Rebellion and Witchcraft
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome.
Yeah. This is what happens when you get on a podcast with two teachers – lots of new rituals always come through.
Speaking of rituals, we’re talking today about witchcraft and rebellion, especially in the life of Saul. Greg reminded me again that we’re still towards the beginning of Saul’s reign. This is not at the end, but there’s very heavy foreshadowing here that we will get to later, because spoilers.
What is this connection between rebellion and witchcraft? Tell us the story, Greg.
I was about to say, “There lies the story.” We’re in 1 Samuel 15 and I’m going to sum up a good deal, but I’ll read a little bit. Saul has already forfeited the throne, but in principle God hasn’t taken it away from him yet, and God sends Samuel with a message.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
The word for destroy is a Hebrew word which means to place under the ban, or a little more explanation, to give something wholly to God. If it’s something that can bear the fires, like gold, silver, or bronze, it literally was passed through the fire and would then go into the temple treasury. But in most cases it means destroy it completely. Don’t take anything from it because God has claimed all of it, so if you take anything you’re committing sacrilege.
This ties in nicely, I think, with what we were talking about last week, the whole idea of that which is sacred and holy and set apart to God, and what happens if you mess with that. Saul had messed with that previously with regard to offering sacrifices when it was none of his business. This at first glance looks more like a kingly job. It’s to take the sword and kill people.
If you haven’t read the rest of the Bible to this point this may seem to come out of nowhere, but if we were to go back to Exodus 17 we find that when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt and were on their way to Sinai, this desert tribe called Amalek, apparently descended from Esau, came and attacked their rear quarters – the weak, the feeble, those who were kind of straggling behind.
For the first time then we meet Joshua. God tells Moses to send Joshua out in the field, leading an army of recently-escaped slaves to take on these people. This is the event when Moses goes up on high, sits on a rock, and Aaron or Hur hold up his hands. As long as his hands are up, Israel wins. When his hands drop, Israel loses. So Joshua – who as I say we’ve met for the first time – leads a successful victory under the watchful eye of Moses.
At the end of this, God tells Moses, “Call Joshua. Write this down in a book and rehearse it in his ears. I will have war against Amalek from generation to generation.” So God sets them off already way back then as utter enemies, a people he will ultimately destroy completely.
Now my speculation or guess is – because it would seem kind of obvious – that with Egypt completely laid low, and having been repulsed by Israel, the obvious direction for Amalek to go would have been into Egypt, where they could take over without a fight and would stay there. Since Israel was not supposed to go back into Egypt, God deferred the destruction of Amalek for quite a while. And Israel’s been kind of busy with its own problems. We’ve run into Amalek here and there as mercenaries working for other nations, so they’ve continued to be a pain.
At this point, if that’s what happened, they’ve been expelled from Egypt. They’re out in the open and God says, “Alright, let’s get this done. I registered their death sentence a long time ago. Go execute it.” And if anyone has trouble with this idea of God executing the wicked, you can go back and listen to our podcast on the conquest where we addressed some of these issues. That’s not what we’re going to talk about right now.
Thank you for going through the history of the Amalekites specifically, because I think it’s so easy to read the Old Testament and just sort of blur everything together in our minds and say, “Well, there’s Israel and then there’s everybody else,” which on a level is true, but these are specific people groups as well, and there’s a lot more to draw out of this if we can keep all the different enemy tribes straight.
Yes, because there’s a time when God is laying down citizenship rules for immigrants, and Egyptians and Edomites are allowed to become citizens in the third generation, and Moab and Ammon not. Amalek, on the other hand, is “…and you will completely wipe out their memory from under heaven.” Then there were Tyre and Sidon, who were originally on the kill list, and yet eventually they’re converted, at least briefly.
To be an enemy of God can mean lots of things. Largely it means you’re on your way to hell, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that God’s not going to come after you with his saving grace or that God may not give you more time or that you’re at the top of God’s hit list at the moment. But Amalek was at this point, and Saul knew that. He was told, “Don’t bring anything back. It’s all God’s. It’s all under the ban. Just do this.”
In some ways it should have been easy. He went and he was very successful in his battle. He won the battle without any difficulty and he killed a lot of the stuff, but he brought back the best of the sheep and the oxen, and he brought back the king, Agag, to do a little triumphal parade into Israel.
As he comes back, Samuel goes out to meet him and immediately, as before, at a distance realizes, “Something is not right here.” Saul sees him and says –
What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?
That’s like when you ask your child, “What happened here?” and he says, “I was just minding my own business.”
“Well, you’re holding a bat and the vase is broken, so I don’t think that’s correct.”
Or you’re asking about the cookies, and with chocolate all over his fingers and mouth, “I don’t know about any cookies.”
“There’s clearly something happening with the space/time continuum, and that paper in particular just vanished.”
But you know, as we describe humanity, that sent me back to Eden. “What’s going on?”
They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed.
