Is God interested in nations or only in individuals?

In a great many evangelical churches in recent years there has been a wholesale abandonment of the idea that God works within nations in particular ways. In those churches, it is all about evangelism and any sense of discipling the nation has been lost. In some churches it has become so severe they no longer even allow voter registration in the church. The question I am asking is what does God thinks about that?

We have a generation of church leaders who have adopted a multicultural model rather than a national model. In doing so, they have abandoned centuries of Christian thought. Indeed, they have abandoned centuries of Christian thought in America. My concern is that such leaders could never have produced a nation such as America had they not been born into it. They are coasting on a previous generation’s energy and investment. Like the prodigal, they are progressively cashing in their inheritance and will leave nothing behind for the next generation. By their omissions, Pastors are diminishing America.

In this message, I want to establish three things:
FIRST, that God designed the concept of a holy nation in the Old Testament.

SECOND, that it was retained in the New Testament.

THIRD, that American Christians and America’s founders envisioned America as a fulfillment of that concept for our nation.

I want to begin with the Apostle Peter’s audience in 1 Peter 1. He begins his epistle like this:
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood….”

He was writing to Christians who were chosen for obedience to Jesus Christ. This was no longer Judaism. This was Christianity. This was no longer Old Testament. This was New Testament Christianity. He gets down to it in chapter two when he writes in 1 Peter 2:9-17:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.

In this passage, it is clear that Peter is building the New Testament church squarely on the Old Testament concepts. Who are the chosen people? The Jews. Yet Peter uses that language for the church. Who was the holy nation? It was Israel. Yet now Peter uses that language to apply to members of the Roman Empire who happened to be Christians. He deals with them on a personal level. That would be verses 11-12.

After dealing with personal morality, Peter starts talking about government. He defines the role of government in rewarding good and punishing evil. I would point out that an Apostle is defining the role of government. It is not other people, secular people, defining government. The spiritual leader is saying what government should do. I suppose some would say that Church leaders should not be involved in politics. Yet Peter here, and Paul in Romans 13, define the role of government. Paul even goes so far as to say that government authorities are God’s servants.[1] We sometimes call ministers “God’s servants” but Paul uses that term for government.

I would ask my fellow preachers and church leaders a few questions:
1. Does your theology include government?
2. Do you inform government what it should do? Peter and Paul did.
3. If you adopt the idea that as a church leader you are only going to be concerned with saving souls and are not going to get involved in politics, do you see that you are not following the Apostolic pattern?

I think there is biblical evidence that both Paul and John were politically active. I have a chapter on that in my book The Revenge of Ephesus. In America today, the most fundamental debate is over the role of government. The Apostles spoke to that issue in their day, why shouldn’t church leaders do the same in our day?

Peter also defines the Christian’s relationship to government. He says that we are to submit to the government as part of our testimony. We put pagans and foolish people to silence by that relationship. We like to say that they will know we are Christians by our love but Peter here says they will know we are Christians also by our relationship to the government. Peter would not accept the idea that it is better not to be involved in politics and just concentrate on loving people and leading them to the Lord.

Let’s take this passage out of Peter and put it back into its Old Testament context. Peter sounds a lot like God at Mt. Sinai before the law was given.
“Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” (Exodus 19:3-6)

In a world of nations, God wanted Israel to be a holy nation. There was to be something special about that nation. They were to be obedient to God. For his part God promised economic blessings and defined borders.
“The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity – in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground – in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you.” (Deut 28:9-11)

In the Old Testament, when God said Israel would be a holy nation, he had in mind their economy, their land, and their governance. In short, it would be all the things that define a nation. This wasn’t just a spiritual kingdom of the heart. This was to be an actual kingdom with a particular relationship with God. They would be a nation among the nations.

Peter described New Testament Christians as being “… a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

He was incorporating by reference, the Old Testament concepts. This is not replacement theology. Rather it is continuity with the past. It is God bringing the same concepts forward into the church.

We have covered the first two points. First, that God designed the concept of a holy nation in the Old Testament. Second, that it was retained in the New Testament.

Now I want to turn to the third idea, that American Christians and America’s founders envisioned America as a fulfillment of that concept for our nation.

You see it from the very beginning. The Pilgrims were quite explicit in their goals in the Virginia Charter. “Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia …”

The connection between God and Country was deep. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

The echo of that is found in the words of the Pilgrim leader John Winthrop in 1630. Aboard the Arbella he said, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses …”
That vision has been a mainstay in America since the beginning right up to the present moment. Ronald Reagan said it. “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”

In his farewell address to add to it for emphasis “‘I’ve spoken of the Shining City all my political life … In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.’

Promised Land imagery figured prominently in shaping English colonial thought. The pilgrims identified themselves with the ancient Hebrews. They viewed the New World as the New Canaan. They were God’s chosen people headed for the Promised Land. Other colonists believed they, too, had been divinely called. The settlers in Virginia were, as John Rolf said, “a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the finger of God.”

This self-image of being God’s Chosen People called to establish the New Israel became an integral theme in America’s self-interpretation. During the revolutionary period, it emerged with new force.
“We cannot but acknowledge that God hath graciously patronized our cause and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient covenant people,” Samuel Langdon preached at Concord, New Hampshire in 1788.

