Editor’s Note: This is Part One of the series which is printed weekly. To read the article in its entirety, go to harrisondaily.com and read PART ONE and PART TWO for the complete story.
Between approximately 739 and 721 B.C., Isaiah inscribed God’s warnings, condemnations, and threats of judgment, chastisement, and punishment for child sacrifice, idolatry, and spiritual adultery to the divided, as of 930 B.C., Jewish states of Israel and Judah. Isa. 57:8 … “You (Israel) have uncovered yourself to those (idols) other than Me, and have gone up to them (idols); you have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them (idols) … ; 9 … and debased yourself even to Sheol (Hell) … 58:..Tell My people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins … 59:2 … BUT your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, SO THAT HE WILL NOT HEAR. 3. For your hands are defiled with blood (child sacrifice), and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity (the new American civil right!) … 7. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood (again, child sacrifice); their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; WASTING AND DESTRUCTION ARE IN THEIR PATHS.”
And as it was for Israel and Judah, so it is now for this United States. Can’t anybody in our national “leadership” connect these dots with the here and now and divert us from what is otherwise in our own PATH due to our mimicking of the worst traits of Judah and Israel? No? Yes, you're right, we don’t have anywhere near the right leadership to even begin to recognize the depravity of our situation: only mindless, Godless, humanistic, ideological leadership to rapidly accelerate the diabolical direction that we have been headed in for far too long already.
Have you ever wondered what is worse? Ignorance, arrogance or impudence? Regardless, our country and its leadership are absolutely satiated with all three traits, and we are and will pay in spades for such as did and still are doing, Israel and Judah; with the added bonuses of all the sadness, grief, and horror that has and will emanate from these three now blatant and pronounced national traits which we have directed toward the God of gods and Lord of lords, the God of Israel.
Absorb the God of Israel’s declarations to His own nation through Moses while His people were still in the “outhouse” (those forty years in the desert as He purged His nation of 603,548 of the 603,550 man army of Israel [Joshua and Caleb being the only survivors of that chastisement], because of their refusal to enter the Promised Land due to the physical size of their Canaanite opponents). “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the Great God, mighty and awesome, WHO SHOWS NO PARTIALITY nor takes a bribe.” Deut.10:17. God does not show partiality, and that includes toward egoistic and id driven, heathenistic, hedonistic, paganistic, and God-debunking societies such as oursl
And in that latter year of 721 B.C., because of the total lack and absence of good kingship and/or any other intervening good subordinate influence; and in spite of the attempted leadership of God’s prophets which Israel ignored, or even worse, killed; God’s Isaiah inscripted threats and prophesied “bad paths” became a catastrophic reality when the Empire of Assyria invaded, engulfed, crushed, desolated, and annihilated the northern Kingdom of Israel. One is want, if the opportunity was possible, to ask an Israelite of that time if their rejection of their God and His standards was worth it? After the above litany of calamities, is there any doubt as to what that survivor’s response would be?
As mentioned previously, the Kingdom of Judah, among its more numerous bad kings, was nevertheless blessed with some good kings (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah), who attempted during their reigns to return themselves and their nation to the commandments and standards of the God of Israel; and in so doing they bought the southern Kingdom of Judah a little over one hundred and thirty additional years of God’s blessed trait of patience; even though suffering during that time from two Babylonian incursions in 605 and 597 B.C.
But then the cumulative effect of Judah’s bad kings and spiritually destructive leadership of rebellion and idolatry against God would bring His third and calamitous chastisement on Judah in 586 B.C. Chastisement by the same perpetrator of the two previous incursions, Nebachadnezzar and the Empire of Babylon. As you will see momentarily, God calls this perp “My Servant.” The God of Israel frequently uses bad guys to punish those whom He decides and desires to chastise; even those who were formally good guys, even His own Chosen People.
Jer.25:9: “Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north (the various peoples of the Babylonian Empire), says the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, MY SERVANT (see what I mean?), and will bring them against this land [Judah] (see what I mean?), against its inhabitants (God’s own people), and against these nations all around (including Egypt, Moab, Edom, Ammon, etc.), and will UTTERLY DESTROY THEM, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations. 10. MOREOVER (if that was not enough!) I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness (I too presently feel the absence of both in my life due to our nation’s spiritual insanity), the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones (looks like somebody is about to go hungry!) and the light of the lamp (we’ve been turning out our national lamps since 1962 and it is getting downright dark). 11. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment (What fun! Weeee!!), and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”
Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian Empire had begun its domination of the Middle East by defeating the Empire of Assyria, and thereafter had made Judah its satellite and satrap by 605 B.C. That initial incursion would involve Babylon taking some of the more accomplished, bright, and educated of the nation of Judah back to Babylon. Among that group would be four names of whom you most assuredly have heard: Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel. Well, maybe not those names, but their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-Nego, and Belteshazzar, respectively. Daniel 1:6-7 … ’member?
This invasive incursion would, of course, not be the last nor the worst. God gives us plenty of opportunities to change our behavior before He finally decides that we just cannot obey; nay, will not obey Him. In Judah’s case, Babylon would revisit Judah and Jerusalem in 597 B.C. and appropriate more of Judah’s non-organic treasures as well as more of her gifted sons; one of whom is another familiar name: Ezekiel.