We’ve seen before that Saul is a new Adam in this new garden Canaan, and he has begun a series of falls. He has sinned against God rather directly. In the chapter we skipped over he sinned against Jonathan, his son, his brother in the faith, and here he is sinning in the context of the wider watching world. He is supposed to have destroyed God’s enemies out there, but instead he’s compromised for personal pride and glory, but his first shift is, “The people you gave to be with me…” Just as Adam blamed his wife, Saul blames the people.
Then he even tries to bring God and Samuel in on the blame by saying, “They brought them to sacrifice to the Lord they God. You know, you’re always so big about this sacrificing to God thing, so they just took that as something that would be okay. They don’t know the faith very well and their intentions were good. There’s basically good in there someplace. There’s some good in them. They want to do the religious thing, so they were doing the religious thing, and I’m sure it’s fine, right? I mean how bad could this be, because we did destroy everything else like we were supposed to, but the people, I couldn’t control them.”
That’s an interesting tact to take, too, if you’re like, “Well, I couldn’t control the people.” Normally, people without control will murder everything. He’s like, “Look, we brought these here to sacrifice them to the Lord.”
They were supposed to be a sacrificial type on the battlefield and in their cities where the sheep and oxen and everything were, but instead there’s this falling back. His excuse is like, “Well, there’s the forms and the traditions that we have to do. We have to bring them here because that’s where things like that happen, even though God told me to do it elsewhere. This is the way we do it.”
I remember using this exact strategy as a kid, too. “Oh yeah, I ate my green beans – just not all of them. Technically I followed the rule.” No, that’s not following the rule.
Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on.
And he recounts how Saul when he started out was humble, little in his own sight, and the Lord sent him on a task. I understand the Hebrew, where it says a journey, is a little trip. This was not a big deal. This was not World War 3. This was something easily handled, and in fact Saul’s victory shows that it was.
And the Lord sent thee on a journey and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil and didst evil in the sight of the Lord?
Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and have gone the way which the Lord sent me and have brought Agag the king of Amalek and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.
Yeah, he contradicts himself in the same sentence. “I did exactly what God commanded, except for the parts where I didn’t. I brought back Agag, but have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.”
“But the people! They took it.” Again he’s blaming the people. A wonderful covenant representative you’ve got here Israel, but you know what? You wanted one and you got one.
As for the animals, “the people” took the spoil. He admits they should have been utterly destroyed, but again they’re going to be sacrificed to the Lord thy God, like Bryan was talking about. The self-contradictory-ness of this is just amazing.
So Samuel just kind of blows the whistle and says, “Alright, wait,” and we begin the passage we want to talk about.
And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and thy words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.
He’s still making excuses. Samuel is going to leave and Saul asks him to stay and support him before the people. “I have sinned, yet honor me know.” But in the process, Samuel turns, Saul grabs his robe and it tears, and Samuel turns and says –
The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou. And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent for he is not a man, that he should repent. Then he said, I have sinned, yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people and before Israel, and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord thy God.
So they go and they worship, presumably not using the animals that Saul brought back because they were already God’s, and to take God’s stuff and then give them back to God a second time would be bad.
Out of curiosity, Samuel tells Saul, “The kingdom has been torn from your hands and it will be given to a neighbor,” I don’t recall offhand which tribe Saul is from.
Samuel says in so many words, “Want to bet?” and takes the sword and hews him in pieces before the Lord. Then that sets us in line in the next chapter for the calling of David, even before the whole Goliath incident.
So there’s the story, the historical details, but we want to fasten on this “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” We’re combining what is in essence the second and perhaps the third commandment with I suppose the fifth. The second and third commandment address witchcraft, which is an attempt to force God to do your will or, to look at it differently, to ignore the channels of authority that God has ordained and to try to assert your will over reality rather than submit to the people that God has put over you, and particularly those who speak to you his word. So that’s where these things are coming together.
It is the second point of covenant theology, that of representation. Will you recognize that God has put people in your life who have the Word of God and who speak it into your life, whether it be parents or church officers or civil officers, or will you insist on having your own way, even to the point of trying to blackmail God himself and twist God’s power back on him to get your own way.
Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. They are both of the same nature. “We will not have this man to rule over us. If that means trying to thwart God by earthly means, that’s fine with us.” That’s called magic. It’s called witchcraft or divination.
A note about divination, and this is something that I’ve only become clear on of late. We tend to think of divination as fortunetelling. It’s probably the influence of Newtonian science and also of late various genres of science fiction. We tend to look at the timeline as an established thing flowing into the future, it’s already kind of set there, and we look down the corridors of time and see what’s going to happen, and tell me. That’s fortunetelling.
Right, but it seems that more generally in the ancient world diviners were thought, where they saw the future, to freeze the future. When Balaam is hired to curse Israel, the idea is not obviously to try to tinker with an existing reality, but to alter reality.
