Lesson 15: The Man Who Couldn’t Build the Temple
As we’ve established, though not perfect, David was a man after God’s own heart who could hear the Lord’s voice with clarity.
And David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will you give them into my hand?” And the LORD said to David, “Go up, for I will certainly give the Philistines into your hand.”
And David came to Baal-perazim, and David defeated them there. And he said, “The LORD has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood.” Therefore the name of that place is called Baal-perazim.
And the Philistines left their idols there, and David and his men carried them away.
And the Philistines came up yet again and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim.
And when David inquired of the LORD, he said, “You shall not go up; go around to their rear, and come against them opposite the balsam trees.
And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then rouse yourself, for then the LORD has gone out before you to strike down the army of the Philistines.”
And David did as the LORD commanded him, and struck down the Philistines from Geba to Gezer.
2 Samuel 5:19-25
We’ve also shown how much of a warrior David was. He slaughtered entire villages, had a cadre of mighty men, fought wars for most of his reign, and fought a civil war in the wake of King Saul's death. He was also an outlaw Robin Hood style in caves for a time where he enacted actions modern churchians would find repulsive, and yet he was God’s man on earth. Still, a reminder is necessary.
Though these lessons are concentrating on the war in Heaven, and Earth and thus debunking the modern christian perspective on conflict with the world, we need to remember that God is not a pagan god. He doesn’t have only one or two facets and responsibilities and abilities. He isn’t just a God of war, or of ocean like Posiden, or of mountains, or of valleys as these poor sods discovered.
Then the prophet came near to the king of Israel and said to him, “Come, strengthen yourself, and consider well what you have to do, for in the spring the king of Syria will come up against you.”
And the servants of the king of Syria said to him, “Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they were stronger than we. But let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.
And do this: remove the kings, each from his post, and put commanders in their places,
and muster an army like the army that you have lost, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot. Then we will fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.” And he listened to their voice and did so.
In the spring, Ben-hadad mustered the Syrians and went up to Aphek to fight against Israel.
And the people of Israel were mustered and were provisioned and went against them. The people of Israel encamped before them like two little flocks of goats, but the Syrians filled the country.
And a man of God came near and said to the king of Israel, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because the Syrians have said, “The LORD is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,” therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the LORD.’”
And they encamped opposite one another seven days. Then on the seventh day the battle was joined. And the people of Israel struck down of the Syrians 100,000 foot soldiers in one day.
1 Kings 20:22-29
No, God is the Almighty, and above all which means no one category holds him. He is a God for the warrior, the poet, the farmer, the King, the peasant, the orphan, rich and poor. As Paul puts elegantly, there are more than one job within the Kingdom of Heaven.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body does not consist of one member but of many.
If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?
But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
If all were a single member, where would the body be?
As it is, there are many parts,[fn] yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,
which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,
that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
1 Corinthians 12-27
One of my personal complaints against the modern churches, all churches whether Evangelical, Baptist, Catholic, or Coptic, all have downplayed the warriors in their midst. In extreme cases even outright calling them evil, and their desire for the blood of God’s enemies to be an anathema. Their very natural tendencies to be base in nature and sinful. The woman, the craftsman, and the man of the field turning against the man of war.
There are many reasons why these factions turn to this. The craftsman has a natural distrust for those who destroy rather than build, the farmer and man of the field for those who don’t provide for their own food, and the woman because she has a strange perverse desire for domination and the strong man of war is in direct opposition to this desire. This isn’t to say men don’t have perverse self destructive desires of course, David and Bathsheba comes to mind.
That said, we are rapidly approaching a time period where the man of war will no longer be the wild ostracized uncle in the corner everyone wishes to ignore if not straight up expunged. He will be the one leading the surviving clans of the nations and the church because we are coming to an era where Christentom will be discovering why the Barbarian was called the Barbarian and the Savage the Savage. So only those who follow the warriors will survive, but in this there is a danger. I implore my fellow men of war not to do what our brothers of the craft, field, the arts, and the woman have done to us.
