If you reject Trump, will you elect Hillary? Bible says no

Scripture tells Christians to represent God's truth

By Alan Keyes

In support of their decision to back "less evil" Donald Trump over "pure evil" Hillary Clinton, some Americans who profess to be Bible-believing Christians are alleging that anyone who doesn't support Trump will be responsible for electing Hillary, as well as for the evils that follow. No doubt, Sen. Cruz is getting an earful of this right now.

But how is this charge compatible with what God says to His prophet Ezekiel:

Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the House of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give warning from me. If I say to the wicked, "You shall surely die," and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deed that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at you hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul. (Ezekiel 3:17-21)

Now, people who have truly accepted the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into their hearts are transformed thereby, so that they can say, with the Apostle, "I have been crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). But if Christ lives in us, our human form answers to the vocation of Christ. From the first, His ministry included warning people of the deadly consequences of sin, and calling upon them to repent in order to accept the forgiveness of God and live. Christ acts through those who, by entrusting themselves to Him, presently form His living body. On this account, they are moved to enact, on the stage of this earthly life, His prophetic vocation.

As they do so, the words God speaks to his Prophet Ezekiel admonish their action or inaction. Since we are, by the Providence of God, periodically called into action as citizens of the United States, those words admonish our decisions about how to cast our votes when acting as members of the sovereign body of the people of the United States. For, trusting to the mind of Christ, we seek to do God's will in preference to our own. So even if our fellow citizens, and in particular our fellows in faith, fail to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness as they fulfill their kingly responsibilities as citizens, we are not obliged to follow them. On the contrary, we are obliged, by the instruction of Christ, to do as God commands. We are obliged to vote for people who will faithfully represent us (that is, Christ in us) in the pursuit of justice, as God determines it. We are obliged to warn our fellows against electing people who reject God's sovereignty, and who have or intend to countenance injustice and iniquity as if they are lawful.

But what if a majority of our fellow citizens reject us, as the Jews who voted for Barabbas refused to join the Jews who voted for Christ? If, as Bible-believing Christians profess, the Scripture reports the words of God truthfully, then we are emphatically not responsible for the fatal consequences that follow from what those who failed to heed our warning decide to do. God's words clearly state that, having faithfully born witness to His will, the fatal consequences are not laid to our account. We bear responsibility for them only if and when we refuse to represent God's truth, as we are called to do as well by the example of Christ, even unto death.

Therefore, Bible-believing – but misguided – Christians who condemn those who refuse to imitate their own choice of evil and instead bear steadfast witness to God's truth, alleging these faithful believers are responsible for the fatal consequences that follow from choosing evil alternatives, are themselves seriously in error; they are speaking against the plain truth in God's Word and proclaiming as wrong what God says He will reward as right. They may nonetheless persist, seeking to browbeat those who adhere to God's standard with worldly taunts, deriding us as people who have wasted our votes.

But even if we suffer, in the flesh, in the fateful events that follow from God's judgment, we can embrace that seeming death as did King Josiah, who found in death his reward for ceaselessly representing God's good will for the salvation of the people God entrusted to his care. But even if we perish, according to the flesh, we do so with the ultimate affirmation of God's goodwill ever before us – Christ's ministry, His death and Resurrection. We therefore have good reason to trust that, by our faithful witness to God, we shall represent Christ's conquest of mortality, and come into the more abundant life that never tastes death again, forever.

Why have Americans forgotten that this trust in Christ's promise of life is an endless resource of courage, against the odds, in the battle to preserve our God-endowed rights, including liberty?

© Alan Keyes