Does God Oppose Mass Deportations? God Invented Mass Deportations.

JD Hall

On Nissan 10 (April 8), 1406, the Hebrews crossed the Jordan River, set up camp at Gilgal to bring down the border walls of Jericho, and invaded the Promised Land. Their timing allowed the Canaanites to do all the work harvesting the crops but not have any time to consume it. The Hebrews then displaced them from their homes and drove them from the land by force. And finally, God commanded them not to intermarry with the Canaanites, lest they re-conquer Canaan by cultural appropriation.

This model of invasion – breaching borders, disregarding walls, consuming goods, and commandeering property – has been seen as a sign of God’s judgment since the beginning. Leviticus 18:24-27 tells us why God punished the Canaanites with the Hebrews’ arrival; they were guilty of homosexuality, incest, bestiality, and child sacrifice.

This is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.”

The occupation of the Canaanite land on the part of the Hebrews had little, if anything, to do with the worthiness of the Hebrews. It had everything to do with God holding grudges against the Canaanites, which went back to its namesake, the grandson of Noah and son of his cursed child, Ham. Canaan’s father had done something untoward to Noah while he was passed out naked, and then we find out Canaan went on to found the region known as the ancient day hub of homosexuality. It appears that perverts ran in the family.

From this time onward, foreign invasion was seen as the epitome of God’s judgment.

Repeatedly, God’s prophets promised that foreigners breaching the nation’s borders was how God would choose to punish the ancient Hebrews. Habakkuk prophesied…

For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, A bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs (Habakkuk 1:6).

Like the Hebrews who God used to punish the Canaanites – despite the Hebrews being idolatrous scalawags themselves – God would use the Chaldeans, whom he characterizes as “bitter and hasty,” to invade the Hebrews because he grew tired of their sin. They would become squatters and house thieves, stealing abodes that didn’t belong to them. Keep in mind those abodes belonged to the Canaanites first, anyway.

Long before Habakkuk, God promised the Hebrews through Moses that he would bring upon them what they brought upon the Canaanites, should they persist in sin…

The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand…(Deuteronomy 28:49).

Through numerous exiles and invasions, God chastised the Jewish people by foreigners who breached their borders until, at last, he rid Canaan of them for good in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy that the temple would be destroyed. The people were scattered because they refused to acknowledge or worship the God of Abraham.

THE GOD OF SOVEREIGN BORDERS

It is true that God invented the nation-state. But before He invented the nation-state, God invented nations. We see this in Genesis 10:1-31, as Moses writes down the origins of the nations, in what is called the Table of Nations. In his accounting, he lists 70 different nations who arose from Biblical lineage.

“These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:32).

From the day God invented them, nations have always been nations of blood. The history of the nations is one of wars and conquest over soil. In fact, God established the first nation that was both blood and soil when he established the sovereign borders of ancient Israel in Genesis 15:18-21. Its borders were clear: between rivers on the north and east, between the sea to the west, and a desert to the south. It also formed a bridge between three continents, perfectly positioning the nation for the birth of Christ in the perfect geographical thoroughfare for gospel preachers to take the Good News to the world.

If you’re tracking, God established Israel as a nation of blood (check) and soil (check) with firm national borders. Unfortunately, before God cast them to the wind, they never obtained their Manifest Destiny over the whole region due to their stubborn sin.

He repeats, or clarifies, this border several times.

And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee” (Exodus 23:31).

In a test of their obedience, God required them to wipe those people off the face of the Earth in several divinely sanctioned genocides, ordering them to “make no treaty with them” and “destroy them utterly” (Deuteronomy 7, Deuteronomy 20, Joshua 6). They disobeyed, and God punished them severely for it. In no uncertain terms, the Israelites were ordered to show the Canaanites who was boss of Canaan.

THE GOD OF SOVEREIGN NATIONS

As God established Israel in both blood and soil, complete with borders, he established the nation-state. It was here that the concept of a nation-state was born. Once God had constituted Israel with a national Covenant and laws for civil governance handed down to Moses (we call this the Judicial Code), it was a fully-established civic government.

