Gadfly's Muse

Exodus 8-9-10 : Forecast - Sunny With 100% Chance of Frogs

Image:  "Waiting", 2019, Severn Run E. P. Church

Exodus 8:22–23 (NKJV)²² And in that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, in which My people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there, in order that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the land. ²³ I will make a difference between My people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall be.” ’ ”

The plagues on Egypt as recorded in these chapters would read like a Vaudeville farce if they weren't so serious.  There is something ludicrous about people standing ankle deep in frogs, scratching like mad at the lice, swatting flies left, right and center.  We might be tempted to chuckle.

The chuckling stops when the hail begins, the livestock start falling dead in the fields, the people going mad with crippling boils and the locusts attack.  In Egypt I imagine the people were close to panic...the very foundation of their society was just about destroyed.  And then.... and then... there came the darkness.

There was absolute darkness for three days!  On the best of days these Pagans were superstitious.  Now... after having endured all these previous horrors they rightly knew that this darkness was the most ominous indeed.  

If this God could "rob" the sun of its light... hide the moon .... cut off all means of moving around outside the house... there was nothing He couldn't do.  Therefore this darkness was correctly understood as the pause before the storm.  I imagine the hairs on the back of their necks were curling away.  I think their hearts were pounding and that they were screaming at their leaders... "let these people go... we cannot stand against their God!"

It was right there that the message came across and was understood.  The first few plagues that God brought on Egypt were those which, in a sense, represented the ordinary trials of life in a fallen world only more intense.  All of the bad things that happen to us in life, both personally, as a group, as a nation, as human beings in general, represent the judgment on the sin in this world.  Because the world does not repent... because it refuses to hear the warnings of the Church given to it as Moses gave warnings to Pharaoh, so God continues to show forth His power.  Tsunamis pound the coasts, hurricanes cut huge swaths through a continent, earthquakes level cities, plagues continue to arise in spite of the advances in medicine.  In short, God is now as He has in the past and will continue to do, demonstrating that man needs to repent.  In these "ordinary" judgments the church also suffers.  For we have sinned and it is only right and proper that we suffer also during this life for our sins and the sins of our parents.

But as the judgments on Egypt demonstrate there are judgments which will not fall equally on Christians and on their enemies.  There will be judgments, as the Revelation given to John clearly states, where the Church of Christ will be separated, and this for a reason.  The Egyptians, in their agony, must have looked at the herds that remained in the Israelite pastures, the clear skins they had in distinction to those with boils, the light they had in the prevailing darkness and the Egyptians must have been astonished.  "They must have something we don't have!  Their magic must be very powerful indeed!" or other some thoughts must have occurred.  But as God clearly intended they finally had to admit... this means that they have a God who is greater than all other gods.  The Egyptian "gods" could not match His works and could not protect Egypt from them.  There was a message here and it was clearly understood... at least by some.  Not all the Egyptians left their cattle out in the fields and their cattle did not die.  Sinners are a stubborn lot but God has a way of getting through.

The greatest witness that is open to the Church is the witness of being a distinct people that God loves.  If the people of God are so immersed in the world that they cannot be distinguished from it, then there is no way for the world to see Christians as being different in this regard.  Like all the worshipers of false gods and like the atheists and other unbelievers, they suffer the hardships of the world... they are not specifically, as a category, more prone to success or failure than the pagans... in other worlds they have nothing to commend them as a separate people, a different nation.

But, when the people of God are separate from the world.  Even if they are purchasing food at the same super-markets, they can and should be visibly different.  Their body language, dress, conversation, openness, concern and, yes, joy... communicate that difference.  They are heavenly minded and they do worldly good.  In Japan when the Tsunami hit, the Christians there rushed to the scene.  They fearlessly helped those who were stranded among the radiation leaked from the reactor.  As the surrounding people of that area fled away it was the Christians who came to help.  And it was noticed.  Japan has been lost in darkness for centuries but now, though still incredibly small, there is a larger Christian community than ever in living memory.  They stand out... they are noticed... and God's power continues to sustain and uphold them in the face of outright contempt from some elements of Japanese society.

It is the Christians that continue to survive in the face of slaughter.  God is still making a distinction in this world and will continue until the darkness at last heralds that time is about to end.  God help us to give evidence of His glory and His mighty protective hand and complete our witness now as He did then. 

Caesar's Coup de Etat

[image: Archs, 2014 JA Van Devender]

Circumstances have prevented any recent "musings" but I am going to force the issue today, simply because I can't not say something.

