Lesson 64
Collapse on the International Scene – 28:20-24
In Deuteronomy 28 we’ve encountered the revelation of some of the
mechanics of history. We’ve discovered the councils of the angels, that are
around the Lord in the Old Testament, replaced by the Church in the future, but
Jehovah is surrounded by a council of angels and the council of angels has as
its job to administer and manipulate in history God’s blessings and His
cursings. These are not just an
exposition of certain impersonal laws; the tendency in a scientific culture is
to think of God’s ways of operating as just impersonal principles. But the universe is personal, not impersonal,
it does not operate as a machine, it operates as an organization run by
people. Therefore in chapter 28 we have
seen first in verses 1-14 the blessings of God.
God is administering a covenant; in order to understand the covenant
that is being explained here you have to go back to certain principles.
When we receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, God the Holy Spirit
puts us in union with Christ, called in the New Testament “in Christ.” You never leave that position. This is true as of the moment that you become
a Christian, regardless of what the conditions are, regardless of where it
happens, regardless of the circumstances that are tentative, you still keep
this position in Christ. However, there
is a second position which we indicate by the bottom circle, and this has to do
with your position as far as time is concerned, and your experience. At any
given time you are either in this circle or out of it. You’ve heard “out of it,” that applies
literally to the Christian; it he’s out of fellowship, he’s “out of it,” and
it’s a very doctrinal phrase to use for a carnal Christian, it means he’s out
of the bottom circle. The way back into
the bottom circle is by 1 John 1:9. We didn’t
do anything to get in the top circle except believe in Jesus Christ. We don’t do anything to get in the bottom
circle except confess our sins. You
don’t confess your sins to get in the top circle; once and for all that’s
salvation; it does no good for an unbeliever to confess his sins. God knows he’s a sinner so he doesn’t have to
confess it. The bottom circle, however,
is something different. This is the mechanics of day by day, moment by moment
Christian living and to operate in the will of God you have to know the will of
God. So we’ll let the bottom circle
equal the will of God; that’s how much you know of the will of God for your
life and when you confess, then God takes care of the legal problems, etc. and
it’s a family matter.
We have to take this principle that applies to the individual in the New
Testament and apply it to the nation in the old, so that you understand what’s
happening. In the Old Testament you have
two basic covenants: the conditional covenant and unconditional covenants. The unconditional covenant which would
correspond to the top circle in the New Testament is what we call the Abrahamic
Covenant, Gen. 12, as amplified through Moses, amplified in Jeremiah’s day,
etc. This is a covenant that guarantees
that the nation
The bottom circle that would correspond to our moment by moment
experience in the nation
So what God said was look, Israel, I have given you the Word of God, you
are the custodians of the Word; even the New Testament was written by the
Jewish people of the nation Israel, and if you stay with the Word, indicating
your faithfulness to Jehovah, then I’ll make a deal with you; then you will
occupy the land. Now you’ll always own
the land; the Abrahamic Covenant means they own the land, or God owns the land
and He’s titled it to them. But as far as the Mosaic Covenant is they’re not
guaranteed they’re always going to occupy it, and it’s not guaranteed they are
going to continue to occupy it until the Second Advent of Christ, they could be
thrown out by the Arabs ten times between now and the Second Advent. There’s no guarantee on that; occupation is
a matter of blessing. In fact, they
technically do not occupy the land anyway today; they’re in the Diaspora. But occupation in the Old Testament was
contingent upon the nation as a nation adhering to the Word of God. Military victories were pronounced and
promised to them if they would, as a nation, adhere to the Word of God. We had other promises given to them in the
Old Testament, we have business or economic prosperity; this was a promise to
them if they would adhere to the Law.
And finally we have a worldwide testimony if they would adhere to the
Law.
These were all “ifs,” just like in the Christian life; we have blessing
in the Christian life amidst adversity and all the things of life if we’re in the will of God, if we’re
filled with the Spirit, etc. operating with His assets, this is where there is
peace in the Christian life; there’s peace nowhere else, there are a lot of
pieces but there’s no peace. And this is
a problem that people usually do not see; it doesn’t make any difference how
much money you have. A lot of people say
if I had a few more dollars then I’d be happen; you wouldn’t be happy, so how
much money you have has nothing to do with your happiness. This is one thing if you understand the
Scriptures you’ll recognize and never be a victim of materialism lust. The most
unhappy people I know are people with money because they’re worried about whose
stealing it from them, about where they’re getting it from, where it’s going,
how much Uncle Sam is going getting, etc.
You see, blessing in the Christian life has simply to do with your
spiritual status, not with your material status.
With the nation Israel, her blessing again would root back to the
spiritual status. We saw this by a
clever way Moses has set up this first section of Deut. 28. Verses 3-6 is a listing of 6 blessings; now
we’re at that point in the Deuteronomic Law where the choir, the Levite choir
are going to inaugurate this in a great covenant ratification ceremony. And during the covenant ratification ceremony
there’s going to be Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal; and the Levite choir is going to
be down directing and they’re going to have 6 tribes on one mountain and 6
tribes on the other mountain. Six of
those tribes are going to recite the blessings of God; six of those are going
to recite the cursings of God, and as this great covenant thing which is going
to happen in the book of Joshua comes, the Levites administer Deut. 27 and then
these 6 tribes kick off with the blessings in verses 3-6 and they shout these
things across the valley, “Blessed shall thou be in the city, and blessed shalt
thou be in the field,” and this is a tremendous anthem, hundreds and thousands
of voices cry this across the valley and as it reverberates through the valley,
then the other side picks it up and then the cursings start, and the cursings
that they recite are before us in verses 16-19.
Verse 16, “Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shall thou be in
the field.” And these are the actual
lyrics that were used during this covenant ratification ceremony. Moses, as he prepares the people for this
explains them and as he explains the six blessings that we saw last time he
sets up his sermons from verse 7, because remember this book is a long extended
sermon, from verse 7-14 is an explanation of these blessings. When he goes to set this blessing explanation
he adopts what is known as a chiastic structure in the Hebrew and what this
means is that you have a concentric set of circles, that’s the way to visualize
what he’s doing, and he splits these verses up.
