33 Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”
They worship sex, they worship other gods, they worship money, they worship their own ideas of freedom and justice, anything but YHWH's. That is why they've become a snare to us.
I'm still at a loss for what YHWH is doing with this concept of "democracy". It doesn't work. Unless that is his point: let's raise up a form of government that proves without a doubt that, "tolerance is self-defeating and that's why I have commands, not suggestions, but commands, to eliminate transgressors of my law from the community (permanently or temporarily)*, who refuse to submit to my ways or can't be healed; do not tolerate their unhealthy/sinful state if they won't be healed of it/turned away from it". As long as democracy is worshiped over here, instead of God's way, I don't see us thriving, but living with a constant snare at our feet waiting to kill us.
*to elaborate on eliminating permanently vs. temporarily:
Permanently Ridding Them
Exodus 31:14 (NIV)
14 “‘Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.
Temporarily Ridding Them
Numbers 5:1-4 (NIV)
5 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone who has a defiling skin disease[a] or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body. 3 Send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.” 4 The Israelites did so; they sent them outside the camp. They did just as the Lord had instructed Moses.
Footnotes:
a. Numbers 5:2 The Hebrew word for defiling skin disease, traditionally translated “leprosy,” was used for various diseases affecting the skin.
All of what's listed in Numbers 5:2 was temporary:
Numbers 19:11-12 (NIV)
11 “Whoever touches a human corpse will be unclean for seven days. 12 They must purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then they will be clean. But if they do not purify themselves on the third and seventh days, they will not be clean.
Leviticus 13:45-46 (NASB)
45 “As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be [a]uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ 46 He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
Footnotes:
a. Leviticus 13:45 Or disheveled
Leviticus 14:3-4 (NASB)
3 and the priest shall go out to the outside of the camp. Thus the priest shall look, and if the [a]infection of leprosy has been healed in the leper, 4 then the priest shall give orders to take two live clean birds and cedar wood and a [b]scarlet string and hyssop for the one who is to be cleansed.
Footnotes:
a. Leviticus 14:3 Lit mark, stroke, and so throughout the ch b. Leviticus 14:4 Lit scarlet color and
The whole ritual for re-inclusion is further elaborated on in Leviticus 14. Note: I quoted the NASB because the NIV doesn't translate it as "leprosy".
My point: tolerance is so antithetical to the God we serve. He always commands separation from the infected, until they're healed, if they ever get healed; unless we're bringing healing, I don't see why we should stay together if the infected one persists in being infected. Especially when the attitude of the person is, "I don't want to be healed of my sin." We cannot coexist. Democracy is so against YHWH's way / reality. Someone will die—either the infected one for rejecting the healing and persisting in their sickness, their own sickness killing them, or us, the rest of the congregation dies off for not healing the infected and / or not separating themselves from the sick to prevent becoming infected themselves.
One will die, either literally (us having no godly way to support ourselves / we get killed by the opposition's ideals), or spiritually; we'll "die" by compromising our ideals. If we compromise, it's a case of the infected infecting everyone else; and God will wipe all of us out come time. We're going to die either way, will it be denying God and living a little bit longer; or adhering to God and dying sooner. As YHWH told us, they will become a snare and make us sin. Their offer: make a living according to our standards, or die (can't have your business, get shut down, livelihood removed). Unless God has mercy on us, we're not going to survive this. If we do and he is merciful, it's still not a permanent solution. That snare will always be there.
I'm not sure what I should be praying for in this case. Democracy is not—has never been, and will never be—the solution. Centuries after declaring independence, all I see is watered down Christianity—the very thing the pilgrims on the mayflower protested against in the first place. Jesus won't be running a democracy when he comes back. Dare I say, should I be praying that ISIS overtake the USA, even if it means living like our martyred brothers and sisters, at the threat of decapitation by ISIS' hand? If that's what it takes to eliminate this disgusting lukewarmness and never-ending snare caused by democracy, then so be it.
The hypocrisy of the world is this: on the one hand saying, "it's wrong to legislate right and wrong / it's wrong to legislate morality", but on the other hand, "we're going to go ahead and legislate it to prevent your brand of morality" in effect, legislating their own morality. Why is it a crime only if we do it? Again, democracy doesn't work! Majority rule, by definition, requires that you leave snares alive to come kill you later, and requires that you submit to man's ideals / man's reasoning instead of God's.