“Obviously God is on the side of these people. We want you to change that by prophesying, not just look into the future and see what’s going to happen.” They already knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t happy for them, but they hoped that his divination could alter the future in that direction.
So when we’re talking about witchcraft – and I think the translation is a good one in that sense, although you might offer diviner or divination – but magic or witchcraft is good in the sense that for us those words more clearly convey that you’re trying to change the future. You’re not accepting what God has decreed, what God has revealed, what God has prophesied.
You’re trying to do an anti-prophecy. You’re trying to twist the timeline in a direction more favorable to yourself and defy God’s eternal decrees or pretend they don’t exist as such. God may have a plan, but there are things within earth that can alter that plan, that can force his hand, turn his power back on itself and give you what you want.
This is a good time then, having defined witchcraft in this way, to sort of on the side address an abuse of this text. I’m thinking of the Gothard-ites and the umbrella picture that we’ve all seen that sort of uses witchcraft as just this stand-in for scariness, that you don’t want to be on the side of witches, do you? Witches are scary; therefore, never question those above you.
I escaped all of that. I was never exposed to that. I know that even in our school in its early days we have used that. My wife more than once has said, “We’re making sure that none of that is left,” so I don’t know exactly what form that took. Could you maybe expand on that a little bit, as to how you perceived it before?
I thankfully was also sheltered from it. It’s not something that I experienced first-hand, but a lot of my friends grew up in those circles. There’s this image that you may have seen or may not have seen. The big umbrella is the father. Under that there’s a smaller umbrella that’s the mother. Then under that is the kids.
Oh yeah. And above the umbrella is the rain coming down, and the rain is labeled ‘sorcery.’
It almost gives you the impression that Jesus’ umbrella isn’t good enough. You need another one under him.
That’s typically how I argue against this as an image. “Do your umbrellas have holes in them?”
“It’s more a parasol, really.” But the idea is to really hammer this idea that if you disobey, you are outside of God’s blessing. You’ve placed yourself under the realm of the devil. It’s more of a scare tactic than any sort of biblical statement about authority. It also heavily implies that fathers are impervious to the buckets of sorcery raining down and they can’t ever be wrong, which again is kind of a scare tactic. “Don’t question, don’t question, just obey,” and it’s been used to support a lot of abuses, from my understanding.
The first thing that comes to my mind in hearing this – and I’ve never heard it explained that way before – would be, for instance here, Saul is the civil leader. He’s the king. He’s the one who falls into magic.
As you look at the rest of the Bible, the people who more often than not are pursuing it are false prophets and apostate priests. They are authority figures who get full of themselves and think that they can do no wrong and that they are the right hand of God.
So the people under them should be questioning them, they should be looking at God.
This is the point where you need to be holding your authority figures accountable. Now, obviously you don’t need the smart-alecky kid saying, “Well, show me from the Bible. I don’t believe you.” There are ways. “Father, can you explain this from scripture? I’m not seeing the connection.” You can do it politely, with respect, but you can do it.
I’m thinking here of the church at Berea, which wasn’t a church yet, it was a synagogue. Paul comes and preaches and we’re told that the Bereans were more noble than the Jews in Thessalonica in that they searched the Word of God day and night to see whether or not these things were true. And because they did, many believed.
Luke calls them more noble because they took on an inspired apostle and made sure that what he was saying was in harmony with scripture. Paul does not say, “I am an apostle. I speak for God. Don’t you dare question me.” He turns it back on the Bible.
In fact, Jesus does the same thing when they start questioning him. “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life. You’re firmly persuaded you have life,” and they could, “and they are they which testify of me.”
Central to this whole idea of authority is that we’re talking about people who have the Word of God. That’s their authority. Their authority is that they minister as delegated agents of God the written Word.
And part of that authority is the responsibility to equip those in their charge, to test them and have them know the Word of God.
Absolutely, and far too often that doesn’t happen. There’s sort of an assumption of osmosis. “You’ve grown up in this Christian family and Christian church. You’ve been in Sunday School. Of course you know the Bible.”
Well, my experience teaching in a Christian school now for many, many years is that’s a really bad assumption. Even after kids have been through Sunday School or catechism class or whatever happens in your particular tradition, that’s no guarantee. And if you send your kid to public school on top of that, that sure doesn’t counteract what they’re hearing on an ongoing basis from school, from media, from friends, and everything else.
It takes dedicated time to teach your children the Word of God. Even trusting Christian schools to do it – we have limited time and we can’t talk about everything, because unless you have church school where you have your own people and your own tradition who can go into your confession in detail, there’s going to be holes. I’ve experienced that myself a bit with my own kids. “Oh, I probably should have spent more time talking about that one. Oh, well, it’s a little late now.” We learn from our mistakes – hopefully we learn.
It’s also interesting that you were speaking about authority and said that Jesus in his earthly ministry specifically was the ultimate authority. He was God in flesh, and even when he is tempted by Satan himself he still goes, “Here’s a Bible verse for you. Here’s another Bible verse for you. Here’s another.”
