Some Reflections on the U.s. Elections

I was telling the brothers and sisters at this morning’s service that this is one of those important sermons. Every sermon is important, but there are some that, given the historical context in which they are delivered and what God’s people are experiencing, have a greater resonance and importance. And that is how I feel this afternoon as I share with you some reflections on the elections that have surprised us all, and how good it is when man’s wisdom is confounded, no matter which side it is on. Sometimes I like it when God—I am telling you the truth—humbles me too, along with my expectations, because He reminds me that I am only a man. And sometimes it is good for humanity to be taught a lesson, no matter which side we are on, when God says, “I am in control, and I am doing a strange work on the earth.”

That is why it is important for the word of the Lord to give us the right perspective on how to see things—not through the lenses of partisanship, human affiliations, or communal passions, but through the eyes of the Lord: eternal eyes, objective eyes, eyes that take neither one side nor the other, but see things vertically, as God needs them to be seen.

And that is why I want to share this message, though I feel a little conflicted within myself for many reasons. One of them is that this morning I had a sermon, and I prepared it, and many of the brothers and sisters told me, “Please, Pastor, preach that exact same sermon.” But I feel as though the Lord has repackaged it differently—the same content, but in a different form. Besides, I wrote it in English because it was so important that I decided to write it out, and I did not have time to translate it, but I know that the Lord has a word for us. Amen. How many believe it?

For this people in particular, because the nine o’clock service is very different in many ways from this gathering. First, let me tell you something so that you understand the context in which I am going to make my comments. This Tuesday, I did not vote for either of the two main candidates. I did not vote for Donald Trump, nor did I vote for Hillary Clinton. I resisted the impulse to fill in that little bubble one generally fills in. Personally, I believe that anyone who voted differently—amen—that is a matter between them and God, and there are things one does out of personal conviction without expecting others to do the same.

I say this so that you understand that the man speaking is not someone who was hoping for and desiring a particular outcome. When I examined the possibilities on both sides, neither one truly appealed to me, frankly, and in one sense I am still reflecting and, like Mary, waiting to see what God has in store, treasuring these things in my heart, letting them mature, and waiting to see what God is going to do at this time in history.

But when I began thinking about voting, personally I could not vote for either candidate, and let me tell you briefly why. I could not vote for Donald Trump because of what this man has embodied in his conduct throughout his life. I see his insulting way of treating our immigrant community. It is not even that he disagrees with the immigration of undocumented people to this nation, but rather the demeaning way in which he speaks about Latinos, for example, in this nation, and about other communities. I see his insulting way of treating the very candidates who were running alongside him at the beginning of this process, calling them all kinds of names, demeaning their dignity, insulting them, and using names and labels to belittle them.

I see his way of exploiting the worst instincts in this nation. I am obviously by no means saying this applies to everyone, but there is indeed a degree of racism among many of these people, a view of America as the center of the universe, and that nationalism which so often leads nations—as we saw with Japan and Germany in the Second World War—into war and into the use of imperialism. It is the imperialism we have seen throughout the centuries from Germany, England, Spain—all those nations that subjugated entire cultures in the Middle East and Africa, which are still paying the price for those actions.

This nationalism that idealizes and enthrones a nation, and his way of exploiting those attitudes of racism as well, and other things—although I am not saying that everything he said or did not say was racist; sometimes we call something racism when it is not racism but something else, and I understand that too. But some of those elements have indeed been present.

When I look at his conduct as a businessman over the course of decades, with profit as the number-one principle—if he has to trample people, he tramples them; if he has to lie, as in the case of his university, which is still in court right now, and lie to students and people seeking to improve their lives, exploit them, and lie openly to advance his financial interests; not pay taxes—it represents all the worst aspects of capitalism. I by no means consider myself a radical, but there is a naked capitalism, stripped of all mercy and every principle except money and winning by any means, crushing your competitors by any means. To me, that seems to be the essence of the demonic in the world: the use of naked force, the fist that strikes down the weak and the poor in order to get ahead.

That has been this businessman’s conduct. I believe he has long exemplified the worst of the business and corporate world in the United States and among the nations. His unbridled sexuality and uncontrolled appetites; his denigration of women, of people’s appearance, of the flaws and imperfections of people with disabilities. We could go on, here and there, mentioning many, many things in this person’s conduct that have truly led me, as a pastor, to say, “Goodness, I cannot associate myself with putting those principles in power,” because, for me, once again, character matters.

