"Tell Me What I Want to Hear"

November 12, 2010 ©Homer Kizer
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Commentary — From the Margins

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And the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, “Behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king. Let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.” But Micaiah said, “As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak.” And when he had come to the king, the king said to him, “Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?” And he answered him, “Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” But the king said to him, “How many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?” And he said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said, ‘These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.’” And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?” And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.”

Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah came near and struck Micaiah on the cheek and said, “How did the Spirit of the Lord go from me to speak to you?” And Micaiah said, “Behold, you shall see on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide yourself.” (1 Kings 11:13–25)

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Behold, the words of Christian theologians are of one accord. Let your words be like theirs. … Is this not the advice theological students receive when they seek Doctorates in Divinity? Is this not the spiritual equivalent to what the messenger sent to summon Micaiah told the prophet? And is this not what Micaiah told King Ahab? So why didn’t Ahab believe Micaiah when he apparently believed his prophets that spoke lying words? Did Ahab inwardly know that his prophets were lying to him, that they were not of God but spoke what he wanted to hear?

What Ahab said of Micaiah can be said about what I write: when do I write about peace and prosperity prevailing in America, or about Christians conquering the enemies of the Christ Jesus? Do I not write about calamities occurring, about a coming Second Passover liberation of Israel that will see a third of humankind—all uncovered firstborns, physical and spiritual—perishing in a day? Do I not write about Christians rebelling against Christ Jesus when they have no covering for their disobedience but their own obedience? So cannot it be asked, when did the spirit [breath] of the Lord leave Christian theologians and speak to me? Answer, on Thursday of the second full week of January 2002 … when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs on a near second Passover, Christian theologians will know that they have taught without being called to teach, but they will not keep quiet even then. Rather, they will still claim that Christians are under grace when that will not be the case. Thus, they will cause those who are now perishing because they do not love the truth to rebel against God, who will then, on day 220 of the Affliction (the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years) send a strong delusion over them so that they will believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth (2 Thess 2:10–12).

Perhaps it is not as easy to believe the truth as it is a lie; perhaps proclaiming the truth has consequences in this world that teaching a lie does not; perhaps believing the truth will get the disciple martyred by his or her neighbors and brothers; but believing a lie when the Law of God [the Torah] is written on hearts and placed in minds will condemn Christians to the lake of fire—

My words are not like those of Christian theologians who have chosen to study the gospel [good news] of Christ as a vocation, or of those who have chosen to preach the gospel as their vocation. My words are like those of the prophet Amos, who said,

I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.

You say, “Do not prophesy against Israel,

and do not preach against the house of Isaac.”

Therefore thus says the Lord:

“Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city,

and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,

and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line;

you yourself shall die in an unclean land,

and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.” (7:14–17)

I was no prophet, nor even a writer, when the Lord, in 1972, took me from Georgia-Pacific’s Toledo, Oregon, pulp mill and rotating shiftwork and caused me to keep the Sabbath. I was no pastor, nor a theologian but a fisherman, a logger, an outboard mechanic, when the Lord opened the door for me to go into graduate school without an undergraduate degree, and without coursework in the discipline. I was not ordained by men when, in 2002—thirty years after being initially called—the Lord called me by the hearing of His voice to reread prophecy; to apply meaning [linguistic objects] for the words [linguistic icons] uttered by Amos and the prophets of old to Israel and to Judea. The work that I do is unique only in that I do it. And when Christian theologians hide themselves from the wrath of the Lamb; when they finally fear the Lord, they will know that they spoke lying words from their mouths.

A lying spirit was used to entice King Ahab to get himself killed: a lying spirit has kept the Body of Christ dead for centuries. But why? Ahab’s lawlessness was and remains legendary. Surely Christendom’s lawlessness doesn’t compare, or does it? Is a little lawlessness okay, but much lawlessness evil? Or is the mingling of the sacred and the profane as in Christmas observance enough for God to reject the Christian?

What message will be delivered to the Church at Laodicea in the Lord’s day? “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth’” (Rev 3:15).

Being spiritually lukewarm is enough to get a Christian condemned to the lake of fire … what does that say about a little bit of lawlessness, just a little compromising here and a little there so that we can all get along in this world?