It appears to me that a bloodless coup has taken place in the United States of America... a coup that has a significant parallel with the assumption of royal power by Julius Caesar in 49 BC.

Caesar's assumption of power was the essential end to the Roman Republic.  From that time on the legislative powers that had heretofore been distributed between the Roman Senate and the Citizen assembly, was consolidated into executive powers of the magistrate, henceforth given the title Caesar.  The manner in which Caesar did this was to recognize where the true source of power lay in the Roman system, the newly professionalized army.  If he had the army he did not need the Senate was his analysis because through the army he could control the treasury and then he could rule without any real constraints other than direct immediate charismatic influence.  

Barak Obama has, it appears, determined that the time is right for a similar transition to occur in the United States of America.  He has similarly recognized that the true power in the United States Government no longer rests upon the legislative branch as it would in a nation governed by laws, but rather in the regulatory power of the various agencies and the army of bureaucrats who oversee them. [see Spike In Regulatory Powers Under Obama]

He has recognized that the laws passed by the legislative branch are not only subject to regulatory implementation, they can be essentially transformed through regulations or, conversely, nullified by administrative inaction.  His most recent and obvious application of these principles is that of imposing new suppressive regulations on the coal industry over the howls of the Senate  including members of his own putative party.  The autonomous ruling mentality has been evidenced across the board in the virtual decriminalizing of marijuana before it was legislatively done so, by his public policy of not enforcing the laws.  Space does not permit a full fledged review of all the instances that could be referenced but even the most out of touch resident in this country can sense the continental shift in governing practice that has transpired.

And last night I heard a member of the House of Representatives, express outrage at this circumstance, and then, with a straight face say "We can't do anything about it.  We can't impeach him."  

The first thing wrong with this statement is that "we can't do anything about it" and the second thing wrong is to imply that "impeaching" is the only option.

There is another historical precedent  for this kind of situation.  In 1215 the feudal barons of England forced King John to sign the Magna Carta and the resulting power balancing led, in time, to the formation of the Parliament with the express power of the purse.  Charles II in the 1600's sought to rule in a similar fashion to Obama and the result was that parliament cut off his source of power by defunding his programs.

Caesar had control of the purse... alot of it was his own wealth but he also had control of the treasury.  Obama has control of the bureaucrats but they work for pay.  The House of Representatives can shut down any government agency, at will, by defunding it.  They can withold funding until the regulatory practices are forced back into conformity with duly enacted legislation as it was passed.  They can eliminate the corruption that infests many of these agencies such that we do see shameful video's of parties and other such abuses paid for by government funds.

This coup is grounded on an army of bureaucrats who have given allegiance to the commander and chief and who are seemingly willing to go along with his agenda.  

Congress can and congress must act to reverse this situation and in this next two years should force a constitutional crisis by selective defunding of some regulatory agencies and by dramatic curtailing of funding for others.

Every elgible citizen of the United States should require the elections that will happen this year to hinge on candidates who are willing to force this issue.

I don't think it can be reversed if it is not done now.  The next president, whatever his party, will inherit an office with dramatically new powers and, more importantly, a mind-set that this is the way that the country is to be governed hence forth.  As Caesar sterilized the Senate by changing the way the ordinary population viewed the Roman government, so Obama is changing the way the ordinary citizen in the US views how the government "works."  

Once this Rubicon is crossed it will be virtually impossible for the outcome to be reversed.

It is time to tell the candidates for legislative seats in the Congress of the United States of America, that they either commit themselves to forcing this issue or they will not be elected... no matter where they stand on other issues.

It is just that serious... in my humble opinion.

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[Image: Bridge, 2013, JA Van Devender]

Ro 9:30–32

30 What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; 31 but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. 32 Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.

The news today [HERE] includes an item about the BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) movement directed against Israel.  It's the ancient problem of "whose land is it" cropping up again and its goal is to pressure Israel into giving more autonomy to the Palestinians as well as recognizing land rights for those who were displaced during the creation of the Israeli state.

I've written before on these pages (?) about the place of ethnic Israel in New Testament thinking.  It is plain from Paul's teaching that they are being preserved as a distinct race because God promised Abraham and the patriarchs that such would be the case.  It is equally clear from Paul's writings, that though his heart ached for his kinsmen according to the flesh, yet they had, as a race, abandoned their claim to God's special hand of blessing and their ancient role of witness to the glory, majesty and mercy of God.  They sought to bridge the divide between man's fallen sinfulness and the righteousness of God through "works of the law" rather than through faith, the embracing of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, in whom and through whom alone, righteousness before God is possible.

