Posted by
Dave Leach on Monday, February 09, 2009 6:53:08 PM
It is very difficult for me to listen to so many of my fellow Christians engage in so much talk which, as nearly as I can determine from Scripture, is a target of the wrath of God.
This talk is a doubly deadly target: not only are my fellow Moral Conservative, Republican, Bible-Believing Christians calling for the dehumanization and destruction of those with whom God so personally identifies that he says "as you treat these, you treat me" and warns of Hell for we who do this, but in order to mistreat God's beloved, my theological neighbors are literally Hell-bent on forcing the Mark of the Beast on every U.S. citizen as quickly as possible, in order to locate every single one of God's Beloved so they can throw them as far away as possible.
If Hell will be the fate, according to Revelation 14, of every single person who takes the Mark, what will be the fate of Moral Conservative, Republican, Bible-Believing Christians who are not only pushing to the front of the line to take it, but are already voting to force the Mark on everyone else?
...Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels...for...I was a stranger [immigrant], and ye took me not in:...Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. Matthew 25:40-45
Have you thought about Jesus’ Second Greatest Commandment, and what it says about our expulsion of “illegals”?
“And who is my neighbour?” Jesus answered with a story about “the Good Samaritan”, in a day when His Samaritans were our Mexicans. Who is the hero of the story? A Mexican. What is God’s highest example of the kind of Love of Neighbor to which God calls us? The Mexican who, despite all our cruel labels and burdens which we will not touch with our little fingers, Luke 11:46, still treats us with decency, not returning cursing for cursing (1 Peter 3:9), as he works hard for us. (Luke 10:29-37)
What do you know about the "line" which you insist everyone ought to come here ought to get in? If you are that determined they get in it, why aren't you asking your lawmakers to make it possible for them to get in it? (My song, "Get in Line like Everybody Else", is posted on Youtube.)
Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Luke 11:46
Not that God wants us to welcome criminals and terrorists, or that we should not use watch lists for those groups at our borders. The phrase “thou shalt love him as thyself” does not say we should let them move about freely after they commit offenses for which we would lock up citizens.
Exodus 12:49 One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.
Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
This actually says the same thing as our “equal protection” clause of our 14th Amendment:
“No State shall ...deny to any person within its jurisdiction [whom the state can arrest] the equal protection of the laws.”
Those are just a few of the 200+ Bible verses which lay out God's immigration vision. But they don't impress very many Moral Conservative Republican Bible-Believing Christians, who say "that won't work". "That was just for Israel." "The Bible is irrelevant in public policy discussion." "All those illegals are draining our welfare budgets."
God's advice won't work? This answer would at least be consistent, coming from a pagan. Jesus' warnings are only for Israel? Oh, so as long as we don't live over there, we can ignore God and still go to Heaven. The Bible is irrelevant? Psalm 2 indicates God gets the last laugh, at any government which does not submit to Him. "Illegals" are on welfare?
Well, I will be glad to reason with anybody about the legion claims of terrible things which immigration is doing to our nation, but I am astonished that a Bible believer would require that kind of discussion before submitting to the Will of God in perfect faith that what God tells us to do is for our benefit, and God knows better than we do what works. In my experience, when I meet Christians inclined to object to the practicality of the Word of God, on the basis of these legion accusations, they have even less patience for the evidence I present than they do for the Scriptures I present. But if your faith in God is so weak that you would actually be persuaded more by evidence, just state your objections and I'll share what I have found.
The Mark Of The Beast
Employers are the latest scapegoats for the impossibility of finding and deporting our 11 million "illegals". (11 million is the official figure in the Save America Act, H 4088, promoted by the Deportation Crowd.) Employers are supposedly able to do what the USCIS can't do: pick out undocumented immigrants from citizens. Republicans started it, and Democrats have proved only too happy to pile on.
Have you been following the latest “solutions” both at the state and federal levels, to force employers to stop letting “illegals” work? Every employer already knows he can voluntarily participate in the E-Verify system. But have you thought about the impact of making it mandatory? Congress would make it mandatory through the “Save America Act”, H 4088. Iowa State lawmakers came within a hair of making it mandatory for all practical purposes, by imposing liability on employers who did not use it, if any of their employees were found later to be here illegally. In other words, the legislation puts the burden on employers to prove in court that they did not “knowingly” hire an illegal, but if they use E-Verify that burden is removed.
The problem is the errors in the SSA database, upon which E-Verify relies. “According to the Office of the Inspector General in SSA, 12.7 million of the 17.8 million discrepancies in SSA's database - more than 70% - belong to native-born U.S. citizens. (AFL-CIO Press Release, 8/29/7) The DHS had acknowledged a 4% error rate, (I read that on the DHS website but can’t find it now) and said its goal was to hone the databases until they had only a 2% error rate.