The observance of Christmas, the quintessential Christian holiday, is a mingling of the sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun] to produce fruit like that which Eve ate and gave to her husband: mingling the sacred and the profane is a form of being lukewarm, neither all in nor all out, with one foot in the Church and one foot in the world. Christmas observance alone is enough for the Lord to spew a person out of His mouth, but that is not what Christian theologians, Christian pastors tell or will tell their congregations. No indeed. Rather, a nativity scene will be erected on the church lawn, and special celebrations scheduled. But the man of perdition, the lawless one of 2 Thessalonians 2:3, will use Christmas observance to fuel rebellion against God.

In Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (Yale:1977, p. 155), author Ramsay MacMullen references the writings of the 12^th-Century Syriac bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi: “It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day.”

Judaism celebrates Hanukkah on the 25^th of the tenth month—Jesus observed this festival of lights (John 10:22)—but Hanukkah is not a one day festival, nor the celebration of a birth, but a commemoration of dedication …

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:22–30)

The Festival of Dedication is about being one with Christ Jesus and by extension, one with the Father—about not denying the disciple’s unique relationship with the Father and the Son; about hearing the voice of Jesus, which requires as its prerequisite believing the writings of Moses (John 5:46–47). The Festival of Dedication isn’t about anyone’s birth, but about being a light that cannot be extinguished because Jesus gives His disciples eternal life.

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. (John 10:31–39)

What complaint do Christian theologians have against Jesus? Their complaint is great, that Jesus a man was not God while He lived as a man, tempted in all things as other men are. These theologians want Jesus to be fully man and fully God while He walked the earth. But if that were the case, then the Logos [Ò Logos] who was God [Theos] and who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning (John 1:1) would have entered His creation as Himself, not as His only Son, the Unique One (John 3:16). Hence, the man Jesus—the only Son of the Logos—was not God but the human Son of the Logos until He received indwelling eternal life when the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon] descended upon Him in the visible form of a dove as the shadow and type of disciples receiving indwelling eternal life that causes the inner self to be raised from the dead … human beings are not born with immortal souls, but receive indwelling eternal life as the gift of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23), with the indwelling of Christ functioning as a vessel able to hold the bright fire of eternal life (life in the heavenly realm) that comes from heaven as Jesus Himself came from heaven.

The Logos gave up eternal life—life in the heavenly realm—to enter His creation where death was assured. Paul writes,

Have this mind among yourselves, which [was also] in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5–11)

In the beginning were two who functioned as one—YHWH—with the creation of first Adam, then Eve forming the earthly shadow [left hand enantiomer] of these two that were one. In the beginning was the Logos who was God—who was in the form of God and who held equality with God as Eve held equality [was equally a human being] with Adam—and who was with the God as Eve was with Adam. These two, with their separate breaths (Rom 8:9, 11) that represented indwelling life (see John 5:26) as human breath in the blood of a person represents life (Gen 9:4–6), are named in the unpronounced tetragrammaton, YHWH. And these two existed before the creation of anything made, including the angels. Thus, the Logos was never an angel (as Lucifer and Michael are angels) as Latter Day Saints contend, and the Logos was not the breath of the God as Sabbatarians trapped in the Sacred Name Heresy contend … these are the two primary faults of Arian and neo-Arian Christians.

The breath [pneumati/pneuma] of the Father [ton Theon] or of the Son [pneuma Christos] does not have personhood as Trinitarian Christendom contends—

As Pharisees sought to kill Jesus because He said He was the Son of God, Trinitarians will seek to kill Arians and Binitarians because they say that they are sons of God, younger siblings to Christ Jesus who is the firstborn Son of the Father and the First of many sons. Arians will seek to kill Binitarians for a host of reasons, the primary being that Binitarians hold that the Father did not create all that has been made, but the Logos as His Helpmate did … just as the woman brings forward the next generation of human beings and is the mother of every person, including the man Jesus of Nazareth, the Logos brought forth everything that has been made, including time [the beginning]. But just as the Logos entered His creation, thereby losing His life [glory] that He had as the Helpmate, it isn’t the Church that will be glorified, for the Church is the Body of Christ. It was the only Son of the Logos that was glorified, and it will be the children of Zion [the Church] that will be glorified, with Zion giving birth to a nation in a day (Isa 66:7–8).

