While we’re on the subject of Adam’s losing dominion, let’s sharpen our skills with a little Swordplay. I’m not going to be dogmatic here because this is the kind of stuff you just wonder about and file in the back of your mind as you wait for further clarification from God (Lk 2:18,19,49-51). But this is the kind of stuff we need to learn to be adept at addressing for three reasons. First, it trains us in the handling of the word of life so, as we mature, we can tell the difference between rightly dividing and wresting the Scriptures. Second, if we hear something weird like, That carpenter from Nazareth claims to have been born of a virgin, we just might be able to overlook the fact that we don’t like His personality, His dress, His body odor, His mannerisms, His facial features, or the fact that He and His low-class friends (who eat with unwashen hands) often sleep in the park; and instead focus on the Scriptures, put them together correctly, allow them to make us stop looking at the outward appearance, and begin to carefully watch the Man to see if He walks, talks, breathes, fulfills, and reveals the Scriptures – something the learned Pharisees phailed to do. Third, if a Christian world leader we really like shows up with a charming personality, impeccable credentials, prayers that end with “in Jesus’ name”, and the backing of the Moral Masses and the Christian Right, but isn’t quite Scriptural in a couple of areas, we’ll be able to set aside our carnal, positive reaction and begin to analyze whether the guy (or gal) is an enemy or not.

So, let’s engage in some Swordplay and see if we can find a satisfactory explanation behind Christ’s having His disciples drink His blood (wine) at His Last Supper even though He knew both Testaments forbid the drinking of blood.

Tradition says the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve ate was an apple. There is no evidence to support that. There is, however, evidence that grapes were the forbidden fruit. But don’t grapes grow on vines and therefore cannot qualify as the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Not if you read Nu 6:1-4 and Ezek 15:2,6.

Just as Adam partook of the vine tree, history repeated itself when the patriarch Noah also partook of the fruit of the vine (Ge 9:20-22). And sex was involved both times. Do Mt 13:37-39; Jn 8:41,44; 1 Jn 3:10,12; Ge 6:2,4 and 2 Sa 21:20,22 mean Adam, intoxicated with the leavening drug of knowledge spreading through his veins (a lust that still afflicts us according to Ep 2:3), allowed Satan to consummate the seductive, subtle betrothal wrought by the ingestion of the forbidden grapes? If so, does that make grape clusters hanging from a vine phallic images?

God created evil, which I believe is the idea of equality. Satan fell from grace when he partook of that forbidden evil. Could it be, because equality enables the carnal Reason that makes us usurp God’s prerogative as Head, that God put the poison of equality in the grapes and therefore called the vine “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”? It is the carnality from those grapes that binds us to Satan as his wives. Why? For an answer we just have to apply what we learned about the purpose of wives – they are servants. The reason Adam didn’t marry giraffes or aardvarks is they were not suitable helpers. And why did God create humans for Himself? Because He wanted wives who were suitable servants. And we were suitable until Adam made us carnal. Once we became carnal, Ro 8:7,8 shows we were no longer meet to serve God. We became just as unsuitable as Satan to serve God, we became at enmity against God, and we became perfect wives/servants of the Devil because we were now carnal just like he is. And that is how original sin binds us to Satan. And that is why, in order to serve God, we must have a new (spirit) self via the new birth and then learn to die to the old (physical) self daily. And that is why the Bible commands us to stay away from the Devil’s philosophy (Co 2:8) that makes us think Reason is good.

