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War and Broken Treaties

When we poured out the vial at Amityville Cemetery on Oct. 7, part of its purpose was to reconcile an underlying problem of "bad decisions" made by many U.S. presidents over the years. Those "bad decisions" include making and breaking treaties with the Native American people.

The Amityville House itself, made famous by the movies, "The Amityville Horror," was built upon Indian burial grounds. The house was built with basement dungeons, where the owner of the house was said to have tortured over 40 Indians. The injustice and cruelty of the place established a pattern that the nation itself often followed in its official policies on behalf of the people--though certainly only a small minority of Americans would have approved.

A great many Christian Americans desired to create a "New Israel" in this land, a Christian Nation, and, indeed, even Supreme Court justices agreed for centuries that this was a Christian Nation. But because there was no way to stop the immigration of non-Christians (and carnally-minded Christians), the new nation followed the same degenerative pattern as ancient Israel followed. The Book of Judges says of them, "Every man did what was right in his own eyes."

In other words, although they were a theocracy in theory, they were a democracy in practice. Optimistic preachers believed that America was the beginning of the Kingdom of God upon the earth, but such preaching died down in the decades that followed, as reality set in.

In Joshua 9 we read how two Canaanite cities tricked Joshua into making a treaty with them. In spite of their deception, God expected Israel to keep their treaty. Many years later, King Saul broke this treaty by persecuting them (Gibeonites). This governmental policy is said to have caused a famine in the land of Israel long after Saul had died (2 Sam. 21:1). King David did not cause this problem, but he had to deal with it. 2 Sam. 21:8 says that as a result, the seven sons of Saul were hanged on the first day of barley harvest (i.e., the wave-sheaf offering, or "Easter").

If God so judged Israel for breaking a treaty that was obtained by deceit, how much more would He judge America for breaking countless treaties which they made with full knowledge of what they were doing? In David's day, the judgment was a three-year famine in the land. In our day it is a famine of hearing the Word (Amos 8:11). I also believe that this is the cause of the end-time "Elijah famine."

On October 7, at Amityville, NY, we prayed at the cemetery, located among streets named for American presidents. We prayed for God's forgiveness and restitution. The issue is bigger than just broken treaties, of course, but this issue was a large part of it. Actually, the whole issue is a major symptom of our overall war policies.

There are two ways to conduct warfare. There is Old Covenant warfare, which employs the physical sword; and there is New Covenant warfare, which employs a greater sword that is the Word of God. In Moses' day, the people refused the Word of the Lord at Sinai on the day that later came to be celebrated as Pentecost. Thus, the spiritual Sword was not given to them, and they were left only with a physical sword by which to conquer Canaan.

Even so, God expected them to follow His laws of war (Deut. 20). They were NOT to follow the tradition of men that said, "All is fair in love and war." No, they were restricted by the word of God. They were to be an all-volunteer army, and before each battle, anyone was allowed to "go home" if they were afraid for any reason. If anyone felt that the war was unjust, and that God was therefore not on their side, they would have been fearful of participating in the battle and could go home.

The chaplains (priests) were to conduct the spiritual warfare ahead of time, and then the army itself was to bring that spiritual warfare into the world according to the word of God.

The day of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts gave us a new sword to use, which ancient Israeli had refused. But somewhere along the way, the Church lost it and then reverted back to Old Covenant swords in their attempt to build the Kingdom of God. Today, American Christians are taught that it is a good or patriotic thing to fight in a war. I admit the possibility in theory, but only because we are in the condition that we find ourselves. If we had truly been a Christian nation, we would be blessed beyond measure, and we could have resolved most conflicts by spiritual warfare. Then, if physical warfare could not be avoided, we should have conducted it according to the laws of war found in Deut. 20.

Our problem today is that our wars are directed by those who do not follow the biblical laws of war, and yet we appeal to God to help us win. And the Christian people themselves seldom read these laws, so they are easily led to support ungodly wars in the name of patriotism. In so doing, they sacrifice to Caesar as if he were a deity, not realizing that this was the very issue that faced the early Church. The martyrs could have avoided torture and death if they had but acknowledged the worship of the State by sacrificing to Caesar.

Our ungodly pursuit of war and bloodshed has been perpetuated to the present time. We fight wars in order to maintain our standard of living, or to protect our business interests abroad--whether those business contracts (treaties) are just or unjust. All natural resources belong to God, not to man, and so God requires a tithe to be paid to Him whenever man harvests a natural resource that God has placed in the earth by His own labor. This law is broken regularly, and no one thinks anything of it. Instead, the governments award cheap contracts to companies and then keeps the taxes for its own self-interest.

Because the people do not understand the law and the causes and effects of divine judgment, they seldom understand the situation when God begins to bring judgment upon the land. And so, things like the Twin Towers disaster on 9-11-01 are blamed on everyone else, and we go to war to punish the perpetrators, not knowing that our first reaction should have been to repent of our own sins. This is the prior cause and the reason that God has removed His hand of protection from us.

But yet, as I have written in the past, even this divine judgment is designed to bring America to the place where we will acknowledge the sin of humanism (making man and his self-interest the god of the universe). God is leading us to the Red Sea, where we face imminent disaster unless God intervenes. As for us, we have heard the word of the Lord and know that He plans to turn our hearts in His mercy, so that we will not be utterly destroyed by our sin.

Our prayer on October 7 was, in a sense, a culmination of a seven-year prayer to overthrow the inner Babylon in the heart of the people and of the government officials who represent them, so that we and the whole world may come into the knowledge of the glory of God. I have long felt that we would see these two things occur at roughly the same time: (1) disaster, and (2) the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The first is the consequence of worshiping man, and the second is the solution that prevents utter disaster.

God's purpose in all of this is to bring the nations under the rule of Christ and His body. I do not care which nation is first to submit to Him, as long as it is done. But as an American, I work in my own country and pray that America will do this. In writing these things in a public venue, I hope also to challenge people from every nation to pray for their own nation, using the spiritual sword, which is the Word of God, not the physical sword as so many today are doing.