Summations Only

I've said nothing about God making a Covenant with America in any sense like the Covenant He made with Israel. In fact I haven't mentioned a covenant at all. It isn't essential to the point I'm making, which is that God will bless ANY nation that honors Him and obeys His laws, and America did that for most of our history. And it has been preached down the centuries by Christian preachers that nations rise and fall according to God's sovereign judgments. It shouldn't be hard to find sermons on the subject. Spurgeon preached along these lines to Britain, Luther preached it about Germany. ALL nations are in God's hands and ALL nations are responsible for ruling by God's Law. As I understand it they dedicated the entire new world to God. Their objective in coming to the new world was not, as is commonly supposed, to flee persecution in Europe, so much as it was exactly that dedication, to give the new land to God, to bring it under God's rule. They (the early Protestant settlers who wrote about this) specifically mention that the Jesuits, who represented the Inquisition in Europe that had persecuted and murdered Bible believers like themselves, were already in the new world with the aim of subjugating the land and its inhabitants to the Pope, and the Protestants had come in the hope of taking it from the Pope and giving it to God. God doesn't respect man-made institutions that exclude Him. As He says in scripture, He often blessed Israel "for the sake of the fathers" rather than because they deserved it. And we are told in the NT to take admonition from the Old Testament, which among other things must mean to learn from it how God deals with nations. The fact that the first settlers came with the intention that God should be honored in the new world, and that the nation was populated by serious Christians for most of its history until recently -- (read Toqueville)-- is the only reasonable explanation for the enormous and rapid prosperity of America. I made no "parallel" with Israel, I merely drew from the example of Israel what preachers down the centuries since Christ have always done: that God is in charge of nations and judges them according to their honoring of His Law. America WAS unusually blessed for its first few centuries, and America HAD been dedicated to God, and preachers of the gospel of Christ have always recognized cause and effect between a nation's respect of God and a nation's fortunes, blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience just as He spelled out for His Covenant People Israel. Even nations that never knew the true God are blessed according to what light they have and how much they obey of His Law, (a lot of pagan nations these days are better in that regard than the once-Christian West) and in America's case the true God WAS recognized and honored at first. For much of its history the same was true of Britain. Much is expected of those to whom much is given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I've said nothing about God making a Covenant with America in any sense like the Covenant He made with Israel.

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But you did argue that the punishments applied to Israel for breaking their Civenant might be applied to the U.S. Which would only make sense if the U.S. Had a covenant and broke it.

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In fact I haven't mentioned a covenant at all. It isn't essential to the point I'm making, which is that God will bless ANY nation that honors Him and obeys His laws, and America did that for most of our history.

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WHICH laws ? And isn't the whole New Covenent about dealing with indiviudals rather tha nations anyway ?

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As I understand it they dedicated the entire new world to God.

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Rather arrogant of them, and hardly something anyone else should be expected to respect,

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God doesn't respect man-made institutions that exclude Him.

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Then I guess that your problems go all the way back to the founding of the U.S.

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And we are told in the NT to take admonition from the Old Testament, which among other things must mean to learn from it how God deals with nations.

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Then why look at Israel which is intentionally set up as a special case ?

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I made no "parallel" with Israel, I merely drew from the example of Israel what preachers down the centuries since Christ have always done: that God is in charge of nations and judges them according to their honoring of His Law.

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The example of Israel, is based on Israel following or violating the Covenant specifically given to Israel. So you did draw a parallel, and an invalid parallel at that. You cannot generalise from the treatment of Israel because the treatment of Israel is based on the existence of a special Covenant. Why can't you understand that ?

Oh, you mean when the United States endorsed whole-sale slavery of millions of African Americans, the mass killing and pillaging of tens of millions Native Americans, the indenturing of people from the orient, the slaughter of thousands of innocent men, women and children and the overthrow of a democratically elected government of the Philippines in the early 20th century. Yes, that was a much better government than the one we have now. I do not believe God was any more happy with that part of our history than he is with us now.You have an uneducated and warped understanding of history due to your religiosity and fundamentalism.

