Lux Lucet

That I May Show My Power in You…

One very clear reason why evil men attain positions of power is that the Lord has raised them up that he may cast them down to glorify his name. 

The most obvious example of this principle in the Old Testament is Pharaoh.  And we don’t have to guess at it, either.  We read, “But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth” (Exodus 9:16).

God built Pharaoh up, so that he could triumph over him in by brining the Israelites out of slavery and into the Promised Land. When Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law visited the Israelite camp following the exodus, he proclaimed, “Now  I know that the LORD is greater than all the gods; for in the very thing in they [the Egyptians] behaved proudly, He was above them.”

The psalmist writes in Psalm 73 how the Lord sets wicked men in slippery places from which he casts them down to destruction.  Their end comes “as in a moment” according to the writer. 

Puritan Jonathan Edwards famously preached his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” on Deuteronomy 32:35, which has much the same idea as Psalm 73.  In Deuteronomy we read, “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; their foot shall slip in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them.”

The temporary prosperity of wicked men – Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden, for example – unless they repent, leads them to a destruction greater than when they would have received had they never prospered to begin with. 

Punishment for Sin

I once heard a minister say that if same sex marriage, which had recently been made legal in Massachusetts, was allowed to stand, God would own an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Well, that was probably 20 years ago, and the moral climate of America has gotten far worse since that time.

The political system of the Bible is that of a constitutional republic.  In such a system, government is limited in scope by a written document which enumerates its powers. But as even some of America’s founding fathers understood, a constitutional republic could not long endure alongside an immoral people. As John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  But God has used tyrannical government to punish nations for their sins.    

This, of course, was the reason Israel and Judah went into captivity.  Their continued unfaithfulness provoked God to send, first Assyria, and then Babylon to punish his people. 

It was the egregious sin of King Manasseh that was the breaking point for Judah.  It was Manasseh’s idolatry, child sacrifice and witchcraft that provoked God to say, in effect, “enough!”  In response to Manasseh’s evil doings, God said, “Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abomination…Behold, I am brining such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle.  And I will stretch over Jerusalem that measuring line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab; I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down” (2 Kings 21:11, 12).

If God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of their rampant homosexuality, should it surprise us if he does likewise to the United States, a nation founded by Puritans, but the heart of whose people are now far from him? 

If God did not spare Israel and Judah because of their idolatry, child sacrifice and witchcraft, why would it surprise anyone that he would punish America for its abortion mills, pornography, open homosexuality and growing love of the occult?   

In 2 Chronicles 12 we read that God specifically caused his people to serve the king of Egypt to teach them the contrast between service to him and service to other nations.  “Nevertheless they [Judah] will be his [the king of Egypt’s] servants, that they may distinguish My service from the service of the kingdoms of the nations.”

Jesus told his listeners, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” But there is nothing easy or light about the service of the kingdoms of the nations.  Americans are likely going to learn this lesson soon enough.

Chasten His People to Teach Them to Trust in Him Alone  

One of man’s besetting sins, and this is true even of those who are saved in Christ, is a tendency to overestimate his own strength and underestimate the power of evil.

The case of Peter is one of the best-known examples of this.  Shortly after boasting that he would never abandon Christ, Peter folded like a house of cards at the questioning of a servant girl. 

In Acts 19, we read about a rather embarrassing beat down received by the sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, when they tried to perform an exorcism.  We read, “And the evil spirit answered and said, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?’ Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.”

It would seem that the sons of Sceva made the mistake of thinking too highly of themselves.

In 2 Peter and Jude we read that heretical teachers presumptuously speak against, apparently, demons, against whom angels themselves will not bring a reviling accusation.  If this understanding of these passages is correct – see 2 Peter 2:10, 11 and Jude 8,9 – among the sins of these false teachers is the error of thinking too highly of themselves and not highly enough of Christ. 

In watching the events surrounding the attempted steal of the 2020 presidential election, I have been both appalled and awed by the brazenness of the theft and the power of those who (apparently) have pulled it off.  How can we stand against the power of the deep state, the educational establishment, the legacy media and Hollywood?

I recall the rise of the “religious right” in the United States in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  You may recall the Moral Majority and all that.  Evangelical leaders convinced Christians that if they just would be willing to work with Roman Catholics, Jews and other unbelievers in areas where they had common interests – stopping abortion or eliminating pornography – public morality and constitutional government could be restored.

How did that work out? 

I doubt Bible believing Protestants have ever had less influence on the government or morals of this nation than they do in 2020.  Could the failure of the Evangelical Right be God’s punishing his people for their compromises they made on the Gospel and other Christian doctrine to forge political alliances with unbelievers? 

In Isaiah we read, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD!”

If Christians are going to mount a successful fight against the overwhelming power and money of the forces that are destroying America and other Western nations, they must look to Christ alone. 

The temptation for Christians to “go down to Egypt” in search of allies in the culture war is powerful.  But by now it should be clear, as if it wasn’t clear from the Scriptures already, that compromised political action is worse than useless and that God will not honor it. 

Closing Thoughts   

If I am right and Joe Biden does become president on January 20, 2021, it likely will signal a turning point in American history, and not for the better. Biden in an evil man and is surrounded by men and women at least evil, if not more so, than he. 

In my opinion, a Biden administration will see a flood of evil loosed in this nation such as has not been seen before.  As a Roman Catholic, there is every reason to believe that he will be under pressure from the Vatican to enact the Pope’s political program of globalism, mass migration, environmentalism.  We can expect the demonization of white people to ramp up as a Democratic White House, House of Representatives and possibly Senate craft reparations legislation. The current figure for reparations is an astounding $12 trillion.

Churches will come under direct attack from groups such as the Secular Democrats of America PAC. 

The homosexual lobby will be strengthened, and all its attendant evils attendant will blossom. 

More can be said, but this is enough to give you a flavor of what’s coming. 

So what can Christians do when such power and evil is arrayed against them?  What the Lord’s people have always done in such times, call upon the name of the Lord.

It’s been said by some that the Chinese word for “crisis” is made of two characters, one meaning “danger,” and the other “opportunity.”  This seems to me to be very perceptive on the part of the Chinese.  But while it’s perceptive of them to see the relationship between danger and opportunity, most of us, and for understandable reasons, tend to focus on the danger portion of a crisis and forget the opportunity side of things. 

Is there reason for Christians to be concerned about the danger presented by a Biden presidency?  Yes, there is.

But at the same time, there is also reasons for Christians to rejoice at the opportunities it will present for them to be salt and light.

I don’t know what’s going to happen the next four years.  Quite possibly a lot of evil things.

But let us remember this, we have the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing.

Let us go to him in faith.  He will be no means cast us out.  And let us ask of him knowledge and wisdom and courage to say and to do the right things. 

The battle is His, and He must win it.

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