Now, could it be that the forbidden grapes on the tree of knowledge were red? In the Bible grape juice – or wine – is called blood (Ge 49:11; Dt 32:14; Mt 26:27-29). And blood is equated with wine (Dt 32:42; Is 49:26; Je 46:10; Ezek 39:19). But Christ showed us there are two kinds of blood, mortal red blood and immortal clear blood (water) (covered on D17-1 and D19-2), so the Bible also equates blood with water (Dt 12:16,23,24; 1 Ch 11:17,19; Ezek 32:6). And since the life (carnality) of the flesh is represented by red blood, not by the clear blood/water Christ has in His veins, it looks like the grapes Adam ate were red, not white. Adam and Eve ingested the leavened red blood of the forbidden fruit, and it revealed them, and us, to be carnal enemies of God. That’s why both Testaments tell us to abstain from red blood (Ge 9:4; Le 17:10-14; 19:26; Dt 12:23-25; Ac 15:20,29; 21:25) but not from God’s blood (Mt 26:27,28). Notice something interesting about the flip side of Dt 12:25-28: If we apply it to Adam’s sin we find the verse contains all the elements related to his sin – the commandment to abstain from the blood of the grape, the resulting curse of original sin passed on to Adam’s children, and the carnality represented by eating the red blood of the forbidden fruit. Now, since original sin is linked with our marriage to the Devil, it may be that Ex 34:7 is a reference to our inherited iniquity from Adam. That’s why the Old Testament saints, bound to the Devil by Adam’s sin, couldn’t go to heaven when they died; they had to wait until Christ legally freed them by His death on the cross. In support of that, notice the context of Je 31:15,22,31 is Christ’s First Coming when He instituted the New Testament. That would make Je 31:29,30 say: In those days of the New Testament when Christ sets us free from our bondage to the Devil, we’ll no longer have to lament when we die that we’re restricted to Abraham’s bosom because of our father Adam’s eating the leavened grapes. In those days good Christians can go to heaven when they die, and only those who are carnal (because they don’t die to the leavened self we got from Adam) will go to hell. That would explain the mysterious third or fourth generation stuff in Ex 34:7: The generations cursed by Adam’s sin were those prior to the cross. That would include the generations of Adam, the first patriarch; Noah, the second patriarch; Abraham, the third patriarch; and Moses, who was almost the fourth patriarch as is made plain in Nu 14:11-20 which, interestingly enough, includes verse 18 as a clue. But if you don’t like that interpretation because Moses did not actually become the fourth patriarch (Jesus did), we can look at it this way: The most specific wording of this third and fourth generation stuff is Ex 34:7. Since Christ’s fourth generation was set free, 34:7 can be read: “...unto [including] the third and [up] to [but not including] the fourth generation.”

If equality, which is the foundation of the devils’ philosophy, was the leaven in the blood of the red grapes on the vine tree of knowledge of good and evil, that would help explain why Dt 32:31-33 identifies their rock (Satan) with the vine tree that bears grapes that produce the “heady” wine that is called the venom of dragons and asps. Which is why 1 Ti 4:1 refers to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Now go to 1 Co 10. In v.4 there’s not much doubt they drank water (Christ’s pure blood). Therefore v.16 would be better symbolized by white wine. And verses 20 and 21 would refer to both wines, white and red.

The fact that wine makes us “heady” or “light-headed” is also fitting because that is essentially what being carnal is. Therefore, ever since we inherited Adam’s original sin and became carnal we have been told to reestablish dominion over ourselves by maintaining strict control over our carnal minds by exercising discernment. That’s why we are allowed to drink heady liquor but are prohibited from letting it take our control away.

And that’s how Adam lost dominion. He didn’t just lose dominion over the earthly real estate God had given him; he also lost dominion over his own body by yielding to carnality. He became unfit to serve God. He became intoxicated with equality and Reason, which made him a heady usurper of God’s prerogative as Head. Adam went from being an obedient body to being an independent head – which is enmity against God. And that is why the Bible says we must first rule well our own bodies or we’re not qualified to help the church. It is imperative that we bring ourselves under subjection, that we subdue or conquer ourselves, that we establish dominion over our carnal minds and bodies by dying daily. The only physical real estate we have today to rule over is our old man – and we can’t even handle that! Because philosophy liberated and legitimized the carnal man, Reason now dominates Christianity – not revelation.

ABRAHAM: DOMINION PROMISED

When Noah, the second patriarch, stepped off the ark God told him many of the same things He’d told Adam, including giving him the Old Commission to be fruitful and multiply. However, God very deliberately refrained from giving Noah dominion. Why? What was the difference between Adam and Noah? For the answer look at the covenant God made with Abraham (Ge 12:1,7; 13:15), and notice the covenant is tied to land. God’s people lost earthly dominion via Adam and wouldn’t get it back until many centuries later via Joshua. Adam lost his real estate/dominion because he showed he couldn’t even rule well his own house – himself and his wife. Noah was given neither real estate nor the dominion to go with it. That was the difference between Adam and Noah. Let me be clear about the difference: Adam was given real estate; Noah wasn’t. Adam was given the dominion to rule his real estate; Noah was given no dominion because God gave him no real estate. God told Adam to establish his dominion by subduing all in his realm; Noah was never told to subdue anything.

