Why Would God Give America Obama or Romney?

If Mitt Romney is elected president of the United States, his religion, a serious, cultic distortion of the Bible and history in the eyes of many evangelicals, will have new standing and credibility, and likely experience an acceleration of its already fast expansion.

Under Romney, some policies may languish in the swampy squish of centrism, one that embraces elements of Obamacare. If his leadership in Massachusetts is a sample, Romney may attempt to combine statist, modified Keynesian economics with Reaganesque supply-side policies, a mixture of oil and water. He is untested on national defense and foreign policy.

If President Obama is re-elected he will continue the overturning of a value-system often in direct contradiction with biblically aligned morality and ethics, including expansion of abortion, and official affirmation of same-sex marriage.

As we noted in the previous article in this series, the next Obama administration likely will have secularism as the underlying motif of policy, utilitarianism as the measure of the right to life, equivalency as the standard for universal values, internationalism as the context for foreign policy, statism as the means for the "general welfare," unfettered Keynesianism as the basis for economic policy, and anti-institutionalism as the attitude toward traditional values institutions.

The Bible leaves no doubt that God is in charge of nations as well as individuals. Among those passages is Proverbs 21:1, which says, "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes." Daniel 2:21 is just as blunt when it declares, "He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings…"

So why would God do it? Why would he raise up a president from a belief system that, to some, seems a parody and caricature of the Bible and history, or a president who officially endorses a moral code contradictory to Scripture?

There are a couple of reasons apparent in the Bible, and probably many more in the yet hidden mysteries of God. First, God will raise up national leaders in the best interests of His Kingdom and its advance in the world. Jesus reveals in Matthew 24:14 that the expansion of His Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17) is the whole point of history. God knows what will make nations fertile for the seeding of His Kingdom, and the kinds of leaders necessary to bring about those conditions.

Second, the accumulation of judgment for the sins of a nation will determine the type of leader God will raise up. There is a point of "fullness" of sins (Genesis 15:16) where the perfect mercy of God must give way to the perfect justice of God. This occurs when a nation rejects God despite His pleadings and prophetic warnings. That judgment may be in the form of a national leader who guides the country into disaster, leading to people waking up and turning back to the Lord and His gracious ways.

In the short term, supporters of the loser will be disappointed and anxious about the immediate future. Obama's extreme partisans fear a nation where freedoms are severely limited, and conservative values imposed on everyone if Romney wins. Romney's most fervent voters fear that if Obama is elected, it is the end of America.

However, everyone must pull way back, and get the largest of perspectives. If God is in charge, and the whole tangled business of elections and governing is leading ultimately to the "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13), then there can be rejoicing even in the midst of what will be defeat for one of those candidates and their voters.

Second, the accumulation of judgment for the sins of a nation will determine the type of leader God will raise up. There is a point of "fullness" of sins (Genesis 15:16) where the perfect mercy of God must give way to the perfect justice of God. This occurs when a nation rejects God despite His pleadings and prophetic warnings. That judgment may be in the form of a national leader who guides the country into disaster, leading to people waking up and turning back to the Lord and His gracious ways.

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Any strategy of resistance to tyranny will have to deal with the fact that tyranny is a curse of God. It must recognize that to rail against God's righteous judgments is merely to perpetuate and aggravate them. It must start with a humble submission to His will, a reverential fear of His judgments, and a full recognition of the righteousness of His moral government. Although we may marvel at the iniquities that men commit, at the fury of the "Commune" or the depravity of "Bolshevism," although the utter evil of God's instruments may astound us until with Habakkuk we are compelled to cry out to the Just and Holy God, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" (Hab. 1:13); yet we must always remember that He styles Nebuchadnezzar his servant and terms Assyria the rod of His anger. It is still with Him that we have to do.
Ultimately, the only solution there can be to the problem of tyranny is to solve the problem of how we can turn God's curse into blessing; how we can transmute His anger into favor. The question becomes one of how can we appease His anger and stay His wrath.
What can shield a man, or a people, or a nation from the curse of God? Ever since the fall by the sin of one man, death and curse have been universal. All have sinned and come short, there is none that doeth good, no not one, and so by both original and actual sin all men and all societies bring judgment and wrath down upon themselves. One of the forms of this wrath is that God sends tyrants as He so clearly warned in I Samuel 8. Men need a covering, an atonement, to shield them from the wrath of God. They need a Daysman, a Mediator, to intercede on their behalf with an offended and omnipotent Deity. In short, men need the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. They need to be Justified before God. And the Biblical, the Protestant, the Reformed answer to this need is that men need to be justified by faith in Christ Jesus. But faith is inexorably linked in the divine economy with repentance and the latter is again just as inescapably linked with reformation. The same golden chain that links election to effectual calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification also links faith with good works, and the new nature with the fruits of repentance. If we would have a covering from the wrath of God and from His curse including the curse of tyrannical government, the road leads inexorably to justification by faith, repentance, and reformation. And we come to the very same conclusion whether we examine the issue in its negative or in its positive aspects. Whether we are seeking to avoid God's righteous curse or whether we are seeking to bring down His blessing, including the blessings of peace, liberty, and just government, either way the answer is reformation. For if I Samuel 8 teaches that the fruit of apostasy is tyranny and unjust, coercive government, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28:1-14 assert that God's blessing will attend a faithful, covenant keeping people. In the Abrahamic Covenant, the covenantal blessing that God will be a God and a Father to us and our seed after us is linked with the covenantal command to "walk before me and be thou perfect."
-- excerpt from the essay
"THE FUNDAMENTAL BIBLICAL TACTIC FOR RESISTING TYRANNY"
by Louis DeBoer

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