scooter wrote:Response: I am disappointed.
When one looks at the Bible you can see how that Godly individuals have brought great salvation to entire kingdoms on multiple occasions.
Has God stopped using individuals?
When a government or a nation forgets God it is not a time of "well all governments will fail" but to me rather a time for a reminding call.
When the wicked rule good people have failed to vote.
And, I respect that view. Most Christians agree with it. I used to. But, let me tell you why I believe I've traded up, not given up. I say that not in accusation to anyone else. But, I've come to some hard realizations, and one of them is that Christianity on the one hand and Americanism and all other national or political "isms" on the other are simply against each other and can't/never could be made otherwise.
God surely has used people to speak the message of repentance from sin and a turn to God. You are 100% right. I find no instance, though, where a
government was addressed in that way
outside of Israel. That matters because Israel was the expression, then, of God's government in the world and unique. The Church is the expression of that government now (I'm not saying Israel is out of the picture; I believe God will still redeem natural Israel). It is the only nation in the NT that God speaks through. In the end, the only nation that will exist will be the one built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone. If that's all that endures, then those institutions which will not endure are rendered meaningless and even evil. Everything in heaven and earth will be subjected to Christ, by force and judgment or by faith and obedience.
Governments do one thing. Increase their own power. That is their fuel, their reason for being. (Side note: compare this with 1 Cor. 13, the 'love chapter', and how that love does not seek its own.) When the Bible says all nations that forget God will turn to hell, it is not a governmental observation but a recognition that the people of the nation who forget God will do so. Governments are not redeemed, they are not saved, they are not resurrected and they do not go to hell. They are tools used by fallen men for corrupt purposes, systems around which people organize and conduct life.
My understanding is that Christians have a choice and that we cannot pick more than one. Just as Jesus says you cannot serve God and money, you cannot serve God and government. By the nature of each, allegiance to only one is allowed; otherwise, you will reject one at the expense of the other, serve one and oppose the other.
All civil government on the planet, ever, has only opposed God. It has never -- in spite of its highest statements and loftiest intents to the contrary, in spite of its most noble philosophies of acknowledgement of God -- it has never actually been or done the New Testament government of the ministry of the Word of God for the sake of Jesus to the exclusion of all other concerns not immediately related to that. Never. At best, governments have been concords of well meaning Christians and evil doers who oppose God.
When Dawgs says that a house divided against itself cannot stand, but cites the inability of politicians to cooperate as an example of that truth, he is right and wrong. A house divided falls, for sure, and for that he is so very right. But, this house (US gov't) and all similar houses are already -- at best, now -- concords of Christ and Belial. It is that very attempt to fuse Christ with such evil that prompted Paul to warn against it in 2 Cor. 6.
The kingdoms of the world are not going to become kingdoms of Christ because they have obeyed Him. They are going to become His because He will crush them in wrath and establish His own actual, earthly government: that is, if we really do believe in a millenium of Christ's reign on earth to come.
I want to please be clear: I do not, do not, do not believe that Christians should run and hide. I simply have come to the point where, as best as I can understand the Bible and what it says about the world , and having that as the basis of informing my views in what I do for a living, it is inescapable to conclude that any act of "citizenship" that participates in the exercises of government is futile. I believe, though, that Christians are the only means God has chosen to deliver His message of sin, judgment, wrath, grace, faith, repentance, salvation and transformation. That message IS to the nations (the people). That message IS also 180 degrees in opposition to even gatherings like Rick Perry's prayer meeting whereby he touched first base on his way to his own home plate goal of personal power in the presidency, and where people gathered to pray the very futile and hopeless petition (based on interviews and statements given to media by people who attended) that somehow God would redeem government in America and make it more conservative -- a goal that I am quite sure God has zero interest in achieving since His purpose in all of creation is to glorify Himself without regard to the political style of American government.
We (American Christians, that is) remind me of Jonah. He has given us a message (repent, be saved), but we really don't want to deliver it out of fear that God will have mercy on people who we don't like (politically, culturally). We'd rather, frankly, have God send a different message that validates us instead of the one message -- the unadulterated gospel -- that glorifies Him. Satan has corrupted that message with so many distractions and additions, glosses and slants, and he capitalizes on all of the political desires that are born in our flesh. Is it any wonder, then, that the church in America (not all of it, of course) seems to be adrift? Surrounded by darkness? Unable to escape? Ready to be spit out, even? Is that not the refrain we hear from some of the church's most prophetic voices in our land?
God's goal for us is not a better America. God is glorifying Himself through a people He calls out to Himself to accomplish the works that He ordains that we do. That is not a governmental, political activity.