NOTES ON THE GENEROSITY OF GOD TO RAISE THE POOR FROM OBLIVION UNTO HONOR

SCRIPTURE. “[The Lord] raises the poor out of the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap and the dung hill, that He may seat them with princes, even with the princes of His people.” – PSALM 113:7-8, AMPC

QUOTATION. “Go through the raging sea, meet your knocked down self and look into your eyes. You will get the drill that you don’t belong here. And, you will get back up to rise up like never before.” ― HIRAL NAGDA, Inspiring Limitlessness, in press (2023).

FIRST THOUGHTS

Each of us has “a Story to Tell,” the amended title of a magnificent song by Naomi Raines (2020) – some melodramatic, stunning and spectacular; others, equally priceless, quieter and gentler, savored in the hidden places of life. My own Story of Rescue is of the first kind, just this side of a desperate suicide cut off by a loving, powerful God at the very last minute near Halloween, 1979.

The point of our discussion today is how only One Person in the entire universe can take a corpse and breathe new life into it. The more I think of ‘Raising of the dead’ in my own experience over 40 years ago, I am still aghast at how far He has brought me. From that darkest, airless place known to man, to this Present Moment, brimming with hope and joy alongside the heartaches and frights of living in the Last Days of human history.

Only God, beloved. Only God.

MY STORY IN BRIEF. I was born on September 23, 1944, at the United States Naval Hospital in San Diego, California as my Dad was deployed as a Navy Submariner in the South Pacific during the shank of the Second World War. Lots of backstory to that, but I’ll let it lie for now.

Grew up in the late 40s through the 60s in the then somewhat dusty high desert town of San Bernardino, where my Grandpa was in real estate and kept a few horses, one of whom was “Easter,” a Golden Palomino that I used to ride with my cousin Bill “Willy Lump-Lump” Kelly when we were kids.

Then something dark took place. When I was about five years old, a young teen neighbor who was babysitting me decided to sexually assault me – an event that would bury itself deep inside my then undeveloped ability to process it. Predictably, that trauma would manifest later in my adult life through twenty years of alcohol addiction and a raucous lifestyle borne of a fierce desire to put that fire out by the Ultimate Solution of suicide as I approached Halloween 1979.

Then came this Jesus running to me a few hours before I did the deed through a tearful prayer meeting with an old-school Pentecostal in a ramshackle church on October 30. And I did not die, but was born anew that morning around 10 am in Stockton, California, just as the morning chill began to give way to the cloudless sunlight that day of days.

From my New Birth in 1979 through today in 2023, I experienced a thousand highs and lows and midpoints along the way, working with and for mostly Christian organizations that at first blessed me, but later in my tour of duty would turn on me as they dared to turn on our Messiah as they increasingly sought earthly, political gain. As you all likely know by now, the Spiritual Landscape of America was shaken to its very core in that regard beginning around 2015 as DONALD TRUMP began his stunning seduction of the American Church, dramatically impacting us all to this tumultuous day.

Consequently, my own life was turned upside down and inside out as I watched the men and women “the princes of His people,” who I had revered as Christian leaders increasingly turn tail and run from their sacred charges to tell the truth, live the truth, and if necessary, die for the truth if required to do so. But they would not, beloved. To this very minute, they still will not!

DEATH OF THE AMERICAN SOUL

I no longer have the luxury of mincing words about the plight of America and her wayward Church after eight years of a most intense study of and engagement with Church leaders, who for the most part seem breathlessly indifferent to the countless Warnings God has issued in that same number of years. As a former near-suicide, I recognize all the symptoms in our ailing National Character.

WARNING SIGNS. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has short listed crucial warning signs of a self-destructive individual that I here extrapolate a few of them to the United States (ret. Nov. 6, 2023).

FEELING HOPELESS. Survey after survey shows Americans in increasing stages of despair with the concomitant expression of abandoning trust in our leaders, both clerical and political.

FEELING TRAPPED. There is also the sense that one’s current condition is not improvable, the idea that this is the way it’s always going to be. This of course shuts down the anticipation of a bright future, reinforcing the hopelessness of that condition.

UNBEARABLE PAIN. Psychologists will rightly observe that psychic, emotional or spiritual pain is the most devastating kind of suffering human beings can experience. When we see the America we used to know and love dissolve before our eyes, our moorings for stability become dislodged, leading to further confusion and despair.

INCREASED USE OF ALCOHOL OR DRUGS. For a large part of the population, there is the need to turn to recreational substances to ease the pain. This is clearly what I did for over 20 years as an alcoholic, to bury the subterranean agony going on inside of me from the childhood assault. While some studies show a drop in the use of alcohol for some, the National Institute on Drug Abuse lists increases in other alternatives including marijuana, hallucinogens, fentanyl, depressants, methamphetamine, cocaine, LSD, as aids to altering one’s reality.

AGGRESSION. This is likely the most tell-tale signature of an individual or a society increasing losing control. We have all read of road rage, gun violence, racist incidents and all manner of what one researcher called “Mean World Syndrome” exploding across the country. Construed by professor of Communication GEORGE GERBNER in the 1970s, he proposed that excessive exposure to media violence over decades has dramatically moved America toward increased fear, anxiety, pessimism, and near paranoia about perceived threats from enemies who are ‘not like us’ (NOT the date of Wikipedia edit: Oct. 30, 2023).

