Wickedness in America (Interview) — David Wilkerson

A Vision of Calamity and National Sin

As I was talking about calamities coming to the United States, I really saw, I believe, called a vision, a word from the Lord, two weeks in a row, every night, an awesome sense of calamity coming to the nation as a result of its sin, rampant sin.

Economic Warning and the Burden of Debt

And I talked three years ago, that was back when cars were selling at record pace. We had the stock market was over 1 ,000. I talked about a double-dip recession that was coming. I talked about cars and houses not being able to be sold.

I talked about a flood of filth on television that was coming, programs that would be incubated in hell. I talked about earthquakes hitting the nations in the world and drought conditions. When it first came out, I lost an awful lot of support, people who thought I should stick to drug addicts.

And I was consequently driven to my Bible. Even some of my very closest, dearest friends thought that I had gone off the deep end. It came to the place where I really wondered if I had just dreamed this, because it's a very awesome, terrible thing to print something, and the book was in a million and a half, almost two million copies, and people were starting to regulate their lives by some of the things that were said.

I was telling people not to go in debt, for example, and I had about 20, 30 pastors tell me I'd killed their building program. People said, they will consider depressions coming, so don't build or expand.

Of course, I'd never said anything like that at all. In fact, I've been building and expanding, but paying cash as we go. Yes, your book is one of the reasons that our ministry pays cash. We've just finished this center here, and we've paid two and a half million dollars cash, and we have just a few dollars to go, and our goal is six more months to be totally debt free, because the Lord has spoken to my heart that if we're to continue ministering during the years to come, should Jesus tarry, that we must have these huge indebtedness taken care of now, that now is the time to do it.

And I believe your book was a confirmation to my own heart at that time. Well, I just put out a letter to over 100 ,000 people that are on my mailing list, and I've just read this past week 10 ,000 letters personally from people, and I'm shocked at that.

My wife and I have just been reading for hours and hours, in fact, days. People are being deluged by people who say, what's happening? There are so many ministries so deep in debt, and everybody's writing to us.

One woman said, I get 40 letters of appeals from ministries around the country, and I think some of us may be, you know, I don't fit in that category now, perhaps 10 years ago, but the Lord's really changed my view on this, that God's work is supported by people, but our people out there believe that too, that if they have to get their houses in order, it should be done through Christian ministries should get their houses in order too, and I believe that time is getting short.

Recession Predictions and Studying Biblical Prophecy

I really do that. I've talked about a double-dip recession that would come back. There would be a white-hot boom, and we're in that now. The stock market did go back over 1 ,000, and I think Carter will start feeding the economy, and we're going to have a false boom probably another year or so.

No one can predict dates and times. I think that's very, very dangerous, and I've never done that, but I do…. I was driven because of that book into the Word, and I have four Bibles that I study just prophecy.

I'm not a prophecy expert, and I'm not a prophet, but I've got a historical view of how God deals with nations who reach what I call flash points. When they reach these certain points of violence, for example, when the nation became violent, God said, I'll destroy it.

And once again, all through the Old Testament, you eat violence, and every time Jerusalem, Israel, Babylon became violent, God destroyed it. I saw the moral landslide that happens, permissiveness in sexual morals, rampant homosexuality.

Nineveh, Moral Decay, and Divine Judgment

All of these things…. The prophet Nahum, for example, came to Nineveh. You know, Jonah preached, and Nineveh repented. A 150-year reprieve was given to Nineveh, and all comes the prophet Nahum, and he said, now God's going to destroy you, and I'm going to give you five reasons.

He said, you become an alcoholic society, you become drunken. He said, your men have become as women. Now, that fits here today so much that we call it bisexual. He said, your leaders have become as grasshoppers.

In other words, they won't make decisions, they promise everything to everybody. Last month, or the month just before the election, in the New York Daily News, I saw a picture of Jimmy Carter with a body of a grasshopper, and it quoted from Nahum's prophecy, your leaders shall be as grasshoppers.

