Wicked America in Scripture

"Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading." - Lamentations 2:14 

As I read this verse again recently, I was struck by how well it describes today's America. Ours is a country in which an overwhelming majority of the people describe ourselves as Christians. Yet immorality is rampant, and our government is progressing further and further into fascism. How can these things coexist with that Christian profession? 

When Europeans first colonized our continent, they brought with them a vigorous and all-encompassing faith. the settlers on the Mayflower signed a compact, an early form of constitution, committing themselves and their new colony to the glory of God. Later, the Puritans of the New England colonies built their laws on the Scriptures, conscientiously establishing a society which practiced the justice of God. 

Yet, now, we their descendants look on a country which celebrates "pride" in the very things which were crimes in those days. And their church-centered communities have evolved into a society in which naming the name of Christ is considered to be a sign of fanaticism. 

The answer is seen above, spoken to Israel an estimated twenty-six centuries ago. Due to liberalism, dispensationalism, and pietism, our clergy have turned silent about the sins of our culture. Instead, they preach nice things, uncontroversial things, inoffensive things. There is little talk of sin, except to criticize those who still speak biblically. The sin is no longer the wicked acts of men, but rather the wicked act of pointing out the wickedness. 

Ancient Israel was punished for her apostasy by the destruction and exile perpetrated by the Babylonians. What is the judgment waiting for America? 

Is Rape a Justification for Abortion?

Rape is a horrible crime. Not only does it violate the physical wholeness of the victim, but it is also an assault on her mental wholeness. It often causes an unjustified sense of shame, and it always deprives her of a sense of security, especially around men. Some people claim that those consequences justify making rape an exception to the immorality of rape. Doesn't that baby cause the mother continuing emotional damage from the attack? 

And a moral person can agree with that statement. A baby resulting from rape is a constant physical reminder of the worst experience most people can imagine. However, the question of whether that justifies aborting the baby is a step beyond sympathy. 

"Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deuteronomy 24:16). 

This verse is an expression of God's justice, one with which most people would otherwise agree. Contrary to the custom in the ancient world, no person is responsible for the criminal act of his kin. In the example before us, that applies to the child of a rapist. No one claims that there is any moral culpability in the child from the circumstances of his conception. It is the father alone who should receive the legal penalty for the crime of rape. 

Therefore, from the perspective of God, rape is no justification for the additional act of violence against an innocent preborn child. This would apply as well to babies conceived by incest. 

God's Judgment on Abortion

"They [i. e., Israel] served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood" (Psalm 106:36-38).

I have been reading of  "progressive Christians" who claim that the Bible says nothing about abortion. Yet here we have God's wrath spoken against the sacrifice of the children of Israel to pagan deities. If that is not the essence of abortion, I don't know how we could put it more clearly. 

Are Americans not aborting our sons and daughters as sacrifices to something - the universe, maybe - as an act of worship in exchange for prosperity? Our jobs will be better, we will have more money, we will avoid embarrassment, however we justify it. It is that paganism which is judged by God, because it is the shedding of blood - innocent blood - as an exchange for personal prosperity, the ultimate act of self-involvement!

God's Judgment on Human Sacrifice: Abortion

"Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I Myself will set My face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make My sanctuary unclean and to profane My holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set My face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech." 

-Leviticus 20:2-5 

There is a lot in this short passage. 

First, what was it to give one of ones children to Molech? Molech was a Canaanite deity. After the Conquest, he was adopted by the degenerating people of Israel, and that adoption flowered into a cult to an idol, marked by the sacrifice of small children, their own children, to the idol in return for material prosperity. Of course, no one walks into Planned Parenthood for an appointment with a priest of Molech, but the mindset is the same. The mother, at least, expects that her life will be better if she executes the child within her womb. The father may or may not be party to that choice. 

