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God’s people once again managed to
disappoint Him, and He again decided to cut them off and start over with a
third patriarch. But this time He didn’t kill everyone as he had in Noah’s day.
This time He did something no less dramatic, but without the spectacle of
something like a flood. The modern church has forgotten this event in spite of
its uniqueness in human history and in spite of its doctrinal significance.
Just as God divided His kingdom in order to cast out and separate the carnal
angels from the good angels, so He did with Abraham by dividing the human
race in order to cast out and separate the carnal humans from the good
humans. Never again would all humans be God’s people. An unregenerate form of
human now existed that God called dogs and Gentiles. By making only
descendants of Abraham (who were called Hebrews) His people (Ge 17:7,8; Ex 3:7,10; Am
3:2), God made those who were not descendants of Abraham – everybody else
on the planet – not His people (1 Pe 2:10), unregenerate, without spirit life. There had
never been unsaved people on earth before. God’s people had never been a
minority before. The era of the “Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man”
was over. For the first time in history God’s people were special (Dt 7:6) and peculiar
(Dt 14:2; 1 Pe
2:9) among humans on earth. Special means distinct, different from the
ordinary, extraordinary. And peculiar means distinguished from others,
belonging exclusively to a person, uncommon.
God was starting over with Abraham and
gave him only a partial Old Commission to be fruitful and multiply. I
say partial because God never told His third patriarch or his sons to
“replenish the earth” (Ge 17:2; 26:4; 35:11)
because – unlike with the first two patriarchs – the earth had not been
depopulated. The Bible is always exact and always consistent.
Life would continue normally for Abraham
and his offspring: Just as all people born under Adam and Noah were made
children of God without evangelization, so would all of Abraham’s children be
Christians. But when all the other people on the planet gave birth their
children would be unsaved, they would be unregenerate, they
would not be God’s people. Yes, all of Abraham’s contemporaries continued to have
everlasting life because once they were born of God they were immortal. In
other words, the people who were cast out were not dogs; they were all God’s
Christian children – just like Lucifer and his cast-out brothers. And while most
of these contemporaries of Abraham’s were carnal Christian descendants of Noah
who were disowned by God and went to hell when they died, not all of
these Gentiles were bad Christians. For example, Lot was a Gentile, not a
Hebrew, because he was only Abraham’s nephew (Ge
14:12), but he was a “righteous” and “godly” Christian (2 Pe 2:8,9) – unlike the rest of
Noah’s Christian descendants living in Sodom. But because Lot and the people of
Sodom and the people of the rest of the world were now Gentiles, when they
birthed children God did not give those children the new birth; God now did
that only to children of Abraham. Therefore when the
first generation of Gentiles died off completely, their offspring – future
generations of Gentiles – were all unsaved.
In Ph 3:2 Paul tells us to beware
of dogs (the unsaved, covered in chapters D7 and D8), evil workers
(could be anyone, dog or saint, whose walk is unscriptural), and the concision.
Our English dictionaries say concision means to cut something off or to
mutilate, and Paul here uses it as a derisive reference to circumcised
Christians and Jews who still believe in keeping the law, as evidenced by vv.
4-9,18,19. (Laws and works of the law are covered
in chapters D19 and D20.)
If we use Sodom and Gomorrah as types of
the majority (!) of Noah’s descendants who rebelled against God (Is
1:2,4) and were cast out, then the “very small
remnant” (Is 1:9) God mercifully kept, and the small group of Jews –
called the “holy seed” – that would return to Jerusalem from Babylon (Is
6:1-13; Ezr 9:1,2) can represent Abraham’s
descendants. The Bible also uses Sodom, Gomorrah, potter’s vessels, and pruned
fruit trees (Ro 9:6-8,21-29; 11:1-5,15-20) to warn us that we, too, can
be cast away by God if we don’t remain faithful (Ro 11:21,22; 1 Co 9:27; 1
Ch 28:9; Lk 9:23-25; 2 Ki
17:20; He 6:4-8; 2 Pe 2:4-7). Yes, the branches
our Husbandman Heavenly Father prunes and “taketh
away” and “casts them into the fire” are in Christ the True Vine (“in
me”) according to Jn 15:1,2,6.
Without God’s guidance, and without
even the capability of spiritual discernment (1 Co 2:10,13,14), the Christian contemporaries of Abraham and all
of their unsaved children quickly broke up into different doctrinal camps or
denominations, which eventually became the different religions of the world.
None of them believed Abraham’s egotistical, elitist tale about God casting
them off, dividing the human race, and being only “the God of Abraham” (page D8-1), so they all continued to worship
God in their own languages to the best of their carnal abilities. They all knew
basic truths about God and history so they all knew about the coming Son of God
Who would be a human/lamb/animal blood sacrifice for sins, they knew about the
Flood, they knew about heaven, the spirit realm, hell, etc. But over the
centuries they all made little changes to the truth as they added
embellishments and subtracted details according to that which was right in
their own eyes. All of that was perfectly fine with God because they were
exactly where they’d always wanted to be – on their own! When He divided
the human race and left them to their own devices He was just doing what their
works always showed they wanted.
When the Egyptians started worshipping
the sun god, going to church on Sun day, and practicing homosexuality, it
didn’t bother God one bit because they weren’t His people, they weren’t under
His authority, and they could do whatever they wanted. When pagans adopted the
egg, the fish, and other things to symbolize fertility/the Old Commission,
and began worshipping the goddess of fertility, Freya, by eating fish on Fry
day; and when the Philistines – whose word for fish was dag – began
worshipping Dagon the fish god; and when Ishtar and her Ishtar egg were
worshipped on Ishtar Sun day; and when Shingmoo, Diana,
Isis and Horus, etc., were worshipped; and even when nations that bordered
Israel practiced human sacrifice, ate pork, committed adultery, picked up
sticks on Saturday, created gods of graven images and bowed down themselves to
them and served them, God did not care, did not tell His people to care, did
not tell His people to go into other nations to stop them from their pagan
ways, and never scolded His people for failing to straighten out pagan
religions. But God absolutely prohibited any of those pagan practices within
His nation of Israel.