I read an interesting thing, and I don’t remember who they attributed this to but it was a very interesting concept. The thought was that Satan didn’t know who the Messiah was himself, and part of it was also Satan giving little testing parries to see, “Is this really the guy? Is this the guy that’s been promised to crush my head?” and that kind of thing.
Each time Jesus doesn’t answer directly. “It is said that the Messiah will be protected by angels, that even your foot will be kept from scraping a stone,” and he just goes, “Don’t test the Lord your God,” and Satan just kind of goes, “Ah, thought I had him on that one.”
Speaking of our Lord, it reminds me too of the centurion who asked Jesus to come and heal his servant. When Jesus starts out he sends more friends to say, “No, I didn’t mean you had to come. Just speak a word, because I also am a man under authority.” He worked for Caesar and therefore, “I tell this guy to do this and he does it. I say to this guy go here and he goes.”
The implication is “You are in total submission to God and therefore you have total authority because you are wholly submitted to your Heavenly Father, and therefore your word is law. So let’s not mess around here and let’s not waste your time. Just say the word. I know how this works.” From a Gentile, that was impressive.
Again we can fall back here on all of the pagan myths where the sons and daughters of God did rebel against their father – Cronos against Uranus, Zeus against Cronos, Isis against Ra, Loki against Odin. It’s an ongoing theme that the begotten always turns on the begetter and tries to overthrow his authority and usurp it. Yet Jesus comes always saying, “I do all that pleases my Father. I came to do the work he gave me and to finish the work.”
There’s no conflict within the Trinity. There’s absolute harmony and mutual submission within the Trinity to accomplish what they have decreed. It’s written down, and once it’s written down Jesus does not get to say, “You know, Dad said that in olden days, but I’ve got a better idea.” There is none of that. There’s no dispensational generation gap. There is complete conformity. Oh, that God’s people understood that better and tried to see the unity of scripture rather than some of the developing conflicts that are there because of sin and the slow process that God takes in dealing with sin.
We can look at the Old Testament and say yeah, things were different there for reasons that are clear, but they’re the same reasons that bring Christ into the world and same reasons that we live the sort of Christian life and the sort of Christian existence we have now. God has not changed. God did not get smarter. He did not evolve into a higher ethical standard.
One liberal pagan said, “The difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is that God became a Christian.” That’s abominable.
One way I’ve always thought of the different pagan pantheons is like they come into being because they had parent gods, who themselves were children of chaotic nothingness. And the only reason that the pantheon as it is now exists, this hedonistic (in the case of the Greeks) collection of deities, is because they all rebelled and killed the first generation of gods that came from the kind of proto-god chaos soup, if you will. Really, it’s Satan’s fan fiction. He’s like, “I didn’t get to do this, but I really want to do that.”
It is indeed Satan’s worldview. It has to be. He awakes, is created, and finds himself praising God, and at some point he’s got to stop and say to the angel next to him, “How long have we been doing this?”
Satan awakes and God is there, but Satan awakes and the world is there. As they look down on the world, there’s a world ocean. How many myths begin with chaos, as you say, or the world rising up out of water.
It’s amazing how many people want to connect with the “without form and void” in Genesis. The word chaos is not there. It’s not the same thing.
It’s not at all the same thing. I love the fan fiction thing. Satan is writing himself a new narrative, a metanarrative in this case. “This is what really happened. God woke up a little before us. He evolved out of the same stuff that we came out of, and he tried to pull this great con thing that he’s some great supergod. He had us conned for a little bit, but then we woke up and now we’re trying to take him down.”
As you say, it plays in all the pagan myths. It’s an ongoing theme that that which was there first was not what was really there first, and the great gods must give way to the newer gods.
Once you deny the reality of scripture, what the Bible actually says, there are only so many options and they all look an awful lot alike.
I would like to address something else, going back to that umbrella idea you brought forward, because I think here is a point we have to be very careful with. In some ways it’s obvious and clear, and in some ways it can become very slightly nuanced. You can say the same thing and mean two different things, let’s put it that way.
“God blesses obedience.” Yes, he does but what do you mean by that? “If we by our own choices in obedience stay under this umbrella, then we earn God’s blessing.” No, that is not the gospel. That is not Christianity. That is works righteousness. That is in essence paganism and magic. We force God’s hand by complying with this list of rules, by going through particular ethical rituals – sometimes just particular rituals, period, and we will capture God’s blessing.
There’s a line from the Heidelberg catechism. I don’t know if I can quote it exactly but it’s something like this. “Do our good works merit nothing, even though it is God’s will to reward them in this life and in the world to come?” and the answer is, “The reward comes not of merit but of grace.”
