CONDITIONAL SUBMISSION: THE DISCIPLE OF CHRIST’S RELATIONSHIP WITH EARTHLY GOVERNMENT
[The headings have been placed above in the image of the table of contents just to give you an idea of what is in this almost 20,000-word article and its scope. I hope you will find it helpful and even uplifting to know how to relate to earthly government and to have a full understanding of who is the real Ruler of this world. When I think of the madness of the Chief Priests declaring that they had no king but Caesar (John 19:15), it chills me to the bone. So let’s declare it: “We have no King but Christ!”]
“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but a terror to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the one in authority? Then do what is right, and you will have his approval. For he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not carry the sword in vain. He is God’s servant, an agent of retribution to the wrongdoer. Therefore it is necessary to submit to authority, not only to avoid punishment, but also as a matter of conscience”Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verses 1-5
INTRODUCTION
The disciple of Christ has a very special relationship with earthly government. It is not like the relationship which others have with the powers which rule this world. For the disciple of Christ knows that all government in the cosmos was originally instigated by God for His own special purposes. Let’s face it, “He removes kings and He establishes them” (Book of Daniel, chapter 2, verse 21). As He says Himself: “By My great power and outstretched arm, I made the earth and the people and beasts on the face of it, and I give it to whom I please” (Book of Jeremiah, chapter 27, verse 5). Case closed!
Thus, the disciple of Christ knows that it is God who is the real Governor of everything, regardless of what atheistic, idolatrous or outright evil human beings may believe about their earthly masters: “For exaltation comes neither from east nor west, nor out of the desert, but it is God who judges; He brings down one and exalts another” (Book of Psalms, 75, verses 6-7). Anyone who sets themselves as a ruler in this world — whether good or evil — only does so because God permits it to be so. For God even permits evil rulers to reign, either as a judgement on a people or to bring His own plans to fruition via inscrutable means. Thus, God is the real Ruler and therefore disciples of Christ will always rely on Him as their Governor and see all those who are in earthly governmental power as mere agents and servants of that Divine government, one way or another.
Because of this relationship and understanding which disciples of Christ have regarding earthly government, it would be impossible for them to become anarchists of any kind. Some folks have a very naïve view that if left alone by governments people would live peacefully in cute green communities and the world would thrive. There are certainly some who may be able to live like that but they are very, very few; and they would no doubt only last for a while before corruption set in, even if only coming from outside influences, which would be inevitable. Christ’s disciples understand very well the corruption which resides in the untransformed human heart. Like their Mentor, Christ, they understand the darkness in this world and they know “what is in people” (Gospel of John, chapter 2, verses 23-25; Gospel of Mark, chapter 7, verses 20-23), and they realise that such overarching waywardness needs firm, just government and continual oversight, or anarchy and lawlessness would soon prevail across the globe.
Many New Age or ‘Truther’ types assume that all government is evil, ipso facto, and that all manifestations of authority are the result of the narcissistic, sociopathic, psychotic desire for control. While it is true that a great many positions of authority — whether in government or any other powerful role — are occupied by people who are indeed narcissistic, sociopathic and even psychotic, the actual original principle of government itself is not. It is here that we come to ask a number of questions so that this paper will stimulate our thinking on these matters: 1) When did a Global, Divinely-Appointed Form of Civil Authority First Occur? 2) How and Why did Governmental Nation-States Come into Being as Administrators of Civil Authority? 3) Is there any Kind of Civil Government Especially Favoured by God? 4) What is the Disciple of Christ’s Relationship with Civil Authority?
So, to our first question…
I. WHEN DID A GLOBAL, DIVINELY-APPOINTED FORM OF CIVIL AUTHORITY FIRST OCCUR?
In the Bible, we discover the first glimmerings and foundation of Divinely-appointed civil authority immediately after the subsidence of the worldwide Flood in the following Bible text:
“Surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind. But as for you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out across the earth and multiply upon it”Book of Genesis, chapter 9, verses 5-7
Here we have what we can call the ‘post-diluvian Magna Carta’, the great charter of the new kingdom of nature which was then being set up — the former charter having been removed in the Flood. Now you may say: “How do you know that there is a formalized civil authority involved here?” Well, we must have the first glimmerings of some kind of formal civil authority here, because capital punishment is commanded for the crime of murder. There must have been some way of administering that formally rather than by the use of a destructive vigilante service, where anyone (miscreant or not) takes the law into their own hands, which would surely not be God’s way of proceeding. Hence, we must have here the first flush of civil government, even if only in crude form.
Until the judgement of the Flood, there had been no formally ordained kind of human government. What rule there was had been exercised haphazardly by clan-heads and warrior-chieftains. There had been no properly organised civil rulership with objective laws laid down publicly by God. There is an interesting lesson here: People would now have to learn that prescribed human law was necessary for the stability of life and that wickedness could not go unchecked, as it had been previously, before the Flood, when “the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time” (Book of Genesis, chapter 6, verse 5).
So, in chapter 9 of the Book of Genesis, we see the first shimmer of Divinely-ordained, organised human government being brought in. Now when we compare many other sacred texts on the matter of the foundation of human government, we discover that there is a Divine mandate which is binding on any civil authority which comes into being, and that Divine mandate involves a number of elements which I want to bring out here.
The first aspect of that binding Divine mandate is that
1. God Requires all Civil Leaders to Acknowledge Him Alone as the Fountainhead of their (and all) Authority
Such acknowledgement is not merely a polite suggestion — it is mandatory. King Nebuchadnezzar (who plainly eventually submitted to God) was tormented by Him until he confessed that “the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whom He wishes, setting over it the lowliest of men” (Book of Daniel, chapter 4, verse 17).
Similarly, the heads of state who are drunk on their own power are clearly told to submit to the God of this cosmos, and specifically to Christ, in the last verse of the second Psalm (which is all about the government of God): “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish in your rebellion, when His wrath ignites in an instant. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him” (reiterated in the Book of Acts, chapter 13, verse 33). The use of the word “kiss” there refers to the kiss of homage. So to “kiss the Son” means to pay due homage and adoration to the Son of God, Christ, who is indeed God. God requires all civil leaders to acknowledge Him alone as the fountainhead of all authority, otherwise Divine judgement will fall on them one way or another. That is part of the divine mandate on civil authority.
Another aspect of the Divine mandate which is binding on any civil authority is
2. The Promotion of the Welfare of the People
We read above that: “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind”. The welfare of the people is at God’s heart here, for human beings were originally made in the image of God. In terms of righteousness and holiness, that image was terribly defaced through the Fall. As David said, “All have turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Book of Psalms, 14, verse 3; Letter to the Romans, chapter 3, verse 10). [For those who would like to know more about this profound subject, a new major article on human corruption is in preparation, entitled “There is None who Does Good: Human Corruption in Biblical & Historical Perspective”, which will appear on this website when I have completed it]. That defacing of the image of God in people remains so to this day, except in all those who are reconciled to God through Christ, and in whom therefore that image is being restored (Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 29; Letter to the Colossians, chapter 3, verses 9-10). But the underlying principle that human beings were originally created in the image of God remains, nevertheless. Murder of the human being cannot be tolerated in any society because of the reality of this image. To kill a human is an assault on God Himself.
Furthermore, the Apostle writes in his Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 4 of the civil authority’s need to promote the welfare of the people, describing authority as being: “God’s servant to you for good”. “For your good” — to promote goodness. Governments are servants of God for that purpose, and they should recognise that. The general welfare of the people is being promoted here, on both a material level and a spiritual one also. What about outlawing the practise of outright witchcraft (sorcery) and sexual perversions along with other blatant works of the devil — should that not also be part of the promotion of the welfare of the people to protect them from the workings of evil (by their own hand or that of others) and from predation by the devious on the weak? What about the outlawing of abortion as a form of contraceptive (which is also murder)? And what of the provision of health welfare and care for the weak, the vulnerable, the oppressed, special age groups and disabilities? Surely such concerns are all binding on any responsible civil government which recognises the rule of Divine law. When you realise how the police in these apostate times spend more energy on visiting and cautioning people who have offended others by telling the truth than on investigating burglaries and other crimes, then you can see how far we have strayed from the Divine mandate to protect the people and promote their welfare.
