America’s election crisis has taught us a lot. One crucial lesson is just how corrupt America’s courts are. The Trump administration filed over 60 lawsuits alleging fraud in several states. So the courts had many opportunities to rule on the legitimacy of the election. Almost all these suits were thrown out!

The United States Supreme Court refused to even hear the Texas v. Pennsylvania et al case that exposed how attorneys general unilaterally changed states’ election laws to flood cities with unverified mail-in ballots. What a terrible decision!

Media sources accepted this at face value as proof that the claims of fraud were baseless. I am convinced, however, that in many cases the rulings told us less about the validity of the allegations than about the lawlessness of the courts!

How many judges refused to overturn the election because their preferred candidate won? Or because they were afraid of the consequences of challenging that result?

Is justice really being served?

A great deal of corruption in the court system is being exposed. Yet these courts are determining the future of the nation and your life!

We need to understand what the Bible says about this subject. It has some amazingly specific and condemning prophecies about our courts.

Evolving Constitution

Laws are to be written by our legislative branch. Judges and justices are to interpret the law—or better, to let the law interpret itself. They have no authority to rewrite the law. If they rewrite the law, it is almost impossible to correct the error.

Nevertheless, judges are twisting the law in whichever direction will favor their political objective. They are not impartial arbiters of the law: They want to obtain a particular outcome.

The political bias of judges leads to division, crisis and disaster. To take one example: The tension in America prior to 1860 was exacerbated by the courts. The Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford ultimately helped trigger open bloodshed.

It took a civil war to overturn that decision!

This gives you some idea of how hard it is to change what judges do!

We see the same problem today. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on homosexual “marriage” or on Obamacare, the justices were not genuinely looking at the law to see what it said. They wanted to legalize homosexual “marriage” and Obamacare—and searched the law for excuses to do so.

Our Constitution is the supreme law of the land! If judges are not subject to constitutional law, they are subject to nothing and nobody!

Law schools routinely teach about being “legal realists.” Like former Vice President Al Gore, they want an “evolving Constitution.” This reasoning gives judges despotic powers. It vitiates the foundational law established by our forefathers.

Judges are taking power from the legislative and the executive branches as they rewrite the Constitution. So why do our politicians allow it? Because they often like judges to do this if the decisions are favorable to their views and they know voters would not approve.

Our politicians simply lack the vision to see how disastrous this process is. It is based on selfish lawlessness—not law!

These judges are destroying the democratic process and exercising power like dictators. This means we cannot maintain the rule of law. The whole system of justice is being contaminated more each day. This destroys people’s respect for these institutions.

Many local judges have this same lawless spirit. A recent Reuters investigation found that “thousands of state and local judges across America [have been] allowed to keep positions of extraordinary power and prestige after violating judicial ethics rules or breaking laws they pledged to uphold” (June 30, 2020). In many cases, judges have “lied to state officials and forced defendants to languish in jail without a lawyer—and then returned to the bench, sometimes with little more than a rebuke from the state agencies overseeing their conduct.”

Federal prosecutors, who are part of the executive branch, are also corrupt. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell was a federal prosecutor for nine U.S. attorneys, both Republican and Democrat, and was the lead lawyer for 350 criminal appeals while in the Department of Justice. In 2014, she self-published a book titled Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.

She writes that “a small cadre of high-ranking United States Department of Justice lawyers” are “engineering” court cases, often motivated by desire for positive press, promotions and political office, not to mention ideology. She says the department is “political, incestuous, self-serving and self-institutionalized.” Its top leaders have used the power of wrongful convictions to serve a number of unjust ends: to end the career of Sen. Ted Stevens, changing the balance of power in the Senate; to destroy the accounting firm Arthur Andersen; to convict innocent people at Enron and Merrill Lynch; and to imprison innocent people. Some people connected to these cases were killed or committed suicide. And in reality, the corruption goes much deeper than even Ms. Powell realizes.

Can’t we see what we are doing to ourselves? Unless we make far-reaching changes, our future is very black indeed!

Anti-Family Judgments

Micah the prophet wrote shortly before the kingdom of Israel went into captivity in 721 b.c. He had a message for a nation on the brink of destruction. It is a message God wants our nations to hear today. And part of the message is about justice.

“And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?” (Micah 3:1).

Who are Jacob and Israel in this end time? We have proved for over 60 years that, in these prophecies, Israel refers primarily to America, Britain and the Jewish nation (for proof, request our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong).

God is addressing the heads of Israel—the rulers, magistrates and government officials responsible for upholding the law. Their responsibility is to give us justice based on law. They of all people ought to understand judgment.

God is discussing court systems here. Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon defines judgment as the sentence of a judgment, according to law. Judges are to interpret and enforce law. Other translations use justice instead of judgment.

The only perfect law is God’s. Yet the framers of America’s Constitution founded much of that document on God’s law as they understood it.

