THE EMMAUS WALK PRESENTS:
"My Basis for Hope for America,"
by Ronald Ginther
This page of the article is in progress.
I will be citing the Mayflower Compact, which is one of the primary founding documents of our Christian nation, and quoting from it as much as possible.
Please go and read it yourself on the History website cited:
"All About History, Mayflower Compact
For this article, I will be also citing Scripture, that chiefly has to do with the case of the Gibeonites, a heathen Amorite nation that tricked the Israelites and misled Joshua into making a covenant with them, which protected them forever from being slain by the Israelites as God commanded Joshua and the people of Israel to utterly destroy. God, nevertheless, respected that covenant, unholy or unwise (as in the case of the Israelites) as the signatories were. It must be understood, that when God sets his signature or imprimature of His holy Name and Honor upon a covenant with unholy man, it is settled. God will never go back on his covenant, though man will always go back on it, being what he is. Saul, centuries after the covenant was made by Joshua with the crafty Gibeonites, killed some Gibeonites, and God struck eoniIsrael in punishment. Why was Israel suffering. Inquiring was made, and a holy prophet came with the answer from God, that Saul had killed Gibeonites, which was against the covenant made by Joshua with the Gibeonites centuries in the past. God had forgotten the covenant, but Saul forgot, and everyone after him forgot it too! God punished Israel for what the Gibeonites suffered, and His wrath was only turned aside when the Israelites made recompence to God and the Gibeonites for transgressing the covenant.
This seems incredible, but it happened! We learn from this, or we do not learn. I choose to learn something.
Our nation's Pilgrim forefathers (also called Separtists) drew up a holy "compact" or covenant with God aboard ship at Plymouth, then everyone signed it, great and small, numbering in their company 41 who were adults and Christians, and God was called to ratify it, as it was presented to the Lord God Almighty, so that this new civil government in society might be blessed by God and survive and prosper and not perish--why? For the colony's sake alone? No! For the Gospel's sake, for the glory of God's sake! They stated so, as you can see yourself on the compiled copy given on the History website that is approved by historians and scholars as most representing the original document drawn from primary quoted sources, a document which is said to be lost.
God approved, which was critically needed, as this little colony was seemingly doomed to die (losing half the signatories during the winter that was now upon them, they arrived so late in the year, well beyond any date they could grow any food to sustain them).
What does this Pilgrim experience have to to with the Gibeoites in far away, far back ancient Israel? It has everything to do, not only with both parties, but to a third party, us today, the terminal generation, it appears, of the great experiment in liberty called the the United States of America.
Howso? Simple! The Gibeonites were able to save their lives, families, goods, cattle, and cities from certain extinction, sure doom and destruction, by tricking the Israelites into a covenant that their God knew was fraudulent, but yet when his anointed servant and successor to Moses, Joshua, signed it, God backed up his man, right or wrong. God backs up the holy office of the man, though he will punish the man afterwards for derelictions of duty. We can have no doubt that later Joshua rued the day he had acted on his feelings instead of what he must have sensed was not the right thing to do. Also, he failed completely to inquire of God for wisdom regarding this prospective covenant with these strangers from supposely a long distance away. He made a similar big mistake when he failed to ask about going up against Ai, an enemy heathen stronghold city, and the Israelite force was badly beaten, many killed, and the name of God given reproach among the enemy for the defeat of Israel.
The truth soon came out. When he discovered that the Gibeonites lived only a short distance away and had tricked him into a covenant with them, he was no doubt outraged at his own stupidity and foolishness. But most of all he must have grieved, that he did not go and ask God first what to do, but took it upon himself to act from his own wisdom and mostly his own feelings, rather than from true wisdom, which God only possesses.
It was too late then of course to annul the covenant. It could not be annuled, in fact. God was made a party to it when Joshua, his appointed man, signed it. In God's eyes, it was a done deal. In God's eyes, He must uphold it forever, no matter how badly man on his side let down and broke and transgressed it.
History in Israel bore that out, as we have already related.
But now our part comes into it. If God could not go back on this faulty-founded covenant between the ancient Israelites and the heathen Gibeonites, how on earth could he go back on the solemn covenant made by our devout, God-fearing Pilgrim forefathers on the Mayflower with each other and Almighty God?
