The Grid

A Few More Thoughts on SSM

A couple of additional thoughts on same-sex marriage:

1. Rand Paul, among others, has expressed hope that the Supreme Court will basically kick the matter of SSM back to the states, which is where in his view such decisions should be made.  That sounds fine in principle, but in practice is nothing short of ridiculous, in that the very case currently before the Supremes resulted from a state's having made that very determination.  Proposition 8 was that most democratic of initiatives, a referendum, wherein the people of California roundly rejected the oxymoronic same-sex "marriage." But wait...a federal judge, a self-identified homosexual named Vaughn Walker, voided the people's judgment. It's a commonplace occurrence today: a state passes a bill or a referendum, and, in our inverted system of today, a federal judge unilaterally subverts the will of the people.  Our Constitution is still in place, but the practical fact is that federalism today is dead as a doornail. Maybe we could use a man like Andrew Jackson, who famously said of the Chief Justice of the United States, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." (Note: in citing this quotation, I advance no opinion about the Worcester v. Georgia case; my point is that President Jackson, rightly or wrongly in this case, made a stand on a separation-of-powers basis, unlike, say, Governor Mitt Romney when the Mass. Supreme Court strong-armed the Legislature into creating an SSM bill.)

2. The question is often asked today, "What harm could same-sex marriage do to the rest of society?"  The overarching answer is that moral corruption weakens any society. "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people." (Proverbs 14:34)  Homosexuality in itself is a moral failing, that is, a sin. But for a nation to codify and solemnize the sodomy and try to stretch God's institution of marriage to include it is an affront to the Creator, and to the American people. But in addition there are any number of roads the bullies in the SSM movement will go down in order to cram their quirks into every nook and cranny of American life.  As pastor, I can easily envision coming demands that conservative Bible-based churches perform same-sex "marriages."  This will of course be under the banner of the tortured, stretched and abused (and certainly by now in its reach unrecognizable to its authors) Fourteenth Amendment.  When the churches refuse, they will be stripped of their tax-exempt status, thereby completely undermining the financial base of evangelical churches, and leaving only the politically correct, complying "churches" to enjoy the advantage. What makes you think that it wouldn't happen?  Is it your confidence in the  government's respect for First Amendment freedom of religion?  Tell that to today's Catholic institutions, whose enumerated Constitutional right to the free exercise of religion doesn't seem to amount to a hill of beans in today's political and judicial climate.

 

 

The Real War On Women- Part 2

Today some two thousand (2,000) nascent women will lose their lives in the killing fields of the RWOW (Real War On Women). Suctioned, dismembered, burned with saline, having their spinal cords severed, you name it. They won't make the Six 0'clock News (or the News at Eleven).  There won't be any body bags flown home from the war theater, no taps blown, no honor guard, no flags folded and handed to grieving survivors.  There is no monument with names. No posthumous medals are awarded. In many cases a drab stained dumpster is their Arlington.

In the parallel universe that is the habitat of our national media, there is another, more pressing War on Women, one in which privileged coeds at elite universities are crushed by the necessity of purchasing their own birth control pills and devices.  Hunted by a relentless and patriarchal right-wing syndicate, they lurk in shadowy hideouts strategizing how next to further the fight against those who would coldheartedly refuse to finance strangers' abortions. Some of these intrepid women have found the courage to speak at political conventions and fearlessly expose the brutality of those who would suppress their reproductive liberty by withholding the funding of it. Others stick to the more low-profile but essential daily grind of undermining churches and American traditions and expanding moral parameters.

The media know and understand their duty.  It would be easy for the public to minimize the plight of the offended coeds and their constituents, and perhaps to give an inordinate amount of emotional sway to those dead babies. These warriors of the microphone and keyboard are vigilant to balance the picture by framing the individual struggles of the repro-militants, and to keep the terminated products of conception in the background.  After all, who ever knew them? What contribution could they ever make now?  Besides, the optics are bad. Very bad.  Which is why the media are careful to protect the American public and the prospective abortion clientele by helping to smother each of the enemies' repeated attempts to foist such inflammatory requirements as mandatory sonograms onto a vulnerable public.

