"And the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer..." (II Chronicles 7:12)
During the week of 18-25 April 2026 an event named "America Reads the Bible" was organised as a way of marking 250 years of the Bible in America. Close to 500 people from all walks of life were involved in reading out over the air the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. According to the American Bible Society (ABS) even those they would call "Bible Users" may only read some part of the Bible on average 3 times a year, and very few indeed have read the Bible from cover to cover. So it was a commendable objective, and hopefully benefited many, but nevertheless something appears missing ...
Out of the many hundreds involved, the most notable and high-profile individual was President Trump, who was given a specific section to read – II Chronicles 7:11-22, a section that has apparently been a rallying call over the years "to prayer and national reflection". But what about the preceding chapter? Who read that out? It doesn't seem to have had the same "red carpet treatment" as chapter seven, but considering it contained the actual PRAYER of Solomon – which God Himself then refers back to – there surely must be a great deal more in this chapter for us to consider.
The dedication of the temple wasn't some minor event, but something totally spectacular which took place around the Feast of Tabernacles that year, and the "opening ceremony" alone would have surely impressed those present:
Then came Solomon's heartfelt prayer, about which the first two verses of chapter seven describe God's subsequent and spectacular "seal of approval" ...
So what was it about this prayer that pleased God and is He wanting us at the end time to learn anything from it? One point to consider is that it was away from self; another is the vital need to repent when necessary. But for us at this juncture in history, a major factor we can take to heart and be encouraged by is that over the millennia, God has faithfully kept His word and continues to do so for modern day Israel, and also His church today. So keeping those things in mind, let's take it step by step through the prayer of Solomon in chapter 6 which God refers back to in the passage read by President Trump.
Not fail a man to sit on Israel's throne
It's doubtful that President Trump has any idea of the greater and enduring fulfilment of God's promise, witnessed in person during the visit of King Charles III of Great Britain earlier this week – a descendent of King David through the line of Judah. The US and the UK have long enjoyed what is called a "special relationship" – a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, and both countries have been close allies in a number of conflicts – but what so many miss is the fact that we are brothers ... Ephraim and Manasseh, and the principal tribes of the 12 tribes of Israel ... in fact, "called by my name" (II Chronicles 7:14)
And the promise of Kingship over Israel – and ultimately the whole world – includes Jesus Christ, as brought out in Jacob's blessing on his family in Genesis 49, and in Isaiah chapter 9.
God WILL dwell with men
Solomon recognised the eternal magnificence of God compared to humanity, but it has been God's desire from the very outset to walk among His people ... from the Garden of Eden, through the wanderings in the wilderness and into the Promised Land (Leviticus 26:11,12) ... and today in His people: "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." (John 14:23)
And as sons of God WE will walk among the people in the millennium as we work alongside and guide them, as brought out in Isaiah 30:20,21 and 32:1, and so on into eternity in the New Jerusalem:
Forgiveness
Solomon recognised human frailty and failings and knew we'd need forgiveness, as he mentions a few moment later ... "for there is no man that sinneth not" (II Chronicles 6:36). And without forgiveness, humanity doesn't have a future beyond the grave. What hope would any of us have, if not for the sacrifice of Christ, which allows our sins to be forgiven? Having been given the priceless understanding of God's plan for mankind, we realise He's not finished with mankind yet! There is a new covenant to be made under which He promises forgiveness – and therefore a wonderful future.
A willingness to forgive is a godly characteristic and a vital part of our lives now, if we want our prayers heard.
Oaths
God doesn't demand a level of righteousness from us that He Himself is unwilling to live by! A few verses earlier than the one above, Solomon was inspired to record God's past faithfulness:
And as we read what God has promised us, we can have total confidence in His word – whatever it is that He has promised, as He is the same yesterday, today and forever:
God to fight our battles
And an important point to note is that God fighting for us is conditional upon our obedience to His laws, and repentance and turning to His way when we realise we are off track. (See the ill-fated attack on Ai, Joshua 7)
We're told that "faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17), so it's imperative to have read and reflected on the myriad of examples in the Bible where God clearly intervened for His people and defeated their enemies. What miracles God performed in the past for ancient Israel are the "faith builders" that we can use to rely on the Almighty, the Eternal of hosts (armies) when Satan attempts to destroy the church at the end time ... "And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth" (Revelation 12:16)
Adverse weather
Many times weather patterns are linked to inappropriate if not downright evil moral judgments. It has been estimated that in the UK alone, a baby is aborted on the average every two minutes, yet the Prime Minister of the UK is pushing for clinics to offer "lunch hour" abortions which will raise the murder rate even higher. The western world in general accepts – and even encourages perverted lifestyles, and until our lifestyles take a dramatic about-turn, things can only get worse in the short-term. But once God's people return to Him ...
