6994 USA And Prophecy: Inferential Relationship
Although several commentators have made pinpoint identifications of the United States in the Scripture, most scholars believe that this country exists in prophetic Scripture only by inference or indirect relationships.
It might be surmised that, being originally populated by people from the old Roman Empire, the United States has some—if not vital—participation in the ongoing flow of end-time developments.
6995 America’s Resources
At the end of World War II, America had 144,126,000 people, 3,022,000 square miles of area, and $625.8 billion in total national output.
Three decades later, the U.S. today has 215,118,000 people (up 49%), 3,615,000 square miles of area (up 19.6%), and $1,691 billion in total national output (up 170%).
Thus, the country’s economy expanded three times as fast as population, bringing unprecedented high standards of living.
6996 American Productions
America, with 7% of world’s land area and about 10% of its population, accounts for 1/3 of the world’s production of goods and services. Its farmlands produce 13% of world’s wheat, 46% of its corn and 21% of its meat. Its factories produce goods almost equal in size to combined output of USSR and West Europe. Auto factories in US produced over 12 million passenger cars a year or 41% of world output.
6997 U.S. National Wealth
If you wanted to buy the United States—land, buildings, machineries, cars, aircraft, people’s belongings, everything—it would cost you more than 6 trillion dollars at recent prices. This represents a rise in value of 1,576% since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It is also equal to $28,611 per man, woman and child in the country.
And if the national wealth continues to expand at the post-World War II rate of 3.5% the U.S. will be worth 8.7 trillion dollars in a decade.
6998 A Scaled-Down Model
Henry Smith Leiper points up American affluence with some startling statistics. Imagine that we could compress the world’s population into one town of 1,000 people, keeping proportions right.
In this town there would be only sixty Americans. These sixty Americans would receive half the income of the entire town. They would have an average life expectancy of seventy years; the other 940 persons would have less than forty years. The sixty Americans would own fifteen times as much per person as all of their neighbors. They would eat 72 percent more than the maximum food requirements; many of the 940 other people would go to bed hungry every night.
Of fifty-three telephones in the town, Americans would have twenty-eight. The lowest-income group among the Americans would be better off by far than the average of the other townsmen. The sixty Americans and about 200 others representing Western Europe and a few classes in South America, Australia, and Japan would be relatively well-off. The other 75 percent would be poor.
—Christianity Today
6999 No Other Motives
Speaking on International Affairs at Chautauqua, New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “We seek to dominate no other nation. We ask no territorial expansion. We oppose imperialism. We desire reduction in world armaments. We believe in democracy; we believe in freedom; we believe in peace. We offer to every nation of the world the handclasp of the good neighbor. Let those who wish our friendship look us in the eye and take our hand.”