I know that 1.3 million dead babies a year sounds bad.  So does fifty-four million since 1973, when the Supreme Court heroically wrested control of the issue.  And 600,000 dead baby girls per year could be construed as some kind of real war on women. That would be very unsettling to the public.  So you know why there has to be a potemkin war on women, created as a public service campaign to save the Republic from a potential nervous breakdown.

 

 

 

No Foundation

I grow weary of the constant drip-drip of the same-sex marriage campaign.  It dominates the media, and in my view has generated more utter nonsense than any other topic within recent memory. But today I feel I must add my take to the general clamor.

I guess the trigger for this post today is having read (again) that President Obama, once having based his opposition to SSM on his Christian faith, is now supporting it, based on- you guessed it- his Christian faith.  What he says now is that the overriding message from the Savior here is that one should treat others as he himself wants to be treated.  My first response to that is to agree (I discovered long ago that arguing with Jesus is the ultimate excercise in futility), and to say, amen.  The way the Golden Rule plays out with me, though, is that the way I would want to be treated is that if you knew that some behavior in which I was engaging threatened to condemn me to an unspeakably wretched eternity, you would tell me so.

Not so President Obama, and his comrade-in-confusion, one Emanuel Cleaver, a U.S. Congressman from Missouri, who as a pastor is supposedly conversant with the Scriptures.  He likes to go on about how the Scriptural prohibitions against homosexuality are found in the Old Testament, the "Hebrew Testament" as he likes to call it, and not in the New, or "Christian" Testament.  I want to say of course that whatever in the Old Testament that is not explicitly obviated in the New (as is the case with animal sacrifices and dietary laws, for example, just to name a few) is still in play. But I'll pass on that and say that the New Testament can take care of itself when it comes to condemning homsexuality without any help from its older brother. Just reading Romans 1:21-28 will leave a mark if you believe that intrasex play is okay with the Lord.

But let's be more specific. We are talking more narrowly of same-sex marriage.  One of the canards being perpetrated on this today is that Jesus Himself never said anything that specificially undermines the idea of SSM.  Here I would beg to differ.  Jesus actually, in His own words, completely ruled out same-sex unions.  Here it is, in Matthew 19:4-5: "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this cause (emphasis mine) shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?"  For this cause: because God made them male and female, therefore a man leaves his parents and joins his wife, and they, in God's economy, become one.  Jesus is also quoted saying the same thing in Mark 10:6-8.  How do theological experts like Obama and Cleaver (and all the others who try to perpetrate this con) miss that?  I mean, Jesus absolutely pulled the plug on SSM here.

Oh, and while I'm at it: there is also an appeal made these days to the Founders' principles of liberty and equality in making the argument for SSM.  But does anybody really believe that the Founding Fathers had any notion that their efforts would support something like same-sex marriage?  In their day, it's likely that no one even contemplated such a thing as a man marrying a man or a woman a woman.  But I think we could extrapolate from a few statements and anecdotes that they would not have favored such a novel idea.

There was a lieutenant in Washington's army named Frederick Enslin, who was accused of attempted sodomy with another soldier. He was convicted at court martial, and sentenced to be dishonorably discharged.  Washington's secretary wrote, "His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with Abhorrence and Detestation of such infamous Crimes orders Lt. Enslin to drummed out of Camp tomorrow morning."

Thomas Jefferson once proposed to the Virginia Legislature that the punishment for sodomy be castration. I need to inject here that I favor no form of punishment or harassment of homosexuals, but I am making the point that neither the Bible nor the Founders who gave us our Constitution contemplated any such foolishness as same-sex marriage.

John Adams famously said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." My guess is that ol' John Adams, were he here today, would not be filing any amicus briefs in favor of same-sex marriage.

