The midterm elections have left many Christians asking a troubling question: Why would God allow this to happen?

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico, who has invoked Scripture in defense of abortion rights and transgender policies, won a Senate seat. He once declared that “God is nonbinary”, a remark he later acknowledged was deliberately provocative.

The question is not simply why God permitted our candidates to lose. It is what He may intend to teach us through the loss.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate, thanking Allah in his victory speech.

Meanwhile, Christians who wanted biblical principles honored in public life suffered significant political defeats. Why does God permit such outcomes? Why do those who reject His truth sometimes prosper while those who profess His name suffer?

The question is ancient. Psalm 73 offers a better way to approach it than election-night recriminations.

The problem of Psalm 73

The psalmist Asaph watched the arrogant prosper. They boasted against heaven while he suffered, and he wondered whether he had cleansed his heart in vain. Then he entered the sanctuary of God and considered their end.

Their prosperity was temporary, their security an illusion. But Asaph discovered something more important than their eventual judgment: He had envied the wrong treasure.

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” (Psalm 73:25).

The wicked may possess political power, wealth, and public admiration. But they do not possess the greatest good: fellowship with the living God. Unlike political victories, that blessing lasts forever.

RELATED: Why Christians lose elections

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Learning to read providence

Christians too often reason simplistically: Victory means God’s blessing; defeat means His judgment. The Puritan writers Jeremiah Burroughs and Thomas Watson, along with the Scottish theologian Thomas Boston, understood that God may have many purposes in permitting His people to suffer.

We cannot claim to know His precise purpose in a particular election. But their writings suggest five lessons worth considering.

1. To reveal whether we love God more than success

In “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment,” Jeremiah Burroughs teaches that contentment rests in God rather than changing circumstances.

Do we love Christ because He gives us political victories or because He is worthy of our love? Defeat tests whether our confidence rests in God or in the benefits we hope to receive from Him.

2. To expose sins among God’s own people

Thomas Watson, in “All Things for Good,” explains that affliction can expose and mortify remaining sin. Christians may denounce wickedness in the culture while tolerating it in themselves. Asaph had to confront his own envy.

Do we defend biblical morality publicly while compromising privately? Have we exchanged reverence for entertainment? Perhaps the response to defeat is less political calculation and more fasting, prayer, and repentance.

3. To teach humility and dependence upon God

In “The Crook in the Lot,” Thomas Boston describes how God uses adversity to humble His people.

Political success can tempt Christians to imagine that the future of the church depends on the right candidate, party, or strategy. Defeat reminds us that Christ builds His church. No election can replace God’s sovereign power.

4. To strengthen faith through adversity

Watson also teaches that God uses affliction to strengthen the graces of His people. Faith untested remains immature.

Political defeat offers a chance to practice patience, courage, perseverance, and confidence in God’s promises. It is easy to proclaim His sovereignty when your candidate wins. The test comes when your candidate loses — and when political opposition becomes more than an inconvenience.

RELATED: The champagne communists who sold Millennials a bill of goods

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5. To redirect our hope toward eternal things

Burroughs reminds us that the believer possesses a treasure greater than anything this world can offer. God may remove earthly comforts to remind us they were never our ultimate good.

Political victories are temporary. Governments rise and fall. Nations flourish and decline. Communion with God endures. Do you seek Him daily in His Word?

The victory that cannot be taken away

None of this means Christians should abandon politics. Government is ordained by God, and Christians should labor for justice and righteousness. But electoral outcomes do not reveal the whole purpose of divine providence.

Those celebrating victory have not thereby demonstrated God’s approval. Christians mourning defeat have not demonstrated His displeasure. Psalm 73 calls us to judge earthly events in the light of eternity.

The question is not simply why God permitted our candidates to lose. It is what He may intend to teach us through the loss.

Perhaps the greatest victory He is preparing for His people is a deeper knowledge of Himself.

