Do they Even Hear Themselves When They Speak: Part 3 - Pride

William Wolfe, Op Ed contributor @ the Christian Post & M.Div student & SBTS writes

On Saturday, we witnessed something more than mere chance or human agency. We saw the very hand of God stay a bullet and preserve not just a life but a nation.

Scripture teaches us in Proverbs 21:1 that “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”

It’s true that God’s providence is meticulous, & it’s also true that seeks His own glory first & foremost, & it’s also true that God prioritizes our well-being over our happiness.  After all, we are limited, finite, & shortsighted compared to the LORD & as both our Creator & Deliverer, God sees the big picture meticulously & comprehensively, while we do not.  Thus we are prone to seek our happiness over our well-being.  

However, did God do what He did to save our nation in the manner in which Mr. Wolfe speaks, or did God do it to expose the revolutionaries among the People & move the nation to drink the measure of His wrath (Revelation 14)?  Throughout his article, Mr. Wolfe says nothing about the latter & everything to say about the former. 

If the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, so is his head — and his ears. This truth remindus that leaders, despite their earthly power, ultimately operate within the framework of God’s sovereign plan. The events that unfold on the world stage, including attempts on leaders’ lives, are subject to divine oversight and purpose.

This too is true. 

When that bullet whizzed past Trump’s ear, missing by mere inches, it wasn’t luck. It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t even the incompetence of the would-be assassin. It was the sovereign hand of the Almighty, the same hand that directed the stone from David’s sling to Goliath’s forehead (1 Samuel 17:49). God, in His infinite wisdom, saw fit to spare Trump’s life and, by extension, spare America from the chaos that would have inevitably followed.

It’s worth mentioning that it was those who disagreed with the outcome of the last election who attempted an armed incursion into the US Congress.    Is Mr. Wolfe admitting that those on his side of the aisle includes a large number of revolutionaries who constitute the 21st Century version of the Whiskey Rebellion & the people who crammed into Andrew Jackson’s White House after his inauguration? 

Now, I can already hear the objections of the scoffers and skeptics. “Why would God intervene for Trump?” they’ll ask. “Surely there are more worthy candidates for divine protection!” But such thinking betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s ways. As the prophet Isaiah reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

That’s also true.  It’s also both funny & ironic that Mr. Wolfe quoted Isaiah.  

9 He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
10 Make the heart of this people calloused;
    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.[a]
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

11 Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”

And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined
    and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
    and the fields ruined and ravaged,
12 until the Lord has sent everyone far away
    and the land is utterly forsaken.
13 And though a tenth remains in the land,
    it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
    leave stumps when they are cut down,
    so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”

Mr. Wolfe is writing an apologetic piece for the thesis that God providentially intervened to spare Mr. Trump’s life for the betterment of the nation, & he writes as a supporter of Mr. Trump who agrees with the GOP/Conservative agenda - the same agenda that we have occasionally examined on this blog relative to a number of moral & ethical issues over which the nation is contending at this time, & it’s an agenda that the right application of Sola Scriptura doesn’t support when it comes to economics, marriage & family, how to regulate abortion, labor law, etc.   Yet, Mr. Wolf seems to think that the LORD permitted the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life for purposes more like those of King Josiah, who drained his own swamp, not Mannaseh or Amon. 

To take just one example, a great many Evangelical Christians & other Conservatives have gone out of their way in recent years to erode the civil rights of LGBTQ people by deploying the ADF to argue in favor of discrimination in matters of public accommodation by way of appealing to their religion. 

Their rationale amounts to an exercise in Situational Ethics that has resulted in the legalization of religious & quasi-religious bigotry — which was at the root of the proximate reason for which God destroyed Sodom & Gomorrah, Gibeah, & about 2/3 of Nero’s Rome.  The LORD is on record in Jude & Romans 1 that He proverbs nations who engage in that sort of behavior, which is part & parsel of a larger set of accusations against these cities that includes witchcraft, gluttony, hautiness & warmongering.  

God often chooses the most unlikely vessels to carry out His will. He chose an exiled Egyptian prince turned stuttering shepherd to lead His people out of Egypt (Exodus 4:10-12). He chose a young shepherd boy to become Israel’s greatest king (1 Samuel 16:11-13).

Perhaps, in our own time, He has chosen a brash, politically incorrect businessman to shake the foundations of America’s political establishment.

Donald Trump is many things. Like all men, he is a sinner in need of grace (Romans 3:23). Unlike most men, he’s a former president — and the current Republican presidential candidate.

Moses committed murder, but in his self-imposed exile, the LORD morally qualified him for his job as Patriarchal Prophet. When God, through Samuel, called David, David was already morally qualified to serve as God’s directly called Successor King to Saul. How does Trump morally qualify for office?

Mr. Wolfe seems to have forgotten that God also providentially raised up Pharaoh, Hanaiah, & Sennacharib to shake the Establishment.   I encourage you, the reader, to read the article in full.   Pay attention to the manner in which he cites the Bible in favor of Mr. Trump while downplaying Mr, Trump’s moral problems & the hurricane of dark providence that surrounds both him & a number of political figures & state legislatures right now.   

Isaiah 29 is clear that when nations go the route that Sodom & Gomorrah, Egypt, Gibeah, Nineveh, Ephesus, & Rome went, the LORD will surely & single-mindedly pursue & proverb them via both His wrath & in His redemption.  The text of Isaiah indicates that He will, by the time He has finished, be vindicated & be seen to have accomplished His purposes down to the minutest detail.  

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.