When the Righteous Rule Part 3

Enabling Evil

1st Kings 11:2 “Of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.”

By Francis Swaggart out of the March 2016 issue of The Evangelist magazine.

When Solomon was about 20 years old, he was already the king of Israel and the Bible says his kingdom was “established greatly.” The Scriptures tells us how Solomon loved the Lord, walked in the statutes of his father, David, and how he went to the great high place, Gibeon, to sacrifice a thousand burnt offerings upon the altar. It was in Gibeon that the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and told him, “Ask what shall I give you.”

“And now, O LORD my God, Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people which Thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this Thy so great a people?” (I Kings 3:7-9)

His unselfish request pleased the Lord, and He gave Solomon a wise and understanding heart like no other before or after him. The Lord also gave the king what he didn’t ask for: riches, honor, and the promise of long life—if Solomon walked in His ways.

Solomon’s relationship with the Lord is demonstrated so beautifully in I Kings, Chapter 8, where we find the king over all of Israel praying in the temple that he built for the Lord:

“And Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven: And he said, LORD God of Israel, there is no God like Thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath, who keepest covenant and mercy with Thy servants that walk before Thee with all their heart” (I Kings 8:22-23).

Sadly, the story of Solomon darkens when he disobeys God by letting his love of influential foreign women to overshadow his covenant with the Lord. The Bible says that Solomon had 700 princess wives whom, Pulpit says in his commentary, “Were amassed for the purpose of amalgamating unions with other nations.”

This indicates a shift in Solomon’s faith for Israel’s strength—from God to princesses with political power.

Despite God’s command, Solomon brought his pagan wives and concubines into Israel perhaps with a false hope that they would forsake their religion and fear God as was his prayer for other strangers:

But Solomon’s foreign wives had no intention of forsaking their pagan worship. Instead, they demanded that Solomon build altars to worship their idols, which he did. Instead of turning his wives to the Lord, his wives turned Solomon’s heart away from the Lord.

“And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father” (I Ki. 11:6).

In his commentary on this passage from I Kings, my husband writes:

“There is no sadder picture in the Bible than that of Solomon’s fall. His extraordinary gift of wisdom did not save him from disobedience to the law of God. His neglect of that law and his loss of fellowship with God. which gives power to it, opened the door wide to the entrance of every form of evil.”

Solomon’s decision to open Israel’s borders to foreigners who were unwilling to assimilate proved to be unwise. America should take note because the president of the United States is making the same unwise decision.

Millions of refugees are pouring in from Syria into Europe and now the United States, and Americans are being pressured by the president and other world leaders to help these displaced people despite the national security threat of infiltration by terrorist groups.

President Obama went so far as to mock politicians who opposed his directive to welcome Syrian refugees into the U.S. and accused Republicans of being “scared of widows and orphans.”

On Nov. 13, 2015, when terrorists carried out the multi-sited attack on Paris and calmly gunned down 130 people while saying things like, “You need to think about Syria,” President Obama still insisted that opening U.S. borders to Syrian refugees is the right thing to do and that the vetting process in place works. His plan is to resettle at least another 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. in 2016.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is the primary responsibility of the president of the United States to keep the American people safe. But the actions of President Obama raise the question: Is he showing love to the people of America and to the refugees that he’s trying to bring into this country, or is he enabling evil to flourish?

The people of France and Germany might be able to answer that question best. Their leaders agreed to open-border policies and are now dealing with a Muslim population of nearly 5 million in each country. In 2015, France alone experienced seven terrorist “incidents” mostly by Islamists—two mass shootings, three stabbings, and one beheading—that left a total of 152 people dead.

In addition to taking refugees into their country, Germany also has to house hundreds of thousands of “asylum-seekers”—more than 700,000 in 2015—and pay them a stipend of $152 for basic needs.

Are these refugees thankful for the assistance? Are they assimilating? No, they are committing crimes. On Dec. 31, 2015, New Year’s Eve, the following sexual assault cases involving refugees were reported in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and France:

Ecclesiastes 8:11 says, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”

Notes from my husband’s commentary on this verse are excellent. They read:The government is morally and spiritually obligated to put down all “evil work,” whether in the hearts and lives of individuals or in entire nations. To not do so will only increase the evil.

The scepter of world power is in the hands of the United States, where it has been almost from the beginning of the 20th century. This authority is given by God to this nation. America is responsible for several things:

• It is the business of this nation to put down other nations that would attempt to take peace from the world, which Satan is constantly promoting.
• It is the business of this nation, given by God, to protect the tiny state of Israel. Surrounded by a sea of Muslims, Israel is besieged from all sides. It is our responsibility to protect her against this hoard of hell. If we as a nation discharge these responsibilities as we should, somehow God will see us through as it regards the constant problems that plague this nation and threaten to hurt, hinder, or even destroy her.

• We are not wise in our thinking, Christians; we are not wise in our thinking, Americans, if we believe it is safe to let people who intend to do us harm cross our borders and live in our country.

The sensible thing to do is stop all immigration. That doesn’t mean that we should stop showing Christian love to immigrants.

I know this issue has many believers struggling with verses such as Matthew 25:35: “For I was hungry, and you gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and you took Me in.”

When this question came up on Frances & Friends, my husband called in to explain that this verse really pertains to Israel and the judgment of the nations in the coming kingdom age.

He said, “When the Lord will say that you have fed Me, He was talking about helping Israel. The world is obligated to help Israel, and God will bless those who do. This is what He’s talking about in verse 25, not that Christians should take all of these people into their homes.”

