, something hardly true of the USA. Besides that, the eagle was the symbol of Rome and is presently a symbol of Germany, Austria, Spain, and Poland. Wikipedia lists over 20 nations whose national symbol is the eagle.

What is more, Isaiah 18:1 does not even contain a reference to eagles but insects. Merrill F. Unger notes that the land in view is apparently “ancient Ethiopia or modern Sudan. The reference to the buzzing of the wings evidently describes one of its most pestiferous insects (or all of them) for which the country was notorious.” (Unger, p.1190)

c. Some see a reference to the United States in Ezekiel 38:13.

“The merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof” protest against the invasion of Israel by a northern power. It is suggested that Tarshish is England and America is one of the young lions, or “colonies” of England. To find England or the United States in this passage involves blatant eisegesis, first reading these nations into the text.

Maxwell Coder has well said that “many attempts have been made to find America in the prophetic Scriptures. All of them have been rejected by conservatives as violating sound rules of exegesis.” (Coder, p.81-90)

2. The absence of American in prophecy.

There are various suggestions why the United States is not specifically mentioned in the prophetic Scriptures.

a. By the time of the rapture, America has passed out of existence.

Does this mean Australia, Japan or South Africa that are also not mentioned have passed out of existence?

b. America has been conquered by Russia or some other nation.

This scenario, while suggested by many, is demonstrably false. If the USA were conquered by a nation today, that victorious nation would be a world power tomorrow. But according to Daniel 2 and 7, there can be four and only four world empires between Nebuchadnezzar’s time (606 B.C.) and Christ’s kingdom. These four kingdoms are identified as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. Also, until the middle of the tribulation period there are two major centers of power on earth: the Western Confederacy and Russia with her confederates. Russia and China, who always wanted to be world powers, will be unsuccessful. The USA, which could have been a world empire, refused to exercise its absolute power in the days following World War II and since the collapse of Communism in 1990.

c. America is not mentioned because prophecy is primarily concerned with Israel and its immediate neighbors.

Because of this, says John Walvoord, “It is not surprising that geographical areas remote from this center of Biblical interest should not figure largely in prophecy.” (Walvoord) The only exception to this appears to be Gog and Magog, whose point of origin is identified three times literally as “the uttermost parts of the north” (Ez. 38:6, 15; 39:2).

S. Franklin Logsdon, Is the USA in Prophecy? Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1969, 55.

Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Commentary on the Old Testament.  Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2002, 1190.

Maxwell S. Coder, The Final Chapter. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1984 (Chapter 7: “The United States and Other Nations,” 81-90).

John F. Walvoord. The Nations in Prophecy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1967 (Chapter XVI, “America in Prophecy”).

© Manfred E Kober