United We Stand, Divided We Fall
Word-Of-The-Day: “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” (Mark 3:25)
One of the bad things about getting old is having your doctor, dental hygienist, or other caregivers retire after years of them earning your trust in poking, prodding, scrubbing, and otherwise abusing you – in a caring, professional way, of course. The doctor I had for 30 years, since we first moved to Florida in 1988, retired back in 2020. We got to know each other in our discussions over the years, even though they were often brief due to his schedule in seeing other patients, but he never shared anything about his Spiritual life.
After I received Salvation in 1995, I often brought up Jesus and offered prayers, and he didn’t often respond (favorably or unfavorably) but as the years went on, he would say, ‘thank you, I appreciate it’, and then it was ‘see you next year’ as he headed out to see his next patient.
On one of my last visits with him, as it was wrapping up, we talked about our families, and out of the blue he mentioned how he was concerned more about the state of country as that is the greater concern for our children than anything concerning their health, job status, etc., and quoted Scripture as it related to a speech from Abraham Lincoln, the verse of Mark 3:25. The doctor then went into how God has blessed him and his family and his prayers for us as a nation to come together. He then said ‘may God Bless you and your family’ and took off to see his next patient, as most of our interactions had ended.
The doctor brought up this quote, which the Biblical story behind it was when Jesus was accused by the Jewish authorities of being possessed by Satan (aka ‘Beelzebub’) for exorcising demons from people. Satan, being the leader of all demons, would not drive out demons from the possessed as that would defeat his purpose. Evil begets evil, and would not attempt to cancel out evil – it would try to add to it. Jesus told the Pharisees (and his family who came to have him ‘Baker Act’-ed) that He was acting for His Father’s good, in conjunction with the Holy Spirit. As we know, Jesus’ comments did not win over the Pharisees and only deepened their hatred of Him, but Jesus was never afraid to speak the Truth.
Abraham Lincoln quoted this verse in his acceptance speech in front of the Illinois House of Representatives on 16 June 1858 after securing the Republican nomination for the Senate seat, to run against Democrat Stephen Douglas that fall. Although the American Civil War was still 3 years away, the country was fractured between slavery, state rights, and culture. Lincoln saw the writing on the wall and foreseen the fractures would worsen, but was committed to seeing the Union of the States come back together; like a bone break, while there would be initial separation the bone would knit itself together and the bond would be stronger than ever.
Ironically, this speech is what cost Abe the Senate election to Douglas, losing the race due to negative press over this speech. At the time it was considered radical and ‘politically incorrect’ to state that the United States would break up, that slavery would ever become illegal or that the slaves could ever become citizens. Yet, this speech was later focused upon when Lincoln ran for the Presidency in 1860, and gave him the backing of the Northern states (and California) to win the election.
The Southern states, having voted for one of his opponents (a Mr. Breckenridge), ended up voting to secede from the Union to become the Confederacy prior to Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861. Thus, Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ speech become prophetic as our nation broke in half and for the next 4 years became the bloodiest episode in American history.
What Lincoln understood about Jesus’ words was the deeper message; Jesus was not only talking about Satan’s house could not stand divided, but neither could the House of God could stand divided – nothing can stand divided. We’ve seen our church go through such an episode many years ago, where two sides differed and lines in the congregation were drawn. Fortunately, it was not a 50-50 split (more like 90-10), but it did cause ripples and damage to MBC with repercussions that took time to heal from.
But we did heal and come back together! Although Abe did not see it come to fruition (having been assassinated in 1865 right after the end of the Civil War), the nation did come back together, albeit slowly over 30 to 40 years. The US strengthened in unity over ‘remembering the USS Maine’ in the Spanish-American War, the two World Wars, followed by the Civil Rights movement and along that path the great economic prosperity that we enjoy even today.
There are now hairline cracks that we see today in the US that are growing into fractures, over both racial lines and political ideology. Like my good doctor mentioned to me, we need to pray to heed Jesus’ warning, to come together before our nation devolves a 2nd time into an internal conflict from our divides. Like ‘Honest Abe’, we have to be ‘radical & politically incorrect’ and speak up about Jesus and Truth, as we find it may cost us in the short term but it pays off overall. We have more in common than differences, and we need to pray that the Lord places our hearts to see those commonalities before it’s too late. As always, God is in control!