The moral of the story is, when a Christian doesn’t do a good job ruling himself, God will not give him dominion.

When God decided to divide the human race into saints and dogs He needed a third patriarch. He selected Abraham. He told Abraham many of the same things He’d told Adam and Noah, including giving him the Old Commission. And, like He’d done with Noah, God gave Abraham zero real estate over which to have dominion (no real estate, no dominion, no subduing). But He did promise real estate to Abe’s descendants.

Before we go any further, let’s define people when they not only have no dominion over real estate, but also are not “at home.” The Bible calls them strangers, aliens, and sojourners. In the Bible these terms apply to: Abe while he was in the very land of Canaan he’d been promised; to people who are in a land that isn’t theirs; to Isaac and Jacob and their descendants until they received the inheritance of real estate; and to unsaved people who were living in the nation of Israel. To verify that see Ge 12:10; 15:13; 17:8; 21:34; 23:2-4; 26:3; 28:4; 32:4; 47:4; Ex 2:22; 6:4; 18:3; Ru 1:1; Ezek 14:7; He 11:9,13. God’s people would continue being called strangers and sojourners until they received dominion over the land of Canaan from Jesus Christ in the days of Joshua.

We’ve already seen above (as well as in the list of Scripture about the Promise on page H2-2) that God’s Promise to Abraham is tied to real estate. There are a number of groups today who teach that Caucasian Christians are – or might be – physical descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel (they call themselves by such names as “Christian Israelites”). They teach that, as descendants of Abraham, they have a mandate from God to carry out the provisions of His covenant to Abraham. For example, in order for them to be a blessing to the world in accordance with Ge 12:3, they think they are supposed to get rid of, by any means necessary, any government on earth that doesn’t rule according to the Bible. One of the places in Scripture they use to “prove” God’s covenant with Abraham is still in effect is Ps 105:6-10. If it’s still in effect, they reason, it must apply to someone. And it obviously doesn’t apply to the Christ rejecters in Israel, so there must be people on earth to whom the covenant does apply – them! But let’s look at Ps 105. Verse 6 shows that the children of Jacob, “his chosen”, are being addressed. Then notice verses 7 through 10 are all building up to the climax that comes after the colon at the end of verse 10. In other words, while verses 7 through 10 refer to the covenant, only verse 11 explains what the covenant is! What is the covenant specifically tied to? Real estate. Which is exactly the same thing we learned in the verses that show what the Promise is. So, if we are supposed to be fulfilling God’s covenant today, where’s our real estate? If our real estate is the land of Canaan why are we messing around with politics in North America? The answer is: We have no dominion anywhere on earth. Not the garden of Eden, not Israel, not England, and not the United States. Our kingdom is not of this world! Why pretend that it is – will God be fooled? Will He be impressed? And, since we have no God-given real estate, we have neither dominion nor the authority to subdue anything.

Abraham pleased God by patiently wandering around the land of Canaan. He was a stranger who sojourned in the land of promise, as were his sons who were also heirs of the covenanted real estate (He 11:9-16). They looked for a city whose builder and maker is God (v.10). In fact, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Sara all saw themselves as strangers and pilgrims on earth because they had dominion over nothing (v.13). They sought a country (v.14) all right, but it wasn’t on this planet (v.16).

Why was Joseph sold by his fellow Christians into slavery? Because they didn’t want him to have dominion over them (Ge 37:8). When in Egypt, Joseph, as any Christian worth his salt, volunteered for nothing in that pagan country because it wasn’t his dominion. But, both as a slave to Potiphar and when Pharaoh drafted him, he did what any good Christian would do in obedience to the word of God: He did everything he could to serve and please his ungodly, Bible-rejecting masters.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

After His people spent four centuries serving pagan Egypt, God decided to give them that which they hadn’t had since before Adam was booted from the garden of Eden – dominion. No longer would they be without God-given real estate on earth they could call their own and rule. No longer would they be strangers in the Devil’s domain; they’d be home.

Moses led them out of Egypt through the Red Sea, thus becoming a type of Christ leading us out of this world, through the Deep, and into the Promised Land/the KOH/Z/our everlasting inheritance. We need to pause here in order to examine the significance of something Moses was given – the ark of the covenant. The ark of the what? The covenant!

