By Jim Mettenbrink
Some are befuddled, angry, and some are happy that Barack Obama was reelected as the US president. In view of the questionable and immoral actions he undertook in his first term, most people with God’s righteousness thought surely he will not be reelected. So why did the people vote for him again? Soviet leader Josef Stalin said, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” However where is God in this process? Has God simply gone on vacation and left mankind to their own sinful devices to obtain and maintain power over the people?
Early on, God tells us He creates the nations. He promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation (Genesis 12:2). Some 85 years later, God told Rebekah ‘Two nations are in your womb” (Genesis 25:23). They were the fathers of Israel (Jacob) and Edom (Esau – Genesis 36:9). After God created nations, was He involved with them? Regarding giving the land of Canaan to Israel, God did so, “because of the wickedness of these nations” (Deuteronomy 9:5). The stipulations of obedience vs disobedience to God was part of the Old Covenant with Israel (Deuteronomy 28:58-65). Israel became more wicked than heathen peoples so were removed from their land (2 Kings 21:9; 2 Chronicles 33:9). Some might argue that this was only because Israel was God’s chosen people.
What about the Canaanites? They were also wicked and removed. On the other hand, God blesses a nation when they are obedient to His ways. Israel’s prophet Jonah went to wicked Nineveh, Assyria’s capital, calling for their repentance. They did and the king commanded the nation to repent (Jonah 3:4-10). Over the next 60 years, Assyria became the world power (God’s instrument ) to remove Israel’s northern kingdom from its land (722 BC). Although God sent them to remove all of Israel, He became displeased because Assyria wanted to take “many” nations and return to their idolatry (Isaiah 10:5-10).
After the northern kingdom was removed, Judah was about to be conquered because of its evil and idolatry. Because of King Hezekiah’s pleading to God, Jerusalem was spared destruction (2 Kings 19:20, 35-37). God indeed was involved in the existence and destruction of the nations. Is it so today?
In 1985, Ludwig Klinka, a preacher for the Lord’s church in Germany told me that he believed Germany was divided into two separate countries after World War II because it had become such a wicked nation. God controls the nations, but does He select the leaders?
Although Judah was spared being exiled for another 135 years because of Hezekiah’s prayer, the nation remained unfaithful to God. God used Babylon as His instrument of wrath. The book of Daniel reveals the depth of God’s involvement. Even though Daniel had interpreted Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, telling him, “…the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory;…” (Daniel 2:37), Nebuchadnezzar commanded the nation to worship an idol under the threat of being incinerated. After the miraculous salvation of the Jewish men in the furnace, he decreed that all should worship God (Daniel 3:26-29). Still he was filled with arrogant pride (Daniel 4:30). God wanted him to learn submission to the real sovereign. In another dream and Daniel’s interpretation, God declared three times “…the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses” (Daniel 4:32). After being humiliated by grazing like an ox for a lengthy period, he was restored to his throne, declaring “I praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works are truth, and His ways justice. And those who walk in pride He is able to put down” (Daniel 4:36-37). Nowhere does the Bible tell us that God stopped being involved in the nations, nor selecting their leaders. So why Barack Obama as the US president?
In 2003, Illinois state Sen. Obama voted against a bill that would save a baby who survived an abortion. This attitude supports infanticide. In March 2008, US Sen. Obama declared the Sermon on the Mount justifies homosexual unions. Evidence of his full support of homosexuality is replete: (1) open homosexuality in the military (2) In June 2009, he issued a memorandum giving homosexual partners of federal employees many of the benefits enjoyed by the spouses of their heterosexual employees. Two days later Secretary of State Clinton extended “eligible family member” status to homosexual live-in partners of state department employees sent to serve outside the USA. The benefits? Housing, education, medical services and travel to foreign post. (3) In May 2012, during the reelection campaign, President Obama endorsed homosexual marriage, and thereby eroding the divine sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. Leadership is often a reflection of the citizens. Over half of the people between ages 18 and 64 believe homosexual marriage is acceptable. In this election, the people, not legislatures or judges, but the people voted in three states to legalize homosexual marriage. We are at the stage of changing the USA to the US of S & G. What will God do to us? Is He ever unjust? Never!
We get what we deserve. God has given us the president in harmony with the immorality of the nation. Barack Obama is God’s man! The question that lurks is what does God have in mind for him to do as our national leader. We must pray he would turn to God’s righteousness as did Uganda’s President Museveni (1 Tim 2:1-2). In his prayer, he asked God to “Forgive us of sins of …sexual immorality, drunkenness and debauchery….We want to dedicate this nation to you so that you will be our God and guide. We want Uganda to be known as a nation that fears God and as a nation whose foundations are firmly rooted in righteousness and justice ….” May God have mercy on the USA as He exercises His justice. “Righteousness exalts a people. Sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