I think that’s something we really need to be very clear on here. Is Saul going to earn God’s blessing by doing the things he’s been told to do? No, he won’t, because sin. God does not owe anybody any blessing ever, not under any circumstances. The only person he owes blessing to is his own son, because of his love for him and because of the obedience his son accomplished in history. What we receive from being in Christ is the outpouring of that blessing for our good.
For the purpose of our good. And because it is for our ultimate good, not our momentary happiness, that does not mean the blessing will always look like what we have been taught to think of blessing as. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. It doesn’t mean we’re going to have riches and Subarus and Cadillacs and Lear Jets and 50 children or whatever. It may mean we’re in for a lot of suffering and persecution, because that may be the blessing whereby God makes us holier.
The ultimate blessing is to draw closer to God himself and to inherit God, and God will take whatever it takes within the sphere of our earthly lives to accomplish that, according to his plan. We don’t get to specify the details. “Lord, I would love to be more generous, so give me lots of money so I can be.”
“No, I think you need to be more poor so that you can learn humility and learn to ask other people to help you and be dependent upon them. Let’s go that route, shall we?”
Exactly. So when we’re talking about blessing here, God does delight to bless his children. The example I’ve used a number of times is that as my children were growing up, especially my firstborn, I wanted to give her a bike, because dads do that. You buy bikes for your kids at a certain point, but that’s the thing – at a certain point. Buying her a bike when she was 2 would be pointless because she couldn’t ride it. She had to grow up.
Did she have to grow up in order to earn my love to give her a bicycle? No. She had to grow up so she could actually use the thing, and so are many of God’s blessings. He withholds blessings not because he does not love us and does not want to bless us, but because we’re not ready for them yet.
Some people would be horrible with a million dollars. Until they have learned to control their lusts and to be wise in their spending and their values, God is not going to give them a million dollars, which means many of us never get a million dollars. Again, God’s vision is for our own spiritual good and our interaction with everybody else. Once we get a million dollars, what are we going to do with it?
As I think both of you may remember, one of the first assignments in our Econ class is, “God gives you a million dollars.” Now it’s two million because of inflation. “What do you do with it?” The first class I ever had just tried spending it. They spent it on everything they could think of, and when they were done they still had a million dollars left and they were just kind of frustrated. “Well, what are we supposed to do with this?”
When we come to Christ, there is nothing that he has not already purchased for us. There is nothing that is not ours by faith. “How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” So we can’t earn it. We don’t have to earn it, but God will appoint and apportion the blessings according to our needs for God’s goal, which is our holiness and our fellowship with him.
So when we are walking in obedience we will find that God may give us some nice earthly things because we’re now at a point where we can use them profitably. Because God delights in us – although our current happiness is not his highest priority – he enjoys seeing us happy, but he has more important things than that.
Where does this idea of happiness come from, if not from God’s own happiness. He made it up.
He is ultimately all blessedness, all happiness, but we have to get there progressively on his terms. We have to be transformed by his Spirit from one degree of glory to another.
Yeah, on the terms of his gospel. It’s the rejection of that that is really aligning ourselves with sorcery and witchcraft. I’m going to throw it to Bryan because he had cool thoughts on this. Sorry for the sudden pivot.
That’s fine. I was thinking in our short little pre-recording conversation about rebellion and witchcraft and specifically how that is displayed for us in the book of Revelation with the mark of the beast.
If you’re not aware of this connection, the mark of the beast is the Satanic counterfeit to a command given in the Old Testament, “Let the law of the Lord be as frontlets before your eyes” – that is, little bits of paper with it written on it – “and as signs on your hand.”
It’s your forehead and your hand that the mark of the beast is set to go on in Revelation. Don’t take me as saying that that is a literal mark. I don’t hold to that. But the mark of the beast is allegiance and loyalty to, in the immediate context anyway, a pagan kingdom, one that has specifically set itself up against God’s reality.
In that sense then, we find a synthesis of rebellion and witchcraft, because there’s nothing more witchcrafty than aligning yourself with Satan and the kingdoms that are under his control, so to speak, and rebellion against God.
There’s God’s side and then there’s Satan’s side, and there’s nothing in-between. So when you rebel against God, there you are.
This is connecting back to what Saul did. He’s rejecting the authority of God. Sorry, continue.
Just contra-dispensational anxiety-inducing theories. There isn’t a single mark of the beast. In favor of the anxiety-inducing, there’s a lot of marks of the beast and they’ve been in various things in most countries at least at one point in their history, for all of human history, because there has always been a time where a nation, generally speaking, has rebelled against God.
In the extreme forms we find things like Naziism or Stalinism or Maoism or emperor worship in the Roman empire, which I believe is the initial at least historical reference for the mark of the beast, giving your pinch of incense to acknowledge Caesar’s authority over all, including this strange new Jewish sect that had popped up in his empire. The mark of the beast is the epitome of rebellious witchcraft.
That makes so much sense. When I was growing up and starting to think about Revelation – I say think about and not study, because I wasn’t there yet – the Left Behind books were coming out and there was a lot of hype. There was a lot of the locusts are helicopters, and vaccines are the mark of the beast.
