As the United States of America, along with the rest of Western Civilization, crumbles under the diabolically fueled heavy boot of lawlessness, Marxist ideology, mass apostacy from Christianity, culture of death, and humanist idol worship—all wrapped up into a tightly wrapped package known as the Great Reset—we can look to Holy Scripture and the true meaning of Christmas for some authentic hope. Comparing our current situation to that of the Jewish people before Christ will help put some things into perspective when it comes to HOPE.
The Apparent Fall of David’s Kingdom
To understand this, it helps to step into the shoes of Palestinian Jews in the first century before the coming of Christ. Such a Jew living at this time could look back on his nation’s history with both reverence and honor. Sadly, the same Jew could also rightfully be depressed over what his once-great, free and independent nation had become.
Having recently escaped the bonds of slavery thanks to God’s providence, and having received a legal and moral foundation under the Mosaic law, the Israelites were primed to build up a new great nation under the leadership of King David. God entered into a covenant with David, in which God made David the founder of a great dynasty, the ruler of a great kingdom, and promised a temple for proper worship. The throne of David was established, and God promised it would never end. The future looked bright for King David and the Israelite nation.
Despite this glorious beginning for the Israelites about 1000 years before Christ, things turned bad, pretty quickly. Under the threat of civil war, the kingdom became divided and split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Both kingdoms suffered through bad leadership and evil kings. Eventually, the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom in about 721 B.C. and forcibly scattered and resettled its citizens.
The southern kingdom of Judah did not fare much better. Less than two hundred years later, Babylon conquered Judah. Top Jewish leaders were forcibly deported into Babylon and the line of David was apparently extinguished. Zedekiah, the last Davidic king, was forced to watch as his captors executed his sons. Then they gouged out the king’s eyes, so that his last visual memory was the slaying of his sons (2 Kings 25:7). To add insult to injury, the temple and the king’s palace were burned to the ground.
Ultimately, the Babylonian empire fell to the Persians and the Jews were allowed to return to the Promise Land. The temple was even rebuilt. But the Jews remained a target of foreign oppression.
The Greeks, under Alexander the Great, eventually conquered the Persians. The world was taken in by the glory of Greece with entertainment, riches and, of course, false idol worship. Even the Jewish priests were caught up in the secular world, neglecting proper worship and their priestly duties in order to attend sporting events in the arena (2 Maccabees 4:12-15). The temple itself was desecrated as it became a house of worship for the Greek god Zeus and hosted all types of debauchery and false idol worship (2 Maccabees 6:3-5).
Despite some incredible military successes, thanks to the Maccabees, things continued to look bleak for the Jewish people, particularly because they had no legitimate king. Eventually Rome conquered the region, who installed Herod “the Great” as a false “king” over the area.
Evil King Harod and the Roman Domination
Harod was an Edomite, and therefore, a gentile. Nevertheless, in his attempt to justify himself as a Jewish king, he rebuilt the second temple and strictly observed Jewish dietary laws. He earned the title “the Great” because of his penchant for spending money and rebuilding magnificent buildings, including the second temple. He also handsomely rewarded the temple priests and managed to purchase their support.
Harod was a classical political hack who ruled with an iron fist, thanks to a foreign power that backed him, in an attempt to portray himself as something he was not—the king of the Jews. He was an evil and psychotic man. He enjoyed the company of multiple wives and managed to have at least one killed as he ruthlessly murdered many of his own subjects out of jealousy and spite. It is no wonder that he had no qualms with murdering every male under the age of two years-old in the Bethlehem area after he learned about the birth of Christ. The Roman Emperor himself declared that “It’s better to be Harod’s pig than his son.”
Such was the state of the Jewish nation, now an outpost of the Roman Empire, at the time Christ was born. A once great nation under the glorious reign of King David, with whom the Lord made a promise of an ever-lasting kingdom, was now suffering under the murderous reign of a psychopath gentile-born king. This, following almost 1000 years of division, destruction, and subjugation to foreign powers after their last legitimate king suffered torture and humiliation. It’s hard to imagine things could get worse.
Hope for a New King
In the face of this terrible situation the Jewish people found themselves in, they held on to something that God long ago promised. Not just the everlasting kingdom promised to David, but also the promise of a messiah. The Prophet Isaiah long before prophesied:
And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root… he shall judge the poor with justice, and shall reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. (Isaiah 11:1-4).
