Thanksgiving—taking and not giving

“Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph…. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.” (Ex. 1:8,11).

 

“And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.

And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim:

And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.

And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.” (Jdg. 2:10-13).

 

I think of the history of Protestant America. It began on two fronts: Jamestown, a money-making venture, which ended in dismal swamps; and Plymouth, an effort to establish freedom of worship.

 

It’s true that not everyone on the Pilgrims’ ship was a converted servant of God; but, in every work of God to advance His kingdom this has been the case. Yet, Providence worked through difficulty to humble and sanctify that group. He brought out of the greatest atheist/agnostic the faith that humbles and saves.

 

That first winter was very cold, and the Pilgrims arrived after the growing season. But, the Lord kept them alive. He opened the hearts of the indigenous tribes and they brought of their stores to save from starvation the strangely dressed visitors. This experience taught the Pilgrims the miraculous, overseeing care of God. They stayed and lived right where they landed and all their days reciprocated with peace the selfless faith of the local tribes. They suffered from want and risked everything to venture across the unknown ocean and to live on a mysterious land.

 

But, others came who did not suffer like the first Pilgrims and who knew not the law of love that the Pilgrims had learned. The word got out that new frontiers were open and would provide immeasurable space in which to live. Abundant natural resources beckoned and multitudes wanted nothing more than to fill their wants to the full.

 

Soon, a new generation of immigrants arrived who did not know the beneficence shown to the Pilgrim fathers. These later arrivals had much less to risk and suffer, since the unknown had already been established. Hearts were unhumbled and reliance on God was not the deep dependence of the first Pilgrims. The natural heart of selfishness manifested itself and skirmishes broke out between the new hypocritical and tyrannical Puritans and their tribal benefactors. Europeans and the indigenous peoples lost the original love and respect that existed between them at the holy beginnings of their union.

 

From that point on, never-ending hordes of new arrivals claimed discovery of this land and that one, which had ever existed in the possession of the American Indians. But, nothing could change the mind of the conservative, republican masses in their invented Manifest Destiny. It was obvious to them that they should have everything they laid their eyes on. Were they not blessed by the God of the Bible? Did they not profess to serve the Creator and Redeemer?

 

“And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:

For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.

And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.

Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.” (Gen. 13:14-17).

 

Did not the God of Abraham give His servant every square inch of land he looked upon? As the descendents of Abraham’s holy religion, the Bible-knowledgeable Protestants appropriated the promises given to Abraham. No worthless red man better stand in their way!

 

But, how could they have the religion of Abraham and his covenant if they did not have the spirit of their father Abraham? How could they represent Christ as Abraham had done if they did not know Christ’s character and would not keep His Law as Abraham had known and kept. The God of Abraham did not know them, like He intimately knew His servant.

 

“For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.” (Gen. 18:19).

 

Those unregenerated children of the Reformation turned into a carnal army of thugs, rampaging across the continent. They were more like Lot.

 

“And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.” (Gen. 13:10,11).

 

How much love for God did Lot have? How much faith? How much Spirit and letter of the Law did Lot know? He was a follower of a follower of Jesus. Lot didn’t know God, but he was a follower of one who did.

 

Like Lot, these followers of the Pilgrims did not know God like their risk-taking, spiritual forebears. They hadn’t laid down everything; they hadn’t sold everything to have the pearl of great price. They hadn’t entered through the strait gate. They didn’t know the cross borne by those who jeopardized their lives for the Bible and for the God of the Bible.

 

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (Jn. 3:36). These later waves of Puritans did not have sound repentance and deep faith in Jesus. Therefore, they retained the bitter wormwood of false religion, the wrath of God against them.

 

Thus, they set up another society of bondage that they left in the Old World. They united church and state and forced everyone in the colony to serve God. Therefore, this God was not Jehovah, but Baal and Ashtoreth. From this sprang superstition mixed with truth, the evils and foolishness of witch hunts and persecutions within Protestantism. They couldn’t read their Bibles and examine themselves thoroughly. The spirit that worked in the children of disobedience worked in the Puritans as well.

 

“From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?” (Jas. 4:1-5).

 

But, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stayed with them. These tarnished children of the Reformation must have a seed to pass down through the generations that would glorify the God of love. The laws of the Bible must remain under their stewardship and be a witness against their lack of spirituality. “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” (Gal. 3:19).

 

Today, those descendents of the original self-sacrificing Protestant Reformation have gobbled up all the land of the indigenous American peoples, and now they are spreading their abominations across the seas. They have laid claim to the world’s resources, fomenting wars and then pouring retribution upon any nation that dares to defend its sovereign rights.

 

“And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!” (Rev. 8:13).

 

We have passed through the fifth trumpet 150 year prophecy of Revelation 9:1-12, which happened from 1849-1999. We are in the middle of the sixth trumpet, begun at the inception of the PNAC report and executed on September 11, 2001. All the wars and rumors of wars of late are the offspring of the sixth trumpet, as we see the ravaging armies of the fifth trumpet transforming into increased brutality and ruthlessness.

 

The Manifest Destiny is way out of control, spreading its wings over the whole earth. “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Rev. 13:3,4).

 

The goodness of God spared His movement of truth from papal extinction, giving to His worthy and unworthy children the New World as a land of Goshen. “And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.” (Rev. 12:15,16).

 

But, they have filled their lustful mouths, gobbling up the blessings of the world, and are soon to reap the whirlwind of God’s withheld consternation.

 

“And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day’s journey on this side, and as it were a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth.

And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp.

And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.

And he called the name of that place Kibrothhattaavah: because there they buried the people that lusted.” (Num. 11:31-34).

 

God help our faithless, miscreant past and future.

 

“I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:

So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.

He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;

Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.

They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.

Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.

And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters.

And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.

They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.

They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.

I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:

Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.

For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.

O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” (Deut. 32:3-29).