But, as you are well aware by now, nothing seemed to impress Judah into conforming her ways to her God’s ways. Not the historical lesson of the annihilation of her northern sister kingdom of Israel; not the two incursions of 605 B.C. and 597 B.C. into her own domain with the expropriation of her monetary treasures; nor even the appropriation by Babylon of what would have been many of her future national leaders such as Daniel, Ezekiel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego; along with others whose names we have not been given. NADA!!!
Soooo, there was NADA left for God to do, but fulfill the curses and “bad paths” (Lev.26; Deut.27:11-26; 28-32; Isa.59:7; Jer.14-15; Matt.23-24) which He had set before Israel through Moses and above all, His Son 1450 years later; and threatened in the event His people chose to go their way and not His way; including the grotesquely evil behavior of Baalish idolatry in which CHILD SACRIFICE was part of the service. “For great is the anger and the fury that the Lord has pronounced against this people” (Jer.36:7). God’s prophet Jeremiah would have a front row, center seat to witness Judah’s destruction since he would be in Jerusalem at the time of the Babylonians conquest of Judah; the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem; the destruction of Solomon’s Temple which had been built between 966 and 959 B.C.(Jer.26:18); and the beginning, in that year of 586 B.C., of Judah’s prophesied seventy year Babylonian captivity (Jer.25:12; 29:10).
And to the very end, God through Jeremiah was condemning Judah for its horror, abomination, and vile sin of SACRIFICING HER INFANT SONS AND DAUGHTERS to, of all things, idols; whether of the foreign kind, or Judah’s own homemade “stiffs.” Let’s get a sense of God’s burning displeasure with this remnant of His people called Judah; formerly of God’s previously eliminated United Kingdom of Israel way back in 930 B.C. And Jeremiah was the designated prophet to pass the Word along to his fellow citizens and nation; encapsulated and highlighted by these ominous nouns of portent: the sword, famine, and pestilence (just the sort of things one always loves being involved in).
Jer.1:13: “ ‘What do you see?’ (God asks of Jeremiah) And I (Jeremiah) said, I see a BOILING POT (wonderful!) and it is facing away from the north. 14. Then the Lord said to me: ‘ Out of the north (Babylon) CALAMITY shall break forth on all the inhabitants of the land (Judah). 15. For behold, I am calling all the families of the kingdoms of the north’ (the Empire of Babylon), says the Lord; they shall come and each one set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its walls all around, and against all the cities of Judah. 16. I will utter MY JUDGMENTS against them concerning all THEIR WICKEDNESS, because they (Judah) have FORSAKEN ME, burned incense to other gods, and worshipped the works of their hands (idols).
Try this little warning of God’s for Judah: Jer.16:3: “For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land: 4. They shall die GRUESOME DEATHS; they shall not be lamented nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth (have you ever seen the documentary film of the literal mounds of Jewish bodies in the just liberated German concentration and extermination camps at the end of WWII; and the actual use of bulldozers to drive those mounds of former men, women, and children into long gouged out trenches for “burial” in an effort to control the deadly diseases so prevalent in those places of terror and life ending horror?
The United States has done a better job of hiding the sixty million and still counting young victims of our own holocaust since 1973; though we do, from time to time, get a glimpse when the efforts of the abortionists have embarrasingly “fallen out of the disposal facilities” and been observed in fly infested dumpsters behind “healthcare facilities,” hospital mop closets, and at least 2400 infant remains in jars within a deceased abortionist’s home and car in Illinois; just to name a few smears in the abortion industry’s public relations paint and makeup to conceal the perversity, savagery, and depravity for their chosen means to “protect womens rights”).
Jer. 16:4: … “They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth. 5. For thus says the Lord: ‘Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; FOR I HAVE TAKEN AWAY MY PEACE FROM THIS PEOPLE,’ says the Lord, ‘lovingkindness and mercies. 6. Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried; neither shall men lament for them’ …
“And it shall be, when you (Jeremiah) show this people all these words, and they say to you, Why has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord God? 11. Then you (Jeremiah) shall say to them, Because your fathers have forsaken Me, says the Lord; they have walked after other gods and served them and worshiped them, and forsaken Me and not kept My law. 12. And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one walks according to the imagination of his own evil heart; so that no one listens to Me. 13. Therefore I will cast you out of this land into a land that you do not know, neither you nor your fathers; and there you shall serve other gods day and night, where I will not show you favor.’ Jer.1:17: “Therefore (Jeremiah) prepare yourself and arise … ” (because Jeremiah himself is going to be caught in a maelstrom of his own from the hatred, death threats (Jer.11:21-23; 26), and imprisonment (Jer.38), inflicted upon him from all of Judah [from the lowly to the kingly] because of his constant, dreadful, prophetic news, even though all these pronouncements of DOOM are clearly from the God of Israel, and not from Jeremiah.)
Just for a little added emphasis, listen to God’s warnings and threats to Judah by another prophet and jeremiad named Habakkuk: 1:5: “Look among the nations and watch — be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you (Oh, boy!!! Here we go again). 6. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans (another description of the Babylonians), a bitter and hasty nation, which marches through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs (such as Judah!). 7. They are terrible and dreadful ...; 8. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and more fierce than evening wolves. Their chargers charge ahead; their cavalry comes from afar; they fly as the eagle that hastens to eat (and Judah is on the menu). 9. They all come for violence; their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand (including Judah). 10. They scoff at kings (such as Judah’s powerless ones), and princes are scorned by them. They deride every stronghold, for they heap up mounds of earth (siege mounds to cross over the walls of fortified cities such as Jerusalem’s) and seize it.”
