Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

State holidays are always highly representative of all the evils that God talks about in His word: idolatry, evils, wicked men, workers of iniquity, statism, patriotism, the worship of men, etc. “Veteran’s Day” is one of the great ones. As if  “Memorial Day” or “Independence Day” wasn’t enough idolatry for the State for the whole year, we once again have another day where we watch millions of idolatrous fools praise the State rather than God—and this is a dichotomy that men must choose between—for everything they have or think they have. (Oh, and don’t forget “Flag Day”). 

The sin of idolatry is everywhere on “Veteran’s Day,” as it is always. Though it would make more sense for it to exist among those who claim no such allegiance to Christ, since men without God are highly likely to make a god out of government, this veneration and worship of the State is unfortunately found among millions of men who call themselves Christians, too. We can find thousands of comments online of “Christians” praising the military, thanking soldiers rather than God for everything, “praying for our police,” and repeating the tired slogans of the State like “freedom isn’t free.”

Here’s but one standard account that’s typical among these idolaters. 

“Happy Veterans Day to all who have served this great nation of ours. We are grateful for the sacrifices you’ve made so that we might live in a nation of freedom. May God bless you greatly today and every day!”

Sometimes it seems like these people were all trained in the same school to say the same things until you realize how sin works and that such idolatry is right within the man. Though propaganda helps to make statist idolaters, it isn’t solely what turns men toward this sin of statism; men are ready in their hearts to say such stupid things as “God bless our troops.” They have no problem turning what God says He hates into “blessings.” While God “hates all workers of iniquity” (Psalm 5:5) and “abhors the man of bloodshed’ (Psalm 5:6), they turn it around and say God approves of men who have strapped on boots for Babylonian empires. They may have made sacrifices to Moloch or Baal, but not for God and liberty. 

“Veteran’s Day” is thus just another day of idolatry toward the State and its violent systems, which is everything that God is against. Our statist society that these men praise is the very type of society of which the prophets speak: full of statism, idolatry, and violence, and scarcely a soul who sees through it. This is a land that is full of blood (Isa 1:15). The setting of America is exactly the same as all the political systems of old that the Biblical authors wrote about — and with the flags, national anthems, the guise of democracy, and other such idols and propagandistic devices, maybe even a more finely tuned one. As one prophet observed, 

“As a well gushes its water, so she pours out her evil. Violence and destruction resound in her; sickness and wounds are ever before Me” (Jeremiah 6:7). 

And another, 

“Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger?” (Ezekiel 8:7).

It is these very systems—political power brought against a people—that the prophets were exhorting the people to end. 

“For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Enough, O princes of Israel! Cease your violence and oppression, and do what is just and right. Stop dispossessing My people, declares the Lord GOD'” (Ezekiel 45:9).

Alas, our people are still praising the beast system and are convinced that its servants (and not God) are their liberators. These “Christians” think soldiers bring freedom and salvation rather than God, and they don’t even see the contradiction. They are fooled enough to hold opposing ideas, like, “I love God, but I’m voting for Trump.”

Who is your savior?

Judging by the millions of people who see no problems or contradictions between “God and country” or “God bless our troops,” you would think that these ideas go hand in hand. Indeed, many are driven away from God precisely because of people like this, whom skeptics understandably don’t want to be associated with. (It is easy for one who doesn’t know any better, ie., hasn’t read the Bible, to think that God’s word must be statist because most all of His professing representatives are). But these are the errors of men and not the word of God. 

These things are contradictions. You cannot have God as your protector, and Pharaoh. You have to decide who your protector is: God, or statist militaries. God’s people trust in the Lord as their protection. Yet, tens of millions of professing Christians can’t decide whether God is their protector and shield, or whether they need Pharaoh’s soldiers to “protect” them. They, of course, claim both. They profess God’s name (in vain), but then praise soldiers and police officers as being the source of freedom. They plaster “In God We Trust” on their courthouses and police cars, as they go and rob God’s people for a living.

Despite the millions upon millions of “God bless our troops” fools in this country, according to God there is a choice involved. Not only are they not compatible, but they are mutually-exclusive and one needs to decide who their protector really is. God makes it clear that those who trust in armies and soldiers do not trust in God. 

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the LORD” (Isaiah 31:1).