Some Thoughts on Newtown

It seems everyone is weighing in on the unspeakable tragedy in Connecticut.  Dozens are living through the worst nightmare known to humankind: the loss of a child.  There are no words for those who are walking through this darkest and longest of nights.  Some thoughts:

• Why?  There are a couple of different aspects to this.  As to why the young demon-possessed Lanza did what he did to those to whom he did it, I don't have an answer, and neither, I suspect, does anyone else. As to why a loving and merciful God would allow such a thing, I am, as at other times, at a loss to explain how things sometimes work in the context of His huge and beyond-human-comprehension economy.  I do have a resort at such times, which is Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. At moments like this, I look for the Romans 8:28 perspective: what good could have been wrought through this awful thing?  In this case, the first thing that came to mind is that all those babies, not having achieved an age of accountability by anyone's standards, are in heaven now, and will grow into adulthood there.  Please forgive me for positing that the likelihood of that being their common destination had they reached adulthood is quite slim.  Perhaps I could here add this from Isaiah 57: ...the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.  Important note: none of this is to say that God did this.  There was supernatural activity involved in Lanza's actions, but not of the God kind.
• What about guns?  There are many sincere folks who, in a time like this, want to do or say something, anything to try to make a difference.  There are also shameless political hucksters who thrive on just this sort of "opportunity".  It's a kind of offshoot of, "never let a good crisis go to waste."  There is a mountain of constitutional ignorance expressed in these calls for greater restrictions on guns.  Example: the government should restrict or ban ownership of assault rifles, etc., the rationale for this being that these types of weapons are not needed for hunting and sport shooting.  The truth is that the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with either of those pursuits.  Hunting and sport shooting have always been givens in these United States, along with the right to personal protection. The Second Amendment was written to recognize the rights of the citizens of the several states to protect themselves against usurpations of the federal government.  Before you dismiss me as a wacko, please read Federalist #28, written by Alexander Hamilton, which really begins to warm up in about the sixth paragraph. I'll guarantee you neither Dick Durban nor Chuck Schumer has ever read it.  Why would men like that want to know what the Founders intended with their constitution?  I mean, it's not like they swore an oath to support and defend it or something...wait...
• President Obama's comments.  Self-restraint is called for here.  A man who never met an abortion he didn't like, who is actually on record as opposing the care and feeding of babies who survive abortions, who is by far the most pro-abortion office holder in the history of this nation, weeps before his teleprompter out of his deep unfeigned grief over dead children.  Sorry, no sale. Abortion is our great national sin, the dark hole down which America's soul is sinking. And there has never been a more fitting figurehead for a nation that slaughters annually over a million of its most vulnerable and precious ones. When Barack Obama begins to evince a little compassion on those in the womb, and even those in the process of being born, as in partial-birth abortion, or those actually born, having survived an abortion attempt, I might buy a little stock in his hand-wringing.  But for now, I'll say this: watch what the non-crisis-waster-in-chief does with this one.  Hold on to your holsters, muchachos.

The Real War on Women

They say there’s a war on women.  They say it may have swung the presidential election, or at least helped. 

 They say that women want their access to birth control untouched, and they want it paid for, by you and by me and by the Catholic Church among others.  Oh, and don’t touch their abortions.  It’s clear to me now that what women want most today is the unfettered right to kill their babies before those babies can mess up their lives. I know this because I watched as one of the political parties’ convention went wall-to-wall abortion.  And I know this because there was no response from the other side.  They must not have had a compelling answer.  Or maybe they were afraid.  They lost.

 I grew up with a different idea about women. Old corny stuff.  Would June Cleaver ever have considered aborting the Beav?  Back in the day, it wasn’t on our radar screen.  Of course I hadn’t yet learned about fearless pioneers like Margaret Sanger with her forward-looking Negro Project and other eugenics launches.  The early American feminists, among them Susan B. Anthony, vehemently opposed abortion, noting that it was a practice, driven by men, that would deprive women of what was uniquely theirs. But a whole new thing began to percolate through the soil of modern-day feminism, and babies became bullets in the war on women.

