In the first post of this two-part series we considered why Jacob asked for a second blessing. Here we will consider the following question.

What Can We Learn From Jacob’s Request For A Second Blessing?

Before Jacob would wrestle with God, cling to Him and beg for a blessing, Jacob had to realize how needy he was. Jacob had to humble himself before God. He had to accept the sovereignty of God.

Have you accepted God as your Lord? Consider this question. How do you think the vast majority of people will answer? How would you answer?

Are you a good person?

Most of us reflexively give this answer, right?

Of course I am a good person!

Unfortunately, not one of us is good, not one (see Romans 3:1-20). When we look at each other and ourselves, if each of us being honest, not one of us can point to a perfectly moral life. All of should be in terror of being tempted beyond our power to resist.

Consider why the Declaration of Independence (archives.gov) says we a need a government to rule us.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –

Declaration of Independence (archives.gov)

Our government exists to protect us from each other. Our government exists because when we have the power some of us will pridefully, beat, rob, rape, and enslave other men. Slavery is the historical norm because given the opportunity all of us are capable of abusing our fellow men. It is this understanding of the nature of mankind that led to all the checks and balances the framers included in the Constitution. When they framed the Constitution, they deliberately set out to do whatever they possibly could to avoid concentrating the power of government into the hands of just one person or a small group of people. The founders did this because they recognized and accepted their own weaknesses.

Since the creation of our Constitution many Americans have forgotten what the framers of the Constitution well understood, we should not trust each other with any more power than absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, we naively allowed the 2020 Election, one of the most furiously contested in our history, to be conducted without the maximum effort to ensure the election was conducted honestly. So, now we are paying the price.

Why has election integrity become a joke in so many states and localities? Much of the news media — which by now we should know is highly biased and cannot be trusted — wants us to believe election fraud doesn’t even exist. That’s as absurd as saying they are no tyrants.

Too much of the news media is owned by huge corporations with their own agendas. These huge corporations don’t operate news organizations to inform us or even to make money. They operate news organizations to gain political power to further their own special interests at our expense. That’s why we cannot trust these people.

Consider all the observations we made in CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES DON’T HAVE TO BE PUSHOVERS. Instead of maintaining appropriate election safeguards we fearfully and lazily craved convenience, and we justified ourselves with the appearance of virtue.

Let’s list some of the safeguards we have neglected:

• Setting the goal properly. One man. One vote. So that the results can be believed, we must design simple, easily verifiable election systems. It is easier to verify and validate simple systems, and it is easier to find security holes in complex systems. Complex is more trouble than it is worth.
• Ensure the vast majority of people vote on Election Day. That allows anyone who wants to do so to watch the entire process. It is difficult to monitor any process that goes on and on for days and not just one day.
• Require a valid excuse for absentee voting. That includes both early voting and voting by mail. When absentee voting comprises a large share of the vote, the incentive to rig absentee voting increases. When mail-in balloting is used, it is easier to intimidate voters or to buy their votes.
• Required a witness for mail-in ballots. We are more willing to cheat when no one else knows we are cheating.
• Require signature validation for mail-in ballots. How else are we supposed to know who filled out a mail-in ballot?
• Prohibit vote harvesting. Absentee voters need to put their mail-in ballots in the mail themselves. They don’t need help from strangers.
• Require a strong voter ID for voter registration and in-person voting. We need to know when someone is trying to steal another person’s vote.
• Require voter registration required well in advance of Election Day. We need to have time to verify the registration list and make it public. We have a right to keep our vote secret. The fact we vote is not a secret.
• Require verification in real-time that each voter is registered and has not already voted.
• Enforce a deadline for the receipt of mail-in ballots (including a postmark).
• Require that representatives from all parties be permitted to observe all steps of the election process, including the counting of the vote.

How many people do we actually trust? Don’t we have to believe someone loves us before we will trust them? Don’t even the people who love us sometimes hurt us? Are any of us actually that much better than the people we don’t trust? Then why would we set up an election system without making a serious effort to ensure election integrity? Isn’t that the same as tempting people to cheat? Isn’t making it easy for people to cheat immoral?

If we want our government to work properly — if we actually do care about the God-given rights of our family, friends, neighbors, and countrymen — then we must hold the people we elect accountable, and we must make certain our laws, including our election laws, allow us to hold the people we elect accountable. We cannot just trust people to do the right thing. THEY WON’T! How do we know? Look in a mirror. We are not any better than our ancestors, and they saw nothing wrong with owning slaves. They just wanted to own slaves, not be one.

If we don’t want to be a slave, then we must protect each other from being enslaved. That requires us to have a good way of selecting our leaders, a simple system we can trust, and we don’t have such a system right now. So we have to fix it.

Please contact your local, state, and Federal representatives. Ask them to investigate your election system and demand election safeguards. Our liberty depends on it.

Reference: Who explains why Jacob asked for a second blessing well? Well, I know of one pastor, now deceased. Please take the time to listen to The Patriarchal Blessing (renewingyourmind.org), a broadcast by R.C. Sproul (ligonier.org).