​Christian faith, James talarico, Michigan senate, Midterm elections, Texas senate, Transgender policies, Divine providence, Christians, God, Scripture, Faith, Sin, Opinion & analysis 

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has a new project. This time, he’s helping people navigate the Bible.

His Deep Dive Bible, officially launched November 2, puts Scripture, commentaries, reference materials, and group discussion in one place. It’s free, and you don’t even need an account to start reading.

‘The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew?’

“If you read the Bible with an app, you probably switch between the text, references, and maybe a group study,” Sanger wrote on X.

“What if all three worked together?”

Sanger calls the project “free, forever: a gift to the whole Church.”

Plenty to explore

The site’s welcome page lists 15 English Bible translations, including the King James Version, English Standard Version, New International Version, and New American Standard Bible. You can read translations side by side or consult commentaries on individual verses without leaving the reader.

There are 55 commentaries, 15 reference works, and 220 maps, according to the site. For more ambitious students, there are Hebrew and Greek study tools, interlinear texts, and cross-references. Audio readings are also available.

You can read without registering; a free account lets you save your progress, make notes, highlight passages, and join group studies organized around particular readings and discussion topics.

The site is still labeled beta, but Sanger says it will remain free, supported by donations.

RELATED: To raise Christian children who become Christian adults, one simple habit matters most

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From skeptic to believer

Sanger has good reason to take Bible study seriously. Raised Lutheran, he lost his faith as a teenager and spent more than 35 years as an agnostic. He went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy, co-found Wikipedia, and build a career devoted to organizing information online.

In December 2019, he decided to read the Bible cover to cover. He wasn’t looking for a conversion. He wanted to understand a book he had long dismissed without, by his own admission, having studied it properly.

Armed with study Bibles, maps, dictionaries, and commentaries, Sanger began working through Scripture. What he found surprised him.

“The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew?” he recalled in his 2025 conversion testimony.

By late February 2020, he had privately acknowledged his belief in God. He didn’t make a full public declaration of his Christian faith until five years later.

“I never had a mind-blowing conversion experience,” he wrote. His faith came slowly through reading, questioning, and reconsidering arguments he had once found unpersuasive.

Questions welcome

He never stopped studying. In April 2020, Sanger started an online Bible-study group on YouVersion, later moving it to Telegram. This September, he gave the group its own website, bringing along the archive of earlier discussions.

The software behind Deep Dive Bible, called Chatiferous, was built using Anthropic’s Claude AI, with Sanger directing the project. It’s released under a free-software license, and the site is being opened to other Bible-study groups.

In a 2023 guide to reading the Bible, Sanger urged readers to make use of commentaries, maps, encyclopedias, and study groups. He was especially insistent that readers shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions.

“It is not only OK to ask questions,” he wrote, “it is essential that you both ask your questions and get them answered.”

​Larry sanger, Wikipedia, Christian living, Bible study, Deep dive bible, Lifestyle, Tech, Scripture, Christianity, Faith 

America’s religious divide is becoming harder to ignore, but Glenn Beck believes something even more troubling is happening beneath the surface.

Election data reveals a stark difference between ballots cast by religious and nonreligious voters — but also proves that Marxist ideology is even infiltrating Christianity itself.

“Protestant was 21% of the vote: 39% of the Protestant voted for the Democrats; 60% voted for the Republicans,” Glenn explains, noting that the closest result was between Catholics.

“21% of the vote: 48% voted for the Democrats; 50% voted for the Republicans. So almost evenly split,” he says.

“The LDS church: 29% voted for Democrats; 69% voted for Republicans. That’s going to make them an even bigger target. They’re the farthest that skew to the right. Other Christians were 17% of the vote. That’s 38% Democrat, 60% Republican,” he says.

Of the Jewish vote, he says, 67% voted Democrat, while only 32% voted Republican.

“That’s changing, and that is way down from where it used to be,” Glenn comments, noting that it gets worse.

The “opposite of the scale,” he says, is the Muslim vote. 85% of Muslims voted Democrat, he says, while only 12% voted Republican.

