Prophets of Doom

The day following our election was a day of depression and grief for me.  While not an ardent Romney fan, I feared more than anything else four more years of what this country had experienced under Obama.  The day after the election, I mourned the loss of a country I knew as a child, of a way of life where morality and justice was honored.  I felt that "bread and circuses" was all that this country now cared about, and that "tax and spend" was the beginning of the end of everything I had known.  Can we possibly recover from four more years of downhill slide?

I have never before known this kind of mourning, and I did not fully understand what I was feeling until I looked around.  The stock market, evidently, had the same "intuition" I did; the victims of Hurricane Sandy and the following nor'easter were suffering in the flesh what I was experiencing in the spirit, and I mourned for them in their suffering and grief. 

The local news channel interviewed random citizens for their reaction the day after the election.  Amazingly, there was not a single positive reaction among those they interviewed.  The most 'postive' reaction came from a soldier who said that he respected Obama as his commander-in-chief, something every soldier must say or be court-martialed.  Then I began speaking to friends and neighbors; their reaction was mine.  All were either very fearful for our future, or depressed at its certainty. 

Like the prophet Jeremiah, the "prophet of doom," I believe there are now two Americas -- and neither one can see what the other one is seeing.  Those who support abortion on demand, gay marriage, and legalizing pot have no idea that our lack of morality is destroying this country from within.  They laugh at any idea that we are suffering as a nation because, like Israel, we "have committed two sins: [We] have forsaken [the Lord], the spring of living water, and have dug [our] own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jer. 2:13).

If the blood of Abel cried out to God from the ground, and if he heard the cry, I wonder what the blood of 17 million innocent murdered babies sounds like. Since when has murder become the accepted 'solution' to societal ills?

 Both Jeremiah and Jesus were 'prophets of doom,' and to shut them up, the leaders of the nation decided that both had to be done away with.  The temple leaders in Jesus' day decided that He must be put to death on the day He said, "Has this house, which bears my Natme, become a den of robbers to you?  But I have been watching! declares the Lord."   That saying comes directly from the book of Jeremiah (chapter 7), and there it is followed  by prophecies of destruction for Jerusalem because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.  The Scribes and Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus was saying, and they did not like its implications.  (In fact, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.)

It seems that now might be a good time for those who "have ears to hear" to re-read the Book of Jeremiah.  Even while one half of America is celebrating and flag-waving, 49% of the nation, those who form the 'other America' are grieving, like Jeremiah, over the destruction of the land they love.  Like Jeremiah, I hope I am wrong; may God rescue us from what it seems is about to happen to all of us!