I almost passed out. It was so shocking to me. I'm not suggesting that. The newspaper suggested that. He said, you're running to and fro. Your shepherds have begun to slumber, they're sleeping, and your people are left empty and void and wasted.

Now, how can God destroy Nineveh for these five sins and allow us to commit the five same sins rampantly and get away with it? There's no possibility of that. So, in view of the historical view I received of this, for example, I believe the landing on the moon was a step toward divine judgment.

Human Pride, Space Exploration, and the Tower of Babel

David said the heavens are his habitation. He set this as his tent to dwell in. I'm not talking about a three-tiered society, you know, or heaven here and earth here, or hell down here. I'm talking about God saying there are limits.

You replenish the earth. You take care of poverty. You spend your money helping human need. We spend billions of dollars sticking our foot in God's tent, flying our puny little kite in his face in an act of pride.

And this is the same thing happened to the Tower of Babel. I believe that society was a very intellectual society. I believe they made it. They were trying to send some kind of beams into heaven, but they said our glory shall be above the stars, and at that point God sent judgment, confused them.

Judgment came at that flashpoint. In Babylon, the city state of Babylon, the Bible says they set their nest among the stars, and they said, who shall bring us down? At that very point, as soon as Obadiah said, the moment they set their nest in the stars, God brought them down.

But we, too, have set our nest in the stars, and in pride we really enact to become as gods. Two weeks after we landed men on the moon, Watergate broke out, and this nation has been in turmoil ever since.

See, sin is the pride of altitude, and it's trying to get up above God. I think that that's one of the…. When Commander Armstrong stepped off of Apollo, he was saying, one giant step toward divine judgment.

Not that these are ungodly men, they're very godly people involved in the space program, but not aware of what's happening. This is an act of pride. Then we're going to go to Mars, we're going to go through the whole universe in an effort to tame the universe.

Television Filth and the Moral Landslide

It's the glorification of science to the deprecation of religion, and this is where we're at now. I warned about the moral landslide three years ago that we'd have X-rated movies on television after midnight, and a number of cities now on cable television have X-rated movies.

Look what's happened since that time. I warned that programs like Sanford and Son, Maud, All in the Family, Good Times would compete with one another to sneer God right out of the American conscience.

That's happening now. They glorify homosexuality. They talk about abortion. Everything is sacred, they trample on it. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is incubating the pits of hell. Most unbelievable kind of programming.

Mr. Lear has a program now, he's trying to put a trial balloon out. Three men sell their soul to the devil for one year of glory. We're going to see the devil glorified on television. We're going to see nudity on primetime television, and it's the prophet Nahum's prophecy coming to pass.

God said, Behold, I'll pour abominable filth upon you. Now, that doesn't mean that God has a reservoir of smut and filth, but the devil doesn't. The Holy Spirit's been restraining it. But men are clamoring for nudity, streaking, filth, dirty television programming, and they're going to get it.

Now, that doesn't make me afraid, because the Bible says the man who built his house on the rock, the flood came and beat on it, the flood of filth and pornography, whatever you have. He couldn't shake it.

Violence, Youth, and the Loss of Moral Clarity

Well, this year was the first time that we've had movies on television suggested for mature audiences only. Isn't that correct? And on the national networks? Oh, it's so bad that this generation, I believe, that's been raised on that kind of permissive television program you're talking about, where only mature audiences can view, have caused a whole generation of kids, now 14 and 15, in New York City, to have no sense of right or wrong.

When I first went there 18 years ago, these gang members would take their hat off. They would respect you, even though they were robbing, and mugging, and stealing, and even killing. These kids had a sense of right or wrong.

But last week I was in New York with our kids, walking the streets there and ministering. A 103-year-old lady was beaten up for $2 worth of broccoli. 258 ,000 elderly people in the Bronx who are afraid to leave their apartments now.

Up to two years ago, they were able to sit out in the park and get some sunshine. Now, the kids throw rocks at them, stones, tin cans, beer cans, 258 ,000 elderly people who won't leave their apartment.