George Washington was the “American Joshua,” and “Never was the possession of arms used with more glory, or in a better cause, since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun,” Ezra Stiles urged in Connecticut in 1783.
In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wanted Promised Land images for the new nation’s Great Seal. Franklin proposed Moses dividing the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army being overwhelmed by the closing waters. Jefferson urged a representation of the Israelites being led in the wilderness by the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. Later, in his second inaugural address (1805), Jefferson again recalled the Promised Land. “I shall need…the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and comforts of life.” [2]

When America was founded as a country, the preachers of America were aflame with that idea. They showed they had learned the lesson of the nation Israel who wanted a king like other nations. They created the motto of the American Revolution “No King but Jesus.”

Yale historian Harry S. Stout wrote an article in Christian History magazine titled, “Christianity and the American Revolution”. Here is what he said about America at the time of the Revolution:

“Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!”

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God’s. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist, to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God’s providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors.
“[Today] taxation and representation are political and constitutional issues, having nothing to do with religion. But to eighteenth-century ears, attuned to lifetimes of preaching, the issues were inevitably religious as well. When understood in its own times, the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event.” [3]

The idea of the expansion of America to the west was a religiously inspired idea. In 1845, an article in the Democratic Review, declared that expansion represented “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

In various ways, the people who put America together were people who believed in the concept of a holy nation. Because they believed we were a nation with a particular destiny given to us by God, they sought for God’s will to be accomplished. They were not ashamed of the laws required by the Bible.

When you see that giant American flag in this sanctuary, you are feeling a motivation of every generation of Americans. Indeed, Christians from the beginning have wanted to create societies that were more than just personally Christian. They longed for that holy nation. Today we are in a low ebb of that dream partly because we need a revival in our hearts and partly because church leaders have abandoned the historic vision for America. Indeed, most have little vision for America. An effete church does not give birth to a nation.

We are in times like those of Nehemiah. We must have both the tools of building and the weapons of warfare. “From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor … Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked.” [Nehemiah 4:16-18]

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[1] Rom 13:6-7 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.

[2] Conrad Cherry (ed.), God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1971). The quotations are from this book: Winthrop p. 43; Whitaker p. 33; Rolf p. 26; Langdon p. 99 ; Stiles p. 88; and Jefferson p. 65. The information about the Great Seal is found on p. 65. See also, Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegal, The Puritan Heritage: American Roots in the Bible (New York: A Mentor Book/The New American Library, 1964).

[3] Elesha Coffman, editor of Christian History Magazine, quoting from Vol. 50 of that publication.

Dr. Joseph B. Fuiten is the senior pastor of Cedar Park Church in Bothell, Washington, and he is the former president of Washington Evangelicals for Responsible Government and the Positive Christian Agenda. Currently, Pastor Fuiten is a founding member of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, an associate organization of Focus on the Family.

Since January, the federal government has taken over America’s largest banks and financial houses, our automobile industry, and now it seems determined to get control of our health care system. I am concerned about Washington state citizens’ loss of freedom. Our best hope is the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It says that the states are entitled to all rights not specifically delegated to the federal government.

Already, more than 30 states are studying the Arizona Health Care Nullification Bill that prohibits the federal government from forcing its version of health care on the residents of Arizona. The bill declares that Arizona citizens are free to choose any form of health care they desire.

WHY A HEALTH CARE NULLIFICATION BILL?

Constitutional Law professor Michael Connelly recently reviewed the entire text of President Obama’s proposed “public option” bill, The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. He says the bill is far worse than he imagined. Not only does it indeed provide for rationing of health care, free health care for illegal immigrants and free abortion services, the bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government-run system.

He says the bill eventually results in all decisions about personal health care being made by federal bureaucrats, most of whom will not be health care professionals. In addition, hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

BUT THAT’S NOT THE WORST OF IT -

As bad as that sounds, it gets much worse. According to Connelly, “This legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead, it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.”

In effect, he says, the Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is the Constitution does not grant members of Congress the authority to regulate health care or businesses.

The Obama bill would give his administration access to your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician and hospital. This is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. Your right to privacy will be nullified regardless of what the Third and Fourth Amendments may provide.

Finally, if your private health insurance is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by President Obama, you will be taxed. They’re calling it a “tax” instead of a fine because they want to avoid the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. However, that won’t work because since nothing in the law allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of a tax, it definitely deprives you of property without the “due process of law.”

LAST RITES FOR YOUR RIGHTS?

The 10th Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under Obama’s health care bill, neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

Clearly this is a federal government takeover – not a reform. It is a way to seize almost 20 percent of the economy and the final ownership of your body. The bill mentions no real cost-cutting measures, such as lawsuit reform. There’s nothing about stopping the tens of billions of waste, fraud and abuse of Medicare and Medicaid.

Decades ago, Ronald Reagan warned us how socialized medicine was a carefully calculated path to socialism, which is the ruling of a country by a few powerful elites. Reagan’s exceptional speech is well worth your time, and it’s a real wake-up call for us today.

I plan to demand enforcement of the 10th Amendment – State’s Rights. In 1997 I introduced Senate Joint Memorial 8002 – a letter from the State of Washington to the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress claiming sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The memorial reads, “Let this serve as a notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.”

While it did not pass, we are introducing it again in January. Rep. Matt Shea, R-Mead, will introduce House Joint Memorial 4009, and I will support it. You can follow this bill – and its progress at www.states-rights.org. Most importantly, we need you to write your state senator and representatives and tell them to support this legislation. With strong state’s rights enforcement, we can keep our freedom to control our lives – and your health care – exactly the way we want.

Sincerely, Val Stevens