PREFACE.
FOR the privilege of having been permitted to deliver these discourses without interruption, and with a cordial answering sympathy on the part of the public, I thank God and take courage. Seldom have I found a heart more thirsty for divine truth, more attentive under it, and more manifestly responding to it, and grateful for it, than in the great congregations whom God in bis good providence brought out to listen to these sermons.
I commenced them, much questioning as to the result, but determined to leave consequences to God, and to proclaim, out and out, the whole truth in his word in regard to the great reigning and destroying sin of our country. I endeavored to do this to the best of my ability.
The event was, that instead of driving men away in anger, the assertion of the freedom of the Pulpit, and the proof of it from the prophets and apostles, and the use of it in demonstrating the sinfulness of slavery, brought thousands on thousands to hear. They came, desiring to learn what God had really said in His word in regard to slavery. The church could not contain the multitudes that thronged, mght after night, to listen to a simple, plain exhibition of God's own truth, in regard to the guilt of this Iniquity in His sight, and the inevitable consequences of it, if persisted in.
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Undoubtedly, Old Testament truth is a strange thing to many; they are not aware how it burns, how it cuts, how it probes and pierces, as a discerner and reprover of sin, and how the mighty Hebrew prophets, ever living, ever new, seem to hold a grand inquest over our organic [systemic, routine, institutionalized] iniquities, and to walk among us with the writers ink-horn, and the measuring plumb-lines of the Mosaic laws.
The people, generally, are glad to witness these operations. The people love to hear God's word demonstrating and rebuking the Iniquity of slavery; and it is only crooked politicians, and political Christians, and preachers standing in awe of them, who cry out against it [Bible-preaching], and call it political preaching. This vulgar watchword is losing all its terrors, and begins to be, as it deserves to be, thoroughly despised.
| Ed. Note: Denouncing speaking up for Bible principles is via accusations of "politicking," of being e.g., "offensive," "divisive," "heretical." |
The people prefer freedom, and are glad to find that God's word not only does not sanction slavery, but is against it, wholly and utterly, from beginning to end.
But those men who prefer slavery along with freedom, slavery for others and freedom for themselves, and whose plan is to combine both, and give them the same sanction and the same rights everywhere, would be glad to find some support of slavery, some shield for it in God's word; and, if any one could demonstrate from God's word that slavery is right, he might do that from the Pulpit ad infinitum and they would not regard it at all as political preaching, but as simply the genuine meekness of wisdom preaching peace by Jesus Christ, and the very perfection of gospel conservatism.
There are many who, without the least wincing, will hear you preach about the slavery
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of sin, but not one word will they endure about the sin of slavery.
| Ed. Note: Likewise is true on war. It's OK to preach for war, to pray for, honor, idolize "our troops." But to cite rebuttal Bible data is "offensive," "divisive," "heretical," "politicking." |
I have been delighted to find a great enthusiasm among young men, for the freedom of God's word in dealing with the Iniquity of oppression. They feel that it is no necessary part of religion to put down, or conceal, or crucify, our native impulses in behalf of freedom, or our native sense of justice against cruelty and wrong. They have but little sympathy with those who make political or commercial expediency, in regard to great Questions of right or wrong, the Urim and Thummim of their divinest consultations.
The series of discourses began with an examination of the dreadful influence and consequences of UNRIGHTEOUS LAW, as illustrated in the history of the Hebrews, under the light of the prophets.
Now, in consenting to throw several of them into a volume, I have taken the liberty of breaking them up into twenty chapters, both for the sake of introducing some details into the argument, which could not be condensed in speaking within compass of the time given to a sermon, and also to relieve and sustain the attention of the reader, and give greater prominence to the principles developed in the discussion.
I am more than ever convinced of the right and duty of every preacher of God's word to preach on this Subject, as contained in His word, and to show the people how He regards it; and the providence that directs and overrules all things is manifesting more clearly than ever the wickedness of the attempt to shield slavery from the reprobation of God's word, by denouncing every mention of it as
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political preaching. That outcry is more likely to cover up a jealousy against religion in politics, than any real hatred of politics in religion. To the law and to the testimony: should not the people seek unto their God? And if their leaders speak not according to His word, it is because there is no light in them [Isaiah 8:20].
THE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE YOUNG MEN OF MY OWN CONGREGATION, AND TO ALL LOVERS OF FREEDOM AND TRUTH IN ALL PLACES.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
| PAGE |
| Preface | iii
| Chap. I.—Shall the Throne of Iniquity Have Fellowship With Thee, Which Frameth Mischief With A Law? | 9
| Chap. II.—The Prevalence and Power of Unrighteous Law, And The Ruin of the Nation In Consequence of Obeying It | 16
| Chap. III.—Compulsion by the Government, Enacting Wicked Laws To Drive The People Into Sin; And The Damnation of Such Guilt—The Iniquity of Preachers Defending or Excusing It | 23
| Chap. IV.—Dan and Bethel in New York, and the Worship of the Golden Calves in America—Repression and Concelament of Truth in the Pulpit and Conservatism of National Sins | 35
| Chap. V.—Obligations of the Pulpit in the Sight of God—Hypocrisy of the Outcry of Political Preaching—The Sinfulness of Concealment and of Shielding Men's Sins From the Light of the Gospel—Application of the Doctrine of Christ and Him Crucified | 48
| Chap. VI.—Glory and Freedom of the Word of God in its Universal and Perpetual Application—Demonstrations from its Historical and Prophetic Portions, as to National Sins—This Light Yet to be Applied | 62
| Chap. VII.—God's Wrath Against Slavery in Jeremiah XXXIV.17—The Illumination from this Passage Upon Our Own Sin—The Solemnity of the Crisis and the Responsibility—National Decisions by Individual Opinions and Choices—The Question to be Settled is of Right or Wrong, Not Policy or Impolicy | 72
| Chap. VIII.—Objections Urged Against the Mention of this Sin—The Opinion of Coleridge—The Example of Lord Erskine in Resisting and Rebuking Oppression—The Word of God Our Only Safe Guide | 82
| Chap. IX.—Demonstration of the Sinfulness of Slavery—Argument from the Law of Love—Argument from the Laws against Oppression—No Such Thing As Slavery Among The Hebrews—Ludicrousness of the Claim of Africans As Our Property by Reason of Noah's Curse on Canaan | 93
| Chap. X.—The Wrath of God Against the Jews for the Attempted Establishment of Slavery—The Penalty of Death Against the Crime of Man-Stealing—Compass of This Law, and Its Application to the Claim of Children As Property | 107
| Chap. XI.—Doing Evil That Good May Come—The Gospel of Slavery—Its Germinating and Propagating Power of Evil—The Stealing of Children—Paul on Man-Stealing | 116
| | | | | | | | | | | |
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| Chap. XII.—Sacredness of the Parental Relations—Violation of It by Slavery—Slaveholding, With the Claim of Property, Man-Stealing | 123
| Chap. XIII.—The Compound Interest of Crime—The Slave's Note-of-Hand Against the Slave-Holder Who Claims to be His Owner—Accumulated Crime, Accumulated Retribution | 131
| Chap. XIV.—Ownership in Man Not Possible—Forbidden in the Scriptures—The Act of Selling Men, A Crime Abhorred of God—The Nature of this Crime, and of the Sin of Slavery, Well Known Under the New Testament | 135
| Chap. XV.—No Restoring of Runaway Servants—The Hebrews Forbidden to Restore Them—The Hebrew Fugitive Law, A Law in Behalf of the Servant, and Not the Master—Demonstration from This Law That Human Beings Can Not Be Property—Paul's Epistle to Philemon in the Light of This Law—The Assertion That the Word of God Sanctions Slavery An Impious Libel | 140
| Chap. XVI.—Jubilee Statute of Universal Freedom—Its Application to Heathen Servants—Perversion and Misinterpretation of the Mosaic Laws—No Involuntary Servitude Allowed—Various Forms of Contract—Limitation by the Jubilee—Meaning of Lev. XXV.46—No Refuge or Standing-Place for Slavery | 148
| Chap. XVII.—The Jubilee Contract of Service for the Heathen—Every Contract Perfectly Voluntary—Usage of the Word Buy—Servants Bought by a Voluntary Contract With Themselves, But Not of A Third Party—The Family Inheritance of Service Till the Jubilee—Both Hebrew and Heathen Servants Free—No Property in Man Ever Sanctioned | 158
| Chap. XVIII.—God's Judgments against Slavery Prove It to be Sin—The Contemporaneous Testimony of Jeremiah and Ezekiel—Effect of Slavery in the Ruin of Empires—Its Effect on the Morals and Sentiments of a People—Degradation of Free Labor | 162
| Chap. XIX.—The Combination of Demonstration—Solemnity of our Responsibilities—The Individual Responsibility—Province of the Pulpit To Proclaim the Religious Responsibility of a Vote | 170
| Chap. XX.—The One Question Before Us—Pretensions and Demands of Slavery—The Consequences If We Yield To Them—Guilt of Extending Slavery, and Setting It at the Vitals of A New State or Territory—The Perpetual Agitation and Power of Conscience | 176
| | | | | | | | |
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CHAPTER I.
SHALL THE THRONE OF INIQUITY HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH
THEE, WHICH FRAMETH MISCHIEF BY A LAW?
—Psalm xciv. 20.
THERE are plenty of answers to this question in the Word of God; but the most startling and overwhelming is the answer by divine judgment, in the destruction of the thrones and kingdoms of Israel and Judab. We have but to trace a few steps in the Jewish history, and we find lessons that, for the closeness of their application to our own period, and people, and country, and the terror of their warning against our own legalized and cherished sins, are absolutely appalling. Would to God we might lay them to our heart!
The time from the beginning of the Hebrew kingdom under Saul to its division under Rchoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, was not much longer than that which has elapsed from our revolutionary war to the present day. And the progress of the nation had been about as rapid and mighty as our own. What a prodigious difference between the state of the people and the extent of the kingdom at the beginning of Saul's reign, and the close of Solomon's!
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In this brief time, cities rose as by enchantment, and territories were added, and brought under the one great confederation, till the fame of its prosperity, and the fear of its greatness, filled the world.
But in the midst of all this, the causes of ruin grew on with frightful rapidity: luxury, aristocracy, grandeur, riches, pride, family-wealth and rivalry, insolence, commerce with Egypt and with foreign countries, bringing in alliances, intermarriages, the imitation of foreign vices and customs, and at length the open, undisguised, and heaven-defying establishment of idolatry for Solomon's pagan concubines and wives.
The wisest of kings had grown the maddest in his rebellion against God, and his iniquitous example before his people. By his own vices he had conducted the country from the climax of power and greatness to the verge of ruin. In the greatest apparent grandeur of its prosperity, none but God knew the precipice on which the kingdom tottered, nor how soon its proud union was to be dissolved forever. There it was, strong and mighty in appearance, yet instantly to be riven, as when the frost splits a rock, or one last blow upon the wedge rives the oak asunder.
The blow descends from God, the kingdoms separate, and thenceforward, what a career of warning to all the nations of the earth is theirs?
The lead in wickedness was assumed by Israel under [King] Jeroboam, as one of the separate and rival kingdoms; the first great national step in open sin
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was his.
By what he considered a master-stroke of policy, but which proved his ruin, he set up the two golden calves, to serve for the uses of his kingdom, in place of the worship of the Temple at Jerusalem. The one he inaugurated at Bethel, and the other at Dan, and proclaimed to all the people, with the semblance of the kindest consideration for their wants and fatherly compassion for their burdens, it is too much for you, too irksome and too great a task, to go up to Jerusalem at the times appointed in the service of the temple; these will answer for your gods, O ye people! [I Kgs 12:28] These shall be to you the representatives of the gods that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and here shall you rejoice in your worship!
The appointed ministers of God's worship, who would not subscribe to these decrees of the king and his government, were ejected from their offices, and in their places Jeroboam appointed an idolatrous priesthood from the riff-raff of the people [I Kgs 12:31]; whoever was willing so accept a devil's chaplaincy under his government, him he set to work in the ministration of oblations and of incense before those golden calves; and so the people, the king, and Baal, were all served and glorified, flattered and cajoled, at one and the same time.
And so the thing became a stately sin, a systematized organic iniquity; and the people went to worship before one or the other of these calves, even unto Dan.
The topography of these places is the best
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illustration of the passage, and for want of the consideration of that matter, the force of the history is nearly lost. One of them, Dan, was at the extreme north; the other, Bethel, at the extreme south, on the borders of Jeroboam's kingdom.
The whole of Jeroboam's kingdom lay north of Judah. If he had set up both calves at Dan, it would have been too far north to attract his subjects of the south; if he had set them up in Bethel only, the people of the north coming down so far as that for worship, would have been tempted to continue their journey a few miles further to Jerusalem itself.
But up at Dan he caught in the snare all the population of the north, and down at Bethel all the inhabitants of the south. And by setting at the heart of Bethel the whole circle of his priesthood, and making the ceremonies of the worship there both gorgeous and attractive, he caught as in a great Vanity Fair nearly all unstable persons, whose consciences might have startled them on a pilgrimage for the Holy City, to engage in the worship of the Temple itself.
Passing through Bethel, they would stop to gaze at the golden calves, they would enter into conversation with the worshipers there, they would be met by temptations and seductive bribes, and in the state of moral debauchery to which the conduct of Solomon had reduced the nation, it was not difficult to make any, except the most truly conscientious of the people, believe that they could serve both God and Mammon.
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Jeroboam must have sounded the heart of the nation, and must have known that he could calculate on the idolatrous disposition of the people, otherwise he never would have dared to propose such a measure. But he had watched the passions of men, and he knew well how deeply the examples, and the idolatrous shrines, made so familiar by Solomon, had corrupted the people, and how far he could himself rely upon them.
Besides, he is supposed to have set guards on the borders of the kingdom between Judah and Israel, at the feast times especially, to prevent his subjects from crossing the line, and going up to the Temple in obedience to the law of God.
And so, between allurements and force, between his lies and compulsion, between the power of law, unrighteous [law], and the examples of the great multitude obeying it as righteous, he succeeded in quieting the most troubled and audacious consciences, and induced his people to believe that inasmuch as this worship at the altars of the calves was commanded by law, and they were bound to obey magistrates, and not to set themselves against the government, it might and must be considered a permitted substitute for the Temple worship.
Moreover, the payment of tithes seems to have been done away, when Jeroboam turned the Levites out of office, and put in a set of his own priests to do his bidding; and that was an exemption which would please the covetous multitude greatly. The king well knew how to make up for the loss; he could extort
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from them in other ways double what the willing support of the true worship of God would have cost them.
Now this whole mighty revolution, first, in the establishment of Jeroboam's authority and kingdom as foreign and separate from that of Rehoboam, and second, in the impious establishment of a new and separate religious worship, the commixture of idolatry and the divine law under one and the same form, would necessitate new laws, and would bring about, in many points, inevitably, a conflict between the statutes of the kingdom and the statutes of God.
But the people chose to obey man rather than God. They agreed, as men do now, when they blasphemously set the laws of a human government higher than God's law, that the law of the land, right or wrong; must be obeyed at all hazards, and that to teach otherwise is to teach rebellion.
They said that the statutes of the king and his government must be obeyed, and “they willingly walked after the commandment [politician law],” as the accusation is brought against them for doing this by the prophet Hosea [5:11]; so that the characteristic description of this monarch, up to the time of Omri and Ahab, who each set new iniquities a going, and framed laws still more infamous, was that of “Jeroboam the son of Nebat, WHO MADE ISRAEL TO SIN.”
The obedience of the people to such a monarch and government in such commanded sins, was rebellion against God; and rebellion against the monarch and
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government would have been obedience to God.
And God by his prophets plainly denounced vengeance against the nation, for thus preferring to obey man's laws rather than God's. Your very blessings shall be blasted, said he, and you shall be swept with desolation, delivered up to captivity and the sword, because you have kept the statutes of Omri, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels [Micah 6:16]. Ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock [Amos 6:12].
Through the impious policy of Jeroboam, and the consent and submission of the people, it thus came about that the separation of the ten tribes was as the building of a vast reservoir of iniquity in Israel; a fountain of atheism and licentiousness, of which the people continued drinking to the latest generations, forsaking God, and the cold-flowing waters of his sanctuary, and hewing them out cisterns of Satan, and springs of the vilest abominations.
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CHAPTER II.
THE PREVALENCE AND POWER OF UNRIGHTEOUS LAW, AND THE
RUIN OF THE NATION IN CONSEQUENCE OF OBEYING IT.
HERE we have come upon a marked and mighty era. The separation of this great Hebrew kingdom into two, and the establishment of these regal and governmental dynasties and machineries, not only constituted the most important revolution since the deluge, and the greatest event of all the history of empire up to that time, but it had consequences, and it set in motion tides of principle and courses of action, that made a stratum in men's morals and character; it was a dispensation, a period of social and governmental theory of life, as distinct as any period in all the formations of geology.
The periods of granite primordial foundation, and of fossiliferous rocky strata, and of alluvial deposits, are not more strongly marked and demonstrated, or more important as demonstrations in themselves of the mighty changes in the globe. The thing not justifies only, but commands our careful study; it ought not to be passed over with a superficial view.
For here began the wide, germinating, sweeping
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habit of rebellion against God under cover of obedience to man; that plague in the body politic and social, worse than the yellow fever, worse than any pestilence ever begotten or active among men, of a supreme submissive regard to the laws of a human government rather than the laws of God.
It is in this respect a most prominent and awful era; a period marked, as you will see, all along the record of the history, down to the time when the kingdom was swept from existence, as the period of the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, WHO MADE ISRAEL TO SIN. The first book of Kings ends [I Kings 22:52-53], as its course has often been signalized, with that stigma, that scar, that trench of God's wrath, and of moral infamy in the cause and subject of it.
Ahab and Jezebel were the next grand incarnation of such wickedness. And as upon the surface of the globe, when a roaring cataract or deluge has passed over it, there are left huge mountain cliffs, frowning over the country in front, and behind them a sloping trail of land where the soil has gathered and held on, indicating which way the convulsion and the torrent rolled forward, so stand these monarch forms, rent, blasted, blackened, the leaders of the people's apostacy from God, and the landmarks of His vengeance.
And from one to the other, it seems as if you could still hear the thunders roar and reverberate. Look back to the 21st chapter of the first book of Kings, and mark the interview between Elijah the prophet
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and Ahab in Naboth's vineyard, and you find in the person and character of that monarch the defiant pinnacle on which God's wrathful lightning descended.
| "Thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord; and I will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, AND MADE ISRAEL TO SIN." |
And look back still further to the 16th chapter, 25th and 26th verses, to the person and character of Omri, who
| "wrought the same evil in the sight of the Lord, and did worse than all before him, for he walked in all the ways of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin, WHEREWITH HE MADE ISRAEL TO SIN." |
And then, before him, look back to Baasha, and before him, to Nadab, the immediate successor and son of Jeroboam. The voice of every peal of thunder, and the sentence trenched by every flash of lightning, is the same dreadful accusation, Thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and HAST MADE MY PEOPLE ISRAEL TO SIN.
And how was it? What does this repeated phrase in the indictment cover up? How could the man carry all Israel with him in his wickedness? Mere example could not have done it; permission could not have done it; bribes could not have done it, nor persuasion, nor the inherent temptations of devil-worship.
No! But in league with all these influences, law could do it; the State power could forcibly persuade, and if the people would yield up their conscience, the
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government would find no opposition to their most impious enactments. We learn the secret from Micah and Hoses, two of the prophets contemporary in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. "For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels, that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing." [Micah 6:16] "The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound; therefore will I pour out my wrath upon them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he WILLINGLY WALKED AFTER THE COMMANDMENT." [Hosea 5:10-11]
It was thus that the king, the princes, the government, by their unconstitutional and infamous legislation, by new enactments, framed on purpose, MADE ISRAEL TO SIN. You gather this demonstration from the history and the prophets together; and this is one of the points in which you see the usefulness and importance of a close comparative study of tbe prophets by the history, and the history by the prophets.
It was a usurpation, under color of law, thus forced upon the people, and the experiment being once successful, then, in giving up their conscience, and renouncing their allegiance to God, they surrendered all their liberties. They should have resisted at the outlet; but there are never wanting those, who affirm that law is to be obeyed at all hazards, the moment it is law, no matter of what character. So,
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by the power and majesty of UNRIGHTEOUS LAW, which is as when the starry angel, first in heaven's ranks, brightest of the sons of the morning, drew after him the third part of heaven in his rebellion, the king and the government compelled the people.
