He Wist Not That the LORD Had Departed
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And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.Judges 16:20 (KJV)
Here is a question most Americans have never once asked themselves: depending on where you live, what language will you be speaking to your new masters? Mandarin? Russian? Farsi? Arabic?
Go ahead and laugh. Most people will. That laugh is the whole problem.
I am not writing this as an armchair general. My military career was in Force Protection and Antiterrorism. The DOD, the United States Air Force, and the Department of Energy trained me to think like the enemy: to look at a base, a facility, or a city and see exactly what an attacker sees. So let me tell you what the enemy sees when he looks at America.
He does not see a giant. He sees Samson asleep in Delilah’s lap.
The Myth of the Untouchable Nation
Americans believe they are untouchable. We have two oceans, the most expensive military in history, and more guns than people. We have never had a foreign army march down Main Street, so we assume we never will.
Edom believed the same thing. Edom lived in the clefts of the rock, behind mountain walls no army could climb, and God answered that confidence directly:
The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.Obadiah 3–4 (KJV)
Babylon said it too: “I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children” (Isaiah 47:8). Every empire in history has said some version of “it can’t happen here.” Every one of them was wrong.
What the Map Looks Like
So let’s run the thought experiment honestly. If America were attacked and broken, who would end up giving the orders where you live?
The West Coast, Hawaii, and Guam: Mandarin
China is the only adversary with the industry, the population, and the navy to contest the Pacific. Any war over Taiwan puts Hawaii and Guam on the front line from the first day. The West Coast faces China across open water, and China has spent thirty years preparing for exactly that fight.
Alaska: Russian
The Bering Strait is about 55 miles wide. Russian nationalists still talk about the 1867 sale of Alaska as a mistake to be corrected. Alaska is a long way from Washington and very close to Moscow’s doorstep.
The Gulf Coast and the Southwest: Farsi and Arabic
Iran cannot sail an army across the Atlantic. It does not need to. Its reach is proxies, sleeper cells, drones, and partnerships with Russia, China, Venezuela, and Cuba, all of which put adversary influence in our own hemisphere. The war with Iran this year proved it is willing to strike American forces and keep striking.
The East Coast: No Flag Required
The East Coast does not need to be occupied. It needs to be switched off. Its threats are missiles from submarines, attacks on the power grid, and attacks on the financial systems that the whole country runs through.
The Heartland: Whoever Fills the Vacuum
Here in Oklahoma, a lot of folks think the gun safe settles the question. I need to say this plainly to my neighbors. A man with a deer rifle and no training, no unit, no supply line, and no communications is not a militia. He is a casualty report waiting to be written. Untrained civilians do not stop a professional force. They never have.
They Won’t Invade. They Won’t Have To.
Here is what my training taught me: you do not occupy a country like this. You break it, and then you let it fall in on itself.
That is not theory. In 2024 the FBI, CISA, and NSA publicly warned that Chinese state hackers, known as Volt Typhoon, had been found pre-positioned inside American power, water, communications, and transportation systems. They were not there to steal secrets. They were there to be ready to turn things off.
Think it through. Take down the grid in the dead of winter. Stop the fuel and stop the trucks. Grocery shelves hold only a few days of stock, and the old saying is that any society is nine meals away from anarchy. Within a few weeks, the people who were sure they were the toughest nation on earth are fighting each other over canned goods and gasoline.
By the time a foreign flag shows up, our own panic has already done the hard work. Whoever restores order gets to set the terms, and the language.
The Navy Is Cooked
I will say it plainly: the United States Navy is cooked. Here is why, using facts you can check yourself rather than anything out of Tehran.
Yes, our forces smashed Iran’s navy this year. Do not let that fool you. That fight exposed the arithmetic that will sink us against a real peer. Night after night, for months, in the Red Sea and around the Strait of Hormuz, our ships have fired interceptors that cost millions of dollars apiece to knock down drones that cost tens of thousands. Every missile fired is a missile that takes years to replace.
Meanwhile, China’s shipbuilding capacity is estimated at more than two hundred times ours, and China already has the largest navy in the world by number of ships. Our own ships sit in maintenance yards for years waiting on repairs. Our land-based nuclear missile, the Minuteman III, was first fielded in 1970, and its replacement is behind schedule and over budget. The Pentagon’s own studies have found that most young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver.
A force like that can still win the fight in front of it. It cannot win the next one, and the one after that. That is how great powers go down: not in one battle, but in a slow drain they refuse to see.
You Already Have Masters
Before you worry about which foreign power might rule your state, look at who already does.
The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.Proverbs 22:7 (KJV)
America is the largest debtor nation in history. Our factories moved overseas decades ago. Much of our medicine depends on ingredients made in China. Most of us cannot go one hour without a phone built on the other side of the world. We are already servants. We just haven’t noticed who we are serving.
Moses warned Israel what happens to a blessed nation that forgets who blessed it:
The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.Deuteronomy 28:43–44 (KJV)
And then he gave the reason:
Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things. The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand.Deuteronomy 28:47–49 (KJV)
Notice what the judgment is tied to. It is not poverty. It is abundance without gratitude. It is prosperity that forgot God. That is not ancient Israel’s problem alone. That is a description of the United States of America.
The Real Problem Isn’t Military
Samson’s strength was never really in his hair. It was in the LORD. The hair was the sign of a covenant, and when the covenant was broken, the strength left. The worst part of Judges 16:20 is not that the Philistines came. It is that Samson did not know the LORD had departed. He got up expecting to do what he had always done, and he could not.
America’s strength was never really in its carriers either. It was in the hand of God over a nation that, for all its faults, once humbled itself in prayer. Now we trust in the hardware.
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.Psalm 20:7 (KJV)
Amos said it to a nation much like ours: “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion” (Amos 6:1). Jesus said it to a church much like ours: “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17).
Wake Up
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.1 Corinthians 10:12 (KJV)
So what do you do with all of this? Not panic. Wake up.
Repent first. The promise still stands: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Notice it says my people. Healing for the land begins in the church, not in Washington.
Then prepare. Not with fear, but with wisdom. Food, water, skills, and knowledge. If you have not read the “When the Bronze Fell” series here on Walking by Faith, start there. Get to know your neighbors before you need them. A community that prays together and works together will outlast a lone man with a gun safe every time.
And remember where your citizenship actually is. “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). Whatever flag flies over your county, no earthly master gets the final word.
Here is one more thing to consider. At Babel, God scattered the languages in judgment. At Pentecost, He gathered them again by His Spirit, and every man heard the gospel in his own tongue (Acts 2:6). Whatever language may someday be spoken over this land, the gospel is already there ahead of it. Right now there are believers worshipping Jesus in Farsi in Iranian house churches, and in Mandarin in Chinese house churches, under regimes that hate them. They are not soft. They are not asleep. They know exactly who their Master is.
Samson’s story did not end in the grinding house. “Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again” (Judges 16:22), and his last prayer was answered. God restores. But Samson’s restoration cost him his eyes and his freedom. It is far better to wake up before the Philistines arrive.
So the real question is not what language you will speak to your new masters. It is whether you will bow your knee to the only Master who matters while there is still time to do it freely.
Wake up, America. The Philistines be upon thee.
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To God be all the Glory · Maranatha
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