A Response to the 1 Timothy 2:2 Kerfuffle

The recent US election has elicited strong reactions from apostolics, but the big kerfuffle in the Twitterverse centers around 1 Timothy 2:2, which says, “For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.”  Some use this verse to say we should pray for the sitting president.  Others contest this, saying it is preposterous to suggest that we lend prayerful support to anyone whose policies are contrary to or even in direct opposition to biblical principles.  Several have even imagined the scenario of early Christians praying for Nero to combat this notion.  But to quote my neighboring pastor, Louis Pio, “the best commentary on scripture is scripture.”  So let’s examine scriptural precedent.

Let’s start with these two verses:

But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. (Psalm 75:7)

...he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: (Daniel 2:21)

We love to quote these when we like who’s sitting in the Oval Office, but when we don’t, well, not so much.  Nevertheless, we have a great example of God orchestrating power into the hands of someone we would not have endorsed.  Let’s read Jeremiah 27:5-8:

“I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me.
6 And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him.
7 And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the very time of his land come: and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him.
8 And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the LORD, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand.”

Did you notice how God referred to  Nebuchadnezzar as “my servant”? This was not because of the king’s policies or platform, certainly not.  It simply meant that God was using Nebuchadnezzar, with or without his knowledge, to accomplish his will on the earth at that time.  Granted, by and large, this didn’t immediately go well for most of God’s people, but (without getting into a lengthy history lesson) if you step back and examine the big picture, it had far-reaching impact and ultimately resulted in a renewed devotion among the people of God on a level not seen since the days of Solomon.  These events had a lasting effect on the Jewish people that persists even to this day.

I concede that “four more years” under President Obama may not immediately go well for most of God’s people, but he is no less a servant of God than Nebuchadnezzar was.  We just can’t yet see the full big picture that is still unfolding.

I think we all agree that “all things work together for” our good (Romans 8:28), but “all things” includes bad things, not just good things.

Also notice in the above passage that those who refused to put their neck under the yoke of the king risked punishment from God himself.  And in case you might be thinking this is an isolated Old Testament notion, consider this:

“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” (Romans 13:1-2)

Does this mean we should support the current administration’s policies or even pray for their success?  Not at all.  It simply means we should accept their role in God’s plan, not fight against it.

A good example is Daniel and his companions under Nebuchadnezzar.  These young men were taken from their homeland, castrated, educated in the ways and language of Babylon, given Babylonian names and placed in positions of authority in the kingdom of Babylon.  Yet they seemed to recognize God’s hand in all this, for we never see them use their positions to influence the king’s policies or rally support against him.

Whenever they found themselves in direct conflict with the king’s decree, they simply took a personal stand, not against the king, but for God’s law.  There were no calls for a referendum on worshipping the golden image.  Why?  Because this wasn’t Jerusalem.  It was Babylonia.  They recognized that they were foreigners in a strange land.  They knew where their true citizenship lay.

Now see the parallel in 1 Peter Chapter 2:

“Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims...Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors...For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.”

You see, this is not New Jerusalem.  It’s America.  Like Daniel & friends, we must know where our true citizenship lies.  Our stand should never be against administrations, but for righteousness.

Look at Daniel's response to Darius' lions' den decree:

"Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime." (Daniel 6:10)

And this brings us full circle back to 1 Timothy 2:2.  For better context, let’s include the verses before and after:

“I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;”

There are a couple of aspects to this.  First of all, God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  Yes, Democrats have souls, too.

Secondly, we can give thanks for President Obama because we understand that he is a servant in God’s big-picture plan for our greater good (dare I say even end-time revival?).  And given the warning in Romans 13:2, we can see how doing so might result in “a quiet and peaceable life.”

So while we may be “perplexed” by recent political events, we need not be “in despair” (2 Corinthians 4:8).  If history is any indication, we are now in a better position to experience the revival in America that we have so longed for.

The Fugitives: A True Story

During the late 1990s, my wife, Stacey, and I were living in a secluded wooded area out a dirt road in Blaine (suburb of Mars Hill), Maine.  This is one of the most quiet rural areas one could live in.  Life is slow and laid back, and pretty much nothing of note ever happens there.  Being in the northeast corner against the Canadian border, it's not an area people generally pass through to get somewhere else.  If you come to northern Maine, it's usually because your destination is northern Maine.

One beautiful summer day, the tranquility was broken by the sound of gunshots ringing out across the countryside.  Somehow, a pair of fugitives from Michigan had ended up in northern Maine and had a run in with police in Bridgewater, the small town directly south of us.  They managed to escape the shootout unscathed and fled the scene in their vehicle.  They drove right past the end of our road, with the police in hot pursuit.  They abandoned their vehicle and fled into the woods directly across from the Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Mars Hill, where we were on staff at the time.

As details of these events made their way to us, my wife became extremely concerned.  We lived in a beat-up nineteen sixty-something trailer that was less than secure.  The frame was so off kilter that the door didn't truly close.  You didn't even have to use the doorknob to open our door.  A simple push was enough, even if it was locked. 

"What if they come here tonight?" Stacey asked.  I assured here that the police had the area where the fugitives were hiding surrounded, and that, even if they did manage to sneak past the authorities, we were miles away and had absolutely nothing to worry about.  She agreed with my assessment, and that evening, we went to bed as usual.

