3 Examples Of Nations Getting What They Want, & What They Deserve
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(6) Observe <God’s Laws> carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” (7) What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?’ (Deuteronomy 4:6-7)
It appears the Iranians have not quite picked up on the ideal of the late US President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, who stated ‘talk softly but carry a big stick’; after the overwhelming defeat over Iran by Israel and the uncontested American bombing run leading to the near-complete destruction of its nuclear enrichment facilities, the Iranian mullahs have taken the opposite approach to its diplomacy. Iran has taken a ‘threaten profusely with no stick’ policy by issuing a ‘fatwa’ or religious authorization to assassinate current US President Donald Trump and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, and it promise to continue pursuing the development (or obtainment) of nuclear weapons.
The Iranian people, Persian by decent, have had a somewhat tumultuous past. The Persian Empire grew to its peak during the Biblical period of Daniel, as it took over the Babylonian Empire around 560 BC. Just after this, around 480 BC, the Persian Emperor Xerxes conquered portions of Greece (starting with the pyrrhic victory at Thermopylae against the 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas) before begin defeated there, and the Persians losing ground until its own conquering by the Greek Emperor Alexander the Great around 330 BC.
After this, Persia fell into a series of both ‘conquered’ and ‘conquering’ regimes over the course of its history. The cycle ended after being taken over in World War II by a joint Soviet-English force to protect its resources from falling into the hands of Nazi Germany.
The Pahlavi family, the last ruling monarchs over Persia/Iran in the early 1900s, were reestablished by the Allied forces as its rulers with an English-influenced Constitutional Monarchy government. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed as the Shah of Iran, and through the mid-20th century ruled with increasingly tighter control, though the Iranians had relative freedom. However, opposition grew and with the Shah in poor health, abdicated in 1979 and the Islamic Revolution, led by the people, installed the formerly deported Islamic cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to establish the current Islamic theocracy that now rules over Iran.
The Iranians got the leader and government it wanted, and for many still want. For younger Iranians wanting greater, Western-oriented freedoms, however, and with the continuous embarrassments militarily by the current regime, this theocracy their parents and grandparents so desperately wanted is not what they want or believe they deserve. Unfortunately, there are no substantive elections to remove the theocratic mullahs, only those political offices that handle the administrative needs of the country in strict compliance to Islam and the Ayatollahs’ edicts. Until the Iranian people decide to establish a government ‘by the people, for the people’, the Islamic theocracy is the government they want, and the government they deserve – even to their own detriment.
Surprisingly, this is not necessarily in opposition to what we have in the US, or any other nation for that matter. ‘We the People of the United States of America’, as a collective, will get the President we want and who we deserve. We may find later that we don’t want the leadership they display or perform but in not doing our homework or electing them, despite knowing what was stated or demonstrated in their election campaigns, we do deserve it from a corporate, collective perspective.
This is true today as it was true for the nations of Israel and Judah ‘back in the day’. We go back to the days of the Hebrews, wandering in the desert, as their nation Israel was homeless and in its infancy. God is giving them the Levitical Laws and the statutes for them to live by. Moses tells them in Deuteronomy 4:6-7 to show their Wisdom by observing God’s Laws to make Israel a great nation.
But there is a condition to keeping Israel great; God must be with them, in their hearts. Also, where are they to get this Wisdom? Wisdom comes from God to those who ask for it (James 1:5) so one must have Faith in God to receive Wisdom. As long as the people of Israel kept their Faith in God and following Him, they were doing very well.
But what happened in Israel, which caused them to collapse, is that they did not keep God with them. They fell into the pagan worship of Baal and other false gods, and they fell into the trap of Ecclesiastes 2:21 (‘For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.’) King Solomon of Israel had great Wisdom and Israel flourished, but he did not pass on (or in his later years demonstrate) his Faith and thus his Wisdom to his children and within one generation Israel and Judah split up, which would eventually lead to the downfall of both.
Remember the historically-proven cycle of nations; ‘hard times create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create soft people, soft people create hard times.’ King Solomon was a strong person and with God and had His Wisdom, but with His Wisdom Israel flourished and all Israelites were in good times. The people forgot the God who got them there and turned inward to themselves. Rehoboam (Solomon’s son) was a soft person who rejected the Wisdom of God and of his advisors (who were ‘hard elders’ of Solomon who followed God) and increased taxes on advice from his ‘soft’ youthful friends (who likely did not follow God). Thus, Israel split from Judah and the hard times began.
If the USA does not return to God or seek God’s Wisdom, we will meet the same fate. We already see our youth turn away from God and the Constitution He divinely provided to our Founding Fathers, and seek instead communism/socialism/anarchy to gain control of our nation, which will fracture (or ‘Balkanize’) it.
We see the growth of deviant behaviors that demonstrate our ‘softness’, or our turning away from God with the growth of porn, transgenderism, LGBTQ normalization, abortion, the repeated rioting over various anti-American causes, the forceful shouting down of dissenting opinions by the left-wing, the outright lies and propaganda published by our ‘mainstream media’. We cannot entirely blame our youth for these issues; we have let our youth down by allow ourselves to get ‘soft’ and not stay in God’s good graces and keep God in the forefront, and allowing ungodly teachings into our schools and culture.
So, pray not for the leader or leadership you want, but for the leader and leadership we need. Pray for God to give you the Wisdom per James 1:5, pray for God to return to our side, who will restore and return us as a nation to the one in Deuteronomy 4:6-7, and to have our youths return to God to relieve us from the trap of Ecclesiastes 2:21. May God’s Will prevail over our decisions and the decisions of other nations, and whatever the outcome, may He be gloried!
