Broken Power

God Has Broken Our Power

We are coming up on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It was a terrible day. The United States vowed retribution as we sent troops into Afghanistan –– a stronghold of terrorism. We committed the whole of the greatest military force in the world to this one task –– to root out and destroy the terrorist who brought such grief upon our land. During the ensuing twenty years, our nation sacrificed 2,448 soldiers in what has become little more of a war of attrition. We spent $273 million a day –– every day –– for 20 years; a total of over two trillion dollars. At the end of it, American soldiers were evacuated in the dark of the night, abandoning more than 10,000 American citizens and tens of thousands of Afghani citizens, leaving their fate in the hands of barbarians. In particular peril, are those who are Christians –– infidels to the Taliban who believe their holy calling is to destroy them or enslave them.

Our brave declaration of retribution has ended in abject failure. It is Vietnam all over again where we spend billions of dollars, countless lives, and after a season - just walk away.

Imagine it: Twenty years, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives –– only to quit, leaving innocent men, women, and children to face barbaric murderers who will hang men in the streets, execute women for not wearing a proper head covering and give little girls into the hands of rapist in a mockery of “marriage.”

Listening to the President this week and members of his team, it would appear that there is no reasonable plan in place to rescue our own citizens and the thousands of Afghans who worked alongside our military to oust the Taliban. In just eleven days, twenty years of bloodshed, sacrifice, and progress were erased. Tens of thousands of innocent Afghans and Americans were left to face a cruel enemy who now, by the way, are armed to the teeth because of the high-tech weaponry left behind as our military left in the dark of night.

The Taliban is overjoyed, our brave soldiers are sickened and shamed, thousands of men, women, and children are left in terror while our so-called Commander in Chief is doing victory laps in celebration of his brave leadership.

This is my reaction in the flesh, as an

American citizen.

In my spirit however, I realize that what all of this represents is the continuing judgment of God upon our nation because of the sinful, rebellious, idolaters we have become. In 2018, I published a book entitled CRY MERCY. In that book I wrote the following:

Because we, as a nation, have essentially given God the middle finger of disdain for His Person, His character, and His laws; there is not defense to be made. We must now realize that Islam is not our enemy, the militant LGBTQ is not our enemy, nor are the abortion mills who murder babies. None of these are our enemy. The sad fact for America is that our gross national sin has made God our enemy.

Because of the rejection of God and His Word and because we have exchanged the God of Life for the gods of death and perversion, America is already under the hand of God’s judgment. If there is no national confession of sin, and if we cannot find a heart of repentance, God will complete His judgment. He will either completely annihilate or subjugate what was once a great and godly people or He will render this nation so completely irrelevant on the world stage that –– broken, impoverished, and in ruins ––America will not even have a shadow of its former greatness.

For every rebellious nation God has a Nebuchadnezzar waiting in the wings. That rumble of impending trouble that we all sense is nothing other than the hoofbeats of the horsemen of judgment that inevitably ride into the life of every rebel.

This humiliation in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban should sound a warning bell, alerting us to a terrible truth: God has removed His Hand of protection and His Hand of help from our nation because of our rebellion. We have rejected God and so we are on our own against the nations who would love nothing more than to see America fall.

America will not fall at the hands of the Taliban, the Chinese, or Russians –– America will fall at the Hand of God. These other players will simply pick up the booty.

Leviticus 26:19-20 speaks to the fate of nations who forget God: “and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.” (highlights mine)

“Your strength will be spent in vain.” Twenty Years, two trillion dollars, countless lives spent - and nothing to show for it. As Americans we have come to believe that our military strength is second to none and our financial power is unmatched in all of the world and yet, it took the Taliban eleven days to upend twenty years of expenditure of that great military strength and unmatched financial power. ELEVEN DAYS. As a nation, we have truly been brought to shame before a watching (and celebrating world). As Leviticus warns, “God has broken the PRIDE of our POWER!

But this shame did not come at the hands of the Taliban. It comes from the Hand of God, who declares “I will break the pride of your power” and “Your strength will be spent in vain.”

At the beginning of his administration, President Biden promised that he would “return America to the world stage.”

He kept that promise this week.