Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehukal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malkijah heard what Jeremiah was telling all the people when he said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live.  They will escape with their lives; they will live.’  And this is what the Lord says: ‘This city will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.’”
Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.”
“He is in your hands,” King Zedekiah answered.  “The king can do nothing to oppose you.”
So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard.  They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern; it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.

• Jeremiah 38:1-6

They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee.  When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.  When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  I beg you, don’t torture me!”  For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man.  Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him.  And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside.  The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs, and he gave them permission.  When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

• Luke 8:26-33

“Morale and vision fade fast.  This is especially true when the battle is raging.  Or when the pace is blistering.  Or when the task is boring.
“Many war veterans tell spine-tingling stories pulsating with heroism and enthusiasm.  Without exception, such remarkable acts of bravery were accomplished because troops felt fresh surges of determination which caused the odds against them to pale into insignificance.  Those same veterans can tell of other occasions when the battle was lost due to low morale and fuzzy vision.
“Optimism, courage, and faithfulness feed on high morale.”

• Charles R. Swindoll, The Finishing Touch

Have you ever been between a rock and a hard place?  Jeremiah was placed into a muddy place, but the situation that God put him in was one of those rock versus hard place situations.  Jeremiah had to pass along what God had said.  The advisors to the wicked king said that Jeremiah’s prophecy was hurting morale, so Jeremiah was consigned to the cistern.

It seems these days that we are in is the same thing.  I see a coming doom.  It may not happen upon this upcoming election in the USA, but at some point, the voters that care about the Constitution will get bored and a government will arise that throws that out, duly elected by apathetic people wanting someone else to care, because they don’t.  This is not new for me.  I fear the election.  I either gain morale afterwards or I do a lot more praying afterwards.  I know there will be one election one day that will change the course of history.  Either one election that fast-starts the End Times, or God starts the End Times in advance of our own self-destruction.

For good or bad, the destruction of the USA will affect everyone on earth.

The time for the praying is now.  We need God-fearing officials at every level.  We need repentance and revival.  We do not need something “new” in as much as something untried.  The ‘untried’ ideas out there are mostly repackaged Communism, Marxism, or simple anarchy.

It is like “Legion” in the second Scripture above.  We are bored with the present situation, or we believe the media’s hype and propaganda.  We see the inevitable expulsion from our home, so we choose a herd of pigs instead of being cast into the Abyss.  Does it make a difference?  How many elections have we voted for the least of two evils, or what we thought as such?

As a side thought, the Abyss appears twice in Scripture:  Luke 8 and Revelation 9.  Could it be that the smoke that turns into locusts when the Abyss is unlocked are all the demons who had been cast out by God, coming back to make life worse for us?

Let us pray that the right officials are elected, but regardless of how bad it might get, let us pray for revival.  An outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a returning to Christ will accomplish much more than any election day.  While some will have false hope on the day after the election because their candidate won, others will fear what is coming.  But when we turn to God, we can have true Hope.

This may seem more like Jeremiah’s prophecy than a pep talk, but if you are a true believer and a registered voter, you need to pray this year and vote this year.  That is as peppy as I can get.  Probably the officer in wartime who gave a pep talk to his men was no more peppy either, when he told his men to go into certain danger with most losing their lives, because the outcome of the war depended on that one objective.  It’s kind of hard to make that speech peppy.

But regardless of the election outcome, we need to pray.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.