Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The visions of your prophets
    were false and worthless;
they did not expose your sin
    to ward off your captivity.
The prophecies they gave you
    were false and misleading.

• Lamentations 2:14

“‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because of your false words and lying visions, I am against you, declares the Sovereign Lord. My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of my people or be listed in the records of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.”

• Ezekiel 13:8-9

” ‘We must decide and decide quickly who is chief, whom we will serve. Millions of people in America live in moral fog. … Modified immorality on the basis of cleverness guides millions of people. Modified dishonesty within the letter of the law is the practice of millions more. Surely the time has come, because the hour is late, when we must decide. And the choice before us is plain: Jehovah or Baal. Christ or chaos. Conviction or compromise. Discipline or disintegration.’
And then Marshall issued this urgent call for prophetic voices to arise:
“ ‘I suggest to you that America needs prophets today … who will set before the nation the essential choices. … We need a prophet who will have the ear of America and say to her now, ‘How long will you halt and stand between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him, but if Baal be God, follow him, and go to Hell!’”

• Michael L. Brown, PhD, Jezebel’s War with America (quoted excerpts from “Trial by Fire” a sermon by Peter Marshall, three years before he became chaplain of the US Senate in 1947), (emphasis attributed to Peter Marshall)

I picked up one of the books at a used bookstore.  I enjoy what I have read from Hank Hanegraaff and the price was really good.  Then my wife and I went to the nearest reliable Christian bookstore in the Pittsburgh area, an hour and a half drive to the far side of town.  I found the Os Guinness book.  I have liked everything I ever read from Os Guinness.  Then I had to get one more book to get the double discount on the clearance rack and I took a chance on the quoted book from Michael L. Brown.  I had never read anything of his.

I would have thoroughly loved all three books, but I was packing in a lot of non-fiction near the end of 2022 and by some method or another, I placed all three books into the queue.  As I looked back, maybe that was not a good idea.

The three books:

• Christianity in Crisis, 21^st Century by Hank Hanegraaff
• A Free People’s Suicide, Sustainable Freedom and the American Future by Os Guinness
• Jezebel’s War with America, The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide by Michael L. Brown, PhD

In Christianity in Crisis, Hank Hanegraaff goes into much more detail than did the documentary, American Gospel: Christ Alone.  My review of the documentary still stands as my most viewed post.  The book details the history and evolution of the Faith in Faith movement, predominantly the prosperity gospel and faith healers.  Whichever is your interest, you are sold verses in the Bible that are taken out of context, you are asked for seed money, when that doesn’t work, you are blamed for not having the faith to give more seed money, etc. until you are penniless.  The key is that you have faith in “faith”, something that you generate yourself by your willingness to give to the “cause” which often is a new jet or vacation home for the preacher or travelling “evangelist.”

In A Free People’s Suicide, Os Guinness goes into what made the USA the “Land of the Free.”  He talks about a variety of attributes in the founding fathers: predominantly, men of noble character, moral men, men of God (even though a few were more Deists than Christians), and responsible servants of the people.  They were the very definition of a statesman.  He spent a lot of time on the faith of George Washington, a very reluctant president.  Dr. Guinness then declares that we think our freedom to be God-given and a right, simply because we are Americans.  Then he described how we have already lost much of our freedom and how easily we can lose the rest.  He makes a plea for a statesman of noble character to return and guide America back toward true freedom and what the country was founded upon.  He basically stated that since the founding fathers, who constituted many of the early presidents, although he had his reservations about Jefferson, it seemed to him that the only true “statesman” since was Abraham Lincoln.  We definitely did not need any more politicians and that is all that seem to survive in Washington, DC.  He touched on a Spiritual revival, but to make lasting changes, the direction of the USA government needed to return to God, morality, and strong moral values and teaching.

The last of these three books, Jezebel’s War with America, has Michael L. Brown describing current events and how we got there.  Sadly, the book was published in 2019 and the wrong directions that he describes were mild in 2019 compared to present day 2023.  He gives the biblical background of who Jezebel was and the use of Jezebel in Revelation 2:20 to describe the spiritual essence of pure evil.