Limiting God

When God is reduced to nothing more than a spiritual matter of soul-saving, men can claim that they need men (i.e., States) to fill in the gaps and provide for their “national defense” and other such social needs. They act as if God doesn’t work in the area of protection and hasn’t provided any ethical instructions in such matters, cause and effect relationships for social order, or simply has no relevance to the real world beyond going to heaven when we die. This arbitrary division of God into the “spiritual realm,” where God isn’t good for much more than soul-saving, prayer, and vague praise, opens the door wide for men (ie., the false god of government) to step in and do all the things (protect, clothe, house, feed) that God himself tells us He will do for us. This limiting of God an otherworldly spiritual realm is how we get people who say such evil, blasphemous, and foolish things as, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.” It’s how we get men who think that without “the troops” they wouldn’t be safe and free.

But God’s protection is not limited to an eternal salvation of the soul, and He never said it was. Trusting in the Lord for our protection from enemies, which state rulers have falsely claimed to provide, is what God was always trying to tell us to rely on if we wanted to avoid statist Babylonian societies like ours today. We see this all throughout God’s word. 

God will also save us “out of the hand of [our] enemies” (Nehemiah 9:27). God saves His people “from the hands of those who plundered them” (Judges 2:16). God gives us “salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us” and “deliverance from hostile hands” (Luke 1:71, 74). “National defense” is not some area where suddenly God doesn’t operate and we need to raise up statist armies for protection. We were to entrust God also for our protection from enemies, from the Pharaohs of the world that supposedly (as most people would tell you) necessitate that we raise up tax-funded militaries of our own. But the prophets had trusted in God to save them, not “the troops.”

“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. For the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and He also has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2). 

Notice Isaiah doesn’t say “the American soldier is my strength”; he cites the Lord God as his salvation. Isaiah didn’t believe that we need man-kings, executive offices, human lawmakers, legislative bodies, or state soldiers to save us. He said, 

“For the Lord is our Judge, The Lord is our Lawgiver, The Lord is our King; He will save us” (Isaiah 33:22). 

Most people say the opposite: Men are my judge, my congressman is my lawgiver, the president is our king, the soldiers keep us free…they will save us.

Our slavery

Far from trusting in men and praising soldiers and Pharaohs for “freedom” and “protection” rather than God, this sinful idolatry is the very thing that brings the Egyptian slave society upon us. It is forgetting God and trusting in men—specifically for protection—that brings God’s judgment upon us. 

“In that day their strong cities will be like forsaken thickets and summits, abandoned to the Israelites and to utter desolation. For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge. Therefore, though you cultivate delightful plots and set out cuttings from exotic vines, though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout, yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain” (Isaiah 17:9-11).

We don’t have a free society, contrary to all the lies of veteran-worshipers on this day. We have a socialist slave society. And we got it precisely because millions of men trusted in Egypt to save them. If they knew the Lord, instead of knowing nothing but the boots of the American solider and police officer, they would know that trusting in militaries always backfires and brings statism across the land.

“Look now, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him” (Isaiah 26:6).

Those who praise governments and their booted agents for “saving” them have forgotten God. We are everywhere told not to trust in men. “Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save” (Psalm 146:3). But those who attribute the liberty we don’t have to militaries say that salvation comes from men. It is blasphemous for these people to invoke His great name alongside such evil praises to men, because they don’t know Him. God is praised as the God who takes His people out of Egypt — who smashes the systems and their soldiers that these people praise. The salvation we need is precisely from these very men—Pharaohs, their armies, their police officers, their judges, and the rest of their system makers— that most foolish “Christians” praise as being servants of God and freedom!

God is our everything, not just a soul-saver that leaves us needing Egyptian soldiers when it comes to physical protection from enemies. 

“My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation. My stronghold, my refuge, and my Savior, You save me from violence” (2 Samuel 22:3). 

Anyone who truly trusts in God does not need the false shield of Pharaoh and his army. 

“But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head” (Psalm 3:3). 

We will take shade under God’s wing, not man’s. 

“For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy” (Psalm 61:3). 

God makes it very clear that we’re not to trust in these statist systems and their standing armies for our protection, but that our faith should be in the Lord for all things, not just the security of our souls in the afterlife. You either trust in God or men. 

“Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7).

How did almost everyone miss this!? How can “Christians” go around praising chariots and horses in one breath, and then invoke God’s good name in the next!? We were not supposed to raise up statist militaries because other people around the world did this. 

