Do you believe that nations can be blessed or cursed by God based on their observance of God’s laws and truths in their laws, culture, and social norms? You either believe this or you don’t, it’s that simple. For those of you who do believe this, you should be clear that this has real meaning for your life right now.

The ancient paradigm that we seem to have completely forgotten is the paradigm of God’s Desire for the Nations. God has a plan for the Nations, He has a way of seeing them and defining what they are, and He has shown us not only how Nations can be blessed but how we can establish and become such a nation amongst ourselves no matter where we live!

I want you to think hard about that.

God blesses Nations if they carefully observe all of His commandments, laws, and statues. If you believe this to be true, read on.

If God wants Nations to be blessed, then He has a plan for each Nation. This isn’t “Old Testament” stuff, it’s Old and New Testament stuff. Look at Acts 17:20-31 to get a full picture of what I’m talking about, then compare Deuteronomy 28: 1-4 with Matthew 28:19-21.

Some people have sort of spiritualized God’s blessings, they might think that the blessings of Abraham don’t apply to us “in the physical”. They might as well also tell us God no loner heals “in the physical” or that when God promises long life, it doesn’t mean “in the physical”. I don’t buy it, and if you buy it, then, well, you are just putting God into some artificial box and if you want to live your life without having the full measure of the blessings of Abraham, then go right ahead, but as for me, I will take ALL that God offers!

Some people talk about “dispensations” or they focus on how “this is the end times” and cling to the notion that the People of God will be defeated “in the natural” by “the anti-Christ” despite the fact that Jesus promises that the gates of Hell will NEVER prevail against His People, not EVER! Now, He didn’t qualify it, He didn’t say “in the spiritual the gates of hell will not prevail, but in the natural, they will.”

I don’t care about dispensations or end-times doom and gloom, I care about the “yeah and amen” of God’s Word and His Promises, and I know that “the gifts of God are without repentance”, in other words, what God promises to the seed of Abraham, the “one blood” in Christ of which God makes “many Nations”, will be blessed, in every way, so long as there is careful observance of all that God commands us!

Do you believe that the blessings and promises of God should NOT be taken literally, that God does not and will not bless us IN THIS LIFE, even in the physical? This view of life borders on the mysticism of the Gnostics who shunned the physical as bad and always corrupt, but God created this physical world and HE doesn’t call it inherently corrupt- He said after He created all things “it was good.”

The world system (kosmos) is corrupt, but the people and the planet and the nations whose God is the Lord, they are not to be disregarded as being outside of God’s care and mercy or providence! When the 5,000 were hungry Jesus didn’t say, “be filled with SPIRITUAL bread”, He was “moved with compassion” and He fed them!

What I do know is that God calls Nations into being, He gives them a place in history and boundaries of their habitation, and He desires that they find Him and show forth some unique aspect of His virtue and, if they do this, He blesses them EXACTLY as He blessed Israel! This is seen in scripture, it is embedded in the “Great Commission”, it is part of the promise to Abraham, it has actually occurred in history since the ascencion of Christ, and if you read the “back of the book” on the “New Heavens and the New Earth”, you will see that NATIONS and even leaders or “kings” (rulers) have a place even in the New Heavens and the New Earth!

God calls individuals and He calls Nations and for both the rules of the fame are similar- follow the path of truth and righteousness in all you do and how you conduct yourself and live, disobey and experience death.

Here is the ancient paradigm that we have forgotten- the blessings God has for nations are for nations only, they are not necessarily for individuals. You can be an individual and not experience the blessings of being part of a Nation whose God is the Lord and still have lots of blessings and still be saved and get to heaven: but why eat only half the food offered when you can have everything that’s on the table?

Here is where this idea gets hard to see and harder to practice. We might not be living in a very God-fearing nation. America, as a nation, practices infanticide, protects and gives marriage licenses to homosexuals, corrupts its young with its entertainment and social media, and has corrupt leaders at the top of ALL of its national institutions! Clearly, America is collectively sinful and wretched, and there’s no doubt about that!

Let’s be careful, however, to discern between America as an entity and America as a nation. As an entity, “The United States of America”, America is a “nation-state” but as a Nation America is not one but multiple “nations” and these nations are the Nations God will bless or curse, along with the entity itself.

If the entity, the Nation-State or the “natural nation” (because it exists in the natural world only as an institution) blesses its constituent nations whose God is the Lord, then the entity, the Natural Nation, will be blessed. If the Natural Nation behaves badly towards the constituent Nations WITHIN whose God is the Lord, then it suffer because God will protect and bless the Nation whose God is the Lord.

What does God mean by “Nation?”

The word for Nation in the New Testament is “ethne” or “ethnos”, from which we get the word “ethnic”, but in ancient times the concept of genetic or racial identity was not the object of “ethne”. Ethne was all about “koinonia” and “oikos”. Koinonia is often translated as “fellowship” but the better word is “covenant” or “covenant bond” because it signified a shared sense of identity and an agreed standard or norms of conduct and lifestyle common to the people “in koinonia”. Oikos is the woird for “household”, like an extended family bound in a common koinonia, and it signified a face-to-face relations most of the time but was also used to identify dispersed Households and families who were part of the same “ethne”, or it’s “oikos.”

While Nations are GIVEN a place in history and even territory, the holding of territory is not the sole means by which a Nation is defined, although it is true that any Nation whose God is the Lord will be given some form of ownership over Land, even if it is dispersed in far flung places.

What is the chief characteristic of a Nation whose God is the Lord as defined in scripture? I will say this simply- it is a Covenant with God that forms the basis of a shared identity expressed in values, language, customs, cultural norms, and way of life and which is part and parcel of the rules and standards of that Nation within its nation-building institution.