God’s people started out under Adam with dominion. When it was lost they became strangers sojourning, waiting for a land they could call their own. When Abraham came along God made a promise, a covenant with him about real estate, about dominion. Christians would pass on this covenant from generation to generation as an inheritance so they would know one day they’d see the covenant honored when God gave them dominion again. When Moses came along God gave His people the ark of the covenant. It can be called the ark of the promise. It can be called the ark of the inheritance. It can be called the ark of real estate. And it can be called the ark of dominion. They all mean the same thing. That is an important point we’ve missed for too long in our Bible study. Had we realized it we would have noticed something else: Whenever God’s people had the ark of the covenant (after they moved into the Promised Land), they also had dominion. And whenever they lost the ark of the covenant, they lost dominion.

But God had to first show His people that obedience, not the ark, is the answer. In other words, the ark was symbolic.

When God’s people sinned, God delayed their dominion. So they were forced to haul the ark of the covenant around with them in the wilderness for forty years in order to learn obedience. When the dominionless Moses (a type of the dominionless Christ at His First Coming) died without dominion, the mantle passed to Joshua to reestablish Adam’s dominion. (Because Joshua had dominion he is a type of Christ at His Second Coming.)

If God’s people had been obedient, Moses would have led them into the Promised Land, restored dominion, and been a type of Christ at His Second Coming. But when God’s people sinned and were penalized forty years, Moses became a great Almost because he wasn’t given dominion. That makes Moses a type of another great Almost, John the Baptist. That becomes clear when we read Mt 11:12-14; 17:3,10-13. If God’s people had been faithful at the First Coming, John the Baptist would have been Elijah, and Christ would have restored dominion. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

JOSHUA: DOMINION RESTORED

When Moses died God spoke to Joshua about the real estate He’d promised His people as an inheritance (Josh 1:2-4,6). God wanted there to be no question about this momentous occasion, and He wanted to establish the significance of the ark of the covenant. So He had a grand ceremony.

Joshua rose early in the morning (Josh 3:1). These events happened after three days (Josh 3:2). The priests carried the ark of dominion in the sight of all the people into the Jordan River and stood still. At that point the flooding river (type of the Deep that flooded the earth in Noah’s day) piled up as if behind an invisible dam upstream, which left dry land downstream. Then all the Israelites paraded past the ark of the covenant and crossed the dry riverbed.

I italicized the two phrases above because their repeated use in the Bible, as well as what they – and other similar Bible phrases – teach us, make me think they are used here as prophecy: Rising early and after three days make us think of Christ’s resurrection, which happened after the third day as it was turning into the fourth day (as covered in chapter D33). Here in relation to the ark of the covenant they seem to refer to exactly when God will fulfill His Promise by giving us our inheritance of everlasting real estate. It will not happen after two days (the two thousand years of the New Testament era of the Gentiles) because that is when Christ’s Second Coming establishes His Millennial Reign on the third day of the New Testament era. And it will not happen on the third day because that is when the Millennial Reign takes place on this planet, which is not our everlasting Promised Land because it is destroyed with fire at the end of day three during the Final Solution. God will fulfill His Promise after three days and very early on the fourth day when several things happen in rapid succession: This planet is destroyed with fire; the Lord and His faithful saints move to the new earth (Zion); the Marriage Supper of the Lamb consummates our union with Christ and puts us under the Second Testament Law of grace (the real “eternal security”); we are given our new, circumcised hearts/glorified bodies – thereby complying with the everlasting commandment to be circumcised on the eighth day (which, if you start counting days at the beginning of the New Testament, is day four (right at the beginning – “early” – of day four, which happens to also be the very end of – or “after” – day three); and, of course, we’ll be given our Promised everlasting real estate over which we’ll have dominion under Christ forever. Day eight (or day four if you start counting from the First Coming) is also our first day without the sidereal movement – time – of this universe; it is the beginning of our eternity.

God had the ark of real estate enter the Jordan first in order to miraculously demonstrate what He, the Lord of all the earth, was doing. This was a big deal. Up until this point King Satan had dominion over the whole earth, including the real estate of Canaan. But now God was demonstrating that, as King of kings, all sovereignty and authority ultimately belong to Him. He was demonstrating that He was taking dominion over Canaan away from Satan and giving it to His people. Even the pagan inhabitants of the land of Canaan knew God was taking their dominion away from them and giving it to His people (Josh 2:9-11; 5:1; 9:24). What a day that must have been!

