Some trust in chariots, and some trust in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

Psalms 20:7, KJV

 

Another election has come and gone. Regardless of the outcome you were hoping for, you have to admit that it is likely one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes. In the years leading up to an election that the opposition feared, a candidate was accused of a laundry list of felonies that heretofore had never been pursued. He was convicted and the only thing that prevented him from being put in prison was a slow legal process that allowed the case to be reviewed multiple times by both sympathetic and unsympathetic courts.

 

But the worst thing that happened through all of this was that his secret service protection was partially removed and fully compromised to the point where an assassin's bullet nearly took his head off. Whether you believe that this was unavoidable occurrence or the result of incompetence, (or if you were like me and thought that it may have had an intentional element that involved a conspiracy to murder a political opponent) it really doesn't matter. The point is that our political situation in this country is so divided that the conditions were permitted to exist that could have permitted a political opponent to be assassinated.

 

It has happened before. King David, a man after God's own heart at one point of his life, committed adultery with one of his most devoted soldier's wife. In order to avoid getting caught, he ordered his top general to put that man in the most dangerous position of a battle, and then have the rest of the troops withdraw so that the man would be killed.

 

It worked!

 

But David did not escape undetected as he had planned, for God sent a prophet to him to tell the king that God knew what he had done. David, a good man who had gotten caught up in a whirlwind of evil, was brought to his knees in repentance. And because he was a man after God's own heart, and because God had promised him that His Messiah would come from his lineage, God forgave King David. One of the most important of Christ's forefathers, and the one who had committed one of the vilest sins in recorded history, was forgiven. This is an important part of our legacy, for it reveals the depth of God's great capacity to forgive even those who have been involved with the worst of sins.

 

The reason I bring up this example is this: If a man as righteous as David could go off the rails so far into sin that he could get involved in a conspiracy to commit murder, then what does that say about men and women who are so wicked that they have no fear of the Lord and no regard for His commandments? Do you believe that they will stop with one failed assassination attempt? Do you believe that just because the election was lost that they will now demurely surrender and allow this enemy to begin a type of purge that will likely result in their removal from power? Or, possibly, do you believe in the power of our modern-day chariots and horses to protect the President so that we don't need the Lord's help anymore?

 

I do not. I have observed through the years that those who practice evil and who never have a change of heart that leads them to repentance only tend to get more bold in their wicked endeavors. I hope I am wrong about all of this, but this is what I am convinced of now. Because I am convinced of this, I believe that our nation is in great peril. I have to admit the last time a leader was elected after a period of sinful decline; I just breathed a sigh of relief and went on with business as usual. Because of this error in judgment, I stopped praying as fervently after that election as I has been praying before the election. I think a lot of people did and as a result of this failure to seek God's continual protection, the nation slid into an even worse state than it had been before.

 

Those on the other side of the political aisle will say it's because we had been going in the right direction before, and then we started going in the wrong direction. But I am reminded that before President Trump was elected the first time that the nation had already begun to dabble in open sexual immorality, and that they had fully embraced the heinous sin of abortion at any stage of pregnancy. So, I am convinced that things got worse not because we had attempted to reverse the sinful direction of the nation, but because we got complacent and failed to remove completely the cancer of sin that had sickened the nation in the first place.

 

The point of all this rambling is simply this: We have let down our guard before after thinking we had won the battle, and it resulted in a worst condition than we were in before. If we let our guard down now and cease to continue to pray for a national repentance and a widespread return to the Godly principles that allowed this nation to become great in the first place, then I am convinced that we will have lost our last best chance to help get America back on the right track. We have been inundated with unrighteous behavior that involves opening our borders to known criminals, allowing illegal drug use, allowing our children to be exposed to perversion in many of our schools, allowing men to use women's most private facilities, a failure to protect honest businesspeople from theft, and permitting the killing the most innocent of our society.

 

If we think for a moment that the ones who are so depraved that they have ushered in and protected these wicked practices are now going to stand idly by and let the new sheriff in town stop them without a fight, then I think we are more than a bit naive. I am convinced that, barring repentance, wicked men do not willingly give up their wicked behavior without a fight. If the comments and actions that have already occurred in the short time since the election is any indication, I believe that their efforts to fight those who would interrupt their sinful lives has just begun.

 

So, I am convinced that we do not need to let our guard down, I am not saying that we do not give those who wish to repent the opportunity to do so, but I am saying that we do not give those who have already expressed a refusal to repent any opportunity to carry out their wicked plans. In short, I believe that we need to continue to repent and seek God's mercy for our past sins, and I believe that we need to be praying that God will intervene on our behalf to protect us from those who refuse to repent. I believe we need to be praying for the protection of those leaders who desire to do the right thing, as well as for wisdom that they may know what that right thing is. 

 

When it becomes necessary to purge evil from society, it does not necessarily mean that everyone who has been guilty of that evil must be destroyed. King David was given the chance to repent of his evil conduct and because he was a man after God's own heart, he too that chance. I am convinced that there are people like that today, and we need to give them a chance to repent. What we do not need to do, however, is give those who refuse to repent another chance to infect our society with their sinful conduct. Such miscreants must be removed from their positions of power, and never be given another opportunity to return.

 

If all this upsets you, then understand this: I believe it is time for a national repentance and a return to God and His standards before it is too late. The only way this can be done is for those who have been leading the way to America's decline be removed from their positions of authority. They have done damage enough! It is time for us to consider their innocent victims - our children and grandchildren among them - and get back to being a righteous people and a nation that is pleasing to God. We cannot do this if we let down our guard, so by all means keep your guard up.

 

And don't forget to pray! No amount of modern-day horses and chariots can save us from the evil we have seemed to have embraced, Only God can do that!