Lawmakers Beware! You are Not Too High to be Under the Divine Check

     In our last message, we addressed the guilt of those who not only employed undocumented workers, but also their shame for mistreating those they hired for a mere pittance of wages. The major oppressors were identified as those being rich, the greedy, the uncaring. But yet, we have to return to those who also enact laws to bring further harm on the poor and defenseless. Who but the rich have enough clout to influence the lawmakers of the land to do their bidding? Who but the rich and powerful, who own most media, create an atmosphere throughout the land that sees brothers turning against each other to lay blame on the poor for their selfish concerns? Most assuredly, the rich and their elected official servants are not advocating nor responding to the poor who cry out for justice.

     Once again, we present further evidence directly from God’s word, which clearly condemns those who not only mistreat the poor, alien, homeless and fatherless; but it boldly states that those magistrates who write grievous laws that oppress the poor, hungry and needy (regardless of documentation), He warns them that they will pay and suffer dearly for their deeds:

1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,

to those who issue oppressive decrees,

2 to deprive the poor of their rights

and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,

making widows their prey

and robbing the fatherless.

3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,

when disaster comes from afar?

To whom will you run for help?

Where will you leave your riches?

4 Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives

or fall among the slain.

Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away,

his hand is still upraised.(Isaiah 10:1-4)

     Far be it from us take credit for pointing out this inequity, albeit, we have cited numerous Bible verses that unfair laws are not about providing security from terrorists or foreign invaders, nor stemming the nation’s economic downturn, but about a blatant attempt to eradicate a specific ethnic group from this nation, short of apartheid!

     These messages are not about siding with (primarily) Latinos from south of the pent up walls the United States erected primarily to protect the wealthy; nor do we point out this inhumane discrepancy because this author is motivated more so by his Mexican heritage (as I have been accused of repeatedly), but because this country, my country, will suffer the consequences when it is not necessary!

     For that matter, this blatant inhumanity is not restricted solely to this country’s pecadillos, this is also happening in the Middle East (Israeli vs Palestinians, Afghanis and Chinese vs Christians, et al) and numerous countries (and regimes) throughout the world. Many of us can understand the nefarious political machinations of poor and Third World countries, but the U S of A?

     But, forbid me not to allow a great man of God, Matthew Henry (1662 – 1714, English Theologian who wrote Exposition of the Old and New Testaments in 1708–1710), revered by most theologians as one of the great commentators of Bible history, to share his caveat for those who continue to bring not only harm to the poor, alien and defenseless, but to this once great nation of ours:

     "The indictment drawn up against these oppressors, they are charged, with making wicked laws and edicts: They decree unrighteous decrees, contrary to natural equity and the law of God: and what mischief they prescribe those under them write it, enroll it, and put it into the formality of a law.

     "Woe to the superior powers that devise and decree these decrees! They are not too high to be under the divine check. And woe to the inferior officers that draw them up, and enter them upon record—the writers that write the grievousness, they are not too mean to be within the divine cognizance. Principal and accessories shall fall under the same woe.’’ Note, it is bad to do hurt, but it is worse to do it with design and deliberation, to do wrong to many, and to involve many in the guilt of doing wrong.

     With perverting justice in the execution of the laws that were made, no people had statutes and judgments to righteous as they had, and yet corrupt judges found ways to turn aside the needy from judgment, to hinder them from coming at their right and recovering what was their due, because they were needy and poor, and such as they could get nothing by nor expect any bribes from, with enriching themselves by oppressing those that lay at their mercy, whom they ought to have protected.

     They make widows’ houses and estates their prey, and they rob the fatherless of the little that is left them, because they have no friend to appear for them. Not to relieve them if they had wanted, not to right them if they were wronged, would have been crime enough in men that had wealth and power; but to rob them because on the side of the oppressors there was power, and the oppressed had no comforter, was such apiece of barbarity as one would think none could ever be guilty of that had either the nature of a man or the name of an Israelite.

     A challenge given them with all their pride and power to outface the judgments of God (v. 3): "What will you do? To whom will you flee? You can trample upon the widows and fatherless; but what will you do when God riseth up?’’ Job 31:14. Great men, who tyrannize over the poor, think they shall never be called to account for their tyranny, shall never hear of it again, or fare the worse for it; but shall not God visit for these things? Jer. 5:29. Will there not come a desolation upon those that have made others desolate? Perhaps it may come from far, and therefore may be long in coming; but it will come at last (reprieves are not pardons), and coming from far, from a quarter whence it was least expected, it will be the greater surprise and the more terrible. What will then become of these unrighteous judges? Now they see their help in the gate (Job 31:21); but to whom will they then flee for help?

     There is a day of visitation coming, a day of enquiry and discovery, a searching day, which will bring to light, to a true light, every man, and every man’s work. 2. The day of visitation will be a day of desolation to all wicked people, when all their comforts and hopes will be lost and gone, and buried in ruin, and they left desolate. 3. Impenitent sinners will be utterly at a loss, and will no know what to do in the day of visitation and desolation. They cannot fly and hide themselves, cannot fight it out and defend themselves; they have no refuge in which either to shelter themselves from the present evil (to whom will you flee for help?) or to secure to themselves better times hereafter: "Where will you leave your glory, to find it again when the storm is over?’’ The wealth they had got was their glory, and they had no place of safety in which to deposit that, but they should certainly see it flee away.

     If our souls be our glory, as they ought to be, and we make them our chief care, we know where to leave them, and into whose hands to commit them, even those of a faithful Creator. 4. It concerns us all seriously to consider what we shall do in the day of visitation, in a day of affliction, in the day of death and judgment, and to provide that we may do well.

     Sentence passed upon them, by which they are doomed, some to imprisonment and captivity (they shall bow down among the prisoners, or under them—those that were most highly elevated in sin shall be most heavily loaded and most deeply sunk in trouble), others to death: they shall fall first, and so shall fall under the rest of the slain. Those that had trampled upon the widows and fatherless shall themselves be trodden down, v. 4. "This it will come to,’’ says God, "without me, that is, because you have deserted me and driven me away from you.’’ Nothing but utter ruin can be expected by those that live without God in the world, that casts Him behind their back, and so cast themselves out of his protection.
 

     And yet, for all this, his anger is not turned away, which intimates not only that God will proceed in his controversy with them, but that they shall be in a continual dread of it; they shall, to their unspeakable terror, see his hand still stretched out against them, and there shall remain nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment."(Matthew Henry Commentary on Isaiah 10:1-4)

      Those who have ever been sent to prison know the horrible pain that can be inflicted by their fellow inmates. But, even more painful will it be to those who will be punished by God Himself for abusing His children, while at the same time recognizing what they did was wrong. But, by then it will too late to repent!

     We obviously fail to believe that this message will influence hundreds of legislators throughout the land, to repent and make right their approach to solving the immigration debate in a more humane process and just manner (as God would want), but they can never say they were not aware of how God feels about this entire matter.

                                                                    

For more information about this blog and the author's two recently published books, The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation, please click here Joe Ortiz