On his television program last night, Glenn Beck was asked by an audience member what the future holds for America, which prompted Beck to reply with a long story about the time when he said that God stopped talking to him for several weeks.

As Beck told it, he had been prompted by God years before the 2008 economic crisis to warn that a collapse was coming. When Lehman Brothers collapsed but the economic catastrophe that Beck had been predicting did not immediately follow, Beck angrily lashed out at God for having ruined his reputation.

In response, God stopped talking to Beck for several weeks until Beck humbled himself and begged for forgiveness, at which point God told him to “build the framework of hope,” which terrified Beck because it was a sign that “what’s coming is bad.”

And now that warning is coming true.

“I think we’re here,” Beck said. “What’s coming? Trouble. Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble. What’s coming? Consequences. God’s our dad. He’s told us don’t do these things. He’s begged us, he’s given us every opportunity and we still vote for unrighteousness … Consequences are coming and we can’t be like little children that say, ‘Wait, why are you punishing us?’ He’s not punishing us, he’s allowing the natural consequences to happen to us.”

President Obama and the progressives have worked to make conservatives feel powerless, Beck said, but that is all part of God’s plan to help the people who “are going to save the nation, save the world, save freedom” to realize that “God is in control and God will see us through.”