What elevates one above another? If elevation is preferred over abasement, then what standards are used to distinguish between the two? When these questions are applied to nations, it is helpful to look at the past to find the answers.
If freedom, prosperity, and wholesomeness are the three indicators of elevation, it is quite obvious that western nations in general, and America in particular, could be considered elevated, while non-western nations could be considered abased. From ancient history until now, a nation’s characteristics dictate its position on a high or low scale.
The number one characteristic, and ultimately the only characteristic, that allows for a nation to thrive, is virtue. If virtue is a standard of right, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it, from where did this standard come and for how long does it apply? Nations ranking high on the freedom, prosperity, and wholesomeness meter understand that the Creator of all things has let us know for all time what is right and good, and helps us have virtue if we want to pursue it. There is stability for the nation that knows right and good never change.
Early in the history of the world, the nation of Israel at times remained true to the standards of right and good. In Deuteronomy 28, God tells the nation of Israel what will happen if they obey Him, and what will happen if they don’t: “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. “The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. “The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them. “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: “Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. “Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. “Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. “Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. “The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess. The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish. And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron. The Lord will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one shall frighten them away. The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you. “You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her; you shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its grapes. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be violently taken away from before you, and shall not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all day long; and there shall be no strength in your hand. A nation whom you have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually. So you shall be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see. The Lord will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. “The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods—wood and stone. And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you. “You shall carry much seed out to the field but gather little in, for the locust shall consume it. You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off. You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity. Locusts shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land. “The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. “Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you. “They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you. The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind, so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter, her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates. “If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD, then the Lord will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues—great and prolonged plagues—and serious and prolonged sicknesses. Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in this Book of the Law, will the Lord bring upon you until you are destroyed. You shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven in multitude, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. And it shall be, that just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess. “Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known—wood and stone. And among those nations you shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life. In the morning you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were morning!’ because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because of the sight which your eyes see. “And the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you, ‘You shall never see it again.’ And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you. ”
During the period that King Solomon lived and reigned in obedience to standards of righteousness that God has set forth, his country enjoyed freedom, prosperity, and wholesomeness. 1 Kings 4: 20 says “Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and rejoicing.” Verse 25 continues with “And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, each man under his vine and his fig tree.”
Virtue elevated Israel to a very desirable position among the nations of the earth. We can assume that today virtue will do likewise, as indeed it has in western nations. We can also assume that a loss of virtue will result in an undesirable position among nations, as was also the case for Israel.
The western nations have in common a belief in the One True God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The United States of America in particular was specifically dedicated for the furtherance of the good news of Jesus Christ, and indeed has spread this gospel throughout the world.
Jamestown Settlers Covenant Dedication, 1607 –
“We do hereby dedicate this Land, and ourselves, to reach the People within these shores with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to raise up Godly generations after us, and with these generations take the Kingdom of God to all the earth. May this Covenant of Dedication remain to all generations, as long as this earth remains… May all who see this Cross, remember what we have done here, and may those who come here to inhabit join us in this Covenant…”
Mayflower Compact, 1620 –
“Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia….”
Western nations, especially the United States, are a popular destination of those seeking a better life. Oddly, instead of leaving the way of life they are fleeing, many bring their unfavorable cultural characteristics with them. Assimilation into the more favorable nation, as was the intention of past immigrants, has become a decimating invasion of raiders purposing to pilfer and pillage. Others come with the specific intent to “fundamentally transform” the culture. They are so inculcated in cultures of death, destruction, and despair that they do not know enough about freedom, peace, and prosperity to even desire it. Worse yet, some of those who have known the freedom, peace, and prosperity of western culture are forsaking it to join in the fundamental transformation of freedom, peace, and prosperity into death, destruction, and despair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5emwIhxXlwE https://www.wnd.com/2016/07/muslim-refugees-threaten-minnesota-community-with-rape/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrefKCaV8m4
There is an unseen enemy leading those who are attempting to abase western nations, but there is One infinitely greater leading those who desire to elevate nations through virtue. Genesis chapter 3 describes the deception of the enemy that has been from the beginning:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam[c] named his wife Eve,[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Revelation 20:7-15 describes the ultimate defeat of the enemy and those whose names are not found written in the Book of Life:
“When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
The enemy, Satan, still deceives. One of his tools is the mainstream media, which is deceptive in their polished pretense of propriety, but in reality is a licentious cabal of corruption. Those belonging to this group land on a term, such as “racism”, and drive it in the ground in order to divide the nation and bring about turmoil.
Before the Obama presidency, racism was for the most part a thing of the past. Being an enemy of America, the Constitution, and the Christian principles America was founded upon, Barack Obama and his like-minded lawless legions fastened upon the divide and conquer strategy, coupled with the “big lie” propaganda technique, in an attempt to “fundamentally transform America”. During Obama’s terms in office, mass shootings tripled from 1980s numbers, and before Obama took the office of the president, America didn’t have a problem with police being senselessly shot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrefKCaV8m4
https://www.dailywire.com/news/complete-timeline-race-relations-under-obama-harry-khachatrian
Since the Obama years, America has taken a hard left from the ideals that made her great. Not only are we threatened by invaders being allowed to flow freely across our borders, bringing illegal drugs, terror, and other such lawlessness, but also by a caustic counterculture that is attacking the population, with a focus on children, in an effort to subvert the foundation of our nation. https://www.conservativereview.com/news/big-ag-harming-rural-america-hugely/
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2019/october/librarys-drag-queen-story-hour-strip-show-goes-viral
If America is to recover from the abasing it has undergone since the last administration and once again be elevated to its former status among nations, a place where it can once again be on a foundation firm enough to help elevate other nations, individual Americans must look deep inside themselves and realize what is important. They must realize that what is important is not the momentary pleasures the world offers, but the eternal pleasures that God offers through righteousness found only in His son Jesus Christ. Through turning away from sin that brings abasement and believing that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins through His death on the cross, then rose to life again after three days in the tomb, and by obeying what He tells us in His Word, the Bible, we can be elevated also to rise from death to live forever with Him. Not only this, but we can also elevate our nation from the corruption that lawlessness has brought upon us. Although we may suffer for our fight against corruption, we can know that we are honoring God, ourselves, our children, and all that come after us, knowing that we have done what we can to leave them a country as honorable and valiant as the one that was established for and left to us.
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