Ten years ago, evangelist David Wilkerson predicted a coming “financial holocaust” in a book, “America’s Last Call.”
Known for his best-selling book “The Cross and the Switchblade” and his worldwide drug treatment program Teen Challenge, these were his words:
• God’s judgment will strike suddenly on the U.S. economy.
• There will be a meltdown of the bond market.
• There will be a real-estate meltdown, with a market made up of mostly sellers and very few buyers. Millions will lose their homes to repossession.
• There would be an ominous rise in homosexual power.
• A sudden storm of confusion would take place on Wall Street.
• God’s watchmen and prophets would be silenced.
• The U.S. dollar would collapse.
• America would lose control of its economy.
I went to New York in December 1998 and interviewed Mr. Wilkerson at Times Square Church. Since this was during the Y2K scare, we talked of his off-the-record conversations with the frightened financiers who attend his church.
Mr. Wilkerson’s warning was briefly heeded but once the millennium came and went, many disappointed Christians felt these warnings fell in the same category as some of his other prophecies that never came to pass. So we read Money magazine and invested in emerging markets.
Last May, I got one of his newsletters repeating this list and warning that the Bear Stearns collapse in March was just the beginning. I filed this warning in a notebook, found it again last week and got spooked.
Despite yesterday’s prophecy becoming today’s headline, is anyone listening? On the surface, yes. When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman calls our financial collapse “the wages of our sins”; when ABC-TV commentator Cokie Roberts says she’d like to see “the CEOs of these [Wall Street] companies marched down Wall Street in sackcloth and ashes”; when the Financial Times of London mentions “repentance” in a headline, we know God-talk is back in.
Funny how the moment things seem out of control, everyone goes to God or gods. In July, the Wall Street Journal covered the growing band of bankers, traders and money managers who have turned to yoga to ramp down the stress.
Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, told readers of the Huffington Post just before Rosh Hashana: “Maybe we should all go to synagogue or church in the next 10 days in order to repent. Because if we don’t, the end of a lot of things may indeed be near.”
The comment section on his post was wildly interesting.
“Jim, it seems that all these people will never repent,” one man wrote. “After all, they are always forgiven by their gods.”
Remember how crammed churches were the Sunday after Sept. 11? And how those same people drifted away a few weeks later?
Mr. Wilkerson, who is still preaching away at Times Square Church, says there will be a day of reckoning in real time. His latest sermon, posted at worldchallenge.org, is called “Getting Ready for the End of All Things.”
“We see the handwriting on the wall,” he wrote.
The rest of us just wonder. There have been so many false alarms in the past; who can hope the Second Coming will happen soon? We hear warnings, yes, but get no answers.
• Julia Duin’s Stairway to Heaven column runs Sundays and Thursdays. Contact her at jduin@washingtontimes.com.
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