Israel was a unified people with no multicultural emphasis on diversity. It was one tongue, brought together by blood and tribe, with one religion, within sovereign borders, and ordered under God’s Law to be executed firstly in decentralized government (this was God’s design) and later by centralized government under a monarch.

God warned the Hebrews in 1 Samuel 8:11-15 that they would regret a centralized government and the establishment of the kingship. After their endless pleading to “be like the other nations,” God warned them that the king would (1) conscript their sons for war, (2) conscript their daughters as servants, (3) use eminent domain to take their property, (4) tax them of their wealth and (5) turn them into slaves. Today, centralized governments universally offer the same drawbacks as well as the same benefits.

A nation is neither sovereign nor free if it’s not free from the influence of foreign peoples. In fact, Americans sometimes misunderstand the “liberty” spoken of in ancient literature by Greek philosophers or Roman political theory. That freedom was not of the individual but of the polis. If a polis (a city-state) was not free from outside influence and control, it was not free. Regardless of how much control a polis had over its citizens, so long as it was free from outside control, it was then considered free indeed.

It was the American experiment in freedom that, for the first time in history, constituted a government not with the freedom of the polis centrally in mind (although this was the goal) but with the freedom of the individual. But it should go without saying that if a polis is not free, neither is any individual within it.

This is the very idea of the nation-state as designed by God; it is the nation-state that is best equipped to protect the lives, liberties, and property of its citizens. Outside influence, or foreign invaders, is the death of liberty and prosperity. Unions and allegiances with other nations, tribes, peoples, or warlords were sure to enslave a genus or ethnos. If people are to be free, it will be the nation that protects them from the foreigner.

THE GOD OF BORDER WALLS

God preferred that his people be led by nothing but his law and that he would be their king, with only occasionally judges deciding disputes locally. But because they were stiff-necked people, God established the throne of Saul – and then David – as a means to protect them from the foreigners and protect their borders, lives, and property. And then he established a capital city, Jerusalem, and the Nation-State was established.

God then ordered, through David in 2 Samuel 5, that Jerusalem be fortified with better walls than those that failed the Jebusites, built up to keep out the foreigners. Solomon later improved the walls and fortified the temple mount. Later, in Chronicles 5, Hezekiah expanded the walls around them and made them taller, at 25-30 feet (the same height as Trump’s steel border wall).

In 586, the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and tore down the walls. When God returned Israel, he moved in the heart of King Artaxerxes to rebuild the walls and put back up the gates. Nehemiah completed the task on 25 Elul (September 18), only 52 days later. God knew that Israel could not be reestablished, if it wasn’t protected from foreign invaders with sovereign walls. God took this state security seriously and instructed the Israelites to rebuild with a weapon in hand, just in case trouble popped off.

The Hebrews understood that they took Jericho when its walls crumbled. They understood that David took Jerusalem when its walls were insufficiently tall. Around their capitol city, the Hebrews learned their lesson and prioritized its walls, just as much as it prioritized the construction of the Temple. For the people of God, securing their borders was of equal priority with securing their worship, and God had them build both simultaneously.

In 70AD, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem because God was fulfilling his prophetic promises against their wickedness, they destroyed the city’s border walls along with the temple, laying waste to all but a small portion of the western wall remaining. Today, Jews gather there and wail, because of the significance of walls to a nation, and what the wall’s destruction signifies; God gave up on Israel and scattered it.

THE GOD OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION LAW

Just as God invented the nation of blood and soil, and just as God invented the constituted nation-state, God invented the notion of Citizenship. The immigration laws of Moses’ Judicial Code reveals this.

God laid out for Israel the notion of Citizenship in the Covenant constituted with the Hebrews, not with the foreigners who lived there. It encompassed the whole Hebrew people, including men, women, and children. Some critics of this notion claim that the Hebrew word for “citizen” only means “resident Hebrews of the land” in ancient Israel. But this overlooks the fact that according to God’s Covenant, all Hebrews were apart of the Covenant (including men, women, and children). In the ancient Grecian or Roman view of government, it is true that citizenship was only bestowed upon the few, but not so in Israel, probably the likely source of thinking that the word ezrah (citizen) meant something different then, than it does now.

The Judicial Code clearly separated between the Hebrews – the rightful property owners in ancient Israel – and two other groups of people (1) aliens and (2) sojourners.