And I am going to speak a little about that in other ways, but I felt that, in all conscience, I had to vote for a principle that went beyond all of that. There is certainly no perfect candidate, but I could not do it; I could find no way. On the other hand, I also could not in good conscience vote for Hillary Clinton, and for reasons weightier than those that kept me from voting for Trump.

I could not vote for Hillary Clinton because of her terrible disregard for human life, as we see in her fierce support for abortion. Abortion to the point of allowing a child who is halfway out of its mother’s womb to be aborted because half of its body is still inside its mother’s real estate, and therefore the mother still has the legal right. On purely legalistic grounds, allowing a nearly nine-month-old child, ready to emerge into life, to be dismembered, and allowing millions of babies—the most fragile creatures in this world—to be sacrificed on the altar of Molech; and allowing institutions such as Planned Parenthood to receive millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, while she brazenly continues to support that industry of death, which is human sacrifice. I could not vote for her disregard for the values concerning God’s creation and design, for how God has created and designed human beings.

The Bible says that God created a man and a woman, and that He intentionally created them to complement one another, to be united in marriage, and to subdue and develop the earth using that male-female model. Today, an entirely different model has arisen that violates this divine principle of creative design and submission to God’s design, and that then establishes homosexuality, transgenderism, and a sexual fluidity in which anything goes and everything is possible. Every sexual appetite, every variation, every sexual neurosis is perfectly acceptable, and then there is an attempt to legislate that, ram it down the throats of those of us who believe differently, and judicially enthrone that principle, which runs directly counter to the very essence of God’s creative act in the Garden of Eden. That is not possible.

And to see how that diabolical principle, in my opinion, is being imported and inserted into the schools, where we must surrender our children to a system that will teach them from childhood, through pornographic images, that no matter what you are, it is all right; and that if your child expresses any degree of confusion about his sexual identity, they take him out of your hands and forbid you from saying certain things to him or seeking help for him, preventing psychologists from working to help people who desire help.

And children—as this previous administration wanted—if any child shows any kind of sexual confusion, which is natural at those ages, must immediately be affirmed, not merely given space, but affirmed in their confused sexuality, creating an entire nation of confused people and creating an environment… because what is done from the throne spreads throughout a nation. And creating an environment where every kind of human wickedness and degeneracy can flourish, as we have seen here in Massachusetts, where recreational marijuana is now legal. And part of the reason is that an environment is created where the weeds can grow easily, where the corruption of moral values spreads like wildfire through a field of dry grass. And I could not cooperate with that. I could not cooperate with the attitude of persecuting the church.

I work with institutions such as Gordon College. I am a member of its board of trustees, and for the past three years it has had to set aside almost its entire agenda in order to defend itself against attacks, simply because the president of that institution signed a letter with other presidents of Christian institutions asking that those institutions’ Christian values be respected and that the issue of homosexuality not be rammed down their throats. But without any respect, we have seen this growing and growing, affecting businesspeople and Christian institutions, the church itself… Right now, there is a law here in Massachusetts under which this church has to allow a transgender person, if that person wants to come and use a men’s or women’s restroom, whichever one they please, to do so, because we are a public institution.

So I could not vote for the corruption at the heart of our nation—the supreme courts, the armed forces. Nowadays, chaplains cannot preach the Gospel; the armed forces are being emptied of all Christian content, while the element of this doctrine, which is so damaging to the health of this nation, is being inserted.

So I could not vote for her either. I found myself at an impasse, and what I did was vote for a third candidate, a woman named Divine Will—I do not know whether you know her. I voted for her and said, “Lord, I am going to take my hands off the wheel and let You be the one to determine this election.” And the truth is that I had resigned myself to having Hillary Clinton for four or eight years, but that is not what happened, and yet I did not rejoice. I was thinking, “What is going to happen, Lord? What have You done? What are You doing?” Because the alternative did not appeal to me very much either, frankly. And I am still like Mary, treasuring these things in my heart to see what God has in store.

So I want you to understand where I stand. I am not here to be a Trump supporter or a Hillary supporter. Right now, I feel that I am simply allowing the Lord to guide and direct, and I want to be a pastor who speaks to his congregation without passions of any kind and who speaks simply from the word of the Lord.

This morning, I shared with the brothers and sisters at the English-language service about Samuel. It is a story I am not even going to take much trouble to read because many of you know it. Saul had been chosen as the first king of Israel, as you will remember from the story. And Saul rebelled against God and instituted his own agenda. And do you know the final reason why God became fed up with Saul and rejected him as king? It was because of something that I believe is very relevant at this time. God told Saul that he had to exterminate a nation that had been completely and fiercely opposed to Israel, an enemy of Israel: Amalek. They had tried to exterminate Israel, and God was very angry with that nation. God told him that they had to destroy everything, including the animals and the king of Amalek as well.

