Deuteronomy 13:6 ¶ If thy
brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy
bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly,
saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor
thy fathers; 7 Namely, of the
gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off
from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end
of the earth; 8 Thou shalt not consent
unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt
thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to
put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he
die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 11 And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and
shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.
Is this not clear as a bell that the ancient Israelites were
commanded to not even spare a loved one who called them to idolatry? This was
no time to tolerate other religious impulses or to say, “It doesn’t matter what
you believe as long as you believe in something,” as religious Americans will
often say. This makes it even clearer that Israel was to be so vastly different
than America. You were not supposed to hear someone then in that time and in
that place say, “I don’t agree with you but I’ll fight for your right to
believe what you believe.”
No, here was a command directly from God to a people to establish
the kingdom, a kingdom under God on earth, following Him as their executive,
legislative branch, and judge from whom which there was no appeal.
Isaiah 33:22 For the LORD is
our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.
Taking this and applying it to a nation-state today as Americans
did in the past led to all sorts of oppressions and injustice. We are not
ancient Israel. We are called individually and as the church to follow Christ
but the country is not a church and the president is not a pastor or a messiah.
This is a secular country, not the kingdom of heaven on earth. Nor was it ever
intended to be. Don’t use your desire to dominate others who are not of God as
an excuse to misuse God’s words. You have no justification to kill people or
abuse people who do not believe as you do.
As Dr. Ruckman said, “Kingdom builders are bloody killers.” He
also talked about how history is filled with corpses and graves upon which evil
men who called themselves Christians tried to build a physical kingdom of
heaven on earth. These people have given non-Christians many reasons to
blaspheme God by their wicked behavior.
America is not a Christ-nation, not a Redeemer-nation, not the
last best hope of earth, as Lincoln said, because that is Christ Himself.
America is a nation that will be judged and is being judged just as any other
nation in history and will be subject to Christ’s rule when He returns. For
now, it is in the hands of evil and powerful men who care nothing for God no
matter what they say and not one whit for you and your rights before God. It
has always been so, lip-service paid to God and Christians for political
purposes notwithstanding.
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