You start with verse 7, that’s the outer circle, “The LORD shall cause
thine enemies who rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face; they
shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.” Coming out one way is an idiom for absolute
order; coming out fleeing seven ways means chaos. So it means that in the realm of the
international relations Israel will be blessed militarily.
Now skip over to verses 12b-13 you’ll see that the end of the chiastic
structure picks up the rest of this up.
So you see what Moses had done, he’s going to structure this thing so
that he starts talking about a topic, he moves to another one, moves to another
one, moves back, moves back. Here’s
verse 7 and then he picks the same topic up in verse 12b-13 where he says, “and
thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow,” this is economic
blessing in the realm of international relations. “And the LORD shall make thee
the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be
beneath,” and here again he’s amplifying and modifying this whole international
blessing.
We move to the next inner circle which begins at verse 8 and verse 8
says “The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in
all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land
which the LORD thy God gives thee.” This
is domestic blessing. So when you move to the next sphere Moses is discussing
domestic polities; he’s discussed foreign policy and the international scene,
and now he comes home and he says you’re going to have economic blessing at
home. And then he says in verses 11-12a,
“And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and
in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which
the LORD thy God swore unto thy fathers to give thee,” and in verse 12 a
climatic blessing, which in agrarian economy was crucial, “The LORD shall open unto thee his good
treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in its season, and to bless
all the work of thine hands.” So you
have the next inner circle of this chiastic structure emphasizing the domestic
blessing.
This whole chiastic structure, the reason why it’s set up this way is
that Moses wants to emphasize something and when you have a chiastic structure
in the Hebrew like this, when you come down to the center, that’s the subject
the speaker is trying to emphasize, so that you ask the question what is it
that he puts in the middle and what he puts in the middle is verses 9-10, “The
LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he has sworn unto
thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in His
ways. [10] And all the people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the
name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of thee.” This means that the
central issue for Israel is who is Lord, this is Lordship. You want to get a concept across because I
slipped when I started this sermon and said when you “receive Jesus as Savior
and Lord.” Technically that’s wrong
because when you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ you can’t really accept His as
Lord as most Christians use the word “Lord,” because you don’t know what
Lordship means. That’s an issue for the life.
Lordship means that we are obedient to the known commandments of God for
our life, that’s Lordship, and that’s the way that term is used but it’s not a
condition of salvation, simply because at the point of salvation you are
unaware of what God’s will is for your life.
In fact, as some of you have told me, that if you knew when you accepted
Christ what He was going to do with you, you’d probably wouldn’t have accepted
Christ, you’d have chickened out.
Lordship is not an issue at the point of salvation. When you receive Christ you start at a point.
God’s plan has three parts, the time you become a Christian is phase 1, phase 2
is from the time you become a Christian until the time you die, phase 3 is
eternity. God’s plan is in three parts and you never want to mix the three or
you’ll be all fouled up in the Bible.
Phase 1 deals with salvation; salvation has to with Christ as Savior and
kurios; kurios is Lord, bit it is
used in the New Testament for deity. Kurios is used… the reason the apostles
picked this word is because it was the word used of Jehovah in the Old
Testament and often Christian that have a little Greek say oh, but kurios was used of the Caesars and it
means that God is dictator. But that
wasn’t how the apostles used it; always remember when you study Greek that the
apostles are using a Greek that is modified by the use of the Old Testament and
therefore it’s a Septuagintal Greek and kurios
is a word for Lord meaning equal to deity, not equal to lordship as usually
used in Christian circles. We accept the
Lord Jesus Christ means we accept the God Jesus Christ. So that’s lordship.
Now coming back to Israel, what was lordship for this nation? Lordship meant that she was to follow God’s
commandments for her. Please remember,
again going back to the concept of Lordship that when you examine the history
of this nation, when were the Ten Commandments given? Were they given before
the nation was redeemed or after the nation was redeemed? Answer: they were given after the nation was
redeemed; after salvation comes the will of God. And the Ten Commandments were not given until
after the nation left Egypt, after Exodus, after Exodus, after deliverance. So
therefore the issue of Lordship is a post-salvation concern.
When we come to this passage before us on the cursings we find the same
chiastic structure because this section is going to deal with the same three
circles, except it’s going to deal with it in very extended detail. The first
circle on the outside, again, like before, is the realm of international
relations, and again this is this chiastic structure and it starts in verses
20-26. “The LORD shall send upon thee
cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand to do, until
thou be destroyed,” and you see the phrase “until thou perish quickly, [because
of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken Me.]” Then in verse 21, “The LORD shall make the
pestilence cling unto thee until He has consumed thee [from off the land, to
which thou goest to possess it.”] Verse
22, “The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with
an inflammation,” etc. and then in verse 24, “…from heaven it shall come down
upon thee until thou be destroyed.” You
see the emphasis here in this first section is the loss of their international
position, “until thou be destroyed” means until you are removed from your
international position of prosperity. So
the cursings exactly negate the blessings.
God has an equal score. If you
disobey I’m going to remove you from the international scene.
So verses 20-26 deal with the international realm, and then following
the chiastic structure if you turn to verse 58, the last part, he deals with
the same thing. Verses 58-68; verses
20-26 all deal with this third outer ring, the realm of international
relations. And verse 58 and following you can see the same theme that’s picked
up again. “If thou wilt not observe to
do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest
fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY God” and so on and so on,
Verse 60, “Moreover, He will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which
thou was afraid of, and they shall cling unto thee,” and verse 61, “[also every
sickness, and every plague, which is not written in] the book of this law, them
will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed.” So the theme picks up again, until this
nation is removed from the position of international blessing and this goes on
in this refrain throughout these last 11 verses.
This is the outer rim of Moses’ structure, but he moves in now. After
verses 20-26 he moves into the next ring which is domestic policy. You have to tie all this together and if you
see the overall structure you’ll see the passage. Here’s domestic structure; domestic structure
starts in verse 27, see, we’re approaching this from both sides. “The LORD will smite thee with the botch
[boil] of Egypt, and with the emerods [tumors], an with the scab, and with the
itch, whereof thou can not be healed, [28] “The LORD shall smite thee with
madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart; [29] And thou shalt grope at
noonday as the blind gropes in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy
ways….” Verse 30, “Thou shalt betroth a
wife, and another man shall lie with her; thou shalt build an house, and thou
shalt not dwell therein; thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the
grapes thereof. [31] Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt
not eat thereof,” etc. and it’s all domestic policy. That’s verses 26-37 that forms that
section.