This event – God’s people being given dominion again – was a type of the Second Coming on day seven if you count from the Creation, and day three if you count from the First Coming. This passing through the miraculously-parted Jordan River was also a type of our leaving this planet/Egypt, passing through the Deep, and being given dominion over the everlasting real estate of Zion. And God used the miraculous crossing to demonstrate to everyone that the Lord Jesus Christ was responsible for this tremendous and historic event. The Bible makes it very clear that Jesus was leading the Israelites into the Promised Real Estate (Dt 31:6,8,20,21; 32:12). Yes, Joshua was there physically and was a type of Christ at the Second Coming, but it was necessary for Christ to lead them in order that His Sovereign Authority legitimize the transfer of dominion. God plays by the rules. He requires Satan to play by the rules. And He requires us to play by the rules. If the modern ERROR versions were right about it being Joshua, not Jesus, who subdued the land of Canaan, the act would have been disobedient, willful, unlawful, and without validity – and Joshua would have been a rebel just like Satan. In order to more clearly make that point, God deliberately put Jesus in Ac 7:45 in His Authorized 1611 King James Bible. Enlightened Christians, filled with Reason, unbelief, and darkness, missed the significance, had no idea as to the importance of the issue of dominion, took Jesus out of Ac 7:45 and put in Joshua in every modern version of the Bible. I say again: If God hadn’t given Joshua real estate and the dominion to rule over it, Joshua would not have had the authority to subdue it.

The ark of the Lord (Josh 3:13) signified that the transfer of dominion over the land was authorized by the King of kings and was therefore legitimate. The ark of the covenant was now a symbol of God’s people having dominion. As long as they had the ark they had dominion.

LESSONS ON GOVERNMENT

In order to successfully fight this war we must learn to apply the Sword of the Lord to our lives. God is a man of war (Ex 15:3), and He wants us to be like Him (Ps 144:1). When His people were given dominion over the land of Canaan they were supposed to subdue the pagans by military force. One reason God left pagans living in Canaan was so His people could learn the art of physical warfare (Ju 3:1,2). Another reason was to see if the Israelites would learn to deal with temptation and false doctrine (Ju 2:21-23; 3:4-8). We must become experts with the Sword. And we must die daily by using it on ourselves.

When the Israelites angered God, He brought pagans against them until His people cried to Him for help, at which point He would raise up a deliverer, such as Othniel (Ju 3:9), to deliver His people. This continued the method God had always used to give His people leaders – God selected them. (This would change when God authorized kings: He’d pick a king, and he and his sons would reign unless God chose somebody else.)

After Othniel, God selected Ehud as judge (Ju 3:15). But after Ehud we notice nowhere does the Bible say God selected either Shamgar or Deborah (Ju 3:31; 4:4). That is not to say God didn’t use them, but we shall see it irritated God when His people took upon themselves the prerogative of selecting their deliverers. God did select Gideon as a judge (Ju 6:11), but Abimelech was democratically chosen by the people (Ju 9:6,8). And apparently God selected neither Judge Tola nor Judge Jair (Ju 10:1,3).

Now, Ju 10:6-10 speaks of cause and effect, but does not say all the judges mentioned in this book were appointed by God. And I think Ju 10:13,14 has another meaning more appropriate to, and more consistent with, the context than the traditional interpretation. Tradition says they were angering God by serving other gods (such as Ashtaroth and Baalim). That fits verses 6-10, but I think it also means God’s people, wanting deliverance, were appointing their own judges instead of waiting for God to do it in His perfect time. They were choosing fellow saints (gods) to deliver them. When God rebuked them, they repented and cleaned up their act (Ju 10:15,16). But as soon as trouble showed up (Ju 10:17), God’s people again democratically did what they thought was right (Ju 11:11)! That’s why the democratically-selected Jephthah, who was serving the people, couldn’t say, “Thus saith the Lord” in Ju 11:14,15! Compare Jephthah’s message with that of Ehud (Ju 3:16,17,20), a judge who was appointed by God.  God’s people, when they did not follow His lead and speak in His name, were in violation of the basic, fundamental duty of every Christian servant – which is spelled out in 1 Co 10:31 and Co 3:17. Later God did get involved and help them (Ju 11:29), but not without punishing/testing Jephthah by having it be his daughter who came out to meet him (Ju 11:30,31,34,35). Although Jephthah made some mistakes he was a good Christian. Just like Abraham was willing to demonstrate his submission to God by willingly sacrificing his only son (which was counted unto him for righteousness), Jephthah’s love for and submission to God made him willing to sacrifice his only daughter – which got him into the hall of fame (He 11:32).