Aliens were lawful inhabitants of Israel, who obeyed the laws and didn’t make a ruckus. Sojourners were different; they were not permanent resident non-citizens. They were traveling from one place, to another, through ancient Israel.

All three of these classifications had one law to follow; no one was above the laws of the land. Moses told the Hebrews…

…there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you” (Numbers 15:15-16).

So far as the law is concerned, “you” (the Hebrew) and the sojourner, had equal worth and responsibilities to follow the laws of the land as it pertained to how they treated one another (as outlined in the Second Table; laws dealing with responsibilities to fellow men).

However, the sojourners or aliens were not required to follow the ceremonial laws given to the “native born” (Hebrew Citizen) Israelites. For them, it was optional.

Every native Israelite shall do these things in this way, in offering a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. And if a stranger is sojourning with you [ie sojourners], or anyone is living permanently among you [ie lawful residents], and he wishes to offer a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord, he shall do as you do” (Numbers 15:13-14).

Many passages like these exist, explaining the tripartite division of dwellers in Israel (1) native Hebrews (2) traveling sojourners or (3) permanent non-citizen residents.

One wonders why God would have ordered their total annihilation, if he would later allow their permanent residency. Aside from the fact the Hebrews did not obey him, one can safely presume the purpose of the harsher entrance to Canaan was to establish in the minds of the Canaanites that the Hebrews indeed would rule over them and establish the laws they were expected to follow.

BEING KIND TO THE ALIEN AND SOJOURNERS

Almost all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth you’ll see in coming days from leftwing Christians (and I use the term loosely), will include their citations of the passages urging the ancient Israelites to be kind to the alien and sojourner. It is important for legitimate Christians to fully embrace these proof-texts as Sacred Writ. After all, we are not leftists who throw out passages of the Bible we don’t like.

However, passages that show this kindness (for example, “not withholding from them justice”) presumes that they have a rightful place within Israel, and following of Israel’s laws.

They will not so quickly cite to you verses that show that aliens and sojourners should be executed for violating these laws. They will not so quickly cite to you verses that show the aliens and sojourners are expected to mind their manners, show deference and respect to the native-born Hebrews, and break no laws.

American laws, like those of any nation, must be equally applied for justice to be done, or it’s not justice at all. Aliens must be lawful aliens, and sojourners must be lawful sojourners. To be here illegally, to have overstayed their visas, to have illegally disrespected our borders, are all things that put them not into the category of aliens and sojourners, but foreign invaders, who must be expelled post-haste.

LEFTWING CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS

You might find this a peculiar term, “leftwing Christian Nationalists,” but I assure you it exists. A Christian Nationalist (in its plainest sense) is one who believes the nation must implement the laws of God. When you see the Jimmy Carter Christians or Russell Moore Christians (to apply the term to someone who’s not yet in hell) demand that the United States implement laws given to ancient Israel as they pertain to aliens and sojourners, they’re indeed espousing the views of Christian Nationalism.

They’re just terrible exegetes, and twist Scripture because they’re sons of Satan.

Leftwing believers (meaning that they believe in Statism and claim to believe in Christ), will demand the same thing as those calling themselves Christian Nationalists, except for evil rather than good, and for the devil rather than God. They insist the Bible gives women the right to slaughter their infants, so we must also. They insist the Bible establishes communitarian Socialism, so we must also. They insist the Bible supports unmitigated welfare, so we must also. They insist the Bible permits religious pluralism, so we must also. They insist the Bible promotes animal rights for “every living thing,” so we must also. They insist the Bible promotes Creation Care Environmentalism, so we must also. They insist God requires personal defenseless pacifism, so we must also.

They’re not wrong that America’s laws should reflect the Moral Law of God. They’re wrong about what the Moral Law of God requires. Ours is not so much a difference of political philosophy, but one of Biblical interpretation. That, and they’re insincere godless pagans using the Bible to promote unbridled worship of the State, and we are Christians using the Bible to disciple the nations in the name of Jesus Christ.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that those who rail the hardest against Christian Nationalists, the Russell Mooreites on the left, are the very ones demanding our immigration laws conform to those given Israel. The problem is not their premise but their assault on the Sacred Writ.

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