Losing the Battle, Winning the War

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

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Anyone who understands the Bible’s consistent message from the Old Testament regarding how Israel’s continued slide away from God and truth resulted in their physical demise also understands that this is not a phenomenon that rests solely with Israel/Judah. It is a phenomenon that addresses the expiration date of all empires/nations.

Amos 5:10 states this truth about how people react to God and His truth.

They hate the one who rebukes in the gate, And they abhor the one who speaks uprightly.

What comes to mind when you read that verse? There is a growing reality that many wish to ignore today. It is this…Marxists are coming together as one to eradicate those who dare to deviate themselves from the stated goals of the Marxist movement. Within Marxism, people are not only encouraged to think and speak alike, but it is demanded. There can be no variance from the “approved” outlook within that society, especially in the area of speech.

Anyone who speaks “intolerantly” of accepted or pushed norms is ostracized, maligned, shouted down and ultimately, if all else fails, destroyed. There can be no one alive who does not accept, embrace and live what is acceptable to Marxism. This mentality comes to its full force in the middle of the coming Tribulation period when people are forced to take the mark of the beast or they will be killed, sanctioned by the existing government then (Revelation 13).

Ultimately, Marxism seeks 100% conformity to that which has been decreed as acceptable. Anything that is not acceptable is seen as the enemy and must be eradicated. For those who believe that things will calm down following the recent murder/assassination of Charlie Kirk, they are wrong. Things will not calm down simply because we only saw 10 counter protesters at the Charlie Kirk Memorial (and forced to remain within a cordoned off area), because Marxists while blind are not stupid. They knew that trying to come with force against the people gathered at the stadium in Arizona was fruitless. One man prior to the event was arrested for impersonating law enforcement, who was also carrying a gun and a knife while trying to enter into the stadium prior to the event.

But if we simply consider the level of hatred exhibited by those on the Left toward those who mourn Kirk’s death, we can easily see that those Leftwing/Marxists and their supporters will not go away. This is what they live for and it is, I believe, the moment they see their movement coalescing across the USA and other parts of the world. They believe that momentum is now on their side and the Charlie Kirk memorial was simply a brief and temporary halt to their movement’s progress.

We need to be aware that their hatred is clear, palpable and something that guides their thinking and actions. These people will not go away and they have become very clever at what they do. I was watching a Tim Pool TimCast yesterday and he and those on his show were discussing free speech and the fact that the Left is being very careful to not break the law with actual threats.

As a for instance, Pool recently cited a group of people gathered and one might have been yelling “Death to Nazis!” That comes under free speech. They are allowed to say that even though they fail to see that they are the actual Nazis. Then another person from the crowd might point to someone outside that group and yell, “There’s a Nazi!!” Another case of free speech, so while no one has stated anything illegal, both statements together while coming from two different people constitute a threat to someone’s safety. Yet, by themselves there is nothing law enforcement can do about it. They can only intervene if/when actual physical violence occurs against a person. Of course, by then it might be too late, so all that’s left is to arrest someone for battery or murder.

Let’s take a look at how this happens from a historical perspective from Amos. Amos is considered to be one of the Minor Prophets, not because his message is “minor,” but because his book is relatively short compared to other “major” prophets like Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.

Amos the man is interesting. He was not a priest but someone called by God to be a prophet mainly to the nation of Israel, but also to Judah, the southern kingdom as well as other nations. Why though? What was Israel’s big sin? It wasn’t just one sin. It was many and those sins began to occur over time and grew in size. These sins alienated God, literally pushing Him away. The people had grown extremely hard-hearted and callous toward God even thinking that they could worship their false gods during the week, but then go to the Temple to worship Yahweh on the sabbath.

The entire short book of Amos is filled with God’s complaints about His people, constantly going back and forth between wooing them, to condemning them, to wooing them again, to condemning them to ultimately promising restoration. God was specifically telling them that if they would only turn to Him, He would forgive and relent of His plan to destroy them as a nation.

So the question is what brought God to the point of finally destroying Israel? Numerous things that are outlined for us in Amos.

And by the way, in the book of Amos, the prophet calls out numerous nations: Aram, Philistia, Phoenicia, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah and Israel. All these nations were targeted by God because of their sin problem and their sin problem grew from their corrupt hearts.

With respect to Israel, the reasons God judged that nation eventually by using the Assyrians includes the following:

• Rich ruthlessly oppressing the poor (2:6-7a)
• Paganism had taken over the nation (2:7b-8)
• The Israelites preferred lies to truth (2:9-12)
• Israel’s system of oppression would perish (2:13-16)

Reading through Amos provides a very clear picture of just how corrupt the Israelites had become, thanks mainly to kings who encouraged pagan worship. Beyond this (and likely because of it), the people of Israel had begun living lifestyles that took advantage of the poor, the fatherless and the widow. Rich people got richer and worked with judges to take what little the poor, the fatherless and the widow had for themselves. It became a crushing system of injustice and anyone who tried to deviate from it was punished.

6 This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.
7 They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.
8 They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines. (Amos 2:6-8)

This is not that much different from what Marxists are attempting to accomplish throughout America. Through force, they intend to put their system of “equality” in place. The problem of course, is that you’re only equal if you go along with their system. Anyone who stands apart from their system will be dealt with in the harshest terms possible.

