The 2026 midterm elections are tomorrow. All across America, Christians are making their final decisions on who to vote for—or whether to vote at all.

For those weighing the latter decision, between sitting it out and making the effort to get to the polls, I’d encourage them to listen to our Southern Baptist Convention President, Willy Rice, in his recent appearance on the CBL podcast. Rice rightly suggests that it’s “unthinkable” to consider that “we’ll have as many as 30 million evangelicals who won’t vote” but that “if every Bible-believing evangelical said, ‘we’re going to go weigh in on these issues,’ there will be some stunning outcomes on Tuesday, and I mean stunning in a good way.”

Of course, no one is suggesting that Republicans are “perfect.” Far from it. There are some great things happening at the federal level right now, and some not so great things. Some on the Right who are critical of Republicans point to another Middle Eastern war, a slow start on mass deportations, failure to implement most of the proposed DOGE cuts, and wink-and-nod immorality. Much of that criticism is true.

We are a nation that has forgotten God and engaged in wanton immorality, fiscal recklessness, and a failure to prioritize the good of our own citizens. You are not reading Scripture wrong when you suspect that compromised rulers are part of the judgment for our sins. God told Israel that He gave them a king in His anger (Hos 13:11), and Paul says that when a people will not honor God, He gives them over to the very things they wanted (Rom 1:24-28).

But we do not answer the godless Left by becoming or empowering the godless Left.

So what do you do with a ballot when you believe the judgment has already begun? Does judgment excuse you from voting? Does it free you to hand the sword to men who have promised to turn it on your children? I want to answer those questions from Habakkuk.

Consider the prophet. He looked at Judah’s corruption and asked God how long He would put up with it, and God answered that He was raising up the Babylonians, that bitter and hasty nation, to do to Israel what invaders do: seize homes, crush the people, leave ruin behind them (Hab 1:6-10). Habakkuk then asked how a God “of purer eyes than to behold evil” could use a people more wicked than Judah to punish Judah (Hab 1:13). God did not deny the charge; He answered it with five woes on Babylon for the very violence He had sent them to do (Hab 2:6-20).

God may use a wicked instrument, but He never approves of the instrument, and He never asks His people to.

Israel wasn’t given a choice in the matter. They didn’t have a “vote.” Judgment was coming one way or another. But if Israel had been handed a ballot, casting it for the Babylonians would have been wicked, because of what the Babylonians would do to their children, their worship, and their countrymen.

Choosing rulers is a moral act in Scripture. God told Israel to choose men who fear Him and hate bribes (Ex 18:21; Deut 1:13). Paul says the ruler is God’s servant, a terror to evil and a praise to good (Rom 13:3-4; 1 Pet 2:14), and our Baptist fathers confessed the same, that God ordained magistrates “for defence and encouragement of them that do good, and for the punishment of evil doers” (2LCF 24.1).

When you vote for men who will punish the good and praise the evil, you are helping to turn the office of God’s servant upside down. Judgment on your nation is not license for you to vote for the destroyers or to sit out the fight.

Now look at the God-hating Left. You may think I exaggerate by comparing them to the Babylonians. I assure you, I do not. Democrats have told us plainly how they intend to destroy us and our kids and our way of life. They are openly campaigning on opening the borders, packing the courts, abolishing the Electoral College, and adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states to bring about permanent, dictatorial one-party rule.

They intend to use that one-party rule to enshrine prenatal homicide on demand, persecute Christians and all those who hold traditional values, and jail their political enemies as a “deterrent” for conservatives thinking about getting involved in politics.

They intend to continue dehumanizing conservatives and inspiring their Antifa foot-soldiers to murder us like they did Charlie Kirk, and to celebrate those murders just like millions of leftists celebrated when Charlie was killed. They are the Babylonians. These are not things you come back from as a nation. There is no “punishing Republicans so we can elect our guy next time.” If Democrats achieve half of what they are proposing, there will not be a next time.

Jesus wept when He saw the judgment coming for Jerusalem. He told the city that her enemies would build a barricade around her, dash her children to the ground, and leave not one stone on another, because she did not know the things that make for peace (Luke 19:41-44). He never once told Jerusalem to open the gates early. A nation under judgment that votes its destroyers in is not “accepting discipline;” such an action invites an even weightier verdict.

Someone will object that Jeremiah told Judah to submit to Babylon’s yoke (Jer 27). He did, and the objection fails. Submitting to a judgment that has already fallen is not the same as inviting one, and Jeremiah spent his whole ministry condemning the rulers whose sins brought the tide of destruction and yoke of slavery on their people.

Paul shuts the other door: We may not do evil that good may come (Rom 3:8). Christian liberty is freedom from the doctrines and commandments of men, not freedom to do evil (2LCF 21.2; Gal 5:13). Voting against the Babylonians is not doing evil. Voting for them is.

A nation under judgment is not past saving. God says a nation under sentence can turn and be spared (Jer 18:7-8), and Nineveh proved Him right (Jonah 3).

When men brought Jesus the news that Pilate had slaughtered the Galileans, He told them that unless they repented they would likewise perish (Luke 13:1-5). So vote with the options you have, and while you vote, plead with God for the repentance of this nation and of its rulers (1 Tim 2:1-2), not because every Republican deserves applause, but because handing America to the Babylonians would be far worse.

And if the fig tree fails anyway, you must do what Habakkuk did. Rejoice in the Lord, the God of your salvation (Hab 3:17-19), and raise your children to kiss the Son (Ps 2:12).