"House of David/House of Saul"
The kind of war I dread is when you have to fight against your brethren.
Download or email this sermon (~310k) Go, Strike Amalek
Then Samuel said to Saul, "The Lord sent me to anoint you as king over His people, over Israel; now therefore, listen to the words of the Lord.
"Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey'" (1 Sam.15:13).
But Saul did not do it.
But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were not willing to destroy them utterly; but everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed. Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, "I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not carried out My commands." And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all night (1 Sam. 15:9-11).
The Ancient Enemy
Amalek, also known as Agag, was an ancient enemy. The enmity goes back to the time of Moses; it resurfaces in the person of Haman, a descendant of Agag, in the book of Esther. This enmity had persisted over hundreds of years, back to the Babylonian captivity. The old enemy remains the enemy. It does not change. Saul was told what Moses was told, what Joshua was told: These are your ancient enemies, get rid of them.
Who are our ancient enemies? We are told in the New Testament that we struggle not against flesh and blood. (Eph. 6:12) As Christians, we love our enemies.
There is a big difference between loving people in false religions, and loving the false religions. We are to hate idolatry, sin, and superstition. I hate Roman Catholicism because it is leading people to hell by the tens of millions.
Saul tried to keep the parts he thought were acceptable. Saul tried to make peace with the ancient enemy. When you try to make peace with your ancient enemy, the ancient enemy comes back and devours you, just like it did in the book of Esther.
You can look back and see in history that more Bible-believing Christians were killed by Papal Rome than were killed by pagan Rome. John Bunyan called it a "Two Headed Giant" – one called Pagan, and the other called Pope!
You may say, "They did that five hundred years ago, they did that sixteen hundred years ago, but they would not do that in the 20th century!" Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were all Catholics, and most of Hitler's deputies were Jesuit educated. Franz von Papen, vice chancellor to Hitler and a privy chamberlain to Pope Pius 12th, said, "The Third Reich was the first power in the world not only to recognize but also to put into practice the high principles of the Roman Catholic Papacy."
Joachim von Ribbentropp, Hitler's advisor in foreign affairs and Papal Envoy, said, "Adolph Hitler is the envoy of God." Some believe that they would not do that in the 20th Century. Saul thought that Agag would not do what they did in the days of Moses. Esther did not think that Haman would have done it either.
The Roman Catholic Church condemns those who say the Church must not use violent force. There are pictures of nuns marching with Gestapo officers to get Jewish children and take them out to be killed.
The simple basic constitutional principle of Roman Catholicism is always the same. Rome has not changed; Agag has not changed.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.