Why doesn’t God require pagan nations to
have Scriptural governments, and why doesn’t He require pagans to live by the
Bible? What does He know that modern Christianity doesn’t? He knows what
carnality is. Before we are born of God all we have is the “first, natural,
corrupt, weak, flesh and blood, earthy, mortal” body (1 Co 15:42-55),
also called the “old man” that we get at our first birth from our human parents
(Jn 3:3-6). The “new man” that we get
from our second birth, our regeneration, is a “spiritual body”, an “incorrupt,
immortal, heavenly, second” body (1 Co 15:42-55). The spiritual new man is a prerequisite
to “receiving” or “discerning” the things of God (1 Co 2:10-14), which
is why God says those who have not been born again, and therefore do not have
the spiritual new man, are “not subject” to His law (Ro 8:7).
Subject means “under the authority, dominion, or rule of some governing
power.” In fact, that verse ends by saying the carnal mind doesn’t choose
not to be subject to God, it “neither indeed can be” because the
carnal mind by its very nature is “enmity against God.” The unregenerate
do not even have the capability to please God no matter what they do (Ro
8:8) because not being under His authority, not belonging to Him as
His purchased property (Ro 8:9b; 1 Co 6:19b,20), they have no
chain of command that leads to Him (1 Co 11:1,3-5). And when we put Ro
8:8 together with He
11:6 we find the unregenerate cannot even produce Biblical faith until after
they’ve been born again. That’s why God doesn’t require pagans to glorify Him –
they can’t. (That’s why the words “only” and “therefore” are in Am 3:2: only God’s children are
punished for disobedience.) All of these verses devastate many evangelical traditions
so they are despised and ignored by modern apostates.
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Christians, on the other hand, have been
born twice and have two bodies. The war rages between these
two bodies (Ro 7:14-25). Unlike the unsaved, we have a choice. We
can choose to walk after the flesh or we can choose to walk after the Spirit (Ro
8:1). The Bible tells us Christians to make the choice (Josh 24:15),
and that the choice is indicated by our service (Ro 6:16). Only
Christians, not the unsaved, have this choice to make. In fact, Ro 8:4,12,13 tells “us” “brethren” that “if”
we walk after the carnal flesh we’ll die, but “if” we deny our old man
by following the Spirit of God we’ll live.
Some Christians incorrectly think only
New Testament saints are born again – that Old Testament saints weren’t. I
frequently refer to Old Testament saints as Christians because I know the
Scriptures. But I am sometimes interrupted by the condescending laughter of
Christians who think the Old Testament saints could not have been followers of
the Christ Who hadn’t been born yet – even though they profess to believe
Christ is the one true God of the Old and New Testaments. And they think Christ
was wrong to rebuke Old Testament saints for not understanding the new birth (Jn 3:10). So I take the time to cover some
basic Scriptures (covered on pages D8-2,3). After
reviewing the Scriptures here is how they do not react: “Wow, the
Scriptures couldn’t be much plainer than that! I simply missed it. Thank you
for correcting me and for teaching me something in the Bible. I scoffed at you
because I thought you were making an honest mistake, but you were right and I
was wrong. And I was being rude and offensive when confronted with God’s truth.
Please forgive me and please continue.” No, that is not the way they react
because that requires maturity – the kind of maturity that would usually have
already caused them to know more Bible than they do. Usually they go into a
stony silence or into a rapid, mindless, shallow, wandering babble in which
they try to save face by pretending they already knew that but were looking at
it from some different angle, thereby revealing themselves to be proud,
stubborn, immature, ill mannered, uncharitable, and unfit to rule
because they are carnal; self is still the dominant influence and interest in
their lives rather than the Scriptures.
If I get a mature reaction I’ll go on to
point out that if they had been correct about the new birth it would mean OT
saints like Abraham, Moses, and David did not have the “incorrupt, immortal,
heavenly, second, spiritual body” that made them children of God. It would mean
they were not subject to the law of God and indeed could not be. It would mean
they could not “receive” or “discern” the things of God, and it would mean they
could neither have Biblical faith nor please and glorify God – no matter what
they did. But that kind of Scriptural reasoning is difficult for many modern
Christians to follow because it requires understanding in so many areas
including authority, carnality, and why the new birth is absolutely necessary.
God made a couple of promises to
Abraham. In Ge 17:7 He said He would
always (“everlasting”) be his God. And then Abraham died. Therefore we know –
when we compare this with Mt 22:32 – there is a spirit realm where
Abraham lives now, and there is a resurrection. God also promised Abraham and
his seed real estate “for an everlasting possession” (Ge
17:8). But Abraham died before he got any real estate, and the land of
Canaan is not going to last forever because it is going to be destroyed along
with the rest of the earth. Therefore the “Holy Land” on the eastern shore of
the Mediterranean Sea never has been anything but a type of real estate on the
new earth in 2 Pe 3:13 and Re 21:1.
This earth is not our home; it is just a temporary abode.
Therefore, when the Bible mentions “the
promise” it is referring to “the promised land.” But because the promised land is going to be an everlasting
possession, “the promise” includes associated and necessary promises such as
everlasting life, resurrection, an everlasting relationship with God, the true
seed – Christ, etc. That is why “the promise” in the Bible is sometimes called
“the promises.” For a quick Bible study showing “the promise” God made to His
people is an inheritance of everlasting real estate, review THE PROMISE: He
11:8-10,13-16,39; Ge 12:1,2,7; 13:14-17; 15:18;
17:7-13; 28:13-15; Nu 14:7-16,24,29,30,34,40,42; Dt
30:20; Ac 1:3-8; 26:6,7; Ro 4:11-16; Ep 6:1-3; 2 Ti
1:1,9; Ti 1:2; He 9:15; Ja 2:5; 2 Pe
3:8-14; 1 Jn 2:25.
