Prayer

Only One True Kingdom

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I hadn’t intended to post on today’s topic, but a friend sent this and told me it was essential viewing:


The Bible says this:

Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.
—1 Thessalonians 5:20-21

I do not despise prophecy by any means, but I do test prophecies against Scripture and by the Holy Spirit of God.

So that is what I will do.

God’s chosen people called for an earthly government in 1 Samuel 8:

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba.

Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD.

And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king.” Samuel then said to the men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.”
—1 Samuel 8:1-22

The chosen people of God were hard-hearted toward Him. They were not satisfied with His Kingdom; they desired instead an earthly, geopolitical kingdom. One that would be like their pagan neighbors. How they longed to be just like those who did not know God! And so this is what God gave them.

Do we remember that this led, in part, to God’s chosen nation going into exile? To the destruction of their way of life? To untold suffering?

When it comes to commentary on people’s dealings with geopolitical systems, this is about all I could recall of direct commentary by the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry:

[The scribes and the chief priests asked Jesus,] “Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar’s.” He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
—Luke 20:22-25

When asked of his political intentions, Jesus gave this answer:

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
—John 18:36

He also said this:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. “
—Matthew 13:45-46

When you sell all that you have to gain the Heavenly Kingdom, there is not much left over for earthly pretenders.

Paul didn’t say much about geopolitical systems, either:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
—Romans 13:1-8

Paul didn’t say that Christians should live in fear of whatever party may come into office, but should instead fear God, who takes out His holy vengeance against those who fail to live a life that is pure and holy.

We see this in ancient Rome. What earthly kingdom could have had a more anti-Christ bent than Rome? Yet without one vote, Christians led to the toppling of the Caesars. They did this through the sacrifice of their own martyred blood in the Colosseum, the ministry of the Gospel among the disadvantaged of the city, their care for the sick, the hungry, the naked, the widow, and the orphan. Indeed, in their allegiance to one Kingdom above all others, the only lasting Kingdom, they brought down one of the most powerful earthly kingdoms in history.

And this leads me to the invoking in the video above of an Old Testament passage that many Christians love to pull out and dust off every four years. In case many of us don’t remember, some Christians have been invoking this passage for at least 30 years, and probably more. Like the boy who cried wolf, every four years Christians pull out this passage to ensure that the faithful understand that “This Election Is the Most Critical One Our Nation Has Ever Faced.™”

The passage in question:

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

—2 Chronicles 7:14

God speaks this to Solomon after the completion of the temple in which He would dwell.

Consider then that today God does not live in a temple constructed of human hands by flawed kings. Instead, He made us and filled us with Himself. We are His temples.

Consider also that we live under a New Covenant that is better than the Old Covenant.

Consider that the Kingdom of God that is better than any earthly Kingdom is now among us because the One True King has come.

Do you know how God heals the land now that the True King has come? That King told us how. He showed us, the temples of His Holy Spirit, the people of a better covenant, the ones who are a part of an unearthly Kingdom, how God heals lands:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:18-20

When Christians repent of their sins and distractions (including political distractions), when they humble themselves and cast off their mistaken notions of power, when they pray to stay true to the focus of the only genuine Kingdom, then God will heal their land through their sharing of the Good News with the lost and the making of disciples. When Christians live out the high calling of the Gospel before earthly kingdoms and shame those unworthy imitations with their service to the only True Kingdom, then God will heal their land.

But when Christians look to earthly kingdoms, when Christians take their focus off the Lord and put their faith in power systems rooted in sin and compromise,  they will wind up off course, off message, off purpose, and ultimately disappointed. God does not heal the land through man’s elections but through Christians living out their allegiance to Christ’s unearthly Kingdom by concentrating on making disciples and serving the least of these no matter what government is in power.

The Christians in Rome understood this, but for all our supposed modern enlightenment, we do not. Nor do our “prophets.”

I want to end with that statement. I have some additional thoughts I’ll add in the comments. Please feel free to add your own.

How You Can Support Cerulean Sanctum

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Dan Edelen thanks you for your support!Cerulean Sanctum exists as a help for Christians who are seeking to experience the 1st century Church in 21st century America. From its inception in September of 2003, this blog has provided thousands of readers with support for their walk with Christ, comforting words in tough times, challenging essays on issues facing the American Church, and answers to difficult questions few are willing to ask. The number of Christian blogs today is an order of magnitude larger than when Cerulean Sanctum began, yet many blog readers continue to come here to find content rarely discussed elsewhere.

One of the unique aspects of Cerulean Sanctum is the readership. People from nearly every denomination in Christendom read this blog. Because the readers demand more than easy answers and bring a wealth of experience to every comment they leave, the discourse here remains unusual, insightful, high quality, and civil. The community of readers at Cerulean Sanctum is one of the best out there. Readers bless each other and bless me. I even have a few readers who have been with me since this blog’s inception. Whether a recent drop-in or a veteran of the dialog here, I thank you.

Over the years, I have received many private e-mails from grateful readers who inquired how they could support this blog financially. I have always thanked them for their offer, but requested instead that they use their gift to help someone in their local body of believers who is hurting. If you’ve read some of the posts here, you well know my views on this issue.

Today’s post exists because this past year has been a difficult one for my family and me. Myriad challenges continue to rise up, including ones I could never have anticipated. But God is faithful and good. I’ve considered my options and discussed them with some of my faithful readers. They all agree on the course of action I’m taking.