And Saul was guided by a false sense of justice, which is what often happens with men when they establish their own sense of justice instead of the definition of justice that God gives. And when they claim to be more just than God and more understanding than God, that does not please God, because what God wants is obedience, not sacrifice. And Saul spared the king of Amalek and chose the best cows and the best animals. When the prophet Samuel came to where Saul was, he said to him, “What have you done?” And Saul said to him, “Well, I decided to be magnanimous and spare this king, and I kept the best animals for the Lord.” And the prophet Samuel said to him, “Look, does God delight in burnt offerings of animals? What God wants is obedience, not sacrifice. And now God is completely separating Himself from you.” There were already other things he had done.

But nowadays, I believe the same thing sometimes happens. What has happened in this nation is that many people have wanted to establish a sense of social justice that is not grounded in the values of the Kingdom of God. And when you do not ground your efforts at social transformation in the eternal principles of the Kingdom of God, sooner or later you are doomed to failure.

If one analyzes human history, when you look at the great revolutions of the world and of history, beginning with the first great revolution in the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, which literally installed reason as a goddess in the center of Notre Dame Cathedral, it ended up degenerating completely into an orgy of terrible violence because they did not ground their desire for social justice. They had a point: the French people were suffering under a horribly corrupt monarchy that paid no attention to the poor, and its rulers deserved to be dethroned, but not in the way they tried to do it, because that thirst for justice did not have God’s principles behind it; instead, its principles were vengeance and violence, and the devil got into that fire and stoked it, and it nearly consumed an entire nation.

After that we see other great revolutions—even before the French Revolution, in Haiti, there was a revolution; Haiti was dedicated to the African gods, and it too ended in a terrible orgy of violence. And look at where Haiti is today as well: a nation that is the most backward in the entire Western Hemisphere.

But you can go on from there: the revolution in China in the twentieth century, also a revolution based on Marxism and materialism. It ended in an orgy of violence. The Russian Revolution likewise, in the 1930s or thereabouts, also ended in violence and in the deaths of millions upon millions of human beings under Stalinism, and in total corruption that ultimately collapsed simply from old age and decrepitude because they had no foundation; they denied God, they denied the spirit.

The Cuban Revolution, a noble revolution that I was able to live through when I was young. The same thing happened there too: it ended in corruption, old age, decrepitude, because it did not have… they denied the divine, they denied the spiritual. The other revolutions—the Nicaraguan one, the same; this so-called revolution in Venezuela, relatively speaking—look at the disaster. All those revolutions share the same thing: they are not grounded in the Word of God; they deny—whether through Santería, witchcraft, whatever it may be—but they deny.

And the Bible is very clear. It says that unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. So, in these great efforts, Saul tries to be holier and better and more generous than God, and God says, no, and then he chooses another king whom he is going to install, and he orders Samuel to go to Jesse’s house, where he will show him who the king is.

And Samuel loved Saul; Samuel had grown fond of Saul. He had installed him, he had mentored him, and Samuel is weeping because Saul is going to be dethroned. And God tells him, look, stop weeping now and go install the king whom I will tell you to install.

The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and come, and I will send you to Jesse of Bethlehem, because I have provided myself a king from among his sons.”

What interests me about that fact is that many times we grow attached to a scenario that we ourselves believe is the way God ought to work, and God decides to change the scenario, but we remain clinging to the scenario we had preconceived in our minds as the way we thought God was going to work. And when God does something totally different, we are scandalized and filled with fear and anguish, and we think that God is somehow not as faithful or as consistent as he is supposed to be.

Samuel was greatly surprised, first because God says, I no longer want that king. He is not obedient. He is stubbornly set on his own decisions. That is why I tell the church of Jesus Christ: I am not interested in human methodologies for filling the church; I am interested in making sure that we are aligned with the Word of the Lord. He will use us. I suffer every time someone leaves my church because sometimes they do not hear what they want to hear, or whatever the reason may be, but I am committed. The Lord is the one who directs our congregation, and if we are faithful to him, we will end up being just and noble; we will bless the city, we will advocate for the poor and the needy. God will use us, because when Christ establishes his kingdom of justice, then blessing comes upon the nations.

The point is that when Samuel goes to Jesse’s house, he is in for a huge disappointment. All of Jesse’s sons are brought before him; they are all 6.4, blue-eyed, muscular men of war, and God says, no, no, no, none of them. And, fed up, he tells Samuel, look, be careful: I do not look at what men look at; I see the heart, so come down from there, because it is none of them.