The Bible says God’s people in the
wilderness continually provoked Him by being stiffnecked
and rebellious (Dt 9:6,7).
The Lord recorded their rebellion in His Book to benefit us, so let’s look at some
examples of authority and rebellion. And when you read these examples in the
Bible I want you to seriously consider what they reveal about the type of ruler
God is. By today’s standards He is too demanding, too unforgiving, too
irritable, too tyrannical, and too violent. If you don’t get to know and accept
the real Him now, you will likely reject Him at the Second Coming just like
most of His people did at the First Coming.
TABERAH: At Taberah (Nu
11:1-3) God’s people complained. That’s right, their sin was complaining.
Because the Lord is our Master Who guides and provides for us in ways that are
both good for us and good for His victory in the war, complaining about our lot
in life is a product of ignorance, selfishness, disrespect
for God, and a complete disregard for the Book of Job. In fact, it is rebellion
against God’s will and Generalship. Therefore, because the principles behind
complaining showed God that His people did not have the kind of Christian
character He demands of His servants, God killed all the whiners. Dt 8:2,3 shows that
God tests (or “proves”) His people in order to separate the dedicated keepers
from the carnal culls. The keepers keep the word of God no matter what. The
culls complain because they want something different from what God has
ordained and provided.
Nu 11:33,34 and Ps 106:14,15 show that God has a way
of dealing with the selfish, ignorant requests in our prayers: He satisfies our
carnal lusts and then either kills us or sends leanness unto our souls. What
was the great sin of God’s saints this time (Nu 11:5) – wanting a varied diet? No, God couldn’t care less what
we eat. But He is extremely interested in submissive obedience to authority. He
punished them because they made themselves equal to their Authority by judging
His leadership, providence, and will, and by wanting Him to submit to
their will, to do what they wanted. They talked the talk, but in
practice they demonstrated that the concepts of meekness, humility, submission,
and obedience were not everyday parts of who they were. They were rebelling
against His authority and revealing themselves to be arrogant, insolent,
impertinent, impudent, imprudent, and presumptuous. And they were so focused on
themselves rather than on God they didn’t even realize the horrible effrontery
of their actions. And, because God teaches us that rebellion is witchcraft (1
Sa 15:23), they were, in fact, being Satanic.
(Parents today, ignorant about Biblical topics like authority, covetousness,
and clamoring, allow their children at meals to commit “Numbers 11 sins” by
complaining and refusing certain foods because they “don’t like it”.)
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A factor that contributed to the above
list of sins was these saints didn’t have enough fear of God. I’m talking about
the quake in your boots/piss in your pants kind of fear (Ac 5:1-11). God
applied the harsh rod of correction in order to teach the church to fear His
wrath if we ever let ourselves forget to be properly respectful of Him. These
wilderness saints should have been looking for ways to glorify Him, to make it
look like they were thankful, loyal, strong followers of His no matter what.
When they used the brains God gave them to form their own opinions without
referring and submitting to the will of God they were being carnal. And while
the above explanation of the saints’ actions is helpful in demonstrating what
carnality is, it still falls far short of showing why the Bible says the carnal
mind is enmity/violent hatred against the authority of God. No, I said that
wrong in my zeal to keep submissive obedience to authority in the picture: The
carnal mind is not enmity against the authority of God; it’s more
personal than that: it’s enmity against God Himself. Let me make the
distinction clear. Authority is a big deal because the issue in the Bible is
authority. The issue in the Bible is not God, and the issue in the
Bible is not the existence of God. Those are not issues; those are
merely facts that are known by all of God’s children (Ja 2:19). The issue is authority
because God is no longer the only king. There is another king, Satan, whose
objective is to overthrow the type of orderly, dictatorial, hierarchical
authority God established in His household. Therefore authority – how you view authority
and react to it – will demonstrate which king and which kingdom you prefer.
True love is choosing God’s way. Violent enmity against God is choosing
equality. When the war is over and King Satan is gone, the issue will no longer
be authority because there will be but one King again.
WHEN AUTHORITY SPEAKS: In Ex 4:16 God made Aaron the spokesman
for Moses and He made Moses Aaron’s authority “instead of God.” That means when
Aaron said, “Thus saith Moses…” God’s people were
supposed to treat it as if he had said, “Thus saith
the Lord…” And that is the way God has established all authority: Wives are to
submit themselves to their own husbands as if they are God (Ep
5:22-24); children are to obey their parents as authorities ordained by God
(Ep 6:1); servants are to obey their
masters with an honest, wholehearted effort to please them, not because they
through flattery hope for favor, but out of love for God because it is God’s
will that they do so (Ep 6:5-7). We are
to submit ourselves to earthly laws, kings, and governors for two reasons:
First, for God’s sake (for the benefit of His cause), and second, simply
because it is God’s will (1 Pe 2:13-15).
The reason I defined “for God’s sake” is
too many Christians don’t know what it really means and how much is at stake.
