NOTES ON THE SELECTIVE VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: AMERICA AT THE PRECIPICE – WITH VIDEO

1. THE TEACHING

SCRIPTURE. “‘But no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall show to be in the wrong. This [peace, righteousness, security, triumph over opposition] is the heritage of the servants of the Lord [those in whom the ideal Servant of the Lord is reproduced]; this is the righteousness or the vindication which they obtain from Me [this is that which I impart to them as their justification],’ says the Lord.” – ISAIAH 54:17, AMPC

KEY TERMS:

• “SERVANT.” ‘Ebed’ [עֶבֶד]: “From a primitive root referring to, ‘One who is in bondage to or labors for [a sovereign];’ a husbandman; a worshipper; a bonded servant (i.e., a bondservant); ‘a slave (one who belongs to someone else);’ applies here to one who ministers to or on behalf of God; the subjects of a chief.”

•  “VINDICATION.” ‘Tsedaqah’ [וְצִדְקָתָ֛ם]: From a root word meaning, ‘Morally right, cleansed of self;’ a characteristic attached to rectitude or virtue; prosperity, justice promised to the blameless of conduct; an extension of the Lord’s holiness; the attitudes and actions the Lord expects of His true followers; ‘vindication, justification, salvation; ethical rightness.’”

QUOTATION. “Millions call themselves by His name, it is true, and pay some token homage to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. ‘Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who or what is ABOVE, and his true position will be exposed.’ Let him be forced into making a choice between God and Money, between God and Men, between God and Personal Ambition, God and Self, God and Human Love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above. However the man may protest, ‘the proof is in the choice he makes day after day throughout his life.’” ― A.W. TOZER, The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine, 1948; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘No weapon that is formed’ – No instrument of war, no sword, or spear; no instrument of persecution or torture that is made by the smith, Isaiah 54:16.

‘Shall prosper’ – On the meaning of this word, see the notes at Isaiah 52:13. The sense here is that it shall not have final and ultimate prosperity. It might be permitted for a time to appear to prosper – as persecutors and oppressors have done; but there would not be final and complete success.

‘And every tongue’ – No one shall be able to injure you by words and accusations. If a controversy shall arise; if others reproach you and accuse you of imposture and deceit, you will be able ultimately to convince them of error, and, by manifestation of the truth, to condemn them. The language here is derived probably from courts of justice (see the notes at Isaiah 41:1); and the idea is, that truth and victory, in every strife of words, would be on the side of the Church. To those who have watched the progress of discussions thus far on the subject of the True Religion … no matter from what quarter the attack has come, and no matter how much learning and talent have been evinced by the adversaries of the Bible, God has raised up some Watson, or Lardner, or Chalmers, or Buckland, or Cuvier, or Wiseman, to meet these charges, and to turn the scales in favor of the cause of truth …

‘This is the heritage’ – ‘The inheritance which awaits those who [truly, fully] serve God is truth and victory!’ It is not gold and the triumph of battle. It is not the laurel won in fields of blood. But it is, the protection of God in all times of trouble; his friendship in all periods of adversity; complete victory in all contests with error and false systems of religion; and preservation when foes rise up in any form and endeavor to destroy the [True] Church, and to blot out its existence and its name.

‘And their righteousness [or vindication] is of Me’ – Or rather, ‘This is the righteousness, or the justification which they obtain of Me; this is that which I impart to them as their justification.’ The idea is not that their righteousness is of Him, but that this justification or vindication from Him is a part of their inheritance and their portion.” – ALBERT BARNES, Notes on the Old and New Testament, 1834; edited

II. AMERICA AT THE BRINK

“The Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble [with submissive wonder]! He sits enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake!” – PSALM 99:1, AMP

THE GREAT DEBATE I. Just a few days ago America experienced arguably the most momentous Presidential Debate in all her history, as DONALD TRUMP and JOE BIDEN went toe to toe in the first of Two Presidential Debates. Without even bothering the many opinions of pundits from both Left and Right:

‘It was a Trump Triumph.’

