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I am here. Saul.
I have not written you for sometime and I would like to say only a few words, and these are, that never in all the battles with the Amalakites, did God help me or bring to me victory, as is set forth in the Old Testament, although some of the prophets, like Samuel, at the time might have thought, yet as I now know, it was not true. God was not the partial and particular patron of the Jews, and to Him is was just as sinful for the Jews to commit murder and the other horrible crimes that are mentioned in the Book, in connection with my life as King, as it would have been for the Pagans to have done the same thing.
God is not the God of any race, but He is the God of every individual child who comes to Him in true supplication and prayer, seeking His love and help in his spiritual nature. God will respond and the individual surely will be helped. But should that individual come to Him, seeking power and assistance to murder his fellow man, no matter how great an enemy he might be, God would not help him or approve of his desires, and this being so, you can readily see that He would not help any nation to commit such acts and gain the victory.
And I want to tell you here, that God is not a God of nations, but of individuals only, and only as the individuals that compose the nations, can He be said to be a God of nations. He wants not the praise of men or of nations because of victory that they might acquire through bloodshed and cruelties ascribed to His help, but he wants the praise of men only because their souls may have been awakened to His love, and have acquired victory over sin and evil.
Nations rise and fall and disappear from the face of the earth, but the individuals who compose these nations never die, even though the physical bodies die, and God is a God only of those things that never die, and He is interested in having the individual become victor over sin and the appetites of the flesh.
Of course, the individuals make the nation and give it its character and qualities, and hence the nation will become sinful and cruel as the individuals that compose it become sinful and cruel. He does not deal with nations as such, but only with the small, but important, units that make the nation. Hence, for a nation to say that God is our God, or that God will help us to victory over our enemies, is all wrong. When the individual gains the victory over his greatest enemy, himself, then he can claim that God is his God and give Him the praise, and when all the individuals of a nation have gained that victory then that nation can proclaim that God is its God and render to Him praise for the victory. But only in such event is any nation justified in saying, "God is our God."
And here let me say, that no Christian nation so called, has yet, as individuals, attained to that condition of righteousness and victory over sin, that it can claim to be God's chosen nation.
And so, I say, that I, Saul the King, before my alleged fall from the grace of God, was no more helped by God, than I was after that supposed event, for the reason that while outwardly I may have appeared to seek God's directions and listened to the advice of His prophets, yet inwardly, I was no more in accord with Him or reconciled to Him than I was after the momentous event.
God never helped the Jews, as a nation, to any greater extent than He did any other nation, for they as individuals were no more in attunement with Him than were many individuals of what were called the Pagan nations.
When I went to Samuel in my despair, as the Bible portrays, and felt the burden of the sins of my life, I became nearer to God than I had ever been before, and He was more my God than ever, though I did not realize it.
I merely write this to show men that they must not believe and rely on the statement that because I was said to have observed God's will and obeyed His commands before the time that I realized defeat was certain to be mine, that God was any more my God then, directing and assisting me to overcome my enemies than he was after that event.
I have written enough and will now stop.
So with all my love, and the assurance that God is a God of the individual and not of the nation, I will say good night.
- Your brother in Christ, SAUL.
Vol. II, p. 271