What covenant are you talking about? The covenant with Abraham was a covenant based on faith, not law, as explained in the New Testament, and that covenant is inherited by believers in Christ. The sense in which the covenant with Moses is related to the Mosaic law is complex but the Moral Law based on the Ten Commandments is always treated as universal, not specific to Israel. The New Covenant with Christ fulfills the Moral Law through His death on behalf of those who believe in Him, but it goes on operating for all others. I'm not talking about the New Covenant with respect to nations and I don't know why you keep bringing it up. It odes not apply to nations, or to unbelievers. It only applies to those who have put their trust in Christ who died for them.I'm talking about the Moral Law, which is illustrated by many cases in the Torah, which is based on the Ten Commandments, all laws that are derived from those commandments. They are not as simple as they are sometimes misrepresented to be. The law against theft for instance applies to all kinds of theft including the theft of identity or reputation; the law against bearing false witness applies to every kind of deceit, fraud, cheating, as well as direct lies; the law against murder was revealed by the Lord Jesus to be against hatred in the heart as well as overt murder and violence; Jesus also revealed that the law against adultery includes lust experienced in the heart; it also applies to every kind of sexual sin. Specific applications of all these are spelled out in the Torah.From the time of Christ ministers have preached that God's law applies to all humanity, both individually and corporately, that nations come under judgment for failure to honor God's law. Somehow or other THEY understood that God's Law was universal and not just for Israel. And what God's Law means in this context is the Moral Law, the Ten Commandments and all the specific laws that spun off that, not the ceremonial laws, the food laws for instance, that were given to Israel alone, but the Moral Law. The Moral Law is what runs this universe, it's not negotiable, it's not rescindable, it's practically identical with God Himself in a sense, His very character. It's the Law from which Hinduism intuits "karma" for instance, and all peoples have some version of recognition of it, however inaccurate or incomplete due to human fallenness. God gave us His word so we could have the accurate and complete picture.Again, the New Testament tells us that the Old Testament was given for our instruction or admonition. We're to learn from it how God deals with humanity so that we can correct our course. We're also told that God's Law is holy and perfect. It was fulfilled in Christ, so that all who are in Christ are saved from its condemnation, but all who are not in Christ are still under the Law.Israel was indeed a special case, a special people chosen by God to carry His word, the revelation of His reality and His character, and His Law, to the world, and to be the people through whom He would send His Messiah. it was not all intended only for that people, the whole history of Israel is full of symbolic meanings intended for those who believe in Israel's God, who is Jesus Christ, and it IS a revelation of God's character for the entire world. God brought the blessings to all the peoples of the world that He said would come through His people; He brought those blessings to all of us through His Messiah. They include salvation from sin, from the condemnation of His Law itself, and they include His word and the revelation of that Law so that we can look to it for understanding of God's moral requirements and try to live by them. Believers are saved from the condemnation of failing to obey, that is, from sin, which is disobedience of the Moral Law; but as believers we are given God's Spirit so that we can love that Law as King David did (Psalm 119 "Oh how I love Your Law") because it is pure and holy and beautiful.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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The sense in which the covenant with Moses is related to the Mosaic law is complex but the Moral Law based on the Ten Commandments is always treated as universal, not specific to Israel.

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It's not complex at all. The Mosaic Covenant only applies to Israel. That's not to say that other peoples might not be held to some of the laws, but that isn't through Moses.

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I'm not talking about the New Covenant with respect to nations and I don't know why you keep bringing it up. It odes not apply to nations, or to unbelievers. It only applies to those who have put their trust in Christ who died for them.

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I'm pointing out that the New Covenant doesn't apply either. So, there's no covenant-breaking, and thus no justification of any punishment for covenant-breaking.So your comparisons with Israel are invalid.

Two thousand years of preaching by the best preachers of Christendom says you're wrong.

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Two thousand years of preaching by the best preachers of Christendom says you're wrong.