Of course, Jesse was King David’s father, and for centuries the Jewish people waited for this rod (or shoot) from Jesse to spring to life, despite being previously chopped down, seemingly out of existence. Later prophets like Jeremiah also prophesied with hope:
And I will gather together the remnant of my flock, out of all the lands into which I have cast them out… Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch: and a king shall reign, and shall be wise, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. (Jeremiah 23: 3-6).
America’s Need for Hope and Christ the King
Indeed, there are many similarities between the state of the world we live in today and that of the Jewish nation just before the incarnation of God in the world. Not unlike the United States—founded on a promise of prosperity, liberty and justice for all—the Jewish nation could also look back in its history to a time of great ideals, prosperity and promise for the future.
And yet, is not the state of the Jewish people just before the incarnation of Christ also similar to the modern United States that now finds itself crumbling under the weight of sin, corruption, and faithless leaders? We live in a nation that not only enshrines into law but openly celebrates the killing of unborn babies. The wealth and consumerism that Americans have become accustomed to is fueled by national debt—money stolen from the labor of future generations not even yet born.
As a nation, like many generations of the Jewish people, we rejected God’s commands and substituted false idols to worship in the form of worldly goods and “science,” in which “experts” promise us the power to overcome death and suffering. And now, we face the prospect of forfeiting what freedoms we have left to a pretender President who claims to be Catholic despite his rejection of Catholic teaching, actively lies to the public about his true motivations, and serves at the behest of wealthy international forces.
Like the Jews before the time of Christ, we need not lose hope in God. The Jewish people were waiting for a new king, and so are we. We are waiting for the same king: Christ the King to come in and slay all the evil doers and rebuild America (or something greater) on a solid Christian footing. We don’t know exactly what that is going to look like when it happens, but we know God wins in the end.
Keeping Hope Alive in the Face of a Biden Presidency
Like many Jews at the time of Christ, we could have the wrong idea about how Christ will make his presence known to us. We now know that Christ first arrived as an infant, delivered from the womb of a Virgin, not as a mighty warrior to kill Harod and personally take over as king of a secular state, as some Jews expected. His kingdom is much greater than that, his mission was much more important, and it did fulfill centuries of prophesy.
Like Joe Biden’s political career, it should not be surprising that evil does not just give up and go away. It never has since our first parents roamed the planet. Satan, his demons and his human earthly agents want nothing more than to destroy this reign of Christ who physically entered the world at Christmas. The Evil One has largely been successful because of the failure of believers to defend Christ’s Kingship and give proper honor and glory to God. It is not hard to conclude that God is once again attempting to teach the world a lesson by allowing evil to gain an upper hand. This could include a Biden/Harris presidency (although I am not resigned to the fact Trump lost yet).
I think we need to go back to basics and remind ourselves what it means to put hope in Christ with the same zeal as the Jews who awaited the coming of the Messiah. Things look bleak, things look bad, and that’s because they are. But hope, which can generally be defined as a “confident desire of obtaining a future good that is difficult to attain,” fuels the soul. With the sacramental graces made available to us through the Church, hope will empower us to persevere during times of spiritual oppression and physical persecution.
We must also remember from Holy Scripture that no matter how bad it gets; the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18). We also know that there is only one hope, just as there is only one body, faith and one baptism (Ephesians 4:4-5). Our hope does not lie in science, vaccines or experts who promise the world and always fail to deliver. Rather than let the evil ones scatter us and conquer us, we must listen to the promises of Christ as revealed in scripture and throughout history.
And unlike the typical American politician, God does not renege on promises, even if he fulfills His promises in ways we do not expect. Keeping hope in those divine promises will ensure our ultimate victory. Advent is a time for hope. Hope that we will ultimately attain that which Christ promised us, if we live up to our end of the bargain and cooperate with what Christ wants to give to us. God’s plan is so much bigger and so much better than we can possibly perceive from our limited ground-view, stuck in our small window of time on this earth.
How that plan will materialize, maybe we cannot tell yet. But a reckoning for evil is coming, along with a coming joy beyond our wildest dreams, whether in this world or the next. If we accept this reality and cooperate with God’s grace as it works in our lives, we will be on the right side of history—the side governed by Christ, the true King—not Biden, the false president.
Much of the historical background contained in this post was obtained from the short book: Joy to the World by Scott Hahn. This excellent little book inspired this post as well.