Now turn to verse 49-57 it picks up the other side of this ring, dealing
with domestic policies, it begins, “The LORD shall bring a nation against thee
from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies; a nation
whose tongue thou shalt not understand; [50] A nation of fierce countenance,”
these are the Assyrians and the Neo-Babylonians, [who shall not regard the
person of the old, nor show favor to the young.
[51] And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy
land, until thou be destroyed….” Verse
52, “And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates….” Verse 53, “And thou shalt
eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters whom
the LORD thy God has given thee, in the siege, and in the distress, wherewith
thine enemies shall distress thee.” In
other words, domestic policy is going to get so bad under the conditions of
cursing in history, God says, that you’re going to eat your own children. Remember this because I’m going to read you a
direct verification of an eyewitness to when they did personally take the young
babies and eat them, during the siege of Jerusalem under Vespasian and later
under Titus. So here you have the domestic
policy. And God predicted this, back in
the days of Moses that this would come true.
Now we come to the inner ring, verses 38-48 and as you might suspect,
the emphasis is here on the Lordship of the nation. So verse 38, “Thou shalt
carry much seed out into the field, and shall gather but little in; for the
locust shall consume it.” In other words
the locust is the one that reigns over them.
Verse 40, “Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but
thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast its
fruit. [41] Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them;
for they shall go into captivity.” And it goes on down, verse 45, “Moreover,
all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake
thee, till thou be destroyed, because thou hearkenedest not unto the voice of
the LORD thy God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded
thee; [46] And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy
seed forever, [47] Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness,
[and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things.]” In other words,
the point that he’s making here and concludes in verse 48, “Therefore thou
shalt serve thine enemies…” you see the choice for Israel is either they are
going to serve God or they are going to forcibly have to serve their
enemies.
Now that’s exactly the way it is in the Christian life. As far as that bottom circle is concerned. As
far as that bottom circle in the Christian life is concerned, when we are
operating inside that bottom circle it means we have freedom. That doesn’t mean
we have to go out and raise Cain, the freedom I’m talking about is a spiritual
freedom. You have freedom and victory over
temptation. There’s a change in your
life, you know that you have moral power and it doesn’t come from you because
you know you couldn’t live this life anyway, it’s a supernatural life. But you have this inner power and so on that
comes because Jesus Christ is now Lord.
Now if that’s not true and the old sin nature is in control, who’s Lord
then? The lust of the flesh! But it’s either one or the other; Gal. 5:16
says one or the other, but you only have two options available and the same
thing goes in the mechanics of the nation Israel because basically that’s a
type of us. You have the nation Israel
and they are either going to submit to the rule of God, and we’ll go through
all these verses in detail, they are either going to submit to the rule of God
or they are going to be submitted to the rule of their enemies. There’s no choice.
And tragically in history this verified down to a T, this verified down
to the point where the Gentiles that moved in, the Assyrians, the
Neo-Babylonians and lastly the Romans were shocked at what happened; they said
in all the conquests of the Assyrians, in all the conquests of the
Neo-Babylonians, in all the conquests of the Romans, and the Romans were tough
conquerors, they had never seen the devastation that was wrought in the land of
Israel. The Romans were so amazed at
this because Titus told his troops as the walls crumbled in Jerusalem, he said
listen, you see that Temple, I want that Temple protected and he dispatched a
battalion of troops in to surround that Temple and somehow, because God said
the Temple would be destroyed, somebody, and it’s unknown in history, threw
what would be the equivalent to a Molotov cocktail inside that thing and it
went up and destroyed it. Nobody knows
who it was and Titus had a special set of troops to go in there and to keep the
zealots from destroying the thing because they wanted to destroy it and even
the Roman army couldn’t prevent the destruction that was going on. It was a fantastic thing and the Romans lost
complete control of the situation when they moved in. One of the very unusual times in history
where the Roman army was not able to control and yet this again comes about
because of the plan of God in history.
Turn to Leviticus 26 to see the counterpart of how these curses are
going to be administered. I want to take
you back to Lev. 26 because this is in another section of the Law, dealing with
the same problem but explained a little differently. You see, God had a system of discipline that
was very interesting. On the one hand
with the Mosaic Law He had the blessings; then He had the cursings, and he said
as far as the blessing is concerned, blessing means you occupy the land; blessings mean you have
military victory, blessings means that you have economic and business
prosperity, blessings mean that you are a worldwide testimony. The cursings mean correspondents, you lose
the land, you will be thrown out of the land, in place of military victory you
will have military loss; in place of economic prosperity you will have economic
depression, and in place of a worldwide testimony you will be a horror to the
nations. Now it’s one or the other, but
God had a system of degrees of discipline.
Five degrees of discipline are outlined in this book. God would spank them to a certain degree and
that is indicated in Lev. 26 beginning at verse 14. Let me show you the structure of the chapter
and then we’ll go into details. Verses
14-17, “If you will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all these
commandments,” etc. “I will do this unto you,” verse 16. In verse 17, “And I will set My face against
you.” So verses 14-17 is the first
degree of discipline. God announces He is going to start tuning the screws and
putting the pressure on.
Then He says, verse 18, “And if ye will not yet for all this hearken
unto Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. [19] And I will
break the pride of your power,” so verses 18-20 deal with the second degree of
discipline. God says I’m going to spank you once and you’d better get
straightened out because if you don’t I’m going to apply the paddle seven more
times. So in verses 18-20 was the second
degree of discipline.
Verses 21-22 is the third degree, “And if ye walk contrary unto Me, and
will not hearken unto Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you
according to your sins.” I want you to
see the seriousness of this and see the mechanics of history. God does not tolerate certain things to go on
in certain nations. And we, as a nation,
are going to see some of the analogous principles applied. God will not forever permit a nation to go
out as a hell-raiser, internationally or any other way and He’ll start
tightening up. He will, and you will see
the depression economically; you will see the loss of military power, you will
see all these things, it’s all correlated by the mechanics of history.