Consider the lawyer in Luke’s gospel who “willing to justify himself” asked Jesus who his neighbor was. The Lord replied:

“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him” (Lk. 10:33-34).

Note that the Samaritan went to the man who had been attacked and robbed. He didn’t bring him into his home. The Samaritan helped the injured man where he was and took him to a nearby inn and paid for his care.

America is a compassionate neighbor in the world and has poured $4.5 billion into the current immigration crisis. More U.S. dollars are being spent to bring refugees here, rather than help support the camps there.

Dr. Ben Carson recently visited a camp for Syrian refugees and asked what more America could do to help them. He said that they did not want to come to America. They would rather relocate within their own country, or at least in the nearby region.

“There’s so many people who think the ideal for everybody is to come to America and be resettled here, but that is not the ideal for everybody,” Carson said.

As Christians, of course we want to be compassionate and show love to our fellow man, but our primary responsibility is to love and protect our families. Within the family unit, a husband’s priority is to protect and provide for his family.

Likewise, the first and foremost duty of any U.S. president is to protect the citizens of the United States of America. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the current administration. As one political pundit put it, “We’re on our own.”

Still, we have people calling my program and arguing that Christians should take these Syrians—who have no desire to assimilate—into our country and into our homes. Donnie responded to those callers on the air:

“What if the next terrorist strike by one of those immigrants that we let in kills your grandchild, kills your son, kills your wife, or your husband,” he said. “What’s going to be your attitude then? It sounds harsh, it sounds mean, but it’s not. We have to be vigilant to know who we let into our country because the lives—potential lives—of Americans are at stake, and it could be someone in your family.”

Just two weeks after Donnie made that statement, a married couple living in California, loyal to Islam, planned and executed a mass shooting at the husband’s San Bernardino workplace during a Christmas luncheon. They killed 14 people and injured 22. It was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

We have to accept the harsh reality that Islamic terrorism is now growing up and living in the United States, and it will continue to grow if no one stops it.

I pray that America does not look back on these days and say the same thing they said of the Holocaust: “Evil unchecked is the prelude to genocide.”

As we’ve stated so many times, as the church goes, so goes the nation. I’m trying to wake up the church. I’m trying to wake up Christians. We have got to understand what evil is, and we’ve got to understand what Christian love is.

John Rosenstern put it well when he said, “As Christians, our love is sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is love.”

We demonstrate true Christian love through the preaching and teaching of the gospel. When He gave the Great Commission, the Lord did not say to open your borders to strangers. He did not say that to Solomon and He has not said that to us. His command is to go and preach—we go to them:

“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mk. 16:15).

Helping those in need with food, clothing, and shelter is good, but humanitarian efforts are a temporary fix; only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has the power to save souls.

I can’t think of a better testimony to this point than the one given by a precious lady named Jackie who called in to Frances & Friends.

She was born into a Muslim family in Turkey; the rest of her family is still Muslim. When she was 9 years old, her family moved to Berlin where she later became a born-again Christian. When Jackie converted to Christianity, her family disowned her because to them, she became a traitor.

Her own brother tried to kill her because in the Koran, people like her should be punished by death. When Jackie called in to the program, what she had to say just blessed me and everyone else on the panel. She said:

• The true Islam follows the teaching of Muhammad, the teaching of Koran. Everything you guys say are 100 percent true. I pray to God that every American gets a Koran and every person that never read the Koran that call themselves Muslim, please, please read the Koran and check the history. Then you will see everything my Sister Swaggart and her panel preach is the whole truth. We love Muslims. Jesus died for the Muslims. You know our war is not against people, our war is against the deceivers, the great deceiver—Satan himself. Pray for those men that call themselves ISIS.Jesus told us to love our enemies; He didn’t say kill them. Muhammad says, ‘Kill them wherever you find them.’ Islam god says, ‘Kill for me, then you come to heaven.’ Our Jesus said, ‘I died for you so you can come through Me to heaven.’

  My prayer is every Muslim receives Christ. And every person don’t know Him, even in America. There are so many people call themselves Christians, but they’re not Christians. We know that, because they’re not living according to the Bible.

When I asked Jackie more about her brother trying to kill her, she added:

• Yes, ma’am, my brother threatened to kill me, tried to, yes, and he threatened me if I ever come to Turkey, if I ever share my Jesus, and I told him, ‘If my Lord sends me there, I’m coming. There’s nothing that can stop me. Even if you kill me, every cell in my body will shout, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’ because He is life. There’s no hope without Him; He is life. He is the cure for the world—not just for Americans, not just for Europe—He is for every human race if they want life and hope.Because of Christianity, I have a personal experience with my God. He has revealed Himself to me personally. He has touched my life. He has changed my life. He changed my heart.

  You know, Muslim is just a religion. God did not give us religion; He gave us a person, and His name is Jesus Christ.

This is a perfect picture of Christian love, both the receiving of it and the sharing of it. This precious woman heard the gospel and received the Lord as her personal Saviour. This is what the preaching of the gospel does. Praise the Lord!

In her story, you can hear the boldness, the discernment, and the wisdom that the Lord has given her to deal with her family and to proclaim her testimony so that others have the opportunity to reach out to the Lord in faith. Most of all, you can hear the love she has for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Until we receive salvation, we are all spiritual refugees in need of the Saviour—the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why we work day and night to send the gospel out to all the nations around the world.

Visit the source for images and foot notes used in this article

Continued in Part 4