“The more nebulous you get, the harder it leans to the left,” Glenn says.

“Listen to this … the largest religious group, with 26%, is none. No religion. 77% who say, ‘I don’t recognize God. I have no religion,’ 77% went to the Democrats; 21% went to the Republicans,” he explains, adding that shockingly, famous podcaster Joe Rogan has already sounded the alarm on this.

“Something’s happening with Joe Rogan,” Glenn says. “It’s been happening for a while if you watch him. Joe Rogan is warning now woke ideology is replacing God on the left and entering into Christianity.”

“That is absolutely true. Your church is a target. Be aware. Know the difference between the woke Christianity and real Christianity, because it comes cloaked as a friend,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Midterms, Election data, Christianity, Voters, Blazetv show 

Thanks to the loud noises of a few boldface names on the left, Americans are getting the impression that the Democrats of 2026 are the anti-technology party. With the blue team surging into Congress this election cycle, the logical inference is that the tech industry lost big — a huge deal for the many voters who had just about resigned themselves to the idea that technology is the one thing that can’t be stopped in America.

Drawing this conclusion would be a colossal misread of reality, no matter how sensationalist the headlines about draconian tech crackdown plans coming from Bernie Sanders and company.

The left elites do not want to de-technologize our economy, our government, or anything else. They simply want to control the technology — the better to control everything downstream of it.

At the tactical level, Democrats did not win because they ran against tech. At the strategic level, the domestic and international left is more convinced than ever that the only way it can end the Trump era and re-establish itself as the ruling elite is by wielding technology with renewed force.

First, the ground truth. As observed by Adam Kovacevich, the tech-optimist Democrat who founded the Chamber of Progress and came from Google’s public policy shop, AI and data centers ranked a distant 19th among issues in a New York Times/Siena survey. Democrats in gubernatorial contests who didn’t support data center bans performed better than those who did. And almost all Democrats Kovacevich defines as “pro-innovation” have won their races. (So far.)

The exit polls tell the same story. Almost 40% cited the economy as their top concern; nearly a third cited the “state of democracy.” The rest prioritized immigration, health care, foreign policy, and crime.

Now, one could argue that all these priorities have to do with tech in some sense. Tech has largely eaten the economy. Tech is reworking our form of government. Tech is what’s behind the intense push to fill out well-paying jobs with skilled immigrants. Health care is rapidly being technologized. Foreign policy is already dominated by the race to technologically transform the global battlefield — a dynamic that has focused unprecedented controversy around Israel, a country that has rapidly vaulted to cyber-superpower status. Crime? Seen any headlines about cyberattacks lately …?

Yes, in a very real sense, as Donald Trump so memorably put it, everything is computer now.

RELATED: America’s ‘AI czar’ could revolutionize our form of government

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But the left elite has no qualms about the force of these transformative technological changes. It only opposes the vector, which has arrowed in a nominally rightward direction ever since the most influential faction of Silicon Valley decided they could only remain masters of their own destiny if they threw in with Trump.

The left elites do not want to de-technologize our economy, our government, our immigration policy, our health care industry, our foreign policy, or anything else. They simply want to control the technology — the better to control everything downstream of it.

Right-wingers may look at that fact and see within it a darkly pulsating evil. Because they share little religious unity, many on the right insist on seeing that menace in ideological, not religious terms — not demonic but communist, socialist, or third-worldist.

Yet whatever kernels of insight may lurk therein, the truth is that the right is even more desperate to control the tech than the left is, and that tortured desire defines the political battle space far more than any of the hoary modern “isms” that Americans keep being told to conform our transformed postmodern reality to. It’s not going to work.

Everyone — left, right, center, white, brown, or purple — fears erasure, defeat, and destruction at the hands of adversaries who have aced them out for control of godlike tech.

RELATED: Sorry, Bill Gates. We’re sitting out this apocalypse.