Value of Prayer
May 1940 was a time of grave crisis for the British Empire and indeed for the whole civilised world. On 10 May Hitler had launched his blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France. Just days later German panzer forces ploughed through the Ardennes forest, bursting through the French defences, and with lightning speed began a rapid advance across France and Belgium. Very soon Rommel's armoured pincer movement was threatening the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) with encirclement, and effective destruction.
The PM at the time, Mr. Winston Churchill feared that it would be his hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in Britain's long history, whilst on 27 May the German High Command went so far as to boast that 'The British army is encircled and our troops are proceeding to its annihilation.'
But the British had a God-fearing man on the throne at the time – King George VI – who encouraged ALL his people to take this frightful situation to God in prayer, which they did, in their multiple thousands. The result was that God DID hear the prayers " of any man, or of all thy people Israel", and consequently multiple miraculous incidents were recorded, resulting in ten times the number of men they'd hoped for being rescued alive from the beaches of Dunkirk.
The Stranger in Israel
Israel was indeed a chosen nation – to be an example to the nations round about them (Deuteronomy 4:6, 9:5) and they were commanded to love the stranger in their midst (Deuteronomy 10:19), but that stranger was to become part of Israel. NO multiculturalism, NO foreign gods.
As of last year, there were around 3,000 mosques in the US, and in the UK, London alone has 400. Multiculturalism is NOT acceptable in God's eyes, and this principle applies to His church, which is not a "multicultural" organisation:
An End-Time Fulfilment
As we know, there is coming a prophesied time of great tribulation on end-time Israel, also called "Jacob's Trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7) but we're given rock-solid assurance that it will be short-lived and for an eternal purpose:.
God's Resting Place
These two verses take us to the end of Solomon's prayer and brings to mind what God inspired Isaiah to write about what He regards as His "resting place", and it's NOT a physical temple:
From Mr. Armstrong's sermon "The Church in Prophecy" March 28 1981
Now the building [Ephesians 2:20,21] becomes a holy, spiritual temple. That, my brethren, is the temple to which Christ is coming! Did you think maybe the Jews were going to tear down the Dome of the Rock across there (on … just to the west of the Mount of Olives) on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, and build a temple for Jesus? Oh, no. He’s not coming to a physical temple. He’s coming to a temple that will excel Solomon’s temple by far in glory. Well, the temple that Zerubbabel built didn’t excel Solomon’s temple in glory. But Christ the second time is coming to a temple that will!
Now, what temple is He coming to? He’s coming to the Church. And when He comes, the dead in Christ (that have died in the Church) will rise first in a resurrection; and we (which are alive and remain at that time) will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye – this mortal will put on immortality. And we will become God Beings, no longer physical beings. Our faces will shine like the very sun.
That is the glorious temple to which Christ is coming! We are to rise to meet Him in the air as He’s coming, and His feet will stand on that same day on the Mount of Olives. It’s talking about this Church.
Now, Zerubbabel built the temple to which Christ came the first time. He was a type, a forerunner, of someone to build THE SPIRITUAL TEMPLE – THE CHURCH – TO WHICH CHRIST IS COMING the second time. BRETHREN, YOU ARE THAT TEMPLE! That ought to thrill you clear from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet.
You are that temple to whom He is coming – a glorified temple, glorified and raised up to meet Him in the air in a glorified form, no longer human flesh and blood, now composed of spirit and absolutely God just as Christ is God and just as God the Father is God. That’s what God has in store for you and for me – if we will overcome, if we will walk with Him, if we will agree with Him, and if we will do as He said to Zerubbabel, get in there and work, which is what we will have to do. ("The Church in Prophecy" March 28 1981)
THIS is God's desired resting place – a temple that is being constructed as we speak, with the stones being prepared "off-site" as brought out in I Kings 6:7, but in a short time we will see the fulfilment of this prophecy in Isaiah when all the "stones" finally are assembled together. God speed that day.