Second, what is the reaction of God, the true and living God of the Bible? His judgment is severe, demanding the public execution of the father of that child. And that itself is interesting, that He directs his judgment less toward the mother and more toward the father. After all, he conceived a child on this woman, and then failed to give her the material and emotional support necessary for her to sustain that new life. Not, of course, that we can assume that He places no blame on the mother. It is a matter of the greater accountability for fathers, the same fathers that are denied a legal right to block the murder of their children in modern America. Yet no law requires fathers to be silent. 

Notice, third, that God does not stop merely at the parents of the aborted child. Rather, He castigates the community which turns a blind eye to the horror of human sacrifice. Ignoring murder is a crime in its own right. Not as severe, perhaps, as the murder, but bringing, not material blessings, but rather material curses on that community. Do we not see this in America? As we have devalued life in the womb, we have devalued life everywhere in society, even as many act bewildered at the cheapness of death in these times. 

Abortion and God's Love of Life

"Do not boil a goat in its mother's milk" -Deuteronomy 14:21. 

I remember the first time I read this verse in an Old Testament course in college, a long time ago. It struck me as very odd. 

Another one was, "If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young" (Deuteronomy 22:6). 

Why, I wondered, would God put in His Scriptures such commandments about what we might have for dinner? And it has taken until now, my mature years, to understand what seems so plain now. 

There are many passages in Scripture that show God's concern for the family. They start with the creation mandate in  Genesis 1:28: "God said to them [i. e., Adam and Eve], 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" The welfare of the family is the concern of the Fifth and Seventh Commandments, and of such extended portions of Scripture as Ephesians 5:22-33. 

The two verses from Deuteronomy above reflect that concern. Notice that the command is not to avoid cooking a kid in milk, or to avoid eating eggs. In both cases the restriction is against the relationship between the animal mother and her offspring. The perpetuation of life is precious to God, both for mankind and for the animals. 

The reason that this has become clear to me in the past few years is because I have become more involved in the fight against human sacrifice in America, nicknamed euphemistically as "abortion." When a baby is aborted, that is the new generation murdered not just with his mother, as in the animal texts of Deuteronomy, but by his mother. What can more destroy the family than does mothers, often with the concurrence of fathers, who kill their preborn children. 

"Religious Neutrality" in Government Is Treason Against King Jesus

One of the stories which we best remember about the Prophet Elijah is his confrontation with the prophets of Baal (I Kings, chapter 18). The people of Israel had reached an historical point in religion in which they had eschewed fanaticism, giving equal devotion, in their own eyes, to Jehovah, their covenant God, and Baal, a fertility deity popular in much of the region around Israel. They chose to be neutral, giving both gods some attention, in the hope that one or the other would reward them. 

However, Elijah rejected the religious neutrality of the rest of Israel, challenging them, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him" (I Kings 18:21). His challenge was outside the cultural norm of that time, in which Israel was lackadaisical about religious devotion. Neutral, if you will. Trying to cover all of their bases. 

However, Jehovah rejected the neutrality of Israel. While the prophets of Baal received no answer from that deity, Jehovah certainly responded: "Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench" (verse 38). When the Israelites saw that Jehovah answered while Baal remained silent, they saw the emptiness in their illusion of neutrality: "When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, 'The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God'" (verse 39) Then, in the words of Elijah ("my God is Yah"), "'Seize the prophets of Baal, let none of them escape.' And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there" (verse 40). 

What Israel learned that day is that there could be no neutrality between the living God of their forefathers, and the pagan idols of the peoples around them. "Limping between two opinions" did not rescue them from the consequences of equating truth with falsehood. 

In a similar way, we in the United States live on land that was dedicated to that same God of the Bible. Then, when our nation was founded, our leaders included a provision in the Constitution saying that the new federal government could not establish a religion. Did they mean to equate Islam, Hinduism, and atheism with Christianity? Not at all. Rather, they intended for the federal government not to show favoritism among the Christian denominations of the new country. 

That plan did not remain in force, especially since the 1960's, when the courts unilaterally decided to eliminate the Christian religion from public forums. Those courts decreed that no establishment of religion meant neutrality toward all religions and irreligion. Prayer and bible reading were removed from government schools, and Christian symbols, such as crosses and placards of the Ten Commandments, were removed from government buildings, parks, even from "polite" discussion. 

