Does God Still Bribe, Oops, Judge Nations?

The Mosaic Law is MORALLY TOXIC.

When the Second Temple was destroyed in AD70, the Jews tried to hold on to the Mosaic Law, which they had never kept and could not keep, instead of following Christ, because Moses offered them this world and Jesus offered them the next one. That devotion to Moses’ promised prosperity gave the Pharisees the opportunity to shift Israel’s (no longer feasible) Mosaic loyalty to them. Moses promised worldly success and the Pharisees promised Moses 2.0, and so the Jews embraced Satan forevermore.

I fear that history is repeating. This time, for Protestants. (Catholics have mortal issues of their own at the moment.)

God Still Curses Nations

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By Rev. Matt, 5 October 2023

There are Christians today who believe that God does not still judge nations as he did in the Old Testament.

Yo!

They believe that the New Covenant has now changed how this kind of judgement works. They would base this argument on a few different prepositions.

The biggest difference is that the Old Covenant didn’t work. Israel was so faithless that God repeatedly persecuted and destroyed that nation. So much for Moses’ promises of worldly success. The highest point was God rewarding David’s bastard for David’s good deeds, because as devoted as David was, God didn’t want a bloodlusting corpse factory to build His temple. He wanted somebody known for his wisdom instead.

My burns pale next to God’s.

The second biggest difference: the Old Covenant is literally dead. Remember it was between God and Moses? Well… God died. Hebrews chapter 9 is explicit that the OC is gone and the NC is the ONLY offer on the table.

Segue

Hebrews 9, partial:

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Boom. Christ’s death was the END of the Old Covenant, and with it, Moses’ offers of blessings & curses. Which is also why Israel didn’t need to listen to the Pharisees in AD70 when they could no longer offer sacrifices at a temple. All they had to do, was accept Christ’s sacrifice as the real one, and they would no longer have needed a Temple. They would have BECOME the Temple. God never left them trapped.

But no, they chose worldly success instead, and became living proof that money can’t buy love.

Matt quotes some of the Mosaic moral laws to bolster his arguments, but he neglects to mention the laws of cleanliness and separation. I’m pretty sure that Matt doesn’t take his mildewed garments to a certified Levite for cleansing.

That was one of the things that Moses offered blessings & curses about. Seriously:

Segue2

Deuteronomy 28:15,28

However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow ALL his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you… The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.

Emphases mine, as usual.

End Segue2

Back to Christ superseding Moses,

In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. He said, .This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Matt, what is your motive in wanting to return to the Mosaic Law? That inferior copy of what Christ accomplished? It didn’t save anybody, and its bribes… Moses’ promises of good results for good deeds… didn’t motivate.

Answer: you want worldly success against evildoers. Which Christ never offered.

Just like desperate Israel did before you, you’re grasping for practical results because the religion you have, feels inadequate to your needs.

Don’t do that. Do not use Christianity as a means to anything but Christ.

End segue

One particular passage I have heard people use to support this case is from Matthew 25 where Jesus says this,

.31 .When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. (Matt. 24:31-33).

They use this passage, and other similar passages, to argue that God is going to judge the nations on the final day, therefore, he now no longer judges nations as he did in the Old Testament.

What an odd argument, both ways. God is obviously doing a “resubdivision” of humanity in that passage, collecting all the nations into one group, then dividing them between heaven and hell irrespective of nation. He’s erasing the nations, not judging them.

It also does not account for the fact that near the end of Revelation in chapter 18 God describes the judgement of a nation/empire, Babylon, in the precise same terms and style as he pronounced judgement on nations in books like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others. Indeed, I suggest you compare Revelation 18 to Jeremiah 50-51 and you will see some incredible parallels.

Parallels? Oh sweet summer child, whoever said the Whore of Babylon is not Israel itself?

To be sure, I doubt it’ll be geographic Israel… the top geographic candidates are currently New York, London, Brussels and Rome… but which ethnic group, which nation is it, who teaches the peoples of today to worship the ancient gods of Babylon? I bet it’s one that previously lived there.

This shows us, very clearly, that nothing has changed with regards to how God judges nations from the Old Covenant to the New.

Because I follow Matt semi-regularly, I know that today’s complete failure of logic & theology is an exception, not the rule, to his normal quality.