The Church as the mother of glorified sons of God will give birth to a righteous Abel before her labor pains are upon her, with her labor pains being the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. She will, then, 220 days later give birth to a second son, a spiritual Cain that will slay his righteous brother as birth-order is reversed in the mirror image of human birth that has labor pains preceding, not following, the birth of a child. Then, when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man and Satan is cast from heaven on the doubled day 1260, the Church, the last Eve, will give birth to a third son, a spiritual Seth that will be accepted [saved] by simply enduring to the end. And this—the preceding—is the good news that must be proclaimed to the world as a witness to all nations before the end comes (Matt 24:13–14).

It has just been proclaimed to you.

I have proclaimed this good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved since 2002 … I wasn’t called to proclaim anything prior to 2002, and I said little about the hope that lay within me for I wasn’t presumptuous, speaking without having been called to speak. But what I didn’t understand in 2002 was that this good news wouldn’t be loudly shouted from rooftops, but would be quietly whispered; for these were the words of Jesus, words that Christendom hasn’t believed and even now doesn’t want to believe—

The Muslim who today believes that Jesus was a prophet but not the Son of God will, when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man and the spirit is poured out on all flesh, rebel against the Adversary, his [or her] present lord, and will be numbered among the firstfruits, and will—most likely—comprise the bulk of the harvest of firstfruits. Christians who were first to receive the good news of Christ will be last to be glorified; for most of Christendom has never been born of God and will appear before God in the great White Throne Judgment. These Christians are not lost for they have never been alive—and they will not receive a second breath of life until they are raised from death after the thousand years of the Millennium.

But this is not what Christian theologians teach … again, what Christian theologians teach is a lie that can be likened to the word the prophets of Ahab delivered to the king.

Concerning Christmas, some scholars challenge the idea that early Christians took part in pagan festivals, but those challenges cannot account for why any Christian would celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25^th … His three and a half year long earthly ministry began when He was about thirty years of age, thus placing His birth date closer to the Feast of Tabernacles than to the Festival of Lights, when no shepherd would have still been in the field with his flock.

Ezra records,

And a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the returned exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem, and that if anyone did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from the congregation of the exiles. / Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. (10:7–9 emphasis added)

The autumn rains would have caused the shepherds of Judea to pen their flocks sometime shortly after the Feast of Tabernacles, meaning that when Luke writes about Jesus’ birth, saying, “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (2:8), no shepherds would have been out with their flocks.

Why Christmas and Christmas observance is such a big deal is that the rebellion of Christendom [the Apostasy — from 2 Thess 2:3] will occur on or about Christmas in the common year of the Second Passover liberation of Israel. If this Second Passover liberation occurs next year, with the second Passover [the 15^th of Iyyar] falling on or about May 19^th, then 220 days later [2520 days minus 2300 days] would be Sunday, December 25^th, with the double witness of Christmas falling on Sunday being enough to convince Arians and Trinitarians to stay with the traditions of greater Christendom. The last day of the present prince of this world’s reign would then be October 30^th, 2014; the first day of the reign of the Son of Man would be October 31^st, when Satan and his angels are cast to earth, coming as evil spirits seeking to devour spiritually whomever they can. This scenario would have the sixth seal of Revelation chapter six being opened on or about the December solstice of 2012, and would have Christ Jesus returning as the Messiah in April 2018, 490 years after 16^th-Century Anabaptists returned to Sabbath observance in 1528 CE.

Is the alignment of these dates coincidental? Certainly that could be the case. But when secular watchmen such as Glenn Beck, a Latter Day Saint, publicly warns his millions of nightly viewers to set aside a year’s worth of food—that if nothing happens in the next two years, he will join in the mocking of his alarmism—it might be wise for Christians to take the Passover sacraments as Jesus left the example with His disciples, thereby covering inner firstborn sons of God and outer biological firstborns with the blood of the Lamb of God … there is no reason for a Christian to die when he or she should live. It will only be unbelief that slays the Christian.

The firstborns of the various “isms” of this world will not cover themselves with the blood and body of Christ Jesus by taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14^th day of Abib [Aviv] this coming spring: their unbelief will simply not permit them to keep the Passover—and the unbelief of greater Christendom will not permit the vast majority of Christians to keep the Passover after the example and model Jesus left with His disciples. Thus, uncovered Christian firstborns will die as will die the uncovered firstborns of Islam and Judaism, also people of the Book.

