The curse of an evil ruler

Nebuchadnezzar the unjust king, the worst in all the world.

In a Book of Daniel, Azariah prays in the midst of fire, being thrown there by the king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

In the fire Azariah stood up and prayed aloud:

"Blessed are you, and praiseworthy, O Lord, the God of our fathers, and glorious forever is your name.
For you are just in all you have done; all your deeds are faultless, all your ways right, and all your judgments proper.
You have executed proper judgments in all that you have brought upon us and upon Jerusalem, the holy city of our
fathers. By a proper judgment you have done all this because of our sins;
For we have sinned and transgressed by departing from you, and we have done every kind of evil.
Your commandments we have not heeded or observed, nor have we done as you ordered us for our good.
Therefore all you have brought upon us, all you have done to us, you have done by a proper judgment.
You have handed us over to our enemies, lawless and hateful rebels; to an unjust king, the worst in all the world.
/Dn 3:25-32/
Now we cannot open our mouths; we, your servants, who revere you, have become a shame and a reproach.
For your name's sake, do not deliver us up forever, or make void your covenant.

God hands Israelites over to the unjust king, the worst in the entire world. It seems to be a very interesting way to deal
with the stiff-necked people. They did not want to obey the good and just God and His commandments. They are under
the ruler who is neither good nor just and they have to bend their stiff necks before him. What is even worse, he himself
orders them to give praises to the false god. Something that Israelites did without being forced before. Now they are
ordered to do it by the tyrant.

This story happens in our times in both individual lives and in the lives of nations. When people do not obey God and do
not respect religion, God allows for oppression of religious freedoms as some visionaries tell us.

Fatima, WWI and WWII

One of the most important examples is the message of Fatima. When Pope Benedict XV ordered prayers for peace in the
midst of WWI, Virgin Mary appeared to three little children in the village of Fatima in Portugal. Part of the message was
that this war would end soon, but if people did not stop offending God, worse one would come. World War I finished in
1918, but in 1939 World War II started and it was the worst war in the history of Europe. People in Europe do remember
events of WWII but they rarely remember message of Fatima. Even in Canada when Remembrance Day is celebrated
every year on November 11, commemorating end of World War I, nobody mentions message of Fatima, answered prayers
for peace and mostly unanswered plea for penance and not offending God. For most part Europe did not answer the call,
but Portugal did. Germans did not attack Portugal; neither Portugal joined Nazi Germany in attacking other countries like
Italy did.

The whole story of the message of Fatima, WWI and mostly WWII reminds us of the story of Israelites in Babylon.
Hitler might have been still worse ruler then Nebuchadnezzar with all the atrocities of the war. Europe did not heed the
warnings and the worst tragedies followed.

In a life of an individual person it might be a way of educative action of the God Providence to instil some obedience in
the stiff-necked, stubborn subjects. Someone who strays from God’s ways, disobeys, maybe breaks the fourth
commandment, might find themselves sometime later oppressed by the very unjust boss. The association of facts might be
not the obvious one at first.

Totalitarian systems
An evil rule is most drastic in totalitarian systems like fascism or communisms. Some observers of current political
changes claim that the worst totalitarian system is yet to come. In a way it is foretold in the Book of Revelation.

Political Ponerology

There might be a scientific explanation for the bad bosses and bad rulers. Polish psychiatrist, Andrew Lobaczewski,
during the communist regime in Poland, worked on a book in which he tried to explain evil politics. He discovered that
about 0.6 % of human population is made of psychopaths, people with no empathy for others, with no conscience. These
people, he claimed, have a very strong drive for power and are very good at advancing thru political systems of power.
The whole teachings of Lobaczewski were given a new name by him: Political Ponerology, the study of evil, from the
Greek “poneros” = evil.

Putting all the scientific and medical explanations aside, it is obvious that the message of Fatima is still very current. Our
world turned from God and offends Him like never before. If we do not heed the message of repentance, we might have to
face the most evil rule ever.