POLITICAL IDOLATRY

Part Two of Three of the series “Dispelling Theo-Politics”

By Vinnie MacIsaac

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

There were two great sins in ancient Israel:
1) Wanting a King like the other nations.
2) Wanting Gods like the other nations.

It is important to understand they are intertwined. When God’s people rejected God as their only sovereign King^[1] they rejected all forms of Godly Political Leadership. All types of Human leadership, since, have been but a marred reflection of who God is and what God meant the nations to become. Israel, in their great sin of demanding a king like the nations, actually doomed all the nations because the Gentiles were intended to learn to have a King, like Israel, and not the other way around. Understand that this great sin did not go away. It leads them to reject Jesus just as It leads us right to this very moment in modern politics and what will bring about the final great persecution of the church foretold in Revelation 13. It is the sin of rejecting God’s political leadership that we have all, and will all, continue to do that gives The Beast the ability to take full control as we have been warned:

“And The Beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.  It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also, it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. If anyone has an ear, let him hear: If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.“ (Revelation 13:5-10)

What is Idolatry? Idolatry comes in two basic packages:
1) Declaring yourself to be God
2) Giving worship to something or someone else that is not God.

As far back as Egypt’s Pharaohs, and even further back into Imperial cults and tribal cults kings, chiefs, and shaman were associated with, if not outright identified as, deities^[2]. So it follows, then, that when Israel was demanding a King, they were doing much more than rejecting God’s political leadership but desiring new gods. It is no wonder they kept falling into literal idolatry all the years of their existence.

How different are we today than Israel of old? Do we think the Government can solve our problems? More to the Biblical point, do we believe there is a form of government that can solve our problems? What is our real hope in? All human types of government are rooted in some sort of idolatry because they, in essence, seek to fix problems only God could fix[3]. You can have big government, you can have small governments but both will be rooted in human reasoning. We have tried tribal governments, monarchs, dictatorships, democracies, republics, socialist states, mixed democratic socialism and straight up communism, and all of them eventually break down.

The reason they break down is as simple as Sociology 101. I learned this basic lesson from my freshman college professor, Steve Arvey, who drilled it into my head, “Rational systems break down when you introduce irrational variables; and humanity itself has always been, and will always be, an uncontrollable, irrational variable that creates chaos in reality where order seems logical in theory.”^[4] The point I abstracted from my teacher’s wisdom is there is no form of governance, that man can create, that can restore the broken (or irrational) nature of the fallen man. If a man is unable to govern himself in a fallen state then on what logic would he be able to govern others? Did the great and wise Rabbi not already tell us that the blind cannot lead the blind? (Luke 6:39, Matthew 15:14)

We cannot return to Eden until the Earth is made new, and we cannot return to true theocracy until Jesus restores all things;

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God, himself, will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:3-4

Furthermore, the central crisis of the end of the world and Satanic persecution of the church in Revelation 13 stems exactly from man’s irrational attempts to restore a theocracy on man’s terms; which is the only terms from which fallen men can function. This is the race the world is running towards with every change of government and political season or movement;

“And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.” Revelation 13:15

So what does God expect us to do? Well, prepare for the coming Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the only truly fit ruler of the universe, of course! However, I have also become convicted that to avoid falling into the snares of the Revelation 13 crisis; we need to understand we cannot invest all hope and all salvation in any political affiliation that comes from man. For they all lead to national and global idolatry that we find outlined in Revelation 13, 17 and 18.

While it is true all human systems are broken it is also true that some are more broken than others and God still works in the commodity of humanities brokeness. The Apostle Paul, in Roman’s 13:1-7 suggests that God is using current political systems to hold order temporally but goes on to expound in verses 8-14 that, ideally, God’s real government would be founded on mutual love. What this means is we should prayerfully seek out the best governing systems, that reflect God’s compassion towards each other and reflect on some limited level sacrificial giving. Each of us must seek what God permits by identifying them on personal understandings of Biblical values and then trust God to unfold His permissive will even at times when we can’t understand His reasoning from our fallen human perspective. Here in the west that would mean I can’t honestly in full identify with the western political left or political right because my identity is not apart of any political ideology.  Rather my political identity is found only in my unfolding reflection of Christ as it collaborates with a deepening understanding of Biblical values in a vastly changing pluralistic world context. Under such conditions, it would be foolish to see political affiliation as static.

I am personally convicted that the common practice among Christians to self-identify with either the left of the right and their ideological platforms is actually bullish Idolatry.

