July 4, 2020
Where Is Glory Due?
Every entity has an opportunity to bring glory to its creator. Great paintings are put on display for all to admire the work of its creator, the painter. Birds chirp and sing glory to the One who provides them with food, life and purpose. Every great work brings glory to its maker.
When we look at history and the people of nations, past and present, we see that in their glorious stages, they too gave glory. In its greatest hour; the Greek honored Zeus. The Romans at the height of their empire gave honor to Caesar. Some European nations honored their kings with praise as gods. The Germans honored Hitler. In its greatest hour of wealth, power and dominance in the earth, who has America honored? After reaching great wealth, power and esteem from around the world, America selected an American representative of wealth and pride in the person of Donald Trump as its president, who is representative and a culmination of America’s religious belief in a prosperity gospel and where wealth and white superiority is held up as the golden standard for the nation. We see in his attitude toward history and culture an ideology of “whiteness” that typifies the attitude of the nation’s majority class who finds glory in themselves and their accomplishments. Their greed, selfishness, prejudices and pride drive them to seek a superiority that mirrors that of Germany’s Hitler and his egotistical reign. Their blind drive prevents them from realizing their identical pattern of the evil of the past. Men without God’s approval and glory seek to bring glory to themselves because their failure to recognize, honor and give glory to God leaves them naked.
Learning Reverence
The bible says train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it (Pro 22:6). It declares: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Pro 29:15). If we did a search of the worst world leaders and the chaos they caused, we would find things went wrong in their childhood. People without good parenting lack balance and respect for authority. Few, if any, of us have had a perfect childhood but it would take a terribly demented childhood or mind to become a brutal, murdering monster seeking to destroy multitudes like the actions of Stalin, Idi Amin, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Lenin and others.
What has happened to America that the nation has become before the whole world a wild, untrained degenerate? The nation started out in religious discipline, respect for God, naming Him in founding documents, on dollar bills and offering Him prayer in gatherings. How has it come to the place where its people now believe that they, themselves, are gods; like the Romans and Greeks? What happened to the humility of its people? There was always a wild strand running through the nation from the Wild West with its carousing, saloons, bank robberies, gambling and public spitting; but there was always a law and enforcement to bring them back into check. A bounty would be offered to bring the outlaws down and society would shun the lawless. However, today people want to invest in the outlaws and get in on the looting of others.
The wild, Wild West was tamed in part by women in society who stood up against their husband’s bad manners in saloons, with liquor and their omission from the vote. Traveling ministers worked the circuit to bring moral values to the west that needed literacy and moral guidance. All of American society grew more cultural and shame came to the lawless. In America’s more recent history it became popular again to be the rabble-rouser, a Burt Reynold’s “Smokey and the Bandit,” James Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause,” Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” or today’s “Oceans” crowd. Ministers today are silenced by the donation plate and fail to rein in lawlessness. The ministers, themselves, have taken a center stage now and seek their own glory rather than bringing all due glory to the God they purport to represent. Society and ministry that used to stop the degradation of society in America’s past have now turned its resources to the pursuit of wealth at the expense of morality.
Practice of Reverence
What happens when the lawful no longer wants to invest in bringing down the lawless? We get Trumped! Every family has its wild card, a drunken idiot, greedy scoundrel, or rebel rouser that brings shame to the whole family. Honorable families refuse to be defined by such persons and will condemn the person or refuse fellowship with the rebel. Yet we see in every nation and through the ages persons who managed to overthrow all familiar boundaries to rise to power and abuse multitudes. Only the outcry of the oppressed rising to the surface and piercing the conscience of a leader or the masses has been able to deliver a captive population. The righteous whether a single person or a group must always challenge evil’s attempt to silence what’s right. America has honored the rights of the individual to make his or her voice known. No other nation has given the individual such privileges to criticize leadership and America would do an injustice to its founding creed to oppose that right.
Ungodly leaders will always try to overthrow good as long as there is something to gain and a people willing to be silenced. The oppressors of every nation and ethnicity have proven that they will stop at nothing and no amount of cruelty to glorify themselves in power and riches. If America, with its divided power and freedom granted to the people, cannot stand against ruthless oppression; it is doubtful that any people could. It may indeed take a village to raise a child but it also takes a village to overthrow a tyrant. America is made up of a union of states but it also takes the union of its people to keep fighting for its freedom. If the majority keeps silent against wicked governance, then its liberty will be lost like that of so many other nations.
Has America forgotten its former stance?
America the Beautiful
Oh, beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
The God that America has sworn allegiance to and vowed to love has reason to be disappointed of what the nation has become:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. Mar 12:30
Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Rev 2:4
The God to whom America has sworn its love and devotion has also taught us how He wants to be honored. Scriptures teach that God is a jealous God and will cause false gods to bow down before Him. Yet America that used to believe those words is now defying His guidance for its own self-glory but the position of God is well documented:
A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? Mal 1:6
For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof. 1Co10:26
The fate of Jezebel and Ahab attest to the fact that the highest leaders in the land have not power to prevail against the Creator of the world. The prophecy had already been spoken that their fate was to be devoured by dogs and the prophecy came to pass. From the least to the greatest, we all owe our respect to God and He alone deserves the glory for all He has done for the nation of America. A nation that honors God receives His favor but those that dishonor Him receive His dishonor. America’s strength has always been in honoring the God that has blessed her. May America remember her God!
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. Ps 33:12
Truth and Life Ministries of Christ with Apostle Joyce Reba Payne 