Over 40 years ago, Mr Armstrong explained:
“Modern education has become almost wholly materialistic.
IT HAS LOST THE TRUE VALUES.
It gropes hopelessly in the dark, in a vain search for the acquisition of knowledge that can come ONLY THROUGH THE VERY SOURCE IT REJECTS!
It fails to teach young men and women the most needed of all knowledge. It teaches young people how to earn a living, but fails to teach them how to live!” (The Plain Truth – May 1981)
“The Bible IS the FOUNDATION of ALL KNOWLEDGE – and it reveals the true APPROACH to the acquisition of all discoverable knowledge.
It is our Maker’s INSTRUCTION BOOK of needed knowledge acquirable from no other source.” (The Good News – April 1984)
“Right now there is a tremendous amount of debate about what values our society should embrace. The truth is that we should return to the values that made western society great in the first place. The values that I am talking about are the values that we find in the Bible. The Bible also places a very high value on family. In the Ten Commandments we are told to honor our fathers and our mothers, and throughout the rest of the Torah we are given very specific instructions about how families are to operate.
Today, much of the population has rejected the Bible and the traditional family unit is relentlessly mocked.
The Automatic Consequences:
Study after study has shown that kids that come from broken homes are far more likely to commit violent crimes, they are far more likely to get involved with drugs, and they are far more likely to end up impoverished.
In ancient times, child sacrifice was one of the most common ways to get rid of unwanted children. When it was time to make a sacrifice to ‘the gods’, children that were not wanted were brought and put on the altar. The same thing is essentially happening today, but we give it a different name. We call it ‘abortion’, and it is done behind closed doors in pristine clinical settings. Since 1973, more than 1.5 billion children have been slaughtered worldwide. So what makes us any better than any of the ancient civilizations that regularly sacrificed their unwanted children?
The Bible very strongly denounces child sacrifice, and it also very strongly denounces the various forms of sexual immorality that are exploding in our society today. For decades, the left has been pushing us to accept one form of sexual perversion after another.
But God has not changed.
He sees everything that is going on, and He has warned us over and over again to change course. If we choose to keep going down this path, we will be cursed and THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE EXTREMELY BITTER.” (themostimportantnews.com)
“God is letting the law of cause and effect take full toll. Man’s society, deceived and misled by Satan, has not even yet brought man to admit failure of his course of self-sufficiency.
Today man’s world is reeling on its last legs. Wars, violence, destruction and terrorism engulf the entire world. Half the world exists in ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, living in filth and squalor. The developed half is sick with ill health, disease, mental stress, fear, frustration, wracked with crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, perverted and misused sex, broken homes, hopelessness in frustration.
Mankind is nearing the end of his rope… Man must be brought to realize his helplessness and futility without God.” (The Mystery Of The Ages - Chapter 4)
“Children need the best start in life - and the authors of a new report warn too many young people face a mental health crisis. Britain is a ‘global leader in family breakdown’ with devastating consequences for mental health, a leading think tank has warned. Young people whose families break-up before they reach the age of 18 are nearly twice as likely to suffer from mental ill-health, according to the Centre for Social Justice. It argues that securing ‘stronger families’ is key to improving mental health across the nation. Researchers are alarmed that ‘a fifth of children aged eight to 16 have a probable mental health disorder, up from 12.5% in 2017.’” (express.co.uk)
“America is waking up. After years of being told that gender is fluid, that chromosomes are incidental, and that masculinity is toxic or obsolete, America is rediscovering a truth our culture worked hard to bury: The Y matters. The crisis began the moment the ‘Y’ was dismissed. Influential voices turned identity into a DIY project, erased the Y chromosome as a marker of manhood, blurred essential boundaries, and loosened every anchor that once helped boys grow. Time-tested anchors of family, faith, community, mentors, and clear expectations were discarded.
In the name of compassion, boys were told that male and female were interchangeable, that fathers were optional, and that masculinity was either threatening or foolish. We’re now living with the consequences: Boys are faltering, and a generation is stalling on the road to manhood.