For example, if you were a Christian soldier told to go to Bethlehem and
slaughter every child two years old and under, you should put aside any
thoughts you might have as to the rightness of the butchery and concentrate on
the fact that there is only one right thing for you to do – obey God and carry
out the will of God by obeying Christian King Herod. In fact, you should do
such a good and thorough job butchering babies that God would see your
complete, wholehearted dedication to duty and be pleased. And if the job you
did was thorough enough that our all-knowing Lord knew you’d not pulled any
punches or tried to hide some babies, it would be no surprise that you’d be the
kind of loyal, dedicated, trustworthy, and resourceful servant who’d catch the
appreciative eye of your earthly boss. That’s how Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in
Babylon served their pagan masters; but, of course, they were
first/already that kind of servant to the Lord and therefore knew the Bible and
understood authority. Today most Christians haven’t even read the Bible
because their carnal minds have caused them to rise up to a position of
equality with (or superiority to) God so that they think their ignorant opinion
about something is the same as God’s opinion (or at least should be)! The Bible
teaches us to have faith in the all-knowing foresight of God: No matter how bad
we think it might be to go to Bethlehem and kill the Messiah along with a bunch
of other babies, we are doing something God knew about, planned for, and prophesied
far in advance (Mt 2:17,18). In other words, we help God by
resisting the Natural temptation to sin by letting our carnal minds convince us
not to slaughter the babies. Any Christian who’d march in front of King Herod’s
office with picket signs saying, “Save the babies!” and “Killing innocent
babies is murder!” would be carnally violating every Biblical principle we’ve
discussed so far. To verify that, look up clamor
in your English dictionary and in Ep 4:31. The
issue is not right and wrong; the issue is authority. If you are the authority
with the prerogative to issue orders, don’t tell anyone to murder babies. But
if you’re a Christian captain under Herod the only right thing you can do is
obey him fully. If you call in sick that day you are sinning. And if you see
one of your Christian corporals in Bethlehem trying to shirk his duty, you grab
him by the front of his uniform blouse and tell him you’ll have him executed
for dereliction of duty if he doesn’t wholeheartedly get with the program. All
of this is why God orders us to obey, honor, and serve our authorities who are
“froward” as well as those who are “good” (1 Pe
2:18). The dictionary says froward means perverse, determined to do what is
wrong, turned away from what is right, stubbornly wicked. That is supported by Pv 2:12-15 which
defines froward as evil, not upright, the ways of darkness, wicked, crooked.
For those of you who do not know why I am going to English dictionaries to
define English words whose meanings may not be fully understood by readers, and
who wonder why I use synonyms from the Bible to clarify word meanings rather
than waste your time rummaging through Hebrew and Greek dictionaries, or if you
are having a hard time following along with my verse references because your Bible
version is often worded differently, it would probably be a good idea for you
to skip ahead and read chapter D22, The King James Bible before going
any further. We’ll wait for you here. (If it helps, a free download of the KJV
is available at TheSwordbearer.org.)
PAGAN RULERS: We are commanded to be subject to earthly
authorities and are told there is no authority that wasn’t ordained by God (Ro
13:1). We’ve already seen that wicked King Herod was used by God to fulfill
Bible prophecy about the babies in Bethlehem. And we’ve covered the fact that
God has definite reasons for allowing King Satan to rule over the physical
Kingdom of Heaven. But both Herod and Satan are children of God with the
(rejected) spiritual ability to discern, so let’s look at proof that God
also gave authority to pagan rulers.
Pagan King Nebuchadnezzar in Da 2:37 is a type of the Devil. Da 2:21; 5:18,21
show that even pagan kings serve at the pleasure of God. In fact, the Bible
says pagan Nebuchadnezzar was God’s servant (Je 43:10; 25:9; 27:6). God
also used Persia’s King Cyrus (Ezr 1:1,2). And God wanted Pharaoh to be king of Egypt so He
could use him (Ro 9:17). These examples help us understand why David was
so intent on not harming evil King Saul, and why Michael the archangel was so
careful not to despise King Satan’s dominion by bad-mouthing his authority (Jude
8,9). They understood that all authorities
are of God, and resisting authority would not only be resisting the will of God
but would also bring damnation upon themselves (Ro
13:2) because rebellion against any authority – parental, governmental,
institutional, etc. – is Satanic witchcraft. It is the religious doctrine of
devils, and they will win the war if they can get Christians to think it is
good.
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AARON AND MIRIAM: In Nu 12:1,2
Aaron and Miriam, who had never resisted Moses before, decided they had a moral
reason to challenge his authority and leadership. Moses’ testimony was being
tarnished, they decided, by his sudden interest in interracial sex with a very
young black woman from a pagan background. They decided it would be better for
the church if they assumed a larger leadership role. God asked Aaron and Miriam
why they were not afraid to question Moses’ authority (v.8),
became angry (v.9), and gave Miriam the disease of leprosy, which
interestingly enough made her the “whitest” woman around by far (v.10).
Aaron quickly became very respectful of Moses’ authority (v.11) and
asked that the curse be lifted. God responded (v.14) by saying, “If her
human father had but spit in her face to demonstrate his displeasure with her,
everybody – out of respect for his authority – would ostracize her for
seven days. I will be granted the same respect.” From this, Aaron and Miriam
learned not to question authority – whether they thought the authority was
glorifying God or not.
THE GRAPES OF WRATH: In spite of the dramatic and seemingly harsh lessons God’s people had witnessed, the equality from the forbidden fruit that Adam ate and we all inherited is hard to overcome – especially when it makes us know we are right. So when God’s people in Nu 13 thought they had an impossible military operation to perform they decided. That’s right – they decided! Had they learned yet that the authority is the one and only head on the body and it alone does the thinking and deciding? No, so they decided. And that’s all we need to know; we don’t have to go any further because we understand their sin was committed right when they democratically decided: They rose up and rebelled, and became equal to and independent of the authority they honestly and sincerely believed was unwisely leading them to their deaths. (Of course, whether or not they were being unwisely led to their deaths is irrelevant; they were to obey for better or for worse – even unto death.) Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life (Jb 2:4,5), even if it means becoming a witch by rebelling against authority.
Satan
agreed to fight God because he understands how powerful equality is and he
knows most people will do anything to save their physical lives. Satan believes
he will win the war. I believe the Bible will prove to be correct: Even though the
majority of Christians will accept the democratic leaven of the forbidden
fruit, a small minority of God’s people will die to self daily by abstaining
from human Reason and by sticking with the mind of Christ/discernment, and will
endure to the end and gain the victory.
As
an aside: There is a dumb but popular pagan song that says, “…when the angels got
together and decided to create a dream come true.” The
democratic usurpation of two prerogatives of God’s shows us the song is about devils.
That type of evil equality should produce a universal feeling of revulsion in the
church. The sad reality, however, is most Christians
blindly walk through life completely unaware of the principles behind the
things that go on around them. That large group of carnal Christians will –
like the devils – be thrown into the lake of fire.