Imagine how God felt. Here He had taken a group of motley enslaved people to call His own out of Egypt. He intended certain things for them. At Mt. Sinai they all agreed to enter into the covenantal promise between themselves and God essentially stating, “All that God has said, we will do.” While certain individuals within Israel did just that, the majority of the nation did not.

They were constantly looking back to Egypt; the food, their homes, Egypt’s gods and way of life. They could not ever fully emotionally separate themselves from Egypt. Under certain kings (of both the southern and northern kingdoms after the split), things got even worse with those kings encouraging and supporting the people to worship false gods. This often involved worshiping the king himself as a type of god, so it was for good reason that many to most kings wanted people to forget Yahweh.

Living in this way eventually caused the people to shake off completely the rules that God had implemented for them for their benefit. Not only were they not concerned about the welfare of all people within Israel, but they used those people for their own personal gain as if those people were put on the earth to make their life better.

Over and over again, God through the prophet Amos details Israel’s sins and confirms that Israel refused to turn to Him. In fact, like the situation with Jeremiah, the people not only refused to turn back to God, but incredulously said that they essentially didn’t know what God was talking about because they weren’t doing the things that God accused them of doing.

This is exactly like Marxists today who, while calling people like Charlie Kirk haters, misogynists, homophobes and all the rest, simply fail to see their own evil trajectory that is that they are the haters. They believe they are the true moralists, yet it is clear that truth is anathema to them. It is foreign to their thinking and they cannot wrap their heads around the fact that they are bereft of all truth and have convinced themselves that the lies they firmly believe are truth.

I find it fascinating that in all the debates between Charlie Kirk and college students I have watched, no one was really convinced of his position. This is not to say that no one’s mind was changed because I have not watched all of his debates. It is simply to say that as knowledgeable and as quick as Kirk was, he often simply silenced the person he was debating because they came to the point where they had absolutely no response to him. Unfortunately, this, in and of itself, did not turn the lightbulb on in them. It simply made them angrier. I’ve seen it happen with students and with professors who debated Kirk.

Kirk always kept things civil. He always treated opposing views and people with respect. He never lashed out. He never resorted to calling them names. He never made threats against them. But with the amount of anger that some debaters leveled at Kirk, it is clear that Kirk was attacking their brainwashing and it was bringing them to the breaking point. The only thing left for them was anger and violence. They could not admit, “Hey Charlie, interesting point. You could be right.” They could not bring themselves to say that because it might cause a mental or emotional breakdown. You could see these students coming to the point of breaking and they desperately clung to their errant belief system at all costs.

This is exactly what it was like during the days of Amos and many of the other prophets, both minor and major. They brought truth and that truth was not only rejected, but it was vehemently rejected with strong denials and sometimes, with violence.

Anyone who goes out to debate college students today has to have a special calling in my book and I believe Charlie Kirk had it. I don’t. I cannot enter into that ring with the right attitude and God knows it, which is why He likely has not called me to it. Yet, there are people who do a wonderful job at it and have stated they will continue. God bless them.

In a sense, they are today’s “prophets” and I don’t mean that in a religious sense the way God Himself called and raised up prophets of old. What I mean is that they are standing in the gap to help open the eyes of the seriously deceived and blind and we need to be in prayer for them. They are taking their lives in their hands because they go into the lion’s den every time they go to a university to debate students who are thoroughly brainwashed into the precepts of Marxism.

Amos, like many other prophets, lost the battle, but won the war. The words that Amos and others spoke largely went ignored by unrepentant Israelites and Judahites. Amos and others did not have what we would call a “successful” ministry. Yet, they were successful solely because they were obedient to their heavenly calling by God Himself. They lost that battle because no one turned (or very few did), back to God in repentance and renewal and sometimes they were killed for their trouble.

However, Amos and all other prophets won the war. This is because they went to be with the Lord they had obeyed in this life, in spite of all that was thrown at them.

Charlie Kirk did the same. He lost the battle but won the war. I found it interesting that prior to the memorial Leftists were enraged promising to protest his memorial so that he would not rest in peace. Their hubris proves their stupidity. Does anyone actually believe that Charlie Kirk is in heaven wringing his hands over the fact that Satan’s minions (spiritual and human), won’t let him “rest”? Absurd, and we know it is absurd. Charlie is perfected now, with His Lord and Savior and even though he may not have gotten everything correct theologically, he clearly loved God and young people enough to want to enlighten them. Why? Because he loved His Lord and Savior more than life itself.

Reading through the Old Testament and even the New, it is clear that Satan hates those who stand with God against malice, hatred and all manner of sinful corruption that plagues much of humanity. The apostles did not die quietly from old age. Many were brutally murdered. The prophets of old did not retire and draw from their pensions while living in relative ease. They were often treated brutally and even martyred for daring to speak God’s Words to people, words that those people found offensive.

Two things may happen as we go forward. There may well be an uptick in violence against those who dare to stand with God and reach out to those who are deceived by the enemy of our souls. There may also likely be an uptick in more young people taking God seriously and vowing to follow Him no matter what. Of course, the other option is that the momentum from Kirk’s death will die, while Marxists continue to grow in power because they are pushed by their own brainwashed ignorance.

In any case, do not expect Marxists to go away with their tails between their legs. It seems they are just getting started. In the end, more believers may lose the battle, but ALL will win the war.

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective