Abiding Wrath of God

Does God punish nations for wickedness? Of course He does. However, He has made it clear that His agenda includes using such nations for His divine purposes. His purposes exceed our understanding, but He sometimes gives hints.

The hints in Scripture portray God as an eastern potentate. He has his council and staff, creatures He made for the purpose. They are “people” in the sense that they live and have some freedom of will, same as human people. We catch a glimpse of them in John’s Revelation, where the narrative describes the presence of “elders” and so forth in His divine council. A proper imperial lord would have a very large staff.

God has a ceremonial bodyguard, troops the Hebrew language refer to as “cherubs”. These would have a pretty high level of power and authority. One of them (we call him Satan or Devil now) embezzled some of the tribute of glory and worship meant for God. He had gardeners, too — us. As you might expect, we would be at the bottom of the scale of power and authority for eternal beings. Whoever got caught embezzling the Lord’s tribute was punished, and he appealed to the council for support. Some of the council endorsed his complaint.

Satan likes worship and praise; so do the members of the divine council. Something about their status as elohim (small “g” gods in the Bible) makes them vulnerable to the temptation to claim divinity in competition with God (elohim singular). At some point, Satan and his allies decided that they hated us and have stated their intention to destroy us. Satan took advantage of his superiority over us and manipulated us into allegiance to ourselves, convincing us that we could be gods of some sort, just like him. His primary claim is that the Creator is not that special, not inherently superior to the other elohim. By embracing his claim, humanity left the covering of God, and were forced out of the Garden. We received a pitiful symbolic covering instead, to remind us of what we forsook.

We cannot comprehend why God is so patient and magnanimous about all of this, but we can understand what He wants from us: to testify of His singular greatness, that He alone is worthy of worship and glory. Our feudal submission to, and worship of, Him is our sole duty. This is how we escape out of Satan’s dominion. God offers a covenant, a privilege within this life that elevates us partway back to the position we lost in the Garden. It gets us started on the path back to Eden.

Most of humanity, to include a solid chunk of the eternal Elect, aren’t walking in the high privilege of the Covenant. It’s not the question of what they do, but where their commitments are. This is the very fundamental core of morality in this world — covenant submission to Christ. The particulars of our performance is supposed to be a manifestation of that submission, not the thing itself.

The revelation of that covenant includes a whole range of model behaviors, contextual declarations that indicate what it should look like. In our American vernacular, you could refer to that body of guidance as “law” as long as you are careful to avoid legalism. Americans don’t live by that law. Indeed, you could make the case that the Constitution, along with the host of regulations supposedly derived from that constitution, are antithetical to making Jesus Lord.

Absent His lordship, America was born outside the privilege. Thus, America was born in sin, and continues in sin to this day. America is inherently immoral and totally lacking in moral covering. It has been under His wrath all along. Sooner or later, our usefulness to God, and to His elohim opposition as well, expires. The same goes for every other human government that doesn’t bow the knee to Christ, doesn’t embrace the law that represents His reign. The same goes with modern Israel. In due time, when these governments no longer serve God’s inscrutable purpose in proving His case, it will be destroyed.

The word “wrath” depicts a moral condition, not a factual condition. Flesh cannot discern the connection between moral truth and factual conditions. Only a mind led by the heart, which in turn is led by the Spirit, can discern how it works. The intellect can’t get there by itself. The intellect can deal with only its perceptions and reason. It will always miss the point, no matter how high the IQ. The facts matter only to the flesh; the moral truth is the concern of the redeemed heart.

Regardless of whether Trump ever serves as POTUS again, his presence on the national stage is a sign of God’s wrath. He already has a destructive effect on things. He rules over some elements of our country’s existence. Don’t get wrapped around the importance of the office; the man has an influence that will yield results, steering the facts to some conclusion. While I believe he will win the coming election, that isn’t the point. His life will be preserved until his mission is accomplished, and we aren’t there yet.

Most certainly by his own confession, Trump has never spent a single moment in submission to Christ. He gets used as any other disposable tool, like a shovel in a sewer or a disposable razor shaving off a beard. Don’t be a part of that. Play along because there is nothing we can do to change it, but keep your distance as much as possible. The wrath of God abides on him and his works.