Has this "neutrality" fared any better than did that of Elijah's day? Not by any definition. Rather, we have discovered the awful fact that neutrality toward God makes the state the new arbiter of all absolutes. As should have been anticipated. Where Jesus told us, "Your word, [Father], is truth" (John 17:17), now the state is the dispenser of truth. And where Jesus told us, "All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me" (Matthew 28:18), the state says that all authority now belongs to it. Thus, "neutrality" has become an opportunity for tyranny, and our health as a nation sinks further every day.

America's Apostasy and the Innocent Blood of Aborted Babies

In describing the apostasy of Israel, God gave these words through the anonymous writer of Psalm 106:36-39: "They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the whore in their deeds."

In my own mind, I recognize in this description my own culture, 21st-Century America. True, worshiping idols has not become widespread. Wicca, Hinduism, and other pagan religions, both ancient and new, even explicit worship of Satan, are spreading and becoming more visible, as they are mainstreamed by the broadcast media, such as the TV shows "Charmed" and "Supernatural." These traditions are being mixed in fashion trends, such as the Goth movement. But they are still relatively small compared to the overall size of the American population. 

On the other hand, the sacrifice of sons and daughters is far more companion than any explicit idolatry. Sixty million Americans were murdered in their mothers' wombs between 1973, when the Supreme Court declared abortion a "constitutional right," and the overturning of that decision in June of this year (2022). Why? For about 99% of abortions, it was merely for convenience: "A baby would interfere with my lifestyle." Babies cost money, and parenthood interferes with an irresponsible lifestyle. Worst of all, a baby puts a block in a lifestyle of promiscuous sex. Thus we have both the prosperity and lasciviousness of the ancient human sacrifice cults. 

America is a land soaked in innocent blood. There has never been, and can never be, a just accusation of a capital crime against an unborn child. The mere suggestion of it is specious. Among humankind since the Fall, there can never be true innocence, but there can be justice. And capital punishment for someone who has never committed a crime is not justice, but is itself a crime.

I am writing this just after the 2022 midterm elections, so I am thinking especially of leftwing candidates who campaigned on the protection of the supposed right to kill the innocent. I have tried to warn them that the blood of those innocents will testify against them in the judgment, but they don't care. May God grant them repentance! Until then, if ever, the innocent blood drips from their hands  and stains every word they speak or action they take. And God holds this nation accountable for not removing that evil from our civil government. 

Abortion: "Christian" America's Covenant with Death

In his book Abortion Violation, author Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas cites Proverbs 8:36, in which the personification of Wisdom says, "All who hate me love death." In application, Thomas tells us, "[T]he rejection of God's wisdom leads selfish, autonomous men to love and embrace death. In the case of abortion, it is the death of innocent children made in the image of God" (p. 22). 

In the Bible, god calls this mentality a covenant with death. This phrase is found twice in Isaiah 28, in which God is castigating Israel for her adultery with pagan deities, for which she is to be judged. God quotes a personification of the whole people: "We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through, it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter" (Isaiah 28:15). The people of Israel had convinced themselves that their game of balancing a profession of faith to Jehovah with their secret whoring with demons would protect them from the judgment of Jehovah, the only true God, who had made them a people. 

However, the prophet tells them God's response to their confidence: "Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be beaten down by it. As often as it passes through, it will take you; for morning by morning, it will pass through, by day and by night; and it will be sheer terror to understand the message... Now, therefore, do not scoff, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord God of hosts against the whole land" (Isaiah 28:18-19, 22). 

America is playing this game. She is playing the whore, both literally and in the sense that Israel did. Sexual immorality is rampant, even among professing Christians. Yet abortion enables the immoral to practice their sensuality without consequences... or so they believe. I think we see the signs already of God's judgment on this imagined sleight of hand. The sacrifice of the innocent will never save the guilty, no matter what "freedom of choice" men may imagine that they have. 

