Walking in the Darkness of What Seems Right in Our National Eyes

Numbers 11:18 And thou shalt say to the people, Be ye purified; for tomorrow ye shall eat some flesh; for I heard you say, Who shall give us flesh to eat? yea, it was well with us in Egypt; and so the Lord shall give you flesh to eat, 19 and ye (shall) eat (it) not only one day, either twain, either five, either ten, soothly neither twenty days, 20 but for a whole month of days, until it go out of your nostrils, and it turn loathsome to you; for by your grumbling ye have rejected the Lord, who is in the midst of you, and ye have cried before him, and have said, Why did we go out of Egypt? …

As we here in the USA prepare to eat burgers, hot dogs, sausages, huge sirloin steaks, and other grilled meats in gluttonous super-abundance this ‘Independence’ Day (4th of July) recall that, days before Obama signed the only superficially democratic healthdeath-care legislation, in March, 2010, a statue of the false Egyptian ‘god’ of death, Anubis sailed into New York harbor, in plain view, on an open barge, celebrated by school children before being sent on a tour of the country. In a sense, our elected Congress was saying: “it was well with us in Egypt… why did we go out of Egypt?”. Let us return to the ways of death under a totalitarian system. It’s more ordered; more predictable; more… civilized. This freedom-under-God, reliant-on-daily-bread, wandering until He calls us home thing is loathsome to us.

Even though we, as a nation, have sacrificed enormous amounts of blood and treasure escaping such ‘Pharaoh’ systems, (not only under the English monarchy of King George III, but through our opposition to Adolf Hitler, a National Socialist, not a right-winger, as most have been brainwashed to believe, not to mention Communism more broadly, throughout the Cold War), we somehow forgot.

Socialism and a strong man at the top, regardless of character, seemed somehow safer to most than the hard work of self-government (e.g., personal discipline, restraint, humility and generosity) repenting and loving one another ‘laterally’, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Just like the Israelites, we failed to learn and fell into the trap of 1st Samuel 8. (Never mind the dire warnings. Give us a king like the other nations!) How ironic in light of our origins…

Enough of this freedom stuff, we have said (and I use the past tense advisedly; it’s over, friends, but for an act of God; a very clever man with anti-socialist politics will not save us so long as he denies Revelation 22:18 — “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.” He will simply run us into a different ditch.).

“It was well with us in Egypt… why did we go out of Egypt?” Alas, too many of the rest of us did not oppose these things with the one weapon guaranteed to be effective (personal confession and repentance, then prayer, in that order) but instead we sought refuge in mere men and appeals to logic and reason — to worldly political solutions. All too often, when that has failed — and be honest with yourselves folks; I’m including myself in this one — we have resorted to anger and bitterness at how things were turning out, launching vitriolic barbs at men and women created in the image of God. As if we are less sinful in the eyes of God. As if we deserve better health care (by whatever mechanism) when we already have one of the best in the world, and half the planet is dying of easily preventable diseases.

The only thing we truly deserve — and we must remember this, every one of us, and not just in America, for it is the ground on which the good news of Christ’s gospel rests — is wrath.

Recall also, as DC struggles back from a widespread power outage, while the Washington Monument remains lit, that the obelisk is a Satanic symbol which derives from the same Egyptian religion and that it was damaged in the earthquake last August. So too, as you read the Numbers passage and choose between medium-rare and rare, cheddar or Monterey Jack, ketchup or mustard, toasted bun or cold, recall the recent spate of literal flesh-eating stories (and their allegorical meanings) — a phenomenon which seems hard to credit to anything other than demon possession (recognizing that such a condition can be accompanied by other destructive elements, such as drug-taking, which many mistake for an ultimate cause).

…23 [and] the Lord answered, Is the Lord’s hand unmighty, or without power? thou shalt see right now, if my word shall be fulfilled in work, or not. (WYC translation) See also Psalm 77:10 (WYC) — “…hath the right hand of the Most High God now lost its power?“

YHWH’s hand is of course NOT without power. Far from it.

As such, I find it remarkable that the capital of the nation which just this past Thursday re-endorsed its embrace with death is suddenly without power, and that as the result of a ‘derecho’ or bow-like storm (H/T: Jay; recall this post, on Genesis 9, regarding a ‘bow in the clouds’ and how it signifies Christ’s power.)

As another aside, remember how John Roberts — the surprise ‘swing’ SCOTUS vote on healthdeath-care — ‘bobbled’ the oath of office when he swore in Obama on January 20th, 2009? I remember thinking, at the time, that Roberts seemed to be under some kind of spell… almost as if he was carrying out a duty he knew to be fraught with spiritual conflict and peril. A little like Jesus in Gethsemane when the guards fell back, except in reverse. Drawn into the vortex out of the duty of his office, it was still hard for Roberts to get the words out. Later, he re-did the oath, without a Bible. It seems obvious in hindsight that the whole thing carried massive consequences, for this country and the world. Perhaps Roberts never escaped from that vortex…

Equally chilling in this whole context are YHWH’s words to Assyrian King Sennacherib, via Hebrew King Hezekiah. The scene comes just after the people under siege have remained silent at the King’s order. Recall that the ultimate antichrist is typologically identified, in scripture as ‘the Assyrian’. I find it helpful to read this in the context of the deep animosity on the part of this administration not only towards national (but eyes-not-yet-opened) Israel, but also towards those who would take Christ at his Word.

Isaiah 37:22 The young woman, Daughter Zion, despises you and mocks you; Daughter Jerusalem shakes her head behind your back. 23 Whom did you insult and ridicule? Against whom did you raise your voice and look up with disdain? It was against the holy one of Israel! 24 With your servants, you’ve insulted the Lord; you said, “I, with my many chariots, have gone up to the highest mountains, to the farthest reaches of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the best of its pine trees. I have reached its most remote lodging place, its best forest. 25 I have dug wells, have drunk water in foreign lands. With my own feet, I dried up all of Egypt’s streams.” [Symbolically and allegorically, in scripture, the drying up of streams indicates the shutting off of true worship of YHWH, while free-flowing streams mean the opposite; e.g., see 1st Kings 17, Ezekiel 47 & Revelation 21; just days ago, Egypt swore in a radical Muslim government; the genesis of that change -- the so-called 'Arab Spring' was something for which Obama took credit.]

26 Haven’t you heard? I set this up long ago; I planned it in the distant past! Now I have made it happen, making fortified cities collapse into piles of rubble. 27 Their citizens have lost their power; they are frightened and dismayed. They’ve become like plants in a field, tender green shoots, the grass on rooftops, blasted by the east wind. 28 I know where you are, how you go out and come in, and how you rage against me. 29 Because you rage against me and because your pride has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth. I will make you go back the same way you came.

Is it any accident that this seemingly improbable set of interrelated events is coming to a head during the week of our celebration of “independence” and “freedom”. For most these words no longer mean independence from Pharaoh-like tyranny, and freedom from the shackles of sin through Christ Jesus, but independence from the commandments of God, and freedom to do whatever seems right in our own eyes.

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