America's National Shaking

Psalm 18:7 - Then the earth shook and quaked; and the foundations of the mountains were trembling and were shaken, because God was angry!!!

I read FB posts and comments often decrying how Mr. O and his minions are ruining our country with their awful liberal policies, their corruption of our gubmint and their incompetence to deal with national emergencies, and I believe that those posts and comments are right and true because they are Scriptural….

Luke 21:25-27 - “There will be….on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and from the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world….

But I have come to also believe that those corrupt, incompetent liberal politicians and these difficult events that are occurring in our land are all merely tools that our good Lord is using to shake up the majority of those in our nation who have been idolizing big gubmint and therefore have not been believing and / or not trusting in God Himself.

Deuteronomy 32:21 - They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their idols.

So I am writing this post of exhortation to you who do believe in God and in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to give you some Scriptures that I believe may help you to be more trusting in Him and more focused upon Him personally, no matter what evils seem to be coming down upon America to ruin our country.

Romans 8:28 - God works all things together for the good of those who love Him.

Then, in your own trusting faith in Him and His word , all of the bad that you are hearing about in our nation you will begin to see (as I do) as actually being, in the long run, for the good for our country and our straying and / or spiritually lost citizens.

Genesis 50:20 - As for you (Satan), you meant evil against (our country), but God meant it for good in order to bring about (His desired) result, to preserve many people, (eternally alive in Jesus).

Through all of the shaking that God has had to allow to happen to America as He has tried to teach our ungodly citizens just how terrible for them and for our country it is to abandon or not believe in Him, your focus upon Him and not the shaking, will stabilize you personally….

Isaiah 33:5 - 6a -  The Lord is exalted….and He(!) will be the stability of your times….

Faithful Christians who are focused upon Jesus in all of their affairs have no reason to shake in fear of what our politicians or what their political parties are now doing to America because….

Hebrews 13:6 - ….we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?”

When we keep our focus upon the Lord and give Him all of our fears and burdens for the country as it is being shaken, I believe that He will supernaturally move to calm and soothe and sustain us….

Psalm 55:22 - Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

He and He alone is our stronghold during these difficult times of our nation’s shaking, as the Scriptures tell us over and over and over again….

Psalm 62:2 - He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be greatly shaken.

Psalm 16:8 - I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Acts 2:25 - For David says of Him, ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; For He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken.

Our loving God, in His ongoing efforts to save America’s citizens’ souls from His ultimate holy wrath upon them for their sins (in hell and the lake of fire), will on occasion have to shake up various aspects of our nation, in order to show people that all of the things that they are relying upon in this world, except for Him and His unshakable kingdom, are ultimately unreliable!

Hebrews 12:27b - 28 - ….those things which (can be shaken in this world will be shaken but those that) cannot be shaken, will remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe….

So, it seems to me that our good and kind Lord Jesus has deemed our national sin of idolatry to now need some very severe correction!

Romans 11:22 - Notice how God is both kind and severe. He is very hard on those who disobey, but very good to you if you continue to love and trust him.

Now in order to correct our nation, I believe that He had to allow some of our nation’s very evil politicians to deceive our people in order to get voted into power over them, so that they could rip them off while also ruling them with severity!

Ezekiel 34:3-5 - You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them.

I believe that He has allowed the devil to shake us and our nation up through these evil politicians actions. But I also believe that He has only been using their evils temporarily for this purpose.

Luke 22:31 - “....behold, Satan has demanded you (America) from My (Jesus) power into his in order to sift it like wheat, to the very verge of the overthrow of (many of its citizens’) faith. but I have prayed for you (America), that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again (to Me with ALL of your hearts) , will strengthen your brothers (fellow citizens).”

So during this temporary shaking of our nation, as long as we committed Christians stay humbly focused upon Jesus, He and He alone will be our blessed hope that eventually all will be well for America and for us.

Titus 2:11-15 - For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself up for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

Hebrews 6:19 - 20 - This hope (Jesus) we have as an ANCHOR of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast….

A simple doctrine of heaven and hell

I believe that many Christians cannot explain a simple doctrine of heaven and hell. So here is my version of such an explanation. Heaven is a holy place occupied by our holy God. Here He expresses more and more and more forever His love for all of His children and His angels who agree with His will and therefore are allowed to reside here. Those who disagree with His will are not allowed to reside here, it is that simple.

Every child whom God allows to die is automatically taken here to reside by the holy angels. Every adult human being is given time and opportunity to decide whether they want to spend eternity with God and His goodness in heaven or not. If a person does, he or she must first repent of their sins and then receive God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ as their own personal Savior in order to get here.

Any adult person who does not want to spend eternity with God (Who is every kind of goodness personified), has been given the evil abodes of hell and the lake of fire as the places in which they must eternally reside. In them there is no goodness whatsoever, only God's wrath and indignation as expressed to them in awful pain, torment, shame, misery and despair.

To go there, humans must make a conscious, stubborn decision that they do not want to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as God's only way for them to go to heaven. It is not God's desire that any human beings go to these 2 evil places. It is their own desire to disagree with God and His will for them that sends them there.