In the early morning hours, when it was still pitch black in our corner of the woods, Stacey, who is a light sleeper anyway, woke up to the sound of activity in our kitchen at the other end of the trailer.  Compelled to investigate, she quietly made her way down the narrow hallway.  When she got about halfway down, she noticed the door was wide open.  It was at this point that she called out to me.  When she did, whoever was in the kitchen, ran out, bumping the door as they went, causing it to swing back and forth.

Being the heavy sleeper that I am, it took me a minute to get my bearings and make my way to her in the hallway, at which point she told me what she had just witnessed.  I told her she was letting her imagination get the best of her.  I told her that it was probably just the wind blowing the door.  I told her the noise she heard was likely Zeek & Daisy, our two ferrets who had free run of the trailer.  She agreed, saying that my explanation was more realistic.

With the door now wide open, we assumed our ferrets had gotten outside, so Stacey tried to coax them back by shaking their can of treats.  As she made her way towards the front of our shed, I stood on the steps, not yet fully awake.  The sun was not yet up, and my eyes were still adjusting to the starlight.  As I stood there trying to focus my vision, I thought I saw a shadowy figure standing next to the shed, but I kept in mind how many times I had mistaken a tree stump for a moose alongside of the highway before.  And since it wasn't moving, I now accused myself of letting my imagination get the best of me.  That is, until the shadowy figure turned and ran into the woods without making a sound.  I asked Stacey if she had seen anything, but she hadn't.  At that point, our ferrets came running out from under the shed and up to Stacey.

We then returned to our kitchen and turned on the light.  The kitchen had been ransacked.  There were dishes everywhere, even on the floor.  As mischievous as our ferrets were, they were not capable of anything on this scale.  And then we saw them, the large muddy prints all over the kitchen counter.  And there, on the window of the door, a distinct muddy print and the streak of mud down the door where the paw had slid as the door swung open.  Our intruder was not a fugitive from Michigan, but a Maine black bear.  As we began to take stock of our kitchen, we realized he had taken our can of hot chocolate powder.  I was not happy about that.

Not long after that, our intruder was downed by bear hunters.  He weighed in at over 400 pounds.  Ever since, I have warned people not to mess with my wife, because she once scared a 400-pound bear out of our home.  We had incidents with bears on our property after that, but none ever came inside again.

Oh, and as for the fugitives, they fell victim to something much more aggressive than the bear.  They were attacked by a swarm of Maine mosquitoes.  The next morning, they exited the woods, covered with bites, and surrendered themselves to the safety of police custody.  And we all lived happily ever after.  The end.

The Storm of '92

Twenty years ago today, I had a winter experience that eclipses all my other winter experiences, and as a Canadian, I have a plethora amazing winter memories.

It was February 1, 1992.  I was living in the Moncton area in New Brunswick, Canada, at the time.  It was already snowing hard when I got off work at the BiWay in Champlain Place.  I cleaned the snow off my car and headed for Salisbury, where I was boarding with a wonderful elderly couple.  But to get onto the highway, I had to drive up an access ramp that was drifted in with so much snow, I couldn't break through.  I turned and went back down the ramp into downtown, but the snow was falling so hard and fast I was having difficulty driving even on the flat streets.  I realized I wouldn't be able to keep driving for much longer, so I pulled into a Tim Horton's and parked.

I remembered that some folks from the church lived a few blocks away, so I locked the car and headed out on foot.  There was snow and ice and wind galore.  I was unprepared for the weather and only had a summer cap for my head.  By the time I arrived at their house, it was dark, and I literally had chunks of ice hanging off my ears.

I'll never forget watching the storm from their living room window and seeing lightning, the only time in my life I've ever seen lightning in a snowstorm.  It lit up every flake in the sky, and was just amazing to behold!

The next morning, there was too much snow to open the front door.  Fortunately, the back of the house was L-shaped, and the wind blew just right so that the snow drifted in such a way that it left a large cavernous quarter-circle of no snow around the back door, so we were able to get out.  The snow was so deep that we were unable to tell where vehicles were.  They were completely buried.  This created problems all over town as plows would strike cars abandoned in streets.

Most of the reports say there was just over five feet of snow, but I'm 5'7", and when I dug a path from the front door to the car, I couldn't see over the sides of my path!  We later heard that there snowdrifts so deep that they came over the top of even the biggest highway plows, and I believe it.  When I finally did get back to the BiWay, there was a drift over the outside doors to our stockroom that went all the way onto the roof of the mall.

One of the most amazing sights was Main Street.  When they cleared the snow, it left a massive snow wall between the street and the sidewalk so that you couldn't even see the storefronts.  The merchants cut out doorways through the snow and spray painted  their business logos on the street side of the snow wall.

Unfortunately, in 1992, we didn't all have cameras in our pockets, so I don't have any photos to say, "Look!  This was the mega storm I got caught in!" And that makes it seem all the more surreal now.  But I can say that I was there, and it sure makes for great conversation at social gatherings.

In my travels, I have met people who can count on one hand the times they've seen even a little bit of snow, but I experienced a snowstorm that even most Canadians have not seen.  And somehow, that makes me feel special.  I shall never forget The Storm of '92!