Thousands of passengers at Los Angeles International Airport fell into panic on Sunday evening, prompting evacuations, chaos and gridlock at one of America’s busiest airports.

“It sounded like a stampede of cattle. Everyone is yelling, ‘Shooter, shooter, shooter,’ and they start diving under the seats to hide,” Donna Melanson said to the New York Times.

But there was no shooter.

The mayhem turned out to have been triggered by harmless “loud noises.”

The lax panic over a false alarm was not an isolated incident.

On August 13, at a mall in Raleigh, North Carolina, eight people were injured because of a noise mistakenly thought to be gunfire. The next day, thousands of travelers at jfk Airport in New York began stampeding, and two terminals were evacuated, after travelers mistook celebratory applause for gunfire. A week later, a mall in Michigan erupted into hysteria after onlookers mistook the sound of breaking glass or a slamming door for gunfire. Then on August 25, nine people at a Florida mall were injured after the sound of balloons popping sent shoppers stampeding.

This trend shows that Americans are on edge.

Memories of recent attacks at airports in Istanbul and Brussels are fresh. Images of the aftermath of shootings in Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris and elsewhere are burned into our minds. Grim pictures of the mass murder in Nice, France, still haunt us.

The result: We are terrified.

When we hear balloons popping, we are often quick to assume it’s an AK-47 in the hands of an Islamic State jihadist.

And this means the terrorists are succeeding. After all, the goal of terrorism isn’t necessarily to kill target populations. A big part of the goal is to terrify them—to instill fear into their hearts.

Terrorism has not killed a large percentage of Americans (we are still more likely to be inadvertently killed by a toddler with a gun than by a jihadist.) But it has terrified a great many of us.

Why Terrorism?

Long before the United States was established, God foretold many riveting details of the nation’s prosperity through His servant Moses (Genesis 48:13-22; 49:22-26; Leviticus 26:3-10). God also explained specifically how He would punish America if this powerful, blessed nation forgot and disobeyed Him: “… I will even appoint over you terror …. [A]nd ye shall flee when none pursueth you” (Leviticus 26:16-17).

Verse 36 offers more detail: “… the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.”

Does this sound like people stampeding and injuring each other because of harmless sounds of applause or balloons popping?

Through the Prophet Isaiah, God foretold how painfully effective terrorist attacks would be if America didn’t obey Him. He foretold the disproportionate degree of destruction a small number of terrorists would be able to inflict: “One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee …” (Isaiah 30:17).

Only 19 terrorists were directly involved in the 9/11 “rebuke,” and only a handful of others have been involved in attacks on American soil since then. Yet an astonishing number of Westerners have been made to “flee” in fear because of those attacks. Reports say the Boston marathon bombing was carried out by just two jihadists, and they turned Boston—a city with more economic output than Finland—into a ghost town for a day.

Take a look at America’s systems of education, politics, religion, military, industry and entertainment. It’s plain that the nation has rebelled against the God who blessed it with such unprecedented prosperity. As this slide into lawlessness continues, we will increasingly “flee when none pursueth” and descend into mass hysteria at the “sound of a shaken leaf.”

But there is also hope on the horizon. Bible prophecy makes plain that on the other side of the terrorism, fear and curses lies the most radiant future imaginable. Fear and terrorism will be forever vanquished and replaced by a planet of peace, prosperity and a single world religion under the righteous, merciful rulership of the King of kings, Jesus Christ.