This is King Saul all over again.
1 Samuel 15:3 (NIV)
3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
Footnotes:
a. 1 Samuel 15:3 The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them; also in verses 8, 9, 15, 18, 20 and 21.
1 Samuel 15:8-9 (NIV)
8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[a] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
Footnotes:
a. 1 Samuel 15:9 Or the grown bulls; the meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain.
1 Samuel 30:1-6 (NIV)
30 David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites [STILL ALIVE] had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, 2 and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way.
3 When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. 4 So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. 5 David’s two wives had been captured—Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. 6 David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.
The comment in red / in all caps is mine.
David ends up rescuing them from the Amalekites with God's help, after inquiring whether or not he should go to battle. But that's just one example of, "leaving unrepentant enemies alive" coming back to bite you in the butt, especially when God says, "kill them all". The Amalekites came back full force because Saul spared some. Either American Christians start taking discipleship seriously (killing off the ideals of the enemy) or some people are going to die (which will be us, not just them; us physically for not compromising God's standards [a good thing], and thus dying off with no godly way to survive; us spiritually if we choose evil and compromise God's standards to save our lives; the USA at large spiritually if they don't repent but persist in the world's ways). Either that, or YHWH sends ISIS over here to kill everyone and everything off: to kill democracy off for being useless (ultimately), to kill his Christians off (to prove the loyal from the disloyal; the disloyal stay alive for compromising, the loyal die for never renouncing faith in Jesus and in God's commands), and to kill off everyone else who refuses to pick a side or who choose the mark of beast / who fail to love the truth. It's getting to the point that we won't be able to survive, buy or sell, unless we submit to the world.
Sigh~
I guess martyrdom is the solution lol. May our Heavenly Father continue sending the USA more persecution, may he kill our lukewarmness (or get rid of the lukewarm Christians by making them leave). May he rid us of all false doctrine, and not leave us like King Saul thinking we're doing things for him, but in reality that's not what he asked for and he's raging against us for not obeying the way he said to (and is about to remove us from power for not doing it his way). May he turn us into martyrs and may he give us discipleship opportunities. But before that happens all false doctrine and blind guides have to go. Otherwise, our teachers / our Saul-like leadership will turn others into twice the child of hell that they are.
Matthew 23:15 (NIV)
15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
1 Samuel 15:18-23 (NIV)
18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ 19 Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”
20 “But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. 21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”
22 But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. 23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”
.
May he expose all this Saul-like ("but it's for God") compromise. We need to kill them all off, ideologically. If not, may we all may the unrepentant, believer and unbeliever alike, be handed over to Satan / ISIS.
Now that I put it that way, I suspect this is what's been happening all along . I watched a report on JLTV, interviewing some Syrians who had fled from ISIS, and this one survivor, who escaped and made a living in some other country, had a pagan christmas tree in the back throughout the whole interview. I couldn't help but wonder, what kind of Christianity is going on over there? And why have we been spared for so long? Well, the same thing is going on over here I guess. Technically our public forms of idolatry are being "eradicted" by the FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) instead of ISIS. Maybe I just need "eyes to see" to see what our own "ISIS" is taking the form of. Though I'm still unsure of democracy; it's a death-trap.
cristobela Vice Captain
Offline
Garland-Green
Friendly Gaian
Offline
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 2:47 am
cristobela
This is why tolerance is so ridiculous.
Exodus 23:33 (NIV)
33 Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”
They worship sex, they worship other gods, they worship money, they worship their own ideas of freedom and justice, anything but YHWH's. That is why they've become a snare to us.
I'm still at a loss for what YHWH is doing with this concept of "democracy". It doesn't work. Unless that is his point: let's raise up a form of government that proves without a doubt that, "tolerance is self-defeating and that's why I have commands, not suggestions, but commands, to eliminate transgressors of my law from the community (permanently or temporarily)*, who refuse to submit to my ways or can't be healed; do not tolerate their unhealthy/sinful state if they won't be healed of it/turned away from it". As long as democracy is worshiped over here, instead of God's way, I don't see us thriving, but living with a constant snare at our feet waiting to kill us.