God's Judgment on Unjust Rulers

"Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, 

And the writers who keep writing oppression."

-Isaiah 10:1 

As a lover of God's Law, I often hear remarks saying that, since we are "under grace, not under law" (a misreading of Romans 6:14), the civil magistrate is under no obligation to the word of God in the execution of his office. In fact, any source of law except for the Bible is preferred, including the humanistic law under which we Americans are forced to live. 

Sometimes the problem is a belief that the Law ended with the crucifixion of Jesus. That is just bad hermeneutics. Other times, the person - and remember that I am speaking of professing Christians - will point to something in that Law and claim that it would be horrible to live by such a standard today. And they say that, completely oblivious to the implied blasphemy, as if God were unjust in His moral standards!  

Yet we have the verse above, Isaiah 10:1, in which God calls the actions of some magistrates "iniquitous." By what standard is an action iniquitous? Is the law of the state to be judged by its own standards? Surely such circularity would always confirm the morality of that law. Of course not! It must be judged by the objective standards of God. And where do we find those standards? In His law, recorded for us in the Bible. 

Government Money Policy and the Bible on Weights and Measures

Here is an article from a non-Christian economics think tank about the historical impact of profligate government printing of currency. As I write this, an estimated 80% of US dollars in existence have come into existence under the expansions of presidents Trump and Biden, partly, they claim, as economic incentive during the covid pandemic. The most famous example of such an economic program was under the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic of Germany, in which the currency was so debased that the inflation was part of the instability which inspired German voters to turn to the Nazi Party as an alternative. More recently, we have seen the same events in Mugabe's Zimbabwe and Chavez's Venezuela. 

The result of such a policy is that the same currency loses value with the passage of time. The government benefits from this devaluation because it spends the money before it has entered the market, where it will lose its value. The same is true for businesses favored by government with access to the new money, such as Wall Street and the banks. They have access to the money before it has lost its value, giving them a benefit of privilege that unfavored businesses and the general public cannot have. 

In the Bible, God expresses His divine displeasure with such manipulations of money. In Leviticus 19:35-36, He tells Israel, "You shall do not wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." He repeats this command in Deuteronomy 25:13-16: "You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God." The references to "weights" may seem strange to our modern ears, since we think of money not as weight but as slips of paper, or even just as a plastic card. However, in the days of Moses, exchanges occurred through the use of scales, which told the weight in specie for a certain weight of commodity. 

The wisdom literature, too, warns against financial cheating. For example, in Proverbs 20:10, the Holy Spirit tells us, "Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the Lord." He repeats the warning in verse 23: "Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good." In both proverbs, cheating through monetary manipulation is named an abomination to the Lord. 

A policy of inflating the currency by government is a policy of theft, which is why it is an abomination to the Lord. it is government which should be the agent of God, not in stealing, but in suppressing theft. Yet our government has a continuing policy of such theft, especially from the poor and elderly. As such, it should be an abomination to every moral person. 

Judgments on the Climate for the Works of Men

"He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants. [However,] He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water. And there He lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city in which to live; they sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield. By His blessing they multiply greatly, and He does not let their livestock diminish" (Psalm 197:33-38). 

The world is abuzz about "climate change." Every time there is a hurricane, a drought, a wildfire, pestilence, or famine, politicians and the media blame it on climate change. That, in turn, is blamed on human economic activity, though even some secular sources disagree. I don't have a problem with that explanation. However, I think that scripture shows that natural forces are merely the means, not the true cause of climate change. 

Look at the passage quoted above. 

In this Psalm, coming down to us anonymously, God tells us that it is, indeed, human activity that produces good or bad climate effects, but not because of economics. Rather, it is man's moral activity that brings either the curses or the blessings of God on the land. That portion of the world which professes the Christian religion, especially North and South America, Australia, and Europe, have embraced the values of paganism, such as human sacrifice by abortion. And, as a result, we have brought God's curses on our land in the form of climactic devastation. 

