We are living in times of extreme gravity, in which the truth has been dragged through the mud, and righteousness is viewed as a weakness that the powerful exploit without mercy.

God will judge this world and, in a very special way, will hold the Romanian people and their leaders to account. We have been blessed as a nation with fertile land, freedom, and the Word of the Gospel at our fingertips, but what have we done with all these holy gifts? We have turned our backs on the Creator, perverted justice, embraced lies, and systematically refused to heed the voice of the Lord. Today’s Romania has lost every trace of spiritual and moral legitimacy in the sight of Heaven. What should have been truly loved and cultivated—namely, justice, unblemished truth, and mercy toward the weak—has been completely perverted and distorted by a greedy oligarchy. Instead of protection and support, the social and political structure has become a bureaucratic trap, a form of disguised oppression that offers the population nothing but false hopes and empty promises.

If we view reality through the lens of the prophecies of the prophet Daniel, the Scriptures clearly show us that the kingdoms of this world are nothing more than terrifying and destructive beasts rising from the turbulent sea of sinful humanity. They were not designed to serve God or to bring true peace, but to dominate, devour the earth’s resources, and lead populations into cruel economic and spiritual bondage. The current form of social organization of the Romanian state faithfully follows this prophetic pattern, manifesting itself as a bureaucratic and financial beast structurally incapable of administering justice or providing security to its citizens. It feeds its people statistical illusions and electoral propaganda, hypocritically proclaiming—just as in the days of the prophet Jeremiah—that all is well, saying “peace, peace,” and yet there is no peace. Economic stability is feigned, democracy and the rule of law are feigned, but beneath it all lies a rotten system, based on institutionalized greed, where from the lowest to the highest, all are greedy for gain, and from the prophet to the priest, all deceive and manipulate the masses.

God hates crooked scales, the abuse of power, and administrative plunder hidden behind the clauses of the law. Scripture solemnly warns us through the words of the prophet Isaiah, saying, “Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field, until no space remains, and they dwell alone in the midst of the land.”

Today, this all-consuming greed manifests itself in the systematic plundering of public funds and the criminal irresponsibility of a political class that has mortgaged the future of coming generations. Romania’s public debt has grown at a staggering rate due to absurd and treacherous administrative decisions. A glaring example in recent years is the assumption of impermissible debts, as occurred in the case of the opaque contracts for Pfizer vaccine doses, which generated staggering and completely unjustified financial obligations for the budget of a country already struggling to breathe. Similarly, this nation’s resources are being drained through insidious legal mechanisms, as in the famous case of the Micula brothers, who acquired massive claims against the Romanian state, forcing the entire population to pay out of their own pockets for the incompetence or complicity of those in power. Further evidence of this moral bankruptcy is the way in which the state chose to abusively shoulder the financial burden of the major scandals in the private insurance market. When behemoth companies such as Euroins or City Insurance went bankrupt after raking in billions, the state should not have intervened to cover their financial black holes, and yet it did so, turning their private losses into public debt borne by every taxpaying citizen. Meanwhile, younger generations are condemned to a modern form of economic slavery, forced to contribute heavily to a pension system that is no longer sustainable and that already guarantees they will receive nothing in their old age. Moreover, the system’s cynicism has reached alarming levels with the intention to use the population’s private savings accumulated in Pillar II of the pension system to finance arms manufacturers. This decision does nothing but directly increase the risk of war and bring death closer, turning Romanians’ hard-earned money into instruments of destruction. The deterioration of public finances is also accelerated by the greed of law firms that win lawsuits one after another at the state’s expense, but especially by the conduct of judges. Rather than serving as guardians of justice, these judges use laws they themselves interpret to grant themselves, in court, retroactive salary increases and special pensions that are bound to bankrupt the country’s budget once and for all. He expected a trial, and lo and behold, blood was shed; he expected justice, and lo and behold, cries of oppression rang out.

The Romanian people often take pride in their superficial religiosity, their traditions, and their Christian statistics, but the Lord God looks beyond the walls of buildings and sees the rot in their hearts. We feed on a false sense of security and deceive ourselves, just as the people of Israel did in ancient times when they ritually proclaimed that this was the Temple of the Lord, believing that the ritual would spare them from punishment. God asks each of us today how we dare to steal, to kill through negligence in hospitals, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, and to worship the modern idols of money and power, and then come to stand before Him in the houses of prayer over which His Name is invoked, claiming we are forgiven—only to commit the same abominations the very next day. The state and its institutions have turned this country into a den of thieves under the eyes of the Most High, and our leaders are put to shame because they commit abominable acts, yet they do not blush and no longer know what shame is. For this reason, they will fall along with those who fall and will be overthrown on the day of punishment.

God has not remained silent nor left us without warning; rather, He has sent watchmen throughout the ages, spoken words of awakening, and sounded the trumpet through the ever-clearer signs of the end times. The general response of Romanian society, from the highest echelons of politics down to the average person, has been, however, either silent defiance or explicit refusal, arrogantly declaring that we do not want to take heed and do not want to walk in His ways. Scripture’s message for Romania at this eleventh-hour moment is an urgent cry of alarm calling on us to pause in our journeys, look back, and ask which are the ancient paths, which is the good way, so that we may walk in it and find rest for our souls. We must urgently set our ways and deeds aright, do justice to one another, stop the oppression of the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow through suffocating taxes and unjust laws, and to stop shedding innocent blood through greed and corruption. Unless both the arrogant rulers and the complicit population fall into sincere and profound repentance, God’s imminent judgment will fall mercilessly upon this country. The Romanian state will crumble under its own weight, and the Lord’s wrath and fury will be poured out upon the people, upon the livestock, and upon the fruits of the earth, kindling a fire that will burn and never be quenched, leaving the great and beautiful houses completely desolate as a testimony to their refusal to heed the voice of the Creator.

O Lord God of hosts, Creator of heaven and earth, we fall prostrate today before Your Throne of glory with broken hearts and filled with shame for the state to which our country, Romania, has come. We acknowledge before You, Lord, that we have sinned grievously, that we and our fathers, our leaders, and our priests have turned our backs on Your holy commandments. We have loved base gain, lies, pride, and debauchery more than anything else, perverting justice and leaving the poor, the orphan, and the widow at the mercy of a greedy beast. We have fed on false hopes and believed that our mere religiosity would save us from Your wrath.

Forgive us, Lord, for the irresponsibility with which we have allowed our children’s future to be mortgaged by enormous debts, for the greed of those who pervert justice for their own gain, and for financing the instruments of war with the sweat of this people. Today we repent of all the abominations committed in secret or in broad daylight without any shame. We cry out to You in this hour of judgment: have mercy on Romania! Awaken the conscience of this nation; give us hearts of flesh that tremble at the sound of Your trumpet; and help us to truly return to the ancient paths and the right way. Turn Your wrath away from us, stop the destruction that threatens us because of our sins, and pour out a spirit of genuine repentance upon us all, from the least to the greatest, through the Lord Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. Amen.