The Former President came in fully amped up, did not stumble on his words (though he repeated the old lies and several new ones), seemed eager to the challenge and did not look at all the measure of his 78 years. Indeed, he seemed somehow ‘possessed’ of the vitality and vigor of a much younger man. It was one of his most effective presentations of his treachery I have yet witnessed.

President Biden by stunning, nearly breathless contrast, seemed to nearly crawl to the podium with the gait of a hundred-year-old man. He was not at all quick with his thoughts or words and at several points stumbled and stuttered, seeming to lose his train of thought. His visage often looked dazed and confused.

ANALYSIS. Here is a reasonably objective Post-Mortem on how the two candidates fared by AARON BLAKE, senior political reporter for “The Fix,” the daily political commentary of the Washington Post. His article is titled, “5 Takeaways from the First Trump-Biden 2024 Debate” (June 27, 2024; edited).

1. BIDEN WAS ROUGH. “Biden came out raspy and with relatively little vigor or inflection in his voice. He stumbled over his words and lines of argument. Perhaps the most striking example came as he tried to make an early point about health care, failing to finish his thought before his time was up. [We’re] making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary personeligible for what I’ve been able to do with’ — Biden said, before trailing off and adding, ‘the Covid — excuse me, with — dealing with everything we have to do with — look — if — we finally beat Medicare.’” DK. And so on and on it went to the very last.

• BIDEN’S RARE TRACTION ON JAN. 6, TRUMP’S LEGAL PROBLEMS. “If there were good moments for Biden, it’s when the conversation turned to democracy; the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; and Trump’s legal problems. Biden made a point to highlight Trump’s felony convictions — ‘The only person on the stage who’s a convicted felon right now is the man I’m looking at right now’ — and cited the substance of the former president’s other problems. He mentioned ‘sex with a porn star’ (the underlying alleged event in Trump’s Manhattan conviction) and ‘molesting a woman in public’ (which Trump has been found liable for in the E. Jean Carroll civil case). Biden also sought to put Trump on the spot over his suggestions that Jan. 6 defendants have been persecuted, something the American people broadly disagree with.” DK. Yet, somehow we don’t tend to recall those points since Biden’s delivery was overall so horribly flat.

• TRUMP UNLEASHED MANY FALSE CLAIMS. “It’s no surprise at this point, but Trump’s performance included his usual stream of false and misleading claims. They included his false claim to having capped insulin costs before Biden did; Blue states executing babies after birth; there being no terrorist attacks on his watch; Biden’s wanting to quadruple people’s taxes; and Biden’s having indicted him. (There is no evidence of Biden’s involvement in the cases). Biden had a few, too, including at one point mixing up when Trump was accused of having his tryst with Daniels. (He said Melania Trump was pregnant; in fact, she had a young child).” DK. However, his quick replies without word salads, the dynamic sense of confidence he displayed and overall demeanor obscured these facts.

• A GREAT DEBATE IT WASN’T. There were plenty of questions before the debate about whether the format would work. In addition to being very early, the debate featured no audience and a mute button if the candidates talked over one another. The format mostly worked okay. But that didn’t make it a great debate. Whether because of the mute button or not, we avoided a replay of the messy food fight of a first 2020 debate. The candidates seemed to understand that talking when it wasn’t their turn wouldn’t do any good. The lack of an audience also meant they weren’t playing to a crowd — and the crowd wasn’t influencing the affair … Trump largely filibustered, repeating his false claims, mostly without fact-checking by Biden and not reallyat all by the debate moderators (who decided beforehand that it wasn’t their role). Biden struggled to make his points and drive the contrasts in a way that deprived the proceedings of much flow, though he did counter some of Trump’s claims.”

