Foreigners and Invasions: Divine Judgment?

Lesson from Israel of old:

The informed Christian knows that care is needed in the reading of Scripture. How we are to interpret and understand the Bible is not always fully crystal clear. As but one example, care is needed in how Christians approach the Hebrew Scriptures. The wise and accepted way to approach it is to understand that there is both continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments.

One obvious case of discontinuity involves the OT sacrifices. Since Jesus is our perfect and final sacrifice for sins, we no longer need the blood offerings found in the OT (see for example Hebrews 10). And, given that the temple is no longer here, we cannot properly offer such sacrifices anyway.

Another area where care is needed involves the blessings and curses given by Yahweh to ancient Israel. In Deuteronomy 28:1-14 we find blessings for obedience, and in Deuteronomy 28:15-68 we find curses for disobedience. Can these be applied wholesale to the church today?

Of interest, there are far more curses listed than blessings, so that might give believers today some cause for concern. See more on this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/01/03/misappropriating-old-testament-blessings-and-curses/

But one set of curses found in Deuteronomy is certainly quite interesting, to say the least. And one can ask whether any of it might be relevant or applicable to today’s world. That passage is Deuteronomy 28:43-52:

The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; it also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you.

This idea of foreigners or enemies coming in and taking over, getting all the benefits that the Israelites had worked so hard for is worth considering. This is known as a futility curse. Many others are found in the Old Testament, such as Jeremiah 6:12:

Their houses will be turned over to others,
    together with their fields and their wives,
when I stretch out my hand
    against those who live in the land.

Or consider Ecclesiastes 6:1-2 as another example:

There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil.

But sometimes we read about God reversing these judgments. As just one example, here is Isaiah 62:8-9:

The Lord has sworn by his right hand
    and by his mighty arm:
“Never again will I give your grain
    as food for your enemies,
and never again will foreigners drink the new wine
    for which you have toiled;
but those who harvest it will eat it
    and praise the Lord,
and those who gather the grapes will drink it
    in the courts of my sanctuary.”

How relevant are these sorts of texts today? We certainly see all throughout the West foreigners and often enemies pouring in. They might be illegal aliens, or they might be allowed by weak leftist rulers to waltz right in, as here in Australia, or in France, or in Spain, or in the UK, or in the US under Joe Biden (but thankfully reversed under Trump).

Millions upon millions of foreigners are coming into Western countries with almost no questions asked. And before the critics get all bent out of shape, let me say that there is a place for orderly and legal migration. If you come in by the rules, seeking to assimilate, learn the language, and embrace the values, that is one thing.

But sneaking in illegally is quite another. So too are woke leaders who happily approve of mass migration, taking no concern of the host culture, its welfare, and its needs. In those cases, these radical left leaders are not embracing multiculturalism, they are encouraging an invasion. They are putting foreigners and strangers ahead of their own people.

Side story

One recent occurrence is illustrative of some of these matters. I was out walking my dog and one neighbour stopped me for a chat. She was complaining about the huge intake of migrants and how we do not have the infrastructure and so on to properly look after them.

She was worried about Australians and how they are faring under such circumstances. I said I agreed and that Albanese and Labor were causing all this, with little resistance from the Liberals. I said that simply noting the zillions of potholes here in Labor’s Victoria is another case in point.

At this point Jilly dog was pulling on the leash, eager to keep going. As I started to leave, this gal said that something must be done, something must change, but ‘as long as it is not Pauline Hanson’. As I was walking away I said I would support her. Had my dog not rushed me away, I would have gone on to say the obvious:

‘You rightly worry about what a mess Australia is in, and the huge influx of outsiders swelling our population to unsustainable levels. And yet, the only person and party who has consistently spoken out against this and wants to turn things around is Pauline and One Nation. But you want nothing to do with her! Can you please explain to me this massive disconnect?’

Sure, One Nation is far from perfect. But given what a huge mess we are in, no wonder so many ordinary Australians are turning to it. We sure won’t solve what ails us by means of the increasingly useless uni-party.

Are these texts for us?

But let me get back to the Deuteronomy passage and others like it. Here we have some theological, biblical and hermeneutical questions to ask. Do these OT curses apply to any other nation besides ancient Israel? They were in a covenant relationship with Yahweh, so they certainly had that relationship spelled out in great detail, including all the curses and blessings.

But do they apply to modern day pagan Australia, or the UK, or Spain? Is the mass influx of foreigners into Western countries – really invasions in so many cases – an example of what God had warned would happen? Many would be thinking that the texts sure do apply to what we just saw transpire in Ceuta, Spain, or how we are seeing so many hardcore leftist Muslims and socialists being elected in Democratic primaries throughout America.

As someone just posted on the social media:

Notice a trend?

Hasan Piker parents: Turkey

Abdul El-Sayed parents: Egypt

Zohran Mamdani parents: India

Ilhan Omar parents: Somalia

The Left’s new leaders have parents who immigrated to America. But still hate it. No longer hiding a goal to destroy America and the West.

Indeed, consider this utterly staggering fact: In just one month we will commemorate the horrific Islamist terror attacks in America. What happened on September 11 was really not all that long ago. In New York City some 2800 people were killed.

And yet, New Yorkers voted in the socialist Islamist Zohran Mamdani as mayor! It boggles the mind! We seem to have short-circuited our memory banks. Cries of ‘Never again’ or ‘Lest we forget’ seem to have escaped us. We are like sheep heading to our own slaughter.

Again, all this may not be a direct fulfillment of something like Deuteronomy 28. But at the very least, we might get some secondary application from such texts. So I will not say with any certainty that this is that, but it could well be that what we are witnessing in the once great Christian West is something like the judgments of God warned about in the Old Testament.

Whatever the case, we can say this with confidence: It is often claimed that the main threat facing the West today is Communism. But with so many leftists and socialists and Marxists all quite happy to get into bed with Islam – often as their tools and fools – it might be more accurate to say that political Islam is the chief enemy of the West today.

And their assault can be by bullet or ballot. Whether we have jihadists killing innocents in Western cities or actually getting elected in leftist cities and states, the West is losing fast. This IS a civilisational struggle that we dare not lose.

But IF all this is in fact part of God’s judgment on the secular, decadent West, then our first and foremost response is to get down on our knees and repent, seeking his forgiveness and mercy.

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