Spiritual Impeachment

The Creator and Ruler of all things is foremost and eternally a moral entity: indeed, The Moral

Entity Who IS King of Righteousness.  And He created man in His Own image, a moral entity.

Scripture says God has written His Law, His Own criteria of right and wrong, in the hearts of
all men (Isaiah 31:33, Hebrews 10:16).

So the governing criteria of all things human, judged by men or by God, is their righteousness,
or their unrighteousness.

Some are arguing today that men and their works...or at least their own leader and his works...
should be judged by some criteria besides "right" and "wrong."  We often hear their claims
that, judged by economic criteria, their leader has been "good" for our country.  And we daily
hear their claims, parroting their leader word-for-word, that he's "done nothing wrong."

His deceived followers argue, like their deceiver, that posing God's moral question about their
leader and his actions is instead a political question.  They have shown that their judgement...
contrary the law God has set in their hearts...is entirely on political criteria; and promise that
they will continue to judge every question of their leader's righteousness or unrighteousness
solely by their own political crieria.

Every day is Judgement Day.

Today is Judgement day for America's Christians.

Who will proclaim that God's law and His Kingdom rule today, over all things ?

And who will instead follow the wretches bringing God's judgement on themselves, denying
that His law governs all things, asserting that their own is greater ?

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Challenging the Emperor

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

News-story:

“The Department Of Homeland Security lashed out Monday at a group of doctors who traveled to

the U.S.-Mexico border with intentions to give flu shots to detained migrants…"

The DHS' Press Secretary tweeted

’Border Patrol isn't going to let a random group of radical political activists show up and start injecting

people with drugs.“

Radical Political Activists Give Flu Shots

Romans had hundreds of gods: Jesus' new "religion" was no threat to them.  The capital charge they

brought against Jesus was His “radical political activism”...ministering to the poor, the sick,and the
prisoners...that showed God's rule was greater than the Emperor's.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Calling God a Liar

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Some background for international readers:

Here in the United States, 30 years ago, we had a guy on the radio named Rush Limbaugh.  He
was a "conservative commentator," and gave his "conservative" views on events.  He was more
stridently (and usually, angrily) "conservative" than any of his party's polticians at the time: the
first George Bush, Bob Dole, etc.: and Rush attacked them relentlessly for not being ideologically
"pure" enough, and betraying the Reagan legacy.

But he saved his most violent attacks for "liberals" and "liberal" policies (on all the same questions
we are still dealing with: immigration, government regulation, social welfare, etc.).  At the time, it
was a level of rhetorical viciousness we'd never seen before.  Rush was a sensation.

Those who listened to him and agreed with his every pronouncement called themselves "ditto-heads."
We saw bumper-stickers...even in the church' parking-lot...that cheered, "Mega Dittos, Rush !"

I think Rush Limbaugh is still around; but his "movement" long ago left him behind.  "Conservative"
commentators eager for notoriety and political influence (not to mention market-share) quickly rea-
lized they had to be more unhinged and violent than Rush.  Breitbart News and InfoWars are Rush'
children.

Rush Limbaugh is only significant for one reason.  His followers unanimously agreed with his views
on public issues, and his contempt for those who had a different view.  The current president's ditto-
heads are required to agree with his moral view, of himself: agree first of all with his absolute conceit
that everything is always about himself.

Right and wrong are moral questions.  And the current president's ditto-heads who style themselves
arbiters of ideological "purity" make it clear in every day's news that no one is a true Republican or
true "conservative" unless they agree wholeheartedly in the Great Leader's moral view of himself:
that in every one of his words or deeds that might be considered morally questionable, he's "done
nothing wrong."

That was the current president's assertion even before he was his party's nominee.  At a "values-voter"
(i.e., Christian) town-hall in 2015.  He was asked if he'd ever asked God's forgiveness.  "I am not sure
I have," he replied; "...“I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

Trump on forgiveness 

 

He explained his answer a few days later to a national news-network:  "Why do I have to repent, why

do I have to ask for forgiveness, if you are not making mistakes ?"

 

Trump on his need for forgivesness

Surprisingly, 80% of "values voters" (i.e., Christians) didn't seem to find the teachings of Roman 3:23
("all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God") or I John 1:10 ("If we say that we have not sinned,
we make God a liar...") relevant in 2016 to their political choices.

Some Christians have since realized they were deceived, and have repented their choice.  But many...
more concerned with their "purity" as Republicans or "conservatives" that their faith in Christ...continue
to chant in chorus with him that the current president has "done nothing wrong."

We don't need to look at Jesus' separation of His followers from His false followers (Matthew 7:21-23)
as entirely a future event.  Every day is judgement day, and Jesus the Judge every day.


The Enemy is deceiving the unwary and unwise the same way he did in the Garden of Eden, and with
the same lie.  Whatever form it takes, and whatever route it comes, the enemy leads to death everyone
whom he deceives to believe what he himself believes, that God is a liar.

This judgement day in this place called America, the form his lie takes, and the route it comes, is political.


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Giving Thanks

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

What C.S. Lewis called “the bloodthirsty Psalms” have always puzzled me.  How could David call on God

to destroy his enemies, and take delight in their annihilation?

The times in which we live help me understand.  Those for whom David prayed destruction were first of all
GOD’s enemies, haters of all good.   Every desire of their hearts was continually evil; their daily attacks on
righteousness offended the Righteous One, and grieved everyone who loves Righteousness.

