The “Torah Made Flesh” told us on more than one occasion – and in more than one way – that we could not serve “two masters”. Shaul (Paul) took up the same theme, and added a bit more directly Torah-based midrash, when he observed that “you are his servant whom you submit yourself to obey” (Romans 6:16)
Given the current hype surrounding the “most important election EVER,” (aren’t they ALWAYS?) this may be a good time to review the issue of the “choice” again being presented to ‘registered voters’ as to which servant of the prince of this world they would rather have “rule over them”. All over the world, people have been deluded into thinking that “democracy” (a form of government which was NEVER consistent with, for example, the Constitution for the united States, and which the Founders uniformly rejected and railed against) is something OTHER than “mob rule” or “mob-ocracy”. In the absence of legal protections against the inevitable (like the long-forgotten Bill of Rights), such a “demon-ocracy” generally degrades quickly into a state where 51% of people exercise dictatorial control over the lives, liberty, and property of the other 49%.
I have written many times about the fact that, while Scripture cites several examples of things which look a bit like “popular votes” which nevertheless, shall we say, didn’t work out so well…the converse is not true: usually the masses seem to make the wrong choice, and reject Him. The story of I Samuel in chapter 8 may be among the best examples, where the people of Israel told the prophet to “give us a king like all the other nations”. Scripture tells us (I Sam. 8:7) that YHVH even told the prophet to listen to them, “for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.”
In spite of additional warnings (which, by the way, sound a heck of a LOT like what Amerikans, and indeed the denizens of most slave states in the world, can see out their own windows) the people persisted. And the king they got was Saul.
The “End of the Book” (Rev. 18:4) tells us as well that there will come a time when we are to “come out of her” so as to NOT participate with the sins of “the Whore,” and so that we do not, as a result, partake of the coming, and now-increasingly obvious, “plagues”. Other admonitions, like “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” and even “touch not the unclean thing” make a similar point.
People are being fed a lie: that to refuse to participate in a corrupt, unlawful, and unBiblical process somehow means one should not only have no right to complain (after all, the Freedom of Speech has ALREADY been revoked. Just look at the so-called “free speech zones” set up well AWAY from the most recent RNC sham. Not only was the only remaining alternative candidate muzzled and not permitted to speak, or even have his name placed in nomination — in SPITE of the “rules” — but elected delegates were unseated and coerced via the not-subtle threat of arrest and a nearby gulag especially set up for the purpose!) The opposite is in fact true. It is those who AGREE to abide by the outcome of a process they choose to participate in who must bear the consequences of their folly. One could in fact say, as the Bible does, that people who should have known better, “have their reward.”
While the Book of Job is perhaps one of the most difficult in all of Scripture for most people raised as Christians to understand, because it seems to demonstrate that YHVH, who created EVERYTHING, thus permitted “evil” as well as “good” — it also has some of the most poignant lessons for us today. “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, And what I dreaded has happened to me.” (Job 3:25) In order for the choice to love and obey Him to be a real one, the alternative, too, must be a real choice. Unless the choice to walk in rebellion to Him is genuine, a “choice” to follow Him is as meaningless and hollow as the “choice” facing Soviet citizens under Stalin, or post-Constitutional Amerikans.
Our “savior” DID not, and will not, come from Washington, DC…or Shanghai…or Moscow, Brussels, London, or the Hague…in spite of what politicians, pundits, and the world’s ‘priests of another god’ would like us to believe.
The Declaration of Independence asserts that lawful government rests on the “consent of the governed”. When the Founders served lawful notice to the world, and appealed to God as the “Supreme Judge of the world” that they would not submit to a “tyrant” who sought to reduce them to despotism — they literally withdrew their consent from that “other master” who was acting contrary to the Creator.
Wherever we live in the world, we face a similar choice today. As the fiat economies based on the abomination of “dishonest weights and measures” collapse, and hunger, pestilence, and even famine, spread, the Rule of Law will continue to deteriorate. The “jackboots” of a worldwide police state, already painfully obvious, will continue to advance as the move to a “mark” without which no one will be allowed to “buy or sell” accelerates.
Given a ‘choice’ in opposition to Him, and His Written Word, we must learn to say, “No!” A choice between evils is no choice at all:
“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice.” (Exodus 23:2)
The real choice was the one expressed by Joshua (24:15):
And if it seems evil to you to serve YHVH, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…
But as for me and my house, we will serve YHVH.”
Should we fail to understand the choice before us, however, the warning from Samuel is just as poignant today as it was when He first proclaimed it:
“And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and YHVH will not hear you in that day!”
The time to ‘come out of her’ is while we still have a real choice to make!