Have you noticed that there is never much, if any, popularity for a messenger or messengers, such as Jeremiah and Habakkuk, who consistently bring bad news and demand changes in the paths of life, though they be destructive and frequently lethal, which the hearers are so heartily and enthusiastically engaged in and committed to; and even though those words and advice are and meant for their good and betterment. Regardless, those kinds of people are called “jeremiads,” and are usually or become highly unpopular.
Believe me, I found that out pretty quickly, and have had that unpleasant experience when I found myself as a jeremiad during twelve years as a judge; and collecting a few death threats of my own. But I am also personally aware of more than just a few individuals whom I attempted, during those years on the bench, to talk out of their dangerous, potentially lethal, and illegal behavioral patterns (primarily alcohol and drug abuse and/or reckless driving inclinations) when they appeared before me in court. They, however, were apparently unpersuaded; did not alter their destructive paths and behavior; and later died due to that unrelinquished, cherished, but sadly, in their own lives, deadly behavior. Or even worse, accidently killed a fellow comrade in their ill conceived lifestyle, or an innocent victim (such as their spouse, of whom one was pregnant at the time of her and her unborn child’s tragic deaths); or a friend; as well as prison sentences. One defendant would eventually get forty years of his life planned for him as the result of an accidental shooting death while intoxicated.
Actually and sincerely, he was attempting to help his friend. For during one late alcohol saturated weekend evening, some disputed matter arose between this individual and his friend with another group from another county and a fight ensued. In an attempt to assist his buddy, who was apparently getting the worst end of his own physical engagement, he whipped out his pistol and attempted to shoot his friend’s opponent. As one might expect, his aim wasn’t the best due to his own inebriated state, and well you know the rest of the story. His friend got the bullet intended for his opponent, and the shooter got forty years for his benevolent undertaking.
I had initially seen this individual many years earlier over a DWI when he was nineteen; and during his arrest for said offense, attempted (he was strapping) to rip the arresting officer’s patrol unit’s door off its hinges. He would spend some time in the Boone County jail for such extracurricular activity, during which time I attempted to talk with him about his life. Once released however, he was out of my life; at least, for a long time.
It is interesting how I came to know about this individual's tragedy after my contact with him over his DWI and attempted rearranging of the patrol unit’s exit and entry mechanism. It would be many years later, and after being defeated for re-election in 1994. I have jokingly stated many times since 1994 that I am no longer a judge because of health reasons — The constituents got sick of me! — Much of that “sickness” arising from delivering and pronouncing, like a jeremiad, repeatedly and persistently, unwanted, unappreciated, and hated news to unbelieving defendants who feit that it was all undeserved; sorta like the people of Israel, Judah, and all other peoples and nations today not liking God’s standards and doubting His warnings!
I met him again unexpectedly in prison. No, I was not there for multiple DWIs as some of my detractors rumoured about when I was judge; but I had taken a group of Criminal Law students from NorthArk on a field trip to one of our state’s prisons outside Calico Rock.
After a tour of the institution, there is a time referred to as a Prisoner Exchange which grants the students an opportunity to speak to the prisoners about what placed them there. During that time an unrecognized individual approached me and “reintroduced” himself. He told me that by that time, he had already spent thirteen years incarcerated for the manslaughter of a friend; and he actually said (believe it or not) that he had and still did wish he had listened to my advice those many years earlier regarding the abstention of alcohol for his personal and others well-being (other detractors referred to my advice as “lectures,” and I do suppose they were).
He also told me that he had been seeking parole for several years since “the shooting was an accident” (legally, he was referring to his lack of mens rea [criminal intent], thereby asserting the “accidental” nature of his friend’s death); but the family of his deceased friend had always been unimpressed by that claim and had vociferously (my word, not his) opposed any granting other than the fulfillment of his original sentence (If you have forgotten, it was a forty year stint). I told him I was deeply sorry for his circumstances, but that I would not attempt to interfere by writing a letter to the Governor promoting his release. I genuinely wished him well though, but left him there at the prison where he expected to be compelled to serve at least half of his forty year sentence before the state will, in cases like his, apparently grant parole with or without the victim’s family’s approval. One reason: a high demand for occupancy!!!
Unbeknownst to either of us at the time of our re-acquaintance, he was already suffering from terminal cancer; and shortly thereafter began to rapidly succumb to the disease. As a result, he did receive a release from prison; but only to a rest home/hospice style facility where he died some months after I saw him in what, at that time at least, appeared to be his still long term residence at the Calico Rock state prison. All for what — a deadly alcohol fueled evening?
I also recall another attempted court effort to alter an individual’s alcohol abuse. I learned from the paper which you are presently reading, many years after our court colloquy, that the individual had been camping out with the requisite “spirits”, and during the night, and in need of relieving himself, he walked away from the campsite, into the darkness, and right off a cliff. In another case, though I recall no effort on my part to dissuade the individual other than his sentence for a DWI. At some later time he apparently became despondent, decided to end his life, put a gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. The aim was apparently too shallow for his brain, but sufficiently deep to destroy both of his eyes, and he was lamentably and permanently blinded.
