Politics and Spiritual Battles

Dannah Gresh: Here’s Randy Alcorn to lead us in prayer for our nation.

Randy Alcorn: Daniel 9:4–10, 17–19 (NIV):

I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed:
“Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws.

“We have not listened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land. Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you.

“We and our kings, our princes and our ancestors are covered with shame, LORD, because we have sinned against you. The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him; we have not obeyed the LORD our God or kept [his] laws [you] gave us through his servants the prophets. . . . 

“Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, our God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”

Lord, we lift our nation up to you, we lift our churches up to You, we lift our families up to You. We pray that You would intervene and do a great and wonderful and dramatic work of grace in our lives, all for Your sake and to Your glory! We ask this in the name of Jesus, amen.

Mary Kassian: We have a magnifying glass that lies as a décor item on top of some books in the center of my family room coffee table. 

Dannah: This is Mary Kassian.

Mary: My grandkids love playing with it. They hold it up to look at various objects, and then they squeal with astonishment. “It’s bigger! It’s bigger!” Politics is like a magnifying glass. When a politician chooses a door, the consequences of that decision are bigger because their policy decisions impact more people.

Politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle. The question always boils down to who gets to make the rules. Who is boss? Who is boss over me?

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for October 31, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of Heaven Rules, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that here in the United States, we’re in the midst of a heavily political season right now. Unending ads, the unsolicited text messages, even the signs in people’s yards . . . they’re all designed to tell you to vote next week (if you haven’t already), and who to vote for. 

Well, here at Revive Our Hearts we’re not here to tell you who to vote for. That’s between your conscience and the Lord. But we do want to encourage you not to live in fear. That’s why we’re bringing you this message from my good friend, Mary Kassian. 

Now, Mary isn’t from the U.S. But she has a passion to help all of us turn our eyes toward the Lord in times of political uncertainty. Mary is a wife, a mom (or as she would say, a “mum”), a grandmum, a speaker, an author. 

She gave this message a while back at our national True Woman '22 conference. The pandemic was still fresh in everyone’s memory. Also, her parents were still living on this side of glory. They’ve gone on to be with Jesus since. Now, let’s listen to Mary Kassian.

Mary: This is a recent photo of my mum and dad—awww. This year we celebrated my mum’s ninety-fourth and my dad’s ninety-seventh birthdays. And to me, they have been a living example of what it means to know that Heaven rules.

You see, my dad was born and raised in the German Province of East Prussia, in the majestic Baltic city of Königsberg. Königsberg in German means “King’s Mountain.” It was named that because it was the home to the kings of the German Empire who lived in the castle that was situated just a stone’s throw from my dad’s house.

Just before my dad was born, the monarchy was overthrown, ending the reign of German kings, and Germany became a Democratic Republic. But the political situation was highly unstable because numerous fledgling political parties vied for control.

The Communist party and Hitler’s Workers’ party often clashed on the streets in violent marches and riots, several of which took place on the street across from Dad’s house. The political tension was heightened by the economic hardship and the food shortages of the Great Depression, out-of-control inflation, and the repressive stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.

My grandma tried to shield her young son from all the political ruckus by drawing the curtains and turning up the music. But he knew that trouble was afoot.

When a small group of Communist trouble makers set fire to the Reichstag building, the Germany equivalent of The White House, Hitler exploited the attack to his own advantage. He claimed that the Communists were domestic terrorists who were plotting to overthrown the German government. He convinced the German congress to pass a decree, an emergency act, to temporarily suspend civil liberties and grant Hitler dictatorial powers to get the threat under control.

And just like that, Germany morphed from a democracy into a dictatorship.

My dad was just eight years old when that happened. But nonetheless, he could sense that a massive political shift had just happened. He heard the old man at the coffee shop whispering about the Unternehmen Kolibri, “the night of the long knives,” when Hitler murdered more than 100 political opponents and imprisoned a hundred more.

He watched Kristelnacht unfold before his eyes as the SA set fire to the Jewish synagogue and orphanage just across the street, the place where he used to scale the fence to play with the boys.

The German people were henceforth subjected to relentless propaganda, censorship, surveillance, and forced compliance by the political elite. People feared what would happen to them if they went against the politically correct narrative.

Free speech was suppressed. Anyone who didn’t toe the line was canceled and punished. Dissidents were roughed up, hauled off to jail, or just mysteriously disappeared.

My dad was seventeen when he was drafted into Hitler’s army. Eventually, he was sent to the Eastern Front to fight in one of the final and most bloody battles of World War II. His unit was decimated. He was captured by the Russians. Marched to Auschwitz/Birkenau, the infamous concentration camp the Red Army had repurposed as a holding camp for German POW.