For because of the original majesty, the awfulness, the reverential glory, the transcendant importance of law, even its perversion wears the semblance of its authority; even bad law, wicked law, accursed law, appears not less than archangel ruined, and men bow down to it, and worship it, and range themselves under its banners, especially when popular and profitable sins are protected by it. Sometimes, under its pressure, men must have the firmness of Abdiel to stand up against it, and nothing but God's word and His righteousness in their hearts will enable them to do it.
This usurpation began in Israel. But you are not to suppose this kind of wickedness was the exclusive property of that kingdom. You might have imagined that after such a divulsion of the tribes, the separation between Israel and Judah would have been so wide, and the enmity so mortal, that certainly the torrent of these devilish iniquities could not have crossed the gulf, and rolled over the house and kingdom of David. But where the heart is not right with God, occasion can easily be found for any wickedness. There was a mine of Satan's combustibles in the bosom of Judah ready to be fired; and there was
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an elective affinity, a power of attraction by evil examples, instead of repulsion by disgust; there was an electric intelligence and fire of depravity shooting from one side to the other. You have but to run your eye down to the 8th chapter of the 2d Book of Kings, and the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses, and you discover the secret."In the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jeboram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to reign in Jerusalem. And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab; for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord." Here you have the bridge, the telegraphic wires, the sympathies. And running on to the 26th verse you have another step, the son of Jeboram reigning in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel. And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, as did the house of Ahab; for he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. And in 2 Chron. xxii. 3, 4, it is added, that his mother was his counselor to do wickedly; wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord like the house of Ahab; for they were his counselors after the death of his father to his destruction.
The singular intensity of wickedness, the eminent and inveterate profligacy and malignity accumulated in this family, as the force of galvanism collected in a complicated battery, will be better understood, if
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you consider that Ahab, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. Him, king Ahab, and the murderess his wife, Elijah the Tishbite confronted.
These related and confederate families of Israel and Judah threw over their kingdoms a net-work of the same diabolical statutes; and to these enactments, and the terrors used in their enforcement, the sacred historian refers, when it is recorded, as in 2 Chron. xxi. 11, that the king of Judah caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and compelled them into all this wickedness.
So this mighty sin passed into vogue in Judab, and from Ahab and Jezebel's families, in connection with Jeroboam's, it ran on, till in the kingdom and house of David itself, Manasseh went far beyond even Ahab in the form, the magnitude, and the monstrousness of bis sins. And of him it is said in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 9, 10, that Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel. And the Lord spake to Manasseh and to his people, but they would not hearken.
And in 2 Kings xxi. 9, 11, God declares that Manasseh seduced the people to do more abominable and horrible wickedness than even the Amorites, and made Judah to sin with his idols, besides filling Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood.
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CHAPTER III.
COMPULSION BY THE GOVERNMENT, ENACTING WICKED LAWS
TO DRIVE THE PEOPLE INTO SIN; AND THE DAMNATION OF SUCH
GUILT. THE INIQUITY OF PREACHERS DEFENDING OR EXCUSING IT.
Now in this account we have the fact of a compulsion laid by the government upon the people, to drive them into sin, to constrain them, and force obedience to the statutes of an idol worship. But this compulsion was no other than the choice of obeying other statutes than God's.
Being compelled to disobey either God's law or the king's, they chose to disobey God's, alleging, perhaps, that whatever laws the government enacted, they were bound to obey, God's law to the contrary notwithstanding.
Sometimes the princes took the lead, and proposed the enactment of mischief by a law, according to the references in Hos. v. 10, and xiii. 2, the princes removing the bound, and enacting that those who sacrificed shall kiss the calves.
So in 2 Chron. xxiv. 17, 18, after the death of Jehoiada the priest, we have the princes coming, and making obeisance to the king, and the king hearkening to them, and all together leaving the house of the Lord God of their fathers,
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and serving groves and idols. All this information is concentrated finally in the 17th chapter of the 2d book of Kings, where the whole transcript of the people's wickedness, and of God's final wrath upon them for it, is so solemnly summed up. For they walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and in the statutes of the kings of Israel, which they had made. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made; walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did, and departed not from them.
Now it is impossible to find any thing in all history more terribly instructive than all this.
It shows the mutual responsibility of government and people, both to one another and to God, and the consequences of disregarding it.
It shows the manner in which the responsibility and guilt of government and people may get inextricably involved and entangled, and unless there be in the people a conscience of resistance in behalf of God, they go to ruin together.
It shows that wicked laws are no authentication or excuse of personal wickedness, nor any authorization of disobedience to God. They are not to be obeyed, but on the contrary denounced and rejected; and only by being thus faithful to God, can a people keep their freedom.
And while it shows that a people are on the high road to ruin, who will suffer and obey wicked statutes, it also shows the terrific responsibility and
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wickedness of those who concoct and endeavor to enforce such statutes, and
who set the example of such iniquity.
If there be a lower deep in hell than any other deep, such men will, beyond all question, occupy it, along with those who have put out or concealed the light of God's word, and have put up false lights to lure men upon the breakers.
It is such as those, whom God gives judicially over to a reprobate mind, to be filled with all unrighteousness; who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them [Romans 1:28-32].
Nothing can go beyond this wickedness; it is a fountain sin, a germinating sin, an accumulating and multiplying sin, a sin that causes and compels others to sin, a sin that enlarges from generation to generation all the way into the eternal world.
If it brings a million under its power this year, it may bring two millions the next; this generation ten, the next generation twenty. Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way; and all the people shall say, Amen! [Deuteronomy 27:18]
But he that strikes out the eyesight of a whole nation, that obliterates the law of justice and humanity, and sets in its place statutes of injustice and inhumanity, and thus compels a nation so blinded, to wander in iniquity, what shall be said of such a monster? What curse is heavy enough for such an incarnation of malignity, or what curse can measure in retribution the dreadful consequences of such crime?
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Of all evil things, law, that embodies in itself the example of wrong, the instruction, the authority, sanction, justification, and command of injustice and oppression, in principle and in act, is the highest and the worst. It is worse than arsenic in the fountain; it is poison for the souls of men, poison for the great heart of society, running through all the veins, and corrupting the whole system.
Well did Edmund Burke [1729-1797] say, that of all bad things, bad laws are the very worst, and that they derive a particular malignity from the good laws in their company, under which they take shelter.
If a system of wicked laws be deliberately contrived, and fastened on a people for the purpose of consolidating and rendering immovable the governmental despotism, and if, under those laws, a system of immorality and cruelty is inaugurated as the central fountain of the country's policy, to enter into both the domestic and civil life of the people, to regulate all their institutions, to impose conditions on the gospel itself [banning providing Bibles to slaves], to compel men in every sphere of society, every branch of commerce, every agency of active business, to swear faithfulness to that immoral interest; and if the word of God itself, for the sake of shielding all this iniquity, is either suppressed or perverted, what really is the attitude of such a people toward God, and what their character in his sight?
Can any thing cover up this wickedness?
But suppose that, along with such a system, there
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is inserted in it a provision, not of improvement or correction, but rendering correction or repeal impossible. Suppose that a guard is imposed on purpose to perpetuate such a system, without change or amelioration, by which indeed any attempt at change is to be punished as treason.
All these ingenious elements of evil were in the diabolical statutes, with which Jeroboam and the like kingly instruments of Satan, subjected the people to his sway.
And all these ingenious elements of evil are in those execrable laws now being enforced at the point of United States bayonets in Kansas; laws acknowledged to be an utter usurpation, publicly demonstrated as such by the House of Representatives in Congress assembled, and therefore unconstitutional, null, and void. And yet the people commanded to obey them [under evil President James Buchanan (1857-1861)]!
Can any professions of religion induce God to wink at such wickedness, or to connive at the prostitution of religion itself for its support? God's own voice shall answer; you shall have his own judgment from the prophets:
"Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed, to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people. Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off." [Psalm 94:20-22]
If a man could take the
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bolt of God's thunder in his hand, and could flash the lightning right in the face of a tyrannical, usurping legislator, there could not be any thing more direct than this. And is not this to be preached? And if the government of any nation be guilty of this sin, is it not to be charged upon them?
Is not the country where this wickedness is perpetrated the very place, and the generation in which and against which it is perpetrated, the very time to rebuke it, and in the name of God declare his testimony against it?
And on whom rests the responsibility of doing this, and who have the right and authority from God to do it, but his own appointed preachers of the word? And will any man dare to call this political preaching?
It is indeed the bringing of religion into politics, according to God's command, and the application of the instructions and principles of God's word to the conduct of the nation and the people, and such application the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah were commanded to make, and our Lord Jesus conjoined upon the preachers of the Gospel the same faithfulness.
"Cry aloud; spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet; show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, is a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God. They take delight in approaching to God." [Isaiah 58:1-2] And yet, besides the delineation continued in that chapter, here is their character by the same
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prophet:"A rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of tlic Lord. Which say to the seers, See not, and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things; speak unto us smooth things; prophesy deceits. Get ye out of the way; turn aside out of the path; cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because ye despise this word, and TRUST IN OPPRESSION and perverseness, and stay thereon, therefore THIS INIQUITY shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly in an instant." [Isaiah 30:9-13]
"For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows; for every one is a hypocrite and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh villainy. [Isaiah 5:23-24] They call evil good, and good evil; they put darkness for light, and light for darkness. They justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. Therefore, as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." [Isaiah 5:23-24]
And every one of the prophets corresponds in his testimony with this description; and you will find in
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the 5th chapter of Jeremiah, and in that which follows, the most singularly precise and pungent invectives for the coveteousness, cruelty, oppression, falsehood, and disregard of God, prevailing to such a degree that they added to their iniquities a plump denial of them, and would not listen to the word of God against them; so that God charges Jeremiah,
Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now and know, and seek in the broad places thereof if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth, and I will pardon it.
And the prophet Ezekiel, writing and speaking of precisely the same period and people, declares,"The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none." [Ezekiel 22:29-30]
The offer that God made by Jeremiah was unavailing. The prophet could not find a man in Jerusalem to stand in the gap before God; that he might pardon the city and the people; and God bears witness to this fact by Ezekiel, even at the very time of the punishment of the people for their sins, especially the sin of oppression.
The iniquities practiced by the people were sanctioned by statute, defended by false prophets, and
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enforced by the priests and princes through their influence, when, if they had stood up publicly and firmly against such sins, we have God's plain declaration both by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that they would have turned the people from their sins, and procured for them life and pardon."A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so; and what will ye do in the end thereof?" [Jeremiah 5:30-31]
What will ye do indeed? They soon found out that the end thereof was death. "I have not sent these prophets," said the Lord God, "yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings." How amazingly solemn and impressive is this testimony as to the responsibility and power of the ministry in reference to the sins of the people and the nation! They are able, at their pleasure, to mold the character of the people for good or evil, and to direct their course for heaven or hell. They may lead them either to obey or disobey God, both in their public policy and their domestic life; they may, if they choose, proclaim the law and policy of the government to be higher than the law of God, and sacred from rebuke for its wickedness, and they may make the true word of the Lord to be de-
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spised and forbidden of the people; but on their heads is the consequence. They did thus deceive and corrupt the people of old, so that Jeremiah could not persuade them to listen to the voice of God.
Behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they can not hearken; behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it. For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to coveteousncss; and from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth falsely, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. And when God said, Walk in the old paths and in the good way, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, they said, We will not walk therein. And when God set watchmen, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet, they said, We will not hearken." [Jeremiah 6:10-17]
Such was their obstinate refusal to hear God's word in regard to their own iniquities.
And then comes the great appeal of God to the whole world to take note, and bear witness for him, against this people of his wrath, and to mark the wickedness that is going on among them, and especially this exasperating and aggravating impiety of refusing to have the light of God's word turned upon their national, governmental, and social policy.
"Hear ye, O nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, 0 earth!' Behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my
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words, nor to my law, but rejected it." [Jeremiah 6:18-19]
God then proceeds just as in Isaiah, to denounce with utter scorn their formal pretenses of his worship, along with all their wickedness. He had said by Isaiah, I hate, I despise your solemn feast-days, and your rites of pretended religious service are an abomination to me. And he asks of Jeremiah,"To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me; therefore, fathers and sons, the neighbor and his friend shall perish together." [Jeremiah 6:20-21]
And the conclusion of this tremendous sermon is impressive beyond measure for its inculcation of the necessity of discerning between the righteous and the wicked, and separating the latter with their abominable maxims, from the former, in the policy and government of a people, in order that the agencies appointed of God for the good of the people may work, and may be able to accomplish his purposes. God describes the character of the people, in their acceptance of, and submission to, the oligarchy of evil counselors and wicked governors and laws, by whom they consented to be led to destruction, following them as sheep for the slaughter.
"They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders; they are brass and iron; they are all corrupters. The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed
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of the fire; the founder melteth in vain; for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." [Jeremiah 6:28-30]
God distinctly informs us, that if his ministers had spoken as they ought in regard to all this wickedness, it might have been prevented, and the ruin which it brought would have been averted. The nation's destruction was in consequence of their concealment and perversion of God's word; and hence the solemnity and appropriateness of these historic records, as applied for our own guidance at the present time.
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CHAPTER IV.
DAN AND BETHEL IN NEW YORK, AND THE WORSIIIP Of THE
GOLDEN CALVES IN AMERICA—REPRESSION AND CONCEALMENT OF
TRUTH IN THE PULPIT AND CONSERVATISM OF NATIONAL SINS.
THERE are some practical instructions from this history of great importance. As we go forward in it, we cannot help being astonished at the very little use made of it, and the very little light poured from it, when it is certainly one of God's great suns of radiance for Christian nations, one of the orbs in the planetary system of His word; and distinctly in the New Testament, as well as the old, He declares that much of this light was given as a warning, a forewarning, and that it should be poured upon our own consciences, our own habits of thinking, and our own courses of action. It is light that cost more than any thing in the world ever did cost, till the light from the cross and sufferings of Christ, the light bought by his death, came down upon the world. The light from the carcasses of dead empires, the light from Israel and Judah in their crimes and final sufferings, and dreadful death, the light from their captivities before the crucifixion, and the destruction and desolation like a whirlwind after the filling up
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of that measure of their iniquities, and the light from half-buried . . . communities, and from . . . infidel minds still going about and wailing in their grave-clothes, peeled, scattered, and exterminated thus, is a beacon-light to states and statesmen, and to every one of us in a world of probation; the world where character, both national and individual, must be formed in accordance with God's word, or it has in it the elements, the self-igniting fires, of inevitable ruin. The history shows the wickedness of obeying men rather than God, and the dangerous nature of a system of human expediency and concealment of the truth, in preference to a reliance on God, and his truth and righteousness.
But here you may possibly say that the great sin for which the nations and generations now under our examination were destroyed, was the sin of idolatry, and we are not guilty of that, and in no danger from it. Examine the record, and you will find, besides the idolatry, the great sin of oppression, occupying as large a space in the indictment; and we shall discover, as far onward as the 34th chapter of Jeremiah, the deliberate establishment of slavery in the nation to have been the one climacteric cause and occasion of the wrath of God coming down upon the whole land and people without remedy.
And we ourselves may be guilty of things as bad as the idolatry of the old Israelites, and may be quite as unwilling as they to have the light of God's truth
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turned upon them. God speaks of covetousness, which is idolatry. [Colossians 3:5] God looketh on the heart, and if God sees a single merchant in our cities, with whom the reason, for example, why he is unwilling that any mention of the sin of slavery should resound from the pulpit, or that any agitation in regard to its wickedness should be kept up, is a regard to his business and its profits, or a fear of revulsion and disturbance distressing to the prosperous course and current of commercial affairs, that concealment and opposition of the light, and the motive for it, are as bad, in his case, with his increased knowledge, in the blaze of the whole word of God, as the idolatry of the Israelites. It is the golden calves still, and still there is the worship of them, and Dan and Bethel are in this city with their Dagons and their altars, and their priests, not among the lowest merely, but the highest of the people.
And the forced concealment of truth on this very subject, the voice to the seers, See not, and to the prophets, Prophesy not, the ban upon the light, the ostracism of opinion, the repression of freedom in the pulpit, the accusation and the outcry of political preaching, if the light of God be turned upon it, the extreme fastidiousness and fear in our fashionable congregations, sit like a night-mare on the genius of the gospel. It is a mountain of despotism, and of the fear of man thrown upon the truth. The preacher is like the fabled giant under the volcano. If the giant
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will be quiet, the mountain will be quiet, and some green things may grow upon it in peace and freshness. But the moment he turns in his anguish, or strives to free himself of his load, the mountain belches forth its fire and fury, and rolls down streams of lava, and the poor be-mountained giant is the cause of it! The giant can not stir, hand or foot, with the least suspicion of regaining his freedom, but Etna rages.
Tell me not that this is an exaggerated description. Almost every time the light of God's word has been turned directly upon this subject it has been followed with tumult Again and again have faithful and beloved pastors been driven from their pulpits, just barely for giving a single utterance of God's word against the sin of slavery. At the South a man has been driven from his church, simply for refusing to add his name to a commendation of the dastardly and murderous outrage in the Senate of the United States. In Washington, a pastor has been recently dismissed for one single sermon against slavery. In Philadelphia the people have demanded and accomplished the resignation of a paator for the same offense. Everywhere, almost, there is this attempt to muzzle the pulpit, this impious refusal to listen to God's word on this one sin.
Now I should insult the moral sense of the congregation, if I should ask them (as though there were a doubt in their minds as to such iniquity) whether this is right in the sight of God; and God perhaps has
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suffered us to come to our present crisis in the affairs of this nation, on purpose, in part, to deliver the pulpit from such bondage. There is a point where the life is reached, and men feel it, and now they begin to speak out, whether mon will hoar or forbear. And if we would be faithful, we must speak out; for we know that this is God's truth and that whatever plausible motives of expediency may induce either us to refrain from uttering it, or you to shrink from hearing it, it can not be right in God's sight to hearken unto men more than unto God.
The conservatism that would prevent the utterance of God on this subject is a conservatism that stands in the way of righteousness, and yet it makes great pretensions to sobriety and uprightness. It reminds one of Jeremiah's satirical description. They are upright as the palm-tree, but speak not. It preserves a sober and dignified silence, when God commands a fearless outspoken rebuke of cherished sins. It imputes the violence of men's passions in defense of such sins to the rashness and impertinence of those who have dared to rebuke them. It is always saying to those who open the batteries of truth, when noise and fury follow the cannonading, Had you kept silence, there would have been nothing of all this agitation; you are stirring up nothing but contention and wrath. This was the very accusation brought against Jeremiah himself, when he proclaimed the Word of God in Jerusalem and Judea against sins
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which the government commanded, and which the people declared they would defend and practice, and which not a few among prophets and priests themselves affirmed were no sins at all, but just a profitable policy.
"Woe is me," exclaimed Jeremiah, "for I am become a man of contention and strife. I love peace, and I love my people, and I love my country, and out of love I speak to them this word of the Lord. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury, yet every one of them doth curse me." [Jeremiah 15:10] Ah, Jeremiah, there are other ways to touch men's pockets, and irritate their avarice, besides charging twenty per cent. for your money. Lay the tax of the word of God upon their profitable, legalized, and cherished sins, and instantly they cry out violence and spoil, and the word of God itself will be made a reproach unto you and a derision, daily."Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words. [Jeremiah 18:18] So I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report say they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying peradventure he will be enticed, we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." [Jeremiah 20:10]
And all for what? Had he injured them, betrayed them, slandered them, defrauded them? Simply and
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solely because he had delivered unto them the words of the Lord against their sins of oppression and idolatry. Well! if all the Lord's prophets had been faithful and true like Jeremiah, they would have conquered, and God's word in them. But Jeremiah stood almost alone, and the prophets themselves were against him, the conservatists of peace and sin.
When he said that the city and the people were wholly given to oppression, and that God would desolate the land, and deliver up the city to its enemies, because of this wickedness, they said no, he will not deliver it, but Jeremiah is teaching rebellion against the king, the government, and the nation.
So between the word of the Lord on the one side, and the word of these false prophets on the other, between the word of the Lord burning as a fire in his own soul and in his very bones, and making him weary with forbearing, and compelling him to cry out, like a lion in his anguish, and the lies, threatenings, and outcries of rebellion and treason, by prophets, priests, and people, the faithful preacher of God was almost distracted.
"Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the word of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness. [Jeremiah 23:9] For both prophet and priest are profane, and their ways shall bo unto them as slippery ways in the darkness. [Jeremiah 23:11-12] I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing."
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"They walk in lies, they strengthen also the hands of evil-doers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants as Gomorrah." [Jeremiah 23:14]
Nothing could be more expressive of the burning anger of the Lord against those who stood against his word. They were looked up to for examples and guides as the conservatists among the people; but they conserved the people in their sins, crying out all the while against this agitation and strife that Jeremiah was producing with the word of the Lord.