Thus, there is a Divine mandate to promote the welfare of the people. However, that Divine mandate not only commands civil authorities to promote the welfare of the people but it also commands them…
3. To Uphold Law and Order
In the text we looked at above in the Book of Genesis, chapter 9, when God says: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed…”, the principle is that He is putting a burden on the human civil authority to exercise law and order in the face of human corruption and criminality. And we know that it is not only murder which would be a punishable offence. Speaking of the power invested in the civil ruler, the Apostle Paul says that: “he does not carry the sword in vain. He is God’s servant, an agent of retribution to the wrongdoer.” (Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 4). Civil authority involves the execution of judgement — ultimately God’s judgement by proxy — on the evildoer of any kind. That is the requirement of God, irrespective of how that works out in practice.
So we discover here that a further aspect of the Divine mandate on the civil authority is to uphold law and order firmly. Incidentally, this mandate applies not only to the internal upholding of law and order (the maintenance of a proper police force, etc.) but also to the external upholding of law and order. In other words, the civil authority is required by God to protect the people against invaders from outside the civic community who seek to disturb the peace or exercise tyranny. The defence of a country by a force specially created for such defence is logically part of the divine mandate to exercise law and order — not to roam around the world fighting proxy wars and meddling in the affairs of other nation-states, but solely to defend one’s own national territory.
But before moving to the next element in the Divine mandate on civil authorities, I want you to notice something important here: That in both sections of that 4th verse in the 13th chapter of the Letter to the Romans, the civil authority is referred to as “God’s servant” —a translation of the Koine Greek word diakonos, meaning “servant” (a word translated as “deacon” in relation to those who serve functionally in local churches).
Here we discover that in this fallen world, God has two “servants” ministering to His Divine ends: the civil authority and the Ekklesia, the true Church. But the ministries of these two are very different and they function separately. The role of the civil authority is the restraint of iniquity, whereas the role of the Church is to provide the remedy for it. These two servant ministries in this fallen world are meant to complement each other — although sometimes they will come into conflict, as we will see in the final section of this paper.
A fourth mandate of the Lord God concerning the civil authority is
4. That it Must Rule with a Mixture of Might and Justice
God expects strong rule, firm rule, unequivocal rule; but He also requires just rule by goodhearted men. This is most important. Narcissists, corruptible men, and outright psychopaths are not at all desired. We see this principle outlined when Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, under Divine inspiration, commends his son-in-law to:
“select capable men from among the people—God-fearing, trustworthy men who are averse to dishonest gain. Appoint them over the people as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. Have these men judge the people at all times. Then they can bring you any major issue, but all minor cases they can judge on their own, so that your load may be lightened as they share it with you. If you follow this advice and God so directs you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people can go home in peace” (emphasis added).Book of Exodus, chapter 18, verses 21-23
Then, after that, when God speaks of the later setting-up of a king over Israel, He says to all the people (who perversely craved a king “just like the nations have”):
“When you enter the land that the lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,’ you are to appoint over yourselves the king whom the lord your God shall choose. Appoint a king from among your brothers; you are not to set over yourselves a foreigner who is not one of your brothers. But the king must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire more horses, for the lord has said, ‘You are never to go back that way again.’ He must not take many wives for himself, lest his heart go astray. He must not accumulate for himself large amounts of silver and gold”.Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 17, verses 14-17
Thus, civil authority is plainly required by God to be just, equitable and immune to corruption. That is the Divine expectation. We have now seen that God formally inaugurated civil authority at a point in history. Now we ask the question:
II. HOW AND WHY DID NATION STATES COME INTO BEING AS ADMINISTRATORS OF CIVIL AUTHORITY?
Within a comparatively brief time (probably 100 years or so) of the regulation being given concerning the principle of capital punishment — the ordinance for the inauguration of civil authority — we see individual nations coming into being. In the Book of Genesis, chapter 10, verse 5, we read that “the maritime peoples separated into their territories, according to their languages, by clans within their nations”. Then in verse 25, we read: “Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided”. Now the Hebrew name, Peleg, is derived from the word palag (פָלַג), which means division. A division had taken place.
Although some have speculated that this verse 25 could refer to some kind of break-up of physical continents, the far more likely and natural reading is that it refers to the event recorded in the next chapter in the Book of Genesis — the divine judgement and scattering at Babel which we read about in chapter 11. In other words, the world was then divided into clearly defined individual, separate nation-states. At the heart of those nations would be the embodiment of the civil authority governing the peoples. There is an important principle being established here, for there are very special reasons for this division of the world into separate nations. Why did God initiate nation-states? In the first place…
1. Nation-States were Originally Set Up as a Judgement on Human Hubris
God had originally said, in the wake of the Flood: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Book of Genesis, chapter 9, verse 1). But, in defiance of that mandate, the people said: “Come, let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth” (Book of Genesis, chapter 11, verse 4). This was a deliberate act of corporate disobedience to God. In fact, it was the first major attempt at being a confederated grouping, a kind of localised one-world conglomerate akin to the global government which hubristic nations are right now coming together to create in what amounts to the formation of Babel 2.0. To deal with that hubris back at Babel 1.0, individual nation-states bearing civil authority were then set up as a Divine response. It was plainly a Divine judgement on human hubris.
2. Nation-States were Set Up as an Embodiment of Civil Authority
The basic principles of civil government, as already outlined — to acknowledge God as the fountainhead of all authority, to promote the welfare of the people, to uphold law and order, to rule with both might and justice — all these now became enshrined in the nations which were coming into being in that primitive time. Regarding those nations, it was God who “determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. God intended that they would seek Him and then hopefully reach out for Him and find Him” (Book of Acts, chapter 17, verses 26-27), and they should have followed in the prescribed ways laid down by Him to Noah after the Flood.
According to Scripture, “In past generations, God let all nations go their own way” (Book of Acts, chapter 14, verse 16). However, they turned to pagan idolatry and debauchery, although they should never have done so. This was the corruption of the human heart in action, as laid out by Paul in the 1st chapter of his Letter to the Romans:
“although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonouring of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen. For this reason God gave them over to dishonourable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless”.Letter to the Romans, chapter 1, verses 21-31
That is a reasonable and accurate summary of human corruption to a greater or lesser degree and with some or more of those characteristics on display. All the false smiles, New Agey fantasies, soft (repressed) voices and spiritual bypassing in the world cannot overturn that accurate assessment of human nature. Sure, many can keep up a pretence, or have developed a persona, which can make you think they do not fit into Paul’s scathing account. But sooner or later, when the chips are down, the real character will be shown. For the untransformed human ignores the desires of God and always does “whatever seems right in his own eyes”. The natural state of the untransformed human is to aggrandize the self and to deny the fact that the Christ is God manifested in the flesh, all of which is the real ‘Satanism’.
Nevertheless, God had a plan. He used His own nation Israel to bring the truth to the nations — in a very limited way in the Old Testament era (though anyone from outside Israel could seek refuge among them and be well-received, e.g. Book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 34), but then in a graciously full manner when the Christ came as the Messiah. And alongside this great plan of God in salvation, there was another plan — a diabolical plan — and this brings us to the third reason why God caused the division of the world into separate civil-authority-bearing nations.
3. Nation-States were Set Up in Order to Restrain Satan’s World-plan from premature realisation
Apart from being a judgement on the people for disobedience in refusing to be scattered, or as a means of embodying civil authority on a national basis, the nations were also brought into being for the purposes of Divine limitation — as a means of restraint on Satan’s plan of world dominion from coming to any fruition before the appointed time. Thus, individual nation-states were set in place by God as a means of limiting the iniquitous ambitions of Satan among the world of humans from coming to their fulness prematurely. As He noted, “If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them”. Therefore, language was divided and the people were scattered and they thus developed separate nations. So it has remained over countless millennia until comparatively recent times, whereupon the League of Nations was set up in 1920, which became the United Nations in 1945 — those attending now hearing all proceedings in their own language, and forces are now hard at work to bring about a one-world government under the guise of a New World Order. One may well thus wonder if God has begun to lift the restraint He had placed on the ability to form a global confederation of nations, thereby preparing the way for the revealing of the Antichrist.
