Read Romans 11:2-8 and Matthew 22:1-14.
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”
This quote or poem (at least one variation of it) was written by Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller at the end of World War II.
According to the write-up about Pastor Niemoller on Holocaust Encyclopedia (online), he was born in Lippstadt, Germany, and became a cadet in the Imperial German Navy in 1910. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was assigned to a U-Boat, of which he eventually became commander. At the end of that war, the commanders of U-Boats were ordered to turn over their vessels to England, but Niemoller, among others, refused to obey this order and was discharged from the Navy.
In 1920, the young man decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and attended seminary at the University of Munster, becoming a fully ordained Lutheran Minister.
In the beginning, Niemoller welcomed Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. According to Holocaust Encyclopedia, his political sympathies took a turning point following a meeting in January 1934 between Hitler and two prominent Protestant bishops in a discussion about state pressures on Germany’s churches. At the meeting, it became clear that Niemoller’s phone had been tapped by the Gestapo. It was also clear that the Pastors Emergency League (PEL), which Niemoller had helped establish, was under close state surveillance. Following the meeting, Niemoller would come to see the Nazi state as a dictatorship, which he would oppose adamantly, though he spent most of the war in prison camps, including the notorious Dachau.
The quotation arose from Niemoller’s lecture series during the early postwar period. His point was that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution and murder of millions of people. He felt this was true particularly of the leaders of the Protestant churches, including his own Lutheran denomination.
Niemoller’s opposition to Nazism brought him to prominence postwar. However, he remained a controversial figure due to his antisemitism. It wasn’t until a television interview in 1963 that he admitted this failure and issued a statement of regret about it. The article says, “He was nonetheless one of the earliest Germans to talk publicly about broader complicity in the Holocaust and guilt for what had happened to the Jews.
In his book, Of Guilt and Hope (January 1946), Niemoller wrote:
“Thus, whenever I chance to meet a Jew …. as a Christian, I cannot but tell him: ‘Dear Friend, I stand in front of you, but we cannot get together, for there is guilt between us. I have sinned, and my people have sinned against thy people and against thyself.'”
Niemoller’s sin and his people’s sin? Silence in the face of tyranny. Please hold that thought.
While Martin Niemoller wasn’t alone in the fight against Nazi oppression and tyranny, there were precious few church leaders who spoke out against the Nazi regime. Precious few.
And now it is September 2021, and we are facing another tyrannical regime, except this one is worldwide. And how many religious figures are standing in the gap now? New worldwide rules and regulations are quickly eroding the rights and freedoms of, not a religious group, not a political group, not a national group … but a group of millions of people who simply are declining to put an unknown substance into their bodies and are being bullied, brow-beaten, and persecuted into compliance.
Where are the voices against this tyranny? Once again, my friends, there are precious few. Why is that? Why is it that even died-in-the-wool, born-again Christians are not only not speaking out AGAINST the jab but are actually some of the ones doing the bullying and pressuring their brethren into inoculating themselves with a substance that wipes out God’s immune system for the sake of a man-made one.
This fact alone ought to strike the fear of the LORD into every Christian heart. Except that, over the years, many Christian hearts have been overcome with the world view. While there are some Christians who are adamantly against abortion, for example, most of those who identify as ‘Christian’ in North America, 82% now support ‘Women’s Health,’ a euphemism for abortion on demand. Why should I be surprised when Christians go blind, deaf and dumb about the COVID lie when these same people have been blind, deaf and dumb about abortion for 40-some years!
How about same-sex marriage? Where was the Church when the laws were being enacted to allow same-sex couples to marry … in a church, for heaven’s sake! Where were the voices crying for repentance? Crickets!
Oh, yes, a few petitions were signed. Some ministers preached against these atrocities. Some others even marched in rallies. But the voices were not loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of sin and the destruction of democracy and the Christian Church that was happening behind the scenes at the same time.
Some Christian Clergy, like Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were very vocal and active in their era, saving perhaps thousands from persecution and death. The thing is, it was a little too much too late to have stopped the Nazi Regime just as, I believe, we in 2021 have waited too long to speak out against the destruction of our civilization.
However, we need to remember that, while we would like to see all this scary stuff just disappear, God has a plan. It may well be, and I personally believe it is, that God is allowing all this division, all this lying to the masses, in order to call the chosen to Him. In the reading from Romans 11, verse 8 tells us, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, to this very day.”
Did you get that? TO THIS VERY DAY. These are not just words for the 1st century. They are words ‘to this very day.’
In 2 Thessalonians 2, we read, “They perish because they refuse to believe the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sent them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie, and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth, but have delighted in wickedness.”
For months, I have been wondering how a born-again Christian cannot see the Truth of what is going on in the world. There have been times that I have asked God if we who avoid the vaxx could actually be in the wrong? Then I will read something that reinforces the fact that aborted baby parts are used in the manufacture of mRNA products … not just the present so-called vaccines, but also in other pharmaceutical products.
My friends, this is wickedness beyond wicked. Recall that Jesus said, “As in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the LORD.”
In the days of Noah, the fallen angels were corrupting human DNA by ‘marrying’ human women and having children with them. Children? Chimeras, more like. Mythology is rife with them. Giants, cyclops, titans, half-goat-half humans (fauns), half-horse-half humans (centaurs), and so on. But God saved His creation by putting Noah and his family, with their uncorrupted gene pool, aboard the ark while He wiped out all other life on earth. As in the days of Noah …
Well, here we are again. Satan, through our present-day science, has devised yet another plan to thwart the Creator and pollute His most precious creation – us – by replacing God’s human immune system with a man-made one. This is the LIE or a big part of it. And even some who are apparently elect have bought into it, with the inducement that they will be able to travel and have dinner at a restaurant and go to concerts and the theatre. “They have traded the truth for a lie.”