There could hardly be a more offensive and deliberate wickedness against God, than the example of such resistance against his word, and such denial of its application.
Therefore saith the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets, Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall; for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.
Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you; they make you vain; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.
They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said ye shall have peace, and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.
For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord; and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it? [Jeremiah 23:15-18]
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These sneering questions of blasphemy and unbelief, this daring denial of God's word in the face of his divinely-commissioned prophets, addressed by the false prophets, and believed by the people, filled up the cup of their sins, and insured the divine vengeance.
And instantly its assertion follows:
| "Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind; it shall fall grievously upon the heads of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he have executed and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart; in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly.
I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.
But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.
I have heard what the prophets have said that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.
How long shall this be in the hearts of the prophets that prophesy lies?
Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own hearts which think to cause my people to forget my name, by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.
The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully.
What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.
Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer |
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| that breaketh the rock in pieces?
Therefore, behold I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every man from his neighbor. [Jeremiah 23:19-30]
Prophet, priest, and people that do this, I will even punish that man and his house; for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the Lord of Hosts, our God.
Therefore, behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, and the city that I gave you and your fathers, and cast you out of my presence.
And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame which shall not be forgotten." [Jeremiah 23:39-40] |
That everlasting reproach, that perpetual shame, that living destruction! We see it with our eyes, for where is the nation on whose soil some of these cinders out of the furnace of God's wrath have not fallen? And still the Jews, like half-burned shingles from the great conflagration, darken the air of prophesy. And how is it possible that men anywhere can read these burning denunciations of the wickedness by which they fell, and repeat the same wickedness, the same oppression, and the same daring defiance, and resistance, and perversion of God's word in regard to it?
God sent Jeremiah with such messages, even toTophet, sent him on purpose, and gathered a congregation to hear him, even on the borders of that smoldering; smoking image of the world of woe; sent him to preach there in order to give a more
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terrible force and stinging application to his words, sent him to that valley of the son of Hinnom, that rotting gehenna of dead men's bones and all uncleanness, and made him stand with an earthen vessel in his hands, which, amid the tide of burning eloquence poured from God's Spirit through his lips, against the sins of the nation, he was commanded to break in pieces, and cast it into the valley as an emblem of the manner in which God would break up the whole nation, and cast the people into Tophet, till there should be none to bury them, nor room for them to be buried. [Jeremiah 19:1-11]
And after he had finished that sermon, he came into the city again, and repeated its application to all the people in the court of the Lord's house [Jeremiah 19:14-15], and instantly upon that, the sermon being reported to the authorities, they lashed the prophet with stripes, and put him in the stocks, as their descendants afterward did with Paul and Silas, the New Testament preachers of the same Gospel.
Never did the malignity of man, and the instant retributive power and majesty of the word of God come into more graphic and instructive conflict. Will you listen to the recital, for it is brief and pungent:
| "Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and be stood in the court of the Lord's house, and said to all the people, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon the city, and upon all her towers, all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they |
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| have hardened their necks that they might not hear my words.
"Now Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, beard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord. And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks."
"Then said Jeremiah unto him, The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-Missabib. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it; and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword.
"And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house, shall go into captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies." Jeremiah 20:1-4, 6] |
It was thus that God preserved Jeremiah, and, according to his promise, made the terror of his words to sink in the hearts of his opponents, made his words fire and the people wood, to be kindled by them. And all around in the region of bis native place, where wicked and scornful men beset and plagued him, Jeremiah was charged with similar messages.
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Now if ever there was what is now falsely called political preaching, it was this preaching of Jeremiah. It was the preaching of religion in politics, God's word as the only authoritative and right guide of politics, God's word forbidding a nation's sins. And God sustained the prophet in this preaching through a ministry of forty-three years' duration.
Now mark my words, It was the preaching of religion in politics which is God's own command, both in the Old and New Testament, but the preaching of politics in religion is quite another thing, the work of intriguing politicians and of Satan, seeking to blind the minds of men, and keep God's light and God's authority away from their hearts and consciences. If religion be not preached and practiced in the politics of a nation, that nation is on the high road to perdition; for the nation and kingdom that will not serve God shall perish; and if politics be preached and practiced in the religion of a nation, which is the case when religion is not applied to politics, then both church and people perish in their sins.
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CHAPTER V.
OBLIGATIONS OF THE PULPIT IN THE SIGHT OF GOD—
HYPOCRISY OF THE OUTCRY OF POLITICAL PREACHING—
THE SINFULNESS OF CONCEALMENT AND OF SHIELDING
MEN'S SINS FROM THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL—
APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED.
THE Jesuitical habit of apologizing for sin, and of covering it up, runs into every thing; he that is unfaithful in much will also be unfaithful in a little, and he that is unfaithful in a little is unfaithful in much. He whose corporate conscience is debauched in a society, will lose all tenderness and acuteness of conscience in private life, and in his own piety. He will lie, steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods, and then come and stand in God's house, which is called by his name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations. [Jeremiah 7:9-10] Politics in religion will not only lead to the practice of such abominations, but will justify and sanctify them; but religion in politics pours the light of God's word upon men's corporate as well as individual crimes. It is impossible for the individuals of a nation to support the nation's sins, or apologize for them, or ward off the light of
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God's word from rebuking them, and not put in peril their own piety and salvation.
Already, over more than half the pulpits in our land there hangs the ban of excommunication, if a single page of God's word be applied against slavery; the thing must not be mentioned, and a politic silence prevails. The drums of God'a word are muffled, and they beat a funeral march instead of a Gospel onset. Our conservative Christians have turned sextons—they are for burying the truth instead of publishing it. Their whole terror is against the living truth; dead men's bones and all uncleanness have less that is repulsive for them, than rousing, cutting, and exciting truth, the truth of God, that brings religion into their cotton speculations and their politics.
"My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their stuff declareth unto them. [Hosea 4:12] Ephraim is a merchant; the balances of deceit are in his hands; he loveth to oppress, yet he saith, I am become rich, I have found me out substance; in all my labors they shall find none iniquity in me that were sin." [Hosea 12:7-8] There may be iniquity in the abstract, but nothing is sin per se if there be great profit in it; and when the pecuniary interest of any wicked system becomes vast, there are prophets enough to justify Ephraim in its preservation.
Now, then, let such dead as these bury their dead, but the Gospel is not to walk as a mourner, at the grave-digger's bidding. Preach thou the kingdom of
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God. Undertakers for the dead; preachers for the living. Let not the first presume to give instructions to the last. It is a different process, that of nailing up truth in coffins, and putting it five feet underground, lest it be a stench in the nostrils of cotton merchants, and that of revealing its grand and noble forms, as glorious living messengers from the Lord Almighty. We walk with angels, not with dead men; we take counsel of living, beating hearts, not dead bones and purses.
To those who conceal or sell the truth for a present expediency, and handle God's word by profit and loss, God gives in receipt a whirlwind; ye shall be ashamed of your revenues, says he, because of the fierce anger of the Lord. And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter, Should not a people seek unto their God? Will they dare to seek for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony! If your leaders speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. [Isaiah 8:19-20]
And if you follow such teachers, hear ye what is in reserve for you, even in your very passage through the word of God, and what it means when the Lord says, that if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. [Matthew 15:14] For, says the living God, If they speak not according to my word, they shall pass through it hardly bestead and hungry; even through this land of glory, this place of living streams, green pastures, and cold flowing waters, and
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trees of life, whose fruit is for the healing of the nations; even through this region of heaven shall they pass more famished with thirst and hunger than if lost in the heart of the great desert under the simoom cloud. They shall pass through it hardly bestoad and hungry, and it shall come to pass that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth, and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven into darkness. [Isaiah 8:21-22]
That is the fate of any political party that will not obey God's word, but chain themselves to platforms that abjure it, and trust in lies.
Nothing can possibly be more hypocritical, than the outcry about political preaching. The truth is, that the moment any sin passes from the individual to the nation, and is sanctioned by law, and becomes what is called organic, then instantly the speech against it is branded as political preaching; so that, if you wish to take all manner of sin from the touch and control of the pulpit, if you wish to shield it from that rebuke which God has appointed to be thundered against it, you have only to make it legal and national, and you have given it a tabernacle, a pavilion, you have enshrined it as a Dagon, before which you must put off the shoes from your feet, and approach it only to bow down and worship. If a man has two wives, you may preach against polyga-
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my, and nobody thinks of charging you with preaching politics; but if a State set up polygamy by law, and its support be made a plank in the political platform of a party, then, if you touch upon it in the pulpit, you are preaching politics. Whenever, and in whatever way, you bring religion to bear upon politics, there are men who will accuse you of political preaching; but you are not to stop for that.
And it is most instructive to see the blundering power of political prejudices, and the distortions of men's vision. The Rev. Dr. Richards, settled in Morristown during the administration of President Jefferson, preached on one occasion a sermon on the prevalence of infidelity, applying the principles of the gospel to the duties of the nation; and the sermon happening to fall in with the opinions of the hearers, it was greatly admired. No one thought of calling it a political sermon. Several years passed away, bringing, in many respects, a great change in the political views of the congregation. But divine truth is always the same. Dr. Richards, thinking he perceived a train or habit of opinion and feeling in the congregation or community, which called for it, took up the same sermon, and preached it again as before. Not an individual remembered it, but a great portion of the congregation were very much offended by it, as being what they called political preaching. They went to the length of appointing a committee to wait upon the preacher and remonstrate with him against
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such kind of preaching. One of the gentlemen on the committee, and their chairman, was Dr. Whelpley, then an elder in Dr. Richards's church. The committee presented their grievances and remonstrance, and Dr. Richards listened with great gravity and serenity. When they got through, he remarked that time brings about great changes. Men change, opinions change; nature herself works wondrous transformations; but his old sermons remained, for aught he could discover, just as they were. This discourse, said he, taking up the obnoxious sermon, is indeed discolored, and somewhat yellow with age; but its contents remain precisely the same as they were so many years ago, when you first heard its expositions of divine truth, and regarded them with admiration as the pure gospel of God, nor ever dreamed of there being any thing political in them.
The committee of remonstrance listened with astonishment; they took the manuscript into their hands, and sat gazing at one another, and at Dr. Richards, in silence. At length Dr. Whelpley, the chairman, turned to them and said, Gentlemen, I think we had better go! And after that, there was no more criticism in the congregation concerning the preaching of politics.
But at the present time, the simplest announcement of divine truth, in regard to national guilt, is asserted to be an invasion, forsooth, of the political rights of the congregation, and an unwarranted intrusion of
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themes adapted to excite angry feeling, where there ought to be nothing mentioned but Christ and him crucified. [I Corinthians 2:2]
But what is it to truly preach Christ and him crucified, except to pour the light of a Saviour's sufferings and death upon men's sins, that in that light they may see and feel "the exceeding sinfulness of sin [Romans 7:13]," their own sins, and the sins of the community, and be led, out of love to Christ, and for bis sake, to renounce them? Many person may be willing to preach nothing but Christ and him crucified, who are not willing, like Paul, to know nothing among men save Christ and him crucified; a very different thing it is, merely to preach that doctrine speculatively, from applying it practically.
Many are very willing to hear about Christ being crucified for them, who will not listen for a moment to the proposed crucifixion of their sins for him, especially those sins which they call organic, those that have the sanction and protection of human law, those that are regarded and maintained as domestic institutions, and those that are defended by a strong party, so that it becomes an unpopular and a hazardous thing to assail them. But for what purpose was the gospel given, but to turn men from their iniquities, disclosing and condemning them in the light of the cross?
And what is the gospel, with its infinite majesty of thought, and its burning motives, and its countless applications, and its sublime combinations of thunder-
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ings and halleluias, and its compass of all sounds reverberating from heaven to hell? Is it a fiddle with only one string, or a harp of infinite harmonies? Is it an organ with only one note—a monotonous anodyne of repeated truisms, so admitted, that they are cradled in the dormitory of the soul, as lifeless as exploded errors? Is it a treadmill of orthodoxy and conservatism, where men, that would be Samsons anywhere else, must grind blind-folded, crushed beneath the fear of man, terrified at the thought of a blast from the political newspapers, afraid of every thing exciting, their only object to keep things quiet, and the watchword of their millennium, First peaceable, then pure? Such an idea of the gospel is preposterous, it reminds us of our school-day declamations:
"My name is Norvall on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flock; a frugal swain,
Whose only aim was to increase his store,
And keep his only son, myself, at home."
I tell you, no wonder that the modern pulpit has lost its power, when men are afraid of the application of that power, and tremble at the consequences. The gospel is not to be perverted as a political lullaby, and shall not be muzzled at the mandate of intriguing politicians and oppressors. There is nothing, from the beginning to the end of the alphabet, connected with moral issues, and bearing on men's duty, which may not, at the proper time, be made the subject of
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investigation in the pulpit and the proper time for the consideration of any sin, is the very time, and the proper place the very place, where the sin is practiced, where its lawfulness, expediency, and righteousness are maintained, and where its disastrous, demoralizing, destructive influence, is felt, and not at the Antipodes, where sins are reigning of an entirely opposite character. The proper time and place for the consideration of idolatry is in the presence of the idol-worship, and in the community where such an abomination prevails, or where it is defended; and no matter what laws, or antique usages and authorities of state and custom sustain the iniquity, that makes no difference in the duty of the preacher. The application of the gospel must be made; nor is there any time to be lost; since the argument of possession, custom, and law, is every day growing stronger.
Just so with every dear, cherished, fashionable evil. If the probing of it occasions agitation, anger, strife, that very thing is proof of the necessity of so dealing with it; and if it is warmly contested not to be an evil nor a sin, that itself just clearly shows the danger and ruin of letting it alone, and the pressing necessity of pouring the light of God's word upon it. If it be interwoven with the politics of the state and of society, so much the worse; so much the more hazardous to meddle with it, but so much the more necessary. Idolatry was thoroughly interwoven with the fixtures and statutes of the Roman empire, but
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the gospel was laid at its roots; and though the apostles might have preached Christ and him crucified, technically, orthodoxically, without saying one word against the worship of idols, yet they attacked it, and poured the light of the cross upon it, in the very heart of Athens [Acts 17:15], Corinth [Acts 18:1], Ephesus [Acts 19:1], and Rome [Acts 28:16-31], before the temples and the altars of Astarte, of Jupiter [Acts 14:13], of Diana [Acts 19:24-35], and the thirty thousand gods admitted by the indifference of Areopagus [Acts 17:19-23].
Think of any man undertaking to tell Paul that he must not
bring his religion into politics! It was only vagabond Jews a [Acts 19:13], and that only of the lower sort a [Acts 17:5], and Demetrius the silversmith, the maker of silver shrines for Diana [Acts 19:24-28], that cried out politics, and the turning of the world upside down with agitation [Acts 17:6], and sounded the alarm that the apostles were persuading men to worship God contrary to the law [Acts 16:21
and 18:13]. That was the accusation; and where the law was all on the side of sin, death, and Satan, how could there but be incessant conflict and strife, till God's law got the uppermost?
I sometimes think I see, with the clearness of a death-bed vision, that the spirit of gain, and of a commercial expediency, and of an indolent love of ease and prosperity, even in spiritual things, has taken fast hold of the people. And I do know that there may be a self-deception, even in the hearts of men who think they are going on wisely and smoothly in the way to heaven, and a secret leaven of supreme
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regard to self, that corrupts the whole fountain, so that, by-and-by, with the horror of an eternal surprise, they may find God saying to them, I never knew you, ye never knew me! [Luke 13:27]
There are those who have asked themselves, again and again, May we not keep silence? Is it not best? Why is it necessary to speak on this subject, though it be in God's word; or, if necessary, why necessary for us, and why now? But we are answered by conscience, by God's word, by the examples of the prophets and apostles: and so answered, how can we forbear speaking out?
By the help of God, I, for one, mean to speak freely, fully, on this subject, at this most solemn juncture in our history. It is not from curiosity, merely, but by constraint, that we have to seek the light of God upon our present path of duty, personal and individual, in regard to this thing. It is no mere abstraction, and never was, but it has come to every man's door, every man's own soul, asking what shall be done? what course are we to pursue, what opinion shall we maintain, and what would God have us to do, in such a crisis? Here, then, we must consent to come humbly to the word of God, and learn what is His judgment in regard to the right way; for now, at this very time, we are making, as a nation, our final decision upon it, and every man takes part in that decision.
I proclaim the right and the obligation of a minister of God's word to preach on the sinfulness of
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extending the system of slavery, and to show the consequent religious responsibility of a vote in regard to it. If any persons in the nation have a right to speak on this subject, those who have thoroughly investigated it in the Scriptures, in their original languages, certainly possess that right. I have long studied the Old Testament in reference to it, out of anguish of spirit at the daring accusation brought against God's law among the Hebrews, of sustaining and sanctioning this stupendous wrong.
And if, after some seventeen years' ministry in the city of New York, I could not dare to speak, or might not be permitted or sustained in proclaiming the whole utterance of God's word on this subject, where or when could I? Could I do it at the South ? where, not only no man is allowed to speak, but if he be even suspected of thinking unfavorably to the system of slavery, he must be expelled from society, the safety of which is declared to be imperiled by his presence.
Or, should a minister go to India or Siberia, and there proclaim the word of God against the sin of slavery, in a country five thousand miles distant? That was Amaziah's advice to the prophet Amos, when, at God's bidding, he proclaimed the iniquities of Israel in Israel. O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there, but prophesy not again any more at Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. [Amos 7:12-13]
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But why speak here, and why now? Because the time has come, and the occasion, and the demand, and the personal moral necessity. It is worth a seventeen years' ministry to come to such a crisis, and be permitted of God to speak out. Never before has the extension of slavery been made a personal responsibility, at least not directly, but now it is. It is put to you and to me, as individuals, to say, Shall slavery and oppression, or freedom and justice, be the rule of this nation? This, then, is a crisis in which, with the word of God in trust to proclaim for God, we can not be silent; and as to our hearers, whatever part of God's word you reject, the same shall judge you in the last day.
Now, it is no easy matter to proclaim the word of God on this subject; it is not a pleasing or a popular theme. And as to position, as to prosperity, as to popularity, are not all inducements over on the side of ease, quiet, and silence? Why endanger your position, influence, the welfare of your church, by an obstinate conscience, that makes you think, forsooth, that you must proclaim the messages in the word of God on this subject? Truly, my friends, you must see that it is nothing of ease, or self-indulgence, or the seductions of popular applause, that can constrain a man, in such a case, to give utterance to his convictions. I can but ask your prayers, as Paul did, that I may open my mouth boldly, that I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. [Ephesians 6:18-19] But speak I must. If
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I did not speak, I should perhaps receive the curse of a judicial darkness into my own soul. I should fool degraded, debased, enslaved. I could never lift my head as a man, a free man, an ambassador for God, who seeks not to please men, but God. I have been made to feel that if a man can not stand against the whole world, if need be, with a Thus saith the Lord, he is unfit to speak for Jehovah; it may be that he is unfit for heaven, destitute of the very first elements of faith in the Lord Jesus.
And of the two lines of mistake in regard to eternity, that of self-indulgence in the way of timidity and love of ease, taking that for a conservative piety, and that of boldness, and a constitutional love of liberty and truth, taking that for conscientiousness;—a man may be mistaken in regard to his motives in either way. But if one must go to perdition by one of these errors, he had better go by mistake of boldness in the truth, than shame and fear of it. And sure I am, that more will be lost in this age by not confessing God and his truth before men, than by imprudent or fiery zeal in the proclamation of any part of God's messages.
O that God may work in us all, by his own grace, a most entire and hearty love of his truth. Remembering that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live [Matthew 4:4], may we be enabled to say with Jeremiah, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart. [Jeremiah 15:16]
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CHAPTER VI.
GLORY AND FREEDOM OF THE WORD OF GOD IS ITS UNIVERSAL
AND PERPETUAL APPLICATION— DEMONSTRATIONS FROM ITS
HISTORICAL AND PROPHETIC PORTIONS, AS TO NATIONAL SINS—
THIS LIGHT YET TO BE APPLIED.
IT is the glory and the freedom of the Word of God, that it is for all ages, times, circumstances, men, and sins, without respect to persons. What would it be worth, if it were not? It would grow old, it would pass out of date, it would vanish away, it would be like the first Egyptian covenant which decayeth and waxeth old, and is suspended. But now, forever, every word of God is settled in heaven, every orb hung up in that divine firmament, the same faithful light unto all generations. Its very historical records are like the milky way, a galaxy of stars, disclosing new worlds with the application of every new comprehensive prayerful investigation by instruments of greater power. And its very nebulosities, that like the cloudy fleeces of the starry universe, have sometimes furnished hopeful clinging-places for the bats of infidelity, are resolved into clusters of perfect worlds, arranged from the outset by him who made them at
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his own great will, for the manifestation of his own glory.