“When you go out to war against your enemies and see horses, chariots, and an army larger than yours, do not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, is with you” (Deuteronomy 20:1).

It is not like these people haven’t read through the scriptures. Indeed, to show how deeply lost our people are, someone the other day cited this very verse as proof that God approves of state militaries and their conquests and plunder. I don’t know how he figured that much. Clearly, this verse is one of hundreds of others where we’re told to rely on God rather than men for our protection, where we’re told that the big guys—the statist militaries that rob enough people to fund great amounts of military gear—are not to be feared for their size, but that a smaller and physically inferior people with God on their side are actually stronger.

We don’t need statist militaries, which are funded by robbing the productive population of hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a murderous terrorist organization that claims to fight “terrorists” and keep us “safe” and “free.” To be free, we need only to trust in God! 

“And because they cried out to God in battle, they were helped against their enemies, and the Hagrites and all their allies were delivered into their hands. Because they put their trust in God, He answered their prayers” (1 Chronicles 5:20). 

Fear and statism

An essential part of the lesson to “fear God” was to not fear men. “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25). When men fear men (eg., “the Russians”), they set up communist systems of their own to “protect” themselves. They get scared and say they need States to protect them. But States operate on fear. They know that if they scare the people about some foreign state, some domestic terror attack, or some alleged virus, that they can gain their compliance. The word of God should keep us resilient against such lies and fears induced by the rulers. 

“I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about” (Psalm 3:6). 

“I have set the LORD always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken” (Psalm 16:8). 

“The LORD is my light and my salvation–whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—whom shall I dread?” (Psalm 27:1). 

Amen. 

If men ever read the Psalms or took them seriously when they did, they could never trust in men for their protection and would see the downright foolishness and evil in doing so. Anyone who ever read the Psalms and trusted in God could never say something as stupid as “Happy Veteran’s Day.” And I will dare to say that anyone who does say it simply doesn’t know the Lord. Someone needs to say it.

A little exegesis of Psalm 23 

As I have said, it isn’t as if these “Christian” military-worshipers and participants in these evils are entirely unfamiliar with their Bibles. They have read at least parts of them, but evidently didn’t take them seriously enough. Let us turn to one that I know most professing Christians are familiar with, that way we can’t be accused of pulling some obscure passages as our defense against the idolatry of statism and the need for an exclusive faith in the Lord.

But even one of the most popular psalms, known and even partly memorized by nearly all Christians, seemingly wasn’t good enough to get men exclusively under the Lord. 

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of His name. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 23:1-6).

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want”  —  Our only guidance should come from God, who will provide for us our every need. We are not in need of things like the “United States Armed Forces.” These are agencies that are opposed to God and seek to draw men away from the Lord. 

“He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters”  —  God brings peace, not men. In fact, men bring the opposite of green pastures: they have for us warzones and prisons, where they place men who don’t obey the ruling elites. Contrary to God’s plan of green pastures, men—soldiers, police officers, judges—carry God’s people into cages over bogus charges like traveling over green pastures without a permission slip from Pharaoh. 

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me”  —  No matter how many “Chinese,” “Russians,” “North Koreans,” or “terrorists,” are out there, we are still going to trust in God. But this is what the statist says: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I became afraid, and I quit trusting in you God, and I set up a state military to keep me safe, and they comfort me.”

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”  —  God is with us. Again, the Christian statist (contradiction) twists this one backward. They don’t trust in God to prepare a table for them, but they set up their own table (an army) to deal with their enemies. 

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever”  —  Our faith in God is to be maintained no matter what. There is never an instance when we would abandon God and trust in men. Yet this is what “Christian statists” (contradiction) do. They say, rather, “Surely the goodness of the military will follow us all our lives, we will dwell in the house of Pharaoh for protection.”

Trusting in God or men 

How it is that men could read the scriptures and still turn around and praise state militaries is some of the greatest social phenomena ever. Not to mention that the same cycle of men trusting in statism and getting enslaved has—judging by hundreds of centuries before Christ when the prophets wrote of this causal law—been going on for millennia. Not only have men not learned, but they positively praise the evils. Some things never change. 

You start to know how the prophets felt—no one would ever listen to them—once you stay in God’s word and compare it to the word of most men, even those who claim to be serving the Lord. It’s a sad sight indeed to see our people praising the military as their salvation, and not only that, but claiming to be Christians. 