Anyway,
when God’s people in the wilderness turned their yellow backs to the grapes of Eshcol, the Promised Land, and their duty to God to submit
to Moses’ leadership, they then took the next logical step according to the
carnal mind: They came up with a form of government more to their liking – one
that would do what they thought was right. This form of government gave
the power to the people and therefore made the “head” of the government a
servant of the people. Obviously I’m talking about the form of government that
centuries later would be called democracy. This government was formed from the
majority consensus of God’s people (Nu 14:1,2)
and was the Natural product of the carnal mind doing what it thought was best.
They knew in the course of human events this form of government was right
because its goodness was so readily apparent, so self-evident to all
Reasonable men. Therefore these well-intentioned Christians whose motivation
was the safety of the women and children (v.3) decided to choose a new leader
whose mandate would be to carry out the will of the people (v.4). The
Biblical Christians were such a small minority all they could do was rend their
clothes, fall on their faces before the majority, and beg them to view the
situation from God’s perspective (vv.5-9). The majority of Christians
listened to these Bible arguments, realized these fanatics were so
narrow-minded they’d never come out into the “real world” and listen to Reason,
and reluctantly and prayerfully concluded that – for the good of the church –
Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb should be executed on the spot (v.10) in
order to save all their lives. At that point the entire congregation saw the
glory of God appear in the tabernacle (v.10). Suddenly everybody fearfully
remembered Nu 12:8 and had to go to the bathroom, but Moses got to his feet and
went over to see what the Lord wanted.
This
was a big moment. Would the Lord tell Moses democracy was a Godly form of
government and to submit to the will of the majority of Christians? No, He
wouldn’t (to the ideological disgust of the modern church). One of the
doctrinal failings of New Testament Christianity is to miss the critical
importance of this episode and therefore to not learn from it. I’m not just
referring to the obvious and undeniable attempt by Christians to institute a
democratic form of government; I’m also referring to how God responded to this
attempt to have a Christian democracy. (And because modern Christians have
missed the significance of this dramatic ideological showdown between
dictatorship and democracy, they also don’t see it repeated throughout the Old
and New Testaments.)
God
was extremely angry that His people, in spite of all His earlier lessons, were
again practicing witchcraft/rebellion (Ne 9:17) by doing what they
honestly and sincerely believed was the right thing to do. In the past, though,
His people had been guilty of individual acts of democratic rebellion when they
challenged authority. But this time they were trying to turn the structure of
government itself upside down. They wanted to take “Thine
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory” and give the power to the people!
They were trying to institute a demon-cratic form of
government that would not only be the ideological opposite of and make a mockery
of Godly forms of authoritarian government, but would also actually cause
people to believe authoritarian governments were evil, and would, over
successive generations, poison fundamental values, outlooks, ways of thinking,
and the way the Bible is read. God decided to do something He’d only done twice
before – and would only do once more: He decided to get rid of the old
patriarch and start with a new one.
He
had replaced Adam with Noah, He had replaced Noah with Abraham, and now He
wanted to replace Abraham and start all over with a third patriarch, Moses, by disinheriting
His lousy Christians (Nu 14:11,12). That would mean only the offspring
of Moses would be God’s people, and he would be called “Father Moses.” And it
would mean all of these lousy children of Abraham – who were Christians – would
become Gentiles and go to hell when they died. And when they had children those
children would not be given the spirit birth by God; they would just be
religious Gentiles whose Christian heritage and traditions would be corrupted
over the centuries by well-intentioned doctrinal interpretations the carnal
mind thought best in order to meet societal changes and problems, and by
dealing with the resulting moral and ethical dilemmas.
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But
Moses pleased God by standing in the gap for the lousy church and showing the
Lord how much he’d obediently learned from God about Christianity: “Lord, as
You know, Sir, forgiveness and mercy are a necessary part of Christianity if
the war is to be won. Therefore forgive their trespasses as I have forgiven
them” (Nu 14:17-19).
Then
Moses went back to the fearfully waiting congregation and told them what
happened. He told them God would kill the yellow Christians who reconned the Promised Land and came back with an evil
report (vv.36,37). In addition, God would
breach His promise for forty years (v.34) until all the adults died in
the wilderness. And because they had said God’s plan would kill their children,
the Lord would prove them wrong by allowing their children to enjoy the very
Promised Land their stupid parents despised (v.31).
The congregation then decided. That’s
right. They decided they didn’t want to die in the wilderness and would atone
for their sin by conducting a military assault on the Promised Land (v.40).
Moses and the handful of good Christians and the Lord stayed in the camp while
the pagans kicked carnal Christian ass (vv.44,45).
KORAH AND AARON’S ROD: God’s special people resigned themselves to
living in the wilderness the next forty years. They had been humbled by God and
had good intentions about spending more time in the Bible, learning to discern,
and accepting the will of God. That’s what we’d all do under similar
circumstances. But the carnal Christian, once set in his ways, has a hard time
being able to filter all the daily events of life through the Bible in order to
see what God wants him to do. And even if he has it pointed out to him –
chapter and verse – by a good Christian, he cannot believe the “little
Sunday-school lesson” in the Bible should actually govern his actions in this
particular situation because mortal life and its events seem more real, more
pressing, and more important to his leavened brain than the stuff in the Bible.
The Bible doesn’t give us a hint as to what
Moses and Aaron were up to this time but you and I already know it doesn’t
matter. The Christians in the wilderness, though, were living the event and it
seemed like such a big and important matter to them. Many Christians were
indignant and outraged at what Moses and Aaron were doing, so some of the
prominent, well-respected men known for their Bible knowledge, pious Christian
walks, and fine Christian families, held discussions and prayer meetings. Korah was accepted as the leader of this democratic Christian
reform movement, and he and two hundred and fifty dedicated Christian leaders
agreed to approach Moses and Aaron to represent the fervent wishes of the
people that some changes be made (Nu 16:1,2).
