"The Divine Aristocracy" - Peasant Rulers (page 17 of 18)

Peasant Rulers

Verse 16:

"Woe to you, O land, whose king is a lad and whose princes feast in the morning. But blessed are you, O land, whose king is of nobility and whose princes eat at the appropriate time, for strength and not for drunkenness."

We are now talking about the aristocracy, the nobility. “Blessed are you, O land, whose king is of nobility” – what is nobility? Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. But cursed is the land whose prince is a youth, “whose king is a lad and whose princes feast in the morning”. To realize what this means we must keep in mind Paul's warning not to appoint a new convert as a leader in the church. Whenever I hear of someone who has been saved for one or two years and is already attending or thinking of attending seminary, my first question is, “What for?” Those who profit from theological seminary training are those who have already been operating in ministry and know their gifts. A scholarly education in academic theology is an asset to someone who already has that ministry and that gift, but it will not impart that ministry or that gift to one who has not been given it by God.

Now, God does not count youth biologically; rather, He counts youth spiritually. You may have someone who grew up in a believing family, who perhaps became saved at the age of 6 or so, and by the time he's 25 that man is no longer a youth. He may be spiritually and emotionally quite capable of coming into leadership. On the other hand, you may have someone who is 60 years old and newly saved who in God's sight is a youth. The Scripture therefore is not speaking of biological youth, but of spiritual youth. "Woe to you whose king is a lad". When you see young believers put into positions of leadership, look out, because you will certainly have a problem. Paul says they will be swollen with conceit.

And yet, “blessed are you, O land, whose king is of the nobility and whose princes eat at the appropriate time, for strength and not drunkenness.” This refers exactly to Matthew 24, the Olivet Discourse. Let's look at that, beginning in verse 45:

"'Who, then, is the faithful and sensible servant whom his master put in charge of his household, to give them the proper food at the proper time. Blessed is that slave, whom his master finds so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions'"…

(This alludes to the Millennium.)

…"'but if that evil servant says in his heart, "My master is not coming", and shall begin to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards,'"

Beating the fellow slaves is Nicolaitanism, or heavy shepherding as seen in Ezekiel 44. Jesus hated this. Heavy shepherding is done by control freaks and of course goes hand-in-hand with financial exploitation and many other evils. But let us look at what happens: as we saw in Ecclesiastes, when the king and the princes are of the nobility they eat for strength and not for drunkenness. Being “drunk in the Spirit” is a very popular thing with those who are into the Toronto and Pensacola types of movements. If we look at Joel chapter 1, we read “awake, ye drunkards”; three times in Peter's first epistle, he says “be sober in spirit”, not drunk. (1 Pe. 1:13; 4:7; 5:8) In this light, we may understand better how demonic the doctrines and practices of Rodney Howard-Browne, Kenneth Copeland, and the others like them truly are. Drunkenness is one of the specific seductions of the Last Days.

They are peasant rulers; God's rulers are of the nobility. These peasant rulers may have all the gold, silver and jewels now, but that will certainly be corrected in the Millennium, and they will never possess the real treasures of wisdom, knowledge and understanding. They will never know how to get people out of the city when it is under siege, or charm the serpent before it bites. They are peasants, and how can a peasant know how to run an economy?

In England and in the USA there are lotteries. A study was done and published in a serious newspaper which showed that most of the people who gamble are working-class, or blue-collar people, who are usually less educated. There is nothing wrong with being blue-collar or less educated, but it is a fact that most of the people who gamble are. When these people won the lottery, most of them were broke within ten years. They were swimming in money, but lacked the education to manage and invest it properly. Giving a peasant money is wrong and unwise; first they should be taught to manage it.

Continuing in Ecclesiastes 10:18:

"Because of laziness the building decays, and through idleness of hands the house leaks."

Remember that Laodicea is lukewarm; it is lax and lazy, so it eventually caves in.

Verse 19:

"Men prepare a meal for enjoyment, and wine makes life merry; but money is an answer to everything."

Practically, money does solve problems; however, the wrong people usually seem to have it. We must remember verse 7, “peasants ride on horses while princes walk like slaves”; God has provided all of the money and resource that the Body of Christ needs for God's work, but it has been misallocated. The peasants have pilfered the treasury. One of the reasons we have TBN, Hinn and Copeland is that it is Satan's way of taking the money that should be going into missions and evangelism and squandering it on nonsense.

Verse 20:

"Furthermore, in your bedchamber do not curse the king"

-- remember, we are all kings, with Christ as the King of kings –

"and in your sleeping-room do not curse a rich man, for a bird of the heavens will carry the sound and a winged creature will make the matter known."

Ultimately this points to God, of course, and yes, we must be careful what we think or say about God. However, this also means that when peasants say things about you, you will know about it. They are just peasants: people who do not have wisdom, understanding, or knowledge of God's Word. They are not the nobility. Again, as Jesus said to the Laodicean church: “You say you are rich and have need of nothing, not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.” Yet the church of Smyrna, persecuted and materially poor, Jesus called rich; they were the nobility. Gold, silver and jewels will not get you out of the besieged city, nor will they get you into the eternal city. The church of today, Laodicea, does not know the way to that heavenly city.

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