Commentary: A Major Difference Between Then and Now

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John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 03-Feb-18; 13 minutes

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There are urgent appeals that I see in emails going out from Christian organizations to those who subscribe to Christian literature these days. The appeals are asking for support for their programs. The overwhelming number of these appeals are for financial support. Some are appeals for prayer support and some are appeals for a more heightened and sterner standard of public morality.

I saw one that I thought was exceptionally timely and good. It hit the weekly email barrage not long before election day in 2016. It was an appeal that voters, to the best of their knowledge, vote for moral candidates. How do they do that? This is an undoubtedly difficult proposition because what the appeal is asking for is largely dependent upon personal contact with the candidates, but the United States of America has grown so large and populous that such contact is virtually non-existent.

I do not know whether you realize it, but God in His wisdom simply did not choose (appoint) every governing official in Israel like He did with Moses. But He shows us a pattern I believe He hoped we’d follow, but like everything else we rejected His wisdom after a short while. You can examine Exodus 18 and see that God permitted the ordinary Israelite to share the governing load by giving Moses suggestions through the governed as to whom their local leadership would be. Thus, from those suggestions, arose the listings of those they (the ordinary citizen felt should be entrusted with positions of authority under Moses. It was from these suggestions from those governed that Moses appointed the captains over ten, over fifty, and over one hundred.

What this clearly suggests is that God desires that people have personal knowledge of their leadership, and in addition to that, Israel, with a few exceptions (such as Jerusalem and a few other cities) was a land of small towns surrounded by farms and herds.

Conversely, don’t get the erroneous idea that Israel’s population was very small. That is not so. People who deal mathematically with birth rates and populations believe that when Israel crossed the Red Sea when exiting Egypt, Israel’s population may have been as great as 5-6 million people, even at that time. But you know the way it is; people are always trying to downgrade God’s miraculous interventions.

When greatly flourishing under David and Solomon, the population was not over 60 million, as England’s is today, or the United States with our 300 million. But a close, believing look at the size of their armies in the Bible indicates populations much larger than people normally assume.

Ezekiel 38 is a chapter-long prophecy during which the action takes place after Israel is resettled in its homeland after the Tribulation, when you would think that the population would really be decimated. At that time, the Gentile nations led by Gog and Magog are leading seven other nations, as God says, like a storm covering the land like a cloud. That sounds like very many people. Again, this is after the Tribulation.

God says Gog and Magog and their companions say (regarding Israel), “Let us go against a land of unwalled villages [same picture as before; Israel has been re-established in a land of unwalled villages], against a peaceful people who dwell safely without walls, bars or gates.” It sounds like they don't even have an army!—but a lot of people. At any rate, it shows what God first planned for Israel when they entered the land will be reinstituted once again.

But contrast that with what exists today when even cities have populations is excess of multiple millions of citizens and people, in many cases, do not even know their next door neighbor. How are you going to get to know the candidate if you don't even know your next door neighbor?

I believe in some ways my family is typical of many in the USA and it tells a story of why so much has been lost in American life, especially in the past 50 years. Both Evelyn and I were born outside of Pittsburgh, she much closer (on the west side) than I was (on the north). We both stayed fairly close to our birth place until our late 30s. In fact—this is kind of mind-boggling—the furthest Evelyn ever moved once we married was literally across the street. She moved from 94 Crafted Avenue to 101 Crafted Avenue—literally across the street. That is how stable people were at one time. I, too, moved only one time, until we married, and that was from the borough I was born in out to the north country. That was when I was 4 years old.

However, once we came into the church, we have been virtually rootless. All this took place within the last 50 years. That is why I used that number. We have been virtually rootless because of my occupation. We have moved 16 times. In addition to that, because of being in the church, we don’t socialize with our neighbors but with our church members. We are keenly interested and concerned with what is going on in the world around us, but we perceive the United States in an entirely different light—I am sure—than any of our neighbors because we see its future as a short term one rather than being a long term one. Who cares about candidates?

We belong to no clubs, no leagues, and no political organizations. We are in the American world and yet in one way we are not part of it because we are in the church. That is the world our life revolves around. In fact, the neighbor I believe I have the best relationship with is the Muslim family across the street. Before them, an Indian family lived in that house and now they live in Orland Park, IL, in the next city west of the Schindlers in Tinley Park, Illinois.

What I am getting at is this: How many additional Americans, who moved about like the Ritenbaugh family frequently due to circumstances within this very fluid society, are there? How are people going to get to know their candidates? And it results in knowing very little (except for generalities) about our leadership (whether local or national); our religions, which we commonly call Christian but are most certainly a frail, opaque shadow of what Christianity is as a reality; and our universities and colleges about which we know more about their football teams than what they are teaching or what is going on on campus?

The overall result, I believe, is that we know far, far fewer people nowadays than we did fifty years ago when we knew almost everybody in the neighborhood fairly well.

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