The prophet Zechariah has a message for America by way of application, if not interpretation.
Specifically, Zechariah warns the world that any nation, any empire that becomes too centralized, too powerful, and too cruel will be destroyed.
The failure of the ironically named Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare) is the latest illustration, and the most prominent evidence of what power-hungry politicians will do to take control of people’s lives. The ultimate objective of this abominable piece of legislation is to make people rely upon the state and not God. Herein is the real evil of Obamacare.
The diabolically designed collapse of the Affordable Care Act is, by stated design, to force Americans to pay for their health care by way of a single-payer system. Simply put, the present government wants to force citizens into a single tax-paying system in order to regulate every facet of their lives.
It is bad enough that the Affordable Care Act is disrupting lives, coercing insurance companies to give “free” health care, or reduced billings, and is insensitive to the plight of millions about to be uninsured. The real evil is the attempt of a rogue ideologue to prove that centralized government planning and planners are good, noble, and can be depended upon. Just the opposite is true, however.
A large centralized government is nothing more than a social cesspool, and the breeding place for greed, moral corruption, and the grabbing of political power. The scandals surrounding the spying on citizens by the National Security Agency, the targeting of conservatives by the Internal Revenue Service, and the cover-up of four dead Americans in Benghazi (and those are just a few that quickly came to mind) reaffirm that a nation cannot survive with an overreaching centralized government.
As the Lord looks down upon America, He is well aware of the excessive greed reflected in a debt of almost 17 trillion dollars (and that’s low-balling it). He beholds the bloody slaughter of the innocent in the murder of babies for money by organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Also, God is not indifferent to the militancy of the homosexual community.
To all of this the voice of the prophet Zechariah cries out afresh saying, “Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings” (Zechariah 1:4).
History records what will happen to any nation that will not turn from evil ways. Simply put, God will send, what Zechariah calls, “carpenters,” “craftsmen,” or “stone cutters” to “cast out” the “horns of the Gentiles” (Zechariah 1:20-21). Horns speak of power. God has instruments ready to cut off the power of politicians who rule without reason and in an irresponsible manner.
When the Assyrian emperors abused their power, God allowed the Babylonians to defeat the Assyrian empire. When the Babylonians grew too wicked, God sent the Mede-Persians to destroy them. When the Mede-Persian Empire became too centralized and used the wealth of the nation for selfish and immoral behavior, God sent the Greeks to destroy them. When the Greeks promoted their worldly philosophies and flaunted their decadent lifestyles, God allowed their conquest by the Romans. And when the Roman government butchered people for pleasure in the Colosseum and gave the populace free bread and circuses, that kingdom was destroyed by the church. Rome fell in AD 476 when the Germanic Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor to rule the western part of the Roman Empire.
Even now, God is raising up divine instruments. God is raising up “carpenters” or “stone cutters” to “flay” the horns of power of nations that will not repent and will not return to righteousness.
God is willing to show mercies to those who will return to Him (Zechariah 1:16). The word “mercies” is plural for there are many mercies God wishes to bestow upon a righteous nation. There is the mercy of financial prosperity. There is the mercy of numerical growth. There is the mercy of divine comfort. And there is the mercy of divine election (Zechariah 1:17). These mercies are ours for the receiving and ours for the asking.