 I have a confession to make.  I don’t see women who abort their babies as murderers, or as sinners greater than I.  I believe that when a woman leaves the premises of an abortion provider, two people have been victimized.  The main difference is that only one gets to walk out.  And even that’s not always the case. But I can understand why a woman would not want her choices restricted by others.  An unexpected or unwanted pregnancy can be a desperate time. 

 The more I thought on this war on women business, the more uncomfortable it made me.  Since I oppose abortion on moral grounds, was I helping to prosecute this war?

 Recently I became curious about something.  I checked and found out that in all the wars the U.S. has ever fought, beginning with the American Revolution, we have lost some 1.3 million dead. That’s a lot of sons and brothers and husbands and fathers. If you think that’s too many (and I do), consider that since the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, we have lost that many Americans to abortion every year.  The total is 50 million and counting. You don’t have to be a geneticist to figure that 25 million or more of them would have become women.  When you start talking 25 million dead baby girls, it sure sounds like you’re talking about… a real war on women.

 Somebody needs to speak up about the real war on women. There is One Who has already spoken: “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? And he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? And shall not he render to every man according to his works?”  (Proverbs 24:11-12)

Don't Tell Me What I Am; I'll Tell You What I Am

Sometime this morning a commentator on my car radio ushered me across a personal tipping point concerning the semantics of the same-sex marriage issue, and of the whole public debate about homosexuality. I'm mad as you-know-what, and I'm not going to take it anymore. I guess I'd heard the word "homophobic" one time too many, and buzzer of sorts went off inside me.

The left has long pursued the strategy of gaining control of the semantics as early as possible in any public debate.  Pro-abortion is pro-choice.  Pro-life is anti-choice. Conservatives are members of the radical right who vote for fringe candidates.  And so on. 

According to the current media style book (which hasn't been challenged effectively from the right), there are only two positions one may hold concerning homosexuality and its related issues: one is either pro-gay (by the way, "gay" used to be a perfectly good word, and I never use it to describe the sad homosexual life) or homophobic.  

This is where I get off. I'm not homophobic, and neither are most of the others who attempt to resist the runaway freight train known as "gay rights" (a term that ignores the fact that homosexuals have all the same rights as everyone else).  When one is "phobic" about something, that means he is afraid of it. So the only two recognized positions in this debate are (a) I'm in favor of everything homosexuals want; or (b) I am afraid of them.  I would like to stake out a new ground here.  I am neither in favor of things like same-sex marriage nor afraid of homosexuals and their unhappy practices. Nor do I carry personal animus against individual homosexuals or wish them ill (it would be nice to see them return the favor).  What I am is- gasp - opposed to the sin of homosexuality on moral and religious, yes, Biblical grounds. So I am introducing a new term into the discussion, one I dream would someday replace the inaccurate and loaded term "homophobic."  I hereby declare myself homo-averse. 

As a homo-averse man, I decry the practice of homosexuality, and oppose special rights for those who engage in it, including the oxymoronic "same-sex marraige." I do however, affirm the worth and personhood of everyone who is in that lifestyle, recognizing that every homosexual is a man or woman for whom Jesus died.

The President of the United States last week introduced a tortured, confusing and cynically political defense of the proposition that same-sex couples should be allowed to "marry."  He astonishingly cited his Christian faith as a basis for his position, loosely referencing the Lord's Golden Rule, that one should treat others as he himself would want to be treated. I don't know about you, but I would like someone to treat me kindly by telling me the truth about something when the consequence of not knowing it could be a miserable eternity.

So here, my homosexual friend, is what Jesus really said about same-sex marriage: "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female. For this cause (emphasis mine) shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh?" (Matthew 19:4-5; parallel passage Mark 10:6-7).  For this reason, the reason that He made them male and female, God instituted marriage.  Marriage is God's idea, and while the state has a role in codifying marriage, no man or government has the authority to redefine what God has created. It's all about male and female.