In v.3 we see what the foundation of this rebellion was – equality.
These carnal Christians were infected with equality; they were at least as good
and qualified as Moses and Aaron. And there may very well have been men among
them who knew more Bible, had more intelligence and education, had better leadership
qualities, and lived less sinful lives than Moses and Aaron. (Just like many
Christians were not as sinful as King David.) And those irrelevant facts caused
God’s people to ignore the biggest doctrinal issue in the Bible – authority.
Moses and Aaron were the authorities, and God says authorities are not
to be reluctantly, sullenly, half-heartedly, marginally, and insincerely
obeyed. God also says we are not just to please our authorities with our
obedient service; we are to please God with the 100% dedicated, enthusiastic,
obedient service with which we please our earthly masters. God is the
Master we are trying to please whenever we obediently submit to earthly rule.
Moses was horrified at this latest
rebellion because he thought God had done a good job teaching how He wants us
to live. But he was faced with over two hundred and fifty of the most respected
Christians in the whole world and they were filled with righteous indignation,
so he fell on his face again and said, “We’ll see what the Lord says about
this.” That is not what carnal Christians want to hear; they inwardly groan
when a Christian answers them by opening the Bible and saying, “Let’s see what
the Lord says about this.” What they want is a debate guided by carnal Reason;
they want to proffer and defend their opinions against someone else’s opinions.
They want to rise up and be equal.
It is important to stress that these men
honestly had no idea they were sinning. The carnal mind does not make you wake
up one day and say, “I want to do evil.” That is not what happened to Lucifer
and that is not the way Satan is today. The carnal mind is not evil because of what
it thinks. The fruit of the carnal mind is not bad or evil when viewed on its
own. It is only bad and evil when it is viewed from the broad perspective of
ideology, concepts, and principles. Only then can we understand that carnality
is made bad by the issue of authority. But not just any
authority; carnality is only bad when viewed from the perspective of God’s authority.
It isn’t what the carnal mind thinks; it’s the fact that it is thinking
independently from God. It is a usurpation of God’s authority as the one and
only God, the one and only Head. For that reason I am not writing a Christian
novel whose success depends on your liking it. I am writing a Bible
study so when you come across something you don’t like or something that
differs from modern traditional Christian doctrine you’ll have the opportunity
to handle the situation like Moses: “Let’s see what the Lord says about this.”
If that is your reaction you are demonstrating two qualities necessary for the
development of discernment – humility before the authority of God and
His word, and discipline, which is needed to overcome the Natural
inclinations of the old man. For example, I don’t despise democracy (and the
principles upon which it is based) because I think it is evil and
abhorrent; I despise it only because I have chosen sides in this war. My
values, beliefs, doctrines, and life are not based on what I think, want, or
like; and I do not concern myself with whether something is right or wrong: I
simply find out what the Lord says and accept it as what “my side” believes in
and fights for. There are two opposing kings, two opposing kingdoms, two
opposing armies, and two opposing ideologies in this war. I have chosen the
Lord’s side. That means I have chosen the side of the Dictator Who wants to do
the thinking and Who wants to decide what to do and
Who wants to decree what is right and what is wrong. The side I’ve chosen requires
me to suppress myself daily. If I don’t like that I can always go over to the
other side where Satan’s religion encourages me to develop my Reason rather
than stifle it, to express myself daily. The Lord’s side requires me to lose my
identity; the Devil’s side allows me to keep my identity.
The shame is that many Christians would
like to be on the Lord’s side but modern “Christian” doctrine is misleading
them into serving Satan even while they think they are serving Christ.
It was just this sort of blindness that
afflicted Korah when he moved up from being a member
of the body to being another head. Nu 16:2 says he “rose up” against authority
and made a nice little egalitarian speech in Nu 16:3. (Notice the rising and
the equality in Is 14:13,14; Ezek 28:2,5.)
These men certainly did not think they were opposing God Himself by resisting
Moses, therefore when Moses told them they were not only taking too much upon
themselves (Nu 16:7), but were actually going against God (v.11),
they thought he was wrong. Imagine their surprise when God had the earth
swallow Korah, Dathan, and Abiram – and their families (vv.30-33). The
Christians who had prayed with and supported Korah
turned and ran (v.34). And then fire from God caught and consumed the
fleeing, screaming two hundred and fifty respected Christians who represented
the congregation (v.35). The next day the congregation, having thought
about the “rightness” of their cause overnight, “murmured” against their
authorities (v.41) and were not happy when the Lord showed up again (v.42)
because He was turning out to be a big disappointment Who always sided with the
bosses – whether the bosses were right or not. They simply couldn’t understand
it because, like most Christians in every era, they were carnal.
God decided to shut their opinionated mouths with a deadly plague that killed
14,700 of His special people (v.49). And then God made Aaron’s rod
blossom and told Moses to keep it as a reminder (Nu 17:10) of Ro 13:1,2. Christianity today has failed to understand that Ro
13:1,2 is better and more helpful than Aaron’s rod because the rod was but a
silent token whose meaning – as we shall see – was quickly forgotten.
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WHEN GOOD IDEAS ARE BAD: I’ve been making such a big deal about how bad
democracy is and how good monarchy is that some people may miss the point about
why democracy is bad and why monarchy is good. Thankfully, the
Lord has given us a good example in His Book.
Our text is 1 Sa
8. The Christians went to their leader and high priest, Samuel, and pointed
out that his sons were not living by the Bible. They said they wanted Samuel –
a godly saint – to end his sons’ authority by instituting a monarchy and
installing a king whose focus would be the Bible (vv.1-5). Samuel was
not pleased (v.6), and the Lord told him His saints wanted a king
because they were rejecting Him personally and were rejecting His authority
over them (v.7). We have two questions that need to be answered: First,
why was it wrong to want a monarchy, and second, why did God tell Samuel to go
ahead and do what was bad, to hearken to the people?