Verses 23-26, “and if ye will not be reformed by Me by these things, but
will walk contrary unto Me, [24] The will I also walk contrary to you, and will
punish you yet seven times [more] for your sins.” So here we have the fourth degree of
discipline.
Finally, verses 27-39, the last horrible stage of discipline. “And if
ye will not for all this hearken unto Me, but walk contrary unto me,
[28] The I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will
chastise you seven times [more] for your sins.”
And here is the fifth degree of discipline. You say why is God so hard on the nation Israel. Here’s why?
God is never hard on people who do not have a chance. God is hard on those people who over
generations have had the opportunity to hear the Word of God, who have had the
opportunity of getting gospel information into their brains to either reject or
accept. Now God holds a person
responsible for what they know. This
nation He had picked out from all the Gentile nations to channel His Word; they
were the world custodians of the Word of God and will be in the future, but in
this particular age in history we see Israel in the fifth cycle of
discipline. The fifth cycle of
discipline or the fifth stage of discipline has not been removed and will not
be removed until Jesus Christ return again according to the prophecy of
Zechariah.
But right now the nation Israel, and this is why, incidentally,
something has happened in history that historians have been at a loss to
explain. Why is the nation Israel, that
has gone into captivity, one of the smallest nations who ever existed, why is
it that that nation has never been able to lose its identity. This is one of the great mysteries of
history. I read you a statement by a
Marxist historian, now a Christian, who said the one thing that got him when he
started analyzing history from the Marxist point of view was that he couldn’t explain
Israel. As he looked upon this nation he couldn’t figure it out. Why is it that this nation, small, you’d
think it would have dissipated, intermarriage, etc. and would have completely
lost its identity. And yet it
hasn’t. Israel has never lost its
identity and never will. It’s simply because God is holding them in abeyance
according to the provisions which we’ll see under the fifth degree of
discipline.
Let’s go back to the first degree, verses 14-17 and see how this came
true. These are the stages by which God
administered discipline. Remember the
agencies directly involved are the angelic council, they are the ones that are
doing this thing but the manifestations are in verse 14-17. “If you will not hearken unto Me, and will
not do all these commandments,” let’s what the discipline is going to be. [v. 15, “And if ye shall despise My statutes,
or if your soul abhor Mine judgments, so that ye will not do all My
commandments, but that ye break My covenant;”] verse 16, I will do this unto
you. “I also will do this unto you: I
will even appoint over you terror,” this is mental illness, “consumption,”
physical disease, “and the burning fever,” another physical disease, “that
shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and ye shall sow your seed
in vain, for your enemies shall eat it,” etc.
The main emphasis of the first degree of discipline is on physical
disease and military reverses and national fear. These are the first three
symptoms that God is administering the first degree of discipline: national
fear, military reverses and physical disease.
Turn to 1 Sam. 4:10 and you’ll see one instance where this was
applied. This is one of the first
military reverses the nation experienced. “And the Philistines fought, and
Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent; and there was a very
great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen,” a military
disaster. And by the way, look at the
casualty list, thirty thousand. When you
think of Vietnam just compare the two.
Here was one battle in the Old Testament, 30,000 casualties. They had tremendously high casualty rates but
again this was a symptom during the days of Samuel and the Judges that God was
applying this first degree of discipline.
Back to Lev. 26 to examine the second degree of discipline. The second degree of discipline is a little
more detailed and encounters a lot more pressure. In verse 18, “And if ye will not yet for all
this hearken unto Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
[19] And I will break the pride of your power,” this is the political and
economic structure of the nation, “and I will make your heaven as iron, and
your earth as bronze [bronze],” that’s an idiom for climatic adversity which
would hurt the agriculture, which means therefore the agrarian based economy
would collapse. Verse 20, “And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your
land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield
her fruits.” Here is a direct
agricultural impact of the second degree of discipline: business failure,
economic failure, climatic adversity.
In 1 Kings 17:1 you see where this came about in history. This is the famous drought when Elijah was
the prophet in the northern kingdom. If
you see this it will bring unity; some of you have picked a lot of material up
in Sunday School stories, etc. but you’ve never connected it, you’ve never seen
it altogether as one picture operating with these mechanical principles. “And Elijah, the Tishbite, who was of the
inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab,” Ahab happens to be the king and Elijah
is going to announce the initiation of the second degree of discipline upon the
nation, “As the LORD God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not
be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” God put the heat on and God actually
manipulated within the physical universe to bring this climatic adversity
about, to bring pressure economically upon the nation. And Elijah said it’s not going to be released
until I personally pray to the Lord for it, and you remember the story of
Elijah’s prayer. All this is tied in
with this second degree of discipline.
Turn to 2 Kings 7:1 you’ll see how once again historically this came
true. Here’s Elisha, “Then Elisha said,”
this is Elijah’s disciple, “Hear ye the word of the LORD: Thus saith the LORD,
Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel,
and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.” Now unless you know the culture of the times
you won’t catch what he just said. What he said was that prices are going to go
up like crazy tomorrow so buy your food today.
This is overnight inflation and it’s going to come about by a tremendous
loss of food. Remember, they were
dependent upon continual food because they didn’t have refrigerators and
freezers in that day; they had to have a continual supply of food. And once that supply of food was gone, that
was it.
In 2 Kings 8:1, “Then spoke Elisha unto the woman, whose son he had restored
to life, saying, Arise, and go thou and thine household, and sojourn
wheresoever thou can sojourn; for the LORD has called for a famine, and it
shall also come upon the land seven years.”
Now I want you to notice a verb there, “the LORD has called for a
famine,” here again we have the modes of the angelic council operating. As we explained before, the angelic council
carries out the dictates of Jehovah in the Old Testament. These angels gather about Him and they are
the ones that actually physically manipulate in the physical creation, and when
it says God has “called for a famine” it means that He’s gone before the
angelic council and said listen, I want a famine and I want it because I’m
applying the second degree of discipline on Israel, any volunteers. And if you saw the scene from 1 Kings 22 when
the angel stepped forward and volunteered to do this kind of activity. So the angelic council was the means God
used.