Now, again, I am not saying that the current jab and coming passport are the Mark of the Beast. But they are indeed a foreshadowing of this worldwide system of oppression. Commerce and movement will soon be very much restricted for the unvaxxed. As of September 21, the day after Canada’s national election, we can look for more of our civil liberties to be eroded. And as the world government’s agenda is rolled out, we will see even more draconian aspects be legislated here in Canada and in most of the other nations of the world. U.N. Head Gutierrez is determined to have the New World Order in place by 2030.
Still, once again, I believe the LORD is hard at work in all this to call His chosen. Our Scripture is Matthew 22:1-14. Let’s look at the parable of the Wedding Banquet and see how God’s Word reflects on what we’ve been talking about.
It is no secret that the King of the story is Father God, and the son to be married is none other than Jesus, His Son. And Jesus begins the parable by saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his Son.” Remember as we go through the verses that Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God to come.
Servants are sent to those who had been invited to tell them the marriage is about to take place and that it is time to come. But they don’t come. They refuse. How many Jews of Jesus’ day refused to believe the prophets that the Messiah was Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Almost all the Pharisees and Sadducees and those who listened to them refused to believe.
So, then the king sends more servants to tell the invited that the oxen and fatted cattle have been prepared for the feast. “Come to the wedding banquet,” says the king.
Again, the plea falls on deaf ears. One goes off to his field, another to his business. The rest of the invited seize the servants, mistreat them and kill them. It’s safe to imagine John the Baptist in this analogy. His was the “voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the LORD.'” Herod threw him in prison and had him killed on a woman’s whim. The invited killed the king’s servant.
This enrages the king, who sends His army to destroy the murderers and to burn their city. Jerusalem is actually besieged, burned and decimated in 70 A.D. by the Roman army.
The king says to his servants that the banquet is ready, but the invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite anyone you find. These are the non-Jews, the Gentiles; and the servants gather all they can find, both bad and good, to fill the wedding hall with guests.
At the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, only those who believe in Jesus Messiah as the Son of God, the Redeemer of humankind, will be present. Some of these will include Messianic Jews, but no non-believing Jews will be there.
In Luke 19:10, Jesus said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Since all have sinned, all are lost until they accept the Saviour’s free gift of Salvation, His precious blood spilled at Calvary to atone for the sin of the world.
Verse 11 is interesting. The king Himself comes to the banquet to see the guests. (Can’t wait to see the LORD at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, can you?) He notices a man who is not wearing wedding clothes and asks, “Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes.”
So, we ask, ‘What are the wedding clothes?’ The answer is that we who rise up to meet Jesus in the air in the pretribulation Rapture will be given new bodies and white robes to wear” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53 and Revelation 19:7). No one will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and feast with the LORD unless they are clothed with the Righteousness of Christ. Those not so clothed will be thrown out into the darkness, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
And the passage ends with the memorable verse 14, “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
As I mentioned earlier, I have been pondering how so many who identify as Christian can have been deceived by the jab. How do they not see that injecting themselves with an experimental witches’ brew of aborted fetus material and man-made RNA can’t be what God has designed.
I have heard these people say things like, “God has conquered COVID with the vaccine.” And I ask, “By altering the Creator’s immune system? Really?” But they don’t see it. They don’t want to discuss it or even think about it. These people are among those who have been invited to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, and they are many. Yet our Saviour tells us only a precious few will be chosen to go into the feast.
Are you and I among them? Saints, I don’t know why we can see the consequences of the jab. And why we can see the End Times lining up when others cannot. Why do we see the mark of the beast in the roll-out of the Vaccine Passports that are currently being prepared to be installed in every nation on earth? My beautiful friends, I don’t know why we are so blessed. But we are.
Every day, give thanks and praise to Almighty God, His Redeemer Son, and His Holy Spirit for His amazing Grace and Salvation. Cling to the LORD, rely not on your own understanding of what is happening in the world right now. Rely on God’s Word to inform you and to give you strength, courage and wisdom for the coming days.
In all things, rejoice! Reject fear. Embrace any opportunity to spread the Good News of Salvation in Christ! Stand strong to the last, and through it all, always speak up for righteousness. Don’t be among the many. Be among the chosen few.
Let us pray …
Heavenly Father God,
Your love for human beings knows no bounds. While we see that You are beginning to divide the goats from the sheep, we are not in any position to judge anyone. Please give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and wisdom to discern what is from You and what is of the world, and not to judge others in what we see, hear and know, but to be joyful that you are calling us to You.
Through Your precious Son Jesus Messiah, we pray. Amen.
If anyone reading this devotional has not yet received Jesus as their Saviour, but God has touched your heart by His Holy Word, please email me (amadea649@gmail.com) or find a Bible-believing local church and ask the Pastor what you must do to be saved in Grace. In the meantime, please consider the ABCs of Salvation:
A – Admit
Admit what you have done wrong and ask forgiveness.
Romans 3:23 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death.”
1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
B – Believe
Believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again as payment for your sins.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
C – Confess and Choose
Confess and choose to allow God to be in charge of your life.
Matthew 16:24 “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Romans 10:9 “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Romans 10:13 “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
This article, based on God’s Holy Word, was written under the inspiration of God’s own Holy Spirit. All glory to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Blessings,
Lynda Janzen