But the one I remember the most — was my friend. His name was David MInear. I came into the court’s office one day, and saw an individual that was horribly crippled. Every movement was an effort. Every word uttered was a strain. He had come into the office to pay his ticket. It was for parking in a handicapped zone! Yes, even in that horribly extreme and limited condition of his, the State of Arkansas had granted him a drivers license. But he apparently had neglected to acquire his handicap parking sticker. I immediately told him to just obtain the sticker and the citation would be dismissed. If ever there was one entitled to a handicap permit, David Minear was the supreme applicant!
I asked him to join me for a little while, and we talked. I enquired as to what had happened to place him in such dire straits. He replied that twenty or so years before, he had joined the U.S. Navy. He then was assigned in his late teens, as a member of a crew whose mission was to launch and recover aircraft off the deck of an aircraft carrier. That is a job, obviously, where one’s life is on the line every moment one is on the flight-line; and the immense need for “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, ‘cause Jack has got to jump over and around stuff far bigger than a candlestick!”
He had come home on leave to visit his parents in Iowa; and one evening, you guessed it, he engaged in drinking and driving and had a one vehicle accident. He remembered absolutely nothing as to what had happened. In fact, he didn’t know anything for at least thirty days. He was in a coma for that long; but when and while he regained consciousness he learned then that he had lost forever a vast amount of what had been an intimate part of his former life: just about everything that all of us would term, our physical health.
David told me that once he became aware of his surroundings again, he would spend months in rehabilitation attempting to learn how to walk again, talk again, and even how to eat again!!! For his entire muscular system barely functioned after that. He used a cane constantly as he fragilely and completely unsteadily would make his way about; but due to his catastrophic injuries, when he tripped and fell which was frequent, he was unable to quickly get his hands out to catch his fall. I saw him fall one day in the court’s parking lot, and His whole body and head just smacked into the pavement. It was sickening; yet with my help he cheerfully got up and proceeded onward.
That first day of our meeting, I asked David if he would be willing to come to court when it was in session to give and clearly demonstrate a clear reason to others as to why not drink and drive. And he was delighted to do so, for there was nothing else for him to do; and he most definitely desired to get others to learn from his own experience. So He would do this for me, for his own sense of responsibility, for the defendants, for the community for a couple of years; until I got my pink slip from the voters of Boone County.
We first tried letting him speak directly to the defendants, but it was so hard for him to enunciate his words and difficult for the defendants to understand him that we finally settled on another approach. He would take his seat very early on court days so that no one coming to court usually saw him other than just sitting waiting for proceedings to begin. The crowds would come and court would begin.
Early in the court session, because I wanted as many people as possible to hear and see David’s story, I would call a DWI case. If the defendant pled guilty, I would question the defendant as to the particulars of his case as well as discuss, lecture, advise, whatever, the defendant’s illegal behavior and legal consequences which he had brought down upon himself. As I did, I would also ask David to approach the bench from his location in the deep back of the courtroom. As I spoke, I instructed the defendant not to look at me, but at David. With significant effort, David would hang his walking cane around his neck, laboriously raise himself from his sitting position, and move down the aisle and into the center walkway of the courtroom. It would take him at least a minute just to accomplish that, before proceeding down the center aisle to the bench where I and the defendant were able to see his glacially slow, tortured, crippled progress.
I would advise the defendant who would be gaping at this approaching apparition that he and David had something in common. And give David a chance to say something so that the defendant could at least hear his throttled speech patterns. And then I would relate to the defendant that David wished he was in the defendant’s shoes with just his legal difficulties, instead of his lifetime of woe, which was by then in its twentieth year.
I would close by telling the defendant that David was looking forward to something, and asked if he might have any idea what that something might be. Invariably the defendant would shake his head in the negative, with some having tears in their eyes. Then I would tell him that David was looking forward to dying; that he was looking forward to being released from the prison of his own body; and that he knew that where he would go when he died would be far, far better than where he was presently. David was by now a Christian, and it brought him great relief and confidence from his pain, loneliness, debilitation, and sorrow over what had transpired twenty years before. Not much later, after he and I had left the court, he got his desire.
On a late Friday evening, he was proceeding to Iowa to visit his parents. He was somewhere near Kansas City when a drunk driver crossed the median and slammed into David. I do not know what happened to the other driver. I do know this however: that because David had put his trust in the Son of God for forgiveness, David is, has been since his death, and will forever more enjoy the most magnificent case of physical and spiritual health and well-being which transcended the capability of David and transcends the capability of our minds to conceive today. It is there for all to embrace and glory in. Please! Don’t let the greatest gift the world will ever know or receive, Jesus Christ, go unaccepted. It is the harbinger of infinite life in God’s infinite kingdom.
There is a lot of bad behavior in this state and nation. You get a nice waft of it every time you read the paper; and, therefore, there is a constant and huge demand for space in our state’s “correction” facilities for “worthy” candidates. So we at least attempt to give them a scent and a hint of “correction” (but don’t dare teach them the Ten Commandments such as “do not kill and do not steal” in their formative years in public school, because that would be unconstitutional according to SCOTUS. Wouldn’t want anything to interfere with developing a potentially criminal career and possibly improve our individual, congenitally stunted, and spiritually dwarfed lives!) before the next worthy candidate for correction arrives; thereby compelling the release of the still uncorrected previous worthy candidate for correction. Gotta keep that “correction” belt a movin’!