We need to understand that wrapped up in the process of redemptive history has been Satan’s desire to set up his kingdom on earth, onto which he was hurled down after a mighty spiritual battle with the archangel Michael and his good angels, as a result of Christ’s ascension (Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 9). If we read the prophetic Scriptures correctly, we discover that he will indeed be permitted to set up his earthly kingdom — but it will only be temporarily, in God’s time as the end of the age approaches, and in order to fulfil God’s purposes. So, we read, regarding nations states, that “God has put it into their hearts to carry out His purpose by uniting to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled” (Book of Revelation, chapter 17, verse 17). We see here that God will permit the nations to foment their global liaison, one-world government, which will come about through the power of Satan being directly delegated to the Antichrist (Book of Revelation, chapter, 13, verse 2). [I recommend downloading free of charge my commentary on the Book of Revelation, “The Essential Apocalypse”, in order to make some sense of it].
Alongside of this, chapter 20, verses 1-3, in the Book of Revelation, should be understood as referring to the continued limitation placed upon Satan throughout this “present evil age” to prevent him from prematurely deceiving the nations into a Christ-hating, Church-slaughtering brief but awful period under the sway of the Antichrist until the time when it is right for that to happen. In this way, we can see that a window was opened in history, after Christ’s victory over Satan, for salvation to be possible for a time across this world — what we can call the Gospel Age or the Church Age. This runs from the time of Christ’s victory until His Second Coming and is also known in the sacred texts as “the last days” (as I wrote about in a recent article entitled “Are We Living in the Endtimes?”).
Obviously, it goes without saying that the oft-referred-to period of great tribulation, which the saints will also have to undergo, will not last for very long but will be brought to a swift conclusion with the return of the Christ, who will consume the entire godless scenario and the Antichrist He “will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 8).
So, although Satan, through the Antichrist who he energizes, will one day be permitted his “little period of time” of terror-rule in preparation for his eternal judgement, the fact is that throughout history God has continually prevented this mystery of lawlessness from reaching its evil climax prematurely by intervening in the world process of events. The Flood was the first instance of such divine intervention. Then, only one hundred years later, we find the next instance at Babel. Matthew Henry paraphrases God’s words as He looked down on the arrogant builders of the tower:
“Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language. If they continue as one, much of the earth will be left uninhabited; the power of their prince will soon be exorbitant; wickedness and profaneness will be insufferably rampant, for they will strengthen one another’s hands in it; and, which is worst of all, there will be an overbalance to the church, and these children of men, if thus incorporated, will swallow up the little remnant of God’s children”.
There is a powerful spiritual truth which lies behind the Bible story of the Tower of Babel, and which has a great bearing on our understanding of modern Europe and other ‘superstates’ (e.g. the USA). Noah’s great-grandson, Nimrod, started a kingdom which was centred in a part of ancient Mesopotamia known as Shinar. Within this kingdom lay the city which came to be known as Babel (the forerunner to Babylon). This Nimrod is referred to as being “a mighty one in the earth” and “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Book of Genesis, chapter 10, verses 8-9). The phrase “before the Lord” carries the significance of being “in the face of the Lord”, in the sense of setting himself up as something special in front of God, as in our phrase “to fly in the face of…” something or someone.
When we learn that the name Nimrod likely comes from a Hebrew root meaning revolt or rebel, we have here an image of a tyrant setting himself up against God and building an earthly kingdom for that purpose. Thus, this Nimrod is a forerunner or ‘type’ of the ultimate rebel, the “man of lawlessness” or “Antichrist” who is prophesied by the Apostle Paul as heading up the great revolt against God and His Ekklesia as the end of this age approaches.
The Babel of Nimrod’s kingdom was set up in direct defiance of God’s earlier covenant with Noah, which stipulated that all his descendants, after the Flood, should “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Book of Genesis, chapter 9, verse 1). Instead of obeying this, the entire peoples of that time had gathered themselves together in one place, “in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there” (Book of Genesis, chapter 11, verse 2) in a corporate entity in the same spirit as the global government which is being attempted in earnest in our own time right now (Babel 2.0). With great arrogance, as we have seen above, these people had said: “Come, let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth” (Book of Genesis, chapter 11, verse 4). In other words, they were collectively, in their own strength, in defiance of God, setting up the first one-world, ecumenical, autonomous, political and religious superstate. Surely, there is no other way to understand it.
What we can learn from the episode at Babel is that national divisions and language barriers in the world have been set in place by God in order to hinder the progress of Satan’s one-world kingdom until the time is historically and spiritually right for it to occur, i.e. when the world has finally “filled up the cup of its iniquity”, has the necessary global reach, has the technology and surveillance in place to enable that global reach to be realised, and has irreversibly rendered itself liable to final judgement.
Separate, individual sovereign nation-states have been ordained by God not only to look after the general welfare of the people but also to uphold the rule of law and order to prevent anarchy in a fallen world. This Divine function on earth operates alongside the division of languages and separate nation-states to ensure the necessary prevention of a premature antichristian global unity. Surely we can judge that the concept of a trans-national superstate is, therefore, as much an infringement of Divine Law as the invention of Esperanto! Therefore any attempt to create a superstate or one-worldness today is a modern exhibition of the same atheistic hubris and rebellious pagan spirit which built the Tower of Babel. Only those in the grip of Satan would be pressing for global government “in the interests of world unity and world peace” and striving to build a kingdom on earth. Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world” (Gospel of John, chapter 18, verse 36) and when He returns at the end of this age He will not be setting up a kingdom on earth but making way for a new heaven and new earth (Book of Revelation, chapters 21-22).
The result of this Babel episode in human history was a judgement from God which was to have a momentous effect on all later civilizations. For God brought into being the supernatural division of languages which would then spread across the world (Book of Genesis, chapter 11, verses 7-8). The purpose behind that was to prevent the nations from embarking on any similar future enterprise in defiance of God. For the setting-up of a “kingdom” on earth in crass counterfeit of the spiritual kingdom of God has been the aim of Satan and his fallen angels from the commencement of human history.
The Bible clearly shows that history is building up to the time when this satanic earthly kingdom will be achieved (Book of Revelation, chapter 20, verses 7-9), albeit on a temporary basis. After the period of worldwide rebellion and apostasy against God and His Law, a global political and religious system will indeed be set up under the dominion of the despotic figure we have already referred to as the Antichrist (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 2-12). Furthermore, as even a mainstream writer such as John Stott stated in his commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Thessalonians (IVP, 1991, p.167), “Antichrist’s revolt… will even infiltrate and engulf the nominal church”. That engulfment of the nominal church — i.e. the mainstream denominational churches and even many more liberal evangelical churches (what I call ‘evanjellycal’, wobbling about like a jelly and compromising with the satanic world-system) — can be seen all around us today.
Many discerning disciples of Christ, looking at the complete lack of healthy teaching and morality in the mainline denominations today — with their widespread ‘wokeness’, charismatic lunacy, liberalistic false teaching and harboured sexual perversion — may well wonder if the preparation for that engulfment is already under way.
III. IS THERE ANY KIND OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT ESPECIALLY FAVOURED BY GOD?
There are three main types of civil government which have been enacted through nation-states in the course of history. First, there is Monarchy, where one person rules absolutely — whether called a king or an emperor or similar title. Then there is Aristocracy (or Oligarchy), which involves government on the part of a few elite leaders working together. Thirdly, there is Democracy, in which the people choose their leaders and are thus said to have the power.
It is true that rulership by a lone monarch or emperor can descend into dictatorship, oppression and cruelty if it is not mitigated by a team of wise advisors. However, at the other end of the spectrum, pure democracy — in which all is supposedly determined by the people — is neither feasible nor biblical and either turns into a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (which is no democracy at all) or it becomes another more subtle form of dictatorship whereby the people are manipulated by certain leaders into thinking they have power, when in fact they are merely “voter fodder” who place their “X” in the box on the voting paper every few years according to the media manipulations exercised by an elite which secretly holds the true reins of power (which is mostly what happens).
As a matter of fact, Democracy is never what it is made out to be. There has never been a single instance in history where Democracy has been anything other than a huge confidence trick on the people. Because where there is direct representation of the people by a delegate of a political party, there will be media manipulation and lies. The winner in any governmental democratic electoral situation is simply the one with the most money and/or the most cleverly managed electoral publicity campaign and/or who has been secretly sponsored by the apparatchiks of the power-elite.
Furthermore, the process which we call democracy has provided one of the main conduits by which the occult stream of world influence has been most able to be carried forward, as I will show below.
The Perils of “People Power”
The word “democracy” comes from two Greek words, demos meaning ‘the people’, and kratos meaning ‘power’. Democracy is basically ‘people-power’. Where do we find such a governmental idea represented in the Bible? Just as people will “heap up for themselves” religious teachers who will serve up what their itching ears want to hear (Second Letter to Timothy, chapter 4, verses 3-4), so they will also heap up for themselves political leaders who tickle their desires in the same way. However, as a wise man once put it, “The thing that we think is best for ourselves is often worst for our souls”, unless we are transformed spiritually and grow in wisdom and discernment.
A case in point is in the First Book of Samuel, chapter 8, where we see such errant ‘people-power’ in action. There, the people decided that they did not want to have Samuel as God’s servant prophet to judge them any longer. Instead, they wanted a king “like all the nations” (verse 5) — a human ruler of their own making. God’s response to this outburst of democracy was as follows, when He said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king” (verse 7)
It is highly significant that it was not their rejection of their original Divinely-appointed ruler, Samuel, for which God criticized them, but rather their implicit rejection of God Himself. After this, they would eventually come to see that their exercise of people power would backfire on them. It is not the will of the people which decides anything but the will of God. Until we learn that simple fact, we will be ruled miserably. As Christ put it: “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 5).
It is true that whoever is in rulership over a civil domain must listen to the cries of the people — must seek their highest welfare — must never become coldhearted or remote — must always be prepared to listen and care for the needs of a population. To that extent, a ruler must be democratically-minded — must want to represent the real objective needs of the people (as opposed to their mere subjective wants, which can easily be manipulated). But the idea that the people must decide everything and that those who rule must be continually at their beck and call to heed their every whim is not an efficient or even a desirable form of government.
Democracy & the ‘Enlightenment’
It is of interest to learn that ‘people power’ as a modern political force in Europe had its earthly origins in the ‘Enlightenment’ which was actually inspired by Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry (all of which I detailed in my 1994 book, “The Serpent & the Cross”). In his important book, “In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order”, Ian Taylor wrote:
“Throughout history, it has been believed that kings, good or bad, were set up by divine appointment. The belief extends far beyond the Judeo-Christian West… Nevertheless, man’s natural inclination is to rebel against divine rulership for whatever cause, and the first successful confrontation of this age took place in England, in 1215, with the signing of the Magna Carta. Here, the monarch of the day was made subject to the law of the land instead of remaining placed above the law. In France, however, the kings still exercised their divine rights until the French Revolution, which began in 1789. Rousseau’s Social Contract, published in 1762, put forward a radical and secular theory of government based on a general will of the people rather than on laws appointed by God, paving the way for the French Revolution and, incidentally, for the American Revolution, announced by the Declaration of Independence thirteen years earlier in 1776. By removing God from human affairs and declaring man to be inherently good, Rousseau had set the stage for secular humanism”.Ian T. Taylor, “In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order”, TFE Publishing, 1987, pp.31-32
And the democratic form of civil government that is so prized today is the product of this secular humanism — with its vain belief that human beings are inherently good and able to choose the good for themselves.
People-Power & Occultism
Occultists and esotericists know this very well. For example, the college known as the “School for Esoteric Studies”, which was founded by the occultist Alice B. Bailey in New York, has put out a pamphlet which recognises only too well that the foremost historical event which has paved the way for their occult schedule was
“the signing of the Magna Carta. This document was signed at Runnymede, during the reign of King John on June 15, 1215 A.D. Here the idea of liberation from authority was presented with the emphasis upon the personal liberty and rights of the individual. The growth and development of this basic idea repeated itself in other major events: The founding of the French Republic with its emphasis on human liberty… The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights (in the U.S.) determining national policy… The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, bringing the whole question into the international field, and in principle guaranteeing to men and women everywhere in the world liberty and freedom to develop the divine reality within themselves” [This occult college is an offshoot of theosophist Alice Bailey’s Lucis Trust. Emphasis added].Jan van der Linden, The Inner Life of the United Nations (School for Esoteric Studies Inc., n.d.), pp.3-4.
It is vitally important to understand this fact: The political, social and religious freedom which is sought by untransformed human beings — regardless of any high-sounding altruistic aims — will always be used ultimately ‘to develop the divine reality within themselves’, that is, to lift themselves up as gods, all of which goes right back to the original malevolent (though ultimately empty) promise of Satan to our first parents in the Garden if they would follow him: “You will be like God (or gods)” (Book of Genesis, chapter 3, verse 5).
What we today call ‘democracy’ had always been the highest ideal of the secret societies and occult sects in the heart of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Accordingly, the Illuminati, an occult brotherhood founded by Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria in 1776, has been well described as ‘A secret society devoted to anti-priestly and democratic ideals’ [John R. Hinnells (ed.), “The Penguin Dictionary of Religions”, Penguin, 1984, p.161]. Because of their hatred of God, their belief in the innate goodness of humanity and their desire to give full rein to human creative powers, it has always been the aim of occultists to gain as much freedom for humans as possible — the ‘liberty and freedom to develop the divine reality within themselves’, as the above-mentioned “School for Esoteric Studies” phrased it.
People-Power and Revolutions
The main feature of the French, American and Russian revolutions was that they were humanist-motivated and inspired by essential Freemasonic principles — not to mention the cabals which manipulated them from behind the scenes.
One of the most successful confidence tricks in modern history has been the claim that the USA was founded by Christians as a Christian country. That idea is laughable. Very few Americans realise that their revolution was a Freemasonic experiment carried through by Freemasons and liberal deists with close links to the most esoteric lodges in the world. Benjamin Franklin, for example, had an impeccable history in Freemasonry — including being Venerable Master of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris, where John Paul Jones, US naval chief, was also a member (click on the “object description” link lower down the page at https://www.senate.gov/art-artifacts/fine-art/sculpture/24_00003_000.htm and see also the information provided next to the portrait at http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/franklin_b/franklin_b.html where it is stated clearly that Franklin occupied many freemasonic positions and was Venerable Master, 1779-80, 1782, at the Loge des Neuf Soeurs, Paris). Although Thomas Jefferson is not publicly considered to have been a Freemason, he was sympathetic to the cause and held Freemasons in high esteem. After my researches, I speculate that Jefferson was a closet freemason who worked in the shadows. (An interesting account is at this freemasonic site http://mastermason.com/dresden/thomas_jefferson.htm ). Jefferson also compiled his own version of the New Testament — known as the Jefferson Bible — which extracted all the miracles of Jesus and most of the mentions of the supernatural, including the sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, as well as passages that portray Jesus as divine. He simply presented a system of morals from the words of Jesus, whom he likened to Socrates and other philosophers. Very Masonic! As for George Washington, see below in the main text.
The idea that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (U.S. Declaration of Independence) completely ignores the reality of the Fall (a classic freemasonic humanistic oversight), and also undermines the fact that human beings have not been created principally, as it states in that Declaration, for the purpose of “Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (which is a self-centred, godless, humanistic enterprise), but to be in communion with God and to glorify Him alone. This obsession with human rights over and above human duties is nothing less than institutionalized self-centeredness. In spite of the token Deistic mention of a Creator and God-given inalienable rights, the reality is that the one true God revealed in the Bible and His unique sovereignty have really been taken out of the equation by the instigators of the American revolution.
The American revolution’s sister revolution in France (for the two stand together) is no different. Article 3 of the French revolutionary “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” made the completely mistaken assertion that “The source of all sovereignty lies essentially in the Nation. No corporate body, no individual may exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from it”. However, the Bible plainly states: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which is from God. The authorities that exist have been appointed by God” (Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 1). True authority does not emanate from the people but from God. This is a truth which is almost completely ignored today, as much in the churches as in governments and in the world in general. Just as governmental authority does not have its source in the nation but in God, so also ecclesiastical authority does not reside in the church but in God (a fact that many churches and denominations today appear to ignore). In many ways, what people call “democracy” is nothing less than the rejection of God and the deification of Man.
“Democracy” & Freemasonry
At this point I could expound at some length about the extent of the occult freemasonic “democratic” connections between France and the USA. What people fail to realise is that humanistic revolutionary notions concerning “La Liberté” are of occult illuminati origins — going back into Rosicrucianism before the European reformation, as people dreamed of being free from the “tyranny” of religion (Christianity in particular) and released from the idea of divinely ordained government. Although many may not realise it, there was massive involvement of Freemasonry in both the French and American revolutions which were intimately connected, as the French assisted the Americans in their revolution.
Most Americans today just will not accept that their country is founded on freemasonic humanism and is, in fact, a Masonic experiment. The statue of Liberty itself — the ultimate symbol of the American revolution and the freedom it allegedly stands for — is a freemasonic project from start to finish, financed by freemasons from France and America and sculpted by French freemasonic initiate Frederic Bartholdi (1834-1904), who was initiated into freemasonry at the age of forty.
The torch in so-called Lady Liberty’s hand is, in fact, the Luciferic light “enlightening the world”, which Freemasonry reveres. The laying of the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty on August 5th, 1884, was a totally Masonic ceremony convened by William A. Brodie, Grand Master of Masons in New York. The image below depicts the commemorative plaque laid by freemasons 100 years after the original stone-laying ceremony).
Ninety-one years before the laying of the Statue of Liberty, the laying of the cornerstone of the United States Capitol on September 18th, 1793, was also a freemasonic affair, with George Washington and other attending dignitaries in full Masonic regalia. The picture below depicts that Cornerstone laying ceremony.
Another picture (see left) shows George Washington in full Masonic regalia surrounded by potent Masonic symbols, including an all-seeing eye as capstone above his head. According to Greek historian Plutarch (46-120), in his work on Isis and Osiris, the main god of Egypt (the religious source of much of the mythology of Freemasonry) was represented by the symbol of an eye. According to A.E. Waite’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, the all-seeing eye is a symbol of “when the eye of the soul is opened and God is known of the heart”. This mystical occult Freemasonic symbol is at the centre of the making of the New World Order envisaged by Rosicrucians and Freemasons for centuries. This all-seeing eye symbol — designed by Freemasons in 1782 — is now the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America and is found on one-dollar U.S. notes over the words “Novus Ordo Seclorum” — New World Order (see below right).
Once again, we see that the USA is not really a Christian country at all and never really has been. That is just some folklore peddled by fantasy-merchants who know how to make lies seem like truth. The USA is, instead, a Masonic experiment from start to finish, designed to effect the envisaged New World Order dreamed of by all masons and occultists in fulfilment of the desire of their father, Satan, to build his pretended one-world governmental kingdom on earth. To understand this further, please read 33rd degree Freemason Manly P. Hall’s “The Secret Destiny of America”, Philosophical Research Society, 1991, which details the real background history to the United States of America from an esoteric standpoint.
We see here how ideas about “democracy” and a country being “Christian” can mask a profound level of wickedness with serious spiritual implications for the disciple of Christ. If we cannot tell the difference between true disciples and textbook Deists and Freemasons, how will we ever be able to discern the signs of the times? This is why the slogan, “Make America great again”, is so hollow. It never has been great; that is just a mesmeric mantra. But it has always been a place of bloodthirsty, massacring, serial war-mongering, hypocritical, ultra-materialistic, pseudo-patriotic, plastic posturing — a harbinger of the New World Order and a preparer of the way for the empire of the Antichrist.
In each case of major revolution in this world in the past five-hundred years, the biblical notion that rulers are appointed by God (with them under command to serve Jesus Christ, whether they realise it or not: Psalm 2, verses 10-12) was eclipsed by the popular concept of “people power”, or democracy, through which governments are believed to be the product of the choice of the people — though they are really the choice of the power-elite through the cunning manipulation of the people, for that is what democracy today is really all about.
Today, this notion of “social democracy”, because it is usually contrasted with the worst of dictatorships, is reckoned to be the best form of governmental authority; but this is to misunderstand the purpose of government in the Divine Plan. Both evil despotism and social democracy are unbiblical distortions of God’s way of government. The Bible does not sanction cruel and rapacious government (see, for example, the Book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verses 4-20; Book of Jeremiah, chapter 5, verses 28-29; Book of Ezekiel, chapter 34, verses 2-10), although, in the providence of God, such a government may come to pass as a judgement upon a rebellious people. But neither do the sacred texts endorse the concept of a majority of the people choosing the rulers who best suit their own whimsical desires (usually less work for more money). Both despotism and democracy have been designed by the devil and his earthly agents to further his global strategy in the Gospel Age.
It is a sad fact that many Christians believe that the humanistic form of government we call ‘social democracy’ somehow has God’s personal endorsement and that, through a process they call ‘common grace’, the pinnacle of ‘civilisation’ will be reached as Christians and non-Christians work together for the good of all and for the preserving of this planet. But that is not at all the prospect for the future shown by the Bible, as I have already demonstrated in countless articles and books. I will never forget the time when a ‘Christian’ environmentally-minded person said to me after a church service, “You are waiting for Jesus to come back. I want to make sure there is a world for Him to come back to!” I hope I do not have to deconstruct those words for any of my readers.
One of Satan’s neatest strategies in recent times has been to dupe so many people calling themselves ‘Christians’ into imagining that there is such a thing as ‘civilisation’, upward human progress, and that untransformed men and women are somehow not really so bad after all. Never has there been such a need for a powerful restatement of brass-tacks teaching on human corruption. In truth, it is not any innate goodness in humanity which makes people dream up democratic institutions and inalienable human rights, but rather the desire to be free from Divine authority.
The form of civil government we today call ‘democracy’ had always been the highest ideal of the secret societies and occult sects in the heart of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And it is democracy which has always played havoc with Divine appointment in the Scriptures.
“Democracy” & Human Hubris
Remember that it was God who originally said, in the wake of the Flood: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”. But it was ‘we the people’ who later said: “Come, let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens; that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth”. “Never mind what that so-called Jehovah has said — let’s go for what we want”. That was the thinking. This is the natural outcome of democracy, people power — which is inevitably fallen-people-power. That same outburst of fallen-people-power is what lies behind the machinations of governmental civil authority today. It is what has lain behind the machinations of government and the cabals behind them for centuries.
The whole of the Gospel Age — from the Ascension to the Second Coming, from the time that Satan was “hurled down to earth” with his demonic realm (Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 9) — has been the final battle-throes of the thwarted would-be ruler of the world, Satan. In a twisted effort to delay their inevitable demise (knowing they only have a short time to do it, Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 12), the fallen angelic realm has waged war against the spread of the Gospel and the work of Christ by infiltrating government and religion and subverting them for their own dastardly purposes.
That is the significance of the two “beasts” in the 13th chapter of the Book of Revelation — the two aspects of Satan’s stranglehold on the world in his kingdom-building strategy. One represents governance and the other represents religion, philosophy and science, as they have been used to pave the way for the revealing of the Antichrist and his imagined theocracy — the Antichrist being the ultimate manifestation of the “beast”.
The more a government ‘talks up’ “freedom and democracy”, the less likely it is to be truly democratic and genuinely free. The governmental model that we call “Democracy” today has simply been a convenient cover for the real power-brokers and wealth-amassers to take the reins — the power-elite which really governs — while bringing their conspiratorial schemes to pass and making the people imagine that it is they who have chosen their rulers. This is a far cry from the times in which an emperor ruled with a rod of iron over the people. There was no mass of conspiracies against the people or a multitude of hidden agendas of satanic subversion such as there is now.
One hears a great deal of talk about how the world must be made a free place through the spread of democracy and the toppling of dictatorships. But the power-elite only prefers “democracies” to dictatorships because a “democracy” is more easily open to its manipulations than a dictatorship. If they “own” the dictator, these “democratic” countries will put up with him and leave him alone, regardless of how beastly he is. But if the dictator is opposed to the machinations of the power-elite, then they will topple him from power — allegedly in the name of “democracy” but in reality in order to pursue their own monetary and strategic aims.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was probably the most powerful example of this. For Saddam Hussein was originally installed via a coup d’etat assisted by the US CIA. However, when Saddam no longer served their financial and strategic purposes in the Middle-East and began to reject US influence and seek to establish his independence, he was put out of office in favour of a more easily manipulated “democratically elected” puppet regime. So it has been done the world over by the USA and “allied forces” for decades.
