God’s judgement is sure to fall on both Britain and America, just as it fell on Judah when the Babylonians invaded the land – that was the clear message brought by Jacob Prasch at a conference this weekend in England.
Jacob was speaking on the book of Jeremiah at a weekend conference at Tongham Christian Fellowship in southeast England this weekend (Feb 7/8 2015).
Jacob and the prophet Jeremiah have much in common. Both give a deeply unpopular message - castigating religious leaders, urging repentance and warning of God’s judgement on the nation. In both cases, the message was ignored. Both men have been scorned and banned from places of worship. And both kept on for decades faithfully giving out the word of the Lord, knowing it would go unheeded and that national judgement was inevitable.
Jeremiah was prophesying in Judah, the southern kingdom, at a time when Babylon (ancient Iraq) was breathing down their necks. Israel, the northern kingdom, had already been invaded by Assyria and totally devastated. Jews in the southern kingdom believed that God would protect them because they had the Temple there.
Jacob made the point that Jeremiah prophesied for three time frames: his own day, the time of the First Coming and the time of the close of the age.
He quoted Jeremiah 2:13, “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
They did that in Jeremiah’s day, and the Jews did it later in history by rejecting the living water – the Lord Jesus - and then inventing the counterfeit religion of rabbinic Judaism, with rabbis instead of Levites. A broken cistern.
Then, the early church did the same thing! The Roman emperor Constantine joined church and state, an unholy marriage of Christianity and paganism. The living water was once again rejected. The church became the Roman Catholic Church, baptizing infants, introducing false doctrines like purgatory, kneeling before statues etc. Augustine was a big part of this.
The Roman church, like rabbinic Judaism, was a broken cistern. The people were doing good works hoping to be saved; real Christians do good works because we are saved, knowing full well that we can never earn salvation*.
In Jeremiah’s day God warned the religious leaders to repent, but they did not. There were many false prophets, who were tolerated, but Jeremiah, a true prophet, was persecuted. The Babylonians came, destroyed the Temple, and carried the Jews off to Babylon as exiles.
In Jesus’ day, He warned over and over again of false prophets, and we have them with us now. He also warned of false peace, when sudden destruction would come.
Jacob quoted Jeremiah 10:21, “For the shepherds are stupid and do not inquire of the LORD…” He said the word "stupid" meant “stupidity by free choice”. The religious leaders perverted their own logic in order to justify things they knew were wrong. Society had become stupid because their leaders were wilfully stupid.
What were these things that were wrong and were being justified? For one thing, the people were recognizing false religions, becoming ecumenical.
The church did the same thing later in history. The Council of Ephesus in the 5th century proclaimed Mary as Queen of Heaven, when there is no Queen of Heaven. There is only the King of kings.
In Jeremiah’s day, they also sacrificed children to the false gods. Now we have abortion.
Jeremiah told the people that God would surely judge them, as He had Israel in the north. They did not believe him, but they were wrong. The Babylonians attacked and destroyed Solomon’s Temple and took the Jews captive to Babylon.
The same sins characterize both Britain and America. The church has become ecumenical, tolerating false religion, and tolerating homosexuality. Millions of babies have been murdered.
Jacob said we have a false sense of security. “(People think…) It can’t happen here! Not since William the Conqueror in 1066 has anyone invaded Britain. We resisted Napoleon, Hitler…”
But in ancient Israel the people thought they could make peace with pagan nations by pandering to their religions. They knew better, but they were “stupid by choice”. Those who told the truth were objects of scorn and were eventually persecuted.
Jacob cited some modern instances of persecution.
- In Durham (northern England), government inspectors asked children at a Christian school about homosexuality and Islam. They decided that the children were not being properly taught, and inspectors have moved to close down that school. The Christian church nationally does nothing.
- In Oregon two Jewish bakers have been forced out of business after refusing to bake a wedding cake for lesbians.
- In Liverpool (England) a Christian fire fighter had to take early retirement rather than go on a ‘sensitivity’ course on homosexuality.
- In the USA a fire chief was fired from his job after one line in his book saying that homosexuality is not acceptable to God.
“We have lost our democracy,” Jacob said. “Our leaders are evil men.” He said he was praying the judgement of Christ on them.
He said there is such a thing as “imprecatory prayer” – praying for God’s judgement. Things got so bad in Jeremiah’s day that God told him not to pray any longer for those people because they were:
1 Fooling around with other gods
2 Killing children
3 Persecuting the righteous
He said: "The judgement of God will fall, as surely as it fell in the days of Jeremiah. God draws the line at certain things.”
*Salvation is a free gift of God for anyone who comes to Jesus in repentance and faith (but the Catholic Church denies this in Canon 9 of the Council of Trent).
. We made this theme of pending judgement and the spiritual reasons for nations to decline and fall a central part of our book Goodbye America, Goodbye Britain which is available from our web shop, as is our other book currently in print, Cults and Isms: True Or False?