You have already noticed in our paper I am sure, that local law enforcement repeatedly has to release those whom they have just arrested and who had previously outstanding warrants of arrest for other anti-social and illegal behavior (such as failure to appear in court for a previous offense) because there is just “no room in the inn.” So what happens? Law enforcement issues another court date, and requires the perp to sign, get this, a signature bond which in effect says: “I promise as a perp that I really will be a good boy or girl this time and solemnly promise to appear on the next court date, heh, heh, heh!” In the meantime law enforcement asks government leaders to expand an already brand new, expanded jail, because there is still “no room in the inn.” The demand in our county for “room in the inn” is, as it is everywhere else, voluminous.
God has advised, lectured, and warned us all through His Word: “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation (and how); but be filled with the Spirit” (God’s Spirit, God the Spirit, Paraclete, and Comforter), Ephesians 5:18; “Wine is a mocker, intoxicating drink arouses brawling (as demonstrated above by my former court and prison acquaintance), and whoever is led astray by it is not wise (in fact, at least while intoxicated, one has rendered any “wisdom” that he may have possessed null and void). Prov.20:1; and “Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbor, pressing him to your bottle, even to make him drunk … ” Habakkuk 2:15.
Here, too, are a few of not just temporally good pieces of advice, but ETERNALLY LIFE SAVING Biblical admonitions and advisements for every last one of us from the God of the Cosmos: “The FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM” ... Ps.111:10; “THE FOOL HAS SAID IN HIS HEART, THERE IS NO GOD … Ps.14:1; and Ps. 90:10: “The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. 11. Who knows the power of Your anger? For as (our) fear of You, so is (our fear of) Your wrath. 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Or this translation: “TEACH US TO CONSIDER THAT WE MUST DIE, SO THAT WE MAY BE WISE.”
And for a brief read that spells out literally the ultimate options in life, peruse the Gospel of John chapter 3. Read it slowly and frequently that one might fully understand God’s truths and love for us, manifested by His Son’s sacrifice on the cross, at God’s behest; and the awful, unending, eternal consequences that flow from our rejection of His proffered love and salvation. These are some of the finest and quintessential truths, advice and instructions from our Holy, Inerrant, God, and for Christians, Holy Father and Abba, which if followed, would alleviate vast, vast, vast quantities of human misery, tragedy, and calamitous consequences across the globe and throughout eternity. But, what does God know? Oh yeah, sorry for the lecture, too.
Jer.2:4: “HEAR the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob and all the families of the house of Israel. 5. Thus says the Lord: What injustice have your fathers found in Me, that they have gone far from me; and have become idolaters? 6. Neither did they say, Where is the Lord , Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, Who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and the shadow of death, through a land that no one crossed and where no one dwelt? 7. Brought you into a bountiful country, to eat its fruit and its goodness … ” (And now, sports fan, comes the cruncher!!!)
“BUT when you entered, you DEFILED MY LAND and made MY HERITAGE (Israel) an ABOMINATION. 8. The priests did not say , ‘Where is the Lord?’ AND THOSE WHO HANDLE THE LAW DID NOT KNOW ME; … (precisely like the judicial system of this nation).
As mentioned in a previous segment, SCOTUS ruled, in the 1962 case of Engle v. Vitale, by a 6-1decision regarding a New York state school system non-denominational prayer, with student non-participation allowed if so desired, that the voluntary and innocuous New York state’s Regents Prayer violated the “establishment clause” of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It could have just as easily ruled that the prayer was constitutional under the same amendment’s “free exercise thereof” clause; but the Warren Court, as that liberal court came to be known, chose to negate a general national practice going back to our very founding colonial establishments beginning in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia, and routinely followed particularly subsequent to the creation of the 1789 Constitution and its amendments until SCOTUS’ decision in 1962. President Dwight D. Eisenhower later stated that the worst mistake he made during his presidency of eight years was the nomination of Earl Warren of California to SCOTUS as Chief Justice.
With many other rulings that would come out of this court in the following years, our courts, both federal and state, have clearly and routinely shown a profound lack of awareness of one of the basic laws of our cosmos: that God there is, and it is one humongous, gargantuan, colossal, titanic, and mammoth mistake to ignore Him and His standards. An act which neither our founding fathers ever contemplated or intended doing; contrary, however and in fact, to the inclinations of this nation’s present regime.
But once a nation begins to flout, ignore, deny, object, and reject God and His laws for His creatures as ours has; and then eventually rules as ours has that God is for all intents and purposes unconstitutional and illegal as did SCOTUS in the 1962 Engle case, bad things will eventually begin to happen; either slowly and insidiously oozing out, or suddenly erupting to undermine the well-being, peace, tranquility, serenity and prosperity of our former great culture and civilization. You know, our former, past, post, late, long-gone Judeo-Christian culture and civilization which was founded upon and maintained under laws which had been given and granted to the Israelites by God through Moses.
The Ten Commandments being the foundation for all the other laws given by God through Moses to His Chosen, as well as intended and eventually for the whole world; such as we find today in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and elsewhere in the Old Testament by Israel’s prophets, with further amplification and addendums by God the Son and His apostles in the New Testament.
Let’s take a look at what God has to say in His timeless, always pertinent, Holy Written Word about the laws He enunciated 3400 years ago through the prophet Moses: Deut. 4:1: “Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe, THAT YOU MAY LIVE, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you. 2. You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take anything from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. 3. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor; for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal of Peor. 4. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you. 5. Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act accordingly to them in the land which you go to possess. 6. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is YOUR WISDOM and YOUR UNDERSTANDING in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation (Israel, before its collapse due to the rejection of these very laws being spoken of by Moses) is a WISE AND UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE.’