The history of the Jewish race since the Christian era dawned bears out this two fold decree: the preservation of the race and the denial of its previously privileged position as a witness to the Presence of God within its bounds.   That privileged position shifted with the dawn of the New Testament.  A new day and a new creation was born.  A people constituted across socio-ethnic distinctions came into being.  An incredible new race, a distinct people, with their own customs, their own speech yet expressed in the manifold languages of the nations from which they streamed, their own distinct ethic and the claim to the privilege of being the true sons and daughters of the Most High God.  

This new people knew no geographic bounds and steadfastly refused to be identified exclusively with such borders.  This people claimed no Temple Mount or Holy Place that constituted a "pillar" of their religion.  Where they were there was their "temple" because there was where their God made Himself known with a witness beyond their own limitations.  Their Lord had told the Samaritan woman that "neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father" (John 4:21ff) but rather the people of God would worship Him in spirit and in truth.  The temple in Jerusalem was slated for destruction... its ruins would mark the ruin of the ethnic nation in its spiritual role as priest to the world and the Zion to which all the nations of the earth would stream to learn of God and of His ways.  That role would pass to the new spiritual Jerusalem, and this new Jerusalem would, in a sense, now spread to cover the entire earth.

God is no longer to be identified with an intersection of cultural highways in the navel of the world, the Middle East.  He is to fill the entire earth, every nook and cranny, and His people are not to view that land as having any significance other than that of blessed history.  It was these hills that our Savior walked, it was on one of these hills that He was raised up and crucified, and it was from a tomb there that He rose from the dead.  That is the only sanctifying significance of that geographic location now.  There is benefit to walking the alleys and by-ways of present day Israel.  It should never be viewed as a "pilgrimage" as if by that religious work a person becomes more holy... there is no sacramental grace to be found in such a visit... that kind of thinking is the way of ruin, it is to retrace the steps that lead to Israel's ruin in the first place.  But, to walk and look and wonder... to envision the hills filled with hungry people being miraculously fed... yes, there is value there... but that' as far as it goes.

National Israel today abides under God's preserving hand as a witness to her fallen state.  She is to be evangelized in the same way and to the same end as all the other nations.  She stands with the Palestinians in this: they both need to repent of their blasphemy and believe in the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.  They both need to lay their pretended claims to autonomy, to the land, to the blessing of their god, of which ever name they call him, and they need to turn to the One True God, the Trinitarian Truth, that stands in repudiation of Muslim Allah even as it does to the Jewish conception.  There is only one God, there is only one faith, there is only one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, there is only one blessed fellowship with God through the Holy Spirit.

Politically I support modern Israel's claim to the land in the same way that I support present day England's claim to the Islands she inhabits.  Both won their place by force... both displaced existing indigenous people, who dwelt there after they, at a previous time in history, had taken it by force and displaced others.  National Israel is a nation among nations with just as much claim to the land as any human enterprise can have and on the same grounds.  It is hypocritical in the extreme to single her out for political and economic sanctions based on such claims and ignore the stuff going on in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and even our ally Turkey.  There is ethnic discrimination throughout the Middle East and quite frankly, compared to how it is being expressed in the other nations there, Israel is a shining light of toleration.  Politically I support her, but never, ever, do I do so based upon some supposed Biblical claim to priority.  God has plans for this world in the progress of history and national Israel is, along with all the other nations, a part of those plans.  There will come a day, please God, that many who are from the Jewish race will hear the Word of God with opened ears and their broken heart will remove their stiff necks and they will bow... along side their Palestinian brothers and sisters who hear and believe also... and truly the manifest mercy of God will be displayed to the gasping wonder of the powers and principalities of the age... as they rise, and arm in arm, enter the gates of the New Jerusalem, the Church of Jesus Christ, and leave all their old baggage behind.

 

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"You're nuts!"

T. R.: Man of His Times, Preacher of "Righteousness", RIP

Book Review:  Edmund Morris' Trilogy - The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, Colonel Roosevelt

Only America, and more precisely, only that America which existed between 1850-1918, could have produced Teddy Roosevelt.