Now back to Leviticus and examine the third degree of discipline. Verses 21, “And if ye walk contrary unto Me,
and will not hearken unto Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you
according to your sins.” Now this is a
very unusual thing, it’s hard for us to visualize it today but it evidently did
occur in history. Verse 22, “I will also
send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy
your cattle, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be
desolate.” We don’t have any evidence
of these kind of animals directly by fossils but we do have gobs of evidence,
both in Biblical and non-Biblical sources that in the days of the Bible lions
and these predatory animals were a tremendous menace to the population. It’s kind of laughable to see a lion around
an oasis somewhere, but this evidently went on during the Biblical times
because it’s not just the Bible that’s reporting this thing. So here we have these wild animals that God
brought in. In Jer. 12:9, Hosea 2:18 we
have references to the invasion of these animal hordes and here you have the
administration of this third degree of pressure. [Jer. 12:9, “Mine heritage is unto me like a
speckled bird; the birds round about are against her; come, assemble all the
beasts of the field, come to devour.”
Hosea 2:18, “And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the
beasts of the field, and with the fowls of the heavens, and with the creeping
things of the ground; and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out
of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.”]
See, the pressure is getting more and more because now they’ve got
adversity economically, they’ve got adversity in their agricultural problems,
and they’ve now got the added adversity, these wild animals coming into the
land. And if you had a naturalistic
observer they’d say well isn’t it interesting, the ecology of nature is
becoming balanced and we’d have to explain Gresham’s law, etc. and all the rest
of the economic principles and we have to get involved in all these things;
there will be a naturalistic explanation.
But what I want you to see is the Bible calls you above the mere
naturalistic explanation of history and says listen, these things don’t happen
as a machine, the history doesn’t just go on like an IBM computer running
itself. It goes on under the personal
direction and administration of God.
You’ve got to see this picture if you’re going to have a Biblical view
of history. History is run by personages
operating behind the scenes. You’ve got
to see this concept.
The fourth degree of discipline gets a little more hairy, verses 23-26,
“And if ye will not be reformed by Me by these things, but will walk contrary
unto Me, [24] Then will I also walk contrary to you, and will punish you yet
seven times [more] for your sins.” Now
in verse 25 he brings in the sword, “And I will bring a sword upon you, that
shall avenge the quarrel [vengeance] of my covenant,” the quarrel is the rib and this is one of the great
discoveries that has just been made and that is that the prophetic literature
of the Old Testament answers to Deuteronomy because Deuteronomy sets forth the
Law and all the prophetic literature in the Old Testament has a law form.
That’s one of the great discoveries that Deuteronomy is in a suzerainty
treaty form, meaning that you have the suzerain or great king here, and he
would make treaties with vassal kings.
God used the same legal format when He set up His law, so in place of
one nation you have Jehovah and you have the twelve tribes down here and that’s
how He set the laws. It’s also interesting
that we know from ancient jurisprudence that these suzerainty vassal treaties,
if they were violated, the man who had the suzerainty position in the treaty
would administer the discipline or bring the curses down upon the vassal kings
by what is known as a rib, the “b” is
pronounced as a “v”, and a rib was a
lawsuit, it’s the Hebrew word for lawsuit.
This man would send down, say this vassal king, say the King of Tyre if
this happened to be the Hittite king or something, the King of Tyre was kind of
fooling around sending merchandise at a cheaper price, say to Pharaoh, and the
Hittite king would say just a minute, you owe me complete allegiance. And he’d
enter into lawsuit with the King of Tyre.
Fortunately from the ancient times we have pieces of these lawsuits and
lo and behold, when you compare the rib
of these treaties with the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, they line
up; the format is the same, which shows that the prophets of the Old Testament
were not just yelling and screaming about sin in the nation; it was far more
orderly than that. The prophets, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, those prophets were not just going around preaching, what they were
functioning as was a person who was delivering a legal claim and for example,
when Isaiah in chapter 1 opens up and says, Hear O heavens and hear O earth, I
have a rib with my nation; in Hosea 4
it’s the same thing, Hear O heavens, hear O earth, I have rib with my nation, and so God initiates the lawsuit proceedings
and that’s the story of the prophetic literature of the Old Testament. You have to see this because a lot of the
liberals today are saying that these people were revolutionaries and they were
tearing up society. Nonsense! They weren’t revolutionaries, they were going
back to law and order; they were going back to the original constitution of the
nation.
Always remember there are two ways the word “revolution” is being used
today. One, it is used in a conventional
sense, such as the American Revolution. That kind of a revolution means that
you go backward to a previous law framework that existed. Example: American
Revolution, we had the colonists over here in 1776 and they went backward to
the laws that controlled England in 1700 and before, the right of Englishmen,
and they demanded these rights and they skipped over George III and a few of
the other idiots that had taken over. The American Revolution was not, repeat, was not a revolution in the sense of the
French Revolution and the revolutions that you hear about. It was a revolution to get back to the
original principles and that is the way the prophets [are], they were
revolutionary speakers only in the sense that they overthrew the immediate area
to get back to an original principle.
The modern way “revolution” is being used, in the French Revolution,
1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917, they are using the word “revolution” and
today they are using “revolution;” they are using the word differently. Here they’re saying let’s smash society because
out of the rubble something might pop up. That’s entirely different; you’ve got
to see the two uses of the word “revolution” or you miss the point. When we speak of the American Revolution we
are not talking about revolution in this sense, nor when the Bible speaks about
revolution is it ever speaking about revolution in the modern sense. Jesus Christ was not a revolutionary in the
modern sense; He was a revolutionary in the old sense, He went back, not
forward in time, to an accepted legal principle. So you go through this literature and you
come to these controversies, you will see that they are legally tight, these
prophets weren’t free to just go around screaming and yelling about sin, they
were actually administers of the rib
or the lawsuit proceedings.
Now in verse 26, the end of the fourth degree, “And when I have broken
the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they
shall deliver you your bread again by weight; and you shall eat, and not be
satisfied.” In other words, the poverty
gets so bad that it takes ten women to one oven, in other words they had about
one-tenth of what they normally cook, and that’s going to be the
provision. Turn to 2 Kings 15 and you’ll
see where this was verified in history.