• TRUMP FINALLY TAKES AN ABORTION POSITION. “Trump has strained to avoid getting pinned down on his abortion position, seeking to say merely that it should be a state’s choice and trying to leave it at that.  But on Thursday night, Trump did — at long last and after blowing his previous deadline for offering a position — finally weigh in on the abortion pill Mifepristone. ‘First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it,’ Trump said. The Supreme Court didn’t actually ‘approve’ the abortion pill, instead rejecting a challenge to it based on a technicality. DK. Mifepristone can cause the death of an embryo or fetus by blocking progesterone, a hormone essential to maintaining pregnancy. This leads to the breakdown of the uterine lining and cuts off the child’s supply of oxygen and nutrients. Mifepristone alone will kill 75% or more of embryos, but these deceased embryos may not be expelled. This can result in infection, sepsis, and potentially the mother’s death. For this reason, the second pill—Misoprostol—is taken 24 to 48 hours later to complete the abortion by inducing uterine contractions strong enough to expel the embryo and placenta (US Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Just the Facts on Chemical Abortion,” Dec. 2021).

ELEPHANT IN THE SANCTUARY. Beloved, I tell you: ‘We stand on the very Edge of Transfer’ – from the Age of Grace to the Great Tribulation. From the Age of the Gentiles to the Age of the Jews. We are currently, therefore, ‘On the Bubble’ as it were, dwelling in the deep and final hallows of the Birth Pangs leading to the Consummation of everything.

‘And the American Church remains complicit’ – either by her treacherous Compromise or by her cowardly, self-protective Silence.

III. WHAT GOT US HERE

While there are a cluster of complex but highly related factors that have resulted in the present condition American Church Apostasy, one is central to our Great Spiritual Collapse: INSIPID SERMONS of the past eight years.

I have found they fall into one of THREE CATEGORIES: ‘Preaching Puerile;’ ‘Preaching Politics; or ‘Preaching Prophetic.’ Only that third category is redemptive, relevant, and life-giving, but rarer than a hand painted Masterpiece midst a raft of Charlie Brown cartoons.

Hey, I love Charlie Brown, but – wait for it – ‘Charlie Brown’s not real!’ Vastly more tragically: ‘Neither is the American Church anymore, beloved.’

• PREACHING PUERILE. “Boyish; childish; trifling; as a puerile amusement” (N. Webster, 1828). I had originally labeled this, “Preaching Safe,” but it’s much worse than that. It is very near the height of abandonment of Christ by cowardice, seeking to avoid any real encounter with controversy. Even the life and death issues of salvation that are beating down the doors of the Church every day now. It is ‘treating us ‘wee babes’ by a diet of the equivalent of Gerber’s creamed carrots instead of the “rich, red meat” of the true Gospel. There of course can be no growth nor spiritual strength from such lifeless preaching, leading to ‘the very death of faith.’

• PREACHING POLITICS. ‘Far worse is the manifest Idolatry of replacing Jesus Christ with Antichrist,’ which I am proposing more and more strenuously is found in the person of DONALD JOHN TRUMP and his insidious, fully heretical “Maga Christian Nationalism” movement, so reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism of World War II Nazi Germany. I tell you flatly that for those “Christians” who have formed serious alliance with Trump, the Scripture clearly bar you from Heaven (cf. Exodus 20:1-3; 1 Corinthians 10:14; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). They are ‘Apostate,’ and no longer of The Faith.

• PREACHING PROPHETIC. This all too rare but vital form of preaching and teaching desperately needed in the American Church is based on EPHESIANS 4:15: “‘But speaking the truth in love’ [in all things—both our speech and our lives expressing His truth], let us grow up in all things into Him [following His example] who is the Head—Christ” (Amplified). It is taking the Words of God and ‘applying them directly to the Crisis of the Age.’ A quotation attributed to MARTIN LUTHER (though disputed as to its true source) sums up this crucial duty: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every proportion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the World and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ! ‘Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace as he flinches at that point’” (c. 1530 AD).

