The Real Election--How are YOU Voting?

BY PAUL E. SCATES

For months now we’ve been inundated with platitudes and promises from the presidential wannabes, and with their prescriptions for what ails our nation. It’s revealing that none of them (including Mike Huckabee, the “almost pastor”) offered anything but the same old tired political and ideological claptrap, when all the problems in the United States today can be easily traced to one source: sin. More specifically, it is the American people’s rejection of God that lies at the root of this country’s ever-faster decline into moral confusion, social anarchy and national shame.

The Founders of this nation were in almost unanimous accord that the God of the Bible was the source and author of our liberty, and of any material prosperity that would eventually come to us. For almost two hundred years, the American people held to their admonitions to acknowledge God, and this country became the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of mankind. Yet we now let pseudo-intellectuals, semi-literate entertainers and amoral political parasites dismiss God as if all our blessings didn’t come from Him

It has been said that if we don’t learn from history we’re doomed to repeat its mistakes. Although I don’t believe the parallels are exact between the Biblical children of Israel and the United States, I do believe that we are repeating the mistake those ancient people made. As my friend and Sunday school teacher explained last Sunday –

In 1Samuel 8, after Samuel’s sons proved to be corrupt and dishonest in leading Israel, the people demanded a king. When Samuel tried to dissuade them, God spoke to him, saying to Samuel, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me…” He then delineated what a king would mean, in practical terms (vv. 9 – 17): “…he will take your sons…to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment… He will also take your daughters…he will take the best of your fields…and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of [your produce] and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take…your best young men…and use them for his work…and you yourselves will become his servants.”

Now, we don’t have a king; we have a president. And an imperial Congress. And a Supreme Court that believes it is. Do you recognize the demands of the federal government in the above passages, or the taxes that our “king” appropriates from us, or the fact that we, once a free and prosperous people, have become servants to the government that is supposed to serve us?

1Chronicles 29, verse 12: “Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to strengthen everyone.” Not from John McCain’s hand, nor in Barrack Obama’s power…but God’s. The God this nation has rejected, just as the children of Israel did, in favor of rule by men.

Daniel 2:21: “It is He who…removes kings and establishes kings…” Read “presidents” instead of kings and you get the idea. But we think it is us who will elect Obama or McCain, that our liberty – the freedom that God gave us and that we used to reject Him, His leadership and provision – is somehow deserved and that we can do with it as we please. But God knew this would happen, just as He knew the children of Israel would also be faithless. In Deuteronomy 8:11, Moses gave fair warning to them: “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God…otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them…and your silver and gold multiply…then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God…”

In Deuteronomy 28, there is an even clearer parallel between the children of Israel and the U.S. today. In verse 1, Moses says, “Now it shall be if you will diligently obey the Lord your God…[He] will set you high above all the nations of the earth.” But in verses 15 - 68 lie this prophetic vision: “But it shall come about, if you will not obey the Lord your God…the Lord will send upon you curses, confusion and rebuke, in all you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly…because you have forsaken Me…The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies…you shall be oppressed and robbed continually…a people you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labor…the alien who is among you shall rise above you…and you shall go down lower and lower…because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies…”

Although God has provided abundant grace and forgiveness to us through Jesus Christ, He is also the God of justice, and He holds us accountable for our rejection of Him, just as He did His own chosen people. Ponder this: the second-most powerful nation in the history of mankind no longer exists (the USSR). You think we’re immune to God’s justice…so did the children of Israel. They followed man in the form of the kings they demanded, and they suffered all the consequences of which they were warned; indeed, they’re still suffering them today. That’s not just Bible, it’s history.

American citizen, the real decision isn’t about McCain or Obama. Our real choice is, and has always been…God or man? For over fifty years we’ve chosen man, resulting in moral confusion throughout our society, shameful political cowardice (in Vietnam, and coming again in Iraq) and appeasement, both of enemies abroad and short-sighted ideologues here at home. It was God, not man, who blessed America. Isn’t it time we again acknowledge that fact?

Formerly a liberal and an atheist, Paul E. Scates served as a Marine in Vietnam and is a lifelong student of American history, politics and culture. A former contributor to national website TooGoodReports.com, he writes his staunchly independent Conservative and informed Christian commentary for his fellow ordinary, working Americans, the “we, the people” who are ultimately responsible for preserving our Constitutional liberties.