We might call these Nations “Abrahamic Nations” because they were prophesied to come into existence when God told Abraham he would be the father of “Many Nations.”

We use the term “Covenant Nation” because the basis of these Nations is, first, the New Covenant, then the Covenant with Abraham (the blessings of Abrahams on the Nations he is the father of), and, finally, the specific Covenant that Nation has with God to show forth His virtues and reach the Nations of the world around it.

A Nation-state is a natural nation, in other words it is defined by its control over land and naturally exists, or exists in the natural, and exists to operate in the natural sovereignty God gives to ALL men. Natural Nations may HOST or even protect multiple Covenant Nations- this is what was attempted in the Roman Empire under Constantine and in many other natural Nations, with varying degrees of success.

The final Nation with which we are concerned is a universal nation that is based on a spiritual and eternal existence, and which can only be entered into by God’s Elect, those who are saved by the Blood of Jesus Christ- this Nation WITHIN each individual Natural Nation is a “Kingdom Nation” or ALL of God’s Elect who dwell within that Natural Nation, and it is only from these that Covenant Nations draw their “citizens”.

In the PROPER order of things the Natural Nation is like the body- it must serve the spirit. The Kingdom Nation is like the spirit within us, it alone can know God and hear directly from God, and yet EACH Covenant Nation ALSO has a “Kingdom Nation” WITHIN it which is part of the universal Kingdom of God. It is the Covenant Nation alone that can have a spirit, a Kingdom Nation WITHIN, and a body, some form of “natural sovereignty”, and yet within any given Natural Nation the Kingdom Nation should be the spirit, the Covenant Nations are the heart and soul which communicate what the spirit or Kingdom Nation is saying, and the Natural Nation’s “state” or national institutions is the physical body.

You see, in America the Natural Nation has become like a carnal Christian who is on the road to backsliding! The flesh, the things outside the heart and soul and the spirit, is running the show and is treating the heart and soul and the spirit like slaves of the body instead of the other way around! THIS WILL NOT DO!

God doesn’t care about what men say we can do or what men say is possible or even probable, what God says is true and what He promises should always inform our decisions, ESPECIALLY when the natural man exalts his ideas and thoughts above God! The natural man says “there are no Covenant Nations in America, so I guess we just have to forego being part of a nation whose God is the Lord until the natural nation repents!”

The heart and soul of America was its covenant nations- primarily New England’s Puritans and the Quakers of Pennsylvania, whose God was the Lord. As America started letting the nation-state she was building call the shots over the Covenant Nations, and as these Covenant Nations compromised and left off of serving God, the very heart and soul of America was killed! These Covenant Nations and all their values and principles, truths, and institutions, died out!

America is a shell of its former glory, and now we are starting to see ICHABOD written over the whole thing, and now the Kingdom Nation within, without a heart and soul to effectively communicate to the body, is losing its relevancy to the American Natural Nation and if this continues, it will all but depart! If this happens, the body WILL DIE, and a horrible death that would be!

The truth is, the Covenant Nations that once were the heart and soul of America are missing from practically ALL the world’s natural nations! The entire Body of Christ is as ignorant today of the role of “Covenant Nationhood” as the Body of Christ in the time before the Reformation was of the Kingdom and Individual Salvation!

I want to encourage you in this- Covenant Nationhood in Christ, which is so in neglect today, IS COMING BACK, but with new vigor and force, and this time, God is going to raise up NEW Covenant Nations whose God is the Lord that will be distributed not ONLY in one “natural nation” but WITHIN many Natural Nations.

One such Covenant Nation God is showing a few people, and soon many more, that He intends to establish has as its purpose to reveal Jesus Christ to the lost and needy as Lord over the Nations.

It’s NAME, which God has given to it, means “the People Rule by God’s Approved Wisdom”.

It’s strategic vision is the fulfill the Call to the Lost (the Great Commission) and the Call to Love (the Great Commandments) by BEING the Nation AMONGST OURSELVES that we are called to DISCIPLINE the Nations to be.

Establishing a Covenant Nation is not easy, it takes a real commitment of time and energy and resources from all, but on the other hand, it’s not something that requires, at the start, more than a dozen or so families whom God calls together for the work. God doesn’t say that Nations have to be HUGE, in Isaiah 60 He shows us that a FEW people can become a GREAT nation. He did that with the Puritans- they started with a few people, in fact the New England Covenant Nation started really with just 53 families and around 200 souls!

I’m not suggesting you just go out and start a Covenant Nation, God has to call you into such a work and He has to call such a Nation into being, but I am saying that God WILL establish such nations again, and that some people I know and work with are already engaged in this Word of establishing the first NEW Covenant Nation in some 400 or so years! You may be called to participate in this work, but for now, I want to leave you with hope and a promise.

The hope is this- God knows the blessings of Covenant Nationhood in Christ require that there be Covenant Nations, so He will show us how to establish such nations amongst ourselves.

The promise is this- as and when God calls you to be part of the work of establishing a Covenant Nation in Christ He will bless you and protect you and nothing, no-one, on this earth or of this earth will have power over you or prevail against you!

You can choose to deny that the blessings of God are literal or physical, and you can fear some “end times” scenario that depicts God’s People on the Ropes and under the power of Satan, OR you can be prepared for anything, for tribulations must come and we can’t control that, but work forward towards a positive future of victory, of hope EVEN IN THIS LIFE, and of blessings, EVEN IN THIS LIFE!

A word of caution before you choose- if you choose the first choice, to walk in the idea that God’s blessings are not literal and physical and to believe that Satan will overcome God’s people in an end-times scenario that is “upon us” (as some say), then you are ALSO choosing for future generations. How you respond and act will determine what society and life will be like in 100 years, if your “certainty” that we are the “last generation” proves to be as invalid as the “certainty” felt by many others who came before us!

Which do you choose?