At the top of the blog you’ll see a tab labeled “Support Cerulean Sanctum.” If you click on the tab you’ll now have the option to financially support the writing that makes Cerulean Sanctum what it is. If you’ve been blessed by the content of this blog or have wanted to support it financially in the past, I’m making that option available to you as of today.

Thank you. I can’t tell you how much your support means to my family and me.

Most of all, I ask for your continued prayers. My family has been through a series of ordeals in the last few months and the end is not yet in sight. I know that many others are struggling in these times, too. If you have a prayer request you wish to share, please leave it in the comment section of this post or e-mail me. I pray for every person who writes me with a need.

I’ve written dozens of posts on how we in the Body need to support each other. I think the time is near when we’ll have to lean on each other like never before. I hope and pray that Cerulean Sanctum will continue to be a blessing to you and a place where you can find deeper truths in Christ to meet the challenges of days to come.

Blessings,

Dan Edelen

When the Devils Know Your Name

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Any military commander worth his salad will tell you the key to battle is to neutralize threats. Whether  by outright attack, supply line disruption, or distracting threats so they turn their attention elsewhere, systematically taking out each threatening unit wins the war.

Last time I checked, we Christians were at war. Do we realize how ardently the Devil and his minions hate us? To them, we are the enemy as much as they are ours. Just as we have been given weapons of war to wage battle against the chthonic, so the legions of hell marshal their power against us. And their tactic is the classic one: neutralize threats.

Here’s the worst thing that anyone can say about you or me as Christians: “You’re no threat to the Devil.”

Sadly, I believe that large swaths of the American Church are just that. The Enemy distracts us with consumerism, entertainment, fads (even church-related ones), and an all-consuming loathing for anything that even remotely borders on boring. We know the entire storyline behind Lost, can name every contestant on the last American Idol, can’t wait to plop down a small fortune on the next iteration of Xbox or Playstation, spend more on movie theater tickets or DVDs than we drop in the offering plate, and generally run willy-nilly after umpteen thousand things that neutralize our threat on the grand cosmic battlefield. Warring in prayerWithout even breaking a sulfurous sweat, the dark principalities and powers have rendered millions of American Christians fat, lazy, double-minded, and utterly worthless for battle.

But not everyone.

In writing this, I realize that some of the most encouraging words we can give to a fellow believer may be difficult to receive. They may be true in the utmost and a genuine balm to the soul, but that doesn’t make them any less hard.

This post is an encouragement to those who are still a threat, but it’s a realistic encouragement, words of hope that may sound like words of despair at first, but only to those who lack perseverance.

Some of us still threaten hell. Here’s an easy check to tell if we do: We’re being opposed by the Enemy at every turn.

If our lives are peaches and cream most of the time, if we’re poster children for the American Dream, then we’re not a threat. The demonic doesn’t take us seriously, because if it did we’d be feeling and seeing the attacks.

Two Scriptures:

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
—Acts 19:13-16

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
—2 Corinthians 11:23-28

When you’re a threat to the devils, they know your name. They knew Paul’s. He later regales us in 2nd Corinthians 11 with a staggering list of ways in which those evil forces dealt with his threat to their hellish mission.

Now who here volunteers to share the trials of Paul?

It’s a hard word of encouragement, isn’t it?

I can tell you that the closer you are to the heart of the Lord in the work you’re doing for the Kingdom, the more brutal the battle. Things will go wrong that you never expected because the Enemy wants nothing more than to neutralize your threat.

In the grand cosmic battle, evil attempts to take out the Christians it knows by name by attacking what is dearest to them: their families. The Enemy loves to go after children and spouses. It’s the hellfire way to napalm the biggest threats.

With children, the Enemy hurts physically or emotionally. Debilitating sickness or injury in a child will often be all it takes to remove a Christian parent who is a genuine threat. Death of a child, too. As a child gets older, rebellion works just as well. Nothing breaks a parent more than to watch a child go down in flames.

With spouses, the Enemy’s first line of attack is dissension. Turning a spouse against the person who is a threat wounds deeply, often because the spouse has been the only source of consistent support outside of the Lord. The height of wounding would be discovering a spouse’s affair. Fray that most precious bond and many threats to hell will wilt. The Enemy will also resort to physically or mentally wounding a spouse if the marriage is a strong one that would not ordinarily succumb to dissension.

Lastly, the Enemy will assault the threat directly. I believe this is often the last resort because indirect threats can be more effective. The most common lines of attack come against the threat’s livelihood, reputation, and/or physical and emotional health. The Enemy may also try to kill the most powerful Christians simply to curtail that threat’s continued assaults.

We see these attacks playing out in the life of Job. This righteous man buried his children, witnessed his livelihood stolen, had his wife turn against him (“Curse God and die!”), and suffered gruesome physical torment. The unmarried Paul, lacking any indirect chinks in his armor, instead weathered relentless assaults against his person and reputation.

If you are not in obvious sin and are being attacked on every side, the devils know your name. Many of the attacks I outlined above may be your daily bread. You are well acquainted with grief.

Don’t even consider giving up. Instead, I tell you, rejoice! For the devils know your name! That means more than you can imagine in a world where most people receive little more than a “Who are you?” brush-off from the forces of hell.

You see, the Devil has a list. Akin to the FBI’s, it’s filled with the names of his Most Wanted. And it’s no coincidence that the names on the Devil’s list are also found in the Lamb’s Book of Life.