Yet, do we see repentance? Not so far. Rather, we see the wickedness compounded by more nature worship on one side and expanding government tyranny on the other. Even those in Christian ministry, embracing pagan "wokeness," are speaking less of God's law, less of man's sin, and hardly a peep about righteous living according to the word of God. 

As result, we can anticipate increasing climactic judgment, no matter what tinkering government does, until the professing Christian community awakens to its failures. 

Kings Your Foster Fathers and Queens Your Nursing Mothers: Biblical Religion the Duty of the Christian Magistrate

"Kings shall be your foster fathers and their queens your nursing mothers" (Isaiah 49:23). 

In today's America, a supposed religious neutrality is enforced by law, especially by a zealously secular judicial system. I question whether that was ever the intention of the Founders when they adopted the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Below is an extended quote from John Bannerman, in his book, The Church of Christ, in which he argues for the doctrine of the established church, as he knew in Scotland. 

"I take it for granted, as a fact not to be disputed, that the state, in all its acts, is to be accounted a moral and responsible agent, as much as any individual that is a subject of it; and that, although not under law to man, the supreme power, or organ of the state, is under law to God. I take it for granted, further, that, in consequence of this responsibility to God, the state is bound, as the first and chief of its duties, to own His will, as embodied in the form of a supernatural revelation from Him, and, in its national capacity, to recognize the authority and the Word of God as its law. And now, with an inspired revelation from God in its hands, what is it that the state learns as to its own interests and duties? It learns, in the first place, the intimate and indissoluble connection between the interests of civil society and the interests of true religion; and that, to promote the wellbeing, or, rather, to insure the existence of the state, it is necessary to call in the aid of powers and influences which the state has not in itself. It finds that what is awanting [sic] in civil society for accomplishing the very end of its own existence, the Gospel alone can supply; and that, for the state to dismiss, as a matter foreign to it, the religious instruction and spiritual wellbeing of the people at large, is to forego the main instrumentality which God has put into its hands for securing the authority of law, for promoting the ends of civil government, [and] for protecting the rights and furthering the peace of society. All this is too plain to need illustration. Without some religion, no society on earth, it is admitted by all parties, could exist at all; and without the true religion, no society can exist happily. Law would cease to be enforced if it had to trust to punishment alone for its authority, without any higher motive to secure obedience to it; and justice between man and man could not be carried into effect if it had no hold upon the conscience and the moral sense of a nation. And can it be alleged that religion is a matter with which states, as such, have no right to intermeddle, when it, in reality, forms the main and only secure foundation on which the authority of state rests - the only sanction sufficient to enforce right and to deter from wrong in a community - the only force strong enough to ensure obedience and respect for law - the only bond that can bind together the discordant elements of human society, and give peace between man and man? To assert that it is no duty of the civil magistrate to care for the religion of the people is nothing less than to assert that he is at liberty to forego the chief or only certain stay of his own authority, and to disregard what is essential to his own existence or wellbeing. If religion be the great and indissoluble cement of human society, then the magistrate is bound, by a regard to his own interests, and for the sake of the grand objects for which a state exists at all, to make the care of religion one of the first duties he has to discharge towards his people." [emphasis in the original]

The Law of God Versus Lawless Theology

Many people claim that the moral law of the Old Testament was given for Israel alone, not for the Gentiles. They base their claim on the fact that only Israel received the written law from Moses. 

That claim is wrong. 

In a familiar passage, Genesis chapters 18 and 19, we have the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even people with no biblical education know the basics of the story. Why were they destroyed? God says of them, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave" (Genesis 18:20). This account is of an event more than four centuries before God gave Moses the Law on Mount Sinai. So, if there was no moral law before Sinai, by what standard did the people of Sodom and Gomorrah sin, and sin so gravely that they would be erased from the face of the earth? 