The homosexual may feel then that he has nowhere to go in Biblical Christianity.  But the Lord's mission on earth is nothing if not redemptive.  When I say I am homo-averse, I mean that I am averse to the practice, not to the people.  There is an old Christian saw - "Hate the sin, love the sinner" - that is not explicitly stated in a citable verse, but that is an accurate summation of the Christian's proper stance. In a seminal passage (1 Corinthians 6:9-11), the Apostle Paul begins by writing, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators..." He then lays out a shopping list of sins, including homosexuality, that will keep one out of heaven.  But then comes the redemptive part: "...And such were some of you: but (emphases mine) ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Wonderful.  He reminds the Corinthian church folks that they had also been lost, but they had been redeemed.

So take up the homo-averse brother on the offer to come to Christ.  One might say that Jesus is the most homo-averse of all in terms of the practice, but he is the least averse of all to you, the man or woman. His surpassing love for you was demonstrated as His life-blood spilled out on the ground under a violent Roman cross nearly two thousand years ago. A few millenia later, He still awaits your call. Invite Him in. He can take your life and make something amazing out of it.

 

 

 

The Contraception Power Play: It's Bigger Than You Think

Flee fornication.

-1 Corinthians 6:18a 

There is much sound and fury on both sides of the controversy surrounding the Obama administration's edict that even church-related organizations provide their insured with birth control devices and/or pills. The Catholic Church understandably raised vigorous objections at the outset, and they were joined by other churches and groups who value religious freedom.  There was a meaningless concession made on the government end, that the organizations themselves would not be required to provide the means of birth control as long as their insurers would do so. There are at least two problems, of course, with this adjusted position: the first is that many of the Catholic schools, hospitals and other venues are self-insuring; and the second is that, even if a separate insurer would be the designated provider, the Church would still be paying, at least in part,  for the products and related services,and would also be referring employees to provisions that are contrary to Church doctrine. 

Thus far those who have publicly sided with the Catholic Church have done so, wisely, on the basis of religious freedom, regardless of their positions on contraception.  Most Protestant denominations do not oppose contraception per se, at least within marriage. While the Catholic Church opposes contraception regardless of the marital status of the sexual partners, most Protestants do not. However, by  failing to distinguish between contraception within marriage and contraception outside marriage, one tacitly condones fornication.  All churches and denominations who base their doctrine on a strict and conservative view of Scripture oppose fornication.

For clarity's sake, I would like to here insert my own definition of fornication: any sexual activity other than that between a man and a woman who are married to each other.  So when Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention proclaims that convention's solidarity with the Catholics on this issue, he is really standing up for more than just a generic offense against the bedrock American foundation stone of religious freedom. He is also fighting back against the notion that Baptist institutions would be required to provide birth control means to unmarried as well as married employees, as well as any students in Baptist schools who are insured through the school or the convention. 

This brings the issue closer to home for Protestant (as well as Jewish and other) folks who do not share Rome's blanket opposition to contraception, but who do oppose sex outside marriage, which is in turn promoted and facilitated by the institutional issuance of birth control means.

This to say nothing of the abortifacients which are included in the government edict, and which violate the consciences of both Catholics and evangelical Protestants.

Saving the Baby Humans: Some Good News

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty..

-1 Corinthians 1:27

There is good news on the abortion front. Next Tuesday, November 8, voters in Mississippi will determine the fate of Amendment 26, which would protect the civil rights of all "persons." "Persons" is defined in the amendment to include "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof." Amendment 26 would, in fact, criminalize all abortions on the state of Mississippi.

There appears to be strong support for the amendment, crossing party lines. Both the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates favor it. And there is some stirring in four other states- Arkansas, Montana, Nevada and Oklahoma- to place similar amendments before the voters. It's likely that, should one or more of these proposed amendments pass, the U.S. Supreme Court may soon have to face the dreaded Roe v. Wade music.