Again, there are times when, honestly, man judges according to reason—and we all do that—and one determines, okay, this has to be it. This is the scenario God has. But I want to speak to you precisely about when God creates a different scenario, when God says, no, that is not what I… I have another plan.

So finally—you know the story, right?—Samuel finally asks Jesse, listen, are these all the sons you have? Because it is none of them, and God told me this is the place. Oh, yes, man, I forgot; wait, little David is over there somewhere tending the cows. We did not even bother with him because he is so small and so unpromising that… we did not think of him. He is not a man of war; he is not big or muscular.

And there comes David, and God says, that is the one; anoint him. Anoint him, because I look at the heart—and I hasten to say that I am not equating Donald Trump’s heart with David’s heart. I believe there is a great distance between Donald Trump’s heart and David’s heart, but what I want to mention is the point that God sees things we do not see. God sees things we would not prefer. God is looking beyond the way we judge. God creates scenarios that we cannot even conceive of, and many times he uses instruments we would never imagine could lead to an outcome in keeping with God’s heart.

And I do not know what the outcome is. I do believe I know what the final outcome is, but before reaching the final outcome, there often has to be a great deal of process. And what I am telling you is that perhaps this is not the end, and that is why we have to remain calm and wait for God’s ending.

The Bible says that God’s ending is always good. It says at times that the process is hard, but God’s ending—it is in Hebrews—is always a positive and good ending. And what I ask of you, my brothers and sisters, is patience until God’s ending is established. Many times God creates very different scenarios, and that is what came to my mind this morning after the nine o’clock service.

The Bible is full of people who thought their solution would come one way, and God brought it about in a completely different way. And we, especially immigrants who rightly want a solution to the dilemma in which we live, to the uncertainty in which we live, to the employment limitations we face, to the uncertainty concerning our children, to not knowing whether I will be in a place today or whether someone will come tomorrow and remove me from this land—it is difficult. And I believe people have a right to desire a resolution to this problem. I identify with my brothers and sisters who feel that they no longer want to live with this terrible uncertainty and that it seems as though the solution is slipping farther and farther from their grasp each day. So the tendency is to grab even a red-hot nail, whatever comes along: Lord, I just want to get out of this situation now.

And so people often build up hopes about how the solution will come. And God says, that is not how it will be; I have another plan. Rest in me. Be still; do not rush. I have another plan for you, and I know your needs, and I will take care of them.

After the service I thought about Naaman. Naaman was a leper; he was a very valiant, highly decorated general. The king saw through his eyes; he was a man greatly esteemed by his nation, but there was something that touched his heart, his sensitivity, and his pride: he was a leper. Leprosy is a disfiguring, terrible, contagious thing. A man as distinguished as a general, yet afflicted with a disease as humiliating as leprosy. And Naaman discovered that there was a prophet named Elisha in Israel who was the solution to his pressing problem. And the king sent him a letter of recommendation, using the powers of kings: I am going to give you a recommendation. Go and give him my card. You know what I mean. Sometimes we keep the general’s card, and when a police officer pulls us over, we take out the card. How many of you know what I am talking about?

He sends letters, because men want to solve things by force. And the king of Syria orders the king of Israel, take care of this man for me; he is one of my people. And Naaman goes full of pride and self-confidence, and he has constructed an entire scenario for himself about what God is going to do with him. And he is sent to Elisha’s house, and when Naaman arrives with his carefully constructed scenario of how God is going to work, he is in for a huge disappointment. Because first of all, the prophet does not even open the door for Naaman; he does not even receive him.

Imagine the pride of this general, and all the prophet does is send a lowly servant, an attendant, to tell him: the prophet says that you are to go into the Jordan River seven times, immerse yourself, and go home; everything is settled. And Naaman is filled with anger and says, how dare this man treat me that way? And he goes grumbling back toward Syria, saying, I thought that when I arrived, the prophet would open the door of his house, invite me in, serve me coffee and doughnuts or whatever, and blow my trumpet. And he says, isn’t the River Pharpar, I think it is called, in Syria more beautiful than that filthy Jordan River? And I am going home. Then a lowly servant says to him, My father, listen, if the prophet had told you to do something truly great and difficult—to give him millions of dollars or whatever—would you not have done it? Well, yes. Then immerse yourself seven times; what does it cost you? The logic of the poor and humble.