And when I was there a few weeks ago, a gang of about 14 kids, just pre-teeners, had brutally decapitated an elderly couple. And a police officer said, we ought to publish these pictures all over the United States to show what's happening to this younger generation.

And when they captured these boys, took them to the judge. Those boys stood up and threatened and said, we dare you to jail us. We dare you. They had no sense of right or wrong. And this is the thing that shocks me, the thing that's changed, that there's no sense of right or wrong.

These kids have been born and raised on violence and permissive television programming. And anybody tells me that that does not affect our kids, that's premeditated ignorance. That's stupidity. Marriage has been just totally made fun of by television in the last 12 months.

Marriage, Divorce, and the Breakdown of the Home

Programs like All's Fair, I believe is the title of it. I don't know if I'll be sued for naming titles or not, but that's all right. But here's a government official living with his girlfriend. They just decided they weren't going to be married, they're just going to live together.

And it's supposedly a comedy, and it's a way of life. But this is just one program. This is what's happening all over. What effect is this disregard for marriage? I know you believe that the home is a very important and honorable position from God.

What's happening? What is going to happen if we don't get back to the mom and dad and kid relationship that God intended us to have? Well, Time Magazine just predicted one million new divorces this next year, ten million kids living in broken homes.

And we have permissive attitudes toward divorce now in churches and denominations, major denominations now. You can be a minister ordained and still hold your papers and be a…. Now, I used to be very, very hard against divorce because, you know, I quoted from Malachi 315, let there be no divorcing of your wives.

God hates divorce. But I'm finding I'm having to ask God to give me a little more compassion because what do you do when a woman comes to you, for example, my wife and I, and her husband, they've been married 23 years, and he discovers his wife, his husband, her husband is cheating on her, living with another woman on the side, and she's got to tell the kids, and he won't break away.

He said, I'm going to leave you. She said, I have no alternative but for divorce. And there are probably many viewers of this program who have been divorced and have had a terrible traumatic experience, and it does mess up the kids.

There's no question. I'm not saying that every divorce messes up the kids, but I want to be able to have a heart of compassion to this problem because the problems today are so unique, and I don't want to oversimplify the problem, but I do believe that the kids that are raised on this have no great respect for marriage.

And it's easy for them. The first problem, rather than try to work it out, just run out and find somebody else. And I think the sensuality in America, if a young people been married five years later, she gets fat, he goes out and finds some slim young lady simply because that's, he's been brainwashed to think that sensuality is the only thing, or sexuality is the only part of marriage that's worthwhile.

Sin, Grace, and Spiritual Awakening

We've heard a lot about born-again experience. In fact, Newsweek just recently, that was the big headline on the cover of Newsweek. Do you feel that America is having any amount of spiritual awakening?

Or you're talking, we're hearing so much on what's happening, it just seems like maybe sin is abounding more than ever. Well, the Bible, I talk a lot about the coming judgment, and I believe judgment is suspended over America right now.

And people who try to, I call them the prophets of prosperity and the, you know, those who gloss over it and say, everything's going to turn out all right. That's the other extreme. They hide their faces to all the things that are happening, the economic confusion that's gripping the world.

But where sin abounds, grace does much more abound, and I'm a very happy, contented minister because I know that, and my book was the one that coined that term, God has everything under control. And live or die, we are the lords.

And I'm not concerned about that. But these prophets of prosperity who want to turn it all the way around, all they want to do is talk about the good things with totally rejecting that anything bad is happening in America.

Well, there's another danger of talking about all the bad and not talking about the great things that God is doing in America. God is moving by His Spirit. The church is being awakened. There's a great renewal all over the world, but the masses are still rejecting.

Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. We have more sin, more crime, more corruption, more immorality, but we have more grace than any other generation. And I just came from New York City, preached Mass in Square Garden last week at Felt Forum, gave an invitation.

I never saw anything like it. These are New Yorkers under the spirit of seduction, and over 1 ,000 came running forward weeping, and all over America, I'm seeing more young people turning to Christ than any time in our particular ministry, and that in view of all the problems like cruising and boozing.