What had happened later on down through history the prophets told the
nation and they told the nation and they told the nation that God is going to
bring into effect these treaty curses and you can’t play around. So they said well too bad Jeremiah, in
Jeremiah it gets so bad they tore up… he wrote Scripture, and he sent it to the
king, he figured if the king wouldn’t listen to him maybe the king would
read. The king said I don’t like this,
so he tore it up and put it in the basket, so Jeremiah says fine, I’m going to
write it again and that king is going to remember this the rest of his
life. It’s going to go down in history
as a condemnation against this king. And
Jeremiah wrote that Scripture out and he kept it and that Scripture has since
become a testimony to the idiot kings of his day.
In 1 Kings 15 we have the beginning of the collapse of the northern
kingdom, [blank spot]. Remember Israel
was divided into two kingdoms. They had
the northern kingdom which you know as Israel, the southern kingdom as
Judea. It was the northern kingdom that
broke away from the southern kingdom; the north succeeded from the union here,
it was the north that went out and left. And the north in this situation became
apostate very rapidly. In fact, they
became apostate after the first king, so by the year 721 BC the Assyrians had
risen to power. The Assyrians were an
aggressive people; they moved all over the Ancient Near East, they were a cruel
people; the Assyrians were known in history for staking a person and they’d
stake a person out on the ground and then they have a little game they used to
play, they’d take out maybe 10 or 15 captives in the front, healthy men, and
then they’d have each soldier take a knife and they’d try to skin this man
alive and the man who got the most skin off before the person died by screaming
won. This was the kind of people the
Assyrians were, a very cruel people and they enjoyed this, this was kind of fun
to them, they’d move into some situation and pick out some good looking men and
some would look strong and then they’d start peeling. This was the kind of people they were, a very
cruel people. And the Assyrians began to move in and to discipline. God used
the Assyrians in 721 BC to collapse the northern kingdom.
2 Kings 15:5, “And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper,”
this is the beginning of the discipline, “unto the day of his death, and dwelt
in a separate house. And Jotham, the
king’s son, was over the house, judging the people of the land.” This is leading up to a tremendous disaster
in the nation. You see in verse 8 some
more about the kings; in verse 13 some more kings, verse 16, some more kings,
and you read this thing as the events become hot and heavy throughout here
until finally in chapter 16 you have the beginning of the collapse, “In the
seventeenth year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king
of Judah, began to reign. [2] Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign,
and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the
sight of the LORD his God, like David, his father.” This is in the southern kingdom.
Verse 3, “But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel,” see, the
kings of the Israel are the kings of the northern kingdom, and they were the
ones that were engaged in idolatrous practices, etc. and so in verse 5, “Then
Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to
Jerusalem to war; and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. [6] At
that time, Rezin, king of Syria, recovered Elath” etc. etc. etc. And you have a northern disaster where you
have the northern kingdom come down, coupled with Arimea, and they come down
and try to destroy the southern kingdom; the Israelites against the Judean
kingdom. This was a prelude to the
collapse of this whole northern kingdom for when they dared touch the southern
kingdom, then God lowered the boom.
And in chapter 17 we have the boom lowered; verse 2, “And he did that
which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel who
were before him. [3] Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and
Hoshea became his servant, and gave his presents. [4] And the king of Assyria
found a conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt,
and brought no present” and so on, and this wise guy on the throne of the
northern kingdom tried to double-cross the Assyrians. I just told you the background for the
Assyrians so you can imagine how these people reacted to someone that would double-cross
them. So when they got through with them… you can read down through this but
the rest of this explains how they moved into the kingdom and completely
destroyed it.
So in verse 24 they did something.
“And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and Cuthah, and from
Avva, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of
Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and
dwelt in its cities.” The Assyrians had
a policy. They had realized that you
can’t keep conquering and conquering and conquering and still hold the
territory so what you’ve got to do to hold the territory is move the people
out. So the king of Assyria, now that’s
not Arimea but Assyria is over here, Assyria comes in under Shalmaneser and
they take out all the leaders. The first
thing when they move into a nation, they get a list of the leaders in the
community and they say he’s a leader, he’s a leader, he’s a leader, they’re
going. And they deported all these
leaders out of the nation and left the people on the farms, etc. who may not
have been in a leadership position, and then in their place they brought
Gentiles. This is the beginning of the
Samarian race and why in the New Testament Jesus talks about the Good
Samaritan, because a Samaritan was a half-breed between the Gentiles that these
Assyrians had planted there and the Jews, and the Jews never could stand
them. This is why when Jesus was asked
who is your neighbor, He picked out a Samaritan. He picked out the lowest thing that the Jew
could think of and said that’s your neighbor.
So that’s the story of the Good Samaritan but the Good Samaritan started
back here under the policy of these Assyrian kings. They completely moved in,
they deported the people and finally it wound up in a complete muddle when he
brought in other people to settle the land.
Now back to Lev. 26 and see what’s going to happen at the end. This is the fifth and ultimate degree of
discipline. In verse 27, “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto Me, but
walk contrary unto me, [28] The I will walk contrary unto you also in fury;”
now here’s where there’s a tremendous expression for the anger of God,” and I,
even I, will chastise you seven times [more] for your sins. [29] And ye shall
eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” I told you to remember that from Deut. 28
because it’s going to be a feature, it’s going to be the tip off as the
prophets stand by and watch their nation go into decline and they watch their
nation lose military victory after military victory and finally they see the
internal collapse and they turn around and see these armies invading and they
see their cities besieged, and they see the people in such dire straits in the
cities that they’re going to begin to eat the flesh the sons and the flesh of
their daughters.
Verse 30, “And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your
images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul
shall abhor you. [31] And I will make your cities waste, and bring your
sanctuaries unto desolation,” etc. And
then he’s going to disperse them and he says in verse 36, “And upon them who
are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of
their enemies,” in other words, they will not have mental stability, they’ll be
afraid of everything, “and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and
they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword,” isn’t that beautiful sarcasm,
they’re going to hear a leaf rattling and they’re going to run because they’re
so scared. This is complete mental
breakdown in the society, this is not just individual, this is when you have
the whole society fearful, fear, fear, fear pervades the whole thing. Verse 37, “And they shall fall one upon
another, as it were before a sword, when none pursues; “complete mental
collapse, “and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies. [38] And ye
shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
[39] And they who are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your
enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine
away with them.”
You see what a horrible catastrophe.