Then I was like, “Okay, so vaccines are not the mark of the beast. That’s pretty obvious.” And then we got to the last couple years and it was like, “So they’re not in themselves the mark of the beast, but there’s a system here that is oppressing people.” We’ll probably get taken off YouTube for this, so we might have to cut this out. We’ll see. We’ll put the full version on Rumble.
Along those lines, Revelation 13 is where you’ll find the first lengthy discussion of the beast. It’s not so much the beast that compels the mark as it is his crony, the false prophet. I don’t know if this is exactly Bryan’s take on the book, but it’s mine and it seems to be somewhat similar to Bryan’s.
If the beast would initially be understood as the Roman Empire and the beast rises up out of the sea, the beast that comes out of the land that looks like a lamb would seem to be false religion or at least Israel taking on an apostate role.
There are two horns emphasized. I would take one to be the Herods, who are Rome’s face in Israel, but the other one has got to be the high priests, because they’re the ones who got in bed to murder Jesus. These are the ones who in the land actually compel the mark. That is, when the power arises it’s all of the little crony friends who share the same worldview and who are gathering scraps at the beast’s table – they’re the ones who turn on you and say, “Well, you’ve got to be on our side or you’re not doing anything. You’ve got to play by our rules. You’ve got to submit to our way of doing things.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a federal agent knock on my door, but our church and our school have had county agents knock at the door and we’ve got a lot of flack from co-religionists who say, “You can’t be doing that, because the government says no.”
We’re so afraid of the Anti-Christ or the beast that we forget about all the little support characters who are more often the people we have to deal with, those who themselves have sold out their allegiance.
Again back to the umbrella idea. “The state says this. God tells us to obey the state. Therefore, to defy the state is rebellion.” No, it’s not that simple because the state too could be in rebellion, and sometimes we have to hold the state accountable to God’s Word. That doesn’t mean we go out and shoot people. Christianity is not revolutionary. It’s not anarchistic. But it does have the good sense that everybody is accountable to somebody, and everyone is accountable to God.
We can call the powers-that-be to account in terms of scripture, and ought to. Again it’s not as lone gunners for Jesus, but as part of covenant communities who are themselves submitted to one another and to the confessions and creeds of the church and so on.
The thing about this is it’s not simplistic, and Americans like simplistic. They like the cowboy who charges in on his horse, pulls his gun, shoots people, and rides off into the sunset. No question of warrants, authority, anything. He solved the problem and everything’s happy. It’s vigilantes, from Superman to Batman to the Avengers. “Do we sign the accords or not? To whom are we accountable?” Captain America didn’t want to be accountable to the UN. Good for him.
And he was the one who was duly appointed by the US government to fight in wars, so he’s the least vigilante of all these characters and he’s like, “No, you don’t want to sign up for the UN.”
It can be complicated and it can take some time to unwind and explain, and we want quick easy solutions, and they’re not always forthcoming. Sometimes we have to put up with a lot while our leaders work through things, and try to figure out, “At what point do we draw a line and say, ‘No, no further. This is contrary to the Word of God. This we can do, this we cannot do and will not do.’” It’s a hard thing.
In my studies when I wrote the original article I came across something by R.A. Torrey. I don’t know if you know R.A. Torrey.
He was sort of a successor to Dwight L. Moody. In fact, he taught at what would eventually become Moody Bible College. And then it was suggested to him by somebody that he go out west and create something like that, so he went to Los Angeles and created a Bible institute in Los Angeles – the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, BIOLA.
Oh, hey! I was not putting that together until you literally spelled it out for me.
I think we would question some of Torrey’s theology, but he was a grand old man of the faith and did what he could with what he had. He spoke around the world. He was part of the Keswick movement, so there’s some problems there, but he certainly believed in inerrancy.
Anyway, he was involved in writing the books that were called the fundamentals – you know the whole Fundamentalist movement. He was one of the leaders and shakers, so a fundamentalist of the first order, serious about scripture, so just that for what it’s worth.
He wrote something called the New Topical Textbook. He edited it at least, and one of the sections is rebellion. I’m going to sum up and do it really quick, and if people really want to know they can go back and play this slowly, but here are some of the things the Bible says about rebellion, and I want to give Torrey credit for having saved me a lot of work.
Rebellion provokes God and vexes His Spirit (Num 16:30; Isa. 63:10). It is exhibited in unbelief (Ps. 106:24-25); in rejecting God’s rule (1 Sam. 8:7); in despising His law and His counsels (Neh. 9:26; Ps. 107:11); in distrusting His power (Ezek. 17:15); in murmuring against Him (Num. 20:3, 10); in refusing to listen to His word (Zec. 7:11); in rejection of God’s appointed rulers (Josh. 1:18); and in departing from the pattern and forms of worship that God has instituted (Ex. 32:8-9). The rebel follows after his own thoughts, rather than God’s word (Isa. 65:2). Scripture associates rebellion with stubbornness (Deut. 31:27), injustice and corruption (Isa. 1:23), and contempt for God (Ps. 107:11).