*to elaborate on eliminating permanently vs. temporarily:
Permanently Ridding Them
Exodus 31:14 (NIV)
14 “‘Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.
Temporarily Ridding Them
Numbers 5:1-4 (NIV)
5 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone who has a defiling skin disease[a] or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body. 3 Send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.” 4 The Israelites did so; they sent them outside the camp. They did just as the Lord had instructed Moses.
Footnotes:
a. Numbers 5:2 The Hebrew word for defiling skin disease, traditionally translated “leprosy,” was used for various diseases affecting the skin.
All of what's listed in Numbers 5:2 was temporary:
Numbers 19:11-12 (NIV)
11 “Whoever touches a human corpse will be unclean for seven days. 12 They must purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then they will be clean. But if they do not purify themselves on the third and seventh days, they will not be clean.
Leviticus 13:45-46 (NASB)
45 “As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be [a]uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ 46 He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
Footnotes:
a. Leviticus 13:45 Or disheveled
Leviticus 14:3-4 (NASB)
3 and the priest shall go out to the outside of the camp. Thus the priest shall look, and if the [a]infection of leprosy has been healed in the leper, 4 then the priest shall give orders to take two live clean birds and cedar wood and a [b]scarlet string and hyssop for the one who is to be cleansed.
Footnotes:
a. Leviticus 14:3 Lit mark, stroke, and so throughout the ch b. Leviticus 14:4 Lit scarlet color and
The whole ritual for re-inclusion is further elaborated on in Leviticus 14. Note: I quoted the NASB because the NIV doesn't translate it as "leprosy".
My point: tolerance is so antithetical to the God we serve. He always commands separation from the infected, until they're healed, if they ever get healed; unless we're bringing healing, I don't see why we should stay together if the infected one persists in being infected. Especially when the attitude of the person is, "I don't want to be healed of my sin." We cannot coexist. Democracy is so against YHWH's way / reality. Someone will die—either the infected one for rejecting the healing and persisting in their sickness, their own sickness killing them, or us, the rest of the congregation dies off for not healing the infected and / or not separating themselves from the sick to prevent becoming infected themselves.
One will die, either literally (us having no godly way to support ourselves / we get killed by the opposition's ideals), or spiritually; we'll "die" by compromising our ideals. If we compromise, it's a case of the infected infecting everyone else; and God will wipe all of us out come time. We're going to die either way, will it be denying God and living a little bit longer; or adhering to God and dying sooner. As YHWH told us, they will become a snare and make us sin. Their offer: make a living according to our standards, or die (can't have your business, get shut down, livelihood removed). Unless God has mercy on us, we're not going to survive this. If we do and he is merciful, it's still not a permanent solution. That snare will always be there.
I'm not sure what I should be praying for in this case. Democracy is not—has never been, and will never be—the solution. Centuries after declaring independence, all I see is watered down Christianity—the very thing the pilgrims on the mayflower protested against in the first place. Jesus won't be running a democracy when he comes back. Dare I say, should I be praying that ISIS overtake the USA, even if it means living like our martyred brothers and sisters, at the threat of decapitation by ISIS' hand? If that's what it takes to eliminate this disgusting lukewarmness and never-ending snare caused by democracy, then so be it.
The hypocrisy of the world is this: on the one hand saying, "it's wrong to legislate right and wrong / it's wrong to legislate morality", but on the other hand, "we're going to go ahead and legislate it to prevent your brand of morality" in effect, legislating their own morality. Why is it a crime only if we do it? Again, democracy doesn't work! Majority rule, by definition, requires that you leave snares alive to come kill you later, and requires that you submit to man's ideals / man's reasoning instead of God's.
This is King Saul all over again.
1 Samuel 15:3 (NIV)
3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
Footnotes:
a. 1 Samuel 15:3 The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them; also in verses 8, 9, 15, 18, 20 and 21.
1 Samuel 15:8-9 (NIV)
8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[a] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
Footnotes:
a. 1 Samuel 15:9 Or the grown bulls; the meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain.
1 Samuel 30:1-6 (NIV)
30 David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites [STILL ALIVE] had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, 2 and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way.
3 When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. 4 So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. 5 David’s two wives had been captured—Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. 6 David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.
