A Spiritual Lesson in the Fentanyl Crisis

America’s love for drugs has nasty unintended consequences.

Doctors love dishing out drugs: Every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, they provide or prescribe a billion drugs. More than 70 percent of office visits involve drug therapy. In the past month, half of Americans have used a prescription drug; a quarter have used three or more; 1 in 8 have used at least five.

Millions of these patients misuse these drugs—or use illegal drugs. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics says more than 1 in 5 Americans age 12 and up misused drugs in the last year. That is nearly 60 million people.

China sees all this. And because it is looking to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, it recognizes this plague as an opportunity.

The Chinese Communist Party supports companies and agents that manufacture specific chemicals at scale, ship them to a port in Mexico, run them by rail right up to the American border, and convert them into mass amounts of cheap, deadly fentanyl. They work with drug cartels to interlace it into other drugs both counterfeit fda-approved and illegal, find ways to evade border safeguards, and deluge the U.S. with this poison (“‘Murder With a Borrowed Knife,’” page 15). This one drug is killing an average of 200 Americans per day.

Obviously, this is far easier and less risky for China than trying to directly attack the greatest military power in world history. Why launch a frontal assault when you can just use Americans’ weakness against them?

This strategy would not exist if Americans weren’t so drug-dependent. It is we who are putting these substances into our bodies.

Drug abuse is a self-destructive vice. This is a painful example of how the consequences can ripple out well beyond the abuser. Here a foreign government is actively weaponizing this vice and multiplying its destructive potential. The array of effects—including the annual deaths of tens of thousands of military-age Americans, economic losses, sunken productivity, personal and family devastation—are incalculable.

This is not an abstract, impersonal force wreaking this ruin. Individuals are making choices that are not only weakening them personally but also creating a breach that an enemy nation is exploiting to weaken the nation just as surely as a military defeat would. More Americans die from drug addiction each year than died in the whole 20 years of the Vietnam War.

Put simply, vice creates vulnerabilities. Weakness compounds to make us even weaker, in unforeseen and far-reaching ways. Examples of this principle are everywhere in our lives, individually and nationally.

This is, in fact, a biblical principle, expounded throughout Scripture. God actually warns of an inescapable law at work that is hastening America’s collapse.

Broken Pride

America has by far the world’s most expensive military. Of the top 10 highest-spending nations, America has invested about as much as the other nine combined. It has imposing air superiority and naval dominance. It boasts leading-edge technology and exceptionally skilled special forces. It can project tremendous power to anywhere on the globe at unprecedented speed.

Given such advantages, Americans tend to feel impervious to dangers, invincible. How could the most powerful military ever be defeated?

A crucial answer lies in a prophecy in Leviticus 26.

Here God promises blessings to the nation that keeps His laws, including favorable weather, abundant crops, material prosperity, peace and security, military victories, divine protection and favor. He then warns of curses on the nation that disobeys Him. Among these, here is one of the most grievous: “And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power … And your strength shall be spent in vain …” (verses 18-20).

Yes, America has tremendous power and strength. At one time, it had great pride in that power. The dramatic story of the reasons appears in Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy. God gave America unmatched power as part of the birthright blessings He had promised to the patriarch Abraham—“the greatest national power any nation or empire ever possessed. We had great pride in that national power—in our national prestige,” Mr. Armstrong wrote.

But as a curse for Americans’ disobedience to Him, God has broken that pride. When Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry discusses this prophecy, he uses the expression “broken will.” “This is an end-time prophecy, and God says that He has broken our will,” he said in a 2015 Key of David episode. “We have the power and God gave it to us, and now He has broken our will, where we’re afraid to use it.”

Evidence abounds that sin has fatally weakened this nation. This is a catastrophic curse that undermines our national power and causes us to spend our strength in vain. You do not even need to believe the prophecy to recognize this inescapable truth. America’s national will has been broken.

Let’s set aside the realm of drug abuse for a moment longer and assess the state of the world’s costliest armed forces.

The Military’s New Mission

One of Joe Biden’s first acts after assuming the presidency was to direct the military to begin allowing transgenders to openly serve. When the policy was implemented in June 2021, leaders insisted it would fortify the fighting force.

“People are the strength of our Army,” Maj. Gen. Douglas F. Stitt, military personnel management director, explained that month. “Our ability to assess and retain qualified personnel provides a more diverse and stronger Army, while inclusivity creates a more effective force and enhances overall readiness.” Some insisted this would boost military recruitment. “This gives the Army a bigger applicant pool to consider,” Stitt said.

In the time since, the military and intelligence community have worked diligently to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, “questioning” and “intersex” activities as well as “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives. Recruits to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, part of the Defense Department, must receive training that includes the “gender unicorn” and “transgender terminology index.” In March, an internal newsletter sent to personnel across the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and intelligence services featured an article titled “My Gender Identity and Expression Make Me a Better Intelligence Officer.” Literally millions of American tax dollars have been spent on “sex reassignment” and “gender confirmation” surgeries for soldiers.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines says, “Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility are the cornerstone of our mission.” As grave threats multiply worldwide, America’s military says its top concerns are to “tackle the climate crisis” and “to improve diversity, equity and inclusion across the force,” with an emphasis on uncovering “possible racial disparity.” The Navy has a “drag queen” as a recruiter. Military bases have hosted drag shows. After one such show, a military spokesman told Yahoo! News, “Ensuring our ranks reflect and are inclusive of the American people is essential to the morale, cohesion and readiness of the military.”

There is no evidence that these efforts have done anything but eviscerated morale, cohesion and readiness. Hordes of capable personnel have left the service as it has become inhospitable to traditional morality. The nation’s image abroad has been sullied by the promotion of male military leaders masquerading as women. And it is difficult to see how soldiers are better prepared to conquer enemies by being trained to view diversity as the cornerstone of their mission and to focus on inclusive pronoun use.