In other words, millions of U.S. Citizens would be dragged into court to prove they are U.S. Citizens, and if they can’t win in time they would lose their jobs. H 4088 gives them 10 days to win in court!
H 4088 would cause additional computer alarms to go off when a citizen works for two jobs, because two employers are reporting the same worker. HR 4088 would make any citizen with two jobs to arm wrestle with bureaucrats to prove that he’s the same guy, and that he’s a citizen.
The problems which no legislation would solve:
* Millions will have to wrestle with bureaucrats to prove they are citizens, or lose their jobs.
* Citizens must already wait an average 499 days for a Social Security Administration hearing regarding benefits. And now we want SSA, with no additional staff, to start another waiting list for citizens wanting to work?
* Names and SSN’s of citizens don’t “match” for dozens of legitimate reasons. How is it “knowingly” hiring unauthorized workers, to not fire workers who get “no match” letters?
Did you know that the DHS attempted to enact the essence of H 4088 by administrative rule, 8/10/7, and that it has since been tied up in court because it could cause millions of American citizens to lose their jobs? (Timeline below.) Did you know a few American citizens have already been wrongfully incarcerated during deportation proceedings because as soon as they are falsely accused of not being citizens, they have no right to a lawyer in immigration proceedings, and while in jail they cannot do “discovery” for themselves such as producing documents proving their citizenship, and that in the American legal system neither the judge nor the prosecutor will assist the accused in researching alleged such documents? Imagine millions of Americans brought under the same cloud of suspicion by enforcing firings in “no match” cases!
The Court acts as if there would be no threat to our freedom, if our national databases were error free. As if a few years of citizens wrestling with bureaucrats and courts, to purge our databases of errors, would be great for America if it just weren’t quite so costly to our economy.
But as a Christian, can you think of any problem with an error free national database? A national database with no errors is the supreme threat to our freedoms. The more accurate our national databases, the more bureaucrats are tempted to become dictators.
Do you know about the “photo tool” which the DHS added to E-Verify 9/25/7? Did you know it uses facial recognition software to turn photographs into unique identifiers as accurate as fingerprints? (Although the most accurate procedure is a series of photos from different angles.) Did you know the Comprehensive Immigration Reform that died in June, 2007 insisted upon “machine readable” Real ID cards with digital photos?
I did not see it spelled out that every employer would need to scan each new job applicant’s Real ID card as he applied, but assuming that were later spelled out by administrative rule, that photo and name would instantly reach the national computer database so that anyone the government wants for any reason, citizen or otherwise, could conceivably be arrested before completing the job interview.
Did you know that even with the full implementation of Real ID at workplaces (Real ID has been rebelled against by the states and by the Senate), Senator Jeff Sessions quoted a CBO report saying even all that Big Brother would reduce the illegal population by only 13%? Have you thought of how much more Big Brother it would take to identify all of them? Well, with all that technology already in place, what would be the next logical step? Wouldn’t it be to link up existing surveillance cameras to the national database with its facial recognition software, to track the movements of every U.S. resident?
Did you know one of the Greek meanings of “in” in the verse “Rev 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:”, is “based on”? That meaning, pointed out in the Arndt-Gingrich Greek Lexicon, is taken from 1 Timothy 5:19 where a judgment is "based upon" "the evidence of two or three witnesses".
Did you know that one of the Greek meanings for “mark” is an image? And that the Greek for “forehead” actually means “the space between the eyes" in one lexicon, and prominent part of the face”?
The Greek word for "forehead" "means strictly the part of the forehead between the eyes, but mostly the whole forehead." (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.) Between the eyes? The nose? All Christendom talks as if it is absolutely certain that the Mark of the Beast will be an RFID chip implanted in the right hand or forehead, but did you know the chips can't be implanted in the forehead because they can't be close to bone?
The Arndt-Gingrich Greek Lexicon gives an example from classical Greek literature where a woman is veiled "up to the forehead." Since the veil could not cover the eyes, "forehead" must be defined as including the eyes.
So a digital photo in a government database, processed by facial recognition software, literally satisfies the technical requirements of Rev 13:16, does it not? Just as a fingerprint record satisfies the description of a “mark in the right hand”. The primary identification biometrics I have seen are fingerprints and digital facial photos.
Revelation says everyone who submits to the mark will go to Hell. Everyone. If God takes submission to the mark that seriously, even though the alternative is decapitation, how much more severe will God’s judgment be upon Christians so eager for this technology that they vote to impose it not only upon themselves but upon others?
Mat 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
God offers win-win solutions for every real and imagined immigration problem. I don’t hear Christians discussing them.
End-Time Preachers Leading the Charge for the Mark of the Beast!
What can be more ironic, or tragic?
