Around 2600 years ago, hard times fell upon the Israelites. After a successful siege, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar II force-marched thousands from their homeland to servitude in Babylonia.
Among the exiles was the prophet Ezekiel. The Old Testament ascribes strange doings to this seer. Not only did he lose his speech for seven years, but also the Lord commanded him to lie on his left side 390 days, symbolic of Israel’s punishment, and forty days on his right side, symbolic of Judah’s punishment. While enduring this rigorous rest regimen, he ate barley cakes baked over cow manure, and barbered himself with a sword.
Ezekiel’s neighbors demanded to know if the prophet’s strange behavior signified an omen. He ignored them, and found comfort in the Lord’s designation of him as “ … a watchman unto the house of Israel…” (Ezekiel 33:7).
Unlike fellow prophet Jeremiah, whose jeremiads to the stiff-necked, sinful Israelites were devoid of anything but gloom and doom, the watchman Ezekiel balanced his castigations with prophecies of hope for a brighter future, which eventually came to be, after Nebuchadnezzar’s drunken son and successor, Belshazzar, read the disembodied finger’s fatal handwriting on the wall, and was slain that very night.
If history repeats itself, is there a Babylon for America? If so, the dunces in Congress seem not the least bit concerned, or are too ignorant to realize that their predominating self-interest and lack of interest in constituents, not to mention their stupidity as illustrated by laws they pass, could set the stage for a modern-day Babylon.
America treads on thinner and thinner economic ice and unemployment creeps steadily upward
As America treads on thinner and thinner economic ice and unemployment creeps steadily upward, what do these political poltroons do? Levy more taxes on those who can offer the unemployed employment.
By analogy, if a company invested in expensive shuttle buses, bought diesel for them, hired drivers, purchased insurance and paid maintenance costs, and if the bus service operated at a loss due to low ridership, it would solve the problem by buying more buses!
The sleazy scoundrels in Congress have made the word politician so vile and evil that an ethical person can barely stand to say it. They seem oblivious to a dismal quality of life for future Americans. Their solution for the impending financial chaos is to quadruplicate spending, ignore the country’s deficit (escalating toward irrecoverable indebtedness), and have no qualms about begging loans at usurious interest rates from foreign countries.
Those Americans who love this country and want their children and grandchildren to thrive and be happy in the safe, secure, well-protected Christian homeland envisioned by the Founding Fathers, can only hope that a watchman for the house of America, a modern Ezekiel, will step forth and prophecy hope for a brighter future.
There is a slim chance that such a prophecy will become reality, but only if the whole kit and caboodle of crooks now in Congress serve the people instead of themselves and special interest groups. In the meantime, we Americans may be trekking toward our own Babylon.
Jimmy Reed——
Bio and Archives
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
