MASS PSYCHOSIS: when People are willing to Sacrifice themselves and even their Children to Tyrants

by Stephen Halbrook

In 1 Samuel 8, when Israel demands from Samuel a king like the other nations, we are told that they had rejected God Himself. Samuel warns Israel of the consequences of having such a king.

The king would plunder them of their property, enslave them, and take their children. The people would cry out to God because of their chains, but not be answered. Israel’s idolatry of the state — trusting in government more than God — would have severe consequences:

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:10-18, ESV)

Here we see the irrationality and madness of human psychology at work in rebellion against God. Despite clear warning from God Himself through the prophet Samuel, not only were the Israelites willing to enslave themselves to tyrants, but their children as well. And the lives of their very sons would be at risk by being sent to war.

And worst of all, God would not hear their cries for deliverance when they would cry out to Him.

Such is the sad state of making an idol of the state. Idolatry on a mass level fuels a mass psychosis, destruction, and despair.

What are we seeing today? Despite clear evidence that COVID is at best largely a scam, people eagerly beg for outright totalitarianism to save them.

To serve their tyrants they are willing to collapse the economy via lockdowns, surrender their freedoms, and even harm or kill themselves and their children with suffocating masks and vaccination. They have left nothing to the future of their children, save hardship, tyranny, and death.

The only enduring cure for a mass psychosis is Jesus Christ. He is not only the Great Savior from sin and hell, but the King of kings, and Lord of lords. Only He can deliver a nation from peril.

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