The ills that plague the United States today are evidenced in every area of this once God-fearing nation. Undoubtedly they stem from the removal of the fear of the Lord and His Word from government, schools, churches and homes. In their place evolutionary theories with their resulting humanistic and pantheistic religions are overspreading the land. Abortion (4,000 daily) drugs, immorality (called "life-styles"), astrology and other new age (but age-old) deceptions abound and increase with alarming rapidity.

There is a generation of Americans who have been raised without God and need to be reached with the gospel of God's grace. Believers living in the United States are already in a land of great opportunity, a needy mission field.

Mission roles are now reversed. Whereas the Western world used to be the source of missionaries to other parts of the globe, now the number of Third World missionaries will soon equal that of the Western world. As foreign lands have been evangelized (almost 80% of the world's population has been reached with the gospel), they too have obeyed the great come mission to go forth with the gospel. They are finding that nations which used to be God-fearing lands, and were used to bring the gospel to them, now are in the darkness of unbelief. Two-thirds of all evangelical Christians alive today are in non-Western countries.

The United States is going in the wrong direction spiritually. May the Lord give each believing citizen a burden for the souls of those in their neighborhoods, towns, cities and governments who are being swept along with the rising tide of evil flooding our country. We should all be missionaries who like Paul and others of the New Testament were sent forth with the gospel of Christ to save souls and then to instruct them in the truths of Scripture. May we all "do the work of an evangelist" (2 Timothy 4:5), "teaching (making disciples of) all nations" (Matthew 28:19,20), including the USA.

—Tim Johnson