What are these wrong directions?  He spends a lot of time talking about abortions.  He quotes from a book that describes what a potential mother experienced as her baby was removed from her womb and then killed before her eyes.  The nurses claimed the baby’s movements were natural reflexes and the baby was already dead, but the woman was haunted with those visions for the rest of her life.  He then compares that to sacrificing children to Molech in the Bible.  I have made that connection and I am glad that I am not alone in seeing the connection.  He goes into the LGBTQ+, but some of those letters are missing since the book is four years old.  He also talks of the gender dysphoria, that was just emerging at the time of the book.  I was unaware that then President Obama signed a bill that required schools to allow boys who claim to be female onto girl’s sports teams or lose all federal funding.  I had heard that other nations had gone that route, in recent years, but this was roughly ten years ago.

When he gets down to his practical things to do, there were five steps, although not easily done and number four needs a footnote:

• Pray
• Prophets must speak out
• Push Back!
• Learn what we can from President Trump*
• Have the “castrated” males regain their manhood

*This last of the three books was written prior to COVID and President Trump losing the bid for reelection (whether you think he did or he did not lose).  But before these points were discussed in detail, the chapter was on “Jezebel, Jehu, and Donald Trump.”  Many called Hillary Clinton the modern-day Jezebel.  Dr. Brown refused to label anyone of any gender Jezebel, maintaining that this was spiritual warfare, and not warfare against individuals, although individuals carry out Jezebel’s agenda.  But of the prominent people who called Ms. Clinton Jezebel, one was a pastor, whose sermon went viral.  While he called Clinton Jezebel, he called Trump Jehu.  And that seems to fit other than he was unsuccessful at removing the spiritual power of Jezebel over our present government.

Who was Jehu?  He was a charioteer and army leader who was called by God to rid the northern kingdom of Israel of the line of Ahab.  The king of Aram would kill king Ahab.  Jehu would then kill Ahab’s sons and bring about the death of Jezebel, being eaten by dogs as prophesied by Elijah.  Then if there were any other stragglers of Ahab’s family, Elisha would destroy them.  All three of these: the king of Aram, Jehu, and Elisha were anointed by Elijah.  All of this can be found between 1 King 19 and 2 Kings 9 or there about.

Thus, learning something from Trump is good and bad and maybe worse.  He tried to drain the swamp and the swamp sunk him.  He tried to kill of the prophets of Baal, but he was defeated.  And even if you liken him to Jehu, Jehu was not much better than Ahab.  Just as God used the pagan empires of Assyria and Babylon to punish his wayward Chosen People, God used a nearly godless Jehu to rid the northern kingdom of Jezebel’s direct influence.  It was just that the people had become so enamored with Baal that they did not repent when Jehu ridded them of Ahab, Jezebel, and their children.

And when you combine those three books, our nation prefers faith in faith and ignores God.  Our nation has no moral, noble character statesmen, and they know that if they ran for office, Washington, DC would devour them.  And we can learn from Trump that Washington, DC and its corruption has a life of its own.

In the time of Jezebel, there was a face for Baal, whatever the sculptor carved, but it seems there are puppet masters behind the scenes of our government that were probably never elected that are more powerful than the president and more powerful than Baal.

I see little chance, except for the miraculous from God, for the USA.  Even considering Judah, the kings were getting worse and worse until a good king came along, yet even the good reign of Hezekiah was followed by Manasseh, one of the worst until he repented.

Are all three books must-reads?  I think so.  We need to be informed, but maybe not all three books in a month’s time.  Let’s have some praising of God and stories of good things and loving one another with these three spaced out among the others.

Anytime I get political, and this really is not political, regardless of the subject matter, I get to the point where our only hope is found in God.  If the USA is to collapse, we do not have to collapse with it.  We can turn our lives over to God and our reward will await us in Heaven.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.