False prophets, and black-robed priests of another god

This week’s “news” and this week’s traditional Torah portion (Re-eh, including Deuteronomy chapters 12 and 13) — as so often happens when it comes to regular study of Scripture — seemed to have an almost stunning connection.

In a week which saw an openly “gay” California judge discover yet another “right” in the Constitution which YHVH Himself calls an “abomination”, the admonition of Deuteronomy 13 to avoid being snared  by false prophets seems particularly poignant.  San Francisco Federal Judge Vaughn Walker claimed in his own variant of trashing the last verse of Deuteronomy 12 that he struck down California’s “Proposition 8” ban on state licensing of homosexual “marriage” because he saw no “rational basis” for “singling out gay men and lesbians” for denial of the Almighty State’s blessings.  “Indeed,” the would-be Lawmaker pontificated, the “evidence shows” that the Amendment — passed by a landslide 70 percent majority of voters in that presumed “democracy” of a state — “does nothing more than enshrine” in that state’s Constitution “the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.”  Motivated solely by “animus”, he continued, the law played on “fear” that parents might end up with “children who are not heterosexual.”

What struck me about all of the debate, all of the news coverage, and ALL of the “ruling” was the utter blindness of what is laughably called “both sides” to the “elephant in the room”, or the Bible that was notably absent from it!  There was a LOT of mention of “traditional marriage”, and some reference to generic “religion”, along with “history”.  But if there even WAS any power in the Universe superior to Big Brother and His Almighty Power to license and (RE-) define “marriage” – you wouldn’t know it from this “decision” or any of the coverage of it.  Just try a search for the word “Bible” on the mass of media spin, or the 136-page ruling.  If you find the Word at all, it will almost certainly be in respect to some “history” that we are now far too sophisticated (or “rational”, to use Walker’s favorite disparagement)  to care about;  that so-called “animus” that no doubt springs from the “hate crime” mentality of believing the Bible.

How far we have fallen from a nation where once there was unanimous agreement* that certain Truths were “self-evident” and that God-given “Rights” came from a Power superior to any government of men, to one where there is “no rational basis” for paying Him even any attention.  What fallen men now call “law” and twist so badly that evil is now called good is not only sanctioned, but subsidized.

The message here, in other words, is not about “homosexuality” per se, or the trap of allowing Caesar to “license” that which YHVH ordains and has given us the rules for.  But there may be no better illustration of just what the Torah has to say about why YHVH prohibits “adding  to” and “subtracting from” His “Law” than this latest “enticement” to “go and serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers has known”.

Even a cursory reading of chapter 13 of Bemidbar, or Deuteronomy, will show just how vehemently He detests those who attempt to deceive His people into serving other “mighty ones”  (or elohim in the Hebrew).  But verses 6 through 11 are perhaps the most graphic (as well as the ones most likely to be on new lists of “prohibited verses” for the  State-licensed, Caesar-blessed 501c(3)  Sycophant “Faith-based” Church in the near future).  Even if it is our beloved brother, or the “wife of our bosom”, or our lifelong friend, who says to us that we should serve these other mighty ones, “of the mighty ones of the people who are all around you”, we are not to “agree with” them, “listen” to them, “pardon” them, conceal them or even spare them.  Serious stuff indeed**.

Now, I know from experience that some reading this are skeptical…and no doubt think that referring to those who construct ‘new law’ from a courtroom bench as “black-robed priests of another god” is too extreme. After all, never attribute to “conspiracy” that which is adequately explained by “incompetence”. But one does not have to be a ‘conspiracy theorist’ to realize that the Bible is True, or to observe that there really IS a force for evil, or that the  Adversary can use those who don’t even believe in him for his purposes.

I can’t help but observe that the newest “justice” now sitting on the US Supreme Court is an acolyte of what the press and most of Washington regard as the TWO MOST IMPORTANT issues which could possibly come before that august group of revisionists:  abortion and ‘gay rights’.  Besides being Maximally Politically Correct, what do they have in common?  Not merely that they are both acts prohibited  repeatedly by the Bible; it is that they are things which are literally condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Note how the Rights that were once called “God-given”, and protected explicitly by the “thou shalt NOT” wording of the Bill of Rights, are now — at best, neglected — from freedom of assembly, speech, worship, to the Right to ‘keep and  bear arms’, to what were once quaintly called “warrants”.  But the “new” Big Brother-created ‘rights’ – notably abortion and sodomy- are more important than ANYTHING actually written in the text of the Constitution!

I once referred to such Caesar-ordained imitations of real Rights as “privileges”, because they were granted by government, rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and  Jacob.  But that doesn’t go far enough.  So far as the prince of this world is concerned – they are Sacraments.

No wonder our real Father tells us we are to be so hard on such lying “mighty ones” and their false priests.

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* As the Declaration of Independence made very clear in its opening paragraphs.

** I personally find the ISR translation of The Scriptures to be my own preferred rendering of these passages, because of their faithfulness to the concepts in the original Hebrew.  At one time, based on renderings like the KJV/NKJV, I concluded that these warnings pertained only to obviously false gods, or pagan practices, like Easter (Ishtar) eggs and Sol Invictus Mithra-related Xmas ‘traditions’.