The best parallel may be Nazi Germany.  Every righteous German was surely grieved to live under the rule of

lies and murder . . . and anguished that many German “Christians” were deceived to approve, and even join in,

the deeds of those liars and murderers.

Germans who loved righteousness must have fervently cried out to God each day, as David did, to be saved
from the oppression of evil-doers, and PASSIONATELY prayed God to destroy them, and all their works.

God did.

In this time of giving thanks, we thank God that He will glorify His Name in our day.  We thank Him that He

decrees the destruction of the evil-doers who oppress and grieve His righteous ones, and decrees that HE
will save His people from their rule.

“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,

 For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,

 Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary.”

                                                                     --  Psalms 107:1,2

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Me and Israel

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I'm a life-long friend of Israel.

Even as a kid, when I was more enarmored with end-times prophecy than with Christianity, I was
firmly impressed that the creation of the modern state of Israel was one of God's signal works in
our times.  And I was pleased to reflect that Israel's birth and mine were within a few days of each
other.

By the time I was old enough for the draft, Vietnam was much on my mind, and I didn't want to end
up there if I could avoid it.  Not that war was then a great evil to me: just that, even in its early stages,
the Vietnam war seemed the kind of ill-conceived muddle nobody should risk their life in.

But I remember staying up all night excitedly listening to the news of the outbreak of war between
Israel and its Arab neighbors.  It was the kind of war I could genuinely consider a "cause:" Israel's
rightful fight for national survival.

I wrote to the Israeli Embassy the next morning, asking how and where I could volunteer for the
Israeli Army.  I was no doubt thinking, as most people probably did, that the war would continue
for some time.  The fact that hostilities ended after six days, with the Israelis sweeping the board
(including most significantly, the formerly Arab-held parts of Jerusalem), was marvelous, and made
me jubilant: and even more certain that God (as little as I knew of Him at the time) had re-asserted
that Israel would exist.

It was also a bit disappointing.  A letter from some junior military aide at the Israeli Embassy only
arrived weeks after the war was over, thanking me for my wishes of support for Israel.  I think I still
have it somewhere in my papers.

When I became a Christian, I had even more admiring interest in Israel.  I'd gone back to school,
and the university I was lucky enough to attend had a program in Judaic Studies, which became
my minor.  I wanted to learn Hebrew anyway, for studying the Bible; and also picked up some hours
on Biblical archaeology and history.

Interestingly, one course under the Judaic Studies program was on Middle Eastern society, taught by
an authority on Islamic civilization (herself Jewish).  One of the most informative courses I took, it
really didn't deal much with politics: but treated Israel as one of the nations whose society was, and
is, shaped by Arab people, and by Islam.

(My Hebrew teacher Tzivia Gaba, the sweetest lady, was by contrast not an academic at all, but a
local housewife.  I think she got the gig because of her fluency in the language.  I learned later that
her husband Joe "had friends" who'd illegally shipped guns to Israel in 1948.)

But the greatest influence on my love for Israel was the man under whose ministry I was baptized in
the Holy Spirit, and whose teaching I've followed ever since, Derek Prince.  A teaching Fellow in philos-
phy at Cambridge before the war, he'd taken a Bible with him to critique when he was drafted in 1940:
and felt that he personally encountered Christ, reading one night in an Army training barracks.  ("From
that day to this, I never doubted that Jesus is Alive.")

He served as a medical non-combatant in North Africa and the Sudan during World War II.  When the
war ended, he moved to Ramallah in the British Palestine Protectorate to marry a Danish woman he'd
met on leave, Lydia, who had started a small Christian orphanage there.  He became the father of her
adopted Jewish and Arab orphans, and began to preach Christ.  The family remained there until 1948,
and had what he called "the very dangerous privilege" of being in Isreal as it became a nation, and
fought for its survival.  (When his ministry became international, he maintained a home in Jerusalem,
where he lived 6 months of each year, and where he died in 2003.)

A lot of my understanding of rightful Christian love for Israel traces back to Derek Prince' teaching.
Too much to summarize it all; but only to say that my conviction of Israel's centrality in God's plans
is firmly rooted in scripture.

From that viewpoint, I have to regard the current "Christian" political adulation of Israel as completely
unscriptural.  It has made love of Israel a political "issue;" and fostered the inevitable unGodly mindset
of angry partisanship.  Its teaching is that love for Israel must entail contempt for Palestinians; if not
hatred of them.

This fits nicely into the mindset of many American "conservative Christians," with whom contempt for
Arabs is an article of faith "sanctified" by the fact that they are Muslims, followers of a violently anti-
Christian religion.  It's a false belief, which overlooks the fact that the minority Christian community in
both Israel and Palestine is Arab, and the oldest continuing Christian community in the world. It's also
an unChristian belief that any race or nationality are inherent enemies of Christ.

But it has served the purposes of "conservative" Israeli politicians (Bibi Netanyahu, for example) that
America's "Christian conservatives" support, as "love of Israel," whatever violence and hatred Israel's
government visits on Palestinians.  (There's a close parallel in "Christian conservatives" willingness to
support the violence and hatred their faction inflicts on Americans, as "making America great again.")

The best counter to what today's "Christians" teach as "love for Israel" is scripture.  Simply this: that
America's "Christian conservatives" show they "love Israel" by approving Israel's unrighteousness and
violence towards its neighbors.  In His love for Israel, God continually excoriated and chastised the Jews
for their unrighteousness and violence toward their neighbors.

I do not for an instant believe that "Christian conservatives"are better "friends of Israel" than God.  And
fiercely believe that their politically-motivated "love for Israel" is spiritually destructive to Israel.