We mustn’t look down upon them, undervalue them, or degenerate them. We are not better than them. We are but men called to a purpose just as them, and ours to be a shield between them and the savage manipulated by the Serpent, by the Empire that Never ended at our gates, and by the demon and the freak in our midst and wilderness.
David said to Solomon, “My son, I had it in my heart to build a house to the name of the LORD my God.
But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth.
Behold, a son shall be born to you who shall be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies. For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.
He shall build a house for my name. He shall be my son, and I will be his father, and I will establish his royal throne in Israel forever.’
1 Chronicles 22:7-10
No one man can complete all of God’s will. No one tool is sufficient, and thus as the body of Christ we must work together to allow God’s will to be fulfilled in our nations and families. This is reality. Blood does taint. The man of peace is as important to the Kingdom of Heaven as the man of war so neither should denigrate the other, but rather see how the Father in Heaven uses all of his servants in the body of Christ.
This is imperative. The man of war is susceptible to the guile of the Snake and the tools of the arts. Look at the power Hollywood had and to a lesser extent still has over the minds of the western world. Through art they held the man of the war’s mind and will in check even manipulating him to fight on behalf of the enemy of their God wasting their blood on pointless world wars which were civil wars between the brothers of Christ as discussed. We as the body of Christ will always be outnumbered in our fight. This is just the nature of our enemy and the narrow path we follow so the craftsman is paramount for the field. Without his tools the muslim would have swallowed Europe and stamped out even the memory of Christianity on the continent just as they did in North Africa and the Middle East. Without the new cannons the Battle of Lepanto would’ve ended with the fall of the Mediterranean and perhaps the Italian peninsula as well.
Yet, as we see, the artist, the craftsman, the farmer, and the woman are toothless without the man of war willing to take the sword of the spirit against the enemy. How many times have we pointed to the corruption and satanic madness such as the Epstien pleasure island affair, and the degradation of law and civilization within the western world? Did it matter how much the craftsman and the artist screamed about their daughters being raped by Islamic gangs in Rutherman? Can the farmer hope to protect his field when the entire horizon is full of raiders thick as locusts like in Gideon’s day?
No. Without the men of war the body of Christ is at the mercy of the Devil’s corruption for we are on a rebellious dishonorable world. The rules, the laws, are designed to cause injustice so justice, vengeance, and righteousness will often only be obtained with the hilt of the sword, and the trigger of the avenger’s rifle. So men of the body and women of the church, do as Paul bid you, and not tell the eye that it is useless because it can’t hear or the leg because it can’t breath. We all serve our part, and only when working as one body can we hope to be instruments of God used to frustrate the plans of our enemy.
Think long and hard on this, because our enemy never sleeps, and is always looking for an avenue to destroy us, and if that is impossible to corrupt us till we lose our protection in Christ and are given over to their twisted desires. Don’t let the Devil have his way again oh men of war. As soon as he finds that the Almighty’s Spirit upon you makes you impregnable then the serpent will come slithering into your arts and soul of your nation to break you from within, and you will never hold him back without the artist in Christ at your side. You will not eat without the man of the Field. You will not have guns and tools for the task without the craftsmen. And you will have no more young men for the armies of Heaven without God given women raising your children while you fight.
As always, the choice will be yours to make my brothers in Christ.
Question 1: Have you as a young man felt the shame pushed on you by churchians for your natural desire to enact vengeance on the wicked?
Question 2: All one has to do is look to nations such as Feudal Japan to see examples of peoples who have overvalued the warrior, and have done monstrous horrors that tend to become destructive nooses around their throats. How can we avoid becoming the Mongols as we fight the savage at the gates?
Question 3: Our children will take our examples, and run farther than men from weakened generations like our own could imagine. How should we encourage them to their task while bringing all of the Body of Christ to bear on our enemies?
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