AMERICA GONE FERAL. This last penetrating point bears closer examination. I turn once again to The Atlantic magazine for superb analysis by Canadian-born American journalist DAVID BROOKS in his piece, “How America God Mean” (Aug. 14, 2023; edited).

Feral. “A formerly domesticated animal thrust into a wild state, causing the individual to run wild. As with ‘wilding,’ rampaging in a public place or attacking people at random.” NOTE: This condition causes human beings to act like beasts.

You getting my meaning here, beloved? America ostensibly began as a domesticated culture, though you’d have a tough time convincing African slaves or the indigenous Natives of that. With that necessary caveat in mind, the application of the argument would propose that America has progressively become ‘less civilized and more uncivilized,’ especially during the last decade.

Here are some excerpts from BROOKS’ POSTMORTEM on the rapid American Decline.

“Over the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide.”

“My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive.”

“We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our Democracy. What is going on? Over the past few years, different social observers have offered different stories to explain the rise of hatred, anxiety, and despair. The Technology Story: Social media is driving us all crazy. The Sociology Story: We’ve stopped participating in community organizations and are more isolated. The Demography Story: America, long a White-dominated nation, is becoming a much more Diverse country, a change that has millions of white Americans in a panic. The Economy Story: High levels of economic inequality and insecurity have left people afraid, alienated, and pessimistic.”

“The Manichaean Tribalism of [today’s] Politics appears to give people a sense of belonging. For many years, America seemed to be awash in a culture of hyper-individualism. But these days, people are quick to identify themselves by their group: Republican, Democrat, Evangelical, Person of Color, LGBTQ, Southerner, Patriot, Progressive, Conservative. People who feel isolated and under threat flee to totalizing identities.”

“[This] Politics of Recognition doesn’t give you community and connection, certainly not in a system like our current one, mired in structural dysfunction. People join partisan tribes in search of belonging—but they end up in a lonely mob of isolated belligerents who merely obey the same orthodoxy. If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear. Seeking to escape sadness, loneliness, and anomie through politics serves only to drop you into a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination.”

“America’s Founding Fathers studied the History of Democracies going back to ancient Greece. They drew the lesson that democracies can be quite fragile. When Private Virtue fails, the Constitutional Order crumbles. ‘After decades without much in the way of Moral Formation, America became a place where more than 74 million people looked at Donald Trump’s morality and saw presidential timber.’”

CONCLUSION. Mr. Brooks completes his brilliant overview of the horribly splintered American Cultural Landscape by arguing for a return to Moral Education, certainly a reasonable plea. But I ask: And just Who and Where are these Virtuous Leaders today? Certainly not in the increasingly aggressive Leftist Universities. But as clearly and certainly, neither in the passive-aggressive American Church today, shamelessly vacillating between a harsh Christian Nationalism and a cowardly Collective Silence.

We shall find no answers in either of those morbid places, beloved. So where do we turn? That is our next sole consideration.

III. THE TEACHING

KEY TERM: “RAISES.” ‘Qum’ [קוּם]: “To arise, stand up (by Divine decree); to accomplish, endure, lift up; to newly ordain, perform, establish; to stir up, strengthen, succeed; results from obesience (respect, reverence, worship, adoration, homage); also from listening [and heeding] God’s Word; to be made powerful; to be confirmed and raised up for action.”

COMMENTARY. “‘He raiseth up the poor’ — Yet, great and glorious as He is, He stoops so low as to regard and advance those whom all men, even their own brethren, slight and despise; ‘out of the dust,’ &c. — From a most contemptible and miserable condition; ‘that He may set him with princes’ —In equal honour and power with them, as He did Joseph, David, and others; even with ‘the princes of His people,’ who, in God’s account, and in truth, are far more honourable and happy than the princes of heathen nations, and their subjects more noble; for they have God’s special presence among them, and His Special Providence watching over them.

One of the Jewish Rabbins applies this passage to the ‘Resurrection of the dead,’ and some Christian commentators have applied it to the work of Redemption by Jesus Christ, and not improperly, for through Him poor, fallen men are raised out of the dust, nay, out of the dunghill of sin, and set among Patriarchs and Prophets, yea, among Angels and Archangels, those Princes of God’s people, those Leaders of the Armies of Jehovah. And, as Dr. [George] Horne observes, ‘What is the exaltation of the meanest beggar from a dunghill to an earthly diadem, when compared with that of human nature from the grave to the Throne of God! Here is honour worthy of our ambition; honour after which all are alike invited to aspire; which all may obtain who strive worthily and lawfully; and of which, when once obtained, nothing can ever deprive the possessors!’” – JOSEPH BENSON, Notes on the Holy Bible, 5 vols., 1811-1818; edited

DK. I have found this rather electrifying Promise to be true in my life, but perhaps most recently, more deeply satisfying and encouraging than ever before. I have told you of my several years of employment terminations between the years 2017 to 2020 (largely due to my resistance of the Trump Movement). After a successful career as a respected university professor, there followed times when we had to travel to food banks for assistance, nearly begging God for bread to make ends meet, including a period of effective homelessness for a while, staying with friends who could put us up.