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About what? And why appeal to preachers anyway?

Millions of white europeans were held in indentured servitude also. It wasn't a racial thing it was a "fuck everyone else I got mine" thing. How very christian.

This is the only thing I want to mention, as Paul is doing a good job on the question of the covenant of which you speak. However, I do not think you have negated any other aspects that could have led to the rapid prosperity of America. One of the main reasons for its rapid ascent was the availability of raw materials in an unspoiled land. In the New World, there was an overabundance of resources available to the settlers, especially once they began to spread across the continent. This allowed the country to provide for its needs and have large quantities of supplies to export to other countries. One big example of a huge export that brought a lot of money to early America was Tobacco, which was shipped to all parts of the world. It grew very well in the Southern portion of the United States and allowed for an enormous market to be created for this product.Of course, I am sure that you give credit to God for these abundant resources, but that is just shoehorning your God into the explanation because nothing more needs to be said then that nature had been relatively untouched before European settlers because of the practices of the original inhabitants of the land.

The indentured servitude of fellow Europeans was a business arrangement of "I'll pay your passage to the colonies and in exchange you will work for me for a specific period of time (or with whatever terms) to pay off your debt to me." None of those Europeans were born into indentured servitude and they all worked to regain their freedom.My question is how that "indenturing of people from the orient" was different or the same. Comparisons to modern-day human trafficking might also be enlightening.

Allowing same-sex couples the same rights as any other couple is not repudiating God's laws. God administers His own laws. You don't.IF God chooses to judge homosexuals, that's His business, not yours. If He chooses to judge you for failure to love your neighbour, that's His business too.

Ringo, you hit the nail on the head and I totally agree with you. Not all Christians believe the way Faith does. In fact many of the more rationally minded Christians leave the judging to God. We understand that hitting non-Christians with the judgmental Bible-thumping club is the worst thing you can do and pushes people away instead of bringing them to Christ. Did Jesus or any of the Apostles/Disciples try to force their beliefs through the Jewish/Roman political system? The answer is no.In fact the NT teaches that Christians though "in this world" are not to be "part of this world" (Romans 12:2, I John 2:14). It was only later in Christian church history when the Roman government started to fall apart and Roman leaders saw the popularity of Christianity, that the church and state were integrated. Of course, this marriage between church and state led to corruption and a divergence of theology from the original message of Jesus gospel.The modern movement of Christian fundamentalism and its entrance into secular politics (i.e. the failed Christian Coalition) is an example of the methods fundamentalists will go through to try to back up their beliefs and push these beliefs onto others. Again, this is not backed up by the Bible much less the earliest Christian church history.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

Sorry I meant to add Europeans as well. And yes it was very unChristlike.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

The "best" preachers of Christendom have been wrong at times (i.e. Martin Luther's bigotry and persecution of Jews). God through the Bible and specifically Jesus teachings should be your source not fallen humans.The Bible speaks nothing of countries or civilizations being in a covenant agreement beyond the nation of Israel. The new covenant the NT does talk about is a covenant of grace to the Jew and Gentile (non-Jew) alike, to those who believe in his name. It has nothing to do with particular nations.Jesus in Luke 22:10 "In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."Hebrews 8:6,7,13 "But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people ... By calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear."Hebrews 9:15 "For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritancenow that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant."It is a fallacy to think that the United States is any more "blessed" by God than any other country. You are speaking for God in an area where he has remained silent.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

This nation has done so from the very beginning. According to the Constitution, you are free to break the following biblical laws:1. Work on the Sabbath.
2. Eat shellfish
3. Wear clothes of mixed fibers
4. Worship idols
5. Take the Lord's name in vain
6. Worship other gods besides the Abrahamic one
7. Not believe in godsI could list many, many more. In the end, we have always had a government that allows people to make moral decisions for themselves and not have it lorded over them by members of a religion they don't belong to.Can you tell us why people in a free country should be forced to live by the edicts of a religion they don't belong to?