And Naaman, biting his tongue, goes and immerses himself once, twice, three times, and it says that on the seventh time—and each time he immersed himself, I believe it was an inner death, a crucifixion of his self, because God had greater plans than simply healing him, healing his leprosy. Sometimes we want very quick solutions. Solve my problem, give me my green card, and we will deal with everything else later. Enough with all these other things. He says, no, no, no. God is a God of processes; God is a God who likes to draw things out… he is like a great storyteller. I say he is like a great composer who, when you think the tension is finally going to subside, gives the music another turn and builds it up once again.

And God wanted to minister to Naaman’s heart, not only to his body. He did not merely want to heal him, because what good would it do to heal his body if his soul were lost without knowing the true God? And when Naaman saw that his flesh was like a baby’s on the seventh time, he said, now I understand that there is no other God but God, the God of Israel, and I will never again serve any other god.

God healed him, and he also healed him in his inner being and in his manly pride, and look how much mileage we have gotten out of that story. A different scenario, a different way. Men, human beings, want our candidate to win; we want things to be done a certain way; we want quick, simple, direct processes, interventions that get straight to the point. But God is a God who thinks in cosmic terms, in eternal terms, in terms of the minute details of that being whom he knows so intimately—man—and of his plans for eternity. And he always intervenes in light of those factors.

I also think of the Messiah. The Jews were waiting for a presidential candidate who would win the election, enthrone them again against Rome, and free them from Rome. And they believed that this was what the Messiah was: a military leader who would come and subjugate the Romans who had their boots on their heads, who would establish the Messiah, and who would restore to Israel among all the nations the national glory it had when David reigned.

But God said, no, my Son is not coming to place one country over others and merely establish an empire as oppressive as all the rest, which is what the Jews would have done. My Son’s kingdom is much more than that. He comes to save humanity; he comes to minister to countless generations. He comes to open a path of communication between God and men. He comes to establish a kingdom of peace, justice, love, and truth. He comes to dethrone principalities and powers; his reach is cosmic, his reach spans millennia. He is not interested in a tiny little country where they can go on engaging in the same underhanded schemes they have always engaged in.

So God brings a different plan, and what he does is come through a humble shepherd, a humble carpenter, and he takes him and raises him onto a cross to be crucified, and that is his strange way of solving humanity’s problem.

You know what happens: when you reject God’s mysterious and strange plans, you run a great risk. That is why I tell you that, in this case, although Trump is very far from being a favorite of mine, I ask my people to embrace complexity and say, “Lord, what are you up to?” And I ask you to pray for this man and give things a chance, to see what God is doing, because this has been so humiliating for all the great minds of this nation, all the intellectuals, all the people who thought they knew how this nation works. And all the wise have been left bewildered—all of them, including me, who never... Frankly, I stood in front of the television expecting a great defeat, and I stayed there until three in the morning, fascinated by what was unfolding before my very eyes.

The truth is that I did not know what to do with it. I thought about my immigrant brothers and sisters and their pain, but on the other hand I also thought, well, at least I can think that there will be some Supreme Court justices... I was in conflict with myself. I believe that this is the kind of complexity we need to have and say, “Lord...” Thank God I said, “I vote for divine providence; I vote for the will of God. Let whatever he wants be done,” and let us simply keep our eyes and hearts open before this mystery that is unfolding before our eyes.

When these Jews—the ones who believed, the ones who had voted for Jesus and allied themselves with him, thinking that he was the candidate who was going to solve their problem—suffer the disappointment of seeing their candidate end up crucified. And this morning I was thinking about the two men who were on the road to Emmaus, saying, “And we had thought that he was the one who was going to save Israel.” Because the scenario was very different from the one they had constructed for themselves. And yet, along the way, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords appeared to them and said, “I am not dead; what is happening is that this is a process.”

God takes time to carry out and unfold his processes. Human beings judge in limited, primitive, childish ways. We paint with primary colors, while God has a palette of colors and an assortment of shades that we cannot even imagine, and he takes his time. He is not in a hurry. He has his appointed time for everything, and he knows what he has to do with this world.

So, brothers and sisters, I believe that in light of the mysterious nature of God’s way of proceeding at this time—again, I believe that if you are not in tune with the word of the Lord, if you have not drunk the milk of the Bible, if you have not studied the mysterious ways in which God has acted throughout the ages—and that is why you and I need to format our consciences according to the paradigms of the word of God, because that is what provides us with our interpretive lenses.

Whenever anything happens in our lives, whether on a personal level or on a collective, macrocosmic level, the children of God who have studied the Scriptures and the precedents God has established in his word for our benefit can read the things that happen to them and can then understand how to walk in light of the most unexpected things.

