Thought for 2008 A.D.: Rummel's Law: The fewer freedoms people have, the more likely their rulers are to kill them.
R. J. Rummel: One very smart human!
With the final phases of One World Government apparently being emplaced around us, it is good to be aware of God's reluctance to allow his people to have kings. He conceded that Saul could become Israel's first king only with regret, as the Israelites were clamoring for someone to lead them in war. But He instructed the Priest Samuel to read off a list of the oppressions they must submit to if they were to embrace an earthly and human king.
From 1 Samuel 8: "This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen. And some will run before his chariots. He will appoint Captains over his thousands and Captains over his fifties and will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep, and you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourself, and the Lord will not hear you in that day."
Yet, after hearing this not so rosy picture of life under a king, Israel still wanted one, so they were given kings one leading to another. And nearly all of the kings were bad kings in the eyes of God either at the beginning of their reign, by the end, or throughout.
In roughly 500 years of living under a king, only David, Hezekiah, Jehosaphat, Jehu (though he's on the bubble), Joash, Amaziah, and Josiah were largely pleasing to the Lord (did I miss any?) Even Solomon's later corruption greatly weighed against his earlier virtue. Bear in mind too that this was a divided nation (dual Kingships, one in Israel and one in Judah) during most of these centuries. There were many kings. So, there were hardly any good kings. They were mostly oppressive. Some were just evil.
It is worthwhile to note the work of a man named R.J. Rummel, who is an American sociologist and a historian. He has held the position of 'professor emeritus' at the University of Hawaii. He has written many books centered around government involvement in violence. He's been published and read widely and has been considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. As mentioned, this man has written a variety of works, but among them he performed an investigation which concluded that the bloodiest century in the known history of the world was the 20th - concluding that during the 20th century approximately 6 times as many people were deliberately killed by their governments among the various nations as were actually killed by wars against other nations. Consider that profound fact: people were 6 times more likely to be killed by their own government than through war with another nation. If war is called dangerous, then our own governments, by this measure, should be considered vastly more dangerous than any of our national enemies.
This includes 20th century ethnic cleansings in Germany, the Soviet Union, Cambodia (Pol Pot's citizens supposedly had 2:1 odd of surviving his regime), Poland, Iran, Sudan, Liberia, North Korea, Armenia, and China among others.
It also includes work camps such as the Soviet Gulags, which contained prisoners more for political or religious views than for ethnic backgrounds.
So, in a sense, you have 6 times as much to fear from your own government as you do from a foreign government, worldwide, as far as your very life is concerned. He estimated after studying over 8000 reports of genocides by people's own governments (democides - a term he coined) that over 260 million people were killed by their own governments in the 20th century. This was essentially 6 times as many as killed by "nation against nation" war, as mentioned earlier. Compare that number to the approximate 300 million persons population of America, to get an idea of just how many killings that represents.
Professor Rummel found virtually no incidents of liberal democratic nations warring against each other, and also found that democratic nations are the ones least likely to kill their own citizens.
A saying attributed to him roughly says that 'concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth'. Also, another: that where a government's power is diffused, balanced, and checked, there are the least incidents of bloodshed by governments against their citizens.
This man has done a pretty great thing here. He has fleshed out the consequences of the warning from God to the Israelites about having a human king (the ultimate concentration of government power) with some real-life numbers and estimates of numbers. I don't mean to say that he had that in mind, as I have never heard this man's religious beliefs. But, in my opinion, his work achieved that. Where God is the ruler, a higher justice and a better justice than man's prevails over the lives of people. And in such places the only real challenge is to continue to teach the laws of God, and to maintain good enforcers and judges.
But where men make the rules, and where the power of men goes unchecked, tyranny either exists or will soon come. It's the nature of the ultra-aggressive dictator type personalities that come along. They just naturally gravitate to those positions of power, and having achieved them, work to consolidate them, and extend their scope. War will always surround centralized and unchecked power. It always has, and man isn't changing. Note that the 20th century was the worst century of all for this bloodshed. If we were 'evolving' into a better type of creature, with higher ethics, morals, and ideals, we would not be seeing the centuries bring worse devastation, but rather better things - peaceful co-existence, for instance.
Americans and North Americans in particular need to realize what a rare and precious thing they have - and try to maintain it while possible. Lost freedoms are seldom regained.
A Coming World Leader is almost on the scene. I personally feel convinced I know which particular person it is based on clues the Bible gives. And that person is no spring chicken, being over 60 now, so if I've guessed correctly then we not only don't have much time - we basically have none. If I'm wrong (and that's pretty likely) we still may be right there at the event.
While it's a foregone conclusion from prophecy that the Coming World Leader will defeat the efforts of men and will only be beaten by our Lord Jesus at his second coming, it is still incumbent upon us to resist evil, and to define those things as evil that our Lord Jesus would call evil. But the Christian overcomes by love, not bloodshed. Our Lord did not resist his enemies' attacks physically. Rage and killing, bloodshed and harm are not the teachings of Jesus. But courage in identifying those same and rejecting them no matter how high the cost to your person the example of Jesus is.