But before I get to those, let’s review
the traditional teaching about this incident. Modernists zero in on “like all
the nations” in v.5 to teach that these wicked saints were knowingly and
deliberately trying to get away from a Bible-oriented ruler like Samuel by
having a secular ruler like all the pagan countries and like the United States
government today. Many Christians who are actively trying to
make the U.S. government Biblical instead of secular use this as an example of
how we, too, are rejecting God if we are not actively opposing ungodly
government. They are incorrect. And there are no instances in the Bible
of any of God’s wicked people (such as Lucifer, Judas, Saul, and Korah) waking up and saying, “I’m sick of not sinning so
I’m going to start being evil by forming an ungodly government.”
Earlier I said carnal ideas themselves
are not necessarily wrong, but that all carnal ideas – no matter what they are
– are already wrong by definition because they did not originate in the
mind of God, were not issued as instructions, and therefore could not be
submissively obeyed and carried out by His saints. In this example the
saints were getting ahead of God. They were saying, “God’s idea to rule through
high priests like Samuel was good until his sons came along. Therefore we
need to come up with a solution to the probability that we’re going to have
ungodly rulers when Samuel dies. We are saints and we discern that God likes
monarchy. So let’s have a godly monarch.” They were carnal not because their
idea was bad, but because they came up with it. They decided!
They usurped God’s prerogative. That’s not discernment, it’s
rebellion – it is rejecting the person and authority of God.
The reasons God told Samuel to give them
what they wanted are several. Among them is His wanting a king as a type of
Him. He did not say, as modernist rebels suggest, “Hey, Samuel, they want an
ungodly or secular government like all the pagan nations.
Go ahead and let them have it.” God also made sure they understood the
prerogatives of the king (1 Sa 8:9-17) included
some of the very things their Christian forefathers were angry with Moses for
doing in the wilderness (Nu 16:15). And God wanted all Christians to
know taxation without representation by a king is Biblical (1 Sa 8:15,17). It should be noted when God had the king levy a ten
percent tax on everything they had – not just ten percent of their money – it
was in addition to the ten percent they already gave to the priesthood. Another
reason God told Samuel to do what they wanted was they didn’t want a democratic
form of government like their ancestors in the wilderness wanted.
JETHRO: The incident we’ve just looked at and the one
we’ll now examine seem to indicate God will put up with many things as long as
governmental structure remains authoritarian. Our text is Ex 18. Moses’
father-in-law, Jethro, was a pagan priest (v.1).
Moses and the other Christians can be forgiven for participating in a pagan
ceremony to God (v.12) because the Law had not yet been delivered on
Sinai. But it was God who made Moses judge over Israel (vv.13-16),
therefore our jealous loyalty to the Lord makes us wonder who Jethro thought he was to question the way God obviously
allowed things to be (vv.17,18). Jethro then
says, “Let me tell you how things should be done…” (v.22). He
concludes by saying something good, “Only do this
stuff if God tells you to” (v.23). Well, our jealousy for God, and the earlier
lessons we learned about how even good ideas are bad/carnal if they don’t come
from God, make us carefully watch Moses to ensure he goes to the Lord in prayer
with something like: “Lord, thank you for the way you do things and how you’ve
led and helped us. I’ve been thinking about the changes Jethro
proposed to the way I govern. His proposal is carnal,
Lord, because it came from an unregenerate person. If I implement his changes
without consulting you I’d also be acting sinfully/carnally. However, if you
approve of the changes and give me the go ahead, I’ll be glorifying you as my
Authority by implementing them. Therefore, I’ll wait, Sir, to see if I hear
from you.” I hope that’s what happened, but v.24 makes me fear that
Moses carnally latched onto a good idea without consulting the Lord. The fact
that God later told Moses the same thing (Dt
1:6,9-18; Nu 11:10-17) is not germane to my point.
You and I are supposed to learn from these examples that we should never do,
think, or say anything without consulting the Lord via His written word.
Discernment must become part of who we are if we ever
hope to be faithful and pleasing servants of God.
SAUL BECOMES DEMOCRATIC – AND IS REJECTED
BY GOD: The Bible
teaches us something about how God uses government. For example, whenever God’s
people are good and faithful He blesses/rewards them with good rulers (1 Sa 12:14). But if they are lousy Christians God punishes
them with lousy governors (1 Sa 12:15; Dt 28; Is 3:1-12) and with other bad things that we are
supposed to recognize and accept as signs from God that He is not happy with
us. And if we admit we are lousy Christians, confess our sins and the sins of
our forefathers, and repent, God will forgive us and heal our land. Christians
today who run around blaming everything on drunkards, homos, and other unsaved
people have forgotten this important Biblical lesson from God. The Lord doesn’t
care what the queers are doing; He cares about the conduct of His special
people.
As the authority over the people the king
was answerable only to God. King Saul was reminded that he was expected to obey
the voice of God (1 Sa 15:1). Then God ordered
Saul to kill all the non-special life forms in the land of Amalek
including babies, women, men, oxen, sheep, camels, and asses (v.3). Saul
was ordered to show no mercy by sparing any of them. However stupid it may seem
to us students of the Bible, Saul succumbed to the carnal mind’s Natural
affinity for democracy, so instead of fearing God and obeying His voice he
feared and obeyed the voice of the people (v.24)! According to our
seventh-grade civics classes that is the classic definition of democracy –
whether it is formalized or not.
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Saul blatantly rejected two of God’s commandments:
First, he spared the best of the animals. Second, he used those animals to
create the world’s first Thanksgiving holyday in order to honor and thank God
for the great victory over the Amalekites (v.15).
Sparing the animals was an obvious sin. And by now you should see that creating
religious ceremonies, golden calves, and feasts such as Thanksgiving are carnal no matter how many Christians agree they are good
ideas – God must be followed. The carnal mind will tempt Christians to
get ahead of God by doing things without His authorization because they expect
Him to say, “Hmm! That’s a good idea you came up with! I wish I’d thought of
it.”
