THE CHURCH – WITHOUT RESTRAINT
Friday – October 13, 2017
Horror unfolded in Las Vegas two weeks ago that the world is having a hard time to wrap their head around but should not have been a problem for the Church that is awake choosing to have ears to hear and eyes to see. At the time I am writing this 59 people are dead and some 500 people were wounded by a single gunman nested in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. I show the hotel only for context not to assign blame of any sort.
There is lots of talk about prayer, the number and type of guns, new gun control laws, attacks on the NRA, attacks on the Second Amendment, attacks on Republicans, and speculation about the shooters motive(s). I am not at all poo pooing prayer. After the fact prayers are a little akin to buying insurance after an accident. A day late and a dollar short as they say. Prayer at this point can bring comfort to the families of the dead and wounded alike, perhaps even bring some awakening to the reality of evil and the consequences of evil without restraint. The most important prayer of all must come from the Church, a prayer of repentance for failing to exercise our authority and Power in our communities and the failure of proper intercession. There is always (in the Christian community) the discussion about the wrath or judgment (justice) of God in these circumstances. After all Las Vegas isn’t called “sin city” for nothing and sin at some point will always bring stealing, killing, and destroying. In any event it is the curse unrestrained by the only people we can restrain the curse, Christians.
There is undue focus on the number of guns the man owned and the question of why one would need that number of guns. Need is not the question, it is a hobby for many, satisfying a desire, and perhaps a degree of pride or bragging rights when one owns a certain gun. Many people have hobbies of one sort of another or horde things way in excess of need. Hobbies and hoarding do not make people dangerous, it is a spiritual heart issue. The speculations and investigations as to the shooters motives may arrive at his given reason or excuse but the underlying motivator is the thief who comes but to steal, kill, and destroy. Evil spirits (and God and His angels and Holy Spirit) talk a blue streak to everyone all the time and more so to those who will listen and act on the wicked ideas that are planted. The question for the Church is: where art thou? Why was there not an intercessor, why were there not intercessors bringing restraint to wickedness in that city, all around us evil is becoming less and less restrained. Perhaps the cup of iniquity just ran over. We see the lack of restraint in the shootings, in the storms, and the scandals in Hollywood and elsewhere. Again, Church, where art thou? Remember that in the beginning God gave His children authority and Power (the Blessing) which they lost through sin however Jesus got it back and more. One of the mandates, commands, of God is that we subdue the earth (all upon the earth including weather), we tend the earth, and that we guard the earth from the attacks of the enemy. Unfortunately, we the church, are complicit with the enemy. We are like Adam and Eve partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Monday, the 9th, I wrote about God-given rights, what are called unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. Among these rights is the right of self-defense. All of the attacks on the guns (powerless without a man), new gun laws, the NRA, even mental illness (who decides), and the Second Amendment are attacks on this God given right. The devil and his cohorts with the assistance of godless or deceived persons (Democrat Party) seek to bring all peoples into subjection to himself through other persons, principally the government. The less free a governed people become the more wicked and the more abusive the government is of the people until for example you have a Stalin who killed millions of his own people. This pattern has repeated throughout history but people do not have ears to hear or eyes to see.
The purpose of the Second Amendment is not for hunting and target practice but for self-defense and to restrain the government. The Founding Fathers believed that the government should fear the people not the people fearing the government. Giving the government more and more firepower is a fools errand and in the end will make us far less free. This is all done because we have more faith in the government than in God. Let’s read the Second Amendment, an Amendment to the Constitution and number two of the Bill of Rights.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This amendment gave the individual States the right to maintain a Militia as a safeguard against the Federal government. Individuals were given the right to keep and bear (have at the house and walk around with) arms. The Amendment ends with the phrase “shall not be infringed”. Given the clarity of the Amendment and the ending phrase why is there this constant chatter about infringing on the rights of the States and our individual rights. The rights of the individual are supreme in America. Consider the following Scriptures which support self-defense.
Esther 8:11 (KJV)
11 Wherein the king granted the Jews which were in every city to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all the power of the people and province that would assault them, both little ones and women, and to take the spoil of them for a prey,
Nehemiah 4:13-14 (KJV)
13 Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall, and on the higher places, I even set the people after their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows.
14 And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
Self-defense is a God-given right even a God given command. The failure to provide for self-defense is a sin. Church awake, arise, and triumph! Stand in your place and restrain the wicked one until we are out of here.
By: Dr. David R. Wood, Author, Bible Teacher, and Prophetic Voice
CONTACT E-MAIL: pastordavidwood@gmail.com
BLOG: https://awakeariseandtriumphministries.org
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