But as The Story goes, in March 2020, things changed, and my patronage began through a few noble and generous donors, and the Digital Circuit Ride Enterprise was birthed. More recently, on February 15, 2022, the Lord spoke “Expansion!” to me via this famous passage:

“Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. ‘For you shall expand’ to the right and to the left. And your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited.” – ISAIAH 54:2-3, NKJV

“EXPAND.” ‘Parats’ [פרַץ]: “To break out; make a breach [in a heretofore unbreachable wall]; to burst forth or spread abroad; to disperse, grow or increase [greatly]; to open, scatter, press or urge; to break in pieces [the hindering opposition]; implies with (spiritual) violence; to become [widely] known.”

And it is beginning to happen, beloved, in small steps for now even before the new book is published this coming December 2023. Consequently, I am both terribly excited and a tad tremulous as I see us all being thrust forward into the very Yaw of this historic American Crisis, “for such a time as this.”

IV: LAST THOUGHTS: THINGS TO COME

So here I go once more out on still another limb, hoping and praying it is God’s Branch and not my own twig! I borrow that phrase in this last subtitle from H.G. WELLS’ classic book, The Shape of Things to Come published in 1936, as the world inched its way toward the bloody catastrophe of World War II just a few years later.

I chose it because a Synopsis of that novel predicted that a long economic slump would cause “a Major War that leaves Europe devastated and threatened by plague” (Wikipedia, Oct. 21, 2023). Beloved, though it pains me to say this, it ought come as no surprise that we are already seeing a nascent World-Wide Conflict in Ukraine, Israel, and likely soon, the South China Sea.

So here is what I see very likely taking place for the rest of the Decade of the 2020s, though in brief.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF DONALD TRUMP IS REELECTED? This is what I am projecting not only on the basis of Trump’s unbelievably steady hold on the voting blocks of the Republican Party, White Evangelical Christians, the great majority of business folk, a good portion of the blue collar voters, and, more troubling, a growing percentage of the military, police and first responder voters.

All harbingers of an historic ‘Coup d’etat’ – whether peaceful or violent. Here are TWO PATHS Christians may follow should that happen. Choose well!

THE POLITICAL CHURCH. “Thearc of REP. MIKE JOHNSON’S career encapsulates the ‘shifting priorities’ of the Religious Right in the Era of Donald Trump. During his first decades in political life, the newly elected House Speaker was a vehement opponent of legal abortion and greater legal equality for LGBTQ people. That focus reflected the dominant public focus of religious conservatives on issues of sexuality and gender roles from the 1980s until Barack Obama’s presidency. Without abandoning those views, Johnson in recent years has embraced key priorities of Trump’s MAGA Movement, describing ‘illegal immigration as the ‘true existential threat’ to America’s future and leading Congressional efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he claimed suffered from ‘credible allegations of fraud and irregularity’ … In his personal demeanor, Johnson is as mild-mannered as Trump is bombastic. But each man appears equally committed to a Vision of America that elevates the moral and political preferences of Conservative ‘White’ Christians over any other group.” – RONALD BROWNSTEIN, “Mike Johnson Symbolizes a New Turn for the Religious Right,” CNN Politics, Oct. 31, 2023

THE REMNANT CHURCH. “What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word Remnant? Do you think about fabric that is left over after a hat or a garment or some other custom-made item has been stitched and sewn together? … The question is, what does the Prophet Amos mean in Amos 5:15, when he talks about some people being ‘the Remnant of Joseph?’ In the context of Amos, a Remnant means those people that have remained faithful to God after so many others had turned away. The Remnant is those who God spared after divine judgment had been visited upon so many others that were being punished for their lack of faith … There have always been people who were a Remnant of Righteousness in a wicked world. Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth were a Remnant. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks were a Remnant. John Lewis and Diane Nash were a Remnant … All these people and a few more like them were the ones who stood up and spoke up for Justice and Righteousness while so many others sat in Silence or worked to maintain the status quo of a wicked world. Thank God for the ongoing witness of a Righteous Remnant in a wicked world!” – DR. MARVIN A. MCMICKLE, “A Righteous Remnant in a Wicked World: Amos 5:13-24,” Christian Citizen US, July 14, 2022; edited

DECISION OF A LIFETIME. Without any hesitation whatsoever, beloved, I propose that second only to your invitation of Jesus Christ to take over your life, this is the most important decision you shall ever make. After eight years of intense review of the Biblical Canon, the Choice that you will make this coming year will very probably determine the rest of your days on the earth, and whether or not you are received in the Kingdom of God in the Eschaton.

From Oblivion to Honor back to Oblivion. Or from Oblivion to Honor, then unto untold, indescribable Exaltation too grand for human language to capture. Choose well, beloved. Everything rides on it.

YOUTUBE VIDEO: https://youtu.be/OQogT0dY80c