The Advantage of Genealogy--Part 6

One of the most important advantages of being an ex-Israelite of the dispersion is that the Gospel came to them first. It was a matter of divine priority. Europe became Christianized over the centuries, whereas many other nations remained in darkness insofar as the light of Christ was concerned.

The biggest problem was that the Church focused upon the apostolic writings and neglected the rest of Scripture. They did not seem to realize that one must live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). The divine law was seen as Jewish, rather than as an expression of the mind, will, and character of God. Christians stopped studying it and began to believe the Jewish idea that the law was given only to Jews.

But that is like saying today that the law is given to judges and lawyers. That is only a half-truth. The law is entrusted to judges and lawyers so that they know how to apply it to the rest of the people. The law is for everyone. If it were not so, then only judges and lawyers would be responsible to observe the laws in America, and we the people would be exempt. That, of course, is ridiculous.

Even so, just because God gave the law to a particular genealogical group of people, this does not mean that they are the only ones who ought to observe it and benefit by it. In fact, taken to extreme, such a principle would mean that only the Levites and Priests in Israel were actually responsible to keep the law, since they were called as its administrators. Yet Scripture clearly says differently.

Murder is murder, no matter who commits it. Theft is theft, no matter who is stealing. Lying is lying, no matter whose mouth it comes from. And all men benefit from living in a nation and society where such righteous laws are the standard.

At first the Church was an oppressed minority. It spread quickly under persecution, because men's character was refined in the fire. But when the Church became powerful, more and more carnally minded leaders came to power. This diluted the blessings that would have come upon the Christian West. After the Roman Empire fell, it was replaced by the "little horn" of Daniel 7:8, which made war on the saints (Dan. 7:21) for 1,260 "days" (i.e., years, from 529 to 1789 A.D.).

The Protestant Reformation was made possible by the development of the printing press in the mid-1400's. That technology had been invented in China and brought west by the Mongol invasions in the 1300's. The Bible was printed in 1453 in the common language of the people, and this brought with it a revival of biblical understanding, including the divine law.

Christian thinkers studied the law to learn how best to establish a truly Christian Nation that used God's laws as the moral and legal basis for society. These writings formed the thought patterns of early American colonies, which later contributed to the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution itself.

This is not to say that American law was perfect, for it was still filtered through the carnal minds of men whose relationship with God was often more "religious" than Christian. Though some of the founders were devout Christians, compromises had to be made with those representatives who had other ideas and agendas, or who did not have a good grasp of biblical law.

Even so, we were recognized as a Christian Nation. It was so ruled by Chief Justice David Brewer on Feb. 29, 1892 in the case of Holy Trinity Church v. US, where the Supreme Court Justice concluded,

"These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation."

America was the product of the Gospel going to ex-Israelites of the dispersion, but many Christians still had an imperfect understanding of the mind of God. They often applied the law unequally. Most notable was the slave trade and the mistreatment of native Americans. The advantages of Israelite genealogy, in the eyes of God, certainly did not include the right to mistreat those who were not of Israelite ancestry. Israel's calling was to bring the Gospel to all nations and to set all creation free "in the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). They were never called to hoard God's blessings, but to be the agents by which those blessings were spread to the rest of creation.

Yet the monarchist ideas of the world systems and the "little horn" of Papal Rome were well rooted in the carnal minds of men. They did not know that in the sight of God, authority is the power to serve others, rather than to be served by slaves. Protestantism was able to make a partial change, in saying that all white men were created equal. However, much of Protestant Christianity still retained the old influence of Papal Rome, which had fought hard against these "liberal" ideas of equal rights for all. This influence was seen most clearly in the southern states of America, where the principles of slavery had become institutionalized.

God brought judgment upon America in 1860 through the Civil War, precisely 6 x 434 years after the beginning of Israel's deportations (745 B.C.). As I explained in chapter 3 of my book, The Prophetic History of the United States, this multiple of 434 was the factor called "Judged Time" for "late obedience."

Afterward, in 1914 God placed upon us a wooden yoke of Babylon. It was the type of yoke that Jeremiah had offered to Judah in Jer. 27 and 28, which would have allowed the people to remain in their own land during the 70 years of judgment. They refused, of course, and so God placed upon them an iron yoke (Jer. 28:13), forcing them by violence into a foreign land to serve out their sentence. We in America were more fortunate, for God blinded our eyes so that we would submit to this wooden yoke of Babylon. Thus, we have been allowed to remain in this land during our captivity.

 Under Babylon, however, we have absorbed the secular world's idea that the divine law is evil and that America is just another secular democracy. In ancient times, Babylon was the great equalizer. They reduced all surrounding nations to an equality of slavery, which they called Babylonian citizenship. This has been duplicated in America this past century. God is using Babylon to show us once again what it means to be enslaved.

One of the most important laws in the Bible is that of equal justice. Judges were not allowed to defer to the rich or the poor, the powerful or the lowly (Ex. 23:1-3). There was to be one law for the whole land, not one law for Israelites and another for aliens. Lev. 19:33, 34 says,

" (33) When a stranger [ger] resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. (34)The stranger [ger] who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were aliens [ger] in the land of Egypt."

God enslaved Israel in Egypt so that they would know what slavery was like. In Egypt they were aliens, or strangers (Heb., ger). God uses this to show that Israel ought not to oppress the aliens in their own midst who have come to learn the ways of God and to experience the blessings of the Kingdom of God. Because we continued to violate God's law, including our treatment of aliens, God has brought us into slavery to Babylon once again in order to learn how NOT to rule in the Kingdom of God.

All those who submit to the divine judgment and learn from it will be properly rewarded at the appointed time. God will judge all equally by His own law.