What we’ve offered boys is not freedom, but confusion. Confusion is crippling. It produces faltering boys instead of faithful men. A nervous system without clarity is a nervous system in distress. That’s not ideology. That’s neuroscience. More boys now have smartphones than fathers in the home, and young men are being shaped more by algorithms than by actual men. The problem has never been the presence of masculinity. It’s the absence of it.” (dailysignal.com)
“We can see it everywhere - from the recent looting by hordes of teenagers, to the explosion in welfare dependency, to the tide of small-boat arrivals that mock our border controls on a daily basis. They’re all symptoms of the same disease: the collapse of consequences in British life.
All of us were shocked by the phone footage of children smashing up shops in broad daylight, stealing, laughing, filming themselves as though it were a game.
Some commentators immediately reached for a racial explanation, but that was to miss the point completely. While the majority of young looters in Clapham, South London, seemed to have Caribbean or African heritage, the fact is that children in Lagos and Nairobi do not behave that way.
WHY? Because in Nigeria and Kenya the boundaries are clear and actions have consequences. Parents, communities and authorities do not wring their hands or look the other way. It’s a lesson we’ve forgotten here.” (dailymail.co.uk)
“I am increasingly concerned about the scale and nature of the violence on our TV screens – even the Christmas viewing didn’t provide respite. I was shocked at the levels of murders and deaths, whether real-life crime, crime series or films, and how much of the violence depicted was sadistic and gratuitous. And it’s not just TV: video games and social media are pumping this violence out too.
It is ironic that on one hand we have become so sensitive that police are investigating non-crime hate incidents and people are being disciplined for using the wrong pronouns, while on the other, an extraordinary amount of violence can be pumped out daily on every media outlet and very few steps are taken to curtail it.” (express.co.uk)
“The unity of the Church of England has been dealt a major blow to the denomination in a punishing reminder that theological treason has consequences, after a group representing nearly 40 million members — ten times the number of Anglicans in the UK — announced they are the real Anglican Communion and will no longer be in communion with their progressive counterpart, dividing the denomination in two while declaring ‘We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority.’
Over the past two decades, the denomination has been liberalizing at a rapid rate, recently appointing Sarah Mullally, a pro-choice feminist as the new Archbishop of Canterbury and allowing the church to bless same-sex couples, with a major contingent pushing the church to deem homosexuality no longer sinful.” (protestia.com)
“The package of insanity puts Britain in a leading position in a world where nobody is following. Producing only two percent of global emissions and therefore irrelevant to global warming, any measures which cost wealth or economic growth are effectively simply exporting pollution, jobs and wealth to other countries that are not following our agenda. The catalogue of delusion includes removing support from pensioners while generating the highest electricity prices in the world for both consumers and industry with all the consequences of that for the economy and personal wealth and wellbeing.” (express.co.uk)
“Banning the nation’s second-largest political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has become a matter of constant conversation. Yet, a prominent academic has warned that there could be serious consequences for breaking the democratic system. Germany’s AfD was declared a ‘right-wing extremist’ organisation by the outgoing leftist government earlier this year, triggering a legal challenge. Meanwhile, some German states have moved to ban AfD members from serving as police officers or becoming civil servants. Far from being a niche or fringe party, the faction now serves as the official parliamentary opposition and recently polled in first place nationwide. ‘A ban that would eliminate all votes for the AfD and thus lead to [a left-wing] parliamentary majority’ would be a ‘sure path to civil war.’” (breitbart.com)
“These are the visible consequences of a society that refuses to speak plainly about what threatens it. This morning a man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ drove a car into a crowd on the French holiday island of Île d’Oléron, leaving at least 10 people injured. It was the latest example of something that has become commonplace across Europe, something that our leaders refuse to deal with. Instead we must learn to live behind barriers, with concrete blocks and assault rifle-toting police becoming a kind of set dressing for leisure. The security is to a certain degree theatre. It’s there to reassure us and it’s better than nothing, but it is also a reminder that things were not always this way and that governments are too ideologically-bound to actually tackle the issue.