So, though the coming King Jesus is the government we must actually place our hope in, we must maintain our hard-won liberties for as long as we can. Many people may come to Jesus through the efforts of a tainted but still God-fearing America, for instance, so long as America exists as a political entity. But once it is destroyed then that many fewer souls will hear of the Lord.
The One World Government now in place and tightening the noose daily is not going to be promoting knowledge of Jesus once their power is complete - that much is a given. We already are told not to place tributes to God and Jesus on display in our public institutions here in America. We are told this by our government, the alleged protector of what America holds sacred. So, there can be no real doubt that our American government's key power figures are already on the side of Jesus's enemies. Or are they just making sure that false gods aren't offended by tributes to the real one? How far away from the end can we truly be?
If you've thought about becoming Christian, or begun to believe in Jesus, or have thought about looking into it, don't say to yourself "I need to do that someday." Someday is already spoken for. We all die 'someday'. So, check your day-planner again and reschedule it. There are two time slots left over in every person's day-planner: There's "Quickly, while I can." And there's 'Never got around to it." And remember, this is where you are going to spend all of eternity. Right now you could live in Heaven or in Hell forever. Right now you have a choice.
But if you choose "Never got around to it" then the Christian scriptures are extremely clear that you have effectively chosen to reject heaven. After all, you have disrespected the most painful and expensive gift that God ever gave up for mankind. You are disrespecting the gift of His Son's crucifixion, suffered on your behalf to affect your rescue and return to the kingdom you were meant to belong to. You are disrespecting the truths that Jesus taught, having brought those truths directly from the Father. That's a huge disrespect. And unlike disrespecting a fellow human - also a bad thing of course - if you disrespect God, Jesus, and the Spirit you are purposely offending those who have no hint of a stain on their record or in their character.
Friend, none of us dare show that much disrespect to God, and towards Jesus; we dare not reject Jesus's gift of salvation to those who choose Him. Jesus has already warned us that it won't be tolerated, and that means eternity (really consider that unit of time!) in hell, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Where the worm does not die. (Three times Jesus repeats that the worm does not die there in that place of damnation. Mark 9:44. You are apparently not burned up instantly to become as nothing forever after. You are aware of things, it is bad, and it is permanent. This bad place is described fairly frequently and usually in the same sort of terms.)
There won't be a fairly acceptable 'consolation prize' type of life there. It will be painful, dry, and hot, and sorrowful. Is that unfair? Appeal to God about it then. But good luck, right? He's the one that decided it would be that way. People who don't even deserve it will be allowed into heaven on the strength of their having chosen Jesus as their Lord. And people who don't even want to go to a bad place forever will go there anyway, on the strength of their having rejected that same Jesus as their Lord. Remember, Jesus fulfilled hundreds (some people have counted 365) prophesies with His birth, life, and resurrection. No religion on earth has a deity with a similar record. None even begin to come close. Jesus is the only true savior and Messiah. Miracles, frequent and well documented, observed by many, have accompanied the spreading of His word to every corner of the globe. No false deity can show any such power. None even try to, if you've noticed. It's true; which other faith has a deity that claims to have performed so great a number of miracles, or fulfilled so many prophecies? There are none.
Understand, the evidence for Jesus is overwhelming - numerically staggering. The reason you still might not believe in Jesus is that there are dark angels, losers of a heavenly rebellion, led by a powerful spiritual creature named Satan, at work here on Earth all of the time. Do you sleep? They don't. Do you rest? They don't. Do you waste time and enjoy life sometimes? It's natural, or at least common. We all do. But they don't.
To them, stamping out belief in Jesus is a deadly serious 24/7 battle in which they count every misled person a victory and a cause for celebration. They know God and Jesus but fear them. They lost the upper kingdom, and now they do not want Jesus becoming King of the lower kingdom - the Earth. That's all they have left, and they, unlike us, understand all about what an eternity of torment would be like. Angels are not known in the old writings or scripture to grow old and die in the way people do. And the dark angels learned things during their time in heaven that we do not yet know. Whatever it is that they know about eternity for the wicked is making them fight with a terrible and desperate fierceness. We should take a lesson from that.
Just simply know that in a world where 260 million people were killed by their own governments in one century, there is something drastically desperately gone wrong. And it's because there is a spiritual war going on all around us, and even in us - all the time. There is truth, spiritual safety, and spiritual security for all those who believe in and learn from Jesus, but other than that, there is no real good, no true peace and safety on Earth. There is a war on. Those who are stolen from Jesus forever are the casualties of that war.
May God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit be with us to guide us in this coming year of our Lord, 2008 and onward. Make it a time of triumph for your soul. And if you've already devoted your life to Jesus, make it a year of victory for someone else's soul, as a praise to our Lord. Praise God!