Scripture is also graphic in describing the consequences of rebellion. God says,
“[God] was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them” (Isa. 63:10).
In going back again to the whole umbrella thing – my mind is still churning on that one – in light of what Torrey has summed up for us here, I think we have to be very clear in distinguishing between a sin, even a pattern of sin, and rebellion. Sometimes only God can draw that line.
Just because your kid backtalks you once does not mean he is a rebel. Just because someone is struggling with one particular sin – anger, lust, or fill in the blank – does not necessarily mean that person is a rebel. He is rebelling against God’s law at that point, but that does not necessarily characterize him as a rebel, and therefore, “Well, son, you disobeyed me so God has set his face against you. Get ready to be devoured by the sword and for God to pour his fury upon you.” No! This is where you point him back to Jesus.
The rebels are those outside the camp altogether, not someone who has strayed in faith or grown weak in faith and slipped into sin. This is somebody who, as you say, has received the mark of the beast. They have consciously, self-consciously devoted themselves to this principle of rebellion, of replacing the God of scripture with some earthly worldly authority that they will serve, that they will worship, that they will imitate.
It’s not going to sneak up on you. You’re not going to accidentally get the mark of the beast. You’re going to be very aware that you have the mark of the beast.
You mention that, but again in dispensational circles that is something you encounter sometimes. “Oh no, I did this. Did I receive the mark of the beast when I…” signed up for Social Security or got the vaccine. No, you didn’t. There’s a self-conscious rebellion here.
Unless you literally said, “I’m getting this because I love Satan or disapprove of God so much.”
“The state is my God and I will do whatever it says.” At that point you’ve got a problem, and I think it probably was rather obvious to lots of people before that thing happened.
You mentioned, Bryan, and I don’t remember if you actually said it explicitly, in case I missed something, but the mark on the forehead and the hand – the forehead or, as you said, more literally between the eyes. In other words, what’s the filter through which you’re seeing everything, or the thing that’s dominating your thinking.
It’s like where’s the first place students think to write answers? It’s on their hand. It’s the first place they’re going to look.
Oh, we could have fun with that one. “You shall not write upon your hand, lest you fall into the mark of the beast.” No, that’s a joke, a very bad joke.
Turning back to my original article, there’s one last thing I do want to talk about. Falling back on what I understand of witchcraft, black magic, and the way it works, the sorcerer does not believe in a rational universe because a rational universe points directly to God. So the witch moves in an irrational world where anything is possible, where weirdness is not a matter of course, it’s just that’s the way the world is.
Although the demons they mess with may insist on very precise rituals, and traditionally demons do – for instance, Roman religion, religion of the family, the father had to memorize the worship formulas, the table formulas precisely from his father. If they were not done exactly right, in theory the demons could get very mad with you. Even if the words descended into nonsense syllables like abracadabra, you still had to do it exactly right or the demons would get you.
It's sort of the demons with their God complex. “If God demands complete exact obedience, we’ll do the same – ha ha ha. Watch them try to render it – ha ha ha.” But it’s insane. The words mean nothing. The ritual movements mean nothing. It’s all a Satanic mind game.
The witch, like the rebel, hates routine. It hates orderliness. It hates disciplined patterns, whereas the Christian self-consciously living in God’s well-ordered universe submits to basic habits – things like work six days and worship on the seventh.
There are things that God has given us, such as the gift of habit and memory and muscle memory. You can learn to play the piano. I was just watching my daughter play the piano last night, and she would turn and talk to her mom while her fingers kept going, because it’s there. We can type and talk to someone. We can do a process because habit has driven it into our very muscle memory.
If we had to stop and remember how to tie a shoe, how to button a coat, or how to shift through multiple gears while listening to the radio and talking on our phone at the same time, the streets would be much more full of accidents than they are, but God has given us these wonderful gifts and we learn to submit to the patterns, knowing that God is an orderly God and the universe he’s created is an orderly universe. By submission to habit, to pattern, to discipline, we gain more control over our environment so we’re more effective for the kingdom of God.
The witch or magician or rebel, on the other hand, does not like habits, does not like to be told, “It’s time to do this.”
“I don’t care what time it is. I’ll do it when I want to do it. I don’t feel like doing it right now.”
“And I want something big. I want it all at once. I don’t want to build up to it by that discipline and practice.”
“I want to be able to immediately play the piano. I shouldn’t have to work for it. I wants it.”
This is again a real point of conflict between a Satanic worldview and a Christian worldview. The Christian worldview recognizes that we are creatures within a created universe that’s bigger than we are, that is ruled by our Heavenly Father for our good. So if we learn the patterns of the world he’s made and submit to the patterns he has placed here, we’re not submitting to an alien universe that he never made. We’re submitting to our Father’s universe that he providentially governs, so we’re submitting to God himself. We can become very, very effective, especially over time.