The antinomian has no answer. His assertion is based on the logical fallacy of a false equivalency, the equating of the Law per se with the recording of the Law. The antinomian is correct in his claim that there was no written record of God's Law, because that privilege was reserved for the nation of Israel: "What advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God" (Romans 3:1-2). While all men have the law of God recorded in our consciences (Romans 2:15), the Jews have had the additional blessing of the Law in written form. Thus they were doubly blessed, doubly accountable, and - ultimately - doubly punished (Isaiah 40:2). 

The problem for the antinomian is that, without God's law (I John 3:4), there is no objective standard of right and wrong, and, therefore, no standard by which to proclaim that a person is a sinner. Yet, even the antinomian claims that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). He tries to have it both ways, sinfulness without law.

I suggest that is why the American church has become so impotent in the face of a depraved and self-destructing culture. She has repudiated the one thing given by God to construct a godly society, his Law. The cry of today's average evangelical is, "Any law except God's Law!," and that is what we have received, a godless society, just like they wanted.

King David the Theonomist

"I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes. Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord." 

- Psalm 101:6-8 

The passage above was written by King David. Notice that he rejects the wicked from both his own house, i. e., from among his family, and in the land, i. e., his political realm of Israel. 

While this was the common Christian view in history, including in the colonial and early independence periods of the United States. Yet, today, even professing Christians, those who claim to believe in God's Word, have accepted the view of the humanists that God has no say in the laws of the land. Under the influence of pietism and dispensationalism, Christians advocate any law except that of God. 

What has that gotten us? Abortion, gunfights in the streets and in our schools, burning down our own cities. How has that been a winning strategy? 

In contrast, David, the paradigm of the believing magistrate, took it as his responsibility to eliminate the wicked from the land over which God had given him charge. 

The Most-Specious Argument Against Theonomy

Everyone knows the Fifth Commandment by heart: "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12). The apostle Paul refers to it as "the first commandment with a promise" (Ephesians 6:2). It is the basis of all human government, arguing from the least to the greatest. That is, if we should honor mother and father, then, obviously, we owe even more honor to the king. 

What few people consider, however, is the importance that God lays on this social order which He instituted: "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear" (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). 

We observe several things here. First, this is a son who is habitually rebellious, not one who is occasionally ill-behaved. Second, the parents have struggled with him, striving to bring him to order. If the parents are sinfully lenient, that is a different sin. Third, they go to the elders of their hometown for action. That is, men who are familiar with the family, and witnesses of both the efforts of the parents and the incorrigibility of the son. And fourth, most importantly, this son is not a child. He is living riotously, including the abuse of alcohol. At the very least, he is a teenager. He is to be removed from society because of his baleful actions and influence on others. Notice the last phrase, which indicates that one of the purposes of this law is to serve as an example to the rest of society. 

Yet, this is the one law which is immediately attacked by the antinomian whenever the proper role of God's law in society ("theonomy") is discussed. "So you want the government to stone children, huh?" Well, as I have already said, we aren't talking about children here. Nor do I want anyone to be stoned. Rather, they make that choice when they commit an act which is legal grounds for capital punishment. What is necessary is not the same as what is subjectively desired. 

Furthermore, look at what has happened to our society as a result of coddling wickedness in our young people! It is impossible to enumerate the crimes that would be prevented before they could happen if the incorrigible wicked were removed before they started their spree of violence. 

So, to answer the challenge of the antinomian: No, I don't want children stoned. I want a society in which children are brought up to respect their elders, society, and, most importantly, the God who rules over us all. 

Pride in Hating God

"You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

- James 4:4

As I write this, it is June, "Gay Pride Month." Every politician and every big corporation is flying Pride flags or posting them on their advertising. This has all happened in my lifetime. I was born before the so-called Stonewall Rebellion. Now people who were considered criminals have public streets closed to traffic so that they can show their pride and wedding rings. My member of Congress and state Senator post about supporting "equality," without specifying what rights straight people have that gay people don't. 