The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. There is no dross in it; there is nothing to be thrown away; and the historical portions are especiully precious for this, among many essential uses, that they teach us, beyond all possibility of doubt, the freedom and fearlessness with which God will have every portion of his Word applied. They set in a divine illumination the precedents, in which the statutory parts of the divine law are illustrated, with such demonstration, as to give their meaning new clearness and power.
And the same is the case with the illustration of the promises, so often made to shine in the chapters of personal experience, and in the beautiful and various recountings of God's providence.
Now it can not be denied that in whatever age of the world any sinful practices or principles prevail, to the condemnation of which any part of the word of God is applicable, or for demonstration of the wickedness of which any part of the word of God can be used, that part of the word of God is meant for that age and that iniquity, was given in reference to it, was prearranged for such application, and is as directly revealed from God to that age, for the purpose of being proclaimed as his immediate message, as it was for the very first age, and the very first occasion. For this is the ever-living power and freshness of the word of God. When God revealed it first, he gave it
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for all times and places, through all generations up to the last day, and with a particular foresight of all phases of human society, all forms of human government, all customs and fashions among men, and all varieties of human wickedness, whether of philosophy or impiety, intellect or heart, in the church or out of it, rulers or ruled. It is the incorruptible, eternal Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, while generation after generation, all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever. [Isaiah 40:6-8]
And God will have it applied; he gave it, he prepared it, he made it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. [2 Timothy 3:16] God will have it applied by living preachers, according as men's conditions, dangers, miseries and sins, sins and miseries, require; will have it divided rightly [2 Timothy 2:12], that every man, and every generation, and every community, may receive their portion in due season. Like the sun in the heavens, there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. [Psalm 19:6]
And there is nothing, in individual or national life, at the door of which, as at a forbidden or sacred citadel, any man, or government, or society, may stand and fend off, or expel, the word of God from entering and applying its judgment. It has the scrutiny and freedom of omniscience and omnipresence, breaking
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every seal and every spell of concealment, and flashing as God's eye into every secret recess and on every hidden thing. Whatever is morally wrong in all the ramifications, employments, and organizations of society, whatever in human business or luxury, whatever in art, commerce, manufactures, labor, learning, science, jurisprudence, civil, social, or domestic economy, on that the word of God falls, to search it out and rebuke it.
Whatever there be in the laws or policy of nations, tainted with moral infection, under the condemnation of God's righteousness, or adapted, or designed, to lead men into, or protect them in pursuing courses of sin, on that the word of God comes down, to that it is to be applied, and that is the province over which it has indisputable dominion, and on which it is to be marched without fear or apology, without hindering or halting. If unrighteousness in law is carrying men in iniquity headlong, God's word is to be planted in the face of such law, in defiance of it, as a park of artillery to thunder against it, and shield the people from its dreadful sway.
Of all partisan claims or theological hallucinations, the idea that the science of government, the conduct of rulers, the political creeds and practices of men, the administration of parties and of nations, the whole domain, in fine, of what is called politics, is sacred from the application of God's word, and stands aloof on ground which the very nature of the preacher's vocation forbids him to invade, is the maddest. A greater
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absurdity could scarcely be broached or a more impious one in its logic and its consequences, than that which, nevertheless, has been broached, and widely insisted on, that politics are out of the supervision of piety, and that religion is out of its sphere in applying to the political doctrines and practices of a people the rules of God's righteousness, the light of God's word. The politics of a people comprise the whole scope of their laws and civil obligations, under which, if they be left to the dominion of the god of this world, given over to his undisputed sway, the whole nation will at length inevitably go down to perdition.
The idea that men commissioned with the word of God are desecrating their office, or transcending its limits, when they undertake to bring the nation's laws and transgressions under the judgment of God's law; or that they are in any manner or degree going out of their own proper sphere as the teachers of God's word, is a creation only of pride and impiety; and for the ministers of that word themselves to echo such an opinion, is itself a desecration of their office and a treason against God.
And here let me say, in regard to the historical teachings, and all other teachings in the Old Testament; that they are not only not superseded by the New, but confirmed and strengthened, and of just as great importance to be applied as ever. The New Testament is an addition to, and perfection of, the revelations of God's will in the Old, but it takes not
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away one jot or tittle of its authority, nor diminishes in the least degree its importance, nor supplies its place. The New Testament is part and parcel of the Old, but what the Old could not do, the New has done, and what the Old has still to do, the New does not do, and can not do, in its place. The Old came very much to governments and nations; the New still leaves that field to be occupied by the Old, and itself comes more especially and directly to individuals; but the Old has still its mission, and must occupy its sphere, as fellow-preacher with the New, both being God's eternal witnesses, neither to cease on account of the other, but both to preach together and forever, to men and communities, to individuals and nations, to governments and peoples, to rulers and the ruled alike.
And in this history, the career of nations, and of the Jews especially, is full of blazing light and practical instruction, both in regard to our duty, and in illustration of the divine Providence and word. The Hebrew people, in their own country, and in their national life, were a perpetual beacon-light amid the darkness; and in their living death among the nations they still serve a mighty purpose for the demonstration of anatomy and disease, as God's subject of dissection, for the scrutiny of deadly moral poison, and the instruction and the warning of all empires. And in these historical pages the providential government of God is revealed and illustrated as we never
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could have known it, but for them. Hence, continually the vivid references by the Lord Jesus Christ back to the records of what God has been doing, for instruction as to his will and providence and our duty. Have ye not read? [Mark 12:26] Is it not plain before you? Remember Lot's wife [Genesis 19:26; Luke 17:32]. Remember the carcasses of those who fell in the wilderness [Hebrews 3:17]. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah. [Genesis 19:24-25]. As it was in the days of Noah so shall it again be [Luke 17:26].
As it was with Jonah and Nineveh, and the warned and instructed, and yet ruined cities and kingdoms of old, so again in the ever-recurring tides and destinies of rising, flourishing, sinning, and falling nations. There they lie, the ruins of those cities, and in solemn silent eloquence proclaim God's wrath; and Nineveh and Thebes, in their wonderful disentombment and material anastasis bear witness to the truth.
The dispersion of the Jews among all nations, and at the same time God's most wonderful providential preservation of them from becoming lost and indistinguishable, or merged and denationalized, constitute a perpetual flaming miracle, in fulfillment of the prediction in Amos,
| "I will destroy the sinful kingdom from off the face of the earth, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth" [Amos 9:9]. |
These demonstrations cover the course of all time, and they are [warnings, precedents] for all ages, and they reach to all possible circumstances and questions in their application, with their
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light [message]. They show, as one vast example and precedent, for the instruction of all generations and nations, how God is a present God, with a particular providence, interposing, acting, arranging all causes, and ordering affairs, and guiding and governing the whole world on the same principles developed in the history of that small portion of the world where the Saviour of the world was crucified.
But this light has never been applied to the affairs of nations, the administration of governments, the political life of the people; and almost half of God's word has remained a dead letter, and an unknown power. When John Robinson told the pilgrims that he was confident God had much more truth to unseal and let it break forth out of his living oracles, than they had any of them then gazed at, he might, or he might not, have had in his mind this application of divine truth to human politics; but certain it is, that by such application and guidance alone can our country be saved from going down into a deeper gulf of ruin than any nation was over buried in.
This country is the battle-ground of religious principle against a wicked political expediency, and of God's authority in national affairs against the spirit of conquest, covetousness, oppression, and diplomatic fraud and selfishness. Never, anywhere else, has principle had the field; it has been shut out and abandoned, as an interloper, an intruder, out of place in politics, and so the world has gone on without it. But here we have
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it. The battle is God's authority, and the religious principle, and the power of conscience, against political dishonesty and villainy. It is by the word of God that conscience and freedom fight on against immorality and slavery; and the whole word must be free, and must be used, and no part of it vailed or rejected.
Heretofore the conscience-battle has been merely as a skirmish in a narrow mountain gorge, where not a thousandth part of the troops could be engaged, or it has only been an ecclesiastical engagement, as of the Free Church of Scotland, moving from the government and patronage of the State. Now, at length, we are down in the plain, room enough for all the forces and for every evolution, and the whole world are gazing at us, as if they occupied the mountain sides, and suspended all their interests for the issue of this conflict.
It is principle, battling by the word of God, that here must contend against policy, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places [Ephesians 6:12]; must enter into policy, conquer it, guide it, shape it, inspire it, transform it. It is principle in the hearts of the people that must reclaim and govern the government, that must wrest it mightily from the possession of men who are subverting its fundamental laws and elements, and put it in the hands, and keep it in the hands, of men who will not do what God abhors.
There is but one way to accomplish this: God's
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truth, working by God's Spirit in the masses, in the common people, in the whole constituency. We must take possession of the constituency for God, and so we get possession of the government for God. The opinions of the constituency in regard to polities must be formed under the light of God's word, a thing which in most nations has never yet been done, but religion has been kept as far away from politics; and politics as thoroughly on the watch against religion, as if politics were a peaceful, unpolluted Eden, and religious truth the prowling fiend, seeking to distract, divide, and fill it with mischief and desolation.
The government of religion by politics has been very common; this has been the rule where church and state have been united; and between both the truth of God's word has been crushed and silenced, where it could not be perverted. But now comes a time when every thing must be brought into the light, and determined not by state or ecclesiastical power, as formerly, but by conscience, which God's truth first sets at work, and then arms with a might that is irresistible. Now, over all this domain, God's word has a park of mighty batteries to move, hitherto masked and silent, but now to be unmasked and thundering. There is a hidden fire never yet revealed, but which is to break forth in triumphant majesty and power.
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CHAPTER VII.
God's Wrath Against [Judah's] Slavery in Jeremiah XXXIV. l7—
The Illumination from this Passage Upon Our Own [U.S.] Sin—
The Solemnity of the Crisis and the Responsibility—
National Decisions by Individual Opinions and Choices—
The Question to be Settled is of Right or Wrong, Not Policy or Impolicy.
THUS saith the Lord, Ye [of Judah] have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor; behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. Jer. xxxiv. 17.
[Ed. Note: Meaning: 'I, God, will abolish you sinful nation]. |
These words constitute one of the most tremendous thunderbolts of God's wrath against a nation's sins ever issued from the quiver of the Almighty. It came down with the suddenness of a peal of thunder in a clear day.
The cause and occasion of it [the abolition of Ancient Judah] were the attempted establishment of slavery in the land [of Ancient Judah], in place of free voluntary paid labor.
Ed. Note: This sin of Ancient Judah parallels the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, Ezekiel 16:4, e.g., oppressing the poor and needy, hence, warranting destruction, Genesis 19:24-25.
In case of both, the penalty was permanent. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, whereas while not all Israelites were killed, they were merely penalized by not being allowed to have their own nation any more, not until after the Messiah shall have returned in person and power to rule as King of Kings, Ezekiel 37:21-28, Micah 5:2-10, 1 Timothy 6:15 and Revelation 17:14 and 19:16 (which event has of course not yet happened). |
Involuntary servitude was forbidden by the divine law [Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7], and the service [employment] appointed by the constitution of the Jewish state was a free service.
| Ed. Note: The Israelites were also clearly told to not oppress the Palestinians. See reference and details by Rev. John G. Fee, Sinfulness of Slavery (1851), p 11. |
There had been, from time to time, great and gross transgressions of this benevolent constitution; and God had incessantly
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denounced his vengeance, by the prophets, against such oppressions; but never before had there been a deliberate determination and attempt, on the part of the nation, to
- violate the free constitution [God's anti-slavery commandments and laws],
- defeat its [God's Laws'] provisions of protection and justice for the laboring classes,
- establish the sinful and forbidden claim of property in man, and
- bind their free servants as bond-slaves and chattels forever at the will of the master.
This dreadful revolution and usurpation [sin] they [the people of Judah] now [in the King Zedekiah era] resolved upon—king, princes, priests, and the whole oligarchy of masters [in defiance of God and warnings by Jeremiah].
They [the people of Judah] had hesitated, had relaxed their grasp from the subjects of their oppression, when Jerusalem was threatened by the invading Chaldean army; but the moment the troops drew off, and the immediate pressure of fear and danger was removed, they returned to their impious project; the gain in their wealth, by making their servants property instead of hired servants was too vast, and the temptation of wielding an irresponsible despotism too dazzling for their cupidity and love of power to resist [Jeremiah 34:8-11].
They [the people of Judah] had been going on in an immoral, sensual, proud, vicious training for this final, daring, culminating iniquity, for centuries; but they did not expect to be reined up and blasted by so sudden a destruction.
It [Judah's permanent national destruction] came like a whirlwind; it was all over with them; there was no more reprieve, no more forbearance [by God]; the choice of slavery instead of freedom, and oppression instead of justice and humanity, as the
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policy of the nation, filled up the measure of their iniquities, and exhausted the last drop in the allotted patience and long-suffering of God.
Ed. Note: This sin, restoring slavery, had been cited by
Rev. Samuel Hopkins, Discourse 1785 [see excerpt]
Rev. John Rankin, Letters on American Slavery, pp 101-102 (Ohio, 1823)
Dr. [Samuel] Horsley, Bishop of Asaph, Anti-slavery Speech (BHL, 24 June 1806).
The offense against divine law was particularly offensive in view of the background of Israel having been created as a nation via rescue out of the Egyptian bondage system and given pertinent anti-slavery laws and principles, see, e.g.,
Rev. Theodore D. Weld, The Bible Against Slavery (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837), pp 86-92
Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument (1845), pp 31-34
Rev. John G. Fee, Sinfulness of Slavery (1851), pp 10-11.
See also Ruth Sinai, "Once we were slaves, now we're slavers" (Haaretz, 14 April 2006), on slavery in modern Israel. |
Now, the transaction of this marked and mighty sin, and God's tremendous, almost instantaneous, wrathful judgment against it, were, for the sudden illumination of wickedness and justice in our fallen world, like a sun shot into chaos.
If I had time to examine, and you the patience to contemplate, the previous steps of transgression, that led to this colossal guilt, and prepared the way for it,
the gradual sapping and mining of the foundations of morality,
the corruption of principles, manners, and morals,
the successive wicked statutes, and
the habit of infidelity and disobedience toward God fastened on the people, in willingly walking after them,
the sacrifice and shipwreck of conscience, in obeying man rather than God, and
the consequent loss of all dignity, power, and freedom,
the recital would be full of instruction and of thrilling interest.
We have already dwelt upon several important points; and I can now only, as it were, take the quadrant, and, getting this orb of light in the firmament of God's word in the right line and reflection, bring it down exactly to our position, to calculate our course of duty and of safety. It is only by such celestial observations, as that great writer, Mr. Coleridge, once remarked, that terrestrial charts can be constructed: such charts, at least, as can be relied upon
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to carry a nation safely through its perils. We ourselves are at sea, and surrounded by breakers, and God only can rescue us; and He will do it, only by our reliance on Him, and obedience to Him.
Let us, then, in the first place, secure an observation as to God's method in a nation's probationary trial, and as to the solemnity of the criais to which we have been brought, and the similarity between our position and that of the Jews, from the lifted lid of whose sepulchre there comes such an awful voice of wailing and of warning. We shall then be prepared to go into the argument as to the iniquity of slavery, and as to our own guilt and ruin, if we consent to its extension.
And here I beseech you to remark [notice], that this mighty precedent of national injustice, and of God's vengeance against it, being once set, and blazing out with lurid fire, like a burning planet, in God's word, it settles into certainty the judgment of God with any other nation that shall dare to take to its embrace a similar injustice as to its policy.
It settles another matter also, that God will never again have patience with any other nation as he had with the first; but the wrath that with the first was restrained for ages, while the injustice was rolling on, will come down upon the last, because of the despised light of the first example, with overwhelming rapidity and power.
Ed. Note: This wrath came about a mere four years after this 1857 writing, i.e., in 1861.
See also Grenville Sharpe, The Law of Retribution, or, A Serious Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies Founded on Unquestionable Examples of God's Temporal Vengeance Against Tyrants, Slave-holders, and Oppressors: The Examples are Selected from Predictions in the Old Testament, of National Judgements, Which (Being Compared with their Actual Accomplishment) Demonstrate "the sure word of prophecy," as well as the Immediate Interposition of Divine Providence, to Recompence Impenitent Nations According to Their Works (London: W. Richardson, 1776).
See also John Lord Somers, et al., Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations: Concerning the Rights, Power, and Prerogative of Kings, and the Rights, Priviledges, and Properties of the People, Shewing the Nature of Government in General, Both from God and Man, An Account of the British Government, and the Rights and Priviledges of the People in the Time of the Saxons and Since the Conquest; The Prophets and Ancient Jews Strangers to Absolute Passive Obedience; A Large Account of the Revolution; Several Declarations in Queen Elizabeth's Time (London: T. Harrison, 1710). This book had been repeatedly cited earlier that year by abolitionist writer Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations(Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855), pp 12, 46 and 68-71. |
If men neglect the examples and the warning in God's word, so much the worse for them, and worse still if
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they scoff at its application.
But there burns the light, the fire, the wickedness, the warning, the thunderbolt: you can almost hear it hissing and detonating anew, as you open those sacred pages.
There stands [in the Mideast of 1857] the scorched, scarred, transfixed, and blasted form of a nation [Israel, Judah] once chosen and beloved of God, but now a monument to the universe [majesty, power, permanence] of his [God's] inexorable justice [to remain abolished until the Messiah returns, Ezekiel 37:21-28].
Dear to him [God] once as the apple of his eye, engraved in covenant mercy on the palms of his hands, yet for the crime [repeated sin] of trusting in oppression and staying themselves thereon [pp 72 et seq.], plucked from his own finger as his signet ring, and whirled in scorn into the gulf of retribution [national abolishment]!
Ed. Note: The penalty, national abolishment, was to last for Israel and Judah until the Messiah. Ezekiel 37:21-28, Deuteronomy 4:26-27,
Jeremiah 16:14-15,
Ezekiel 34:23-30 [see analysis infra]. As shown in
Leviticus 26-27 and Deuteronomy 27-30, Israel was to be allowed to stay in Palestine as long as Israel remained obedient to God. Israel failed to be obedient, so was ordered abolished by God. Jesus Christ re-warned the people, in Luke 20:9-19 (the vineyard parable), that obedience was required, or what they had, including the nation, would be taken from them, and given to others (God would "give the vineyard to others"). The required obedience did not occur, sin worsened until becoming so extreme as to be described in John 8:44, so the warning of dire consequences indeed came to fulfillment. Said fulfillment will continue as the people become "utterly corrupt" with further adverse consequences befalling them "in the latter days" (Deuteronomy 31:29 and 28:20; Isaiah 30:1, 9, 13; Jeremiah 15:6-8, 6:26, and 18:22; Hosea 8:14 and 10:15).
Israel can not and will not be restored with God's blessing during this Dispensation, not be restored by Act of God until after the Messiah comes in person to rule, not until then (in the future) when Israel shall then seek God wholeheartedly (Jeremiah 16:21, Jeremiah 29:12-14).
No commandment permits, authorizes, supports, condones, provides for, premature end of the Exile (Diaspora) nor restoration prior thereto. Christ reaffirmed the penalty, Matthew 21:43, "the kingdom of God shall be taken from you." This was repeating Jeremiah 16:12-15, God would "cast them out," out until the Lord would bring them back in an Exodus bigger-than-the-historic-Exodus. This divine-intent time-line is significant, not to be ignored, by, for example, alleging "grace," as, to the contrary, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, the law remains in full force and effect vis-a-vis the unrepentant.
See Matthew 19:4 and 6 on the duty to respect divine intent.
In Moses' era, some Israelites defied God's timing on when to enter Palestine. They attempted to go into Palestine before the set time. Numbers 14:44. See also background and context in Psalm 95:7-11, 1 Cor. 10:10-11, and Hebrews 3:7-19, and the commentary on these verses in The Ryrie Study Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976).
Many of them were therefore "discomfited" or even killed (Numbers 14:33, 40-45). The Israelites who respected and abided by the divine time-line survived.
The bottom line requirement, condition precedent, for Israel to maintain their country was to "love," "obey," "cling to" "the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 29:18-29 and 30:19-20). Israel disobeyed! so could NOT maintain their country. This deterioration came about when Israel came into "contact with the capitalist [covetous] ideas of the [surrounding] heathen empires," says Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion (New York: Vanguard Press, 1918), Chapter 7, § 2 p 286.
Centuries went by. Israel alternated and vacillated between compliance and rebellion. See, e.g., the Book of Judges, Jeremiah 29:17-19, etc. After being abolished by Act of God in the 500's - 700's BC, with God using Assyrians and Babylonians to effectuate His purpose, a small remnant of Judah was allowed to return, as shown by, e.g., Ezra and Nehemiah, on condition of obedience. This failed, Israel rejected its King (Jesus Christ) in the 27-30 A.D. timeframe, so was wholly abolished by Act of God in 70 A.D., with God using Romans to effectuate His purpose.
For many centuries after 70 A.D., Israel remained obedient to the Divine Decision that Israel be abolished as a national political entity. However, a secular rebellion doctrine called Zionism came into existence in the late 19th century, urging rebellion against the said Divine Decision, and instead urging rebellion by restoring Israel without God's blessing and without the Messiah!! See details, infra.
The divine policy and practice is to chasten those whom He loves. (Hebrews 12:6). This is done by His Word (sufficient in itself,
Isaiah 8:20, Luke 16:29, and by prophets, Hebrews 1:1-2), and as a last desperate step (after lamenting 'what more could I do?,' Isaiah 5:1-7), via violence / war methodology. Examples:
Genesis 19:24-25 (sudden terrorist-style destruction of sinning cities Sodom and Gomorrah)
Exodus 7-10 (the Lord caused ten plagues, ten terrors, against sinning nation)
Exodus 12:29-30 (deaths of sinning Egypt's firstborn)
Exodus 14:24-28 (the Lord destroyed sinning nation's army)
Leviticus 26:14-39 (the Lord's punishing of sinning nation with diseases, violence, attacks, poor crops, desolation, war, poverty, premature deaths, and national weakness)
Numbers 14:41-45 (the Lord declined to aid sinning people against attack)
Numbers 16:30-35 (the Lord destroyed politicians)
Numbers 21:6 ("the Lord sent fiery serpents among the [disobedient] people [which] bit people; and much people of Israel died")
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
(the Lord sends a sinning nation curses, vexation, rebuke, pestilence, diseases, drought, national defeats, insanity, terrors, blindness, oppression, despair and depression, crop failures, unjust laws, poverty, war, plagues, continuing fears, slavery, etc.)
Judges 3:12-13 ("the Lord strengthened [the enemy] against [sinning] Israel" who "smote Israel")
Judges 4:1-2 ("the Lord" put sinning Israel under Canaan which "mightily oppressed" them)
Judges 6:1 ("the Lord delivered [sinning Israel] into the hand of Midian")
Judges 10:7-9 ("the Lord" put sinning Israel under Philistines and Ammonites who "vexed and oppressed" them to be "sore distressed")
Judges 13:1 ("the Lord delivered [sinning Israel] into the hand of the Philistines")
Judges 20:28, 35, 46, ("the Lord smote . . . destroyed" about 97% of a sinning society (about 25000 of 25600)
1 Samuel 24:2-18 (national defeat including deaths of clergy due to high-level sin)
2 Samuel 24:1, 15 ("the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel [killing] seventy thousand men")
2 Kings 15:17-20 (national defeat)
2 Kings 24:2 (“the Lord sent” against a sinning nation, terrorist attacks by Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites, and war with Babylon (Iraq), “according to the word of” and “the commandment of the Lord” — a triple emphasis of the Lord's involvement, so as to make the meaning, the Lord's role in terrorism and war as punishment for persistent repetitive and long-unrepented-of national sins, unmistakeably ultra-bluntly clear)
Job 1:12, 2: 6 (the Lord expressly authorized destruction of Job's family, wealth, health)
Isaiah 1:19-20 ("be willing to change and obey [or] be killed with swords.")
Isaiah 37:36 ("the angel of the Lord . . . smote . . . a hundred and fourscore and five thousand" troops)
Jeremiah 7:1-34 ("I" "the Lord" "will do" “as I have done to Shiloh” [destroyed it in war] to the sinning nation trusting in its "morals" but sinning and oppressing blatantly)
Jeremiah 16:13 ("I" "will cast" the Hebrews :put" and will deny them His "favor"
Jeremiah 16:16-18 ("I" "the Lord" "send many fishermen" and “many hunters” [enemies] to “repay them double for their sins”)
Jeremiah 25:26-29 (“I” "the Lord of hosts" "will call a sword upon all the inhabitants," upon "all the kingdoms"
Jeremiah 34:17 (the Lord gives "liberty" loving nation the liberty of war, pestilence, famine, destruction)
Jeremiah 50:7 (permission to attack the unrepentant)
Amos 6:1-14, espec. v. 14 (God will raise up a nation against sinning Israel to afflict them)
Nahum 1-3 (The Lord will send war and destruction upon sinning nation)
Habukkuk 1-4 (the Lord sends "dreadful and terrible" Chaldeans "all for violence" "to slay [sinning] nations")
Mark 12:1-12 (the Lord Jesus Christ will take their (Jews') nation (the land of Israel) from them due to their unrepentance, and give it to others (and soon did, to, e.g., Romans, Palestinians, etc.))
Matthew 24:1-3; Mark 13:1-4; Luke 21:5-7 (the violence of war vs sinning Israel will be so great that not one stone will be left on top of another at the Temple. The Romans in 70 A.D. did not destroy to this extent; the 'Wailing Wall' still remains stone upon stone. Hence, these verses prophesy yet additional violent destruction against still-sinning unrepentant Israel, foreseeably non-conventional i.e., nuclear, see background).
Matthew 23:35 (retribution upon the sinning unrepentant nation is for "all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from . . . Abel" up to and including through all unjust incidents over the past thousands of years)
Such violent retribution occurs due to people's continuing obstreperous, defiant, obnoxious, persistent refusal to heed warnings, refusal to repent, despite the divine desire that they do so, e.g.,
Deuteronomy 5:29 (wishing people would have a repentant attitude)
Acts 17:30 (commanding all people to repent)
1 Timothy 2:4 (wishing for saving of all people)
Ezekiel 33:6 (warnings to repent, for saving of all people)
Proverb 16:7 (protection for the repentant)
Lamentations 2:14, 4:13 (pro-sin clergy)
Ezekiel 18:31 and
33:11 (lamenting people's non-repentant attitude)
Revelation 2:21;
9:20-21;
16:9, 11 (citing persistency of refusal to repent)
1 Samuel 2:31-35, 3:13, and 3:18, the sin of Eli,
fatalism,
refusing to repent in face of prophecy of future penalty
When Israel and Judah in even additional rebellion against Bible law, "I" meaning "the Lord" sent "the sword" against Israel (Amos 7:9), and raiders, terrorists, and war to destroy Judah (cited at, e.g., 2 Kings 24:2 and Habakkuk 1:5-11). That destruction, abolition of Israel as a nation, was, as aforesaid, to last until the Messiah shall return in the future. Ezekiel 37:21-28.
See references on the state of affairs to exist then (in Messiah's reign), and not before:
animals at peace, e.g., lion and lamb together (Isaiah 11:6-7)
desert to bloom, blind-deaf-lame healed, no lions, exiles return (Isaiah 35:1-10)
animals at peace, no hurting or destroying (Isaiah 65:25)
the resurrected David (not elected politicians, not a "Knesset," "Prime Minister," or "President") ruling the restored nation (Jeremiah 30:4, 10; Ezekiel 37:15-27, Hosea 3:5; expressio unius est exclusio alterius, "the express mention of one thing excludes all others"
peaceful safe streets (Zechariah 8:4-5)
the process to occur after Christ's return (Isaiah 9:6-7,
Luke 1:32,
Acts 1:6-7) as depicted in, e.g.,
Daniel 2:44-45,
Joel 2:1-11,
Zechariah 12:6-11 and
14:1-19,
Malachi 2:17-3:3 and
4:1-6,
Matthew 24:37-51,
Luke 21:20-28,
34-36,
Revelation 17:13-18,
Rev. 18:1-7,
Rev. 18:24,
Rev. 19:1-8, 11-21,
and Rev. 20:7-10, etc., as King of Kings, Ezekiel 37:21-28, Micah 5:2-10, 1 Timothy 6:15 and Revelation 17:14 and 19:16
See also
Orthodox Jews such as the "Satmar," the "Jews Not Zionists,"
the "True Torah Jews Against Zionism," and the “Neturei Karta” (13 April 2004), warning, e.g., “The State of 'Israel' does not represent the voice of Judaism . . . . The Torah [Bible] clearly forbids the formation of a State [nation], for the Jewish people, in their time of exile. . . .” [Background and 3 Dec 2003 Statement; 2006 Material: This pre-1948 view is that, Biblically, only God (via the Messiah) is authorized to restore Israel; Zionism is atheist/secular and seeks to act in defiance of God, i.e., refuses to wait for the Messiah (in whom Zionists do not believe).]
“Why Orthodox Jews are opposed to the Zionist 'State'”
1890's data deeming premature Israel efforts as atheism and idolatry [Speech by Rabbi Goldstein, Background]
“Veni, Veni, Emmanuel” (1710) (Catholic church song citing Israel to remain in exile “until the Son of God appear” (Note also that "traditional Catholic [Bible] doctrine . . . made it impossible to view Israel . . . as a legitimate state. For theological reasons, the 'deicidal' Jews [could not return]; a return to their own homeland, and a revived Israel, did not accord with traditional doctrine," 21 April 2004).
Acts 1:6-7 (Christ's and disciples' awareness that Christ would restore Israel, not Britain, Truman, Stalin, the U.N., or itself. The Zionist position is a rebel position. Orthodox Judaism and Christianity holds that the Hebrews can properly return to Palestine only after this Dispensation, i.e., after the return of the Messiah to rule as King of Kings. Some very orthodox Jews, e.g., the Naturei Ketura, "Neturei Karta,” supra, often initiate and/or attend demonstrations against Israel, pursuant to their Bible-based view that the so-called "Nation of Israel" is a type of blasphemy. The name "Israel" is a misnomer, it represents only one fraction of one of the twelve (12) tribes of Israel. More than 11.5 of the Tribes do not accept Israel. This means that 962/3 % of the Hebrew people reject the so-called "Nation of Israel." The Zionist movement historically did not base the return to Palestine on a fulfillment of the Bible; they could not. Indeed, early Zionists considered other possible geographic areas to which to relocate. The Zionist movement was profoundly, even solely, secular, anti-Bible, atheistic, rejecting the orthodox Bible position that the Hebrews could return only after the Messiah arrived in person in power as King of Kings. Hence, Zionism could not and does not base its claim to Israel on the fact that that particular geographic area had once been a Hebrew homeland (from approx. 13 cent. B.C. into the 2nd cent. A.D.) (And Palestine, of course, was homeland to others before the Exodus from Egypt). Hence, neither Christ nor any of the disciples ever had any inkling of this modern heresy, rebellion against the Bible, and so of course, they never authorized it. They understood that only Christ personally would have legitimate authority in the matter. The disciples' only question they were asking in Acts 1:6-7 is, whether He (Christ) intended to act (restore Israel) right then. The clear meaning of Christ's answer then was 'No' at the time, and indeed His answer remains 'No' throughout this Dispensation: He is obviously not here to rule in person as 'King of Kings.')
Pertinent Orthodox Videos Against The Sin of Zionism:
"Rabbis Against the Existence of Israel"
"Jews United Against Zionism"
"Neturei Karta Anti Zionist Rabbis Teach"
"The Difference Between Jews and Zionists"
"Israeli Jewish Man Says Zionism is the Cause of the Problems"
"Jewish Rabbi: Zionists are Godless Criminal Thugs"
"Judaism and Zionism," Part 1,
2,
3,
4, and
5
"Rabbi Weiss, Outside Annapolis Peace Confab, Rips Zionism"
"Zionist Thugs Beating Up Jewish Rabbis"
"Zionist Jews killing Orthodox Jews"
"Israeli Police Attack Synagogue"
Rabbi Weiss Rebuts Media Disinformation
Also of interest:
Prof. Noam Chomsky, "Zionist Tactics, etc.
George Galloway, M.P., Background
George Galloway, M.P., "Zionism IS NOT Israel"
"Hitler & the Zionists," Part 1
and
Pt. 2
http://www.serendipity.li/zionism.htm
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Rev. John Harden Allen (1847-1930), Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright: or, The Royal Family and the Many Nations of Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Shaw Pub. Co., 1902), Part Third, Chapter X, "The Coming Exodus," p 350, citing Jeremiah 16:14-15, on the future Exodus when the Lord restores Israel to the Promised Land, an exodus to be so awesomely huge that people won't mention the first Exodus, referring in short to the Lord doing the restoring, not to some Zionists, an heretical concept never heard of until its apostasy invention
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p vi ("Panoramic View"): "The biblical account of Israel, past, present, and future, falls into seven distinct periods: (1) From the call of Abram (Gen. 12) to the Exodus (Ex. 1-20); (2) From the Exodus to the death of Joshua (Ex. 21 to Josh. 24); (3) from the death of Joshua to the establishment of the Hebrew monarchy under Saul; (4) the period of the kings from Saul to the Captivities; (5) the period of the Captivities; (6) the restored commonwealth from the end of the Babylonian captivity of Judah, to to the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70; (7) the present dispersion [Exile, A.D. 70 - Messianic Era]."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 25, commenting on Gen. 15:1-7: "The gift of the land [Palestine] is modified by prophecies of three dispossessions and restorations (Gen. 15:13, 14, 16; Jer. 25:11, 12; Deut. 28:62-65; 30:1-3). Two dispossessions and restorations have been accomplished. Israel is now [1909-1945] in the third dispersion, from which she will be restored at the [future] return of the Lord [Jesus Christ] as King under the Davidic Covenant (Deut. 30:3; Jer. 23:5-8; Ezk. 37:21-25; Lk. 1:30-33; Acts 15:14-17."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 257 ("The Historical Books"), "The present dispersion (Exile, Lk. 21:20-24), which according to all the Old Testament prophets is to be ended by the final national regathering promised in the Palestinian Covenant (Deut. 30:1-9). . . . In the year A.D. 70 Jerusalem was again destroyed, and the descendants of the remnant of Judah sent [into exile] to share the national [Hebrew] dispersion [Exile] which still continues."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 766, commenting on Isaiah 61:1-2, "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; 2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn," explained thusly: "Observe that Jesus [Christ] suspended the reading of this passage in the synagogue at Nazareth (Lk. 4:16-21) at the comma in the middle of Isa. 61:2. The first advent [30's A.D.], therefore, opened the day of grace, "the acceptable year of Jehovah [Yahweh]," but does not fulfill the day of vengeance. That will be taken up when the Messiah returns (2 Thes. 1:7-10). Cf. Isa. 34:8; 35:4-10. The last verse, taken with the 4th, gives the historic connection: the venegeance [at Christ's return] precedes the regathering of Israel, and synchronizes with the day of the Lord (Isa. 2:10-22; Rev. 19:11-21; also Isa. 63:1-6)."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 1029, commenting on Matthew 21:43, "the kingdom of God shall be taken from you" [Israel], meaning, "the kingdom of God and His righteousness is taken from Israel nationally [emphasis added] and given to the Gentiles (Rom. 9.30-33)."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 711, says "The predictions of the restoration from the Babylonian captivity at the end of seventy years, must be distinguished from those of the restoration from the present world-wide dispersion. The context is always clear. The Palestinian Covenant (Deut. 28.1 - 30.9) is the mould of predictive prophecy in its larger sense--national disobedience, world-wide dispersion, repentance, the return of the Lord, the regathering of Israel and establishment of the kingdom, the conversion and blessing of Israel, and the judgment of Israel's oppressors."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 879, re the above-cited Ezekiel 34:23-30: "The whole passage (vs. 23-30) speaks of a restoration yet future, for the remnant which returned after the 70 years [Babylonian Captivity], and their posterity, were continually under the Gentile yoke, until, in A.D. 70, they [the remaining Jews] were finally driven from the land [Palestine] into a dispersion [Exile] which still continues."
the Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945), p 1345, says "The Times of the Gentiles is that long period beginning with the Babylonian captivity of Judah, under Nebuchadnezzar, and to be brought to an end by the destruction of Gentile world-power by the 'stone cut out without hands' (Dan. 2.34, 35, 44), i.e., the coming of the Lord in glory (Rev. 19.11, 21), until which time Jerusalem is politically subject to Gentile rule (Lk. 21.24)."
the Sykes-Picot Agreement (16 May 1916) (changing policy from supporting creation of a unified Arab nation to "subsequently trying to enlist the help of Jews in the United States in getting the US to join the First World War, in conjunction with the Balfour Declaration, 1917")
pre-1948 Church doctrines and Bible Commentaries, e.g., The Abingdon
Bible Commentary (1929), at, e.g., p 652a
the warning by Pope Benedict XV against establishing Israel, based on his foreseeing potential future adverse results, as noted in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed, Vol 2, (Thomson-Gale, 2003), p 250:
“He opposed the [British] Balfour Declaration, which promised Jews a homeland in Palestine, fearing the [foreseeable] major Jewish migration would threaten the status of Catholics in the Holy Land, even as he was fearful of Orthodox and Protestant influence there.”
The American Council for Judaism (formed December 1942 to oppose Zionism. Its spokesman Rabbi Louis Wolsey [1877-1953] stated that it opposed "a Jewish state, a Jewish flag, or a Jewish army," and represented the "views of the vast majority of Jews in the United States," says Prof. Thomas A. Kolsky, Ph.D., Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942-1948 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), Ph.D. dissertation, Chapter 3, p 177). See histories of it in
Chaim Lieberman, Strangers to Glory: An Appraisal of the American Council for Judaism (1955) (hostile)
Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (1961), one chapter
Melvin Urofsky, We Are One (1978), several pages
David Polish, Renew Our Days: The Zionist Issue in Reform Judaism (1976), several pages
Howard Greenstein, Turning Point: Zionism and Reform Judaism (1981), one chapter
Prof. William Yale, Ph.D. (1887-1975), The Near East: A Modern History (Ann Arbor: Univ of Mich Press, 1958), Chapters X, "Abdul Hamid and the Rise of Zionism," pp 145-157, and XVIII, "Zionism Achieves Its First Objective" pp 262-270. P 147 references Jewish organizations "public statements" in 1869 and 1885 denying "the restoration of the old Jewish state" apart from "Israel's great Messianic hope." "These declarations were made by men who had neither a prophetic nor a dialectical vision of the age of violence and conflict towards which the social order of the western world was rushing." P 148 says, "They [of 1869, 1885, etc.] did not foresee a future conflict [between] orthodox historical Jewish nationalism and materialistic Jewish nationalism over the return to Palestine and the re-creation of a Jewish state there." [Who could foresee such a rebellion??! as Zionism?] "A large percentage of the Jewish people of all classes remained orthodox in the field of religion and both loyal and devoted to the ancient ideas with regard to a messianic restoration to Palestine. Some of the less orthodox and more free-thinking liberals and intelligentsia . . . became convinced [to favor] a national Jewish state [nation]," p 151.
Simha Flapan [1911-1987], The Arab-Israeli War of 1967 (Intl Dept of the United Workers' Party, 1968)
Rabbi Elmer Berger [1908–1996], Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978) (Rabbi Berger of The American Council for Zionism formed in December 1942 to oppose Zionism, was its Executive Director 1943-1955).
He said, “Judaism is to do justice and to have mercy and to walk humbly with God [Micah 6:8]; and all the rest is commentary and of secondary importance.” See also his
“Why I am a Non-Zionist” (1942)
The Jewish Dilemma: The Case Against Zionist Nationalism (New York: Devin-Adair, 1945)
A Partisan History of Judaism: The Jewish Case Against Zionism (New York: Devin-Adair, 1951)
Letters About Israeli History (New York. The Bookmailer, 1955)
Judaism or Jewish Nationalism: The Alternative to Zionism (Bookman Associates, 1957)
Who Knows Better Must Say So (Inst for Palestine Studies, 1970)
A Just Peace in the Middle East (1971)
Letters and Non-Letters: The White House, Zionism and Israel (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1972)
What Difference for the Middle East? (1986)
Video Lecture (May 1989)
with Deane A. Tack, Thorns of Resistance (Destra Publishers, 1993)
Peace for Palestine: First Lost Opportunity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993)
Obituary Tribute
Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians (Barnes & Noble, 1979)
Prof. David Fromkin, J.D., A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1989; Avon Books, December 1990)
Rev. Dr. Stephen R. Sizer and John Scott, "Christian Zionism: Dispensationalism And The Roots Of Sectarian Theology: A History of Dispensational Approaches" (12 December 2000) ("dispensationalism is regarded as a dangerous heresy, an unwelcome and alien intrusion, advocating an exclusive Jewish political agenda and undermining the genuine ministry of justice, peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.")