BAY ISMOYO/AFP/Getty Images

That’s why the midterms weren’t a referendum on the breakneck advancement of technology to an even greater position of dominance over our country and our way of life. And yet despite real defeats for data centers in local elections, tech’s commanding position remains intact. Those setbacks may turn out to be Tootsie Roll-sized speed bumps. (Think stopping data centers stops AI? Think again.)

Tech elites who embraced Trump — Elon Musk first among them — may worry about reprisals from Democrats looking to throw bloody beefsteaks to the slavering mob. But at a time when almost nothing but tech has consequential energy behind it, it is technology that was the victor on Tuesday and technology that will define the fateful choices America’s elites will make — with or without public support — about just what our country and our people are to become.

​Ai, Tech, Bernie sanders, Midterms, Democrats, Data centers, Economy, Healthcare, Adam kovacevich, Chamber of progress, Americans, Politicians, Trump, Opinion & analysis 

Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters,” wants his audience to be equipped but never paranoid when it comes to spiritual warfare.

“We’ve tried to be good stewards of this podcast, and just to warn you — not to have you looking for demons around every corner, but also not to send you out into this fallen creation where there’s spiritual war raging for you not to be prepared,” he says.

That’s why he had former psychic Jenn Nizza on the show. Deeply involved in the occult and New Age for roughly 25 years before becoming a Christian, Nizza now warns believers about the spiritual dangers of mainstream New Age practices — tarot cards, astrology, crystals, numerology, and the like.

On this episode, Nizza joins Burgess for an honest conversation about the New Age pitfalls ensnaring Christians.

Mainstream occultism doesn’t look like black robes, blood rituals, and devil worship. Rather it presents itself as “light,” which is why people are so drawn to it, Nizza explains.

“The counterfeit is very manipulative. … It’s really darkness in disguise presenting as a false light,” she says, highlighting how the messaging often revolves around “healing, solutions, [and] wisdom.”

She explains how Satan, who the Bible says disguises himself as an angel of light, offers “cheap [imitations] intended to deceive” — things that “look so close” to the truth and seem “so convincing” that even Christians will sometimes take the bait.

Modern culture has played a pivotal role in normalizing New Age beliefs and practices through “social media, cinema, [and] the music industry,” says Nizza.

“‘Wicked’ with Ariana Grande … the movie ‘Tarot,’ ‘Practical Magic,’ ‘Hocus Pocus’ … that’s the devil defining a very real, spiritually dangerous practice: witchcraft,” she tells Burgess.

“This is glamorizing witchcraft and desensitizing the masses. So we as Christians need to step in and share the truth about what it is, and rather than glamorize, expose it and point to the light of Christ.”

She gives the example of the popular, long-running TLC show “Long Island Medium,” which documented the life of psychic medium Theresa Caputo.

“She’s just like how I used to be — want to help people and seemingly innocuous, right?” says Nizza but, “You don’t go home with her. You don’t know what the demonic oppression she is facing, and I can assure you that she is because when you do these things, you will face the side effects.”

“[Christians] need to be the ones to go in there and tell the truth about this and not shy away from this because otherwise you’re letting these secular movies that are run by devils disciple your congregants, disciple your children, and certainly at the very least, educate them falsely.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Astrology, Demonic oppression, Rick burgess, Spiritual warfare, Tarot cards, New age, Witchcraft, Blazetv show 

The election is over. People will spend weeks picking apart the results. Meanwhile, family caregivers are sorting medications, helping someone get dressed, and having late-night conversations with the ceiling fan.

November is National Family Caregivers Month. As the holidays approach, expectations pile up even when a caregiver’s strength is running low.

If you’re a caregiver who’s frazzled, stressed, heartbroken, or weary, you’re in the right place.

You can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel lonely. I often tell pastors that caregivers can feel lonely on a crowded pew.

Family caregivers know what it means to disappear into someone else’s story. People ask how your loved one is doing. You explain the latest procedure or what the doctor said. Somewhere in the conversation, what you’re carrying disappears beneath the details of the person you’re caring for.