That is why I started this post with the Bible verse above. The politicians and corporations are advertising their association with the God-haters. The same people will advertise in the Fall for Christmas, the holiday which was once considered a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Not anymore. There is even a children's show on public TV which has a special episode for "winter solstice." Neither Jesus nor Christmas are mentioned, lest they offend. Whom? I don't know. But why are they worried about offending that person while being OK with offending me? 

In addition to James, there is another Bible verse which describes today's America: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!" (Isaiah 5:20-21). We have exchanged God's standards for good and evil and substituted those of a particular perspective among men. And what is God's warning about that exchange? "Woe!"

Social Disorder, Statism, and God's Law

I write this at a time when America is going through widespread social tumult over police shootings of black men and women. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are names we hear on the nightly news almost every day. On one hand, we have the protesters, some of whom are committing wanton acts of violence and destruction, and on the other, politicians arguing over who better supports the police. Rather, I am asking whether Scripture tells us anything relevant to this crisis.

Do we see any solutions to this situation in Scripture? Some argue for more evangelism, saying that the Gospel provides an effective means of uniting people. While that is true, I don't think it is the only solution, and it is not my topic here. 

Rather, I am asking whether Scripture addresses government in a way that impacts this situation. And I think it does.

First, what is the source of law in the Bible? Is it the state? No, it isn't. Nowhere in Scripture do we find a basis for government promulgations regarding crimes or punishments. This isn't an argument for anarchy, but rather for a severely restricted state. If not the state, then what is the source of law? It is God alone. "See, I [Moses] have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon Him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?" (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). Not the king's law, or the president's or Congress's, but God's law. 

Then who is to enforce the law? Nowhere in Scripture do we see a description of a police force or of inspectors or enforcers. Rather we see this: "On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst" (Deuteronomy 17:6-7). The enforcement of the law is not assigned to a separate enforcement class, but is instead the responsibility of the people themselves. 

Our social conflict is the result of our worship of the state, of our looking to the state for salvation, of our looking to the state to be the source of social order. Since that is not God's intended role for the state, the result of those expectations is not social order but social chaos.

How the Church Paved the Way for Humanism

There has long been a tradition of dividing the Ten Commandments into two tables, commandments one through four and then five through ten. I am OK with that division. The first four deal primarily with man's relationship with God, and the other six primarily with his relationship with his fellow man. They are often portrayed this way in images of the commandments. That might be a bit fanciful. We have no record of how they were divided between the two tablets. Or even if they were divided. Some people believe that each tablet displayed all ten.

That's fine so far. 

There is also a common view that the civil government is supposed to enforce the second table, the laws against thievery and murder, etc., but has no authority over the first four. 

My question is this: Why? 

Sometimes the answer is that the First Amendment to the Constitution forbids it. We have freedom of religion in this land, so we can't have laws against idolatry. Yet our country has a heritage of so-called "blue laws," laws that required businesses to be closed on Sunday in honor of the Sabbath. "Blue," in this case, derives from a historical usage, in which "blue" was used for something which was overly strict. It was a pejorative term, but passed into general usage. The courts have upheld Sunday-closing laws on secular grounds, such as the practicality of providing a day off for workers. 

However, the question must be, Why does the First Amendment - in reality, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment - outweigh God's commandments? Should a cultural preference become the standard by which even Christians are to live, over the Word of God? 

When God tells us, "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3), His desire is clear. So also when He says, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (verses 4-5). So, on what grounds do we decide that His will in these two commandments is less important that it is when He says, "You shall not murder" (verse 13)? There is certainly no biblical justification for that judgment. 

When the Westminster Standards were originally written, the Larger Catechism, question and answer 109, included among the sins forbidden by the Second Commandment, "tolerating a false religion."  However, in 1788, when the first Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church met in the newly-independent United States, they removed that clause as offensive to religious liberty. Not as offensive to the Word of God. 