Despite all assurances to the contrary, military recruiters are struggling to meet quotas. In the latest Defense Authorization Bill, the number of active-duty service members was the lowest it had been since World War ii. Since the military has traditionally been a magnet for strong, masculine males—who tend to be more politically and morally conservative—this is no surprise.

This begins to illustrate how the prodigious strength of the world’s most expensive military can be spent “in vain.”

It shows why America has been consigned to watching Russia—with a mere 10th of its military budget—invade Ukraine for the past two years (while its economy has grown). It shows why China—with a third of America’s military spending—is speaking openly about ignoring U.S. security guarantees and taking over Taiwan. It shows why Iran—which spends 3 percent of what America does—continues to promote piracy and sabotage in the Red Sea despite U.S. efforts to stamp it out.

Here is a plain, clear example of sin’s corrosive, weakening effect. Americans, steeped in sin, have elected corrupt leaders. These civilian leaders, morally depraved and neck-deep in sin, have installed military leaders who are sick with the same problems. Together they have pursued their perverse ambitions with religious fervor, prioritizing their articles of faith over national security, ignoring the disastrous effects of their decisions.

It is stunning how little people consider the moral dimension to national and international affairs. We must recognize the connection between our individual choices and national security. People want to pretend that morality is entirely separate from public matters, that there is no connection between character and leadership. But the evidence surrounds us: The connection is unbreakable.

How Balaam Destroyed Israel

An example from ancient Israel tells. Balak, king of Moab, feared the Israelites and wanted to curse them. For this, he hired a false prophet named Balaam. God would not allow the prophet to curse Israel directly. But Balaam found an indirect means by which to fulfill Balak’s request. Essentially, it was the same strategy the Chinese are using to weaken America with deadly drugs.

The account in Numbers 22-25 shows the Israelite men taking an immoral interest in the pagan, Moabite women. Numbers 31:16 and Revelation 2:14 show that Balaam was behind this: He had convinced the Moabite king to “cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.” He managed to turn the Israelites’ moral weakness against them. Not only did they break the Seventh and Tenth Commandments, but those women led them into Sabbath-breaking and worshiping pagan gods. One sin led to another, and it brought down God’s wrath on the whole nation.

Israel was overcome not by military conquest but by indirect moral sabotage.

Using roundabout means of attacking an enemy is a time-tested strategy of warfare. In the fifth century b.c., Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu eloquently described the practice. “There is no art higher than to destroy your enemy without a fight—by subverting anything of value in the enemy’s country,” he wrote. Among the specific means he advocated: “Cover with ridicule all of the valid traditions in your opponent’s country.” “Implicate their leaders in criminal affairs and turn them over to the scorn of their populace.” “Do not shun the aid of the lowest and most despicable individuals of your enemy’s country.” “Spread disunity and dispute among the citizens.” “Turn the young against the old.” The Chinese who are flooding America with fentanyl are executing the strategy expertly.

The real master at subversion, though, is a far more ancient military strategist. In Scripture he is called “the tempter,” “the accuser,” a liar and murderer (Matthew 4:3; Revelation 12:10; John 8:44). He is also called “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” and “the god of this world” (Ephesians 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4). He is always trying to entrap us in sin that saps our strength. He has filled his world with traps aimed at weakening us and subverting and undermining our will.

Peter’s Warning

The Apostle Peter warns against the corrosive, destructive nature of sin. He describes how God punished the angels that sinned, destroyed the world in Noah’s day, and reduced promiscuous Sodom and Gomorrah to ash, and he says these ancient examples are for us. We live in modern Sodom. In some ways you could argue that it is worse.

Peter then describes several sins that will provoke God’s judgment. Among them: “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin …” (2 Peter 2:14). Truly we live in a world so habituated in sin, especially sexual sin, that people cannot cease from it!

“They are hooked on sin like heroin—like the homosexuals in Genesis 19,” Mr. Flurry writes. “Their willpower is destroyed. That is what sin does to a person—it saps you of the will to live righteously” (The Epistles of Peter—A Living Hope). Consider that: Sin doesn’t merely bring the immediate consequences associated with that specific sin—it saps your will. It destroys your willpower. Thus it tends to have a multiplying effect. Giving into one sin leads to another.

Verse 15 warns against people “following the way of Balaam.” This false prophet was himself enticed by Balak’s riches into directly defying God.

Peter continues, indicting people who “promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved” (verse 19; Revised Standard Version). How vividly this describes our world! People everywhere promise freedom through immorality and lawlessness. But they themselves are enslaved to sin and sapped of will; thus, Satan is able to draw them into ever-more-depraved sins.

Observe God’s inescapable law in action. Sin brings curses. Sin breaks the will, and the resulting weakness leads to worse sin and more grievous curses.

Recognizing this truth on the national scale will help you apply it in your individual life. Think about it, and you will likely find areas where you are sabotaging yourself, giving Satan leverage over you because of weakness. When you lack will, you cannot do what God asks of you. When you fail, make a bad decision or sin, then your resolve, your confidence, your will, is weakened. Making that wrong choice the next time grows easier.

Thankfully, the reverse is also true. One good decision strengthens your determination to make the next one. Virtue builds spiritual confidence, which supplies strength for forging more virtue. “[T]he righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).

America is on the wrong side of this formula. Its broken will is hastening its fall. Already the nation’s enemies are beginning to move from acts of sabotage to much more direct attack. We can expect this trend to intensify.

Fathom this lesson, and apply it personally. Obey God, and enjoy the blessings He promises: “[Y]e shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid” (Leviticus 26:6).