When I started this column for Blaze, I wanted caregivers to find a little respite and something solid to stand on while they caught their breath. Whatever else I write about, I keep coming back to the caregiver who wonders whether anyone understands.

That’s also why I started a caregiver group at our church here in Montana.

Every Thursday morning, we gather around a table. First-timers sometimes arrive nervous, sometimes already teary-eyed. Walking into a room of strangers to talk about caring for someone you love takes courage.

The church has committed to keeping us supplied with tissues.

The pastor or his assistant sometimes has coffee waiting. When neither is there, that responsibility falls to me.

I’m accustomed to making coffee for Gracie. She likes coffee that reaches out and slaps you. Most attendees have learned to politely decline when I’m handling the brewing.

One fellow brought a tin of cookies from Costco. We’ve made a sizable dent in them.

Well, let’s be honest. I’ve made a sizable dent. I keep passing the tin around, but somehow it makes its way back to me. I need to be careful, or I’ll get so big the bears will have to start hiding their food.

RELATED: Would you trust this politician with your wallet?

Sonmez karakurt/Getty Images

We go around the table and check in. Sometimes the circumstances are dire, and the tissues get passed along with the cookies. Sometimes we talk about ordinary things. Even amid the tears, laughter has surprised us at every meeting.

You see, each of us speaks fluent caregiver. Nobody needs a lengthy explanation of why someone is exhausted, frightened, or struggling to make one more decision. We recognize the language because we live it.

This week, one man whose wife lives with dementia told us he can no longer have a rational conversation with her. Around our table, he said, he felt heard for the first time in a long time.

How many more caregivers feel the same way he does?

Sometimes, speaking fluent caregiver sounds like this: “Pull up a chair. Have a cookie. Or three. Sign this waiver before drinking the coffee.”

I can’t offer bad coffee and a tin of cookies to readers. You’ll have to supply your own tissues. If you run out, use toilet paper. We’ve all done it.

But I can bring four decades of caring for someone I love to this page. I can speak honestly about the weariness, the fear, the resentment we’re reluctant to admit, and the laughter that still catches us by surprise.

RELATED: There is a place sin cannot molest

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I can also remind you of something I regularly need to hear myself: You don’t have to feel better in order to be better.

Making your own doctor’s appointment, accepting help, or sitting with people who understand can be a good decision even when you still feel worn out afterward.

If you’re struggling to find the words to say to a caregiver, try these: “I see you, and I see the magnitude of what you’re carrying, and I hurt with you.”

If tears come, you don’t have to find something profound to say. Stay and listen.

If you’re a caregiver who’s frazzled, stressed, heartbroken, or weary, you’re in the right place. Tell me how you’re doing in the comments. I try to read them all and respond when I can.

If you’re none of those things, you’re still in the right place. Because if you love someone, you’ll most likely become a caregiver.

If you live long enough, you’ll need one.

Friends don’t let friends caregive alone.

​Caregiving, Caregivers, Comfort, Help, Doctors, Cookies, Coffee, Dementia, Readers, Comments, Tears, Companionship, Fellowship, National family caregivers month, Medications, Opinion & analysis 

There was a time when Josh Howerton — BlazeTV host of “Live Free” and pastor of Lakepointe Church — thought anxiety attacks were “a Gen Z way to say you had a bad day.”

But when a crushing season of anxiety threatened to cripple him, his perspective changed.

“I’ve never experienced a hell like that,” he tells Louie Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta.

Giglio has had his own journey with anxiety — a journey that was so significant, he wrote an entire book about it. “Putting an X Through Anxiety” is the longtime pastor’s account of his battle with anxiety as well as practical and spiritual tools to help readers understand anxiety’s roots, address anxious thoughts, and find freedom and rest in Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

On this episode of “Live Free,” Howerton and Giglio address the mental condition that now has millions of young people in its grip.

“I was like you, you know, when people talked about they suffered depression or anxiety, I was sympathetic, I think, but definitely not compassionate and understanding until I thought I was going to die one night,” Giglio tells Howerton.