I believe that at this time, the children of God must, number one, give God time to complete his work, his strange work. Let us take a deep breath, and let that mother who thought she was going to give birth now return home, endure three more days of labor pains, and wait for God to complete his work. Give the Lord time; say, “Father, you are sovereign, you are Lord. Although I do not understand what is happening, I give you the freedom to act. Teach us to do your will. Your will be done.”

And then surrender that to the Lord. Surrender that dream to the Lord. Perhaps you would have preferred everything to be resolved by tomorrow, but God has handed down a different ruling. Is there anyone here who thinks that God was asleep when Donald Trump was elected? Either we believe what we say, or we do not believe it. We have just said that God is Lord, that he is on his throne, that God will do great things. Do we believe it or not?

So let us trust. The Bible says, “Be anxious for nothing, but let your requests be made known in every prayer and supplication. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your minds and hearts in Christ Jesus.” Rest in the Lord, take a deep breath, and say, “Father, I surrender myself to your will.”

Number two, if you voted for Donald Trump and are pleased with the result, I beg one thing of you: do not celebrate too much, because Donald Trump is a flawed, very, very imperfect, and even sinful man, and you must see him through biblical eyes. You do not have to put makeup on a person and overlook his serious imperfections in order to let God do whatever he wants through him.

Pray. If you voted for him, do not forget your brothers and sisters who are hurting and who feel that their safety is seriously threatened. Mourn to some extent; mourn for them and pray for them. Identify with them and ask the Lord to heal their hearts. At most, I believe that triumphant laughter is not appropriate at this moment, but, at most, a quiet, sorrowful smile—and then let the Lord be.

Let us have mercy on those who have suffered a great disappointment, including those out there in the world who did not expect the result and are now depressed, heartbroken, and confused. And the church of Jesus Christ must walk with sobriety, mercy, and love. Let us not become partisan; let us not become passionate about any man. Let us not think that the solution comes through a man. No human being is going to bring a solution to the problems of the world unless his values are not totally or strongly aligned with the word of the Lord.

Men cannot do good for humanity even if they wanted to; they are tremendously corruptible. So do not place your faith in that candidate; act in a fatherly, pastoral way. Do not become impassioned, and think about your brothers and sisters. And let us make a covenant that this congregation will always be a church of love, mercy, and kindness. Let us not glorify brute force; let us not even glorify beauty, because sometimes there are things that are not very attractive but are beautiful in the eyes of God.

Sometimes there is this idea of a perfect family coming and going. I was telling the brothers and sisters on Wednesday about that glorification of the human that, unfortunately, I often see in this man. Let us be a church of mercy, love, kindness, and compassion for the poor, the weak, the needy, those in conflict, and those engaged in an inner struggle, whatever it may be. And let us promise ourselves that we will be the antidote to the vengeful spirit and to the crushing, animalistic, carnal, diabolical spirit, and that our church will be a church of incredible mercy and love for the poor, for those who have no voice, for those who sometimes have to leave their nations even though they want to remain in them, because there is exploitation there and because this very nation, over the centuries, has cooperated with many of the horrors we see in those countries.

I am not a Marxist, but I understand enough history to know that God often has his ways of redistributing goods. And let us be a complex church, one that sees the world in the complex way God also sees the world. Again, if you did not vote for Trump and right now you are scandalized at the sight of this man sleeping in Obama’s bed, and you are thinking, “How will I be able to see this man installed in the White House and honored?” and this is already going to spoil your lunch—you have already sold all your television sets—no.

The Bible says that time and chance happen to everyone. If Trump acts in a just and proper way, God will bless him; if not, he will knock him off his horse as he also did with Saul. His time will come. Brothers and sisters, there is nothing better than bowing one’s head and blessing the hand of God when he slaps us.

I tell you, God used a mule with Balaam; he used a donkey to speak to the prophet. Can God not use something? Let us pray for the Lord to do something. Who knows whether this man, who has already surprised us once in an incredible way, may surprise us a second time. I do not know. How many can pray for their...

When Paul said that we should pray for our rulers, he was saying, “Pray for Nero; pray for Caesar.” That is what he was saying. We have to pray for those in power so that—as the Lord says—we may have peace, so that the Lord may enlighten them or eliminate them, but that he may do something in them. Let us pray for him; let us pray for his administration. Let us pray for the Lord to do something. Do not allow hatred, bitterness, or resentment to nest in your heart.