Hanna Braun, "A Basic History of Zionism and its Relation to Judaism" (London, September 2001)
L. Ray Smith, "Exposing the 'Secret Rapture' Theory" (2002)
Brian Whitaker, "Selective Memri" (12 August 2002) (he "investigates whether the 'independent' media institute [MEMRI] that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems"; discovers that numbers of employees are of "Israeli intelligence" background)
Donald Wagner, "Christians and Zion: British stirrings" (Daily Star, 9 October 2003)
Dorothy Anne Seese, “The Present Christian Delusion: a doctrine our founders never knew” (22 April 2004) (the “rapture” apostasy was invented in the 19th century by heretic lawyers John N. Darby (1800-1882) and Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921), and contagiously spread). [Darby was a preacher of the "Plymouth Brethren," a most repressive sect, and became a spiritualist (seances, table tapping) before his role in inventing Dispensationalism, charlatanism all. The Darby-Scofield heresy/scam was shortly before the Zionism heresy was promoted by journalist and lawyer Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). "Herzl envisioned a Jewish state that was devoid of most aspects of Jewish culture. He did not envision the Jewish inhabitants of the state being religious, or even speaking Hebrew."]
Theodor Herzl is "the founder of what is now termed Zionism," says Max I. Dimont, Jews, God and History (1962, 1994), Chapter 29, p 411. "Herzl, the pampered son of a wealthy, half-assimilated Jewish family in Budapest, was raised in an atmosphere of luxury and German culture. . . . his adolescent heroes were Goethe, Napoleon, and Bismarck. He studied law in Vienna, but became a journalist. . . . he was a succesful playwright, author of cream-puff bedroom comedies in which wives were constantly being seduced by handsome young rakes and husbands made amiable cuckolds. As a journalist, Herzl affected a supercilious, cynical literary style," p 411. In his book Der Judenstat (The Jewish State), published in 1896 . . . he outlined the Zionist ideal . . . . 'to create for the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine secured by public law,'" p 412. "Many Reform rabbis attacked him. . . . It was not the Jew in Herzl but the universal man in Herzl that brought forth secular Zionism." Herzl had "an impatience with caution, a lofty disregard for detail. The strength of Herzl was his total ignorance of Judaism," p 412. "To the Jews, Herzl was already the ruler of this state-to-be, their Herzl hamelech--'Herzl the king,'" p 413.
Dr. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Dr. Geoffrey Wigoder (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion (New York: Adama Books, 1986), "Zionism," p 414. Zionism "was at first violently opposed on religious grounds by a large section of Orthodoxy (who claimed that Divine Providence should not be anticipated [coerced] by human, let alone by ungodly and secular, action), as well as by Reform (which held national aspirations to be a betrayal of the purely religious mission of Israel)."
Profs. Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo, and Norton Mezvinsky, Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections (Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1988) ("This collection of essays challenges the conventional wisdom that Israel is a peace loving democracy and the perception that the continuing state of Middle East hostilities is due to intransigent Palestinians and rigid hostility of Israel's neighbors. The authors persuasively argue that political/national Zionism, systematized by Theodor Herzl and codified in the legal, political and socio-economic structure of Israel, is the principle obstacle to peace. . . . The essays were written . . . as a tribute to Rabbi Elmer Berger for diligently defending, for over forty years, the great spiritual values . . . against the onslaught of an ideology that falsely equates political Zionism with Judaism and has corrupted the universal moral truths of the sister religions of 'the Book.'")
Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin, Au Nom de la Torah: Une Histoire de l'Opposition Juive au Sionisme (Sainte-Foy, Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 2004) (transl., A Threat from Within: a Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, January 2006) (has history of Orthodox Jewish opposition to Zionism, citing "Zionism is one among many consequences of secularisation," and, atheistically rejecting God, involves "transfer of the concept of redemption from the exclusive domain of God to that of worldly political action")
Charles E. Carlson, “It May be Time to Walk out of Church” (2004) (has more material on the Scofield heresy)
Anders Strindberg, “Forgotten Christians: Not all displaced Palestinians are Muslims,” The American Conservative (24 May 2004)
Christopher Catherwood, Churchill's Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq (Carroll & Graf Pub, June 2004)
Rev. Dr. Stephen R. Sizer, “Christian Zionism: The New Heresy that Sways America: The Political Agenda of Christian Zionism”
(24 August 2004)
"The Orthodox Jewish Response to the Criticism of the Iranian President" (28 October 2005) (Background, see below.)
Charles E. Carlson, “Pat Robertson directs God's wrath upon Arial Sharon . . . .” (6 January 2006) (Has more on the Scofield heresy).
Motasem Dalloul, “Christian Candidate on Hamas Ticket” (25 Jan 2006)
“Anti-Israel rabbis support Iran” (12 March 2006)
Prof. David J. Goldberg, M.D., Former Rabbi, Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today (London: I. B. Tauris & Co, Ltd., March 2006) (theme “that in modern times the Jews of the diaspora have preserved the honour and heritage of the Jewish people far more convincingly than Israel's citizens”)
“Anti-Israel rabbis vow Hamas support” (22 March 2006)Sarah Posner, “Lobbying for Armageddon” (The American Prospect, June 2006, excerpted 3 August 2006)
Mark Elf, “Zionism against Jews?” (Monday, 5 June 2006)
Max Hastings, “Israel can no longer rely on the support of Europe's Jews” (The Guardian, Tuesday, 20 June 2006) (narrative and review of Rabbi Daniel Goldberg's book)
Louis Sahagun, “Religious groups work to hurry apocalypse,” Baltimore Sun (25 June 2006)
“Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon” (Reuters, 14 July 2006)
“Orthodox Jews Demand End to Zionist Atrocities in the Middle East” (New York, 18 July 2006)
Anders Strindberg, “Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon” (Christian Science Monitor, 1 August 2006)
Silvia Tennenbaum, “Why Doesn't Israel Work For Peace?: Holocaust victims would decry the slaughter of innocent children during attacks on Hezbollah” (Newsday, 4 August 2006)
Daniel, "Israeli papers near united against war efforts, aims and leadership: War should end" (Saturday, 5 August 2006)
Jean Bricmont, "The De-Zionization of the American Mind: How to Deal with The Lobby" (Counterpunch, 12 August 2006)
Anthony O'Mahony, "Exodus Under Fire" (The Tablet, London, 12 August 2006) (Christians caught in cross-fire in Lebanon; est. 200,000 flee Iraq after ouster of their protector Saddam Hussein)
Dan Glaister, "Bush 'helped Israeli attack on Lebanon' " (The Guardian, 14 August 2006)
Dudi Cohen, "Neturei Karta rabbi to Iran newspaper: Israel will cease to exist: Rabbi David Weiss says: Israel was established in the name of Judaism but is impure and Godless" (Ynetnews, 16 August 2006)
Eliane Engeler, "World Council of Churches: Israel planned to destroy Lebanon" (Jerusalem Post, 17 August 2006)
Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad, Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, and Bishop Munib Younan, "The Jerusalem Declaration On Christian Zionism" (22 August 2006) (Mirror Site)
Amy Goodman, Interview on
the 'New Anti-Semitism'" (30 August 2006 [near bottom of website]) (with Prof. Norman Finkelstein (DePaul Univ), author of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (Berkeley: Univ of Cal Press, 2005; London: Verso, 2005); and of The Holocaust Industry
Matthew Tostevin, "Holy Land Churches Condemn Christian Zionism" (Jerusalem, 1 September 2006) (The Vatican's envoy in the Holy Land and bishops from three other churches have launched a rare joint attack on the Christian Zionist movement, accusing it of promoting "racial exclusivity and perpetual war.")
Haaretz Service, "Officials said fearing wave of war crimes suits over Lebanon" (Haaretz, 3 September 2006; 10 Elul 5766) (Israel expects lawsuits or indictments alleging war crimes: "In connection with war criminals, international law holds that due to the severity of the charges, nations may bring the accused to trial, no matter where the crimes were committed, nor against whom.")
Gideon Levy, "Gaza's darkness" (Haaretz, 4 September 2006; 11 Elul 5766)
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Olmert should have more of an insight than most into terrorism" (The Guardian, 14 September 2006) (cites example of terrorist origin of Israel)
The Council for the National Interest, "Christian Zionism: An Egregious Threat to U.S. - Middle East Understanding" (27 October 2006)
"Swedish human rights worker viciously attacked by Jewish extremists in Hebron chanting in Hebrew 'We killed Jesus, we'll kill you too!'" (ISM Hebron, 21 November 2006)
Pierre Heumann , “An Interview With Al-Jazeera Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Sheikh”(Die Weltwoche / World Politics Watch, 7 December 2006)
Rabbi Aharon Cohen of Neturei Karta, “Orthodox Jewish Attitude to the 'Holocaust’” (International Conference “Review of the Holocaust,” Teheran, 11-12 December 2006)
Johann Hari, "'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today?'" (Independent, 23 December 2006)
Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., “More Deception from the War Criminal” (25 January 2007) (“Bush hides the neoconservative agenda behind 'the war on terror,' which essentially is a hoax. The main purpose of the neoconservatives’ 'war on terror' it to eliminate any effective Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights. To silence Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Arab lands, the US must eliminate or intimidate Middle Eastern governments that are not under US control--Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah which governs southern Lebanon.”)
Yakov M. Rabkin, "Gap among Jews widens on question of Zionism" (Baltimore Sun, 8 March 2007)
Rabbi Goldstein gives an historic overview of Zionism (". . . The Muslim people basically got involved in the fight against zionism when it started effecting them on a political bases which is 1917 for the Palestinians or afterwards for some of the other Arab countries. We [religious Jews] were in this fight from the 1890 roughly . . . . As soon as it was founded [zionism], it was condemned—Jews came out and said this is atheistic, this is idol worship. . . .") (March 2007).
Sonja Karkar, “How Palestine became 'Israel's Land'” (31 March 2007) (“The modern day struggle for this land by European Jewish immigrants who have no connection with Palestine other than through their religion is a colonial enterprise that seeks sovereignty for an 'external Jewish population' to the exclusion of the indigenous Palestinians who, regardless of faith—Jewish, Christian or Muslim— have lived together for centuries.”)
Gideon Levy, “Israel doesn't want peace” (Haaretz, 8 April 2007)
James G. Abourezk, “How Syria Helped US in 'War on Terror': And How Bush Said 'Thanks'” (10 April 2007)
I R News Agency, “Ahmadinejad: Israel's repeated mistakes to spark nations' wrath” (24 May 2007) (“Advising the Zionists to stop 60 years of massacre, assassination, crime and aggression, he said, 'If you do not stop massacring, regional nations will soon come on the scene and eliminate you criminals.'”)
Arash Norouzi, “'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century” (26 May 2007) (what was really said was: “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.” Translation: “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”Context: “As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated.”
The Distortion: “Yet we are [falsely] led to believe that Iran's president threatened to 'wipe Israel off the map,' despite never having uttered the words 'map,' 'wipe out' or even 'Israel.'”
Claims that he denies the Holocaust are also a fraud. What he is denying instead is that the Palestinians committed a holocaust! He denies that the Palestinians committed it!
Well, duh! Of course he's correct! The Nazis did it! Not the Palestinians! But it is the Palestianians who are the ones being punished! being forced off their land! That is his point! They wrong people, the Palestinians, are the ones being punished! not the Germans!
That punishment of the innocent Palestinians is what Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is objecting to, and denying its legitimacy.
See also
"Ahmadinejad: Lost in translation," by Mary Cutter (Peace Palestine, 5 May 2006; and Seoul Times, 19 June 2006)
Full Text: The President of Iran's Letter To President Bush (Translation, 9 May 2006)
"Lost in translation," by Jonathan Steele (The Guardian, 14 June 2006). Says: "Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. Reports that he did serve to strengthen western hawks."
Bottom line: He is denying the Palestinian Holocaust (a non-event), not the Nazi Holocaust (a real event).
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The distortion disregards Iran's anti-war policy: “We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state [nation].”) (See also the Orthodox Jewish Neturei Karta view.)
Gabriel Kolko, “Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident" (2 June 2007) ("Israel's existence was an unpredictable accident of history. The past century has been full of them, everywhere. That is why the world is in such a perilous condition.”)
Phyllis Bennis, Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer
(Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2007)
Greg Felto, “Even after 40 years, Abba Eban’s great fraud defines the official version of the 1967 War” (Canadian Arab News, 7 June 2007) (see also his book, The Host and the Parasite—How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America [May 2007])
Charles E. Carlson, “The Unacceptable Cost of Christian-Zionism" (23 August 2007): A Christian-Zionist “thinks and acts as though political Israel was a god.” "No religious persuasion has ever been more clearly responsible for so much bloodshed and destruction as has 'Christian Zionism.'” It is “an apostate-cult.”
Walter C. Uhler, "The 'Protocol of the Elders of American Neoconservatism' and the Blood of American Soldiers" (1 September 2007) ("by clamoring for war, it was the neocons who failed to support the troops. How so? Because many of America's senior military leaders (both active and retired) opposed the very invasion of Iraq that the neocons begged for. In fact, the neocons have fostered the spilling of American military blood in Iraq in at least three different ways.")
Rabbi Levi Brackman, Tali Farkash, and Uri Orbach, "Study: US Jews distance themselves from Israel: Feelings of attachment to Israel declining among non-Orthodox American Jews, and are replaced by indifference and even alienation, study finds" (6 September 2007)
"Iranian University Chancellors Ask Bollinger 10 Questions" (25 September 2007).
Charley Reese, "Cut Israel Off" (17 November 2007) ("Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. . . . Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave."
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, "It Is Not A Religious Conflict (27 November 2007) (video on Bible prohibition of Israel)
"Rabbi Weiss, Outside Annapolis Peace Confab, Rips Zionism" (Orthodox Jews Against Zionism, 27 November 2007)
Mark Tran, "State of Israel could disappear, warns Olmert" (Guardian Unlimited, 29 November 2007) ("Drawing a parallel with the last days of the apartheid regime in South Africa he [admitted]: 'If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (with Palestinians) . . . then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.'" This admission verifies what Jimmy Carter had alluded to, the apartheid system of Israel. "Olmert also warned about the loss of support of the Jewish diaspora once the question became framed in terms of one man, one vote. . . . they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.")
Salman Abu-Sitta, “Traces of poison: Israel's Dark History revealed” (30 November 2007) (“Israel, not Iraq, holds that distinction of being the first country in the region to use weapons of mass destruction [typhoid] with genocidal intent.”)
Khaled Abu Toameh, “Fatah map shows all of Israel as Palestine” (Jerusalem Post, 22 December 2007) (“The underlying message of the poster is that Fatah, like Hamas, does not recognize Israel's existence.”)
Silvia Cattori, “Omar Barghouti: 'No State Has the Right to Exist as a Racist State'” (Voltaire, 8 December 2007) (“Omar Barghouti belongs to a new generation of Palestinians who never adhered to the solution of 'Two States, Two peoples'. They are advocating, instead, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) of Israel as well as a 'secular, democratic state' solution, where Palestinians and Israelis would share equal rights, after historic injustices are redressed and the refugees are allowed to return.”)
"Jewish group says Israel (Zionism) should not exist" (12 December 2007)
Glenn Greenwald, "New Poll Reveals How Unrepresentative Neocon Jewish Groups Are" (12 December 2007)
Prof. Eric Alterman, Ph.D., “'Bad for the Jews'” (The Nation, 20 December 2007) (“belligerent right-wingers and neocons who frequently demonize, distort and denounce their values [purport] to speak for them in the US political arena. . . . According to the American Jewish Committee's 2007 survey of American Jewry, released December 11, a majority of Jews in this country oppose virtually every aspect of the Bush Administration/neocon agenda. . . . As with so much of American life, the far-right minority is better funded and better disciplined than the liberal majority. Fault can also be found with lazy editors, reporters, producers and the like who invite neocon and other unrepresentative people to speak for Jews and Jewish values.”)
Hannah Mermelstein, “The End Of Israel?” (22 December 2007) (“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights. As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished,” says Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us,” he told Haaretz, “because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.”)
Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007)
Ayesha Ijaz Khan, “The Iran Fixation: How the American Media Enables Bush” (8 January 2008) (“US media has increasingly become a mouthpiece of the Bush administration, perpetuating and ventilating the fears which prevent a population from thinking rationally about important issues.” In essence, it is “slapstick news” supporting and aiding and abetting Bush in starting yet another war.)
“Orthodox Jews Condemn Zionist Atrocities in Gaza" (26 January 2008) ("Judaism is the belief in revelation at Sinai [and recognizes] that [the] exile is a punishment for [Israel's and] Jewish sins. It is the teaching of the Torah [that the Hebrew people] are forbidden by the Almighty to have our own state . . . . Zionism has for over a century denied Sinaitic revelation. . . . [Devout Jews] have been in the forefront of the battle against Zionism for over a century. . . . the only long lasting solution is to accept [God's] command of [in] the Torah [Bible], which opposes Zionism and the state of 'Israel' entirely.”)
“Haredi sect brands Chief Rabbi Metzger 'Zionist stooge,' wicked” (Haaretz, 5 February 2008) (cites Zionism as an “idolatrous cult”)
Alison Weir, “Should the U.S. End Aid to Israel? Funding Our Decline” (Counterpunch, 4 April 2008)
Uri Avnery, “Manifest Destiny?” (12 April 2008) (Israel “is opposed to peace . . . The real Zionist vision does not recognize any maps. It is a vision of a state without borders - a state that expands at all times . . . In this respect . . . Israel resembles the United States, which was founded along the Eastern seaboard and did not rest until it had reached the Western shores on the other side of the continent. The incessant stream of mass immigration from Europe flowed on westwards, breaching all borders and violating all agreements, exterminating the Native Americans, starting a war against Mexico, conquering Texas, invading Central America and Cuba. The slogan that drove them on and justified all their actions was coined in 1845 by John O'Sullivan: 'Manifest Destiny'. The Israeli version of 'Manifest Destiny' is Moshe Dayan's slogan 'We are fated'.”)
David R. Francis, "Why the Presidential Candidates Won't Talk about Israel" (12 May 2008) ("Why the silence? 'Fear.'")
Acquittals of Protestors vs. War Crimes of Israel and Accessories (12 June 2008)
Jeffrey Rudolph, "Can You Pass The Israel-Palestine Quiz?" (ICH, 22 June 2008)
John Pilger, "From Triumph to Torture") (ICH, 2 July 2008) ("Israel's treatment of an award-winning young Palestinian journalist is part of a terrible pattern." [See example pattern details.])
Michael Scheuer, "Turning the Tables on the Israel-Firsters" (16 July 2008) (Israel-firsters "appear to care about the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-for-Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than a fifth column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other peoples' religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a nation in which the United States has no genuine national security interest at stake." "Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and the author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.)
Prof. James Petras, "The New York Times: Making Nuclear Extermination Respectable" (30 July 2008) (rebutting "calls for the nuclear incineration of 70 million Iranians and the contamination of the better part of a billion people in the Middle East, Asia and Europe" re which the author "is utterly, starkly and clinically insane" in "his [anti-Iranian] genocidal ravings." "Unlike the Nazi past, we cannot claim, as the good Germans did, that 'we did not know' or 'we weren't notified', because it was written by an eminent Israeli academic and was published in the New York Times.")
Prof. James Petras, Zionism, Militarism And the Decline of U.S Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press: August 2008)
Prof. Shlomo Sand, Tel Aviv Univ, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (2008) (Review 1, 2, Video)
"International Law Seldom Newsworthy in Gaza War: Israeli justifications often cited uncritically" (FAIR, 13 January 2009) ("indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets ["a TV station, police stations, a mosque, a university and even a U.N. school"] are illegal under international humanitarian law.")
Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., "Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the US?" (31 August 2009)
Rabbi Michael Lerner, "Israel as Idolatry" (21 September 2009) ("Blind loyalty to Israel is the primary form of idolatry today in the Jewish world.")
Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole, and Brian Ross, "President Obama's Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan" (ABC News, 2 December 2009) ("With 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30 billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year.")
Peter Beinart, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" (10 June 2010)
("Frank Luntz . . . unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen. The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. . . . Most of the students . . . had imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights. And in their innocence, they did not realize that they were supposed to shed those values when it came to Israel.")
Daniel Levy, "A glimpse of the future" (Haaretz, 11 June 2010) ("Israel has been able to get a glimpse of the future and into the abyss that awaits if we continue on our current course. It is a future replete with both insecurity and the indignity of global opprobrium and sanctions.")
Law Prof. Francis A. Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., "Racists and Hypocrites When it Comes to Palestinians" (20 November 2010)
Prof. Juan R. I. Cole, Ph.D., "Labor movement drives Egypt, Tunisia protests" (Detroit News, 10 February 2011), pp 1B and 3B.