As you say, the sorcerer wants everything right now, without work, without discipline, and without really any rational explanation of why he should have it or how it should be there. His will should be sufficient.
I was just going to make that comparison. It’s the will. They don’t live in a universe like this, but they want to live in a universe that is – I’m looking at snow out my window right now – they want it to be a world where they willed that the snowflake could become a ham sandwich before it hits the ground, then land in their hand, because they don’t want to make a sandwich right now.
Yes, and the big theme of the podcast – Halting Toward Zion – is one little step at a time.
That’s the whole idea behind the halting. Jacob limped, and limping is not the most effective way to get anywhere.
But it doesn’t matter because we’re not getting there by our own power. God has paved the way. God has ordained the way. God has empowered us for the way by his Spirit through the blood of Christ, so we can keep on keeping on. If occasionally we slip and fall and land on our face, he picks us up and we keep going and we don’t despair, “Woe is me. The devil’s in charge because I fell on my face.”
No, you’re a sinner but God has got you. As long as you keep looking at Jesus the path will remain clear and you’ll keep on keeping on. It just may take a lot longer than you want it to.
There’s that great line from Luther where he says, “When the devil reminds me that I’m a great sinner indeed, you need to respond to him, ‘That’s good because Jesus Christ died for sinners.’”
I remember a couple weeks ago when I was talking about jigsaw puzzles and how I feel like it’s a sanctifying process for me, it’s this very idea. I keep thinking to myself, “There has to be a better way to go about solving this. I’m not solving this jigsaw puzzle in the optimal way,” and it just stresses me out. Then I’m like, “This is literally the opposite of the point of doing a jigsaw puzzle. The point is to just do it one little piece at a time.”
I thought of that because jigsaw puzzles were my recommendation awhile ago. I think Bryan has also recommended jigsaw puzzles. Speaking of recommendations, we should give some before we sign off because we’re way over time. Greg, do you want to go first?
Earl Grey, hot. I did not grow up drinking tea or coffee, and for years I drank milk or water, but I went to England when I was in my late 20s and was introduced by the English to drinking proper tea.
Yes. It’s calming. It’s soothing. We’re on COVID quarantine right now so we’ve all been pulling out the tea, and I went back to it after not having drunk it much of late, and it is so much nicer than coffee – smooth, calming, relaxing. So if you’ve never tried tea before, now’s a good time to try it.
Coffee, if you have to have that jolt to get you up and going in the morning, which I try not to do – but just relaxing and recovering and looking out the window – I wish I were there, Bryan, and could see your snow, because I like looking out at snow. So try some tea.
Yeah, tea is good. That goes really well with my recommendation, as I have just finished a mug of tea, although I really like coffee so I will fight you on that one. I’m drinking this tea out of a mug that is way more fancy than a mug has any right to be. This is called the Ember mug and this one was a gift to David. What it does is it connects to your phone, and you can tell it on an app on your phone how hot you want your drink to be and remain, so for hours it will stay at your ideal temperature.
This was the perfect gift for David because he has this very narrow window of temperatures that are comfortable for him to drink, and by the time it’s got there he has like 5 minutes before it’s too cold, and he’s of course very distracted and working all day, so this mug is his favorite thing. And since he has it, I also drink out of it and enjoy it. This is called the Ember mug. They have it in a couple different sizes and a travel version. It’s ridiculous and I didn’t want to love it, but I do.
This seems like just the kind of First World comfort that you would despise on principle, but in practice you love.
For my recommendation I’m going to recommend two things and they are in my house with my wife, things that happen concurrently. That is, in the mornings we drink a full cup of water and a smaller mug that is full of all the hot toddy ingredients except for cinnamon and bourbon.
Just hot water, honey, and lemon juice. It’s very delightful in the morning. It’s just a nice little thing to have. My wife has coffee as well. I don’t typically drink anything caffeinated in the mornings because I don’t like it in the morning as much, for whatever reason. It’s just not me.
The second thing is – and I’m pretty sure this is something I’ve recommended before – but I’m going to recommend daily morning devotions, specifically with whoever is in your immediate family as a member, so me and my wife, and then the dogs are just there. They don’t participate.
It’s been really lovely. I did not grow up in a family that did any kind of devotions as a family, so it’s very nice. This is something I 100% recommend. You should be doing this with your family because it leads to great conversations. Multiple times we’ll read something and it will spark a 2- or 3-minute sidebar where we just talk about that, or in our less-sanctified moments complain about people who don’t do the thing we just read.
So hot lemon-honey water and a full cup of water, because you need to hydrate. Then daily devotions. I recommend that.
Awesome. Great recommendations. Thank you, guys, so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband and favorite mug owner – that is, the owner of my favorite mug, as well as my favorite owner of a mug.
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