Our cultural erosion, corrosion, degeneration, and putrefaction, is like a medically hinderless terminal cancer; even though in our case we have done absolutely nothing to attempt to radiate or apply chemotherapy to this spiritual disease; but have done the exact opposite; in fact, we have done every and all things to exacerbate it. Just watch what unfolds over the next couple of years with the united government we now have in D.C. with the opening salvo and unveiling of its newly declared “dual flag” for the United States: the oh, so old, trite, boring American flag, but now enhanced by and burnished, by the bright, colorful, hip addition of the rainbow flag of the avant-garde, sophisticated lgbtqaddddd (lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, abominable, deviant, depraved, demented, debauched, and degenerate) and glaad (gay and lesbian alliance against defamation) movements embraced by the Democratic Party and their standard bearers. I am sure God is presently scrambling to bring His 3,400 year old statutes into conformity with this nation’s new standards to avoid future litigation as a defendant for hate crimes and defaming the above sexually cool folks.
Eight hundred years earlier, God had used Moses, between 1446 and 1406 B.C., to instruct and inscribe for reading by the United Kingdom of Israel His truths, His expectations for His people, and, by His omniscience, what would fully come upon His people due to their stiff-necked, obstinate rebellion. This quote is a tad lengthy, but highly instructive; and if you like horror stories, this passage is for you (keeping in mind that the Apostle Paul in I Cor.10:1-10 stated that Israel IS AN EXAMPLE AND AN ADMONITION. i.e., these scriptures are applicable to us of today as well)
Deut.32:5: “They have corrupted themselves (Man! What a perfect description of our country today; we have reverted back to the past, weeee!); They (Israel, Judah, America, the world, or all of them), are not His children, because of their blemish: a perverse and crooked generation. 6. Do you thus deal with the Lord, O FOOLISH AND UNWISE PEOPLE? Is He not your Father, (God’s brief and nostalgic look back into Israel’s history before turning to what God, through Jeremiah, declares will now be Judah’s new reality) Who bought you? Has He not made you and established you? … 9. For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance. 10. He found him in a desert land and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him (Israel) as THE APPLE OF HIS EYE … 12. So the Lord alone led him, and there was no foreign god with him.13. He made him ride in the heights of the earth, that he might eat the produce of the fields; He made him to draw … oil from the flinty rock (good stuff, no?);
Indeed, in keeping with God’s Biblical declarations as set out above, within the last decade or so, Israel has begun making serious discoveries of more and more petroleum and natural gas; Finally!! After being only one of a few Middle Eastern nations without huge reserves of oil and gas beneath the surface. Jewish people have long jokingly complained about and criticized both God and Moses, because after leaving Egypt with God’s people, God had Moses turn left to a land apparently and long thought oilless, instead of right: to lands with oil and natural gas coming out the kazooooo; e.g. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq, and Iran. Not any more, however.
But even more impressive now, Israel has discovered off shore in the eastern Mediterranean between Israel and Cyprus a huuuuuuge reservoir of natural gas, and in cooperation with Cyprus is already extracting substantial quantities of this extremely valuable commodity for their own use and are building an underwater pipeline to transport large excesses of it to a ravenous, oil and gas starved Europe. As of late February, 2021, it was announced that another undersea pipeline will be built to Egypt in an agreement to use Egypt’s underused natural gas liquefying plants to further facilitate the refining and transportation of that resource eventually to Europe as well as meet Egypt’s own needs, too. But, alas, with all good things it seems, there also appears to be a fly in this ointment for Israel as well:
One: this development could have a very significant, negative, and highly unappreciated impact on the price of the Russian Federation’s own exports of oil and natural gas to Europe and a major source of access to its constantly serious need for foreign monetary currency. Anybody want a big pile of Russian rubles? Ah, come on. You can get in on the ground floor with this currency for a great retirement investment! OK, ok, so the Russian ruble is rubble! Can’t blame a guy for trying though.
As we are all also fully aware, Russia and its predecessor, the late, never-great, loathsome, murderous Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, sadly still with us under just another name, has never been big on competition, whether domestically or foreign. Under communism the only serious “owner” of property is the gumment. You may not be aware that Joseph Stalin and his murderous, communist, socialist, minions and lackeys (one, being a guy us older folks grew up with; Nikita Khruschev, whose son, Sergei, actually taught my son Russian history when he attended the U.S. Naval War College for a year in Newport, Rhode Island) in their utopian pursuit of state ownership of everything but the clothes on the backs of their enslaved masses (and maybe even their clothes), literally starved to death between five and seven million landowning peasants called Kulaks in the Ukraine during the 1930’s. Why? Because they resisted communist collectivization of their farms and personal property, which would have and in fact did return them to a landless and propertyless enslavement far worse than being serfs; that is, if they managed to survive that communist and socialist “utopian” manmade, draconian horror of enforced starvation. Remember though, it was really for the good of all; and what is a little collateral damage when it is for the better good of all. And besides, the Kulaks were just a bunch of malcontents! Served them right.
Two: Turkey is claiming that at least some of these offshore natural deposits are Turkey’s and have been sending some of their warships to aggressively and hostilely harass Cypriot and Israeli oil and gas production activity as well as those nations warships protecting their offshore rigs, construction of the underwater pipeline, and future transmission of those deposits. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Israel and Cyprus shut down their operations for a time due to hostile and aggressive Turkish naval activity in the neighborhood of the offshore drilling platform.