The fact that government and civil authority today are such a clear expression of naked greed and the product of cabalistic schemes has many repercussions for the faithful disciple of Christ. How are we to respond to such governments, when they now clearly ARE a terror to good conduct (cf. Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 3), in the sense that they are so clearly part of the satanic world-system and will assassinate the character of a whistleblower or even his or her body for revealing or speaking truth? Are we to respond with unconditional obedience in all respects? This is the subject of our next major section in this paper.
IV. WHAT IS THE DISCIPLE OF CHRIST’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CIVIL AUTHORITY?
The relationship between the disciple of Christ and the civil authority is clearly laid down in the sacred texts. We must always be very careful to ensure that we really do understand what those texts say about such matters rather than merely going along with what has become a common — but inadequate — interpretation and body of opinion in the ‘Christian’ scene.
It is important to realise that there are two ways of undermining Scripture. The first is to distort it completely so that it comes to mean something completely different from its original intention. The second is to fall short of the fullness of what God intended in the Scripture, so that it no longer carries a three-dimensional message. Many otherwise well-meaning people commit this second form of misinterpretation. Usually this is because of some fear of the full implications of what the Bible teaches at that point. But, in the final analysis, the outcome of both forms of misinterpretation is the same: The twisting of Scripture and an expectation that others will follow suit — those not doing so being labeled as “mavericks” or worse.
Allow me to go into this a little with an examination of the text in the first part of the Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, and other texts which have a bearing on this subject, because I think that there are important issues at stake which many may not have considered.
First and foremost,
1. We Must Acknowledge the Sovereignty of God Over all Affairs of the World
“There is no authority except that which is from God. The authorities that exist have been appointed by God”.Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 1
Everything which comes to pass has been decreed by God. Even leaders who are popularly elected have been so elected through His will. However, this does not mean that He positively approves of everyone who rises to civil office. For here we must distinguish between God’s Preceptive or Decretive will and what we can call His Permissive will. They do not at all contradict each other but, obviously, they function differently and for different purposes. Let me explain…
God’s Preceptive or Decretive Will involves those things which He has revealed as being good and pleasing to Him, such as in His commandments (precepts, decrees), etc. On the other hand, His Permissive Will involves those things which are not really pleasing to Him but which He permits to happen for a higher purpose in His providence even though they are actually sinful and wrong. For example, bad things happen in the world on a daily basis (in the sense that He does not intervene to prevent those things), yet this is not indicative of His positive approval of them. The stark reality is that He often permits bad things to happen in order to fulfil His higher purpose, for example Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers or even the Lord Jesus’ crucifixion, etc. He permits wars to be waged and evil leaders to come to power, yet this does not mean that He positively approves of them. It would therefore be a real mistake to adhere to the following logical syllogism, which is a very common way of thinking:
First premise: God puts those in power whom He wills to be there.
Second premise: The election of our leader is God’s will.
Conclusion: Therefore, we must obey our leader in all respects, as if he was God’s own mouthpiece.
If it could be positively shown that a leader had come to power because God positively approved of Him, then we should indeed obey Him in all respects. If the voice of the Lord boomed out across the world saying “This president is my beloved servant. Obey Him”, then our actions would be clear. But we do not have that kind of confirmation about world leaders today. To be sure, their appointment is a reflection of the will of God, in the sense that people get the leaders they deserve, but this does not mean that they deserve our obedience in all respects, as I will show further below.
Nevertheless, we must begin with an acknowledgement of His supremacy in all things.
2. Our Submission to Governance is Rooted in the Governance of God
“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God”.Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 1
Because God has put in place civil authority in order to restrain evil and promote the welfare of the people, disciples of Christ should support those worthy principles of governance and set an example by being law-abiding, caring citizens. This is something which we need to understand well. This has nothing to do with being a government ‘dupe’ or ‘patsy’ (far from it!). But our support for good civil authority is really a witness to our belief in the authority of God and His restraining, caring hand in this fallen world. However, the corollary of this must surely be that if we are to be good witnesses to the Lord and His restraining, caring hand in this fallen world, then we should not support evil civil government, for to do so would be a bad witness. Many professing ‘Christians’ do not appreciate the importance of this fact. Their desire to be faithful to the Lord can be overshadowed by the fact that they unquestioningly give support and credence to bad governments as well as good because they assume that the mere existence of a government is a sign of God’s approval of, and support for, that government and all that it does.
This brings us our next heading when looking at Romans, chapter 13:
3. Our Submission to Governing Authorities is not Absolute but Conditional
It is very important that we grasp this, for it is often assumed by Christians that God expects us to submit to governmental authority on all levels, on all occasions and in every way. However, this is not the case at all. Disciples of Christ are the counterculture people and being counterculture (i.e. living contrary to the satanically-inspired world-system) will sometimes bring us into conflict with governing authorities if they are initiating satanic proceedings or advocating satanic principles. Our submission to governing authorities must therefore be seen against the background of the following considerations:
i. When a Government Does God’s Work well, it is Functioning Well as God’s Servant
“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the one in authority? Then do what is right, and you will have his approval. For he is God’s servant for your good”.Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verses 3-4a
A government is essentially a servant of God — literally God’s “Deacon” (as the Koine Greek puts it in the New Testament), in order to promote goodness. The governments of the world make up God’s “Diaconate” to carry out His ordinances and decrees in this fallen world in governance, judgement and care. In fact, the Lord calls on all governments to submit to Him alone as He is their overseer. He expects earthly rulers to be subservient to Him, as I have shown earlier. Paul here is clearly speaking about governments being “a terror” to bad conduct. But what if they are a terror to good conduct and not at all subservient to Him but subservient to the strategies of Satan? What if they fail to keep good law and order, fail to act with wisdom but fall into corruption and do not really care for the welfare of the people? What are we to do then?
The answer is surely this:
ii. When a Government Fails to Ratify God’s Mandate, it Forfeits the Right to Obedience in Certain Respects from Faithful Disciples of Christ
It is at this point that many professing ‘Christians’ will shudder in disbelief. However, consider this: All the ideas in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verses 1-7, assume that the civil authority concerned is fulfilling the Lord’s mandate on civil government to maintain order and promote the welfare of the people. When such a civil authority is in power then it is indeed “God’s servant for your good”.
However, we know very well that governments can fail to fulfil God’s mandates to maintain order and promote the welfare of the people. Therefore, at this point, we have to make important decisions. For example, if our government decides to wage an unjust, expensive and bloody war, which is clearly designed to promote the interests of the elite rather than defend the shores of its own nation-state, are we expected by God to go along with it, participate in it or tacitly ignore it without so much as a whimper? Or are we going to refuse to fight and then expose the injustice as a good witness before God?
If our government embarks on a policy of mass arrests and torture as a means of oppressing the people, are we going to keep quiet or are we going to write about it and expose it for what it really is, or ensure that such behaviour is somehow outlawed by a responsible body (if that is at all possible — long shot, I know)? If our government enacts a law which makes fellowship with other disciples illegal, will we roll over and let them scratch our stomachs or will we organize underground meetings? If our government commands us to identify ourselves with things “beastly” on pain of persecution and death, will we allow ourselves to be so identified or will we refuse to have anything to do with it?
Now, you may say that I am citing extreme examples which would only rear their heads in a major way at the end of this age. But this is not the case at all, as governments even today carry out murderous schemes and wage illegal serial wars, as well as work against the welfare of the people, as I will show below. It boils down to this: Will we make ourselves guilty of faithlessness towards God or will we become guilty of civil disobedience in the cause of God’s honour and truth?
