One of the arguments for Christian Nationalism is that God particularly cares about nations, that prior to Christ coming, we see his concern for the nations as entities and that we still see that after Christ’s coming. So, two crucial texts are Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Acts 17:26.
In the first, Moses says:
“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.[b] 9 For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.
Does this mean that each nation is set up with permanent boundaries because of God’s Will? Well, there is a sense in which that must be true because everything is subject to God’s sovereign will. However, does that mean that God has some special plan for the US or the United Kingdom. Is his purpose, his focus, to make America or Britain “great again”?
It’s helpful to see those verses in their wider context.
Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. 8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.[b] 9 For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. 10 In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, 11 like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft. 12 The Lord alone led him; no foreign god was with him.”[1]
The wider context makes abundantly clear, if there had been any doubt that the focus and purpose of God’s words is not on the nations. We are not meant to see this as a blueprint for how nation states are to operate. The point is that the sovereign God who has created all peoples, all nations, all ethnicities, chose one people for his special purposes and that was Israel. The concern of Christians today then is to grasp what it means for us to be God’s inheritance, his treasured possession as those ingrafted into Israel,
Acts 17:26 says:
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
Again, this comes in context:
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]
It’s part of Paul’s sermon to those at Mars Hill considering the altar to the unknown God. Who is this God that the Athenians want to make some space for but do not know? Paul’s point is that this is the true and living God, the creator who sustains and orders time and space. Notice that this ordering of things includes time boundaries as well as geographical boundaries. There is nothing here that requires us to assume that modern nation states are required to go on for ever, anymore than there is a need to create mythology to suggest their eternal existence prior to now. Kingdoms and nations come and go.
The point Paul is making is all to do with what God is like. Again, it is a pointer to his purposeful sovereignty and this is all about drawing a people for himself. It is not to do with the building of nations with a nationalistic agenda.
[1] Deuteronomy 28:7-12.
Faithroots 