It’s a long-cherished American dream: seeing our children enjoy a better life than we had. And from the nation’s beginning, when the founders declared the “self-evident” truth that all people have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the United States’ remarkably steady growth in prosperity has made that dream come true for untold multitudes.

In today’s dismal economic climate, though, most Americans think the run is over—that we are the generation to witness the withering of that perennial promise. Not even one in five Americans believes today’s children will be better off than their parents. Two in three say the kids will have it worse.

It looks like—as President Obama said back in January 2009, after news of especially nasty economic contraction—we are starting to experience “the American Dream in reverse.”

Such pessimism is not without justification. The nation’s economic woes are hitting young men harder than just about anyone; more and more are moving back in with Dad and Mom. Gloomy near-term factors like job losses are coupled with longer-range realities like the growing ranks of retirees and the unsustainability of Social Security. The dream of homeownership—of building equity over the lifetime of a 30-year mortgage—has become a castle in the air: Home equity has collapsed from $13 trillion at the height of the housing boom to $6.5 trillion. The wealth gap between the old and young has grown eye-poppingly wide. And evidence abounds that the nation’s economic decline is irreversible.

But hold on a moment. Before anybody leaps off a bridge, let’s step back from the brink and assess the big picture.

Two important truths will give us some much-needed perspective on the threat to the American Dream.

First, we need to challenge our assumptions about the need for endlessly rising prosperity of the sort we enjoy today.

At one time, the focus of what is more or less an “official national dream” was different. It wasn’t about any particular possessions or income level, but about opportunity being available to anyone who went after it. Even the scrappy immigrant of low station, if he worked hard, had a better chance of giving his children a leg up in America than anywhere else in the world.

But that focus began to shift in the 1930s with the shared-sacrifice principle introduced by fdr’s New Deal. If all workers pitched in, the government could establish Social Security to ensure that retirees could enjoy their sunset years free of want. It was perhaps the first time that the model American lifestyle was attached to a particular material promise.

This trend quickly took aggressive hold in people’s minds. At the end of World War ii, the G.I. Bill offered returning veterans low-interest home loans, and enterprising developers began using mass production to erect inexpensive houses for the everyman. After decades of around 45 percent of American families living in homes they personally owned, that number ballooned to 55 percent by 1950, and 62 percent by 1960. Just like that, homeownership became a new facet of the American Dream. Riding a wave of postwar prosperity, Americans also began to enjoy higher levels of car and television ownership. The aim of sending the kids to college became mainstream.

In the middle of this unprecedented upsurge in standards of living—and helping to fuel it—was a mushrooming of consumer credit. At a comparatively small $2.6 billion in 1945, the nation’s personal-debt monster grew to $45 billion by 1960—and $105 billion just a decade after that. Meanwhile, Americans’ expectations of what life should offer floated up into the troposphere: a bigger house, a second car, a fancy annual vacation. The free spending transformed what was once the world’s biggest creditor nation into, in 1986, its biggest debtor nation.

There is something magnanimous about parents wanting something better for the next generation. “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children,” the proverb says. But clearly, during these pie-in-the-sky years, the American Dream got unhinged from the virtues of hard work, responsibility and self-control. And the inherent falseness in expecting a never-ending ascent in material abundance was exposed. As Gregg Easterbrook wrote in his 2003 book The Progress Paradox, “For at least a century, Western life has been dominated by a revolution of rising expectations: Each generation expected more than its antecedent. Now most Americans and Europeans already have what they need, in addition to considerable piles of stuff they don’t need.”

Today, even as Americans consume more and enjoy more luxuries and a higher standard of living than ever, a majority of them say they consider the American Dream unachievable. Nothing is ever enough. Whatever they have, they feel entitled to so much more. Satisfaction and contentment are ever just over the horizon.

Don’t buy into this poisonous, delusional thinking. Square your values with reality. And make sure you’re passing on to your children a wealth of what really matters in life. (Our article “How to Be Rich” might help.)

The second truth we need to understand in order to gain perspective on the state of the American Dream involves the broader view of the nation’s economic future. While much evidence points to decline for the foreseeable future, other, even more sure proof shows that the long-term outlook is much, much dreamier.

Consider this seriously. A recent Gallup poll found 65 percent of Americans believe the Bible “answers all or most of the basic questions of life.” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 78 percent of Americans—nearly 8 in 10—say the Bible is the “Word of God”; and of those, almost half believe “it is to be taken literally, word for word.”

That means nearly 40 percent of Americans consider the Bible literally God’s Word, and every word of it true.

Are you one of them? If so, consider this.

A full third of the Bible is prophecy. And very prominent within that prophecy are rich, vivid descriptions of a future world very different from our own. It is a world of universal prosperity. Not one in which a single nation provides opportunities to succeed for a span of a handful of generations—but in which all peoples and all nations enjoy such benefits for centuries. Believe it or not, America is specifically described within those prophecies as rejoicing in those blessings!

An understanding of biblical prophecy reveals that, yes, we are in for some extremely difficult times in the short term. But these troubles are in fact signs that we are on the threshold of that far better world! They are signs that Jesus Christ is just about to return!

We are, in truth, the generation to witness the blossoming of that perennial promise! And that long-cherished dream of seeing our children enjoy a better life than we had will become a reality far more awesome than we ever imagined.