Today’s Mount Carmel Christians

Humanity’s eminent question is never that of god or no god, but which god: Yahweh or Baal (1 Kings 18:21), God or Caesar (Matthew 22:21), or God or mammon (Matthew 6:24)? “How long halt ye between two opinions? If Yahweh be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” (1 Kings 18:21) This was Elijah’s challenge to the double-minded Israelites on Mt. Carmel.

What is today’s Mount Carmel? As individuals, we may each have several personal Mount Carmels to be scaled and conquered. However, as a nation, America’s Mount Carmel is unequivocally Yahweh versus We the People (a modern form of Baal).

I can understand humanists’ choosing We the People. We the People is just a collective form of a majority doing what is right in their own eyes (Judges 21:25). What I cannot understand is that Christians would choose to serve Yahweh as God on one hand and We the People on the other. What’s even more paradoxical is that “conservative” Christians are the greatest advocates of We the People and its humanistic government built upon the traditions of men.

The choice between gods comes down to which god’s law is paramount:

Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29)

And when they [disbelieving Jews] … drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also … and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. (Acts 17:6-7)

The Supreme Law of the Land

Nowhere did the constitutional framers acknowledge Yahweh (except perhaps as their document’s timekeeper in Article 7) or His morality as codified in His perfect law and altogether righteous judgments (Psalm 19:7-9). Compounding the problem, Article 6 of the United States Constitution brazenly pronounces the Constitution and all laws and treaties made in pursuance thereof as the supreme law of the land. Marbury v. Madison (1803) added, “…a law repugnant to the Constitution is void….”

The framers were fully cognizant of the word “supreme” and its meaning when they declared the supremacy of the Constitution. In so doing, they made the law of Yahweh subservient to the law of We the People, thereby making null and void any of Yahweh’s laws not in accord with the Constitution:

Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matthew 15:6-9)

The framers and today’s political leaders and Constitutionalists pay homage to the traditions and commandments of men as the supreme law of the land. Even the Pharisees of Jesus’ day weren’t so brazen as to call their man-made traditions supreme.

The Supreme Being

A supreme law can only be created by a supreme being. Proclaiming (or even acknowledging) the Constitution as the supreme law of the land demands that the creators of that law are god to those who so regard the Constitution. Vox populi, vox dei: the voice of the people is the voice of god.

Consequently, Christian Constitutionalists (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are as double minded as were the Israelites on Mount Carmel. The question remains, “How long halt ye between two opinions? If Yahweh be God, follow him: but if We the People, then follow them.” Choose carefully!

For more on this issue, go to Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution.