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How and When to Establish a Christian Nation: Part 6

I have tried to show the basic difference between a Christian Nation and the Kingdom of God in order that you might know how best to expend your energy. While I certainly would like to live in a truly Christian Nation, I recognize that it would not be the Kingdom of God. By the time men did the best they could once again, the result would be a compromised Christian Nation.

Catholics would want a Christian Nation ruled by the Pope; Mormons would want one ruled by their Apostle; and each other Christian denomination would want a man of their stripe to rule. Even if one group won the day and elected its own "Saul," he would then be opposed by other political parties established by various Christian groups--to say nothing of the other religious factions.

If we could somehow expel all non-Christians, where would this end? We would then be left with Christians competing for power, each group having its own particular idea of righteous government. We might replace the Democrat-Republican polarization with a more Catholic-Protestant polarization. We would replace one set of problems with another. Congress would become even more rancorous than before, because religious zealots are far more likely to "kill for God" than secularists.

If America were somehow to be established as a Christian Nation before the manifestation of the Sons of God, there would probably be a blood bath by sectarian conflict, along the lines of the situation in Iraq. Christians who love to sneer at Muslims for being "violent" have forgotten their own Church history, which was violent long before Islam was even founded.

The best we could hope for in today's world would be to put some band aids upon the nation to make it "more Christian." If people want to work toward that goal through the political or judicial processes, more power to them. I applaud their efforts and admonish them only to be led by the Holy Spirit, manifesting the fruit of the Spirit toward all others.

Yet recognize that the best that could have been done in the past 2,000 years is to set up another form of the Kingdom of Saul.

I believe the one mistake that America's founders made at the beginning was to set forth a Constitution, a document which was based upon the Bible according to men's best understanding, but which was not the Bible itself. A Christian Nation has a Christian Constitution--a document expressing Christian men's best understanding of the Word. But the Kingdom of God has the Word of God itself as its "Constitution."

According to biblical law and types, it is the difference between food and dung (man's processed food).

But in looking at the example of Israel, which received the oracles of God at Sinai--a complete set of laws for a righteous nation--it is apparent that it is not enough to have a righteous set of laws. Laws can regulate behavior to some extent, but they do nothing to change the heart. That is the weakness of the Divine Law. It is not that His Law was unrighteous, but that men's hearts are unrighteous. Paul asks in Romans 7:7,

"What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, You Shall Not Covet."

The purpose of the law is to establish a standard of righteousness and teach us that certain thoughts and actions are sinful, falling short of the glory of God. The Law, by its threat of judgment, can coerce a man to refrain from certain actions, but it cannot change the heart. The heart can only be changed through the activity of the Holy Spirit operating within a person.

Israel was given a perfect law, as David tells us in Psalm 19:7. If kept, theoretically, this law would have given them life (immortality), as Moses said in Deut. 30:19. But righteous acts done by death-ridden people, are never perfect and can never bring us into immortal life. Nor can a Christian Nation with perfect laws be sustained by imperfect people.

Israel had a perfect law, but was a very imperfect nation. Israel had a very good administrator (Moses), but the people often wanted to stone him. People's hearts have not changed over the centuries. Only civilization progresses. New ways are devised to restrain evil, but all of these new ways are based upon the presumption that the people need restraints because of sin, which we call "crime."

So where are we today in all of this? We are awaiting the rise of a new body of Kingdom administrators called in Scripture "the Sons of God," not merely under a Passover anointing (as was Israel), and not merely under a Pentecostal anointing (as is the Church), but Sons of God under a Tabernacles anointing.

David said of Israel in Psalm 82:6, "all of you are sons of the Most High." That was true, but they were very imperfect sons. Israel had a Passover-level of faith, enough to leave Egypt at Passover, but they lacked Pentecostal faith when they refused to hear His voice at Sinai.

In the New Testament, 1 John 3:2 says of the Church, "Beloved, now we are the children of God." They were sons, or children of God having a Pentecostal-level of faith through the events recorded in Acts 2. But he adds, "and it has not appeared as yet what we SHALL BE," anticipating a greater anointing yet to come.

If the Church had been able to retain the Holy Spirit's manifested presence beyond the first century, it would have created a much better world in the centuries that followed. But it was not perfect, for Pentecost was a leavened feast as prophesied in the law (Lev. 23:17).

Nonetheless, because the anointing of "Saul" was genuinely from God, the Church was given its full allotment of time according to Saul's pattern. Forty years became forty Jubilee cycles. This gave Saul more than enough time to prove himself to be unworthy of ruling in the Kingdom of God. He has now been replaced by "David," the company of overcomers who have been prepared since the beginning to rule in the Tabernacles Age to come.

Most of these overcomers have lived and died in past generations. But like Caleb and Joshua, they must be alive on earth when the time comes to "cross the Jordan." For this reason, "the dead in Christ will rise first" (1 Thess. 4:16). Paul says the single "trumpet" will sound, signifying the calling forth of the "princes" and "heads" of the people, as prophesied in the law (Num. 10:4).

The purpose of the first resurrection is to bring forth the overcomers to rule as administrators in the earth. They must be given a physical body, clothed in "woolen" garments (Ez. 44:17-19) which signify physical bodies, in order to be able to relate to the rest of the world's population. They will "reign on the earth" (Rev. 5:10), along with the rest of the overcomers who were alive at the time of the first resurrection.

These "children of God" will be empowered by the anointing of Tabernacles and will be like Jesus Christ Himself after He was raised from the dead.

With a perfect set of administrators on earth, having in them the Word of God that proceeds from their mouths as a sharp Sword of the Spirit, the real work of bringing the world under the authority of Christ will begin and not fail. They will not need to force any man to submit to Christ. When men see the manifested Sons of God, they will want to know how they can come into that same experience.

This, I believe, will cause a spiritual revolution to take place all over the earth. The Stone Kingdom will grow throughout the next millennium until it fills the whole earth (Dan. 2:35).