BY ED FELIEN
“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness,” Trump, on election night.
And Mike Johnson thinks he’s Moses: “Only God saw the path through the roiling sea.”
And Pete Hegseth is on a White Nationalist Holy Crusade with the tattoo Deus Vult, God’s Will, on his bicep. “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords … our fight is not with guns. Yet.” “Voting is a weapon, but it’s not enough.” “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians 1,000 years ago, we must.” – Pete Hegseth, in his 2020 book “American Crusade.”
At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, Trump announced, “We are going to keep foreign Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists out of America. We’re keeping them out of America.”
School Boards across the South are posting The Ten Commandments on classroom walls, and the Texas State Board of Education has approved a Bible-based curriculum.
It behooves us all to know as much as we can about Moses and The Ten Commandments and Jesus of Nazareth.
The first time we learn anything about Moses is when Ezra brings The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, from Babylon into Jerusalem. Cyrus the Great financed the expedition and furnished the myths (borrowed from ancient Sumerian stories — like Adam and Eve and The Flood) that justified the expansion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire by building a temple in Jerusalem.
The story of Moses crossing the Red Sea and getting lost in the desert for forty years was probably meant as a cautionary tale for Ezra and his expedition. They had to cross the Syrian Desert from Babylon to get to the Mediterranean and Jerusalem. If they got lost it could take them as much as forty years to find their way out. Of course, it doesn’t make sense that Moses, the adopted son of Egyptian royalty, wouldn’t know about the thousand-year-old road and trading route from Alexandria to Palestine that went along the shore of the Mediterranean. But Exodus made a good story, and it allowed Ezra (like Mike Johnson) to compare himself to Moses.
The stories we learn about Jesus tell us he preached peace and love, but led a massive demonstration on Palm Sunday that drove the Roman tax collectors out of the Temple. He was arrested that night after a Passover meal with his friends. He told them, according to Luke, Chapter 22:
35 And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.
36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
37 For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.
Painting of cherubim after a detail of “Sistine Madonna” by Raphael
They must have found enough money to buy lots of swords because a few years later, in 66, there was a Great Jewish Revolt, beginning first in Caesarea, the big Roman port close to Nazareth. The first rebellion ended in the tragedy of mass suicides at Masada in 73.
Rebellions against Rome continued for another seventy years. And rebellion spread. It was underground in catacombs in Rome. It undermined Roman authority, and, eventually, it drove Roman emperors out of Rome and into Turkey.
Who were these early Christians?
Acts of the Apostles says:
Acts 4:35 “And distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.”
Acts 5:1-11 tells the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and how when they didn’t share with their brothers and sisters, they were struck dead.
That spirit of utopian communism, sharing everything with everyone, was the utopian communal spirit of the first European settlers on these shores. The Guilford Covenant says:
‘We whose names are herein written, intending by God’s gracious permission, to plant ourselves in New England, we do faithfully promise each for ourselves and families and those that belong to us, that we will, the Lord assisting us, sit down and join ourselves together in one entire plantation and to be helpful to the other in any common work, according to every man’s ability and as need shall require, and we promise not to desert or leave each other on the plantation but with the consent of the rest, or the greater part of the company, who have entered into this engagement.”
“In witness whereof we subscribe our hands, this first day of June 1639.”
Acts 4:32-35 “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
Acts 2:45 “And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
Matthew 19:21 “Jesus answered, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’”
Mark 10:21 “Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’”
How did this simple doctrine of love thy neighbor become lost and replaced by the Prosperity Gospel — a gospel that preached that the richer you got meant the greater God’s blessings were upon you. Material wealth was, now, a manifestation of God’s love.
By this measure, the billionaire oligarchs of Trump’s administration must seem like the Heavenly Host to the evangelical faithful steeped in the Prosperity Gospel.
But Matthew 6:24 says “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect,” Matthew 24:24 and Mark 13:22.
“And in their greed they will exploit you with false words,” 2 Peter 2:3
According to 2 Thessalonians, Jesus cannot return for the End Times until the “man of lawlessness is revealed,” who “will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped.” This lawless man will “use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie.” But ultimately the man and his followers will be destroyed: “all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
