Time To Vote: What's It Going To Be, Blessing, or Cursing? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    This election, with its myriad of issues to navigate, poses a tough choice for some Christians. For me, however, there's a way of simplifying the matter. There's a north star to guide one's ship away from the rocks and into a safe harbor.

    Consider the Scriptures. From beginning to end, God has a people. All of history centers on them. What God is doing in the world mainly focuses on them — their place, their plight, and their ultimate destiny.

    There are examples of this before Abraham, but none as clear as God's choice of him. In Genesis 12:1-3, God chooses Abraham and his lineage, promising to give them a land and make them a mighty people. Then God says, "I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

    Later God rescues his people, the Hebrews, from bondage in Egypt. Egypt is devastated by God's wrath. God then leads his people to Mount Sinai and establishes a covenant with them, and reveals the reason why he has chosen them above all others on the earth. "Now if you will listen to me and carefully keep my covenant," says God, "you will be my own possession out of all the people, although all the earth is mine, and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation" (Ex. 19:5, 6).

    Priests are God's representatives to man and man's representatives to God. The calling of God's people is to show the nations how to know God and do his will — how to get in right relationship with the Creator- God and walk upright before him.

    Through the centuries, God's prophets told Israel that he would send a redeemer through them. Jesus of Nazareth remarkably fulfilled every one of their prophecies by his incomparable life, death, and resurrection from the dead. He had all the credentials of the Messiah. The entire world is now invited to believe in Jesus to be forgiven of sin, reconciled with God, and included among God's redeemed people.

    In Romans 11: 17–24, the apostle Paul says that everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is grafted into the promises God made to his people, Israel. Paul writes to the church in Galatia, "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29).

    Therefore today, Christians are included among the people of God, specially chosen by him in his grace, and just like in the Old Testament, they are to be priests for God. I Peter 2:9 declares, "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

    This is what God is doing in history — calling out a people for himself. Everything he does is centered on this work. These people are the apple of God's eye, and he judges the nations by their treatment of them.

    If his people are cursed, God will curse their oppressors. If his people are blessed, God will bless their benefactors.

    Look through the annals of history and see if this is not the case. The nations that blessed Israel God blessed. The countries that despised her God cursed. But the same can also be said of Christ's church. Where the church has been blessed, so has the nation. When the church and its works for Christ's sake are cursed, so is the nation.

    Personally, I know of no other principle to help clear away the fog for making a wise decision about whom to vote for in this election. One needn't even get lost in the weeds of its many issues. Generally speaking, one side currently stands to aid and abet orthodox Christian teaching, while the other side promises to work against it. One side has blessed Israel and the church, while the other side would initiate policies to bless Israel's enemies and hamstring the church's efforts to present the truth of God to the world.

    It's really this simple.

    I think this is where we are now in America. And if the people of God can't see this and vote right, then perhaps the time has come for the church to be disciplined by God's providence that it might better understand its duties as a "royal priesthood." Moreover, if the church fails to faithfully perform its civil responsibilities in the light of God's Word and gives the nation up to be run by its enemies, what hope has the country?

    It's time to vote. What's it going to be? Blessing or Cursing?

    The way a Christian votes makes the biggest difference.