In giving all of us our own free will to decide this matter here on earth, God had to have a place for those who choose to be His enemies to eternally reside. So these 2 places, which were prepared by Him for His rebellious angels who decided in heaven to become His enemies, are also the places He has for humans who do the same here on earth.

The difference between humans' and angels' judgments are that angels were created in heaven and experienced all of the joys and bliss of that place and then decided to rebel so they are given no chance by God for salvation, whereas humans are given only tastes of both heaven and hell here on earth and then over time they can decide one way or another as to where they wish to reside. Heaven is all goodness, earth has the presence of both goodness and evil but hell is all evil!

When we choose to love God and Jesus we also choose to spend eternity with them and their goodness in heaven because it is God's will for us to do this. In effect we agree with His will when we do this and this agreement with Him saves us from hell and sends us to heaven when our days here on earth are over. It's that simple.

Hebrews 4:12 - For the word of God is LIVING AND ACTIVE and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and ABLE TO JUDGE THE THOUGHTS AND INTENTIONS OF THE HEART.

I have been counseling a lovely young lady who turned to Jesus when her love relationship with an unsaved young man began to go sour. Up until recently she had been dealing with her ex-boyfriend but he just kept getting harder and harder for her to be with. This is because he is an admitted alcoholic and a pot addict who keeps elevating the use of those drugs more and more in his life over his relationship with her. 

However, whenever he decided to stay sober, they would have the greatest of times together so this led her to keep at it with him for so long in hopes that he would overcome his addictions. He paid lip service to wanting to do so but his confessions just did not turn into actions.

Well, one night it all came to a head when she was given a ride by one of her male friends to his house to see him. When he let her in, she could tell that he was quite high. When he asked her how she got there she told him that this nice fellow had brought her there. He reacted to this news with insane jealousy and began to yell at her and to push her around. He didn’t strike her, he just yelled at her and exerted his superior strength over her to dominate her and to shove her here and there.

So in fear she grabbed her bottle of mace and sprayed it at him. He screamed from the effects of it and fled to the bathroom to clean it off. Then she called the police to report the incident and to seek their protection from his rage. When they arrived and assessed the situation they sided with her and asked her if she wanted him arrested. She said no because by then he had calmed down and somewhat sobered up. Then she left his place.

The next day he e-mailed her that he was ending their relationship permanently because he did not feel safe around her anymore! He then told all of their mutual friends that the two of them had had a fight and that she had maced him and that he had called the police on her but he did not have her arrested because he felt sorry for her! This of course was a total lie and a reversal of the true facts of the matter. Unfortunately, it was believed by most of their mutual friends so they began to shun her even to the point of becoming rather hostile towards her. None of these so called friends even asked her to tell them her side of the story. They just abandoned and in so doing, they shamed her.

So we discussed how she, like Jesus, was being falsely accused and crucified emotionally by the devil through her ex and them. We saw him as being in the devilish tag team spirits of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, wherein the seemingly nice Dr. Jekyll spirit was being used by Satan to entice her with their great times together into a place wherein the obviously evil Mr. Hyde could come forth to “gaslight” her (this term comes from the movie “Gaslight” in which these 2 personalities in a man are depicted as emotionally and physically tormenting a naive young lady until he died). We saw this brutal, lying, “gaslighting” spirit as exactly that which Satan was employing through her seemingly nice boyfriend to conceal his evils (when he was high) from their friends and to deflect them from seeing his evils by falsely accusing her.

Well, after months of the emotional pain that she had been suffering from all of their adversity towards her, she confided to me that she was wearing out and at times she felt that the situation was utterly hopeless. She told me how she wanted vindication and she also wanted her very nice boyfriend to overcome his addictions and come back to her without this split personality. To this I felt moved to advise her to just keep her focus upon Jesus and Jesus alone so that like Peter who focused his attention upon Him and was able to miraculously walk over a storm in his life, with Him she would be able to walk over this storm in hers too.

A couple of days later the Lord led me to this living and active passage for her in His word…

Hebrews 12:1b - 3 - ….let us run with ENDURANCE the race that is set  before us, fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him ENDURED the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider Him who has ENDURED such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Truly, this passage was living and active in her life, was it not? I see it as being so alive and focused upon her current circumstances that it could have been written just for her! I also see it as a special exhortation from God to her for her to continue to endure the evil that is happening through all of them towards her personally. Then, in His own good time, He will take her into the vision that He gave her of a joyous life with a husband of His choosing (either this man saved or someone better)! This thought is also backed up in the following verse….

Habakkuk 2:3 - “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.

THOUGH IT TARRIES, WAIT FOR IT; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.

And IMHO, in this passage as well….

Isaiah 51:22 - 23 - Thus says your Lord, the Lord, even your God, Who contends for His people,“Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of reeling, the chalice of My anger; You will never drink it again!!!

“Instead, I will put it into the hand of your tormentors, who have said to you, ‘Lie down that we may walk over you.’ You have even made your back like the ground And like the street for those who walk over it.”