Every once in a while a character springs to life about whom it can be said that he or she is truly an extra-ordinary person, and have that be, quite literally, true.  There is often much to admire about such a person, and that is true of T. R.  There is also, just as often, much which may be criticized, and that is true of T. R. also, and in spades.  However the net result of such a life is that it inspires the rest of us very-ordinary folk to shoot a little higher, strive a bit more and to recognize that, after all, one individual can make a difference.

Edmund Morris' trilogy is superb.  I read them as they were published though with a bit of a delay.  Biographies fall into that category of "night-time, before I go to sleep, read a few pages and turn off the light", reading.  When each book runs upward of 700 pages of tightly constructed prose, it takes a bit of time to get through on that type of schedule.  Each of these books however are amenable to that approach.  One must be able to "pick up where one left off" without having to go back and review.  The writing must stimulate mental images which involve the reader in the material.  The subject matter must be interesting and personal and not just endless recounting of facts, figures, policy details, etc. which numb the mind and break the concentration.  These books all possess those qualifications and are highly readable.

But if Morris' writing is the proper instrument to convey the information, it is ultimately the subject which determines the worth and no mortal sinner ever walked this earth who was more interesting than T. R.

The man was simply prodigious.  How do you encompass a man who: (1) wrote a detailed study of the Naval War of 1812 before he was 25, a work which continues to this day to be a primary reference for any scholarly commentary on that subject, (2) was a recognized expert naturalist who not only wrote regular articles on various aspects of it but was also commissioned by the Smithsonian to supply samples, specimens and analysis of flora, fauna and geography across the globe, (3) was a cowboy & deputy sheriff in the still wild west, (4) raised the "Rough Riders" and lead them in battle in Cuba, (4) was an effective and energetic Police Commissioner in New York City, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice-President and then President of the United States, (5) winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and was actually deserving of it, (6) was the organizing power and principle for a serious third party alternative to the Democrat and Republican political system, (7) carried an assassin's bullet in his chest until he died, (8) fought off multiple bouts of malaria contracted in his explorations in South America and Africa, and .... well, it goes on and on.  T. R.'s correspondence ranged from kings to plumbers.  He was never late for a publishing deadline and had a nearly infallible memory for details of reading, conversations and acquaintances.  His preserved correspondence numbers in the hundreds of thousands of pages in a day when hand writing or dictation was all that was available.

No one was neutral about T. R.  His infectious charm made him at home with virtually every head of state in his life-time and many sought his advice even after he had passed his political zenieth.  He was a man to be reckoned with in whatever he undertook to do.

The best description of him, I suppose, is that he was a boy who never quite grew up.  Whether playing with his kids or his beloved grand-children, he delighted in energetic activity.  Passionate in everything, he was explosive in his anger, mostly controlled to some extent in his public dealings but never so in private.  His disgust, mostly well merited, with Woodrow Wilson verged on mania.  

One of his first public actions was to propose, as a brand new, virtually unknown delegate, that a black man be nominated to the chair of his state political convention.  This was unheard of in the late 1800's but it is representative of T. R.'s mind-set.  He was a compromiser par excellence in pursuit of objectives but he never abandoned those objectives and saw compromise as only a step in the process.

T. R. was not religious and hence there was lacking in him that spiritual depth that would have, perhaps, reigned in some of his more egregious characteristics.  He was, in his own terms, an advocate of "righteousness" (hence my title above).  But T. R.'s brand of "righteousness" took Stoic, Spartan pride to new heights.  He was fiercely moral but only according to his own defintion of it.  There was a blood-thirsty tinge to most of his life and he thought war a means of purifying the national character and developing its virtue.  This lead to him flinging his four sons off to the front in WW I and using all of his political skill to get them posted to combat elements.  His sons served with distinction but one, his youngest, did not survive and the others were all deeply affected by the horror that they saw.

T. R. never quite recovered from that.

I do not agree with all of T. R.'s political agenda but his far sighted vision and impact cannot be denied.  Perhaps his greatest legacy, humanly speaking, is the National Park system and the present ecological emphasis.  He was an elitist in virtually every aspect of his personal life but he never lost sight of the common man during a time when the common man was not very high in political concerns.  His brand of Progressiveism is foundational to that which goes by the name today but I doubt seriously that he would agree with where it is now registering.  His nationalism would place him far afield from the present advocates of that system.

All in all, this is a man who registers most vividly what America once was and will never be again, for good or for evil.

I would most highly recommend Morris' work.  Too many Americans today are ignorant of their history and their heritage.  These books will acquaint the reader with not only a man but the nation in which he lived and one cannot help but gain from having that additional depth in his perspective.