The People's Defenses

The People's Defenses

2/28/21

Betrayal in the name of leadership represents no higher form of personal, national, and spiritual treason.  It is difficult enough to know that friends let you down by giving away secrets and personal information you entrusted them with, but when those who are in leadership do the same seditious acts against you and many around you, it is almost too much to bear.  How far do we allow such pluckings from our lives to continue before we take up our fight, and how do we respond when we realize that our entire defensive system has been torn away from those who vowed to protect it?  It is time we rise up and stand against those who wish us harm, even if those people include leaders and family members.  God is the only source of healing and stamina that provides enough strength to win such struggles, fighting our enemy is hard enough but when our own flesh and blood take aim at our lives we cannot allow such activities to go unnoticed.  God wants us to be ready and able to fight the enemy and we need all of our spiritual parts intact in order for us to accomplish this command.

As a military history lover, I come across reports that either praise leaders or condemn them.  One hopes that when the time comes to engage the enemy that the leader over us will have the right stuff present in them so that our fight will be fair and equal.  A chosen leader may seem like they have it all together on the outside during training exercises but true nerve testing comes into play when the enemy is first looked upon on the battlefield.  When the shooting starts, it is quickly obvious if your leader is any good or not, for they will either anticipate the movements of the enemy or they will stay focused on their own immediate position and sit and hope for the best.  It is this type of leader who is not fit for command and somehow has snowed the higher-ups in believing they know what they are doing.  in other words, they have plucked the skin and flesh of the people below them all the way to be bone and left the entire group hanging out in the open with no supervision or true leader present.

From the moment that first shot whizzed past your head, the quality of your defensive mechanisms kick into action, but if they have been eaten away by those above you, it is evident that this probably will be a very bad day for you and those with you.  We are taught naturally to trust the people over us no matter what the circumstances may look like, but anyone can put up a smokescreen heavy enough to blind us from the truth.  It is also our responsibility to inform the highest command when we believe that our provisional leadership is not worthy of our presence, but how many times do we ignore such a fact just to keep the status quo from changing?  It is this trait of ours that costs many lives when the static exercise turns into a mobile unit about to engage in battle.  Sadly, at this point, we find out that the leaders that were chosen for us lied to us, and instead of drilling us to be combat-ready that we were siphoned down to the bone and unfit to fight.  Now, it is too late to make any changes to the command structure and we must make adjustments as they warrant, praying all the time that the enemy will hold off or take another route around us.

How does one think people feel when it becomes obvious that the leader chosen for them has been selling them short by faking their devotion and knowledge to the cause of the fight?  Even worse, as referred to above, how does one feel when they realize that their own leaders have walked them astray, right into the enemy's hands or traps?  In any case, all trust and confidence in leadership are gone and the mad scramble to find help in a hurry begins.  Finding out that you never had a fighting chance against an enemy due to the fact that your leaders led you astray, is quite damning and should never be tolerated on any level.  However, this type of betrayal happens a lot and not just on the physical level alone.  Many times we are misguided on the spiritual level as well and while our bodies are guaranteed death on the physical aspect anyway, the spiritual aspect is on another level.

Equally repulsive, spiritual betrayal goes against all aspects of honesty when it comes to God and being taught His Ways.  Just as on the physical level we should always have no doubt whatsoever that what our pastors, teachers, and other spiritual leaders tell us to be true.  The information that these church leaders give us has been instilled for years sometimes even decades and we have had no reason to doubt such information.  Unfortunately, we have plenty of examples that prove our beliefs differently and this type of misinformation (lies) has the same devastating effect on our spiritual lives as the physical.  We see this type of betrayal in our Bible reference for this article, it is actually a continuum from an earlier article that used Micah 3:1 as its source.  Today, we will be using Micah 3:2 and its content is as follows:

Micah 3:2

"Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;"

Hebrew

"You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from My people and strip the flesh from their bones."

This is not an overnight process, it takes time to fully deceive people, and how easily this process can be achieved if you are the one sitting in the place of leadership and judgment.  When leaders decide that right is wrong and good is evil, they have been manipulated enough to bring into effect the entire circle that Satan began in the Garden of Eden.  Also, when this process is complete, there need not be much further aggressive tactics needed to make sure plans are followed, only additional situations to reinforce those plans.  At this point, the justification for not following through with evil plans becomes the goal of deepening their sources so that the world can thrive more within their lives.  The passage we have before us here gives some detail about how evil the leaders of Israel and Judah had become over time, and more disturbing is that they had no intention of changing their ways or their hearts.