That catastrophe was duplicated several times in history. In 586 BC a man by the name of
Nebuchadnezzar, who was a military genius, had a decision to make. Here’s the eastern end of the Mediterranean,
here’s Galilee, here’s the Dead Sea.
Nebuchadnezzar had moved his armies in here, he was actually thinking
about going down to Egypt as far as we know, and he had to make a decision, and
he had an arrow, and here’s his divine guidance, by witchcraft, he had an arrow
that he had chipped and this is what he was going to do; he’d take this quiver
of arrows and he’d throw it down on the road and the arrow that had the right
chip, whichever way that was, whether he should take the road to Jerusalem or
go down here and knock out Egypt, he’d do it.
And the chip fell for Jerusalem and so he said okay, therefore I’m going
to come into Jerusalem and he moved into Jerusalem and he just cleaned it; just
completely cleaned it. Jerusalem had a
series of fortifications from the west, they had been fighting the Egyptians,
but not from the east. This is why even
today you will never see Egypt by their own volition, ever give up the
territory conquered in the Six Day War over on the east side; they need that
territory, militarily they are vulnerable to an eastern land invasion and
they’ve known this and this is one reason why during the Six Day War they moved
over there quick and moved the troops into a blocking position so they could
get that Jordanian territory.
The Jews learned because in 586 they had all their defenses on the west
side and Nebuchadnezzar simply came up here, went across the Kidron Valley,
moved in and surrounded the whole town.
He had an interesting policy, these defense cities were scattered out
and so he’d move all his armies on one city, leave the rest of them alone, and
then he’d knock that city off. And then
he’d take all his armies and move them down on another city and knock that one
off. It’s called superiority of number;
modern military men who have used this technique to great advantage; during the
flying tiger fame of the 1940’s Chennault always was outnumbered in total
airplanes. The Japanese always had him
outnumbered in total airplanes, but Chennault had a little principle that he
told his pilots. He said when you engage
always make sure you’ve got two or three planes on every Japanese and so the
Japanese could have 30 planes over here but Chennault would lure two or three
of them over and then jump them with ten. Then what he’d do, he’d knock them
off and then he’d lure two or three more off and jump them, always making sure
that when the fight occurred they had more men in that locality than his enemy
had. This is an old trick that’s been
used again and again in military warfare where you pick off the enemy one by
one, always making sure that every time you pick him off, that in that locality
you have superior numbers.
And Nebuchadnezzar did this in 586.
When he invaded that city conditions were so bad that it was almost
unbelievable. But what Nebuchadnezzar
did to the city was nothing compared to what the Romans did. In 70 AD a man by the name of Vespasian,
actually in 68 AD, it shows you it took them two years; the Romans took two
years to conquer Jerusalem so you can imagine what a fight it was. And Vespasian came in, he was a tremendous
Roman General and he moved his armies here; the Romans finally had enough of
this, they had one revolt after another in Israel and Jesus Christ had
prophesied it. Do you remember the last words of Jesus Christ? Remember He told the people, when you see the
armies encompassing this city then you’d better get out. And Jesus Christ told the people leave, don’t
stay in that city; get out and move to the mountains, just like in the Second
Advent, it’s the same thing. Don’t stay
in the city, because in omniscience Jesus knew what would happen, He knew these
armies would come in and He was warning the people in grace, when you see these
armies closing in don’t stay to fight because they’re going to trap you there,
get out, head for the hills and you can get away from them.
But they wouldn’t and they stayed there, and it was one of the great
massacres of history; three to four million people died; people died of
starvation, people died of cannibalism, people died of disease, people had
wounds that were getting infected so they had to cut the whole limb off so they
wouldn’t spread the disease, etc. It was
tremendously adverse conditions and still they stayed on and hung in there and
the Romans would march around, they’d pick off one wall and they had another
wall in back of that and the Roman armies, Titus and Vespasian, by the way,
Titus was the son of Vespasian, and halfway through the invasion Vespasian was
called home to become Caesar. And when
he left he put his son in charge, Titus was a younger man, actually extremely
young for his position, but he was a good manager of the soldiers and he had a
heart, he didn’t want to annihilate these people and he did everything he could
to convince the people to surrender to the Roman Empire. But they wouldn’t and Titus marched his troops
around the city, asking them to surrender and the people sat on the walls and
spit on his soldiers. You only spit on
the Roman soldiers once and Titus said okay, if that’s the way it’s going to be
I’m going to come in there and clean you and he did.
I’m going to read a passage from Josephus who was a contemporary observer as he
looked on the scene. Josephus was
outside the walls; many Jews considered Josephus to be a traitor because he saw
the wisdom of the thing, he said look, you can’t fight Rome so let’s just
forget about it, make a treaty, swallow our pride and relax. But Josephus was used by Titus. See Titus had a propaganda staff and Josephus
was the head of it. And he would send
Josephus up to the wall to try to get these Jews to surrender because he didn’t
want to destroy them. Well, Josephus was
there as all this thing was going on and he gives us this report. We’ll just read this section. He’s describing
what happened on the inside of the city.
[Josephus, p. 578, Wars of the Jews] “Now of those that perished by
famine in the city, the number was prodigious and the miseries they underwent
were unspeakable; for if so much as the shadow of any kind of food did anywhere
appear, a war was commenced presently; and the dearest friends,” this
translation, by the way, was written in King James’ time so this is the roaring
King James English, unfortunately it’s not a good translation, “and the dearest
friends fell a-fighting one with another about it, snatching from each other
the most miserable supports of life.” Elsewhere Josephus relates how these
people and one man was so hungry that he’d have a piece of food in his mouth
and someone else would come up and grab it right out of his mouth and eat
it. This is how people can be driven to
fantastic behavior pattern by frustration and starving, etc.
“Nor would men believe that those who were dying had no food; but the
robbers would search them when they were expiring, lest any one should have
concealed food in their bosoms, and counterfeited dying: nay, these robbers
gaped for want, and ran about stumbling and staggering along like mad dogs, and
reeling against the doors of the houses like drunken men; they would also, in
the great distress they were in, rush into the very same houses two or three
times in one and the same day. Moreover,
their hunger was so intolerable, that it obliged them to chew everything, while
they gathered such things as the most sordid animals would not touch, and
endured to eat them; nor did they at length abstain from girdles and shoes; and
the very leather which belonged to their shields they pulled off and gnawed;
the very wisps of old hay became food to some; and some gathered up fibers, and
sold a very small weight of them for drachmae.