Prof. William James Martin, "64th Anniversary: War, Ethnic Cleaning Unleashed" (5 December 2011) (Israel's "ethnic cleansing commenced . . . when the 75,000 Arab citizens of Haifa were subjected to a campaign of terror jointly by the terrorist group, the Irgun, under Manachem Begin, and the Haganah, the regular militia under David Ben Gurion. The Jewish settlers who had arrived during the previous decade had built their homes higher up the mountain and thus occupied a higher topographical space. From the superior height, they could snipe at the villagers at will. They began doing this while the Jewish troops rolled barrels of burning oil down their roads and then ignited them. When the terrified residents came out to try to extinguish the rivers of fire, they were sprayed with machine gun fire. Another techniques was to deliver cars filled with explosives to Arab garages to be repaired, and then to detonate the cars in the garages.")
Petition to EU to Suspend EU-Israel Trade Agreement
Pending Israel Respecting Human Rights and International Law
Note that 89 years after Cheever spoke in 1857, Zionists, U.S. Pres. Harry Truman and U.S.S.R. Pres. Joseph Stalin in 1948 decided to defy the Bible's Ezekiel 37:21-28 'no restoration until Messiah' timeline. Aiding and abetting the Zionist heresy, those two enabled the establishment of modern rump Israel, via aiding and abetting its secession from Palestine. See references such as
Clark Clifford, “Recognizing Israel: The 1948 Story,” 28 Am. Heritage (#3) 4-11 (April 1977)
Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President (New York: Random House, 1991), Chapter 1,
pages 3-25 (outlines the corrupt maneuvering and deception to secure US recognition of Israel. Page 14 cites that “In fact, a significant number of Jewish Americans opposed Zionism; some feared that the effort to create a Jewish state was so controversial that the plan would fail. In 1942 a number of prominent dissident Reform rabbis had founded the American Council for Judaism to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It grew into an organization of over fourteen thousand members, which collaborated closely with State Department officials including Dean Acheson and Loy Henderson. Its leaders believed that the establishment of an exclusively Jewish state was 'undemocratic and a retreat from the universal vision of Judaism' and would lead to 'ghettoizing Jews by segregating them from their compatriots and turning them into aliens.' Other individuals, including Arthur H. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times (who supported the American Council for Judaism), and Eugene Meyer, the publisher of The Washington Post, opposed Zionism. Sulzberger's wife, the redoubtable Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, who disagreed strongly with her husband, later recalled that ‘Zionism was a heavily debated issue among American Jews.’ Many Jews opposed American backing for any Jewish state in Palestine.”
Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1973), pp. 299 and 381-391
Uri Avneri, Simha Flapan, et al, Israel and the Palestinians: A Different Israeli View (Breira Inc, 1975)
Prof. Edward Said, Ph.D., Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978) (on the "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture")
Prof. Edward Said, Ph.D.,
The Question of Palestine and the American Context (New York: Times Books, 1979; Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1979; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) (Review)
Simha Flapan [1911-1987], The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, August 1987)
(W R Review;
Israeli Review;
New York Times review;
P R Review; “The baby, it seems, was a bastard. It had no claim to legitimacy from the start," says reviewer Marie Syrkin, The New Republic [7 Dec 1987]). Flapan's book debunks various Zionist myths.
Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (New York: Cambridge Univ Press, 2001)
Benny Morris [diplomatic correspondent for The Jerusalem Post], The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (New York: Cambridge Univ Press, 1987) and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (New York: Cambridge Univ Press, 2004)
Prof. Ilan Pappé, Ph.D., Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1951 (London: MacMillan, 1988)
Professor Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Columbia Univ Press, July 1988)
David Hirst, Gun and the Olive Branch: Roots of Violence in the Middle East (London: Faber and Faber, 1977, reprinted, 2003)
Edward C. Corrigan, J.D., M.A., "Jewish Criticism of Zionism" (Middle East Policy Council Journal #35, Winter 1990-91)
Prof. Thomas A. Kolsky, Ph.D., Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942-1948 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) (from dissertation) (The Council was formed in 1942 to oppose Zionism. Its spokesman Rabbi Louis Wolsey [1877-1953] stated that it opposed "a Jewish state, a Jewish flag, or a Jewish army," and represented the "views of the vast majority of Jews in the United States," Dissertation, Chapter 3, p 177).
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Controversy of Zion: Jewish Nationalism, the Jewish State, and the Unresolved Jewish Dilemma
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1996; London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996)
Prof. Michael Neumann, The Case Against Israel: The Core of Zionism (26 Jan 2006)
Prof. Avi Shlaim, “On Old and New Histories” (Palestine Chronicle, 3 May 2006)
Prof. Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (Pluto Press, February 2007) (helps debunk "the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel," supports "a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state," notes "that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a 'state-sponsored racism' fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution")
Eugene T. Meyer, "How Two Jewish Publishers Who Privately Opposed Zionism Folded" (The New York Observer, 6 January 2007) ("Lately Richard Cohen of the Washington Post admitted regretfully that the creation of Israel was a 'mistake.' Sixty years ago a group of Reform anti-Zionist Jews were saying just that.")
Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (Yale Univ Press, 2008) (Review) (Example: "Palestinians . . . had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. "Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?" he asked. "There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country." And: "In late August 1948, during a United Nations-sanctioned truce, Israeli soldiers conducting what they called Mivtza Nikayon -- Operation Cleaning -- encountered some Palestinian refugees just north of the Egyptian lines. The Palestinians had returned to their village, now in Israeli hands, because their animals were there, and because there were crops to harvest and because they were hungry. But to the Israelis, they were potential fighters, or fifth columnists in the brand new Jewish state. The Israelis killed them, then burned their homes.")
Piers Brendon, Ph.D., The Decline and Fall
of the British Empire 1871-1997, Chapter 16, pp 476-479 (During the 1939-1945 World War, Great Britain began "imposing strict limits on Jewish immigration and land purchase [in Palestine]. It also promised an independent Arab-dominated Palestine within ten years" (p 476). Result: "It was now the turn of Jews to assert, as Arabs had asserted in 1936, that their only option was to employ terrorism against [Great Britain]" (p 477). At that point in the war, Britain under Churchill understood "that any concession to the Jews would, by incensing the Arabs, jeopardize [Britain's] already precarious position. This was an argument [consideration, factor] that the embattled Churchill could not ignore" (478). But British views changed in the following years. Former British Prime Minister David "Lloyd George stated, 'The revolting treatment of the Jews by the Nazis has made any other solution than a Jewsish State [nation] in [Arab] Palestine unthinkable'" (478). And "the following year [new Prime Minister] Clement Atlee took the same view. Britain went to the extreme of "maintaining [alleging] that a stable settlement required the transfer [ousting/ethnic cleansing] of [the Arab] population. 'Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out,' it said, 'as the Jews moved in' to a Palestine that might expand across the Jordan" (478). "This [British extremism] was too inflammatory for [Israel's David] Ben-Gurion himself, since Atlee [Britain] seemed to confirm the worst fears of the Arabs. They [Arabs/Palestinians] would have to pay the debt Europeans owed to Jews for their suffering" (478-479). And "it seemed that Atlee [Britain] was bowing to force" [Jewish terrorism] (479). "Muslims [e.g., Palestinians] would be punished for Christian sins while the Jews used their [Holocaust] moral capital to acquire Lebensraum in Palestine from people [Arabs/Palestinians] they [Jews] treated as Untermenschen. The state [nation] of Israel would be the atonement for the Holocaust. The Middle East [Arabs/Palestinians] would be sacrificed on the altar of imperialism to assuage the guilty conscience of the West" (479).
U.S.S.R. Premier Joseph Stalin was an atheist (a former Russian Orthodox seminarian who knew the Bible better than most people) who wanted to disprove the Bible time line. Truman was from the so-called "Bible-Belt" and wanted to show he could do better than the Bible predicts, he could do better and faster than the Messiah.
Truman (overruling importuning advisories from U.S. Dep'ts of State and Defense, that this would cause the U.S. permanent trouble in the Mideast—as Stalin intended!) decided to
follow the bad example of the Numbers 14:33-45 anti-time-line rebels;
defy the Bible timeline;
support an immediate, 1948, premature, pre-Messiah, restoration.
Most American "Christian" clergy,"government-worshippers," caesaropapists, successors of the 1841 excommunicated ones, said and say nothing against this rebellion against the Bible time-line.
Bible adherents such as the above-cited Orthodox Jews realize the rebellion. See, e.g.,
"Terrorism’s original sin" by Punyapriya Dasgupta (Deccan Herald, 10 August 2005) ("The Newtonian law of action and reaction operates in the socio-political sphere too, whether one likes it or not. Israel was created and is being relentlessly enlarged by dispossessing the Palestinians with the maximum cruelty. The latter cannot but fight back in whatever way they can . . . . Those who fail to see this logic are being hypocritical — consciously or unconsciously — in their judgement.")
"An Apology From a US Christian to Palestinians" (Cites Jerry Falwell as saying, "The Bible Belt is Israel's safety net in the US" (10 August 2005)
“Neturei Karta to hold Anti Israel Protest Outside White House” (13 April 2004). They say, e.g., “The State of 'Israel' does not represent the voice of Judaism and/or the Jewish people. The Torah [Bible] clearly forbids the formation of a State, for the Jewish people, in their time of exile. The Torah forbids stealing land, subjugating and oppressing a people, etc. The root cause of the endless bloodshed and suffering in the Holy Land is Zionism and the State of Israel.” (This process is aided and abetted by the aforesaid Darby-Scofield heretics and their "Christian Right" accessories purporting to be "Christian," cited in next section.)
See also
Margaret Kimberley, “Wrapped Up in the Rapture,” Black Commentator (Issue #92) (27 May 2004), “[Christian Rightists] are now hoping to hasten the return of Jesus Christ and bring about the Rapture by helping [Israel Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon oppress the Palestinian people. What do the great leaders of black Christianity have to say about people who not only try to make God move at their speed, but use the name of Jesus to kill children?”
Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (Oxford Univ Press, 2000) (Review 1; Review 2, Commentary April 2001).
Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Indeed, confirming that many American clergy are not Christian, but are instead caesaropapists, civil religion emperor worshippers as per Emperor Diocletian decree, numbers of them are actively promoting this rebellion. See
U.S. News & World Report (12 Aug 2002)
Rick Perlstein, "The Jesus Landing Pad," Village Voice (18 May 2004) ("A
new memo shows Christian Zionists are behind Bush's Israel policy").
George Monbiot, "US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East
policy: Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power" (The
Guardian, Tuesday, 20 April 2004).
(As readers here know, such "Christian Right"
caesaropapist views are worse than merely
"bonkers," they are apostasy and heresy.)
William Berkowitz, "Evangelicals Rally Their Flocks Behind Israel" (5 April 2006) (cites John Hagee's Christians United for Israel [CUFI] and its heretical view limiting God and God's power, by denying that the Messiah can return without Israel's existence; see video on Hagee's heresy).
Such heretics misrepresent verses on other subjects, such as, for example,
Isaiah 11:11,
Isaiah 35:1,
Isaiah 61:4,
Jeremiah 29:14,
Jeremiah 30:24,
Amos 9:14-15,
Zechariah 8:1-8,
Matthew 19:28;
Luke 21:24,
and
Romans 11:25-27, as meaning that (a) God wants Israel restored without the Messiah, indeed, even before the Messiah returns! thus without the
characteristics to prevail then, and (b) that Deuteronomy 28 is repealed! and that Israel must be "blessed" even when committing offenses the Bible lists as warranting "curse."
Such heretics of course cite no evidence that the verses mean what they claim they mean! when the literal words of the verses invariably read otherwise!
For background on the Palestine partition process, see, e.g., “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer: The United Nations Partition Plan” (2000). The partition concept refers to the secession. Palestine was one country. People in one small portion of that country seceded, just as people in the South had seceded. This secession triggered the wars to try to end the secession and make the nation once again one nation.
Pres. Richard Nixon continued the Truman error. When Israel was losing the war in 1973, and there were prospects that the secession by Israel from Palestine would be ended, Nixon overruled the State Department, ordered massive military aid, thus kept the secession alive.
Note in modern Israel, the violent return of Numbers 14:45 and 2 Kings 24:2-type wars, discomfitings, killings, terrorist acts. America since Truman on, is accessory to, aiding and abetting, partaking in, Israel's rebellion against the Bible time-line, and can therefore expect penalty to follow.
American slavery was worse than Ancient Israel's.
American slavery led to revenge by Confederates, and now continues, in the form of tobacco-induced drug addiction, and criminalizations and disenfranchisements.
America never repented of slavery. (Slavery was ended by war, not by repentance.) Almost as soon as the slaves were freed, they were abandoned by the North, to be brutalized and lynched by the “Religious Right” “Bible-Belt” South. The Bible precedent on providing to freed slaves land, jewels, gold, etc., was ignored. The Bible precedent on killing 100% of the entire slaver army (the Egyptians at the Red Sea) was ignored; only 25% of Confederate troops were casualties. The unrepentant South in the "Second Civil War" brutalized the 'freed' slaves, murdered many, continues revenge via poisonings and mass criminalization. See, e.g.,
Profs. James M. Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry Peacock, Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M Univ Press, 2003) (Review 1,
2,
3)
Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox (New York: Viking,
2008) (cites the South's "brutal war of terrorist violence.")
Unrepentant America can therefore expect more violent retribution and penalty than God sent on Ancient Israel. Reference Hebrews 10:26-27, the unrepentant can expect not forgiveness but fearful punishment (witness the various color-coded "terror alerts"!).
The national retribution scenario, in essence, God declaring war on Ancient Judah, then included
national leader ignoring warning, 2 Kings 23:26, 29, 2 Chronicles 35:20-24 (click here for background on information and leaders),
repeated terrorist incidents followed by war abolishing the sinful, rebellious,
non-repenting nation, 2 Kings 24:1-2.
Is this pattern recurring? "The [then] new Hamas leader, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said Sunday that . . . God has declared war on the United States," says Greg Myre, "Hamas Leader Calls Bush Foe of Muslims," New York Times (29 March 2004).
"America declared war against God. Sharon declared war against God and God declared war against America, Bush and Sharon. . . . " [Dr. Rantisi was killed 17 April 2004 by an Israeli missile strike]. See also Prof. Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 1979) (Background,
Overview,
Context,
Perspective,
Review 1, 2).
Abraham Lincoln used Bible references showing awareness of the divine penalty on America for having committed the national sin of slavery. As a nation sows, so shall it reap, see, e.g., Sharp, Law of Retribution, supra. Wherefore war came to America for that sin, the Civil War, the result of ignoring the divine warnings against slavery, both written and by national penalty examples of, e.g., Ancient Israel and Ancient Judah.
Ancient Judah had had the history record of the sins of Ancient Israel and its resultant national punishment (721 B.C.E.). See, e.g., Jeremiah 3:6-10. Ancient Judah was thus warned to not repeat the sin pattern, and refused, so was itself punished by being abolished (circa 596 B.C.E.).
The U.S. had the record of both histories (of the consequences of sin on both Ancient Israel and Ancient Judah), but was in 1857 ignoring and defying those lessons from Bible history, and would ignore and defy them again in 1948 and continuing in rebellion to present (2008). There is no excuse.
Return now to Rev. Cheever's message: |
We [in America] may be sure, if we do not mark this example, and take heed to the warning, there will be no such patience and forbearance of God toward us, as for a while reined in his wrath from riding as a whirlwind over his ancient people.
Nations have their time and scene of probation as well as individuals. They form character, habits, and fixed principles of conduct, that, in the end, however things may seem to move for a season, come out according to eternal justice.
If that be violated by a nation, to secure a present seeming temporal prosperity or power, there will be a divine vengeance and retribution. The course of crime [sin] strikes back, and that which was pleasure, luxury, and power, in the forward career, is wretchedness, ruin, and death in the reaction.
The time must come; it can not wait for
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eternity; and whatever distance there may be between
the actors of a present generation, whom the judgment for national crime overtakes,
and those who began the crime, or set its causes in the national policy,
the stroke of vengeance is not lightened, but falls with a renewed and accumulated, as well as original righteousness and force, the present actors
having adopted for themselves the sins of their fathers [e.g., p 172, infra],
woven them in the life of the nation,
and made that perpetual which might have been temporary.
That upon you may come all the righteous blood, from that of Abel down to the last man murdered for his principles. [Matthew 23:35, shortly after the Matthew 21:33-44 parable of the vineyard and similar punishment principle.]
Ed. Note: Vile, depraved, immoral U.S. clergy were aiding and abetting, partaking, in making slavery permanent, as shown by
Rev. Silas McKeen, Disfellowshipping (1848), p 20
James Birney, Bulwarks (1840)
Rev. Stephen Foster, Thieves (1843)
Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn Hope (1847).
Sen. Thomas Corwin warned of retribution to come on the U.S.
Bible principle is that people ARE their brother's keeper. So when evil occurs, it does so by the substantial complicity of others in society, who are in essence, accessories.
Bible precedent is in the Book of Judges, chapters 19:1 - 20:48. A crime was committed. A tribe (modern word, state) was asked to extradite for prosecution. It refused. The leaders thus aided and abetted the crime. The people in turn supported their leaders. The penalty was, death for all but 600 of them.
Note the precedent of Ancient Israel's wicked King Ahab, 1 Kings 20-22, 2 Chronicles 18. When the national leadership sins, behaves immorally, judgement/national penalty ensues. Such "judgment pronounced was not only righteous, but alike the necessary sequence of God's dealings throughout . . . history, and of Ahab's bearing in it. And in the judgment [penalty] the people as a whole must share. For even if theirs had not been the same [wicked] spirit [attitude/policy] as that which had prompted the conduct of Ahab, yet the public acts of rulers are those of the nation, and national sins are followed by national judgments [consequences/penalties]. Ahab had been on this triumphant return to [the capital] Samaria, there to receive the popular applause for his achievements [doings]," says Alfred Edersheim [1825-1889], Bible History (c. 1885), Vol VI, Chap. III, last paragraph, p 423.
Public support for rulers = public partaking of rulers' evils. Partaking of others sins is expressly forbidden by Divine Command and principles, see, e.g., Ephesians 5:7, 1 Timothy 5:22, John 17:15, 2 Corinthians 6:14-18, and Revelation 18:4. Instead, people are to become partakers in the holy divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4. Example: “Let him that stole steal no more,” Ephesians 4:28. Don't be overcome by evil, Romans 12:21. Resist the devil, James 4:7 and 2 Peter 5:8-9.
Be holy, 1 Peter 1:16. Abstain from lusts, 1 Peter 2:11.
See examples of individual penalties for sin, violating instructions:
Moses for striking vs speaking to the rock to bring water, Numbers 20:11
the thieving family of Achan, Joshua 7:20-26
Looking into the Ark, 1 Samuel 6:19
Saul for not dealing with Amalek as instructed, 1 Samuel 15:22-28
touching the Ark, 2 Samuel 6:6-7, 1 Chronicles 13:9-10
Ananias and Sapphira for refusing to follow Acts 2:44-45 and 4:32, 34-35, and lying to pretend they had complied, Acts 5:1-11
In a nation such as the U.S.A., where the people elect leaders, the people aid and abet the leaders' evils, by voting for them, by even re-electing them, approving, supporting, applauding, their evil deeds, thus bringing the guilt, and penalty, on the nation as a whole.
So Senator Corwin's warning of retribution to come on the U.S. was well justified.
|
It [God's national judgment] all comes, and comes righteously, for the last act challenges all the preceding, as adopted, legitimated [ratified]; and the fate that, like the whirling of a sling, has been swinging round and round for generations, to gather force and swiftness, at length descends, as with the speed of lightning, in the concentrated fury of a vengeance long scouted and defied.
Ages of expostulation and rebuke, of compassionate delay and warning, throw themselves into the blow. The spirits of retribution awake and hurry onward from a thousand quarters, where the moans of the injured have been going up to God.
When the time comes, when the books are open for settlement, as in the time of vengeance on the French monarchy for ages of oppression, every outraged principle; and every agonized class, presents its account. The universe seems but one uproar of
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wrath; seems to have taken fire for God and justice, and to rush upon the long-escaping and long-defying criminal with a rejoicing energy and strength.
The race of men in Sodom, overwhelmed with the storm of fire from heaven, were perhaps no worse than the generation that preceded them; but the vengeance long delayed all came down upon them. [Genesis 19:24-25, 28.]
The vengeance due for past crimes, which might have been prevented by repentance and humility, is condensed, pointed, and brought down, by impenitence and hardness of heart, as when a lightning rod is lifted to the clouds.
There is always a last drop of insolence and cruelty that fills up the measure of a nation's iniquities, and then the edict goes forth, Actum est de te: periisti. There was, in the case of Belshazzar and Babylon; there was, in the case of Israel; there was, in the case of Judah; there was, in the career of Jerusalem, when incarnate Deity, in person, warned and expostulated.
There are awful unseen junctures, unseen, because men choose to be blinded, and there are days of unknown visitation, unknown, because men scoff at the thought of being thus under the judgment of a present God.