“I was having these physical symptoms that were crazy … heart blowing up, then face totally numb, arm totally numb, and legs convulsing,” he recounts.

After a hospital visit and some medication, Giglio assumed everything would “be OK” again, but the trial was just beginning.

“I think I had a nervous breakdown. So I don’t think I really had an anxiety attack or a panic attack. I think it was way more significant than that,” he says.

“I cracked, and I ended up in a heap in the corner for about four months of life. I was out of commission. I mean, I didn’t go to work. I didn’t go to meetings. I didn’t preach. I didn’t think I was ever going to be normal again, and I thought I was losing my mind.”

But God was faithful to deliver him from this darkness, he says. “By the grace of God, I found my way out. He led me out. Worship led me out.”

Part of Giglio’s recovery involved speaking the truth to himself — and that’s one of the pieces of advice he gives to people struggling with anxiety.

“You have to take the mic and say, ‘God is with me, and I am not crazy. God did not make me crazy. God is with me,”’ he says.

Giglio shares that during his crushing season of anxiety, he would wake up every night at 2:00 a.m. feeling like an “elephant [was] on his chest.” No amount of advice from others could lift the dark cloud, but preaching to himself did.

“To the Lord, I said, ‘You didn’t heal me yesterday, and You didn’t heal me today, and I don’t know if You’re going to heal me tomorrow, but I do know You’re a healer … I’m going to praise You not because You healed me. I want to praise You because You’re a healer,”’ he recounts to Howerton.

Out of this dark night of the soul, a song was born.

“This little spontaneous song dropped into my heart, and I started singing it, and it was like a little pinhole, Josh, in the canopy of the darkness. And a tiny ray of light came in that night,” says Giglio, calling worship “a weapon.”

“I didn’t wake up the next day, take a shower, put on a suit, and go to dinner with friends, but I had a song the next night at 2:00, and eventually the song overtook the cloud.”

That song eventually became “I Lift My Hands” — a Grammy nominated song recorded by Christian music giant Chris Tomlin.

“I went on tour with Chris not long after that, and we were doing basketball arenas, and every night I would stand up and tell that story,” says Giglio.

“And I am telling you, Josh, people did not expect a Christian speaker at the concert to talk about falling in a hole of depression, and I was just seeing this wave of freedom go across people.”

To hear more of Howerton’s and Giglio’s personal battles with depression and anxiety, watch the episode above.

“Live Free with Josh Howerton” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms. Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH to get $20 off your subscription.

​Josh howerton, Mental health, Blazetv show, Louie giglio, Anxiety, Depression 

God does not leave His people unarmed and then call the resulting vulnerability “faith.” From the first organization of Israel after the Exodus to the final instructions Jesus gives His disciples before the cross, Scripture treats the capacity for defensive force as ordinary, necessary, and compatible with obedience.

In Numbers 1, God commands Moses to count every male 20 years old and upward who is able to go to war. “Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male individually, from 20 years old and above — all who are able to go to war in Israel” (Numbers 1:2-3). The total reaches 603,550 fighting-age men (Numbers 1:45-46).

Biblical self-defense requires foresight, discipline, and bravery; it is protective rather than aggressive, proportionate, and open to preemption when the threat is clear and imminent.

This is neither a civil registry nor a professional standing army. It is the mustering of the fighting men of Israel: men of the tribes, organized by household and clan, who would return to their lands and labors when the threat passed. The parallel to the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” is striking — and not entirely coincidental.

In a 1788 sermon, Samuel Langdon, a former president of Harvard and delegate to New Hampshire’s constitutional ratifying convention, explicitly held up ancient Israel’s political and military organization as a model for the American states. He even described the Israelites’ armed forces as a “militia.” God Himself established an armed people as the ordinary defense of Israel.

‘Fight for your brethren’

The “sword” that appears hundreds of times in the Old Testament — more than 400 in many English translations — is the practical instrument of that survival. It kept the covenant community from being destroyed by those who would erase it. The violence is almost always defensive in purpose: securing the life and blessings that by His grace God has given, against those who would take them by force.