But why should I describe the shameless impudence that the famine brought
on men in their eating inanimate things, while I am going to relate a matter of
fact, the like to which no history relates, either among the Greeks or
Barbarians!” Now he’s going to relate a
shocker. Josephus is about to relate to
you one of the most fantastic events that ever happened in the history of
warfare. The reason why this event happened was because of the fulfillment of
the curse of Lev. 26.
“It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard. I had indeed willingly omitted this calamity
of ours, that I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity,
but that I have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age; and besides, my
country would have had little reason to thank me for suppressing the miseries
that she underwent at this time.”
“4. Now there was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was
Mary; her father was Eleazar, of the village Bethezub, … She was eminent for
her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the
multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had already
been seized upon; such I mean as she had brought with her out of Perea, and
removed to the city.” Now this woman was
an idiot, she did exactly what Jesus Christ told her not to do. Jesus Christ said when you see the armies
gathered around this city get out, don’t come in. So this woman was a wealthy, upper middle
class type and she said the safest place to go is Jerusalem, I don’t want to be
out here in the country. Listen, the
safest place in invasion is out in the country, not in the city. So she ran into the city, did exactly what
Jesus Christ had told them not to do, so watch what happens.
“What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived
to save, had also been carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day
running into her house for that purpose.
This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent
reproaches and imprecations she at these rapacious villains, she had provoked
them to anger against her,” in other words, she couldn’t get rid of these
guys. “…and if she found any food, she
perceived her labours were for others, and not for herself; and it was now
become impossible for any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced
through her very bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree
beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with anything but with her
passion and the necessity she was in.
She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching u her son, who
was a child sucking at her breast, she said, ‘O thou miserable infant! For whom
shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the
war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves! This famine also will destroy us, even before
that slavery comes upon us; yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than
both the other. Come on; be thou my
food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets and a bye-word to the
world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us
Jews.’”
“As soon as she had said this, she slew her son; and then roasted him,
and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently,
and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her, that they
would cut her throat immediately if she did no shew them what food she had
gotten ready. She replied, that she had saved a very fin portion of it for
them; and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and
amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight; when she said to them,
‘This is mine own son; and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come, eat of
this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more
tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so
scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half,
let the rest be reserved for me also.’”
That’s what happened and this was one of the most amazing events in
history and it’s never been duplicated before in the annals of ancient
history. It was so amazing that when
Titus, Josephus goes on, when Titus heard it he couldn’t believe it, because of
all of the fierce fighting of the Romans he’d never seen anything like this;
never saw people reduced to this tremendous level of behavior, and yet it was
all because of the pressure of discipline that God had put upon the nation.
Now look, we as a country have a similar principle operating. We don’t have five cycles of discipline, God
hasn’t entered into covenant with the USA but God has observed the blessing
principle in us; we showed last Sunday how as the Puritans built up the faith
of this nation it was transferred into this 18th century, from
1700-1800 this country prospered like no country on earth has ever
prospered. It prospered economically, it
prospered physically, it prospered in every way imaginable. You had fantastic blessing in that century,
due because from 1600-1700 you had Bible doctrine permeate through the society
and with the result you had tremendous blessing.
All right, what happened? We come down to the 1900’s and you begin to
have minus Bible doctrine, you begin to have apostasy in this country, and
isn’t it interesting that World War II was the last time this country had ever
had a military victory. Korea wasn’t any
military victory; when we get into some of these passages I’m going to give you
some of the speeches of General Douglas MacArthur and you’re going to see how
he felt about some of these things. This
country hasn’t had a military victory.
We haven’t had actual prosperity either; depression hit. Isn’t it interesting the depression hit very
much shortly after the great theological apostasy. This is not accidental; you’ve got to learn
to read history as a Christian and be concerned with it, that these are the
personal administrations of God, the principle of Acts 17 which says God sets
the boundaries in space and time of national entities to cultivate a positive
volition toward Him and when those nations disobey and they go negative
volition, then He collapses them and replaces them with another nation.
Basically there are only two things we’ve got going for us as a nation.
We’ve made every mistake possible in the area of foreign policy. We have done
everything we can to finance the Russian Revolution. If the Russians have something today it’s
because American money bought it. The
Americans have actually built the entire Russian economy by various lending
programs, etc. We have financed our
enemies, we have done everything we can, we have deprived our own men, we have
men come here for training and they’re going to be asked to go out and fight
some no-win war somewhere with a meat grinder because our country has forsaken
its principles. We don’t have leaders
that are willing to stand up for something, are willing to say if I’m going to
fight you I’m going to clobber you all the way.
And I’m not going to say well I’ll tie my hand behind my back if you’ll
tie your hand behind your back. That’s
what goes on. We’ve seen it
economically, we’ve seen it militarily, and that is the way we’re going to go
and there’s only one thing that can revert this and that’s getting back to
Bible doctrine, getting back to a positive volition in this country where a
maximum number of people trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and where a
maximum of those in turn get with Bible doctrine.
The only thing that is saving us basically is two, one we have not
become anti-Semitic. God says in Genesis 12:3 that any country that goes
anti-Semitic He is going to clobber in the sense that… by not being
anti-Semitic doesn’t mean you favor the Jewish people, it simply means you
treat them as you would anyone else. And
anti-Semitism is when the people gang together and try to eliminate the Jews,
God will eliminate them because that violates the principles of the Abrahamic
Covenant. The second thing that we’ve
got going for us is our missionary activity. There’s no nation on earth today
that’s sending out missionaries like America but our missionary task force is
dropping off so maybe the only thing we’ve got left is anti-Semitism. We’re in
a bad position and the only thing we can operate on as a national entity is
getting back to Bible doctrine and a maximum number of people with the Word of
God. That is the only thing that is
going to help this nation. This nation can have all the armies, all the programs,
everything it wants but nothing will take the place of a strong citizenry who
know Bible doctrine and can see and understand issues and analyze them from the
divine viewpoint.