Three: Turkey’s “sultan” Recep Tayyipp Erdogan is a committed Islamist (actually aspiring to be the new caliph of all Islam (successor to the prophet Mohammed), as was the Sultan of the former Ottoman Empire; but the British ended that caliphcy as well as the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI in 1918; however portions of that former empire eventually resulted in a new country denominated, Turkey, under Mustafa Kamal Ataturk in1922). Turkey, once an ally of Israel, is today an on/off ally of Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin or Pootin. I never, never can remember how to spell his name. And that guy, whose name I am unsure of the correct spelling, is a buddy with the ayatollahs of the Numero Uno terrorist state in the world: uh oh, a brain freeze: it’s not You Ran, it’s not He Ran; it’s coming; I know too that it’s not We Ran, uh, and it’s not She Ran, O yeah; Oh yeah, I remember, it’s I Ran, although the spelling could be IRAN) So this is quite a witches brew brewing over there. And my dear friends, it will indubitably boil over. The Bible clearly states it, but refers to the jihadist nation by a former name: Persia. Read on.
Most likely, Israel is going to become extremely prosperous as a result of all of this and begin to look like an irresistible plum to be plucked by a greedy neighbor or confederation of greedy neighbors, ideological or a wanna be empire (think dictator of Russia, Pootin or Putin, and “president/Caliph Erdogan or Nerdoman. I just can't remember those spellings). And let’s not forget our other assorted petty and vicious tyrants in that lovely neighborhood of the world called the Middle East: dictator and “president” Bashar al-Assad of civil war wracked Syria since 2011 (remember the “Arab Spring”? That year of anticipated enlightenment in a unenlightened region that turned into anything but) with over half a million of his unhappy constituents dead to this date; and who can possibly forget the malignant Iranian ayatollah Ali Khamenei and any possible successor to this ; (and still to this point, not yet a “mohammed'' in the kit and kaboodle; amazzzing!) all of whom would probably like to get in on the act and the booty with that “country of the far north” (which more than a few theologians think is a reference to the Russian Federation) whenever the Biblically pre-declared failure, attempt goes down.
AND, it will go down because God has already declared it will, as well as the results of these and other piratical players aggressions toward Israel forecast and prophesied in the 2500 year old inscriptions, but oh so relevant, found in Ezekiel 38 and 39. See the advantages of making the Bible a priority in your reading materials??? You get to know things, due to God’s shared omniscience with us BEFORE they happen. It’s awesome, and it doesn’t cost a thing. Just your intellectual time. Check out Ezekiel 36 and 37 as well for further intellectual and spiritual enhancement and advancement.
So with that little aside of current and future events completed, we can turn from the last of God’s good news to Israel in the initial stages of Deut.32, to the deep and dark material which begins in the middle of chapter 32. And it is there we come again to that nasty little word that just about always changes everything for the worse … BUT!
Deut. 32:15: “BUT Jeshurun (one of God’s appellations for Israel) grew fat (individually and nationally; and heh heh, fits to a “T” another nation that I am personally familiar with) and kicked; you (Jeshurun) grew fat, you grew thick, you are covered with fat (God is omniscient); then he forsook God who made him, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation. 16. They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. 17. They sacrificed to demons (again, child sacrifice), not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear. 18. Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful, and have forgotten the GOD WHO FATHERED YOU (This too reminds me of that formerly beloved nation of mine). 19. And when the Lord saw it, He spurned them, because of the provocation of His sons and daughters.
“And He said: ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be, for they are A PERVERSE GENERATION, children in whom is NO FAITH. 21. They have PROVOKED ME to jealousy by what is not God; they have moved Me to ANGER by their foolish idols … 22. For a FIRE IS KINDLED IN MY ANGER, and SHALL BURN TO THE LOWEST HELL; IT SHALL CONSUME THE EARTH WITH HER INCREASE, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. 23. I WILL HEAP DISASTERS UPON THEM; I WILL SPEND MY ARROWS UPON THEM. 24. THEY SHALL BE WASTED WITH HUNGER, DEVOURED BY PESTILENCE AND BITTER DESTRUCTION; I will also send against them the teeth of beasts (recall the brief history recited earlier of SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the “blonde beast” and master planner of the Jewish Holocaust in January, 1942; the Reinhard extermination camps [named so in memory of that blonde beast who was assassinated in Prague by Czech resistance fighters parachuted into Czechoslavakia to rid that poor devastated nation of such demonic evil]; the use of Zyklon B for the gas chambers), WITH THE POISON OF SERPENTS OF THE DUST (could this be an allegory referencing a future serpent and viper named Adolf Hitler, his ideology, Nazism, and his “final solution” for the “Jewish problem” with a poison called Zyklon B which produces an extremely lethal gas for use in solving the “Jewish problem”)?. 25. THE SWORD SHALL DESTROY OUTSIDE; THERE SHALL BE TERROR WITHIN for the young man and virgin, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs … 28. FOR THEY ARE A NATION VOID OF COUNSEL” (Boy! you can say that about the U.S. today! OK, I will. “For we are a nation void of counsel”), NOR IS THERE ANY UNDERSTANDING IN THEM (Boy! you can say that about the U.S. today! OK, I will. “Nor is there any understanding in them.”) “29. OH THAT THEY WERE WISE, THAT THEY UNDERSTOOD THIS, THAT THEY WOULD CONSIDER THEIR LATTER END! (Didja catch that last little pregnant phrase?) 30. How could one chase a thousand, and put ten thousand to flight, UNLESS THEIR ROCK HAD SOLD THEM, AND THE LORD HAD SURRENDERED THEM?...34. Is this not laid up in store with Me, sealed up among My treasures? 35. Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; THEIR FOOT SHALL SLIP IN DUE TIME; FOR THE DAY OF THEIR CALAMITY IS AT HAND, AND THE THINGS THAT COME HASTEN UPON THEM … (and as it is for our nation now) 39. Now see that I, even I, am He, and there is no God besides Me; I KILL AND I MAKE ALIVE; I WOUND AND I HEAL; NOR IS THERE ANY WHO CAN DELIVER FROM MY HAND. 40. For I lift My hand to heaven, and say as I live forever, 41. If I whet My glittering sword, and My hand takes hold on judgment, I WILL RENDER VENGEANCE TO MY ENEMIES, AND REPAY THOSE WHO HATE ME. 42. I will make My arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the heads of the leaders of the enemy.”