How deep was their evil?  It was deep enough that their daily activities stripped the flesh from the bones of the people they served.  In order for this to occur, the outer skin had to already be in such a condition that there was no function to it or if the skin had already been torn away.  There is no defense for a person when the outer skin has been taken off the body, it is a guarantee that infection will set in and destroy what remains of the infected person's body.  We have horror stories of people getting burned over many parts of their body from various causes; these are natural and sometimes occur without warning.  But to have these types of conditions deliberately performed on people you are supposed to serve, it a horrendous crime and for this, there cannot be any excuse.

Now, comes the tough portion of this article for God wants all of us to understand that we are being skinned alive by our own leaders.  As stated in previous paragraphs and articles before it is easy, yet scary, to believe that secular and worldly leaders would do such a process all in the name of political sovereignty and gain.  We are currently witnessing this come to pass today with all of the wicked legislation being drafted and passed into law.  What everyone who voted for such a law fails to recognize is that what is stated in these acts go totally against what God deems as His Order, which means that we are on a collision course with the truth about our existence and I can guarantee that we shall not win, God has NEVER failed or lost at anything, so what gives us the idea we are smarter than Him now?  The truth that God has never failed at anything should be the sole reason why we should never go down the path that Israel took in 1 Samuel 8; logically, why would we decide to choose a path of loss instead of a path of continual victory?

When leaders decide to follow their own ways and thinking and change the status of the protection over and around their people, only bad things can result in such a move.  The intentions of these decisions may be of good nature, but we can never forget that the Ways of God is totally different from what man decides are his ways.  When the world is chosen as a direction, the defenses that are effective and eternal are taken down and thrown away.  There is no example higher than this than what our passage of Scripture says, for it even goes all the way down to taking the flesh off of our bones.  God has always placed the initiative in our hearts to do what is right and what He sees as good, but through our acceptance of the sinful nature in our lives, this pure living gets overruled.  Thus, our tendencies lean toward the world and when comforted by fellow makers, it is an easy ride to the top.

This passage refers to the spiritual leaders of Judah and of Israel.  The entire nation of Jacob was in turmoil with their lives and they had forgotten that their spiritual conduct would automatically flow from them in the physical aspect.  Their spiritual losses were so apparent that they were now making decisions that publicly defiled God and His Ways, thus establishing a pattern of destruction that would eventually allow their enemies to simply walk in and take over every aspect of their lives.  A return to slavery due to the fact of their own disbelief and worldly ways seems like a harsh establishment to incorporate again, but it is exactly what they had to endure.  It is easy for one to study this verse and wonder why Israel continued to allow corrupt leaders to serve in vital posts, but look at our examples of today and that thought paints a very similar or even identical picture.  Oh, they reached a pinnacle alright, the pinnacle the deceptive and divisive life because one can reach no higher when hate over good is reached.  Remember, when something is torn away from an attached position, it shall hurt and then die.

It is obvious that Israel continued its decline in the seriousness of the tribe of Levi and what God had set it off to be.  It is horrific to watch what occurs to Israel and Judah throughout the Old Testament because of this condition.  It is also a disgrace that the Church has allowed Satan to invade deep enough into our hearts to allow the same procedures and processes to develop, and all the while, we sit and watch him do his work without even standing up to defend God and the mission that He gave us to complete.  People wonder why our nation and many other nations around us are struggling in every area of our existence, this is the reason why it is because we have taken God out of our hearts and placed our ways as the first priority.  This was confirmed this week in our Congress when one of the Representatives stood up and defended the Order of Creation by God claiming that He created only male and female.  Immediately after he finished another Representative stood us and said that the Will of God has no place in this Congress and then sat back down.

So, God asks us again, do we want the exercises of Judah and Israel to thrive in our materialistic hearts, or do we wish to pursue Him and His Ways of eternal life?  I believe the answer to that question is easy to concur when talking about the secular world but it is also painfully obvious that the Church does not want God to rule over her either.  We no longer stand up for what is right in the eyes of God, nor do we proclaim His Words to be eternally true simply because we do not believe in their content and meaning.  God wants our hearts to be healed and to live as they were created, not as by-products of a deadly world that has no purpose or direction.  Church, we can truly change the world if we just return to God again and allow His voice to flow from our hearts, the world is in deep trouble and there are countless lives that do not know God at all.  The fields of harvest lie right next door and down the same street we live, our nation no longer exists for God but for ourselves.  This is the harvest and we need to make sure the harvest is done correctly.  Repent, and turn from our wicked ways so that God can bless this nation once again so that our defenses can be fully repaired and strengthened through the mighty hand of God.

DLB