Let us heap burning coals on the head of any unjust ruler. His time will come. You know, the final scenario—and with this I am coming to the end—the final strange scenario I see in the Scriptures is when God tells the Hebrews that Nebuchadnezzar is coming to exile them, to take their nation and possess it. And they know that Babylon is at the gates and is going to destroy Israel, take their women and children, slaughter them, and carry them out of Israel, their beloved land. And God has the audacity to send the prophet Jeremiah and tell the Jews, “Do not rebel against Nebuchadnezzar; do not resist him. Do not try to seek help in Egypt.” He says, “If you try to seek help in Egypt, you will perish. Accept my discipline. I have spent centuries telling you that I am going to remove you from your land and discipline you.”

Brothers and sisters, do not seek help in Egypt. Many of us seek help in Egypt, and God has rejected Egypt. Many of us want to seek help from something we know is impure because it often gets us out of our predicament. But God has said, “No, do not seek help from something I have rejected.”

In Isaiah 31, the Bible says to the Hebrews, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and trust in horses, and who place their hope in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or seek Jehovah. The Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit; so when Jehovah stretches out his hand, the helper will fall and the one who is helped will fall, and all of them will perish together.”

I have always said, “Lord, I will never accept help from anything impure that you have not blessed.” Brothers and sisters, I would rather—and I believe and hope I have the moral courage to stand behind what I am saying—I would rather die a thousand times than accept help from something of which God has said, “That I do not want.” Something that goes against the will of God, that does not obey and is not aligned with the principles of the Kingdom of God, cannot be a source of help for a people who know where their help comes from. My help comes from Jehovah.

And God told the Hebrews, “Do not seek help from the Egyptians; instead, go into Babylon. Accept Nebuchadnezzar, because after a time of discipline I will bring you home again, but for now, submit.”

And I believe that we are in something similar right now. Perhaps Babylon is now among us; we are in Babylon. But I know one thing: in that environment, I ask you to rest in the Lord and trust in him.

When the Hebrews finally—and in fact they did try to obtain help from Egypt—they disobeyed the Lord, and precisely the judgment God told them would come did come: they were completely destroyed. Because when you disobey the Lord and follow your own reason instead of God’s complex logic, you will have no rest. Any help you seek will be illusory. There is nothing like aligning yourself with God’s complex purposes.

And when the Jews were finally in exile in Babylon, sorrowful and thinking that there was no longer any hope for them—and, by the way, I tell you, read the books of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah, because those books tell us about God’s care for his people when they are in exile. I preached about Esther a couple of Sundays ago. Haman wanted to kill the Hebrews, to exterminate them, and God ended up having him hanged on the very gallows he had built to hang Esther’s cousin, Mordecai.

We are in that very situation right now. Perhaps we think there is extermination, that there are people who, in a sense, want to exterminate the people—not physically exterminate them through genocide, but exterminate them in terms of exile and other things, and drive them out. But God watches over his children.

Years ago, I wrote a book entitled ‘Pilgrims, the Land of the Pilgrims.’ There I say clearly—and I still believe it—that immigrant people, including us Latinos, the Latino church among other churches, because I do not want to be too egocentric either, have been brought to this nation to renew it with their tender heart for God, their love for family, their love for children, their respect for authority, their prayer, and their Christian, spiritual heart, which has already drunk deeply of the milk of the Gospel.

God has brought us here. We have not come fleeing terrorism, gangs, violence, or poverty; we have come because God, in his sovereignty, has brought this people to this nation. God gives the land to whomever he pleases. God has brought us to this nation to bless it and to be a blessing. And I believe that what God gives, no one can take away. I am going to exercise faith and believe that God has us here for a purpose, and no primitive way of seeing the world will prevail against the children of God.

Let us pray, let us get on our knees, let us practice peace; in quietness and rest, the Bible says, shall be your strength. Let us worship the Lord, because the joy of the Lord is our strength. Let us launch bombs of joy, grace, love, mercy, and faith, and let us destroy this principality with the weapons of light, not the weapons of darkness.

The devil has tried for centuries to subjugate the world with the weapons of darkness, and he has not succeeded. Light always prevails over darkness. Let us love, let us help, let us do the work of the church, let us become a better, more excellent church every day, let us serve the Lord with love, and let men fight their battles and quarrel and pull each other’s hair however they please—that is their business. We will do the work of God; we will remain steadfast in the things of the Lord until God does what he must do.

I leave you with a word from Psalm 37:5–7. The word of the Lord invites us: “Commit your way to the LORD, and trust in him, and he will act. He will display your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. Be silent before the LORD.”