At any rate, God’s saints learned nothing (Ju 12:8,11,13), and God’s punishment was Ju 13:1 in exact accordance with what He said about dominion in Ne 9:28; Le 26; Dt 28. God then raised up Samson to deliver Israel from the Philistines (Ju 13:3,5,24; 14:4). What did the saints learn? Nothing: Ju 17:6. They failed to apply God’s lessons, which would have allowed them to mature in their Christian walk. They merely followed their flesh no matter what happened: When God beat them with His rod of “bad circumstances” they cried out to Him with selfish, worldly sorrow instead of an ashamed repentance generated by love for Him. When God heard their cry and made their lives pleasant again they selfishly went their own way.

I put quotation marks around bad circumstances above because we need to stop viewing things in our lives as “circumstance” and acknowledge the correcting hand of God. Ps 106 and 107 are good lessons on this topic. Notice in them that God’s people failed to learn from His counsel, words, and works – all of which are supposed to be studied and applied to our lives. (But that requires faith.) Notice also that instead of living in accordance with His revealed will, they lived in accordance with their own counsel, lusts, inventions, and works. And then zero in on the cycles of carnality, God’s punishment, carnality, God’s punishment, etc. Notice these “acts of God” would today be considered “chance.” Then notice these horrible events are supposed to engender praise and thankfulness in us for what God regards as “His goodness,” “His wonderful works,” and the “loving kindness of the Lord”! I’m afraid today we don’t respond that way to death, hard labor, destruction, distress, oppression, affliction, and sorrow. Whoso is wise will observe these things and shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord. See also Ps 119:75; Ro 2:4; He 12:5.

The Lord continued to be involved with His people (Ju 20:23,35), but, in general, Christians did not repent (Ju 21:25). After a time the Lord decided to again punish Israel by taking away their dominion, and He would involve the ark of the covenant so we could learn some stuff.

At one time Israel was under the high priest, Eli. He was one of those Christians who talks the talk (1 Sa 2:22-24) but failed to do God’s will (1 Sa 2:29,30; 3:13). When Israel was defeated in battle by the Philistines (1 Sa 4:2), they decided the defeat had nothing to do with their lousy Christian lives, but was because they’d neglected to take their lucky charm into battle with them (1 Sa 4:3). The Philistines saw the ark and were filled with fear (1 Sa 4:6-8) because they didn’t know God wanted them to conquer His people and take away Christian dominion. (I admire the characteristics of Christian manliness the Philistines demonstrated in 1 Sa 4:9 in the face of what they feared was going to be a defeat.) Israel lost the ark and dominion to the Philistines (1 Sa 4:11,22). But because the ark represents God’s everlasting covenant, it wouldn’t be meet for it to reside in the land of the Philistines. So God moved it to Kirjathjearim (1 Sa 7:2).

When Eli died he was replaced by Samuel, who was called by God (1 Sa 3:4) and was a type of Christ (1 Sa 2:35). And democracy reared its ugly head again among Christians: They went to Samuel and demanded that he submit to the will of the people and give them a king (1 Sa 8:4,5). Samuel wasn’t happy (1 Sa 8:6), but, surprisingly, in spite of the fact that the Christians were filled with a spirit of antichrist, God told Samuel to hearken to the voice of the majority (1 Sa 8:7) because He had more lessons to teach us.

God told Samuel to warn all the Christians about exactly what they’d have to accept if they were given a monarch. They were told life would be pretty much the way it had been in the garden of God before Lucifer’s rebellion (1 Sa 8:10-19): Their property would belong to the king at his discretion; their sons and daughters would be drafted against their wills to do the king’s bidding; he would take their property and give it to others; and he would tax them without representation. (Obviously the American founding fathers ignored verses on taxation without representation such as 1 Sa 8:15,17 and Lk 2:1-5, and decided to rebel against their Christian king, George III, in spite of 1 Sa 8:18. If we confess our iniquity, and the iniquity of our founding fathers, with the trespass which we’ve all trespassed against God, admit that we have walked contrary unto Him; and that He has therefore walked contrary unto us; and if we, which are called by His name, will humble ourselves, and pray, and seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways; then will God hear from heaven, and forgive our sin, and heal our land.)