These ladies and gentlemen are the utter utterances of no less than the God of Israel Who is also the God of the United States of America and all other human configurations and constructions: and because of rejection and gross disobedience to Him comes the bad, the ugly, the sordid, the calamitous, and the hellish; or, from grim to grimmer to grimmest. After getting that kind of warning from the only God we will ever have, don’t you think we should reconsider, contemplate, and HEED??? Nah! “COME ON MAN,” we are just too smart, too wise, and too, too intellectually equipped (or too, too mentally detached) to fall for such balderdash.
But let’s revisit Deut.32:25, although previously quoted above, because it so powerfully does have something to say about our own nation’s rather recent history: “The SWORD shall destroy OUTSIDE; there shall be TERROR WITHIN” ... Our nation for the last sixty years has had more than just a few episodes of its own with the sword outside and terror within. And I am here to present and seriously and vigorously suggest for your consideration that there is a correlation between our nation’s difficulties today and the difficulties that both Judah and Israel suffered in their histories and which the recently new (73 years) State of Israel continues to suffer from to this very day; and each are for the EXACT SAME REASONS — blatant disobedience and rebellion — AND FROM THE EXACT SAME SOURCE — THE GOD OF ISRAEL!!! i.e. CONNECTING THE DOTS.
Contemplate for a moment just some of the “SWORD OUTSIDE AND TERROR WITHIN” our own national history subsequent to the brain dead decision of Engle in 1962 rendering God unconstitutional and therefore pretty much illegal:
November,1963, President Kennedy is assassinated; March,1965, the U.S. begins a huge military buildup in Vietnam in an attempt to save South Vietnam from communist aggression which will last until 1975, and cause the deaths of 54,000 American service men and women, numberless wounded and crippled, and physically and emotionally diminished and devastated; and ultimately wasted billions if not at least a trillion of our national treasure; and ending with our defeated withdrawal and communist domination of Southeast Asia: South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; but that ain’t all.
Also in 1965: SCOTUS issues another ruling through the case of Griswold (Not the Chevy Chase one) v. Connecticut (and it’s no laughing matter) creating another non-constitution, constitutional privilege called the “right to privacy” which will later be used to foment and allow perversion (homosexuality and various other sexual and gender type “unions” and styles) to be practiced that had previously been criminal behavior since the beginning of Judeo-Christian civilization three thousand four hundred years ago; and from the foundation of our own nation as being either in 1607 at the new English colony of Jamestown, Virginia; or in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; or in 1789 as a constitutional republic under our new Constitution; but that ain’t all.
April,1968: Martin Luther King is assassinated with all the burning and looting that occurred across the United States that followed; June,1968, Robert Kennedy is assassinated. Remember who did the assassinating? It was a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian background named Sirhan Sirhan; and he did it exactly one year after the Six Day War began which cost his country Jordan’s claim to all of the Islamic holy sites in East Jerusalem as well as all of the Jordanian controlled West Bank of the Jordan River, and referred to by the citizens of Israel as Judea and Samaria (sounds sort of Biblical, don’t it?)
That assassination literally changed the course of our national history because there is not a doubt in my mind that Robert Kennedy would have defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency that year instead of Nixon defeating Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I also believe that this assassination was the very first of a now too long and tragic experience with the now ever present pulsating Islamic terrorism within our country. Have you ever read the story of Helen of Troy and the Trojan Horse? You should. But that ain’t all.
1973: SCOTUS gives us Roe v. Wade and the beginning of a childrens Holocaust to end all holocausts type slaughter of S.I.X.T.Y. M.I.L.L.I.O.N., AND STILL COUNTING, of our own sons and daughters; (how ‘bout that for “terror within;” remember the female abortionist in Spanish Fort, Alabama, mentioned in a previous column, who said that in late term abortions she performed, she would initially cut the larnyx of the baby so that it would not cry out as she began the “rest of the procedure.” Keep in mind that this savage and brutal sadism has been sanctioned, approved and condoned by SCOTUS and has declared it to be within the meaning and the tone of the words of our Constitution (I’ll bet James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Sherman [he is now associated with Pace Industries; and yes, he is that old!], would be quite surprised to hear that!)
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