As Micaiah initially spoke what he was told to say, encouraging Ahab to get himself killed, the pastors of the Sabbatarian churches of God have spoken what they were told to say: they have encouraged the saints to trust in the Lord to protect them in a place of physical safety, a place of so-called final training, where these Sabbatarians will escape the ravages of the Affliction … that place of physical safety is the grave. All Sabbatarians who do not have the spirit of prophecy—and even some who do—will be martyred. Their pastors have been like the lying prophets who encouraged Ahab to go up to Ramoth-gilead where he would be killed by the king of Syria; their pastors have not done for them what Glenn Beck is doing for his listeners, in that their pastors have not encouraged them to prepare to survive the collapse of spiritual Babylon, the single kingdom of this world, with the foremost preparation they can make being to understand prophecy [i.e., have the spirit of prophecy].

Paying off debt, laying aside food, clothing, fuel—these are physical things that any reasonable person who sincerely believes the end of the age is at hand will do to the best of the person’s ability… Latter Day Saints have been preparing for the coming collapse of the spiritual kingdom of Babylon at least since LDS President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., said in the General Conference Report of April 1937 that every head of household should have on hand enough food and clothing and if possible, fuel for a year. The instructions come from a carnal [natural] mind, but the wisdom remains sound and is what Glenn Beck advocates.

The wisdom for having on hand those things necessary to ensure life for a year comes out of America’s Great Depression when hunger gripped much of the nation. Of course, those who closely adhere to LDS President Clark’s admonition will believe that the wisdom came from God through their prophet—and by having on hand a year’s supply of essentials, faithful Mormons will be less effected by the collapse of society whenever it occurs. Unfortunately, by having on hand a year’s supply of essentials, Mormons will not repent of their present ways when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, but will, instead, believe that God inspires their prophets. Their year’s supply of essentials will not last a year, but will last long enough that they will rebel against God when the man of perdition is revealed on day 220 of the Affliction. And within the scope of President Clark’s admonition, the LDS Church and LDS members have acquired control of much of the food distribution system in the United States. Within the Church’s administrative hierarchy, an office has been created to coordinate the leveraging of food into discipleship in the event of societal collapse. So the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has anticipated the fall of spiritual Babylon [the single kingdom of this world] and has prepared itself and its members to use the collapse to promote its theology. Latter Day Saints, with few exceptions, behave in a way that shows they believe that the end of the age is a reality.

For most Americans, the Depression is a societal memory, not a reality that can repeat itself in the second decade of the 21^st-Century … the Depression years were some of my grandfather’s most prosperous years. As a nearly self-sufficient farmer who apparently had gotten burned in the banking failures earlier in the 20^th-Century, my grandfather was debt-free and had eighty acres in northern Indiana, Amish and Mennonite neighbors, and an innate curiosity that caused him to do for himself those things for which others paid, including drilling (not digging) an eighty foot well on the second forty acre tract he acquired—the well that supplied water to the house was one he had dug as a young man. That well was also eighty feet deep, and its digging had been a major and a risky undertaking. So my father’s father had lived and reared seven children without purchasing much of anything. He milked a dozen-plus cows by hand, hoed his fields himself, saved his own seed, and lived to a ripe old age, sound in limb and mind until he pulled over to the side of road while driving to town and died, slumped over the steering wheel. He had just finished harvesting his fields: he lived long enough to hear Sputnik’s beep-beeps.

But a nearly self-sufficient lifestyle really isn’t possible in 21^st-Century America: at local supermarkets, Amish families load shopping carts with sugar-coated breakfast cereals. Their men fall timber with chainsaws, and hunt deer with scope-sighted shotguns using ammo purchased from local vendors. Their men use milking machines in barns, ark welders, and power sanders. Certainly the Amish are more self-sufficient than average Americans, but they, too, have succumbed to the passing of time. It is, however, their communities that provide the resources needed to allow for their limited self-sufficiency as it is America as a national community that provides the resources necessary for the lifestyle of the nation, a lifestyle that has become unsustainable, a growing recognition that empowers both environmental activists and the Tea Party insurgency. No person, no household, no community can borrow forty percent of the money it spends and prosper, or even sustain itself. The debt load of this nation will collapse the nation. America’s “enemies” don’t attack the nation with planes and tanks, but with money in-hand at Treasury auctions. They loan America ever more money as if the nation were an addict and our creditors were drug dealers. At some point, the addict cannot pay; the drug supply is cut off; and the addict withers in withdrawal pain—as does whatever the dealer demands to just feel normal again.