That is what God is asking of us: let us keep a holy silence before this mystery that has occurred in our midst. Be silent. There are things that are too great for us. Let us keep silent. Let us meditate, pray, fast, and wait for him. Do not be upset because of the one who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out evil schemes. Perhaps many of us are asking, “How can it be this man? How can God use him? How can he be installed there in a place of honor?” And we are tempted to fill ourselves with anger and resentment, and perhaps envy or other things.

It says, “Do not be upset; cease from anger, and forsake wrath.” There are so many people throwing Molotov cocktails nowadays, breaking windows in the street, destroying cars, and they are succumbing to the same demonic spirit of violence that now threatens to take control of our nation. No—cease from anger, forsake wrath; do not become agitated in any way so as to do evil, because evildoers will be destroyed, but those who wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. For in a little while the wicked will be no more; you will look at his place, and he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the earth and delight themselves in an abundance of peace.

Let us jump to verse 18. It says, “The LORD knows the days of the blameless, and their inheritance shall be forever.” Perhaps many of us are saying, “God forgot about me. It seems he was amusing himself galloping around some galaxy and forgot what was happening here in this nation.” But the Bible says very clearly that the Lord is in control of your life. He knows your days; he knows the minutes of your life.

Their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. This is an evil time for many of us; let us trust that God knows the needs of his children. This is a time to build faith so that one day we may tell our grandchildren, if the Lord has not yet come, “I went through a difficult time, and let me—sit down here, because I am going to tell you what God did.”

Times of crisis are often times of hope and opportunities to see God. Many times in my life I have had the water not up to my neck, but up to my mouth, and I have seen the Lord come forth and pull me out of the pit, out of despair, out of the miry clay, set my feet upon a rock, straighten my steps, and give me a new song. And by this stage of the game I have learned so much that now, when things get very serious, I take two aspirins and say, “Lord, I trust in you; I wait for you.”

I will not be ashamed, because I have trusted in you. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be consumed like the fat of lambs. They shall vanish like smoke, but the salvation of the righteous is from the LORD, and he is their strength in the time of trouble. The LORD shall help them and deliver them; verse 40: he shall deliver them from the wicked and save them, because they trusted in him.

How many can say, “Yes, Lord, I believe that this afternoon”? I believe that you know very well. Let us stand for a moment. Receive grace and peace from the Lord. I love serving a God who does not sell out to anyone, a God who does whatever he wants. There have been times when I wished God would do things the way I wanted. I had a different scenario in my mind, and I am not going to tell you about it because you would be scandalized.

God took my breath away, because I thought something was going to happen that you cannot even imagine, but God changed things. Nevertheless, that is the God in whom I believe, the God I know. He is a God who has his own ways of doing things, and no one is going to change his methodology, not even those whom he loves most. We might wish that God were just a little more considerate toward us, that he would be a little more concerned about our anxieties, but he is there on his throne, and he knows what he must do.

I continue to tell you, as I told you a couple of weeks ago, that I believe God is working on the earth as never before in history, that we will see his glory as never before in history, and that we will see the name of Christ enthroned as never before in history; that we will have a great harvest of souls; that great glory awaits his church; and that a time of darkness and confusion will come before the time of harvest arrives, because the arrogance of this man who thinks he inhabits the earth right now must be humbled.

And when man humbles himself before his God, then the salvation he has awaited so long will come. So let us give the Lord time. God is working as never before in history, and the greater his work becomes, the more mysterious it becomes. And he needs men and women who will rise to the level of its complexity and wait for him and trust in him. So I declare a spirit of peace over you right now, in the name of Jesus.

I set aside anger, I set aside anxiety, I set aside fear, I set aside envy, I set aside the fear of what may happen, and I say, “Father, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us wisdom; give your people wisdom to know how to conduct themselves in this very strange time, and help us to be a people who minister to this city with your word, Lord; an exemplary people, for the glory of your name; a people who have good counsel for those who come seeking peace in their hearts; a people who preach enlightened holiness, holiness filled with grace and mercy and goodness and love; a people of justice, a people of obedience, a people who know how to move within the mystery of your will.”

Begin with me. I declare peace over the hearts of all my brothers and sisters, and we make room for what God is doing to be completely fulfilled, for his providence to reign and carry out the things he wants to do. We will go to our homes, we will celebrate, we will rest, we will be glad, and we will not cease to do good while the Lord completes his work.

Give us patience, and give us peace to wait for you, Lord. Send these people forth with your shalom, with your peace, with your wisdom and your eyes to see what you want them to see, in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. I bless you, my brothers and sisters. The grace of the Lord be with you.