Good Morning!
One day I was taken to a place in northern Ukraine to lead a street crusade in the afternoon and an indoor crusade in the evening. We had arrived early and the pastors wanted to take me to see something I had never seen before. The city where we were leading the crusades was near what they called a "Dead Zone." It was an area of the country where the toxic material from the nuclear power plant disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 had spread and destroyed hundreds of square miles of land and life. While we were driving up the road we were in the country. Then...suddenly we noticed that the countryside had changed. There were no birds flying. Buildings and homes were deserted and there was no sign of life anywhere. Then we began going through a city. We stopped and walked through a shopping plaza where at one time there were many stores. We walked into the stores and saw everything had been stripped down and destroyed. We walked through a restaurant where a mosaic on the wall displayed the five circles of the Olympics that had been in Moscow in 1980. There were vials of medicine all over the floor. It was some type of antibiotic that the Russian politicians had told them that if they take it they would survive the infection of the nuclear ash floating in the air. Like all Socialist propaganda...it was a lie! The people who stayed in that location died from the nuclear ash. We walked through a housing development that was a very nice area that was totally deserted. It was an eery feeling. Beautiful trees with no birds in them. In the city a few miles south where we were going to lead a crusade, the birds were everywhere. But, in this city there was nothing. No sign of life anywhere!
It was true. I had never seen anything like this before. All life had ceased to exist. The beautiful city was a desolate place. The farms that were once rich with farming were gone. No life. No animals. No vegetation. No people. Everything was gone. Life had been snuffed out.
Later, I was taken to a place in Kyiv, Ukraine, and visited the Chernobyl museum where I saw the videos of the explosion in the Number 4 reactor in Chernobyl. The puffs of smoke and ash traveled over most of the northern hemisphere. Some of the nuclear ash was detected in America. But, in the few hundred miles around Chernobyl...life was gone.
When Jeremiah delivers the message about what Israel will look like after God destroys her, I see similarities from the Chernobyl accident. It is so bad and God is extremely graphic about what it will look like that Jeremiah begins to weep. Jeremiah is called the "Weeping Prophet." He wrote an entire book, Lamentations, about weeping. Read what Israel will look like according to chapter nine.
"I will raise weeping and a lament over the mountains.,
a dirge over the wilderness grazing land,
for they have been so scorched that no one passes through.
The sound of cattle is no longer heard.
From the birds of the sky to the animals,
everything has fled--they have gone away.
I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a jackals' den.
I will make the cities of Judah a desolation,
an uninhabited place." vv. 10-11
I saw that kind of place. It is terrible. It's a lonely feeling. When there is no one and nothing living to be found. The quietness of that place is deafening.
No one would want that kind of thing to come to their country. Yet, it was coming to Israel and Jeremiah wept over it. He had tried to inform the people of God's impending judgment, but, the people...citizens, business people, rich people, poor people, middle-class people, politicians, ministers, believers, unbelievers, EVERYONE...would not listen to Jeremiah. They were set in living their own lives which did not include following God and turning from their sin.
When I look at the events of the end times...the results will be the same. Desolation everywhere! When I watch the decision-making of our nation today I am curious about how long God will hold back His hand of judgment. Even believers are being disobedient to God's leading and are holding their hands out to God with the flimsy statement..."What have I done?"
Linda and I lost a baby several years ago during her pregnancy. This morning she was asking me if I ever think that we have another child in heaven and one day will see him/her. What will be our reaction when God shows us the millions of babies that are in heaven whom we have allowed to be aborted in our nation. And, now our tax dollars have been approved to fund abortions globally.
It is no question as to why God will allow total devastation to come to this land in the future. There is too much disobedience. God says that "He will NOT clear the guilty." Nahum 1:3. And... there is guilt all around us!
Let's pray for our nation. Let's be trend-setters for good and Godliness for those who live around us. Let's pray for our leaders. Pray that God will intervene into the hearts of men and women and the disobedience to God will end. Let's pray for citizens in our nation to trust God and "lean not on their own understanding."
May God Bless You!
Don Betts
DBEA/campus320
DBEAWINNING.COM
TO GOD BE ALL GLORY!