From there, over the months, prisoners were corralled into putrid railway cars and shipped to the Russian gulags. In the gulags, he experienced unspeakable atrocities. Red Cross records indicate that of the 40,000 men taken into one camp, only eleven came out alive, and my father was one of them.

Nearly dead from malnutrition and tuberculosis, he was shipped to a border town in Communist East Germany. After he recovered, he became part of the underground, risking his life to smuggle people across the border to escape the repressive Communist regime. He smuggled my mother’s family out of East Germany. Then he tracked her down in West Germany and married her.

Mum and Dad were refugees, the lowest of the low. They weren’t accepted by the locals, who resented their presence, but they couldn’t go back home. Indeed, there was no home left to go back to. Königsberg had been incinerated and reduced to rubble by allied bombs. The castle was no more.

The remaining residents were killed, raped, humiliated, tortured, and starved as the Red army ethnically cleansed the city of Germans. Some say the purge was the largest exodus of people in human history.

The city of kings, Königsberg was no more, which is why, when the Lutheran church offered free boat tickets for refugees for relocation, my dad seized the opportunity to take his growing family and immigrate to Canada.

Why do I tell you this? Because all of my life, I have sensed the ache in my father’s spirit, an underlying sadness, a vacuum, a homesick longing for the home that no longer is. But I’ve also witnessed his unshakable belief that God is in control when politicians are out of control, even when political forces radically change the direction of our lives.

My dad’s story has remarkable similarities to a story of the young men in the book of Daniel that Nancy talked about last night. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah who, likewise, were caught up in geopolitical events that were beyond their control.

 

The central theme of my message this morning is that Heaven rules over all earthly kings and kingdoms.

• How do we face a changing political landscape?
• How do we retain our equilibrium when rulers are ungodly and oppressive and when their decisions negatively impact our lives?
• How do we find strength to take a stand when everyone else is bowing, knowing that the consequences of doing so may be dire?
• How do we respect authority but not compromise our morals?
• How do we survive in a hostile political environment?
• How do we live in Babylon but keep Babylon from living in us?

These are questions that the four young men taken into captivity to Babylon undoubtedly wrestled with. And they are questions that you and I need to wrestle with as well.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 2. Psalm 2 is one of the royal psalms. It was written to celebrate the coronation of the king of Israel and Judah. Daniel and his three friends—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—would have been familiar with this psalm. According to rabbinic tradition, these four youths were of royal blood. They were descendants of King Hezekiah. They were friends, but they were also relatives, cousins or distant cousins of some sort.

Daniel confirms that the young men Nebuchadnezzar expropriated were Jewish royals and nobles. They were up-and-coming celebrities in Jerusalem, rising stars, healthy, strong, good looking, and smart. The press covered them the way that the press here covers the royals. They’re a fascination amongst the public.

Scripture tells us they were skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competence, and this was before the king expropriated them to Babylon.

These four young royals were educated in Jewish royal fashion. Therefore, they would have been well versed in the history of the Jews, in the Torah, and in the psalms. Their royal tutors would have had them study and perhaps even memorize Psalm chapter 2 because the coronation psalm was of particular importance to the royal family. It was the psalm they sung or heard recited at the coronation of their two uncles, Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim.

The psalm opens with the question: why? “Why do the nations rage?”

And given what these young men lived through, I’m sure that they often asked the “why?” questions.

• Why is this happening?
• Why is the world so messed up?
• Why do the people in charge do such hurtful and evil things?
• Why are we at the mercy of power-hungry bullies?

They had good reason to shake their heads about the political events that had unfolded during their lifetimes.

The Holy Land was a magnet for conflict. That’s because Judah was located on a narrow strip of land connecting the continents of Africa and Asia. 

All the major military and trade routes ran through Judah. The Jews often found themselves at the mercy of superpowers who wanted to exert control over these routes and benefit economically from the trade and taxing of goods.

For centuries the Assyrian empire was the superpower that kept Judah and everyone else in the region under its thumb. The Assyrian king made all the other kingdoms his vassals, forcing them to pay tribute, that is taxes and gifts. Judah was subjugated and so was Babylonia, Media, Persia, and Egypt.

Assyrian records indicate that King Hezekiah once sent a convoy to the Assyrian king with thirty talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, jewels, precious medals, a large assortment of valuable treasures, couches of ivory, elephants’ hides and tusks as well as virgins for his harem and dancers and male and female singers. That is a staggering amount of money and goods. Thirty talents is more than a ton of gold. Eight hundred talents is more than thirty tons of silver.

The convoy stretched out like the trucker convoy—miles and miles of camels and carts of Judah’s wealth being sent off as payoff to the Assyrian king.