The comment in red / in all caps is mine.
David ends up rescuing them from the Amalekites with God's help, after inquiring whether or not he should go to battle. But that's just one example of, "leaving unrepentant enemies alive" coming back to bite you in the butt, especially when God says, "kill them all". The Amalekites came back full force because Saul spared some. Either American Christians start taking discipleship seriously (killing off the ideals of the enemy) or some people are going to die (which will be us, not just them; us physically for not compromising God's standards [a good thing], and thus dying off with no godly way to survive; us spiritually if we choose evil and compromise God's standards to save our lives; the USA at large spiritually if they don't repent but persist in the world's ways). Either that, or YHWH sends ISIS over here to kill everyone and everything off: to kill democracy off for being useless (ultimately), to kill his Christians off (to prove the loyal from the disloyal; the disloyal stay alive for compromising, the loyal die for never renouncing faith in Jesus and in God's commands), and to kill off everyone else who refuses to pick a side or who choose the mark of beast / who fail to love the truth. It's getting to the point that we won't be able to survive, buy or sell, unless we submit to the world.
Sigh~
I guess martyrdom is the solution lol. May our Heavenly Father continue sending the USA more persecution, may he kill our lukewarmness (or get rid of the lukewarm Christians by making them leave). May he rid us of all false doctrine, and not leave us like King Saul thinking we're doing things for him, but in reality that's not what he asked for and he's raging against us for not obeying the way he said to (and is about to remove us from power for not doing it his way). May he turn us into martyrs and may he give us discipleship opportunities. But before that happens all false doctrine and blind guides have to go. Otherwise, our teachers / our Saul-like leadership will turn others into twice the child of hell that they are.
Matthew 23:15 (NIV)
15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
1 Samuel 15:18-23 (NIV)
18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ 19 Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”
20 “But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. 21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”
22 But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. 23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”
.
May he expose all this Saul-like ("but it's for God") compromise. We need to kill them all off, ideologically. If not, may we all may the unrepentant, believer and unbeliever alike, be handed over to Satan / ISIS.
Now that I put it that way, I suspect this is what's been happening all along . I watched a report on JLTV, interviewing some Syrians who had fled from ISIS, and this one survivor, who escaped and made a living in some other country, had a pagan christmas tree in the back throughout the whole interview. I couldn't help but wonder, what kind of Christianity is going on over there? And why have we been spared for so long? Well, the same thing is going on over here I guess. Technically our public forms of idolatry are being "eradicted" by the FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) instead of ISIS. Maybe I just need "eyes to see" to see what our own "ISIS" is taking the form of. Though I'm still unsure of democracy; it's a death-trap.
It is a very difficult question. Either way we have a real problem. If we don't involve ourselves in the political processes and shape decision-making someone else will. Many of those decisions are bound to be wrong since the decision makers do not have the foundation of God to build on. If we are not involving ourselves is it the same as permitting bad things to happen? It seems as if the right thing to do is to be prepared to suffer injustice. Because if we involve ourselves we are likely to be forced into compromise.
We as Christians have tried making our own societies (Geneva) with our own rules and laws but they have been successful for only a time. Often when we do make our own societies I have the impression that we tend to separate from the world to such a degree that we damage our ability to be witnesses, on the other side of the argument some tend to get so absorbed in the world that it also damages their testimony.
I have never really seen FFRF as doing God's will, but you could be right. He does use both the good and the evil for His purposes. I think I should point out for readers that ISIS or FFRF are not doing God's will in that it is not His will that we should kill one another, but that no matter how heinous the crimes God can use it for good. Allowing something to happen is not the same as causing something to happen. We should make sure we make those distinctions since God is not the author of evil (James 1:13).
You should be careful what you ask for Maria. lol. It is in that direction we are heading. I think God is allowing, like you pointed out human government to run its course so people can see what it will culminate in, and that without God it is a hopeless project built on clay. If we look at Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar's dream we can see what God thinks of human government. It is gradually getting worse. Starting with a head of gold and ending with feet of clay and iron at the end just before Jesus returns as an unmovable rock to make the whole statue topple over. You are right that democracy is not the solution. It would be a good way to govern if people were inherently good, but as we know it is not the case.
Reply
