Isaiah On The Doomed Culture War: As Politician Embraces The Great Whore In Zion
“And Hezekiah was glad of them (Babylon), and shewed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not. Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men” (Is.39?
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Zion (the Church/the New Jerusalem) is the chaste Bride of the Lamb. As city-civilization is the Cain-christ (or Antichrist) counterfeit of The Patient Kingdom (“the kingdom and patience of Christ”--Rev 1), so also the Great Whore has marched alongside throughout history as his unclean consort: Babylon. Abraham began life as a Babylonian in Ur, and was called to a lonely sojourn in the desert with no more than “the Promise” of a “city that hath foundations,” of which the Church is “the firstfruits.” Ur, along with all other cities, are but a counterfeit of that city. He died in a tent with very little earthly proof of what he claimed to “see afar off.” Enoch, 5400 years ago already saw Christ’s coming on the horizon: “the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints” (Jude 1). (The prophets saw their visions as you see the night sky–some of those lights are galaxies, and seem as close as the planets in our backyard). On the brink of entering the Promised land, Moses was frustrated to hear that he had been replaced by Joshua, because he was but a tick on the clock of the Kingdom of Patience. Great men were surprised to discover that they are dispensable, because none of them hardly moved the dial. There are no great men in the kingdom of God, and those who make themselves so are cast into the Lake of Fire on the Day of Judgment. Elijah was called to his reward at the peak of his powers. He despaired at the peak of his powers. They did not amount to the mustard seed of faith in the common believer: “the still small voice.” John the Baptist faded into the background as soon as he had accomplished his mission, and the greatest man ever born (filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb– I have a six year old wether that I still call “little Johnny” because when he was a baby lamb he would jump for joy next to his mother while I talked to him) died a lonely death in a dungeon. “Don’t,” Jesus warned His Apostles, “focus on your gifts, but on your common faith.” The gifted preachers are all cast into the Lake of Fire on the Last Day, because they assumed that “great preaching” was proof of being saved, or that it exempted them from bearing the unsensational fruit of cup-bearing. This is the fatal flaw of the unfruitful political activists of the Reformation, when they adopted formulas as salvation and made a pact with Caesar to serve the kingdom of Cain. They filled the Church with divorce-adultery, and the world with blood. “By their fruits–the lack thereof–you know them.” You can be saved and “born again” without repentance, they say, because “dead faith” is still “saving faith,” and a man can be saved with “dead faith” or unfruitful faith. This is the essence of the modern church. It is why they now gather en masse in stadiums or Megachurches to chant and sing slogans. They have become so alienated from the Bible that they no longer even quote it, or pretend to understand it, because every verse can be fatwaed into its opposite with Luther/Calvin tricks.
But where is the Zion that is from above in History? It is the “still small voice” of “the saints of well doing until they rest from their labors.” They themselves are surprised that “they had been it” all throughout history, because they had only done what came naturally to them. Sodom did what was natural to it, and modern preachers would get them to “see Jesus” and not scare them away with talk of repentance. Get them saved first, Moody would say, “and worry about repentance later. Let the Holy Spirit convict them. But don’t go around naming specific sins, because sin too is “case by case.” The well-doers had thought of themselves as undeserving servants working to improve on their “talent.” They were the Zion of “none observation,” and could be safely ignored. Little did the rich man know that the common faith of sickly Lazarus was a greater miracle than a man resurrected from the dead. Lazerus could be safely ignored, condemned by his condition. If God was with him, then why was he a beggar? A bruised reed shaken by the wind, Christ had “no form or comeliness,” says preacher Isaiah. Naaman accused Elisha of being an impotent fraud when he refused to assume the antics and drama of a real prophet. Why would God not make Himself known in worthy fashion, to show the world who is in control\? Why hide His power in weakness? Is this not deception? Masquerading under “things that are not?” Except that “the still small voice” is everywhere telling people that they will be judged by “the still small voice.” But that is the deception: a great God should reveal himself in a great roaring voice . Why would anyone listen to a "still small voice?" Did Jonah even know that a mite of a worm had destroyed his shade? God could have created an elephant to trample it. Why always "the weak things of the world?" But only when it's too late does God pierce the ear with the deafening sound of the last trumpet. But only the still small voice can produce the mustard seed faith that moves great mountains. The last trumpet is but a crude instrument, like the fires on Mount Carmel, which only confirmed men in their unbelief, and made them worse, because it cannot mix faith in them that hear it. The ubiquitous “heavens declare the glory of God.” “He has shown you, O man,” says the prophet wearily to the rich man, “what is good, and what God requires” (Mic. 6). Oh, that, yes, yes, of course–still the rich young ruler demanded clarification. God expected him to stand shoulder to shoulder with despised Samaritans and publicans, or other low-lives who were little more than church-thieves angling for a handout? He wanted a guarantee that what Jesus preached was not actually unlimited access to his purse? I asked a young heart surgeon if he would join a church that practiced Vox Populi, Vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God). No, he said. He would not endanger his career by being made preacher. Ananias and Sapphira wanted to cut their own ticket. The notion of unreserved access to their lives terrifies unregenerate men. Calvin/Luither solved that problem with slogans and civil legality. Mere civil legality now became a substitute for biblical fruit. “If it’s legal, it’s right.” The richest lobbyists in the US are Evangeliecals, bribing officials to write their crimes of covetousness into law to make them legal.