The same pattern appears when the people rebuild. In Nehemiah 4, workers on Jerusalem’s wall face open threats. Nehemiah arms them and says, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses” (Nehemiah 4:14). Half stand ready with spears and shields. The laborers work with one hand and hold a weapon with the other. “Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built” (Nehemiah 4:18). The community is built by men who stand ready to defend what they are building.

God’s law itself draws the line between proportionality and excess. “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed. If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed” (Exodus 22:2-3). The presumption is that an intruder in the night presents an imminent lethal threat.

Daylight changes the calculus because identification of the adversary and use of lesser force become possible. The distinction is necessity and proportionality: Force is justified by the nature and immediacy of the threat, not by vengeance or property alone. This standard still governs most American self-defense law.

Two swords

The New Testament does not cancel the pattern. In Luke 22:36-38, Jesus tells the disciples that the one who has no sword should sell his garment and buy one. When they produce two, He says it is enough. Raymond Ibrahim has shown how medieval Christians, including the Templars and Hospitallers, understood the verse as authorizing two swords — one against spiritual enemies, one against physical threats.

The modern pastorate, weak and effeminate, empties the passage of meaning and reduces it to mealy metaphor. As we have argued elsewhere, God calls men to be meek, not weak. Meekness is strength under control; the modern pastoral ideal is mere passivity that leaves the flock undefended.

Jesus never once forbids the use of steel. In fact, at His arrest, Peter draws one of those swords and cuts off the servant’s ear (Matthew 26:51; John 18:10). Jesus does not stop the blow. Instead, He heals the ear (Luke 22:51) and tells Peter to put the sword away, because, “Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” (John 18:11; see also Matthew 26:52). The healing of the ear clears Jesus’ path to the cross; it is His last miracle before the crucifixion. The command is specific to that hour, not a universal prohibition against arms. The swords Jesus had just told them to acquire remain legitimate.

The most emphatic call for proper defensive alignment and proportionate force comes from the king of the universe Himself. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). The love is sacrificial, not suicidal. It is the willingness to spend oneself so that others may live. If the defender dies without stopping the threat, those he claimed to protect are left undefended. That is not greater love.

RELATED: Muslims organize openly. Why do Christians act like they can’t?

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God-given right

Yet the modern Christian view abhors Christ the warrior against Satan. It prefers a cheap, easy Christianity that not only ignores real threats — feminism, open borders, Islamification — but affirms the sins that emerge from those threats: sexual immorality, racial idolatry, and self-destruction. Biblical self-defense therefore requires foresight, discipline, and bravery; it is protective rather than aggressive, proportionate, and open to preemption when the threat is clear and imminent. The prosperity gospel cannot defend families, and proactive defense is exactly what God demands of His men.

The Second Amendment records the American recognition of this ancient, God-given right. Free people retain the means to defend life, family, and liberty. When government acts as the servant described in Romans 13:4 — “he is God’s minister to you for good” — the people may rely on it. That “good,” however, is God’s objective good, not the subjective whimsy of those in power. It is not within the purview of human rulers to affirm immigration without assimilation, sexual anarchy, or racial idolatry, for all those oppose the laws of God. When government abandons its duty to do objective good or becomes the threat itself, the residual duty and the means of recourse remain with the people.

The census in Numbers, the swords at the builders’ sides in Nehemiah, the nighttime rule in Exodus, and Jesus’ instruction to acquire swords all point to the same conclusion. The right to keep and bear arms is not a concession of the state.

As Massachusetts patriot Mercy Otis Warren wrote in 1788 in her pamphlet, “Observations on the New Constitution,” “Self-defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; this primeval principle, the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges everyone … to resist the first approaches of tyranny.” Arms are the ordinary means of survival for the people of God who refuse to be destroyed.

​Natural law, New testament, Old testament, Self-defense, Christian living, Biblical, Second amendment, Mercy otis warren, Nehemiah, Lifestyle, Culture, Faith