The tide seems to have shifted in the decades-long abortion debate.To what do we owe this changing momentum? We have noted in a previous post that both DNA science (a crushing blow to the "It's my body" argument) and improved sonogram technology ("It's really a baby!") have been pivotal in the gradual move towards abortion sanity (which is why the "pro-choice" people have fought so hard against any legislation that would put this information before a woman's eyes prior to an abortion).

But what I'm seeing at a time like this is all the nameless (not to God) soldiers, men and women, who have formed those ragged little bands of protesters pacing back and forth on sidewalks in front of abortion clinics, mostly silent but sometimes praying out loud or singing hymns, trying to get the attention of women who are entering, hoping to persuade them not to abort, informing them of alternatives. Some of them are women who have had abortions and lived through the awful empty pain of no labor, and who would now spare others. They have a story to tell, and sometimes it resonates. Sometimes a baby is saved from the saline furnace, and the troops rejoice over the victory.

I think about a Catholic bishop standing outside a west Florida abortion clinic leading prayer while a local attorney screamed the vilest epithets through a megaphone only inches from the bishop's ear. Bishop Nevin prayed on, Christlike, undaunted. I remember standing on a sidewalk as part of a human protest chain, and seeing upper-middle class and professional people giving us the finger and shouting obscenities while repeatedly honking their horns.

I think of a man I knew who risked his advancing career by getting arrested at a pro-life demonstration. I think of the volunteers in crisis pregnancy centers, who apply all the persuasion they can to save babies from oblivion; and all those faithful unthanked women who staff the homes where expectant mothers can stay and be cared for while bringing their babies to term (and usually to adoption). I think of those who strip away portions of their hard-earned money to help support those centers and homes. I think of the ones who have wept and fasted and prayed at all hours of the night that this awful stain would be removed from America's soul.

The foolish and the weak indeed. Take a bow, brave ones. The tide is turning, and you who have been there during the seemingly hopeless times will someday see your fondest dreams return to you, fulfilled. Paul the Apostle counsels you thus: "And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." (Galations 6:9)

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20

 

Two men facing execution have been in the news lately.  One is a man who committed the most vile and heinous of crimes, crimes committed twenty-two years ago.  His name is Oba Chandler.

The other man is Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani of Iran.  He once led a congregation of some four hundred people, but now faces possible execution.  He was originally arrested in 2009.  His crime?  "Apostasy", that is, the crime of being a Christian and not a Muslim.  

In 1989, Chandler bound and gagged Joan Rogers and her two teenage daughters, Michelle and Christe. He tied concrete blocks to their necks.  He raped them and threw them alive into Tampa Bay, where they drowned.  

Chandler was convicted in 1994 and sentenced to death. He just turned 65 in prison.  He has lived a lot longer than the three victims.  Florida Governor Rick Scott has signed the execution warrant, and Oba Chandler's termination is set for November 15 at 4:00 PM.  His death will be considerably less uncomfortable than those of his victims.  Hal Rogers, the victims' husband/father, plans to attend.  He has said that he would like to pull the lever.

Pastor Nadarkhani's plight has captured some international attention, and the Iranian government has apparently  postponed for now what was to be his execution date.  In response to worldwide pressure against killing a man solely for religious purposes, they are now saying that, no, it's not apostasy, but rape and extortion for which he would be punished.  Interesting, since he was first arrested in 2009; the charge has always been apostasy; and the rape and extortion charges never appeared until the last few weeks. It's clear that those charges are fabricated out of whole cloth.

As Chandler's date approaches, count on seeing and hearing from opponents of capital punishment, pontificating about what a barbarian practice execution is, that Chandler should not have to die, and so forth.  I expect we will see no such ardent wailing from these same lefties on behalf of Pastor Nadarkhani.  It is one of the inexpicable moral contradictions of the left that they would become so wrought over the execution of a beastly man who has lived sixty-five years on this earth, the last twenty-two of them in prison, who has been down every possible legal avenue,and who won't admit his guilt; and predictably oblivious to the plight of a man who is simply exercising what we here take for granted: his freedom of conscience and religion.  Many of them are also zealously favorable towards the practice of slaughtering innocent babies in the womb.