I am personally convicted that the common practice among Christians to self-identify with either the left of the right and their ideological platforms is actually bullish Idolatry. While there are biblical values on the left like; equality, feminism, care of those in poverty, and other general protections for the underprivileged; the right can also lay claims to being pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, and pro-protestant work ethic. To even try to identify which of these two platforms is more Biblical is to ignore the reality and certainty, that while both hold some values in common with Christianity, neither are Godly because both are steeped in philosophical humanism and therefore contain vast amounts of unbiblical propositions in their mix. Thus, the “right” direction for a Christian to vote is likely subjective to the ever-shifting paradigms in our pluralistic society at that particular time or even region. Therefore, such things as how to vote can only be decided in personal prayer and supplication with seeking the will of the Holy Spirit in that moment’s specific social, political, and cultural situations.

In other words, a Christian who finds themselves voting along party lines is likely, at times, certainly voting against the Holy Spirit and is not being sensitive to God’s leading in their growing spiritual journey. That is why we should move to finding our values first from our identity in God and the teachings of His Word, rather than from popular political ideology and debated talking points that we find on modern news outlets.

To be frank, political ideology is idolatry to the born-again Christian because a born-again Christian’s identity should ever be grounded in Jesus and his teachings; and no such political party exists. It is to make something other than Jesus your King, your solution, your Savior.

To be frank, political ideology is idolatry to the born-again Christian because a born-again Christian’s identity should ever be grounded in Jesus and his teachings; and no such political party exists. It is to make something other than Jesus your King, your solution, your Savior. Political ideology lets you say evil things about people, vote evil things that hurt people, and hope evil things to happen to people, all in the name of what you believe is right!  For me, it is the start of that hate that is festering in the heart of the faithful as they march away from Jesus and are transformed into becoming Satanic Soldiers who embrace the second beast’s methods found in Revelation 13, namely, a forced ideology which leads to his forced worship.

“Hear what the LORD says to you, people of Israel. This is what the LORD says: “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” No one is like you, LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power.” Jeremiah 10:1-6

CLICK HERE FOR PART THREE  – The Politics Of Jesus

CLICK HERE FOR TO RETURN TO PART ONE  – Rejecting The King

Footnotes

^[1]  I will deal with in detail in the second installment of this series.

^[2] “The rulers of Egypt, first the kings and later the pharaohs, were gods as well as men who ruled by divine right. Each king was ‘the son of god’, who at the point of death became one with his father, a god in a cosmic Heaven.” Christopher Knight, Robert Lomas (August 1, 2001). The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus, 100. ISBN 978-1-931412-75-9. Available in print from Fair Winds. Sourced from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_been_considered_deities#Imperial_cults

[3] That is not to say we should do nothing but it is just to say nothing we do will hold for long.

^[4] Steve Arvey, Intro to Sociology; Sheridan College, Oakville Ont, Canada.

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A New Declaration

Pastor Vinnie

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”^[1]

The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the single most important document of liberty in the western world with the only other possible exception being the Magna Carta Libertatum^[2] that forged the direction that would lead to the dream that true liberty could exist in a free, civilized world of everyday people. Still, as great of a document as the Declaration of Independence is I have come to ask, “self-evident,” to whom?

Self-evident literally means “not needing to be demonstrated or explained; obvious.”^[3] It seems it needs to be explained to a lot of people still these days! This dream that was cast over 241 years ago has never yet come to pass for many living in the “land of the free and home of the the brave.”

Liberty, freedom, equality, the pursuit of happiness, they are not left or right ideas. They don’t excessively belong to liberals or conservatives but rather ought to be the basis where both can and should have full agreement. Let the bleeding heart liberal, who’s own name stands for “Liberty,” say to the conservative patriot, who’s desire it is to hold up founding principles, “All men deserve compassion, respect, and basic human rights.” And let the conservative patriot echo back, “Amen brother, our founding conservative documents declares that, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Among Liberals and Conservatives, there ought to be no disagreement, yet there is still too much and often more noise of conflict than peace and clarity. Certainly, Christians can fare better overall than the divide found in modern politics right?

For the Christian, also have a founding document, but this founding document is superior even to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and even the Bill of Rights. Our founding document is the very word of the Creator and cannot be denied by any real Christian regardless of political ideology. This founding document also offers some unalienable Rights that will be self-evident by those who follow God’s Declarations but perhaps its seem at times to be getting lost in the political fray of the left and right that echo even in the hallways of the church. Let us this Independence Day declare our self-evident values of liberty we hold because of God’s Declaration to us!

1) The Word of God declares people of faith will respect immigrants.

• “You must not oppress foreigners. You know what it’s like to be a foreigner, for you yourselves were once aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9)

• ‘This is what the LORD says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. Don’t exploit or brutalize the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place. (Jeremiah 22:3)

2) The Word of God declares liberty to the poor and that people of true faith should aid in that liberty.

• Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. (Proverbs 19:17)

• For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. (Matthew 25:46)

• You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ (Deuteronomy 15:10-11)

3) The Word of God showed tolerance and not hate towards the seed of Islam just as God did to the seed of the Jews who shared the same father, Abraham. Let us seek to reach both for Christ.