The word judgment means the entire process or whole administration of justice. The Hebrew word is mishpat. The same word is translated “lawful” (e.g. Ezekiel 18:5, 21, 27). The point is, proper judgment must always include law. This is why it is crucial that judges not change or reject the righteous law. God holds judges and rulers accountable for their judgment against every institution and each individual.

In God’s eyes, just how bad is our justice system today?

“And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment? Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron” (Micah 3:1-3).

God is speaking figuratively and spiritually. His evaluation of our justice system here is likely the grisliest metaphor in the Bible! Could America’s courts really be this bad?

Consider the legacy of America’s courts. Many of the worst perversions in the nation’s history have been approved not by legislators who were voted into office, but by the courts! In many cases these perversions were so extreme they couldn’t be approved democratically, so instead the courts approved them. Only later did they become normalized and accepted by everyday Americans.

It was the Supreme Court that legalized abortion in 1973. In 1992, it ruled that states cannot place “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion. When states have tried to prevent this, the courts have stepped in to stop them. Even if a majority in a state would like to restrict or ban abortion, they cannot legally do so. The Supreme Court has invented a constitutional right to have an abortion and will strike down any law that violates this “right.” Today, on average, a baby in America is aborted every 36 seconds. That’s nearly a million babies a year being ripped apart or poisoned. This is what America does to the most vulnerable members of society! The Founding Fathers would be aghast. Is God extreme to say that courts “break their bones, and chop them in pieces”?

For decades, U.S. courts have ruled that not all pornography is “obscene”—some is protected as “free speech” by the First Amendment. In 2000, a U.S. court overturned a law that restricted sex shows on cable to the late-night hours; they wanted people to have access to pornography day and night. In 2007, a district court struck down the Child Online Protection Act, a law to protect children from harmful pornography. Courts also watered down the Child Pornography Prevention Act, saying it was too strict to outlaw footage that “appears to be of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”

A 2018 survey found that 98 percent of men and 73 percent of women reported Internet porn use in the previous six months. The average child is just 11 years old when he first encounters porn. The world’s top porn sites get as many visitors in one day as cnn gets in a month. What is this doing to our families and our children? In the name of “free speech,” our leaders are allowing the devil to enslave our young people before they even learn how to live! The vilest pornography is channeled right into their own homes. The Bible commands us to flee temptation and fornication. We are going to pay a deadly price for our rebellion against God.

The courts have also led in pushing homosexuality. In 2003, Lawrence v. Texas made homosexuality legal across America. In 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex “marriage.” These decisions would not have been made by Congress, which should be making law. In many cases, a majority of Americans have been against the leftist agenda.

Family breakdown is destroying lives and our entire civilization, and America’s courts have led the way! No wonder God is wrathful. Is He too extreme to compare us with cannibals?

God’s Justice

Micah’s prophecy continues: “Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings” (Micah 3:4). The heads, including the judges, ignored the cry of their victims.

Soon, in the Great Tribulation, God will turn away from these judges’ cries for help. That includes everybody who operates in this same evil spirit.

God’s message is about judgment—His system of justice. He is speaking to the heads—to politicians, lawyers, judges, educators, media and religion. They must hear God’s judgment, which, again, refers to that which is just, lawful, or according to law—in this case, God’s law. They must change, or our national house will not stand!

“Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity” (verse 9). Our leaders “abhor judgment” and “pervert all equity.” What is straight, they make crooked!

That is our system of justice. And God tells His messenger to address the rulers directly: “Hear this!” People must hear God’s rebuke about justice, or they will suffer more than any nation ever has. Do you “hear this”?

“The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us” (verse 11). The religious and secular leaders’ judgments are not motivated by love for law, the Constitution or justice. They seek personal gain. And they have no fear or regard for God.

“That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up” (Micah 7:3). Politicians and judges are taking the initiative in seeking personal reward. How abominable!

These leaders render injustice if they can’t get what they want. Their motives are very impure. When Micah writes “they wrap it up,” he means they conspire to subvert justice! They weave crooked paths and catch people as a spider catches flies in its web.

How urgently this world needs new leaders! The good news is, this chaos we are experiencing will lead directly into a world ruled by God-fearing leaders who uphold the rule of law and make just judgments. These leaders are now being prepared!

Broken Judgment

How important is judgment? What Jesus Christ said about this may surprise you.

To the religious leaders of His day, Jesus said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:23). Christ rebuked these people for focusing on the minute details of the law while ignoring the law’s “weightier matters”! These weightier matters are where we must start. Only then can we have the right perspective in following its details.

Notice the order of the weightier matters: judgment, mercy, faith. God puts judgment above mercy and faith! We must give the weightier matters proper priority—in the proper order.

We need judgment to know how to hold the trunk of the tree and not get distracted by twigs. The Jews of Christ’s day were failing in this, and it created serious problems. People in our day are making the same mistake on a more catastrophic scale.