THE CONSEQUENCES. ‘Agenda 47, Project 25, Antichrist, and an American Fourth Reich, and nothing less!’ Quickly engulfing all nations in the indescribable Flood of violence and mayhem and lawlessness and blood and death of the Great Tribulation. Which ultimately takes what is left of the earth’s populace to the Hills of Megiddo, after which there shall be no more human history as we have known it, beloved (Revelation 16:16).

‘It is The End of the Age.’

IV. LAST THOUGHTS

As I again reflected on the Presidential Debate, I was profoundly struck with an unprecedented Reality Check: “It’s all truly happening now, just as The Messiah promised it would.’

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? We are every one of us struggling with that massive Question, first famously posed by DR. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER in his marvelous book of the same phrase published in 1976.

The first book given to me as a freshly minted Christian in 1980, Schaeffer prophetically wrote this about the America and West nearly 50 years ago.

“Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776-1789] said that the following FIVE ATTRIBUTES marked Rome at its End: First, a mounting love of show and luxury (that is, affluence); Second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor (this could be among countries in the family of nations as well as in a single nation); Third, an obsession with sex; Fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; Fifth, an increased desire to live off the State. It all sounds so familiar. We have come a long road since our first chapter, and we are back in Rome.”

I am now fully convinced that AMERICA IS AT THE PRECIPICE, teetering on the very edge of her ‘Final Telos’ [τέλος]: “The limit at which either a person or thing ceases to be what he or it was up to at that point, or at which previous activities ceased.” Or as I have often termed it:

‘The End of the American Order.’

CODA. A number of you have been laboring and agonizing over how to ‘Save America’ – by voting Blue, or by advocating replacing President Biden with a more viable alternative to Trump, or more remotely, searching for a dark horse third candidate who can somehow save us from The Beast.

None of this shall accomplish the rescue of a Nation that is hellbent on becoming nothing less than Babylon the Great, as I have noted previously. Though now with vastly more conviction and urgency.

So what now, beloved?

• RECALIBRATE! As I noted in my last Commentary: “This is really happening!” I am consequently no longer interested in saving America any more than the ancients were capable of saving Rome. That political horse has long left the barn. – “¡Se acabó!” (cf. June 2021)

• THE ILLUSTRATION. “The Trump Scenario fascinates me, and I say that as a supporter. As a teenager in the 1980’s and during the many years since then pre-2016, I would have never dreamt of Donald Trump being either a successful Presidential Candidate or a successful President. Even more I never foresaw him garnering such a good percentage of conservative votes, and, more particularly, votes of concerned and involved Christians (far too few overall, candidly-should be closer to 100% as to active interest and varying levels of cultural war engagement and involvement in this polity, in my humble opinion). I will conclude in an attempted summary fashion. I think that what many concerned and active Christians, along with many other concerned Americans, are looking for in a President and other Politicians are patriotic bulldogs with a conservative world view, who are not primarily career-focused and beholden to corporations and Wall Street, lobbyists, the press, special interest groups, or Washington or statewide ‘insiders’” – Christian Attorney, June 29, 2024, 9:33 am

• PREPARE! Prepare for what, exactly?(1) For the Rise of Antichrist to the pinnacle of earthly power; (2) For the stripping of our Constitutional freedoms in the few years ahead; (3) For the probability of being persecuted as never before, and for some, imprisoned, tortured and even executed; (4) For the Return of Jesus Christ just before the ignition of the Great Tribulation detailed in Revelation 6:7-12) , or what Scriptures call “THE TIME OF JACOB’S TROUBLE”(Jeremiah 30:7).

CODICIL. Writing the very last Book of the Canon before the Book of Revelation, the APOSTLE JUDE penned what some expositors call, appropriately: “The Book of the Apostates.” I close with its exquisite detail and sober instruction for us all as to our FINAL DUTY as true followers of Yeshua ben David.

“These [Last Days apostates] are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.  

‘But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh” (16-23, NKJV).

Are we clear, beloved? ‘¡Claro que sí mis amigos! Dios los bendiga a todos.’

Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/1upjSWbG9VA