The city was under final attack by the Babylonians. It would soon fall. Jeremiah had given counsel to the leaders and had preached to the people that the Babylonian presence was God’s judgment. It should be accepted and submitted to. They had sinned and they were being judged. The judgment was God’s way of restoring wholeness.
People didn’t like that. They kept trying to find ways to avoid the reality of judgment, to think in other categories than those of right and wrong, sin and irresponsibility. One of their substitute ways of thinking was in terms of loyalty and disloyalty. Patriotism was used to muddle the sense of morality. “Our beloved country is being attacked and we must be loyal to it; in times of crisis it is not right to criticize your leaders. It is disloyal, an act of treachery.”
Using jingoist language is far easier than taking responsibility for righteousness in the nation. Far easier to shout patriotic slogans than to work patriotically for justice…
Irijah was a man who used his job to escape his responsibilities as a person. He was a bureaucrat in the worst sense of the word, a person who hides behind the rules and prerogatives of a job description to do work that destroys people. Without considering morality or righteousness, God or person, he did his job. We meet these people all the time. And there are more and more jobs like this all the time. Every day people are hurt and demeaned by officeholders who refuse to look us in the eye, shielding themselves behind regulations and paperwork, secretaries and committees.
Irijah was the kind of person that Melville, in his novel The Confidence Man, describes with great scorn as “the moderate man, the invaluable understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for wrong, but you are useless for right.”
I’ve known since 2020, where everything is headed for our nation—history repeats—and I wrote about it at the very beginning of the “lockdown era.” I embarked on a rigorous study of how modern civilizations have fallen to despotism and democide, and published insights about it in the very first issue of FreedomTalk Magazine.
One red flag I noted in “How to Murder Millions” is an “Irrational belief that someone is coming to save us.”
“’Only two responses are possible: attempts to escape, or self-deception by grasping at illusions.’ -Israel Gutman
“We must be patient and a miracle will occur,” Gutman quotes a Ghetto leader. “Fighting against the enemy makes no sense…Defense means the utter destruction of the Warsaw ghetto! If I were convinced that we could not manage to save the core, I would arrive at a different conclusion.”
The inaction resulting from such a desperate belief can be tragic: “As long as the ghetto’s population could be deceived by reassurances from those in authority—Germans or Jews—they were prepared to carry out German orders and treat the Jewish Fighting Organization as provocateurs endangering the entire ghetto. In this new climate, however, [when all hope was lost] the Judenrat [Jewish police complicit with the Nazis] and the police could no longer dominate public life. Public opinion no longer regarded the Jewish Fighting Organization as an irresponsible element that could bring catastrophe to the ghetto. They had already experienced catastrophe.”
Maybe there is a “Plan”; many of us would like to think someone ultimately has control, and everything will turn out fine. And yet, as the saying goes, it is wise to “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” Politicians and the powerful cannot always prevent catastrophe, and God does not always choose to for reasons perhaps only He fully comprehends. “The proverbial unwise virgins did not fill their lamps, and their lack of preparation and vigilance cost them dearly. ‘Faith without works is dead’; faith without preparation can be fatal.
But no leader, no government, no kingdom will escape judgment if that society does not execute justice on behalf of the oppressed. That is because God can only bear to hear the cries of the oppressed before He must bring mercy to his “little ones” by judging those who refuse to give it. And in our form of government of, for, and by the people, if we stay silent, we share in the blame and the consequences. The very criteria for the separation of the “sheep” from the “goats” in Matthew 25 is clear: “I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me….inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me….”
The “moderate man,” who may be used for wrong because he’s “just following orders,” who is useless for right because he’s “doing his job” will not escape this judgement. Not when that job includes shielding the guilty and withholding justice from those the government itself has harmed.
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.” -Abraham Lincoln
A nation does not fall first by invasion—it falls when justice is denied its most vulnerable citizens, when the law becomes a political weapon, and when those entrusted with power cease to see the People as human beings made in the image of God.
All of that is happening now—yes, even under this administration—and that is why I tremble for my country.”
“They have grown fat, they are sleek;
Yes, they surpass the deeds of the wicked;
They do not plead the cause,
The cause of the fatherless;
Yet they prosper,
And the right of the needy they do not defend.
Shall I not punish them for these things?” says the Lord.
“Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?” -Jeremiah 5:28-29‘Execute judgment in the morning [ie. speedily];
And deliver him who is plundered out of the hand of the oppressor,
Lest My fury go forth like fire
And burn so that no one can quench it,
Because of the evil of your doings.’” -Jeremiah 21:12————P.S. Let me insert here that by “fighting,” I mean peacefully, by First Amendment means.
Kelly John Walker is an American statesman, senior writer, author, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder of FreedomTalk, Editor-in-Chief of FreedomTalk Magazine, and Co-Founder of Parents Demanding Justice Alliance. His work has appeared in The Washington Times, Gateway Pundit, The Epoch Times, Newsmax, and more. He’s a frequent guest on national news and commentary programs. Kelly holds degrees in English, Theology, and a Master of Science earned on a U.S. Department of Defense fellowship. In 2020, after being canceled and arrested for standing against government overreach, he became a leading independent journalist and advocate for liberty and parental rights.