What is “normal”? Is it normal to have a year’s supply of essentials on hand? Is it normal to live close to the land in a self-sufficient lifestyle as is possible? Is it normal to save seeds, plant gardens, spend little, become debt-free if possible? Or is it normal to send text-messages to friends while watching an oversized flat-screen TV and munching potato chips? Is it normal to charge groceries on credit cards while talking to best friends on cell-phones? What would it mean to feel normal again if the American economy collapsed? Or if the world economy collapsed because of an American decline?

Normal isn’t normal but abnormal, regardless of whether a person home-cans the produce from his or her garden, or daily charges groceries on the person’s credit card. The world is all mixed up.

If a Christian truly believes the end of the age is near, the Christian will live as if the end were at hand … what happens if the Christian is wrong? What happens if the world continues on as it has been going indefinitely? How much will the Christian miss by living as if the end were near in time?

The so-called disease of childhood obesity might well prove to be the salvation of the children; for the present American affluent lifestyle will pass as the nation’s previous near-subsistence lifestyle did … in 2000, I purchased five acres in Southern Illinois that had been platted as a town. There was no surface evidence that a community had ever been there: the five acres were covered by black walnut trees two-feet in diameter and cedars almost as large, but as I dug here and there, I uncovered the evidence of 19^th-Century occupation. A six pound cross-peen hammer. A rusted butcher knife. Bits of iron that were quickly returning to ore. Broken glass. The shards of a railroad community that had disappeared with the railroad, its roadbed now part of a bike path that was to eventually run the length of the state.

If suddenly there were no more cell-towers, no more satellite television or radio, no more full supermarket shelves, no more community water systems, would American Christians survive? Would Sabbatarian Christians who look and act like their neighbors survive? Where is there a support system for Sabbatarians as there was in the 19^th-Century? The factions within Sabbatarian Christendom seem less able to get along with one another than other Anabaptist factions are able to get along with each other. Every Sabbatarian does what is right in his or her own eyes—

The Book of Judges ends with, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). … When there is no authority in Israel, every person does what the person believes is right.

So returning to Micaiah, why would the Lord permit a lying spirit to speak through the prophets advising King Ahab? Scripture discloses that He did. So would the Lord permit Sabbatarian pastors and teachers to speak lies? Certainly every Sabbatarian believes to some degree that the Lord has permitted Sunday-observing teachers and pastors to lie to their congregations. But if the Body of Christ is one Body that consists of many members, and if the Sabbatarian Church represents this one Body, then Sabbatarians will differ in attributes (such as a hand differs from a foot), but not in theology. To hold a differing theology places the person in a different body.

If Sabbatarian Christendom is also divided into Arians and Trinitarians, with an additional division representing Binitarians, then Sabbatarians are not of one body but form many bodies, with all but one of these many bodies not presently recognizing Christ Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. For an Arian Christian has little in common with a Trinitarian: both may drink Pepsi and buy their milk and butter from Albertson’s and insure their automobiles with All State, but one will pray with folded hands or with upraised hands or by touching his or her chest and the other by clasping his or her chest. One will use a bastardized Hebrew pronunciation of Joshua as the name for Jesus and another will not—

Moses records the words of the Lord,

The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. / Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. (Deut 8:1–20 emphasis added)

Has America forgotten the Lord? Have American Christians forgotten the Lord? They have, haven’t they? For who keeps the commandments by walking in the way of the Lord? Who does not live by bread alone, from paycheck to paycheck, feeling the tug of poverty, yet being declared the wealthiest nation on earth, but a nation facing bankruptcy, a nation whose currency is a debt-based confidence game? Have American Christians not forgotten their God? They have good houses and usually full bellies and unbelievable wealth; yet they own nothing, not even their own thoughts. So how is it that American Christians have confidence that they will be with the Lord when they die when they will not walk in His ways while they live? Who has lied to them?

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Homer Kizer Ministries

Commentary — From the Margins

"Tell Me What I Want to Hear"