Alcohol, Prosperity, and the Last Goodness Call

Those are the big two words in high schools now, cruising and boozing. They get there all week. They save up, get six packs, load it up in the van, go out. You find them in front of hamburger joints. You find them in shopping centers now.

They're just cruising around all night drinking, throwing cans out the window, and we are on the verge of having maybe 5 million young alcoholics in the next 5, 10 years if Christ does not come. We're going to see alcoholism become a problem 10 times as big as drugs.

It's going to be absolutely devastating, and this is, if anything causes fear in my heart, it's what's happening because of the drinking. In the light of your book, The Vision, do you feel that this is the last great period of prosperity in the United States before something happens?

I believe in my book I call it the goodness call. They said, don't you know that I'm blessing you that this would lead you to repentance? I'm blessing you. I'm pouring on the good, and in my study of every society in the past 6 ,000 years, we've destroyed 20 civilizations.

20 civilizations have come and gone, and every one of them the same patterns. We've never learned from history, and always just before judgment has been a prosperity wave, God's last goodness call to a society saying, before I spit you out of my mouth because of crime or immorality and judge you, I'm going to bless you.

I'm going to prosper you. This is exactly what's happening, and I think God has destined a man in the White House, but if he's not careful, he's going to move his destiny. He's going to miss it very tragically, and I've got some gnawing fears that are gripping my heart.

Judgment Suspended and the Call to Repentance

If you want to talk about it, I will. Yes, you said that judgment is suspended over America. What do you mean by that? I believe that he's withholding judgment, and the only reason America hasn't been judged at this point is God calls judgment a bow, and he's stringing the bow tighter, waiting.

He's so merciful. He so loves this nation. He so intensely loves this nation, and it's my intense patriotism, too, that causes me to look out around and hear the cry from the 33rd chapter of Exodus. He said, if watchmen see the sword come and he doesn't warn, I'm going to hold him responsible for that, and I hear a sound of a trumpet.

I really do. I believe God is trying to say to this nation, I'm giving you one last merciful call. God will spare America. God will bless and prosper this nation, but not unless there's Nineveh-like repentance from top to bottom, inside and out.

Christian Leaders and Public Faith

We have over 25 congressmen and senators who claim to be born again. We can't let these men anymore hide and subject their testimony to Potomac fever anymore. There has to be a turnabout in this nation.

We can't allow them to take over our schools and push God out of our schools. We can't allow the courts to become so ungodly that they dictate what we can or can't do about prayer. We can't allow X-rated movies to take over our streets.

We can't allow the pushers of smut to suddenly tell us what we can or can't do. We can't allow these purveyors to sneer God out of the American conscience, just allow any kind of television programming.

We American people as Christians have to say something about it, and God is calling us. But I believe judgment is suspended right now, and I see black days coming. If we do not repent, if we miss it at this point in history, if Jimmy Carter does not say on inauguration day what God wants to say here, this nation, that I believe is going to be the beginning of the black days that are coming to America.

Jimmy Carter, when he was accepted, his nomination did not mention God's name once at the Democratic Convention, not one time. I read it four times, didn't even mention God. Jimmy Carter, I believe as a Christian I'm obligated to pray for him.

I'm not talking politics now. Every Christian must pray for the president, and I found Jimmy Carter in the Bible. I believe he's Jehu in the Bible. Jehu came out of nowhere, a man who spoke pious politics, mixed religion with politics, said we need a new day.

He followed a fallen government that had been corrupted, and he suddenly was there out of nowhere. Jehu came, a revolutionary. The whole nation was filled with hope and anxiety that this was the beginning.

He talked about a new day that was coming, the same words we hear from President Carter right now. And he came in, and the first probably hundred days of his reign, he began to clean things up. Things were changed, but he built around him ungodly advisors, and these ungodly advisors began to draw him away from his original goal.