I doubt if anyone has been warning about the coming Mark of the Beast on national radio much longer than Noah Hutchings, with his Watchman on the Wall program distributed by Southwest Radio Ministries. But in his February 2009 issue he sounds like Congressman Tom Tancredo. He at least does not overtly call directly for national tracking to identify them all, but he has to know the only way to identify them all is with more Big Brother than any politician has ever yet dared to publicly articulate. His Scriptural support is so silly it is shameful. He literally says 2 Samuel 5:17-25, where the Philistine armies invaded Israel right after David was crowned King, showed "David had to deal with...illegal immigration." Tancredo talks like that too: he can't see any difference between honest, God-fearing people who only want to come and work, and obey the same laws which citizens obey, and bloodthirsty, heavily armed armies crossing the border to kill, ravage, and destroy.
God sees a difference. God evaluates our willingness to acknowledge the difference.
Just about tied for the longest End Times Warnings ministry must be David Reagan, who publishes Lamplighter. I talked to him briefly after his presentation of "100 signs of the end times" October 20, 2007, at a Jan Markell conference in Minneapolis attended by several thousand. Here are my notes on that astonishing conversation:
I said "A huge 'sign of the times' which I haven't heard anyone talk about: how our immigration debate is preparing American hearts for Big Brother. Christians who rightly fear the Real ID act (digital photo ID's, processed by facial recognition software, without which it will be pretty tough for anyone to buy or sell) are often the same Bible-motivated Moral Conservatives who demand their politicians figure out a way to deport our 12 million 'illegal aliens', as if that were possible without hiring Big Brother, aka the Mark of the Beast, to find them. The result is that Moral Conservatives are climbing all over each other to get on the Paving Crew for the Road to Hell."
(Moral Conservatives in this category include Tancredo’s own press secretary and East\Central Iowa state director, who did not know Tancredo sponsored and voted for the Real ID Act, among other things.)
(Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out June 27th, 2007, that the Immigration Compromise bill, even with all its national tracking, would only reduce our unauthorized population by 13% according to the Congressional Budget Office. Clearly far more national tracking will be required to find them all, and yet the Senate is finding Big Brother so unthinkable that it won’t even fund the Real ID Act.)
Reagen nodded as if aware of this problem, and he shared my disturbance about these things. He asked "what do you think we should do?" I answered, "inform Christians of the connection so they will stop indirectly calling for the Mark of the Beast." He asked another question something like what should we do, that prompted me to quote the Scriptures about God’s immigration plan.
He was with me in making the above points until I quoted Lev 19:33 and Mat 25:33! "That doesn’t have anything to do with us! That’s for the Jews!" he declared actually with anger at Leviticus. To Matthew 25 he said "These people are here illegally! I can’t have any sympathy for that!" I said these Scriptures indicate how God feels about our laws. He said these people are here illegally and that’s just the way he feels about that. I said, summarizing the points I had made at first about the sheer impossibility of reducing our illegal population without the Mark of the Beast, "No other plan will work." He walked away in anger saying "That’s just the way I feel about it."
At the same conference, I tried to show Jan Markell some of my articles about God's vision for immigration. Jan's national radio show is called "Understanding the Times". She calls her ministry "Olive Tree Ministries". She got angrier with me, the longer I waited for a few seconds to talk with her. She has not responded to my emails.
Footnote: here is a short history of the push to implement the Mark of the Beast through employers:
"Job Magnet" Attack History
August 10, 2007,the DHS, without Congressional permission, ordered employers to fire anyone whose names and numbers didn’t match in SSA records, and who couldn’t prove to the satisfaction of bureaucrats, within 10 days, that they were citizens.
August 29: the AFL-CIO sued, saying that would have caused tens of millions of citizens to be fired, and a few to be deported, in the opinion of AFL-CIO who sued.
On October 10, the Court ruled against the DHS, which then asked for time to figure out some way to modify its rule so it could identify illegals without firing citizens. In March 2008 it released a revised rule which is almost the same as the old rule. (AFL-CIO v. Chertoff, N.D. Cal. No. 07-4472-CRB)
December 6, H 4088 (see also H 5515) was introduced in the U.S. House, 112 cosponsors, called the “Save America Act”, even though it has about the same threats to America as the DHS initiative still tied up in court. It requires the “E-Verify” system, to which a “photo tool” had been added September 25. It would require states to digitize their birth and death records and combine them with existing national databases.
3/21/8, The DHS released a revised rule, almost the same as the original rule.
12/8/8 (Or perhaps the day before) Federal Judge Breyer, in San Francisco, refused to shorten the standard review schedule. a decision will not come until late February or March of 2009. Since the arguments against the rule are that it will adversely affect millions of American citizens, the review process includes time to receive and process public comments.