A case in point (though I could think of many) has been the dishonest and mendacious manner in which the entire Covid debacle has been handled, followed by the administration of a highly suspect and untested vaccine (the roll-out itself was the test!) which has injured and killed a huge number of people (which is why we are reading about so many young people ‘dying suddenly’, left, right and centre, during the last couple years), which has also been covered-up by those health organisations and governments which are responsible. Governments actually do not have independent powers in these matters and are dictated to by distinctly dodgy bodies such as the World Health Organisation and tendentious characters such as Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Most professing ‘Christians’, egged on by their pastors, docilely went along with it all. When I wrote an article about this, entitled “You Have Been Spooked”, showing how intelligence operatives and behavioural psychologists masterminded the whole thing (backed up by the propaganda enforcement of the 77th Brigade of the British Army, which wages psychological warfare), there was disapproval from a number in the Christian scene who thought that it was wrong to oppose the government because they were “doing their best under difficult circumstances”. We have come to a very strange place indeed when governments are regarded as “doing their best” and we should not rock the boat if they are in fact knowingly lying through their teeth about a pathogen (which was most likely created in a laboratory by government agencies in the first place), injecting untested materials into everyone, including children, forcing people by law not to associate (while the politicians themselves were partying as usual), and while colluding with spooks and behavioural “experts” on how best to mislead and deceive the people into compliance. There were not many pastors who wrote truthfully about Covid-19, but an exception is here: https://www.clr4u.org/covid-19-vaccines-and-vaccination-mandates-how-should-christians-respond/ by Dean Davis. It is a very thoughtful analysis of what should be the faithful disciple’s thinking about the entire Covid debacle. This article and Dean’s website were censored by Google and others during the pandemic (another utter disgrace) but now seems to be available again.
At this point, some will say that maybe God has deliberately placed incompetent and/or amoral leaders in positions of power as His judgment on a nation and therefore we have to honour that and submit to it. Obviously, He may well have done so. However, whether or not God has done such a thing has no impact on whether or not we submit to ungodly laws or remain silent about atrocities committed by ungodly governments. That is another issue altogether. For, although the Lord may have brought an evil government into power as a judgement on a people, it is not indicative of His positive approval of that government or its actions, but merely of His permissive will.
The fact that God may permit a brutal tyrant to come to power for His own judgemental purposes does not mean that we must therefore approve of that tyrant’s actions or that we must meekly obey everything which that tyrant demands of us. On the contrary, if we are to be true to our God-given morality and values as disciples of Christ, we are distinctly called to civil disobedience under certain circumstances. At the very least, we are entitled to speak publicly and judgementally about the amoral actions of a cruel, corrupt and rapacious government.
Of course, this does not mean that we are free to break any civil laws which are enacted by a corrupt government. We have to uphold the law of the land at all times if that law does not conflict with the law of God. We are only free to resist those civil laws or expose government actions which go against God’s laws, though always being sure to season it all with grace and love. We are not to behave like hotheads or in a fit of hysteria, but in considered wisdom and as ambassadors of Christ. It is a question of faithfulness. We must not be like the toadying chief priests who said to Pontius Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar!” (Gospel of John, chapter 19, verse 15). Our King is Christ, God manifested in the flesh. In other words, we are called to obey God rather than men when there is a conflict between the law of God and the laws of men. We are not called to endorse evil but to expose it and resist it.
Disciples of Christ are walking a tightrope in this world today when it comes to their relationship with earthly government. For although there is an apostolic instruction to conform in general to the good laws of the land, the idea and practice of “government” across the world at the present time has become synonymous with the satanic world-system. National governments, despite appearing to be “voted into office” by the people, have become mere pawns in the policies of a power-elite which is plainly enabling the strategic manoeuvres of the forces of darkness. In our own day, the empires of the world have devised a plan to usher in a totalitarian world government by stealth. Along with successive previous governments, they have murdered, lied and attempted to govern by fear in order to effect this New World Order, which is plainly in the service of Satan. At the same time, church leaders have been involved in a plan to usher in an interfaith global religious consensus, a “New Spirituality”, which completely destroys the claims of Christ (as I outlined in my free-to-download 2022 eBook, “Discerning the Signs of the Times”).
The New World Order and this New Spirituality are two sides of the same coin, the two beasts in their late adolescence, the one political, the other religious, each interfacing with the other. The evidence for all this is inescapable. Yet the majority of professing ‘Christians’ would rather play at being ostriches and ridicule the Noahs of our time than face up to reality and make themselves unpopular or seemingly unpatriotic.
So how are disciples of Christ supposed to behave under such circumstances? Is there a dichotomy between the call to submit to government and the need to be faithful to God? My answer to that question is “No”. Our way is clear, if we do not complicate it with misplaced legalistic burdens. The sacred texts calls us to “discern the signs of the times” and to avoid taking “the mark of the beast”. That would immediately bring us into conflict with the civil authorities (for taking the ‘mark of the beast’ simply means aligning oneself with the satanic world-system, the “beast”); and if — out of faithfulness to our glorious God — we refuse to go along with the lies and activities of mendacious, murderous governments, we will become guilty of civil disobedience. The Lord will not count us guilty, but the governments will. So be it! For this is our calling.
When the rulers of Israel “strictly commanded” the apostles not to teach others about the truth of Christ, they responded by saying “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Book of Acts, chapter 5, verse 29). This is what we can call a “control text” in terms of the way to interpret the Letter to the Romans, chapter 13. Good Bible interpretation means that we not only take verses in their immediate context but that we also view them in the context of other texts elsewhere in Scripture which shed some light on, or expand on, or clarify the original text.
By doing a comparison between the first verses of Romans 13 and Acts chapter 5, verse 29, we can see that when men make ungodly laws, we do not have to submit but we must obey God rather than men. Our duty under law and in matters of civil authority or governance is first and foremost to God. If a government makes decrees or passes laws which are not in accordance with the laws of God, then we have a right — nay, a duty! — to become disobedient to the ungodly laws of that government because we are then being obedient to God. It seems ridiculous to have to say it, but if one discerns darkness, then one must not be conformed to it!
To put it even more forcefully, we have a moral duty — as representatives of a good and holy God — to become a thorn in the side of a bad government, especially during these times when national governments are merely pawns for the power-elite of the New World Order. When the Apostle John warned us not to “take the mark of the beast”, he was essentially warning us not to be suckered by the myriad deceptions of governments that are in hock to Satan — with an eye on the ultimate deception by the ultimate world government under the emperorship of the ultimate fallen man at the end of this age. Taking “the mark of the beast” is a personal action which has enormous spiritual implications for our souls. To throw in one’s lot with a corrupt antichristian government is a personal action which has serious fallout in one’s spiritual life and for which one must take responsibility. This is what so many fail to understand today. It is our duty to look beyond the masks of modern government and to penetrate the reality which lies behind the facade.
It is the duty of the disciple of Christ to expose and to stand up against corruption in all walks of life. It is certainly his or her duty not to endorse, give credence to, or tacitly go along with the corruption of civil authorities. As the conservative theologian, John Murray, put it so succinctly:
“To declare the whole counsel of God in reference to political matters, as well as other matters, is definitely an ecclesiastical function… If it [the church] is to be faithful to its commission it must make its voice heard and felt in reference to public questions. The church may not supinely stand aside and ignore political corruption, for example, on the ground that to pronounce judgment on such issues is to intermeddle in politics. Political corruption is sin, it is public sin, and the church denies its vocation if it does not reprove it”.Prof. John Murray, Collected Writings, Banner of Truth, Vol. 1, pp. 256-7
Most Christians seem to think that such civil disobedience or the reproving of civil authorities is not for them but only for those ‘Christians’ who will be around at the time of the end when the Antichrist is in power. However, this is not the case at all. For ‘antichrist’ with a small “a” is the driving force behind governmental power long before the actual “Antichrist” is revealed on the world stage. All of this is, in fact, the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’ (First Letter of John, chapter 4, verse 3).
iii. Civil Disobedience in the Sacred Texts
Many in Scripture committed acts of civil disobedience in the face of an oppressive governmental power. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego engaged in civil disobedience in the Book of Daniel, chapter 3 when they refused to follow the king’s command to bow down and worship a gold image. They had God’s approval. Similarly, in Daniel, chapter 6, we read that the prophet refused to obey a governmental decree not to pray to God by so praying immediately the decree had been signed by the king. That was civil disobedience but it had God’s approval. In the Book of Acts, we read that the rulers, elders, and scribes called Peter and John
“in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, ‘Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than God. For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard’”.Book of Acts 4:18-19
That was blatant, in-your-face civil disobedience. The truth is that if all these faithful people had not committed civil disobedience, it would have been a sin. The Bible clearly shows that it is a serious sin to go along with human law or the will of the people, instead of standing up to them when they are contrary to the law of God (First Book of Samuel, chapter 15, verse 24). This is not just about laws against prayer or proclaiming Jesus. It is about governments forcing people to commit acts which are contrary to the decretive will of God, or which are harmful for the health of our God-given bodies, or which force us to act against what is commensurate with the integrity and authenticity of a disciple of Christ.