• And the angel of the LORD said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the LORD has listened to your affliction. (Genesis 16:11)

• And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Up! Lift up the boy, and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation. (Genesis 21:17-18)

• Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

4) The Word of God declares God loves sinners and so should His followers.

• And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

• But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

5) The Word of God declares that His followers will protect the children.

• Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. (Psalm 127:3)

• See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 18:10)

• Before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

6) The Word of God declares we should stand against oppression in all its forms

• Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. (Isaiah 1:17)

• “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages.” (Jeremiah 22:13)

• The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. (Psalms 9:9)

7) The Word of God declares all people equal, and God followers likewise should engage in no forms of prejudice, discrimination, or racism.

• “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 14:34

• There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

• For God does not show favoritism. (Romans 2:11)

• If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. (James 2:8-9 )

• Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people. (Revelation 14)

These are inalienable, self-evident, biblical rights, principles, and declarations of liberty, justice, and freedom of oppression that come from the mouth of God! All who accept the Bible as their creed must yield to its word above ideology least they make politics an idol that they worship above Jesus!

This Independence Day we have the opportunity to make a New Declaration. That Declaration regardless of if we Republication, Democrat, or Independent, on the left or the right or hugging the center, would be that we are first and foremost Christians who declare the Word of God over the politics of man as our founding documents, principles, and values! We can declare, anew, that we will not justify away what is inalienable, self-evident, and above all Biblical!

 Let the church say AMEN!

——-

^[1] Declaration of Independence; Thomas Jefferson with influence from John Locke.

^[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

^[3] Google Dictionary.

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It’s A Beautiful Day 

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The Thirteen: One Crisis

#JESUSFIRST

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What If I Told You About Faith in Politics?

By Vinnie MacIsaac

Counting down to inauguration 2017 I started what turned out to be a rather interesting social media experiment.

If you’re like me you see Christians taking all kinds of political positions on social media and if you are at all like me at times you wonder how does a person of faith get to that position?   Secondly, if you have been on social media for five years or five minutes you likely have faced the scorn of a random outrage from a reasonable question or contrary position on a political issue of even among the most trusted social media “friends.”

My Experiment: I posted for 10 days leading up to inauguration a series of Tweets that I assumed every Christian should (or at least could) agree with.  Of course I was limited by my own perspective and thus I was wrong, there was a lot of push back (mostly on Facebook some twitter). Over time my followers who did not push back but enjoyed them starteed calling them “truth bombs” and I picked up the hashtag #truthbomb. Enjoy:

 

What if I told you not everything is the Media’s fault? #personalresponsibility #media #seektruth

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 11, 2017

What if I told you that God is more concerned about your virtue then he is your political affiliation? #USA #churchandstate #truthbomb

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 12, 2017

What If told you Jesus was not a Republican or a Democratic or an Amercian or even a western? #USA #churchandstate #truthbomb

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 13, 2017

What if I told you the Church Jesus founded openly flaunted redistribution of wealth as a key church value? Acts 2:45-47 #truthbomb

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 14, 2017

What if I told you, your political opposite is not the devil but you might be based on how you treat and talk to and about them? #Truthbomb

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 15, 2017

What if I told you Jesus and Martin Luther King both had a dream, and it was the same dream? John17:21 #martinlutherkingday #truthbomb #USA

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 16, 2017

What if I told you that breaking the 9th commandment also applies to how you treat politicians and elected officials? #truthbomb #usa #faith

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 17, 2017

What if I told you we should pray for and not curse those political leaders we dislike and fear the most? (Matt5:44) #truthbomb #USA

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 18, 2017

What if I told you that Jesus was not against paying his taxes even to oppressive political systems? Luke 20:25 Matthew 17:24-27 #truthbomb

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 19, 2017

What if I told you that being pro-life logically includes being anti- death penalty, and extreme caution in invoking war. #truthbomb #USA

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 19, 2017

What if I told you God permits all leaders. Some do His will knowingly and others not. Both good and bad God will use. #truthbomb #USA

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 20, 2017

My Conclusion: People of faith surprised me. People who I thought would push certain ways by in large did not. And disagreements were not at partisan as you would have thought. Maybe we are not that divided after all? Yet, at times I wondered if people really practiced their convictions but that was not really my business to explore. Maybe the best outcome of this experiment was that on several tweets it really got people who disagree to talk.  If you want to comment on any of these you missed do so on Twitter on in my comments section on this blog. I’d love to hear from you or even debate you some.

Post Script:

Well 45th, batter up! Go with God because only God can bring the Unity you speak of. God Bless America. God is our Hope! @realDonaldTrump

— Vince MacIsaac (@VinceMacIsaac) January 20, 2017

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