If you compare Saul’s sins with those
committed by King David, Saul was a Boy Scout. Saul didn’t intend to do evil,
and when cornered by Samuel he confessed his sin (v.24), asked for forgiveness,
and wanted to turn again in repentance to worship the Lord (v.25).
Shockingly, Samuel told this Boy Scout it was too late because, in spite of
Saul’s relatively clean record up to this point, God had already rejected him
for this transgression (vv.26,28)! (Most of the
bad things Saul did happened after God rejected him.) God said the
kingdom would go to David, who was called “better” (v.28) than Saul even though
the Lord knew how sinful David would be. If David were President of the U.S.,
Christians would anger God by impeaching him for his serious transgressions.
When we compare the transgressions of
Adam and of Saul we can’t help but notice the principle of democracy in each,
and we can’t help but notice the similarity in the way they are worded so we
wouldn’t miss it (Ge 3:17; 1 Sa 15:24).
The war will be lost unless at least a remnant of the church rejects the carnal
principles of democracy by remaining obediently submissive through humble
discernment.
KING DAVID’S CARNAL TEMPLE: We are now going to exercise our maturity just
like we did when we looked at Moses’ implementing Jethro’s
advice. We’re going to examine something King David did and see why it was bad/carnal even though the Bible doesn’t come right out and
say it was bad. I want you to see that God didn’t have to come right out and
condemn this “good idea” of David’s because He has already taught us enough
Bible for us to be able to discern David’s sin. In that way the Lord both
avoids making the Bible unnecessarily long and He gives us a chance to exercise
our faith by discerning and maturing into the kind of princes who can rule and
reign under Him forever.
King David was the apple of God’s eye. He
loved the Lord and was greatly blessed by Him. All of this was obvious to those
around him. Nathan the prophet was with David one day when both of them erred
by yielding to their carnal minds/opinions: The temple at that time was a tent,
and David lived in a nice house (2 Sa 7:2). So
David thought (that’s right, David thought!) it would be a good idea
(independent ideas – good or bad – are carnal) to overrule God’s detailed
instructions concerning the design and material of the tent and to build a
“better” temple. This temple would come from the carnal minds of well-meaning
Christians like David who would then expect God to submit Himself to their will
by first, meekly allowing them to disapprove of His tent design as unsuitable
for city life, and second, make Himself accept, like, and live in the new
temple they designed. This was just like – and just as bad as – Saul’s
inventing the first Thanksgiving holiday: God was expected to submit to and be
pleased with these idiotic humans – who were supposed to wait for
Him to make His will known and then wait on Him by obediently
doing His will. Now thoughtfully
compare 1 Ch 23:5 with Am 6:5.
When David voiced his carnal idea to
Nathan, the prophet should have asked, “Has the Lord expressed displeasure with
the tent He designed?” But he assumed David knew what he was doing because
David was a good Christian, so he said, “Yeah, go ahead and do that which is
right in your own eyes as long as you’re sincere” (2 Sa 7:3). God
appreciated David’s sincerity, but that didn’t change the fact that he was out
of God’s will (vv.4-7). That night God let Nathan know the prophet’s
advice to David was carnal advice because God did not want David to build a
temple. Nathan was instructed to put David in his place by reminding him God
had selected a humble shepherd (v.8) and He expected him to remain a
humble shepherd over His people. God said He’d have David’s son build Him a
house. (And we know Solomon and Solomon’s Temple are merely types of the Son of
David and His temple built without hands because it
says “for ever” in vv.13,16.)
RESPECT FOR GOVERNMENT: Even though it was known God had rejected Saul
and chosen David as king, God’s people did not take matters into their own
hands by ousting Saul. According to modern Christianity, the people had every
right to rise up and get rid of Saul when he rebelled against God by refusing
to step down. But even adulterers and murderers like David knew better than to
mess with seated authority. Therefore, even when urged to avail himself of a good
opportunity to kill Saul, and even when told it was the “Christian” thing to do
(1 Sa 24:4), David refused to touch the authority that God, in His
infinite wisdom, allowed to rebelliously remain on the throne (1 Sa 24:6,7).
Notice David’s respect for froward authority is very similar to Michael the
archangel’s behavior toward King Satan (Jude
9). Michael was on a mission from God and was being interfered with by the
Devil, and Michael still wouldn’t dare to be presumptuous by
bad-mouthing evil dignities because they are the Lord’s anointed (2 Pe 2:10-12). David’s refusal to fight his evil king is
such an important lesson that God gave us a second incident to support the
first so we’d be sure to incorporate the principle into our lives: 1 Sa 26:7-11.
God decided to make it absolutely clear
to us just how far this respect for authority stuff goes: When Saul was wounded
in battle he asked his armourbearer to kill him, but
because the armourbearer was afraid to touch the
Lord’s anointed, Saul committed suicide (1 Sa 31:3-6). Later a young
man, hoping to gain favor with the new king, David, invented a story about how
he killed Saul (2 Sa 1:5-10). Imagine his
surprise when David and his comrades reacted by fasting, ripping their clothes,
mourning, and weeping. And then his shock when David coldly asked him why he
wasn’t afraid to touch the Lord’s authority (2 Sa
1:14). And then his horror when David ordered one of his
soldiers to execute him (v.15). Since the young man was a liar it
is likely he was also weak and cowardly. Therefore he immediately admitted he’d
invented the story, confessed that he had merely witnessed from a distance
Saul’s demise (1 Sa 31), and thought he might impress
David if he claimed to be the one who killed Saul. But David knew regicide is
so evil a concept that people who merely advocate or support it are worthy of
death. Therefore, it didn’t matter if the young man actually killed Saul or
if he lied about it because the evil ideology that says killing a king
is permissible still resided within the man’s breast. So David answered the
young man’s hasty confession by saying, “You’ve caused your own death, son,
because when you lied about killing the king, your own words revealed that you
believe in regicide” (2 Sa 1:16).