He became ashamed of the revolution, and his government became an abomination to the sight of God. And Jimmy Carter has around him some advisors, the president of a brewery, for example. Well, that's all right, but I really believe that if Mr. Carter—we have no right to doubt his born-again experience.

I believe that. But Jimmy Carter, I saw in a football game the other day, I think it was Tennessee, the quarterbacks being reviewed, and before the cameras, the whole nation, he said, I believe in Jesus.

He said, thank God for you. I thought, if a football player is not ashamed to get on television, why can't the president on inauguration day stand up like Jehoshaphat and stretch forth his hands and say, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ.

A President’s Public Confession and Moral Leadership

I'm not ashamed. The whole world would admire him. I have a terrible gnawing in my heart that a man who may have been destined by God to call a nation back to moral principles can miss that if he's not careful, and that's my prayer.

That's why last week I took out a full-page ad in 100 newspapers. I called it Nineveh 2, a letter to the president, and many of your viewers have seen it, asking Mr. Carter to make a public stand. Now, you say that the president can't do it all, but if you read your Old Testament, Jehoshaphat on his inauguration stretched forth his hand and called the whole nation to stand before God, and the Bible says they gladly received, and then it says they built, they prospered.

Arabians brought gift. The whole nation went into greatest prosperity it had ever known. Jehoshaphat, Eza, all through the Scripture, he did that which was right. He was not ashamed. He cleaned up the courts.

He commanded the nation to stand before God, and God judged Israel by the kings, by the leaders. President Carter has told the American people, this is the highest office. I want it because of its power so I can use it for good.

All right? I say to Jimmy Carter, and if any of Jimmy Carter's people are listening, we need as Christians to get this message through. We have been deceived as evangelical voters if we do not now have a public declaration.

I know Mr. Meany is on his back, and the unions, and all these people who have been promised things, but we Christians have been led to believe that this is a new day, a new spirit, and that we have a born-again president.

A born-again president cannot separate Jesus Christ from his politics. He cannot separate Jesus Christ from his morals. He cannot separate it from his government, and I believe even the Jewish community will admire President Carter if he comes out and says, I believe in Jesus Christ, and I know where….

He was being interviewed the other day, and this scares me. He's been interviewed, and he said, I know where my strength comes from now. I know where I have to get my guidance. The American people, what a chance to have said, you know, if he had the guts to tell Norman Mailer in Playboy magazine where he stood on morals, he should have the guts to stand up now and say, I am born again.

Being Born Again and Refusing to Hide the Light

I'm a little concerned what I heard on Tom Snyder's program from his sister being asked about being born again. She said, you could look at a nice painting and be born again. Well, that's not my concept of being born again.

My concept of being born again is that Jesus Christ becomes the Lord of my life, and I don't care if it costs me my job or an office or what it costs me. I'm not going to hide the light under a bushel.

And the prophet Azariah came to Jehoshaphat. He says, as long as you trust God, God is with you. The moment you forsake God, God forsakes you, and at that point, America's in trouble. And if we do not have from our government leaders now, we have congressmen who've asked us to vote for them.

They're born-again believers. All right, then let them take their stand. Let them not be ashamed of Jesus Christ. Let Christ be integrated into the government, all right? Then we'll see the Lord keep this judgment suspended.

He'll keep withstanding. He'll keep withholding it. He's done that time and time again all through history. But the moment we break His commandments, the moment we become ashamed of His testimony, then black days.

A Call to Repentance and Prayer

And Jesus said then, and that's what my book is about, and I can talk about what I see coming in the way of judgment. Right now, before we go into our next hour, Dave, could you pray with the people that are watching?

We have a potential audience today of 75 million people, and I want to call the people to repentance. You have warned us. You have warned us in the spirit, I believe, of what needs to be done to repent, to humble ourselves before God.

And there are people you've watched today, and you've heard things that just like a knife went through you. You say, that's me. I've been fooling with the things that I know I shouldn't be. God's been dealing with me.

Could you lead us in prayer that people will give their lives to God right now all over America? Yes, because you know, I believe that repentance is an individual matter.