Sometimes the words that we use are quite enlightening, particularly if we ever stop to think about them. More often than not, they give us insight into assumptions we make, and things that we thus take for granted, even when they are utterly wrong. The end of this month of March brings us a dramatic comparison with two false gods – neither of which is what they appear to be.
A word like “insurance” is instructive, for example. Notice how many of the men of faith described in the Bible needed insurance, because they simply refused to believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was able to honor His promises to them. (OK, I let a bit of sarcasm seep in. But hopefully the reason will be obvious.) Similarly, where once the “widows and orphans” of a city were a witness to the ability of its people to demonstrate their faith by their works, today coercion and theft replace voluntary “charity”.
There is a certain irony in observing that insurance companies once called some types of disasters “acts of God” — often so that they could deny coverage. Now a government that wants to mandate insurance denies God. And we see that a “health plan” which has far more in common with the “Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto” than it does the Bill of Rights — much less the Ten Commandments — has replaced freedom of individual choice, at least for those who serve Caesar.
We are also told, undoubtedly to the shock of those who once signed the Declaration of Independence, that such “insurance” is somehow a ‘right’. Not a Right endowed by our Creator, certainly, but one granted by the would-be masters in Washington, DC. Unlike those Rights once protected by the Constitution, however, this new one is funded by theft, what the Bible calls the “abomination” of dishonest weights and measures, and enforced at gunpoint — by over 10,000 new armed bureaucrats . Worse still is that this “right” is one that people who once believed they were free CANNOT REFUSE.
How can this be, given that even the Sovereign Creator of the Universe gives us a choice — whether to obey Him, or not, and serve Him, or not, and love Him, or not?
Admittedly, it’s difficult to even summarize the serious violations associated with a billing running well over a thousand pages in just a few paragraphs – especially when even those who supposedly approved the thing have not even read it. But the principles are clear, as are the transgressions. Can the Right to “free exercise” of faith in YHVH still be claimed when the ability to say “no” to “another master” is denied?
The same week that saw the first widespread coerced “purchase” of any “product” in Amerikan history is also the week leading up to the Pesach, or Passover: the memorial of the sacrifice of our Savior, the perfect Lamb. Unfortunately, this, too, has seen “substitution” of an even more subtle and insidious sort. Imagine if you can how a Creator who clearly desires that His Name be glorified must feel when He sees that the most important event in all human history – which He fulfilled perfectly, in His perfect timing and in perfect accord with His promises — has been replaced by an impostor. Not only has His calendar and day been changed, and the the feast that He said to keep “forever” been forgotten by many of those who claim to serve Him, but forbidden symbols of pagan idolatry have replaced those He specified, and even the name has been changed to glorify a pagan fertility goddess! (Ishtar/Astarte/Ashteroth/Easter)
Our Savior, of course, warned repeatedly that we cannot serve two masters – whether YHVH and “mammon”, or Caesar, or ‘the world’.
The answer, of course, is simple, albeit perhaps unpleasant to contemplate. We have a choice – and many have already made it. The fact that there is massive deception involved is not new (see Genesis chapter 3, for the beginning of a process that has continued ever since) does not make it any less insidious. Nor does it excuse us for having been blind to the Truth; after all, we have been warned over and over again. There really is “nothing new under the sun“.
So whether it’s a pagan fertility goddess named ‘Easter’ and symbolized by chocolate bunnies and candy eggs, or the slavery of “health care” mandated by a master who denies any Authority superior to itself over its property – its “human resources”– the principle is the same:
those who will not serve YHVH will in the end serve the ‘prince of this world’. There indeed is a time to “come out of her”, and to “be not a partaker of her sins”.
The prophet Isaiah said it this way:
“Just as they have chosen their own ways, And their soul delights in their abominations, So will I choose their delusions, And bring their fears on them; Because, when I called, no one answered, When I spoke they did not hear; But they did evil before My eyes, And chose [that] in which I do not delight.” — Isaiah 66:3-4
He tells us to “choose this day Whom you will serve“. Choose wisely.