Of course, God cannot go back on it. Man can, since he is a failure waiting to fail again, but God cannot. He has never failed, and will never fail, and can never fail! America can transgress it, but God cannot annul it. God will always uphold it. Americans have transgressed this holy covenant, time and time again, in fact, but God still upholds his end of it, absolutely. God sees the past of America as if the events of the signing of the Mayflower Compact were just a couple days, at the most, ago. The ink is still wet on that parchment, in His eyes!
We have reason, I have reason, and a firm basis for hope too, that God will continue to uphold his end of the covenant we have already badly, proudly, disastrously transgressed in multiple ways by our sins and rebellion, pride and arrogance. We must repent, that is a given, of what we have done in transgressing this covenant and not holding true to the stipulations our forefathers wrote into the covenant that would govern their side of the "bargain." We have failed utterly, so don't bother about the particulars, we have transgressed them all, absolutely! Look around, what you see is proof we have transgressed the covenant, for the woeful conditions of society and the churches are the direct result. Plagues and troubles and even judgments of all kinds have been unleased, allowed by God, upon us, as a result too, the means God uses to drive us back to Him in desperation and humble repentance.
No, we must repent of all we have done, and plead for the mercy and grace of God, on the basis of the Shed Blood of Jesus Christ, that He forgive us, as individuals, as a people, as a nation.
God will come through for us and be merciful and forgiving to us once again if we do this needful thing. Do you doubt it? Do you doubt it? Well, repent of that too! Well, don't. Think of the Gibeonites. They tricked the Israelites into an alliance to protect them, through the covenant. Israel's King Saul, who conveniently forgot obedience to God's laws and the Prophet Samuel's instructions regarding God's will for him, later forgot and then broke the covenant and attacked the Gibeonites and killed some of them. God then went to bat for the Gibeonites, and punished Israel until the Israelites cried out to God, why is this happening? God told them through his holy prophet, that Saul had killed the Gibeonites. Not until Israel repented for Saul and made restitution to God and the Gibeonites was God's wrath turned away from them!
That is how much God will uphold even a wicked people like the Gibeonites who were covered by the covenant recognized by God and signed by his servant, Joshua. How much more will God stand up for us, Americans, whose forefathers were not crafty, pagan Gibeonites but devourt, God-fearing Pilgrims!
Yet our generation today must not dare for a second to stand on the holiness of our Pilgrim forefathers and our nation's founders--no, a thousand times no! Most of us have no connection with them, we are almost totally ignorant of them, we scarcely know one of their names. I too am virtually ignorant of them. Yet I know the main facts, which are also connected with the Bible history of the Gibeonite-Israelite covenant, and which has direct bearing on today's dillemma and what we face now in the Nov. 2 election and the chief question of it: whether this nation can be saved from the hands of its enemies (which includes the u.S. Congress, the U.S. President, and the America news media, not to mention the courts and some Supreme Court judges, to name only some of our nation's enemies). Yes, we have enemies beyond our borders, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Mahmoud Achmedinejad of Iran and the Ayatollah and the mullahs with him, Putin of Russia, and communist regime of China, and the North Korean communist dictator, those, including Muslim terrorist and jehadist groups such as Al-Qaida and Hezbollah and Hamas are clear and outspoken enough in their hatred for America. But the enemies within, they are right the most deadly, for they are pulling down our Constitutional liberties one by one through executive orders, appointed Czars, Congressional bills, and Supreme Court and lower court and individual activist judges' rulings.
Our nation, as many people clearly see, is in peril today, not as much from Al-Aqaida or any rogue communist or dictatorial state as from these I have mentioned that constitute the leftist and socialist and authoritarian-leaning U.S. government and judiciary.
God knows all this, and has allowed it, to drive a wayward America with a sleeping church back to him. We must plead the Blood and plead for grace and mercy and forgiveness at his mercy-seat!
There is no other way. But one thing more we can plead, we can boldly plead for the sake of the covenant He made with our forefathers the Pilgrims. It exists still. It isn't just a document held in safekeeping somewhere in our national archives. God holds it in his memory forever, and cannot forget it, nor will he ever choose to go back on it.
