Here is a recent scene from early voting in my small town:
When I first came to this area 27 years ago, our voting place was a one room school house no longer used for anything but voting. It gave the feel of voting from times a century and more before. All who voted there were neighbors of long standing and we were the new ones, welcomed and smiled upon for voting in the long held tradition.
This year all tradition seems gone. Many would contradict, saying the voting has prevailed, but we wonder if it will be a free and fair election. Neighbors are distanced by disease and rhetoric and the persistent electronics. Somehow, I don’t feel like I am in the same nation I grew up in, the one that taught its young the regional songs and tales of the frontiersmen and miners and canal workers and farmers. We had connections to our past and stability in our present. Now we have neither. Rather than gain these things for those who lacked them as newcomers or oppressed people, we further divide ourselves from each other in order to scrap anything good about our nation for a future of slavery to the ruling class. (1)
The voting does not look and feel different because of polemical pandemic and politics. We have had division in the past. We have had disease and drought and war and depression and social unrest. It is different because we are giving up our freedoms for slavery of mind and one day body.
John Basil Barnhill, in a meeting in 1914, said, “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” (2) At present, the people are in fear of the government while simultaneously not respecting its institutions or personnel. This is a formula for disaster.
On the subject of the cruelty of slavery, Thomas Jefferson said, “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever…” (3) We have long since righted the wrong of the institution of slavery, though many have not changed there attitudes about it on either side. Now we threaten the liberty of us all by giving it up to control by government, to the continuance of slaughter or the unborn, and outright denial anything moral according to God’s law.
Why are we doing this evil to ourselves? We have turned away from God. Even many in the church do not know Him and the culture as a whole does not acknowledge Him. Many have argued that we have no need of acknowledging God as a nation since ‘we are not a Christian nation’, but God warns otherwise. “Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling.” (Psalm 2:10-11) “Nations are obligated to worship the true God,” said John MacArthur in a recent sermon. (4)
You may be asking what this turning away from God has to do with voting. I can think of several ways, all of which involve God’s judgement on our forsaking Him and running to wickedness:
1. We will lose our incredible freedom to have substantive say our government.
2. God judges individuals and institutions.
3. The righteous in general are delivered over with the wicked in times of judgement.
4. Voting may no longer be neighborly and civil.
It is on this last point that I want to dwell upon for just a short moment. I have friends who have been missionaries with AIM/Air in Nairobi, Kenya, for many years. As a mechanic, the man is head of maintenance to the many planes that fly out to villages for the many ways they help people. The woman has taught in a local seminary. In their newsletters over the year by paper and then email, they would periodically ask for prayer about national elections. This is frequently a time of violence in the streets and at the polling places and upon the candidates. This nation is not the only one plagued with this problem, but one that has dealt with it more or less since their independence. With the level of division, selfishness, and God hating present in our nation, it will come here if we do not repent.
Intentionally pray for your repentance and mine and our neighbors and our nation. Pray that God will yet again be merciful and patient to give us a time of renewal and turning to Him. Vote for righteousness and the rule of law. Pray for civility throughout this election process.
CreatorWorship 
Voting
October 22, 2020 by creatorworship
Here is a recent scene from early voting in my small town:
When I first came to this area 27 years ago, our voting place was a one room school house no longer used for anything but voting. It gave the feel of voting from times a century and more before. All who voted there were neighbors of long standing and we were the new ones, welcomed and smiled upon for voting in the long held tradition.
This year all tradition seems gone. Many would contradict, saying the voting has prevailed, but we wonder if it will be a free and fair election. Neighbors are distanced by disease and rhetoric and the persistent electronics. Somehow, I don’t feel like I am in the same nation I grew up in, the one that taught its young the regional songs and tales of the frontiersmen and miners and canal workers and farmers. We had connections to our past and stability in our present. Now we have neither. Rather than gain these things for those who lacked them as newcomers or oppressed people, we further divide ourselves from each other in order to scrap anything good about our nation for a future of slavery to the ruling class. (1)
The voting does not look and feel different because of polemical pandemic and politics. We have had division in the past. We have had disease and drought and war and depression and social unrest. It is different because we are giving up our freedoms for slavery of mind and one day body.
John Basil Barnhill, in a meeting in 1914, said, “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” (2) At present, the people are in fear of the government while simultaneously not respecting its institutions or personnel. This is a formula for disaster.
On the subject of the cruelty of slavery, Thomas Jefferson said, “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever…” (3) We have long since righted the wrong of the institution of slavery, though many have not changed there attitudes about it on either side. Now we threaten the liberty of us all by giving it up to control by government, to the continuance of slaughter or the unborn, and outright denial anything moral according to God’s law.
Why are we doing this evil to ourselves? We have turned away from God. Even many in the church do not know Him and the culture as a whole does not acknowledge Him. Many have argued that we have no need of acknowledging God as a nation since ‘we are not a Christian nation’, but God warns otherwise. “Now therefore, O kings, show discernment;
Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling.” (Psalm 2:10-11) “Nations are obligated to worship the true God,” said John MacArthur in a recent sermon. (4)
You may be asking what this turning away from God has to do with voting. I can think of several ways, all of which involve God’s judgement on our forsaking Him and running to wickedness:
1. We will lose our incredible freedom to have substantive say our government.
2. God judges individuals and institutions.
3. The righteous in general are delivered over with the wicked in times of judgement.
4. Voting may no longer be neighborly and civil.
It is on this last point that I want to dwell upon for just a short moment. I have friends who have been missionaries with AIM/Air in Nairobi, Kenya, for many years. As a mechanic, the man is head of maintenance to the many planes that fly out to villages for the many ways they help people. The woman has taught in a local seminary. In their newsletters over the year by paper and then email, they would periodically ask for prayer about national elections. This is frequently a time of violence in the streets and at the polling places and upon the candidates. This nation is not the only one plagued with this problem, but one that has dealt with it more or less since their independence. With the level of division, selfishness, and God hating present in our nation, it will come here if we do not repent.
Intentionally pray for your repentance and mine and our neighbors and our nation. Pray that God will yet again be merciful and patient to give us a time of renewal and turning to Him. Vote for righteousness and the rule of law. Pray for civility throughout this election process.
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Posted in America, Civil Debate, Cultural commentary, Freedom, General, Government, Judgment, Liberty, Mercy | Tagged Civility, Election, Prayer, Repentance, Voting | Leave a Comment
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