Nowhere is that more visible than in Germany, where the tradition of the Christmas market is being quietly dismantled. In several towns and cities they will not go ahead as normal this year. These cancellations are not simply administrative matters. They are the visible consequences of a society that refuses to speak plainly about what threatens it. Islamist terror – or even the fear of it – now impacts the architecture of public life. The markets that survive do so behind ‘controlled zones’: fenced pockets of reassurance in cities that pretend the danger does not exist.
This is how cultures fade – not through sudden collapse, but through small, well-meaning surrenders. Each cancelled market, each renamed festival, each silence accepted for the sake of ‘safety’ is another retreat from the public square. They need not strike again; the mere possibility has achieved their purpose. The attack in France on Sunday showed how fragile the ordinary has become. Germany’s response shows how easily fear can be mistaken for compassion.” (telegraph.co.uk)
“American supremacy is on the line as a historian has issued a dire warning about the impact debt could have on the country. Professor Niall Ferguson has warned the US’s global status would suffer devastating consequences if politicians continue to ignore the country’s worsening debt crisis. Professor Ferguson noted both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have heavily contributed to increasing America’s debt during their presidencies.” (express.co.uk)
“The Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars that were created out of thin air into the financial system since 2008. That has helped the stock market hit record highs, but it has been one of the factors that has made the cost of living unbearable for the rest of us. The very foolish decisions that our leaders have been making have had dramatic consequences.
Previous generations handed us the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world had ever seen. And we went out and wrecked it. 50 years ago, the US economy was so dominant that IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN STUPIDITY ON AN EPIC SCALE TO CAUSE IT TO FAIL. But somehow we managed to do it. US households are piling up tremendous amounts of debt. In fact, US household debt recently hit an all-time record high of 18.59 trillion dollars.” (theeconomiccollapseblog.com)
“In 1958, Mao Zedong decreed that Chinese citizens should destroy the humble sparrow because the birds were eating much-needed grain in a country where hunger was a constant companion. After two years, hundreds of millions of birds were dead as the sparrow approached extinction across China. But destroying the sparrow resulted in one of the most devastating famines in recent history, killing 15-40 million Chinese citizens (the exact number remains subject to debate).
Why? Because it turned out that sparrows didn’t just eat grain. They also ate insects, including locusts with an appetite for crops. With its major predator effectively side-lined, the locust roamed rampant across China.” (jpost.com)
“Today this country is in dire trouble – far more serious than we realize. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE – THE FOUNDATION OF A STABLE AND ENDURING SOCIETY, IS BREAKING DOWN. Morals in the cesspool. Crime escalating. We’re in a world of troubles its governments can’t solve, recurring wars, governments overthrown almost one a month – weapons of mass destruction that can erase human life from the earth.
WHY? Our troubles are spiritual in nature, governed by a basic spiritual LAW. It is the way of life I simplify by the word ‘GIVE’ – outflowing LOVE – the WAY OF LIFE of cooperation, serving, helping, sharing. We don’t believe it, but it’s as inexorable – as relentless - as the law of gravity! It’s the WAY to peace, happiness, contentment, joy, universal well-being.
Break it, and it breaks YOU! We break it by our ‘GET’ way of life – the way of vanity, coveting, envy and jealousy, competition and strife with violence and wars, resentment of authority.
It’s no maudlin, sentimental or impractical religious idealism, but the cold hard FACT that stares us all in the face now – WITH LIFE-AND-DEATH CONSEQUENCES! Our problems are spiritual in nature, and WE’VE LOST ALL SENSE OF THE TRUE VALUES!
We need desperately to CHANGE – but we have gone past the law of diminishing returns – past human ability to solve our life-and-death evils.
THIS VOICE CRIES OUT EMPHATICALLY that now, THAT UNSEEN ‘STRONG HAND FROM SOMEPLACE’ IS ABOUT TO INTERVENE dynamically, before MAN annihilates mankind from the earth, and save a misguided humanity from itself! Your believing that makes no difference – it’s as CERTAIN as the rising and setting of tomorrow’s sun!
Even our so-called human nature is going to be changed! The world is going to be changed from the ‘GET’ principle of life to the ‘GIVE’. And the GOOD NEWS is, a new world of PEACE, contentment, happiness, universal well-being and salvation for all is just around the corner – AFTER a misguided mankind first brings itself to the final grand-smash climax of world trouble and to the very brink of total destruction!” (The Worldwide News – March 16, 1981)