Mount Carmel made an “idolatrous sign-seeking generation” worse. So much that Elijah despaired. If that didn’t do it, then the cause of God was lost. All the while farmer Elisha was meditating behind his sturdy oxen (he later had to settle for wild vegetables), and the parents of “the little maid” whose faith would put two kingdoms on the move, were among the 7000, “the quiet in the land.” Lamech died 5 years before the completion of the ark longing for “rest from his labors.” He would remember “the hard speeches of the ungodly” against his grandfather Enoch, as he wore out the centuries until he “entered into his rest.” Meanwhile, the culture-Machers, the descendants of Cain (Gen. 4) were busy laying the foundations of civilization and culture: industry, the arts, the science of domestic farming. No sooner had God destroyed the “cursed” Kingdom of Cain, “the giant men of renown,” but it sprung up even more vigorously in Nimrod, the descendant of “cursed” Ham, and architect of the world brand, Babylon (likely, Nimrod, a Hamite, conquered the Semites, who became the Babylonians) . Cursed Ham is the second founder or civilization in all its forms (Ham enters the Messianic line through the Canaanites Tamar, Ruth, and Jezebel, far as the curse is found). The Tower of Babel was to be a monument of renown, and so raw was the energy that God had to intervene before things got out of control again, because “now nothing will be restrained (these men are the furthest from “weary”) from them, which they have imagined to do” (Gen. 11). A “tower to heaven” worthy of “the kingdom of observation” (meanwhile the saints are plodding on—while Pharaoh is throwing up Pyramids, Abraham is building little altars in the desert). God knocked down the tower of Babel and began again with the still small voice of the Babylonian, Abraham. His was a lonely life, and Lot bolted for the comforts of the city. Sarah had one son, Rebeccah, two (“the day of small things”). Before the flood, the sons of Zion had managed only one structure of significance, a huge boat on dry land where it had never rained. It benefited only 8 people. It was a huge voice, but so odd, it was like the “stone which the builders rejected.” So out of sorts, that it was useless, save for eight. Enoch preached against the tide with few results, even as “the Spirit of God strove with man.” But look at what godless men can do. Having been rejected as priest in the Kingdom of God, the murderer Cain converts the Mark of protection into the religion of man: politics/secularism/civilization. What has now become almost 6000 years as “the Patient Kingdom of Christ” (Rev. 1), Cain, impatient to get on with life (and dispensing with the Curse by overriding it with civilization) throws up an earthly city (which will become Babylon) overnight. There, he could cry, is how it’s done. Lamech, his descendant, took the Mark of Immunity (“sevenfold”) and converted it into the Flag of Impunity (seventy and sevenfold”-–he could kill and not worry about being killed (Gen.4). This would become the historical definition of the State: the monopoly of violence. The minute you achieve the monopoly of violence, you have reached a critical mass of legitimacy, no questions asked: you are a State, and other monopolies will send ambassadors. Hitler, Stalin, the Mafia are legitimate the minute they achieve the monopoly of violence. In politics as in war, the only crime is losing. You are a condemned man as soon as you lose, the First Citizen the minute you overthrow the previous. It is the monopoly of violence that certifies them as the “ministers of God,” ordained to use the sword with impunity because they have complete immunity as long as they retain their monopoly of violence. They become “unordained” the minute they lose their monopoly. Cain was the first minister of God, the Antichrist will be the last. There has never been a politician who did not owe his office to the Mark of Cain. That was “the ordination of the sword by God.” Which is why even the monarchy of Israel was a coup (crime) against God. “God is your king,” Samuel told Israel, when they demanded “a king like all the other nations.” “God gave them a King in his anger, and took him away in His wrath”--the Isreali king was no more legitimate than Antichrist. David’s kingship was no less a usurpation of the kingdom of God than the Antichrist’s. The monarchy of Israel was no more legitimate and no less valid than the government of Cain and Antichrist. It was a counterfeit, which God destroyed when he put the Church “under preacher-judges as at the first.” Samuel was the last ruler of the Kingdom of God until Christ and the Apostles, when the Kingdom of God once again became a Christocracy. (to be continued)