I get it. I even sympathize. The reason “God still judges the nations” is perennially attractive to Normie conservatives, is because the implication is that we have the power to wish all the wickedness of GAE away. Don’cha know, God is stamping His foot with impatience because we haven’t yet ordered Him to act. I am also weary of evil… but that does not imply anything about my ability to stop it.

Or, maybe God made me Rambo but I didn’t notice. In which case, God is not yet impatient enough to offer me a clue how special I am. Big mistake, Boss, teaching me to be humble and control my temper instead of slaying my HUNDREDS of thousands….

Another prominent argument that such people will use, and perhaps their most powerful argument, is that God judged Israel according to the covenant that he made with them. Therefore, once that covenant was brought to completion, judging peoples as nations is no longer on the cards…

Yep.

But just because God held Israel to a specific or certain standard, does not mean that he does not judge other nations according to another or similar standard.

No, Matt. Very obviously No. God personally founded Israel with a personally selected clan, by personally leading them there and personally dictating their new government into existence. He did not merely give them a moral code to obey… He wanted them to be a metaphor of Heaven, so He gave extra laws for only that people.

Thus, Israel was a theocracy. Everybody had to participate in the State Religion. You had to bring sacrifices to the mandatory priesthood yearly, if not more often; you have to obey laws covering everything from God’s standard morality, to dressing only in certain fabrics, eating certain foods, living in assigned areas, observing specified holy days… it was a very hands-on religion, often without specified punishments, so it made sense for Moses to warn “the people” about obeying it all.

By contrast, I am not a participant in my society, by no fault of my own. Already landless and a second-class citizen with no family, and homelessness is on the horizon. No vote even, because Dumbocracy. Why would God promise me rewards/curses about my leaders mutilating children? I’m not involved in that. I’m not even allowed in the building.

Any nation that worships false gods will experience the curses that come with that. Any nation filled with disrespectful children will experience the curses that come with that.

Consequences, not curses. But there are consequences for literally everything you choose, so that’s a meaningless statement.

Certainly, “God will judge you” is not the same statement as “that’s eventually going to hurt” or “listen to your conscience”. The former implies direct action by a wrathful God.

Let me state the problem outright. Is God going to punish the innocent for the crimes of their guilty leaders, until those leaders learn to fear God? If yes then God does indeed judge nations, and He better enjoy it, because He’ll be punishing me for an eternity and a half before Governor “Hair Gel” Newsom repents of status, power and money.

If no, then God does not judge nations… and according to Hebrews 9 above, we the people die first and THEN face judgment. Meanwhile in reality, the depraved will suffer the predictable consequences of depravity, and so on.

God did not found any existing nation to have a special divine status. There is no Australian Covenant. There is no Chinese Covenant. There is not even an Israeli Covenant. That was broken with Christ’s death, as mentioned above. Israel today is nothing like Ancient Israel.

It is critically important that you Normal Christians understand that modern Israel is not Ancient Israel. There is a growing moral threat of the Noahide Code, which will offer you a ‘temporary’ substitute for Christ, just like the Babylonian Talmudists offered the Israelis a substitute for Moses. I don’t have the full details yet, perhaps it hasn’t reached Australia, but the threat has appeared in USA.

God still judges nations. But the corollary of this is that he wants to bless nations if they would receive this… The choice is ours as a nation today whether we want to flourish or decay, God wants to bless, but he cannot bless those who foolishly reject him.

The idea that Moses’ offer of worldly success is still on the table, is one of the Jews’ attack vectors against Protestant Christianity today.

How so, you ask? You can’t accept Moses’ promises without accepting Moses’ Law. The entirety of the Law, including a “Levite” Jewish priesthood. Your churches won’t even be run by Christians anymore.

And those promises were useless even back when God had bound Himself to honor them.

Defend yourself by letting go of false hope and false guilt. Our current situation is not your fault. It did not come about because of you, and it won’t go away because of anything you might possibly do. Life right now is ugly, hard and poised to get worse… but it’s not your fault. God promised us suffering in return for our loyalty, not the halls of power in return for good deeds.

That’s the New Covenant. The ONLY Covenant. And the freaky thing is, it works better than the Old ever did. God’s offer of worldly success did nothing to foster devotion among the ancient Israelis. But suffering in return for devotion? Two thousand years later, Christianity triumphantly completed its mission to evangelize the entire planet… and I daresay that our finest hour is still ahead.

There are such strange things in this world.

Grim determination in Truth’s defense > bribes for good behavior. Which is why God does NOT judge nations.