Midterm elections in the United States have left Congress as divided as America itself. The Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans have solidified their majority in the Senate. Anyone naive enough to believe Hillary Clinton’s preelection statements about how civility can return to America when Democrats retake the House or the Senate should now be deeply disillusioned. It only took a day for some shocking instances of incivility to occur.

On Wednesday evening, an Antifa mob congregated outside the home of Fox News host Tucker Carlson, chanting “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!” Hours later, a Twitter account affiliated with this group published the addresses of Republican commentators Ann Coulter, Neil Patel and Sean Hannity. Rather than condemn this behavior, the Democratic Party has decided to make Rep. Maxine Waters—who famously called on Democrats to publicly confront and harass members of the Trump administration last summer—the head of the House Financial Services Committee.

It is no exaggeration to say that a specter is haunting the United States—the specter of political violence. During the lead-up to elections, a mentally-disturbed supporter of President Donald Trump was arrested for sending pipe bombs to the addresses of former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, billionaire financier George Soros, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan and others. Five days later, a man carrying a “Trump is Satan” sign threatened to blow up a Republican Party office building in Traverse City, Michigan. Guns shots were fired at a Republican Party office in Florida on October 29, the same day that actor James Cromwell told Variety magazine that there would be “blood in the streets” if Democrats did not stop President Trump. There are no official statistics measuring the rise of politically motivated violence in the United States, but most Americans feel that it is getting worse.

A Politico-Morning Consult poll conducted in late October found 58 percent of respondents consider political violence to be “widespread.” One third blamed President Trump for the violence. Another third blamed Democrats in Congress. And almost two thirds thought the media was responsible for dividing the country.

It seems an increasing number of people—especially on the left—believe they should unshackle themselves from human decency in a quest for power. For decades, leftists have been able to vote progressive policies into law via the ballot box or, when the people and their representatives in Congress have opposed those policies, they have used executive actions and Supreme Court rulings to push their agenda into law. But after being out of power for two years, many leftists are turning to rioting and protesting.

The last time that leftists resorted to these extreme tactics was in the 1960s and 1970s. During this era, the Black Panthers, Weather Underground and other radical groups used terrorist tactics to fight the U.S. government. One presidential study pointed to a “crisis of violence” during the first 15 months of Richard Nixon’s presidency, a period that included some 41,000 bomb threats and bombings. At the same time, radicals threatened to assassinate the president and burn down the houses of those who worked in his cabinet.

Things have not gotten quite that bad during the first 24 months of Trump’s presidency, but 1960s-style political violence has returned to America, and it is about to get worse.

The late Herbert W. Armstrong explained in his most popular book, The United States and Britain in Prophecy, that the Anglo-Saxon peoples who settled the United States and Britain are the descendants of ancient Israel. This astonishing truth means that all of the Bible’s end-time prophecies concerning Israel are primarily directed at the United States and Britain, as well as the Jewish nation called Israel in the Middle East. Understanding this truth is key to understanding political violence in America.

Some 2,500 years ago, God revealed an end-time prophecy to a Jewish slave named Ezekiel, who was a captive in the land of Babylon. “Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off” (Ezekiel 12:27).

This prophecy concerned what was to happen to Israel in “the times that are far off.” It was not fulfilled in Ezekiel’s day, because 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel were already in captivity in Assyria. Yet God foretold that a day would come when famine and civil war would devastate the cities of a rebellious Israelite nation.

“Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness; And say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of Israel; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate; and ye shall know that I am the Lord” (verses 17-20).

This passage describes cities being laid waste “because of the violence of all them that dwell therein.” This is not describing foreign invaders but civil war. In Ezekiel 5, God reveals that one third of the nation’s population will die from the pestilence, famine and violence that result from this war. Such devastation has never occurred in an Israelite nation from the time of Ezekiel until now. This is an end-time prophecy about the United States.

It is easy for Democrats to blame political violence on President Trump, and it is easy for Republicans to blame leftist agitators in the streets. But the root cause of political violence in America stretches back decades.

The leaders of the modern Democratic Party are student radicals from the 1960s. And their ideological grandchildren—and in some cases their literal grandchildren—are the supporters of radical socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders and newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Inspired by the writings of Communist philosophers like Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse, these radicals believe that utopia can happen only after an economic revolution. And economic revolution can happen only after a cultural revolution. So in addition to advocating socialist economic reforms, they have revolutionized views on sex, gender and race. Many of these Gramsci-inspired student radicals flooded into two professions in particular: community organizing and academia. They accused America’s system of individual liberty and constitutional checks and balances of being a mask for the power of wealthy, white, European males.

The first generation in American history that could afford college education en masse learned in lecture halls dominated by socialists. These students were taught that traditional American principles like personal responsibility, individual liberty, free markets and limited government were racist and elitist. They were taught that democratic socialism was the only way to create utopia on Earth. College students of the 1960s and 1970s absorbed these views not just because of youthful rebellion, but because they were specifically and explicitly targeted by socialists. This was a major step in revolutionizing American culture.

The ideological clash in America today is largely between the older generation and the younger generation. But how did this happen? How did a generation of Americans come to so radically reject their parents’ values?

God delivered a sobering warning to America’s Israelite ancestors about teaching His laws to their children.

“Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you. … Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; Specially the day that thou therefore stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children” (Deuteronomy 4:1, 9-10).

Americans do not reverence and obey God’s Ten Commandments as much as they once did, and they have failed to teach their children about their nation’s history with God.

Civil war is coming to America, not because socialists outmaneuvered conservatives, but because the American people as a whole have turned away from God’s law. It is going to take real repentance to bring people back to God and end the crisis that grips the nation. To learn about how this repentance will eventually come to America after a time of intense trouble, read Great Again, by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.