Last summer, America’s political and law enforcement leaders permitted the destruction of our cities. They argued that this devastation was justified by supposed racial injustices. Many arsonists, thieves, assailants and other criminals went unpunished because leaders wanted to show abundant understanding and mercy toward minorities. This is broken judgment! It showed no understanding and mercy toward the millions of people who had their businesses shattered, property looted, homes demolished, communities ruined! It did nothing to solve racial problems—it made those problems far worse! And it did just as much damage to the individuals who got caught up in this violence because it legitimized their sense of grievance and encouraged their hatred, violence and lawlessness.

In one extreme example, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner released all the rioters and looters arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest, but prosecuted the McCloskey family for defending their home from a dangerous mob. In an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Mark McCloskey said, “It’s a totally upside-down world, Tucker. … The prosecutor has apparently decided that her job as a prosecutor isn’t to keep us safe from criminals but to keep the criminals safe from us.”

Exercising “mercy” without good judgment is a disaster! This is why judgment must come first. If your judgment is broken, your life will be broken.

What causes judgment to break down? The reason is more sinister than you may think.

The Root Cause

Another prophet on the scene during the same time as Micah was Hosea. And Hosea’s message, like Micah’s, applies to three end-time descendants of ancient Israel: Britain (Ephraim), America (Manasseh) and the Jewish state (Judah). Hosea often refers to the northern kingdom as “Ephraim,” the most prominent tribe, and “Samaria,” the capital. But his prophecies apply to Ephraim and Manasseh.

“Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked after the commandment” (Hosea 5:11). Ephraim is oppressed, meaning the people are extorted by fraud and violence. Judgment is broken. Many decisions made in society today are atrocious.

Note the reason for this broken judgment: Ephraim “willingly walked after the commandment.” Barnes Commentary says: “The commandment, which Ephraim willingly went after, was doubtless that of Jeroboam, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt’ [1 Kings 12:28]. And Jeroboam ordained a feast unto the children of Israel. Through this commandment, Jeroboam earned the dreadful title ‘who made Israel to sin.’”

The word willingly should be willfully. Ephraim willfully walked after the commandment of Jeroboam. All the kings of Israel after Jeroboam i willfully followed his evil way (2 Kings 10:28-31). There is a big difference: Willingly means, according to Webster’s, “inclined or favorably disposed in mind, ready, prompt to act or respond, done, borne, or accepted by choice, or without reluctance.” Willfully means “obstinately and often perversely, self-willed to a perverted degree, done deliberately, intentional.” This implies launching into a decision without restraint, even knowing it is wrong.

The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says, “To begin an act clearly indicates the function of one’s mind to initiate. The verb concentrates on the volitional element, rather than upon emotional or motivational factors. It stresses the voluntary act of the individual’s will to engage in a given enterprise, not what may have brought him to that decision.” The person wills to go the wrong direction!

This problem is different from getting swept along by emotions. This sin is egregious because it is deliberate and intentional. People know they’re going the wrong direction, yet still go that way.

And notice: Hosea 5:11 shows that this is the cause of broken judgment!

Willful rebellion breaks judgment. It is destructive self-will at its very worst! And broken judgment pollutes mercy and faith. It wrongly places mercy at the top of the list, so criminals receive unjust mercy, and victims receive no justice.

This is a hardened, perverted spiritual attitude. Knowing they are wrong, some people still go the way of self-will and their judgment becomes broken. They can end up making decisions that even a child would know better than to do! This is the condition of our nations today.

The Warning

Hosea’s prophecy continues, “I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O Ephraim, thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled. … And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them” (Hosea 5:3, 5). Society today is wracked with insoluble crises because so many people lack sound judgment. We are plagued by terrible divisions in politics, between races and religions, and in education and science.

In Hosea 7:11 Ephraim is called a “silly dove.” Britain and the other modern descendants of ancient Israel are making decisions like a silly dove. Broken judgment is disastrous. It brings down nations! It will bring down any of us if we don’t correct the problem. Most people cannot even comprehend how bad their judgment is. Yet nothing in our lives, families, churches or nations works properly without sound judgment. People with broken judgment keep grinding away until they destroy themselves!

God wants all of us to exercise right judgment about our way of living. He says, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). This is the ultimate choice before us: life and death! Wrong choices produce terrible curses and even death. But we can choose a different way—the way of great blessings, spiritually and physically (verse 20).

These failures in society put more pressure on fathers to guard their families. If we judge rightly, we can save ourselves and our families from terrible curses.

Satan the devil is very active in the world today. He is the ultimate cause of all broken judgment. But God has already judged Satan (John 16:11). Jesus Christ will soon return to Earth to replace Satan as ruler over this world.

Christ is going to establish a kingdom based on His perfect law, a kingdom that exercises judgment and mercy in perfect balance.

God is teaching His faithful people how to exercise sound judgment today. He is training the judges and leaders of the wonderful World Tomorrow—people who will judge all nations under God! Those who attain this reward will judge even the fallen angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). What a noble challenge, and an inspiring opportunity! Anyone seeking such responsibility must be preparing today.