What this should tell us is that the secular humanism which has come to dominate these United States is not a new phenomenon, and did not suddenly puff into existence because prayer was removed from government schools in the 1960's. Rather, it was the culmination of that decision in 1788 to place political and cultural considerations above the enscripturated Word of God. The door was opened to the supposed independence of "secular life" from God. Now we have parts of our lives which are designated "religious," and parts which are designated "secular." And the humanists are perfectly happy with allowing Christians to enjoy that distinction, because it turns all of life outside the church doors over to them. And the church doors are only a temporary barrier, until the humanists have secured their territory against that day.

The Impotence of the Church

These two quotes from Gary North ("Tools of Dominion," p. 48), written in 1990, explain why the church is impotent in the face of the crises of humanistic 2020 America.

"To retreat from this task of applied Christianity is to to turn over the running of the world to pagan humanists and their theological allies, Christian antinomians. It is to turn the medical world over to the God-hating abortionists who are opposed so vigorously by Dr. [James] Dobson. Yet this is precisely what every publicly-visible Christian leader has done throughout the Twentieth Century, and what almost all of them did after the late-Seventeenth Century. It is universally assumed by Christians that the case laws of Exodus are null and void, and should be" (emphasis in the original).

"The tools of dominion, God's law, sit unused, and generally-unread by those who call themselves Christians. They are the best weapons that Christians possess for moral self-defense, since the best defense is a good offense, yet they steadfastly refuse to use them. To use God's revealed law effectively would require them to become intimately familiar with its many subtleties and complex applications, and, even less appealing, to discipline themselves in terms of it. They prefer to let is sit unopened, either in their laps or on their shelves. Christians, therefore, continue to lose the war for civilization."

When Times Are Chaotic, Does It Mean That God Has Abandoned Us?

As I am writing this, America is in the grip of chaos. America has been shaken by understandable protests over the police killings of black people. In most places, those protests have wound down, but there a few cities, such as Portland, OR, which still see a lot of property damage and some violence. At the same time, we face the attack of the coronavirus. In some states, hospitals are at capacity, yet we still see a death toll which has surpassed one-hundred fifty-thousand.

Why are these things happening? Where is God as we face these things?

Well, we can be glad that God is where He has always been,on His throne. He is no less in control during days of chaos that He was when our society was at its most placid.

So, does that mean that there is no spiritual dimension to these circumstances? I would definitely not suggest that! Rather, it is not God who has failed us. I think that it is the organized church which has failed.

When Jesus gave us the Great Commission, He gave us a step that most Christians ignore: "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:20). We are fine with making disciples and baptizing them. In fact, there are even some mission organizations that proudly state that they do no more than that. But the command of Jesus did not stop there. In fact, even in those first two clauses, many Christians make a false assumption, equating "making disciples" with "making converts." Of course, a person must be converted first, but he is not then a disciple. Rather, it is the third clause that makes a convert into a disciple, for a disciple will obey all that Jesus has commanded us.

I place the blame for the chaos not on President Trump or on Democrats, as culpable as they may be. Rather I blame the pietists and dispensationalists in the American church. The pietist defines his faith as just a private relationship between himself and Jesus. He never intends for his private religion to have an impact on the world - and it doesn't. The dispensationalist (and I am using the term in its classical sense, such as seen in Scofield's Bible) denies the validity of God's Law in today's world. If anything, he might replace it with rules, such as hairlength for men. But they never notice that the Great Commission says nothing about obeying the rules of men; the obedience which is commanded is to what Jesus commanded.

Where are those commands? The answer is easy: all of Scripture was mediated to its authors by Jesus (see, for example, Exodus 20:2, , Luke 24:27, and I Peter 1:11). It is the same moral law (not the ceremonial law) which was proclaimed to Israel by Moses. Jesus is the author of the Ten Commandments, and He is no schizophrenic, teaching one morality today and a different one tomorrow, contrary to the claims of the dispensationalist. And it is because the dispensationalist has deprived American society of these guiding moral principles that men now act like lawless animals. And it is because the pietist leaves his faith in the closet that the church provides no solution to a crumbling society. God has not abandoned us; the American church has abandoned God.