For the title of this brochure, I searched for a special font to impress upon the reader that the subject being addressed is indeed about “the broken-bottle nation”. I found an appropriate font named Matisse ITC, and you will notice how shattered it appears. I could have used other synonyms for “broken”, such as “totaled”, “finished”, “ruined”, “destroyed”, “smashed”, “wrecked”, “demolished”, “shivered”, “fractured”, “splintered”, “spent”, “expended”, “terminated”, “crushed”, “shattered”, “pulverized”, “dashed”, “consumed”, etc. I would like the reader to grasp that we are addressing something that cannot be salvaged, restored, renovated, rehabilitated, rejuvenated, reinstated or revived in any way, shape, manner or form. That it’s totally defunct, extinct, dead, never to be resurrected. Yet the majority of pastors fail to understand as much!
What we are talking about here is Jeremiah’s prophecy at 19:1-11, which reads: “1 Thus saith Yahweh, Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests; 2 And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee, 3 And say, Hear ye the word of Yahweh, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. 4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; 5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: 6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Yahweh, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter. 7 And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. 8 And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. 9 And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them. 10 Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, 11 And shalt say unto them, Thus saith Yahweh of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury.”