I must make a distinction here.  There are many Catholics (and others) who oppose the death penaly, but also oppose abortion.  They are not hypocrites in this matter, as are the loud lefties, and, although I disagree with them about capital punishment, I respect their consistency.

I've been praying for Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, that he will be set free, and I suggest you do the same. And, yes, I've prayed for Oba Chandler, and will do it some more.  I'm not praying he will escape execution, but that before November 15 he will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, the divine Man from heaven, Who came and died, innocent, for all of mankind, even the Oba Chandlers of this world.

 

 

How God Judges Nations- Part 5

And he said unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, they words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia...

Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I reutrn to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.

-Daniel 10:12-13, 20

 

These rather startling portions of a conversation between an angel, presumably Gabriel (Gabriel having visited Daniel previously) and the aged prophet Daniel briefly pull back the curtain that conceals the spiritual realm from the natural world.

The angel discloses that, although Daniel had been seeking God for wisdom with fasting for three weeks, and despite the fact that he was dispatched right away, he was delayed because of a battle with the "prince of Persia." Clearly this prince was not a mortal man; no angel of God would need more than a few seconds to defeat a man in battle. This prince was a highly-ranked angel of Satan, whose manipulations are behind the machinations of the world's systems. That is why the Apostle Paul refers to the devil as the "god of this world" in 2 Corinthians 4:4. and the "prince of the power of the air" in Ephesians 2:2. The Apostle takes time in Ephesians 6:10-18 to describe Satan's kingdom as organized and multi-layered, and to warn Christians that they must not try to face the devil in their own strength, but must make use of the spiritual weapons God Himself has provided them.

"Persia" was then the name of an empire whose land mass had previously been known as the Media-Persian Empire, and before that, the Bablylonian Empire (read Daniel 5 for a description of how Babylon went to the Medes overnight). The angel tells Daniel here that he will return to finish his battle with the prince of Persia, and then the prince of Grecia would come.

This is an amazing insight into the entities behind the nations, and into history itself. When the angel left Daniel to complete his conquest of the demon prince of Persia, the demon prince of Grecia would succeed him, opening the door in the natural realm for Alexander's conquest of the Persians.

The application to our study on the judgment of nations is this: God judges nations, not only in and for eternity as in the Matthew 25 scenario (see Part 1 of this series), but He judges nations in time. Many nations that have existed in history will never make it to the Matthew 25 judgment, because they have already been judged in time by the Lord and found wanting (see Daniel 5:25-31).

Closer to our time, we witnessed the demise of the Soviet Union. The USSR was a great oppressor and persecutor of Christian believers, and we saw in Part 1 that those governments who suppress the Gospel are outlaw systems in the eyes of God. There was much sustained prayer sent up to the Throne of God by Christians the world over, and one day, the Lord had had enough, and the Soviet Union was no more.

This is not to discount the human agencies involved in solidifying the national changes effected first in the spiritual realm. Alexander was a brilliant military commander; and with regard to the Soviet demise, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul and others had large roles to play. But God's in-time judgment was at the bottom of it.

We may bring more on this subject in the future, but this is the end for now of the series, How God Judges Nations.

Suggested Scriptures on which to build prayer for nations:

• Psalm 2:7 (as a member of the Lord's Body, you are authorized to request nations be given Him by the Father on the Head's (Son's) behalf).
• 2 Chronicles 7:14 (if my people- believers- will do all these things, then I will heal their land).
• Psalm 33:10-12 (powerful basis for national prayer, especially regarding the machinations of those who would move a nation away from God).
• 1 Timothy 2:1-8 (covers a lot of ground, much basis for national prayer).