Assyria was like the big bully at school who terrorized all the other kids, threatening, “Give me your lunch money, or I’m going to beat you up.” It wasn’t an idle threat.

When the Northern Kingdom of Israel refused to pay tribute, Assyria obliterated its capital, exiled tens of thousands of people, and annexed the region as an Assyrian province. The ten tribes were scattered. The Northern Nation of Israel ceased to exist.

Why do the nations rage?

If I were to plot the lives of the four young royals on a timeline, you would see how much political turmoil they lived through. There was a whole lot of raging going on.

When the four friends were born, Assyria was the biggest bully on the block. But then Nebuchadnezzar’s father, a Babylonian general, rebelled and took down the Assyrian capital. The four royals were about eight years old at the time. Good news. Right?

But, wait . . . not so fast. What about that saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”? Egypt came storming up through Judah to help Assyria fight back. King Josiah tried to stop the Egyptian king from getting through, but he was killed in battle. And for the next few years, Egypt became the bully that bossed Judah around. Not good.

Things didn’t get any better when Babylon defeated Egypt to become the world’s next undisputed superpower. In fact, for those four young royals, things got much, much worse.

To flex his muscles and secure his position, Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem. He told his chief eunuch to scope out the talent stack and identify the cream of the crop so he could expropriate the best and the brightest to serve in his kingdom. Their presence in Babylon would guarantee the good behavior of the Judean king.

Can you imagine how those fourteen and fifteen and sixteen-year-olds felt when they were selected and shackled for the long trip to Babylon? Against their will they were torn away from their homes, their families, their place of worship, their community, and their culture. Exiled.

When they got to Babylon, the chief eunuch stripped them of their identities. He changed their names to ones that honored the Babylonian gods. And what’s worse, he subjected them to one of the most shameful and humiliating medical procedures anyone could inflict on a Jewish man. He made them eunuchs. They were castrated so they would never father children. Then he immersed them in the culture of Babylon.

They were given Babylonian haircuts, Babylonian wardrobes, Babylonian-furnished suites. They began to listen to Babylonian music, read Babylonian books. They were introduced to Babylonian gods, Babylonian Netflix, Babylonian spas and night clubs and all the other many riches and pleasures and indulgences that Babylon had to offer, which were many.

For three years they received the best Babylonian education, including, no doubt, a healthy dose of politically-correct Babylonian propaganda. The aim was to brainwash them into a Stockholm syndrome mindset that they might become enamored with their captors and completely turn their backs on their Jewish heritage.

And most of the exiles did just that. But Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah remained faithful to the Lord their God. I believe that Psalm 2 helped them.

Psalm 2 is a poem composed of four stanzas. Each stanza contains a foundational truth that helped these young royals stay grounded in times of extreme political upheaval and pressure. These truths can also help us stay grounded when our politicians do crazy things.

Stanza 1, verses 1–3:

Why do the nations rage
   and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
   and the rulers take counsel together,
   against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
   and cast their cords from us.”

Peter explains in the book of Acts that when King David penned this psalm, he did so under the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the anointed king this psalm talks about is primarily God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

The opening stanza asks the “why question.”

“Why do nations rage?”

• Why do governments and politicians connive and collaborate and plot and scheme to pass foolish and harmful laws?
• Why do they do morally reprehensible things?
• Why do they view God’s directives as restrictive bonds and cords that need to be thrown off?
• Why do they rebel against the Lord and against His anointed King, Jesus Christ?
• Why do they fail to recognize Him as Boss?

I must admit that I’ve had a hard go of it these past few years, watching all the political upheaval and theatrics and observing the government response to various matters. COVID, obviously, being at the top of the list.

I don’t know what things were like here, but my government went into crazy dictatorship mode.

• Mums were fined for taking their kids to the playground.
• Teenagers were arrested for playing outdoor hockey.
• We could go to Walmart and Costco with the throngs, but for more than a year we couldn’t go to church. 
• The fear and the oppression were palpable. Pastors that opened their churches for worship were taken down by SWAT teams and dragged off and imprisoned.
• We were told who we could have in our homes, even who we could have in our cars.
• The hateful rhetoric and sanctions against those who were hesitant to take the vaccine was stupefying.
• People lost their jobs.
• People lost their families.
• People lost their minds.

On Valentine’s Day, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada evoked the Emergency Act to shut down the truckers who were apparently trying to overthrow the government with bouncing castles and honking horns. (laughter)

The Emergency Act is a wartime measure. Essentially, it suspends all civil liberties and puts the country into a state of martial law. It gives the Prime Minister and his police force unfettered power to spy on people, storm into their houses, arrest them, throw them in jail, and seize their bank accounts without due process and for no reason whatsoever except that the government suspects they might be an enemy of the state.