As surely as the Bible is true, this is true that I say here. God cannot lie. The Mayflower Compact cannot lie either. The Mayflower Compact is an everlasting covenant, in that God will stand by it forever, as long as America exists on this earth. He will not let us be destroyed, if we only appeal to Him in our distress and need. That held for Israel too, and look! Do you see Israel vanished? Is it extinct? No, God has preserved the Jews through all the eras of history, right down to our prssent day, and despite all their enemies tried to do to exterminate them and render them extinct. Their enemies, many of them, are extinct. Where are the Romans? Where the Amalekites? Where the Babylonians? Where the imperial Persians? Where the Philistines? Where the Inquisition and the Spanish kings? Where the Nazis and Hitler? But not the Jews! They celebrate the victorious deliverance of israel time and again by the hand of God! Their enemies are in hell, in the flames, suffering forever. Now Israel will be saved, not just exist as a people. Israel will come to know Jesus Christ as her Messiah. Individual Jews are saved, and are coming to know Y'shua as Savior and Messiah, to be sure, by the thousands, in fact. The nation not so, but that is coming, soon too, at the end of the coming Tribution and Great Tribulation Period. All will come about according to the Word of God that promises the redemption of the remnant of Israel as her greatest foe, the Anti-Christ, uses all the powers at his disposal to destroy the Jews utterly from the face of the earth. God won't let him do it. God remembers his everlasting covenants with Israel, the Jews, and will come to their aid and save a remnant, and this remnant will then, after the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet are cast alive into the lake of fire, will saved and reign with Christ for a 1,000 years on this rstored Earth.
I cannot tell if there will be an America always. Like many, I see no sign of America in Biblical prophecy in those coming times, and rather think that there will be no America as a nation-state that is like what we know today. I believe it will lose ultimately its sovereignty and power too to the European empire that will be founded on the Roman empire which will be fully revived under the Anti-Christ. But I will not be sad or gloomy about it. I know for this time we face God will remember his covenant with our forefathers the Pilgrims and the Puritans too (we must not forget the Puritans). We must repent and seek God's forgiveness and grace and mercy. God will not turn his ear away from us, as he cannot do that, he must remember the coveant he made with our forefathers.
If you continue doubting (and no amount of proof is sufficient to a professional doubter who lives by unbelief), I cannot help you if Scripture and the Mayflower Compact cannot help you. Scripture cannot help you? American history, Israelite history cannot help you? You are a sad case, friend. But know this, it doesn't depend on you for fulfilment, or me, or what we feel or think. God will come through for us, whether we happent to believe this or not. God moves either with people of faith when he has people of faith, or he will MOVE AROUND THEM WHEN THEY ARE SUNK IN UNBELIEF. He has to. He is God. He will perform his purposes in the earth regardless of whether one man or a million go with him. He performed his purpose in the time of the Great Flood with only one righteous man, Noah, and his family, a total of eight individuals. But he could have done it with just Noah too, and made him a new wife after the voyage was done--Noah was necessary to continue the human race, his wife was optional frosting on the cake. After all, God raised Eve out of Adam's rib, and he could have done it again with Noah.
The point is, God is true to all his covenants, and performs all his purposes, no matter what shape we people are in, spiritually. That is just how God is, and how he operates, always, without exception. if not so, then the Bible is untruth, it is lies, and God himself is a fraud. But that is not the case. Satan is the liar, and every man also a liar (who hasn't told a lie?). But God is true, the One True God. He alone cannot lie, and has never done so, and will never do so. Glory be to his eternal Name!
Heaven and earth will pass away, and America too, sooner or later, but God's Word will never pass away. The Word of God says so! Christ my Lord, the Son of God, said so, and I believe it! You, friend, believe it too! Don't doubt! That is no way to serve and honor God who created you. What have you got to lose in believing God? You have everything to lose believing man, but with God, nothing will be lost, you can only gain richly! Can you disagree with that? I doubt it, if you are are reasonable and can think with a sound mind. God is true, man is not true. The Word of God is true, man's word is flawed and often untrue. We can trust only in God, but vain is the help of man, and it is vain to trust him too for anything important to us. Best trust God. he can not fail anyone who trusts Him, for He is utterly trustworthy. What he promises, what he says He will do, He will do! Without fail! In His Time, too--not in ours, but in His perfect time! Praise His Name!
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