Anyone truly trusting in God and putting their full faith in Him cannot also give it to men, i.e., government soldiers. These are yet another idol in our world of false gods. Any Christian should know that “a horse is a vain hope for salvation; even its great strength cannot save” (Psalm 33:17). 

The prophets always taught us to trust in God rather than men, as trusting in men means that men will fall for the lies and ideologies that support political plunder societies. The prophets always explained that the reason for a people becoming captive to men—our people today no less than the ones of old—was due to men trusting in Egyptian systems rather than God. 

“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD” (Jeremiah 17:5). 

But men gave into the fears of men that the scriptures warned us against, and they fell into the trap of thinking they needed to build up a powerful military because of some foreign bogey like “the Chinese!” Again, if they read the scriptures, their faith would have remained with God. 

“Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or terrified of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6).

Freedom or slavery?

Most people think our statist society today is a “free” one, and even that it’s the very order God wanted us to have. And yet the opposite is the case: this is a slave society that has turned its back on God and is enslaved for that very reason. Trusting in politicians is not going to get us out of political bondage, as it is the reason that God punishes us with it.

Freedom comes only when men submit to the Lord. As long as men believe they have a need for human lords, they will continue to be ruled by them. The statist system of the world is not God’s kingdom. Soldiers are servants of the evil system of statism, and they fought for socialism and slavery, not “freedom.” They lost their legs in a vain defense of an empire that’s crumbling, not for the prosperity of their people.

Those who thank Pharaoh’s veterans “for their many contributions to America’s victories over tyranny and oppression” are fools. They don’t know God nor liberty, and thus get neither. Yet this thinking is abundant in this idolatrous society. People can thank God (for what if men have them covered?) and state servants in the same sentence for liberty. “Lord God, Almighty Father, creator of mankind and author of peace, as we are ever mindful of the cost paid for the liberty we possess, we ask you to bless the members of our armed forces.”

While men think that this is “freedom” and they praise Babylon and her “vets” as the best thing to ever happen to the world, the prophets, speaking the word of God, always saw that these societies were based on idolatry and violence. As one of the great prophets of God said,

“For since I spoke, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily” (Jeremiah 20:8). 

How many men say this? They say the opposite! “For since I spoke, I cried out, this is freedom, and God bless our troops for it!” They won’t call-out the plunder society for what it is, but defend it as something that it’s not.

Men who know God do not see peace, liberty, and greatness where statist idolaters do. They say, rather, “I see violence and strife in the city” (Psalm 55:9). They see that “destruction and violence are before me. Strife is ongoing, and conflict abounds” (Habakkuk 1:3). 

The state-worshipers of this country are going to be shocked and surprised when God smashes the beloved statist system that they have been caught praising. But destroying statist societies—even if by allowing them to ruin themselves from within—is what God always does.

“Behold, the days are coming when I will punish the idols of Babylon. Her entire land will suffer shame” (Jeremiah 51:47).

They are going to be very surprised when state militaries that they thought were their saviors and protectors, and were beautiful examples of empires on earth, are turned upside down by God.

“Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame, and the refuge of Egypt’s shade your disgrace” (Isaiah 30:3).

Those who say such dumb things as “America is the best country in the world” and attribute this to its military might are in for a rude awakening.

“Those who made Cush their hope and Egypt their boast will be dismayed and ashamed” (Isaiah 20:5).

Prayer 

Our heavenly Father, please move on some people and change their hearts. Their minds are in a wicked place. They thank men, rather than You, for their false salvation. And they can’t see a problem with it, or how they got enslaved for doing this. They foolishly think they’re free. Please work on their hearts, God. Wake up these lost sheep and bring them home. They’re deeply unrepentant and they do not wish to give up their lies. Every time I point out their foolishness, they remain ignorant. They never want to see their idolatry when I point it out to them, and they always make excuses, even citing Your word to justify their sins. They want to keep praising murderers and thieves. Your true servants trust in You for salvation and protection, and we will never turn to men for these things. We know that human rulers are false gods and thus false protectors, and that their monopolistic and coercive control over these services is used just to fool everyone into buying into their evil system. Please be with us as our foolish, Caesar-worshiping neighbors make our world very dangerous. Amen.