And for me, it was deja vu to what happened in Germany in my father’s day.

I’m a mild asthmatic, and when I heard the news, I could not breathe. I went into an asthma panic attack that was so severe that my husband had to call the paramedics because I was on the floor. I could not breathe.

Why? Why do the nations rage?

Politics is the favored topic around our dinner table, so it’s not surprising that two of my sons got degrees in History and Political Science. My oldest son, Clark, went on to become a lawyer. I distinctly remember a phone conversation I had with him last year. I was lamenting about the decisions our politicians were making and how destructive and increasingly oppressive they were.

Why are they doing this?
Didn’t they study history?
Don’t they know where this will lead?

Why?

And after a few moments of political ranting on my part, there’s a moment of silence, and then, “Mum,” said my ever-calm and logical eldest, “Why do you ask ‘Why?’ Name me the rulers and empires throughout history that have not tended to drift toward power-hungry, heavy-handed oppression, because without Christ, that’s what ungodly rules do. You know this.”

I raised him right. (laughter)

The “why?” in this opening stanza is a rhetorical question because the answer is self-evident. And the first truth is that politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle. The question always boils down to who gets to make the rules. Who is boss? Who is boss over me?

It’s a spiritual question that’s as old as time. So old that the serpent brought up the matter with Eve in the Garden.

Door number one: You get to be boss. You’ve got the rights and the smarts to govern.

Door number two: God gets to be boss. He’s got the right and the smarts to govern.

Eve picked door number one. “I get to be boss.” And ever since, humanity has lived with the ugly consequences of that decision.

We have a magnifying glass that lies as a décor item on top of some books in the center of my family room coffee table. My grandkids love playing with it. They hold it up to look at various objects, and then they squeal with astonishment. “It’s bigger! It’s bigger!”

Politics is like a magnifying glass. When a politician chooses a door, the consequences of that decision are bigger because their policy decisions impact more people. And the temptation toward pride and lording it over others, that comes with any position of authority, is difficult to resist.

The four royals were well-versed in the history of their family tree. They knew that if they were to highlight all the evil kings with the red marker, the good kings with the green marker, and the ones who were a mixed bag with yellow, the predominant color would be red.

Uncle Josiah who was king when they were kids was a good king. But Great-Grandpa Manasseh’s reign was evil. It was downright ugly. Manasseh slaughtered innocent people. Anyone who disagreed with him (sound of neck slicing) dead. The rabbis said that he martyred his maternal grandpa, the prophet Isaiah. He cut him in half with a saw because he didn’t like what he had to say.

The author of the Hebrew’s faith hall of fame may have been alluding to Isaiah when he mentioned the hero of faith who was sawn in two.

Crazy Great-Grandpa Manasseh even sacrificed his baby boy to a pagan god—burned the precious child alive.

Manasseh repented in his later years, but one can only describe the bulk of his reign as exceedingly evil and ugly. Only six out of thirty-nine kings on their family tree were good. That’s only 15%, and that’s among rulers who were well-versed in God’s laws.

Politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle. In politics we witness the perennial human struggle between good and evil played out on a larger scale. And this should come as no surprise.

Nancy: We’re listening to a message Mary Kassian gave in Indianapolis at the True Woman '22 conference. 

The theme of that conference was “Heaven Rules.” That two-word phrase has been a great comfort to my husband, Robert, and me anytime we find ourselves upset and flabbergasted by things going on in our lives or our community or our world. Heaven rules! God’s completely in control, so you and I can take courage, and we can take comfort from that assurance.

Dannah: As you shared earlier this week, Nancy, that phrase, “Heaven rules,” is found in the Old Testament book of Daniel. It’s also the title of your book—a book that walks us through Daniel and applies it to our lives.

Nancy: Yeah, the book of Daniel is so timeless, as is that message, Heaven rules. I think it’s an especially helpful reminder as we face the general election here in the U.S. Yes, do be a responsible citizen and vote, but also rest in knowing that the Lord is in charge. He is at work. And as Pastor John Piper reminds us, “In every situation the Lord is always doing a thousand different that we cannot see and we do not know.” Heaven rules!

Dannah: We’ll send you a copy of Heaven Rules by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth when you request it with your donation of any size. It’s our way of thanking you for your support. We’ll see to it that your gift is used to help spread the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ to women everywhere. To give, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Nancy: Well, Mary shared the first of four truths we see in Psalm 2. That was that “politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle.” Tomorrow she’ll show us truths numbers two, three, and four. In the meantime, I’d encourage you to meditate on Psalm 2 yourself. And then please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

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