There are seasons of deliberate choice forever, where two ways meet, and nations, as individuals, come to the point, decide, and from that step, go steadily downward or upward, according to that decision.
We ourselves, [the U.S.A.] as a nation, have come to such a point. We are to choose for an empire between
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wrong and righteousness, between injustice and justice, between oppression and benevolence, between slavery and freedom.
It is a point, in which all the characters and wills in this country come to a convergency, one side or other, good or bad. It is a point where the choice will be determined by individual adopted opinions and preferences, under motives and principles which in every case God unerringly traces and judges, as he alone can do.
It is a spectacle, and a national issue, such as there never was before in all the world; a decision affecting at present and in prospect, more millions of men, and greater varieties of interest in this world, and more solemn eternal results, than any movement of any nation's policy ever on record.
All such issues, heretofore, have been made up by the few in power, by consolidated governments and councils, in regard to whose determinations the people have no choice, and whose edicts are only to be registered and executed, unless the people have bad the virtue to resist them.
So the world has gone on, amid the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in provinces; the place of judgment, and iniquity there, the place of righteousness, and iniquity there; oppressors making wise men mad, and the few assuming, by robbery and tyranny, the responsibility of many, defrauding them almost of moral agency.
But out of this condition of the world there has been great progress; it is given to our country to see
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whether the many will act more truly and justly for God, and mercifully and righteously for themselves and others, than the few, whether human nature is unjust, selfish, and tyrannical in the few only, because few, and intrusted with too great a trust, or in the many also, except God's grace interpose.
It is a new, vast, unexampled step, that of a question of morality for hundreds of millions and for ages, committed to a whole people to determine, by the expression of individual judgment as responsible as if the whole decision were thrown upon each one's own mind.
The question of duty with us is therefore not merely national, and corporate, but INDIVIDUAL, inasmuch as every man is called to vote, and to vote freely, according to his own opinion and choice. It is his highest moral responsibility, and most solemn action, as connected with the state.
In forming his opinions, justly or unjustly, and in selecting his representatives or agents, with reference to those opinions, and in voting for his rulers, he is himself the actor of the justice or the injustice.
What a man does by his agent, he does himself. Qui facit per alium, facit per se. If a man orders a broker to buy, he buys; if a man hires an assassin to murder, he murders. If a man votes for Senator, Representative, President, or Governor, pledged to pursue a particular line of oppression and iniquitous policy, he votes for that iniquity, he sustains it, he transacts it himself, he will have to stand before God in judg-
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ment on that indictment. The vote is always a moral trust, but especially when a great moral question is to be determined by it. It is, of all others, a thing of individual responsibility, and a matter of conscience; a matter between the soul and God, a matter of religion, and not of mere politics, a matter in which every man ought to seek the instruction of God's word, and in which we are bound to proclaim God's judgment.
We do not preach to the government, but to the people, the government being merely their agent. We do not preach to the people on a question of mere expediency, or diplomacy, or profit, or political economy, or statesmanship, or even of what is best, but of what is right, of what God allows.
The question of slavery is not a question of power or revenue, but of RECTITUDE; and, since God's will is plainly expressed upon it, a question of obedience to God's law.
Beyond all contradiction therefore it is a legitimate, appropriate, authoritative subject for the pulpit; and if the course proposed for the nation is that not only of sanctioning and sustaining the system of slavery, but of enforcing it as the policy of a new state, the system to be set at the heart of a virgin society, and men who religiously hate and abhor it to be driven into an endurance of it and submission to it at the point of the bayonet, then no true embassador for God can avoid speaking out.
On the plain and pungent principles laid down in Ezekiel, he is bound to proclaim God's denunciation of such an iniquity.
| Ed. Note: This subject, Judah's national abolishment for attempted slavery, is resumed in Chapter 10, pp 107-115. |
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CHAPTER VIII.
OBJECTIONS URGED AGAINST THE MENTION OF THIS SIN—
THE OPINION OF COLERIDGE—
THE EXAMPLE OF LORD ERSKINE IN
RESISTING AND REBUKING OPPRESSION—
THE WORD OF GOD OUR ONLY SAFE GUIDE.
BUT here again I hear the stale, accustomed outcry of political preaching; and perhaps you say, it produces noise and agitation, dispute and disturbance, in the churches, to have the sluices of God's word opened on this iniquity, and revivals of religion will be stopped, and every thing will go to ruin.
But, we may be sure every thing will go to ruin by sin, and not by the efforts to put a stop to sin.
It produces a dreadful noise, to have the safety-valves opened on board a steamboat racing with such reckless speed and pressure of steam, that the boiler is about bursting. And suppose a party of men on board, engaged in a religious conversation, should run and jump upon the safety-valve, to prevent that noise, declaring that they could not converse while the noise continued. Would that be piety or wisdom? Suppose they asserted that all the danger was from the noise, and not from the racing. Your fire-engines make a great noise, tearing through the streets to put out a confla-
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gration. Suppose that they should be indicted as a nuisance, while the incendiary goes at large, and the flames prosper. According to the word of God, he that kindled the fire shall make restitution, not he that made a great disturbance in striving to put it out.
Ludicrous as it may seem, I have absolutely had the charge brought against my preaching, that it excites the nerves to such a degree that the man could hardly sit still under it.
A man complained to a friend who brought him to church one Sabbath evening, that he never was so excited in his life, that he did not come to church to be excited, but quieted, but that he never found himself under such excitement of mind anywhere, and he would not stand it. Poor man, just as if the word of God were nothing but carpenter-work, to make sound sleepers! He did not consider that there are sleepers enough in our churches any day, strong timber, and no danger of disturbing them; and that the very thing we need is excitement by the truth, excitement in the mind, excitement in the heart, excitement in the conscience.
But you can not have it all one way; and when there are snags in the mind, there will be a ripple where the current of truth sweeps over them. Hurlgate itself could be kept smooth, by widening the channel, and blowing up the rough rocks at the bottom.
Between the mealy-mouthedness of preachers, and the mealy-heartedness of the people, with the motto,
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first peaceable, then pure, there comes to be a most unsubstantial, unreliable state of things. Christians educated in this manner are not to be relied upon for a confession of the truth in troublous times, or a defense of it when it becomes unpopular. You might as well make a cable out of a bag of meal as expect to hold fast by such a Christianity.
The fashionable and time-serving congregations can not endure plain truth. The flour of the gospel itself must be so finely and exquisitely bolted, that all the strength is excluded, all that goes to make bone and gristle, and between that and the evil mentioned in God's word (Ephraim is a cake not turned [Hosea 7:8]) you get nothing from the gospel-oven but dough-faces.
| Ed. Note: "dough-faces" was the 1857 term for pro-slavery Northerners. |
And the same monstrous inconsistency is visible now, in the profession and life of Christians, as was in the character of the people of God of old, when in one verse he described them aa a people making great ostentation of seeking God, and delighting in his ordinances, and parading their oblations, and in the next as a rebellious generation, a lying people, who would not listen to the word of the Lord, when it condemned their own cherished and defended sins.
They fasted, but refused to break a single yoke. [Isaiah 58:2-6] They prayed, they made long prayers, and then turned and gave their influence against all preaching and all effort to establish freedom instead of slavery, which was quite equivalent to making long prayers, and then devouring widows' houses [Mark 12:40].
Just so now, men pray for
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revivals of religion, but if any brother from the country, too simple-hearted to understand the atmosphere and the currents of the prayer-meeting, happens to pray for the deliverance of the oppressed and the enslaved, a feeling runs through the room, as of something strange, ill-judged, unmannered, as if fanaticism has appeared bodily in the assembly.
If slavery be in any way referred to, they remark upon the injudiciousness of such preaching, how certain it is to put a stop to revivals of religion, and drive away the pious praying hearts that long for the outpouring of God's Spirit.
Now is it to be supposed that God does not see to the very bottom of such hollow professions, or that his indignation against such hypocrisy is any less at this day than it was when he told his people of old, that all their oblations and their approaches to him, were a smoke in his nose [Isaiah 65:5], instead of gaining his approbation, and that even when they burned incense to him, it was no better than if they blessed an idol?
Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations; I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them. [Isaiah 66:3-4]
God is not mocked [Galatians 6:7], and we have yet to learn what that meaneth [Ed. Note: see subsequent data]; I will have mercy, and not sacrifice. [Hosea 6:6]
Love your neighbor as yourself, and thus prove that the love of God is in you. [I John 4:20-21]
A deplorable, sickly, hypocritical fastidiousness is in danger of settling down on our congregations,
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destructive of every thing manly, bold, and original.
There are plenty of gentlemen with kid gloves in our pulpits, but no brawny blacksmiths with sledge-hammers; or if by chance a sledge-hammer ever does come into play, it must be garlanded with silk and flowers, or cased in India rubber, to accommodate itself to the elastic conscience with which it is to come in contact; and even then, though it may be used advantageously to pound all in pieces the sin of dancing [!!], it can not preserve a conservative reputation if brought down upon any organic [national] iniquity.
But God's description of his word as a fire and a hammer [Jeremiah 23:29] certainly smacks of the blacksmith's shop rather than the parlor, and looks as if burning thoughts and hard blows were more acceptable to him than fastidious elegances.
Ed. Note: Many "Christian" clergymen are in fact heathens, "emperor worshippers," hence they carefully avoid real issues, to focus on trivia like dancing!
This corrupt preaching was much ridiculed by abolitionists.
See also Rev. Cheever's Discourse (June 1856), p 34 (citing John the Baptist as focusing on major sin, adultery, not trivia like dancing!);
and his Fire and Hammer Speech (May 1858). |
Our young men look in vain to our pulpits for that sympathy with the oppressed, and affinity with the native impulses of the human heart for freedom, which true religion always possesses, and which the true gospel cultivates. They are repelled by the cold, sanctimonious caution with which all enthusiasm for freedom is banished from the sanctuary.
I have but just received a note from a brother minister in which he says, after inquiring as to Jeremiah's positions, "The pro-slavery sentiment here has spiked so many guns, that they expect to spike mine without much difficulty. I only wish it was of a larger caliber."
Now it is rather hazardous business,
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this spiking guns while the fight is waging; and one thing is certain, if conscience has had the casting of the gun, and the management of it, the attempt to spike it will only result in filling it to the very muzzle with grape-shot, and giving a tenfold fury to its cannonadings.
Spike the guns of the gospel against men's sins?
Try the experiment.
More than forty men once bound themselves with an oath that they would neither eat nor drink till they had spiked Paul's gun by killing him [Acts 23:12-13]; but they only opened before him a wider and more effectual door of utterance, and mean time we do not read that they starved themselves to death, though really all that their oath could do was only to spike their own stomachs.
Just so the pope tried to spike Luther's gun, but only taught him how to load and fire more effectually.
And this is the effect which outrages upon truth and justice always will have, and ought to have, upon faithful and noble souls; it will only make them still more earnest and resolute.
Certainly, when truth is fallen in the street, and equity can not enter, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey [Isaiah 59:14-15], it is time for gap-men [Ezekiel 22:30], time for the duke's guard, time for Cromwell's invincibles, time to storm the enemy with greater energy than over, but not to compromise our principles or spike our guns.
The truths that have been outraged are to be reproclaimed in the spirit of outraged truth, at the behest of conscience, in the service of the God of
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truth. They may require the voice of loud alarm and impassioned warning.
"Such," says Coleridge, "are in our own times the agitating truths with which Thomas Clarkson [Ed. Note: English abolitionist who got Parliament to take action against slavery] and his excellent confederates the Quakers, fought and conquered the legalized banditti of men-stealers, the numerous and powerful perpetrators and advocates of rapine, murder, and of blacker guilt than either, slavery. Truths of this kind being indispensable to man, considered as a moral being, are above all expedience, all accidental consequences; for as sure as God is holy, and man immortal, there can be no evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them."
Both the duty and the privilege of bearing such testimony, and of rebuking such wickedness, especially in high places [Ephesians 6:12], has been defended and demonstrated with illumination so dazzling, on occasions so illustrious, in a manner so noble, and with consequences so grand, that the instances are the most impressive and instructive chapters of history.
I have seldom met with a prouder and more fearless averment of the grandeur, solemnity, and imperious necessity of such testimony in the teeth of tyranny, than that of Lord Erskine, when the minions of the British crown, and a cringing, tyrannical judiciary were endeavoring to force the guilt of constructive treason upon innocent men, and to compel a jury to bring in a charge of guilty, just as they are now doing with innocent men in Kansas, but in that Territory in a manner more outrageous, more defiant of
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truth, freedom, and righteousness, than ever before in any nation under heaven.
"Gentlemen," said Lord Erskine to the jury, "this is such a horrible proposition, the imputation of treason to men whom we know never designed it, and the proposition to hang them by law on account of it, though they could have been indicted only by perversion of the law, that I would rather, at the end of all these causes, when I had finished my duty to their unfortunate objects, die upon my knees thanking God that for the protection of innocence and the safety of my country, I had been made the instrument of denying and reprobating such wickedness, than live to the age of Methuselah for letting it pass unexposed and unrebuked."
The religious sacredness and nobleness of testimony against oppression were never more grandly illustrated; but if such be the convictions and exalted sentiments of an advocate at an oppressive earthly tribunal, surely, they who occupy the place of ministers of God's truth in God's own sanctuary ought to be animated by impulses not less sacred, ought to glory in their testimony with an ardor not less sublime.
But why do we refer to mortal instances, when we have the example of divine? In the judgment-hall of Pilate, Christ Jesus himself transcendently glorified and illustrated the duty of bearing testimony to oppressed and persecuted truth, by declaring that his own object, even in becoming incarnate, was to give
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it utterance and to stand up in behalf of it. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. [John 18:37]
Now when we hear God declaring that the throne of iniquity, which frameth mischief by a law, shall not have fellowship with him [Psalm 94:20], and when we hear him saying Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and write grievousness which they have prescribed [Psalm 94:20-22]; it is beyond all possibility of doubt that the denunciation from the pulpit, of such vast, creative, germinating, and accumulating wickedness, is pleasing in his sight. It is one object for which he has established the pulpit, and given it a sacredness in the opinion and a hold upon the hearts and consciences of men.
But let ministers beware how they lose that reverence, by yielding up the freedom of the pulpit to the fear of man, and suffering the hypocritical outcry of political preaching to prevent them from pouring the light of God's word on political sins.
Lord Erskine denounced the wickedness of the imputation of treason to men who wore known to be true lovers of their country and of freedom, and the infamy of the proposition to hang them up by an indictment which itself could not be framed except by perversion of the law. But the wickedness that Lord Erskine was called to battle against might almost boast of sanctity in comparison with the complicated villainies transacted in Kansas, and enforced by our government. For we have there the unrivalled
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atrocity of a pretended territorial legislature, proved and acknowledged by our own government to be a violent fraud and usurpation, and all its authority null and void, yet sustained by our national government, with the whole available force of the United States army;
we have in the second place the atrocity of laws enacted by the same legislature, and pronounced by the Senate and House of Representatives to be infamous, barbarous, unconstitutional, and fit only to be broken and trampled on, yet enforced by the same government at the point of the bayonet;
we have in the third place the transcendent farce and wickedness of the very best men in this outraged Territory indicted and imprisoned for the crime of high treason in peacefully and constitutionally opposing this diabolical usurpation, and their fetters riven, and their prison guarded by the same government with the same army.
I defy all history, from the foundation of the world, to show any usurpation to be compared for atrocity, with this unparalleled wickedness, for it is a usurpation entered into and sustained for the extension and perpetuity of slavery.
And if the people of this country tamely submit to such shameless and monstrous prostitution of law and complication of injustice, their liberties are dead and buried from this time and forever. And yet, the Executive [Ed Note. President James Buchanan (1857-1861)] of this undeniable and enormous tyranny remains unimpeached; and there are not wanting
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men bearing the Christian name to palliate if not to justify and sanctify the wrong!
This could never be, if we, as a people, had kept the word of God in view, and had not forgotten or denied its principles. We need to return to them, and to examine this iniquity, and our conduct and position, in their light. Even as politicians, in regard to this matter, we must take our stand on God's word, and square our policy, our platform, according to it, or we shall surely perish as a nation, and with such a destruction as the world never beheld.
I invite you, therefore, in the first place, to a calm investigation of the judgment in the word of God in regard to the system of slavery.
In the second place, it being proved to be a sin in the sight of God, I invite you to consider the defiant iniquity, the daring and abominable impiety, of making it the great, chosen, and perpetual policy of the nation, a system not only tolerated, but to be protected, defended, extended, and enforced.
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CHAPTER IX.
DEMONSTRATION OF THE SINFULNESS OF SLAVERY—ARGUMENT
FROM THE LAW OF LOVE—ARGUMENT FROM THE LAWS AGAINST
OPPRESSION—NO SUCH THING AS SLAVERY AMONG THE
HEBREWS—LUDICROUSNESS OF THE CLAIM OF AFRICANS AS
OUR PROPERTY BY REASON OF NOAH'S CURSE ON CANAAN
THAT the system of slavery is sinful in the sight of God, is capable of demonstration by several distinct lines of proof. We take the simplest first, and from that ascend to a broader induction.
First, there is the law of love.
Second, there are the laws against oppression.
Third, there are the laws against man-stealing and man-selling.
Fourth, there is the nature, the inviolable sacredness, of the parental relation.
Fifth, there are the recorded retributive judgments of God for the attempt to hold and use servants as property.
Sixth, there is the providential argument of great power, the manifestation of God's curse upon the established system of slavery in full blast, and the destruction of nations by it.
The evolution [elaboration] of the argument on any one of these lines would be enough for conviction; the forces marched upon them all, are overwhelming, irresistible. I restrict myself to the word of God, and even thus, much brevity will
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be requisite, in its various steps, to compass the argument.
First, we take the Law of Love. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" and, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Neither color nor race puts any man out of the category of my neighbor. You would not yourself be made a slave. You can not, in conscience, say that you would, under any circumstances, be so treated, be deprived of your natural liberty, and held as the property of another. You feel that you are a person, and not a chattel, and that to be treated as a person and not a chattel, is your right, by the law of common reciprocal justice and benevolence.
If you had been stolen and sold, or your father before you, and had passed through forty different hands, called your owners, you would still feel that no theft of your father, grandfather, or most remote ancestor before you, could pass by transmission into honest ownership, or could give to any human being any right of property in you, and that no money whatever could purchase such right. Applied to yourself, as a man, to yourselves as men, you know, you feel; that these principles are undeniable, impregnable; by the law of God, then, you are bound to apply them to others, as yourselves.
On this ground, the command in the New Testament, specific as to duty, "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal," would strike the fetters
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from every slave in existence. No man can claim property in man and not violate that injunction.
You would not have your fellow-men compel you to serve without wages.
You would not have a master sell your wife and your children from you.
You would not have your fellow-beings take away every natural right and dignity of a human being from you, and treat you as a beast of burden.
You would not consider it exaction, on your part, if you demanded that your children should be your children, and should be free, since you never entered into any contract with any human creature otherwise, and could not rightfully have done such a thing, if you had wished.
Now, then, the law of love demands in you the same treatment, the same award of justice, to your fellow-being; and any relation in which you hold him, subversive of these natural rights and claims of love, is sinful. The compulsory relation itself, as your work, is sinful. It is sin per se, and can not possibly be otherwise.
I might trace and demonstrate this sinfulness, in other infractions of the law; but the worst of all, and the most prolific, is the robbery of children from their parents, the moment they are born into the world, and the claiming, as your property, what was the gift of God to those parents, what you never paid a farthing for, what you never made a contract for, what you never received from any trader even in human flesh, and over which you
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have not the least shadow of a claim, on any ground on which human beings ever settle the just relationship of possession or ownership, as between one another. You can not in any thing do to others as you would they should do to you, if in this fundamental thing you take their children, and claim and use them as your property. You could not rightfully use your own children as your property; much less the children of others.
I might rest the whole argument here; but I pass to a second demonstration of the sinfulness of slavery in the various laws enacted against oppression, which are indeed necessary conclusions from the law of love. If slavery is not oppression, nothing under heaven can be. It is the violation, in every particular, of every one of the statutes of God against that wickedness.
When God says, Cursed be he that oppresseth his neighbor, in whatever respect: that curse comes, in every possible shape, upon the man who claims property in man; because that claim gathers up into itself every conceivable exaction and exasperation of tyranny, cither as essence or result.
When God says, Thou shalt not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, the widow, the servant, the hireling; and when be teaches us to pray, Deliver me from the oppression of man: so will I keep thy precepts; every one of these statutes and instructions demonstrates the system of slavery to be sinful; because its fundamental claim of property in man is the sum
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Welcome to the book, God Against Slavery (1857), by Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D. To go to the "Table of Contents" immediately, click here.