When a sleeping child must be awakened, a loving parent takes him by the shoulders and gently shakes him. If the child doesn’t wake up immediately, the shaking becomes a bit firmer. The parent insists because he knows the child will suffer if he doesn’t wake up on time.
That is precisely what God is doing right now, both to America and the world. At first, he shook us very tenderly; but now his shaking has become violent because he has not succeeded in awakening us.
The Lord began to literally shake the earth with earthquakes in the late 1980s. A quake in Armenia wiped out almost that entire province. A quake in Japan measuring 6.9 nearly destroyed an entire city. Then came the horrible quake in San Francisco with more following almost daily in that area. Quakes hit the West Coast constantly, from northern California to San Diego and down into Mexico.
Isaiah prophesies that God will one day rise up and shake the whole earth. “Behold, the Lord makes the earth empty…distorts its surface… All joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone… When it shall be thus in the midst of the land among the people, it shall be like the shaking of an olive tree” (Isaiah 24:1, 11, 13, NKJV). God is going to shake the earth as if it were an olive tree until every bit of fruit falls.
Ezekiel says that when God’s fury arises, he will shake all that can be shaken. “All men who are on the face of the earth shall shake at my presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground… And I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 38:20, 23).
The writer of Hebrews says, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven… That [only] the things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:26-27). God is going to shake everything in sight so that he is revealed as the only unshakable power.