To lay aside the commandments of God and meekly follow the traditions of men is likely to get you labeled as a “hypocrite” by the Christ (Gospel of Mark, chapter 7, verses 6-9). On pain of hellfire, disciples of Christ are specifically commanded to become dissidents who practise civil disobedience when the government makes demands of us which would result in us being unfaithful to the law of God, or giving credence to the beast, which is the satanic world-system (Book of Revelation, chapter 14, verses 8-13).
This is something which is not widely understood or accepted in certain Christian circles — except if you are living in China or as some kind of vague notion connected with the Great Tribulation in the future. In fact, any kind of civil disobedience is distinctly frowned upon and those who suggest it are labeled as “antinomians” or “anarchists” or, in my own case, I have been labelled as wearing a “tin foil hat”, by Christians! I know; it’s so childish.
In recent decades, we have seen millions upon millions of professing ‘Christians’ give vocal public support to governments which practise mass murder, financial greed and innumerable acts of corruption (for example, the Iraq War and Covid lies). Worst of all, they then label those who do not go along with them as being “faithless”, “rebellious” and “ungodly”. This is a terrible travesty. We could even go so far as to say that it is a sign of apostasy.
I believe that there are a number of identifiable reasons for this misplaced rejection of civil disobedience and slavish conformity to anti-God governmental actions and decrees. Allow me to expand on this.
4. Why Do So Many ‘Christians’ Mistakenly oppose the Idea of Civil Disobedience?
It is interesting to analyze the reasons behind the opposition of Christians to civil disobedience. The first reason that most Christians oppose all forms of civil disobedience is because of…
i. A Profound Ignorance of Scripture
Many seem only to have skimmed through the admonitions in Rom.13 and concluded that submission to civil authority is total, without ever having thought through the implications of what that might mean when they may come under persecution. They seem to think it only applies when, for example, they would be commanded not to go to church or not to pray. They seem to be ignorant of the many instances in Scripture where God’s faithful servants have had to disobey authority in many circumstances in order to remain faithful to the Lord. Even the simple command to “Come out of [Babylon], My people, so that you will not share in her sins or contract any of her plagues” (Book of Revelation, chapter 18, verse 4) also involves not partaking in bad things cooked up by bad rulers. That will inevitably lead you into civil disobedience. We may well wonder whether this is a case of a selective ignorance and that they have chosen to ignore such Scriptures because it would mean an end to the comfortable life which their brand of Christianity has brought them.
This brings us to the second reason that most Christians oppose all forms of civil disobedience:
ii. A Reluctance to Give Up Being “Fat-Cat” Comfortable
Let’s face it, most churches in the Western world are breeding grounds for fat-cats and powermongers — although they certainly do not see themselves that way. Church, for them, is not a place which is opposed to the corrupt culture of the world but somewhere cosy where they can enjoy a communitarian experience and can put their knees under the table and feel secure; kind of like an exclusive golf club.
For them, becoming a Christian and being part of the body of Christ is not a matter of being a spiritual square peg in a worldly round hole. It is somewhere that they can fit in and conform to a bouquet of norms invented by men, or even work out how to “manifest” worldly wealth through ‘affirmations’ (as practised by many ‘megachurches’ today), all the while assuaging themselves that they are more spiritual than most others. In short, they have bought into “religion in its silver slippers”, as Bunyan so perfectly put it, in his “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. This is a fitting description for much of Christianity today. When Bunyan’s “Christian” asked the hypocrite, Mr By-Ends, about himself, he replied:
“My wife is a very virtuous woman, the daughter of a virtuous woman; she was my Lady Feigning’s daughter, therefore she came of a very honourable family, and is arrived to such a pitch of breeding, that she knows how to carry it to all, even to prince and peasant. It is true we somewhat differ in religion from those of the stricter sort, yet only in two small points; first, we never strive against wind and tide; secondly, we are always most zealous when religion goes in his silver slippers; we love much to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines, and the people applaud him”. [To read the above extract in its full context, please go to http://bunyan.classicauthors.net/PilgrimsProgressThe/PilgrimsProgressThe7.html ].John Bunyan, “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Book I, Part 6.
Indeed. Point made. Most professing ‘Christians’ today would never dream of striving against wind and tide (even though that is their true calling, see Letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verse 2; Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 19; chapter 17, verse 14; Letter to the Galatians, chapter 1, verse 4; Letter of James, chapter 4, verse 4; First Letter of John, chapter 3, verse 13; chapter 5, verse 19), and they want only showy, flashy, ear-tickling, popular, entertainment religion which the world would never despise (though it might often find it somewhat bizarre).
Such people plainly would not become involved in any kind of civil disobedience as it may lead to discomfort and unpopularity and undermine their advancement in the social strata of their adopted church home. They are reluctant to give up being “fat-cat” comfortable.
The third reason that most Christians oppose all forms of civil disobedience is because of
iii. An Understandable but Misplaced Desire to Maintain a Good Reputation
One of the reasons that early Christian leaders emphasised the fact that Christians should not get involved in revolutionary organisations of zealots devoted to overthrowing the emperor was because they knew that this could lead to the complete annihilation of the visible church and a staining of the spiritual standing of the faith. They wanted to preserve the reputation of Christians as being law-abiding and supportive of government as God’s way of managing this fallen world. Such a desire is understandable and is still applicable today.
However, there is a vast difference between exposing or refusing to support a government’s corrupt activities and getting involved in plots to overthrow it! Obviously, one wants to preserve the reputation of Christ’s disciples and the Ekklesia but if one has to become a supporter of evil in order to do that, then we have lost our focus and created a dichotomy between our expressed faith and our actions (aka hypocrisy).
I believe that it would better serve the reputation of the Ekklesia and the cause of Christ if His disciples were seen by the world to oppose evil or corrupt government rather than supporting it, either tacitly or expressly. To oppose such things would be in keeping with our moral and spiritual stance and, I believe, with the mind of God.
The fourth reason that so many Christians oppose all forms of civil disobedience is because of
iv. The Confusion of Patriotism with Godliness
You have heard the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness”. Well, for many professing ‘Christians’ — especially in the USA — it is patriotism which is next to godliness. Because of the religious connotations of “the stars and stripes” and the association of patriotic or military rallies with hymns and religious occasions, many professing ‘Christians’ have come to identify faith in religion with faithfulness to a country.
The pomposity and gravitas of patriotism thus becomes confused with religious worship. This is one of the main reasons that national anthems bear an extraordinary resemblance to hymns and flags (which are nothing more than rags) are hung in churches. A kind of touchstone begins to be used whereby the more patriotic a person is the more spiritual he feels he has become. But when you become a disciple of Christ, you are part of the only transnational body in the world, and while you will seek the wellbeing of your country of birth, your mind and soul have transcended national boundaries on a spiritual level and your battles are spiritual ones rather than all that indulgent jingoism and serial physical wars.
This religio-patriotism is the mindset which took hold so powerfully in Nazi Germany. The fatherland becomes a kind of idol from which all things flow and is confused with the true God and godliness. Strange notions begin to be held about the special uniqueness of one’s country and its people. A purist fanaticism sets in and others are judged for their spiritual faithfulness according to their level of patriotism. Unpatriotic people are then judged to be ungodly and treacherous. However, it is very easy to turn one’s ‘fatherland’ into an idol, and at that point it has crossed the line. All that putting of one’s hand on one’s heart (into which even young schoolchildren are brainwashed as a startling parallel to Chinese schoolkids reciting chunks of Mao Tse-tung’s [Mao Zedong’s] Little Red Book) while reciting the ‘pledge of allegiance’ or while singing the national anthem, is a kind of idolatry which should have no place in the life of a faithful disciple of Christ, who should be the only one to whom we give our allegiance.
The misplaced patriotism of many otherwise law-abiding and respectable people has led to them supporting their government to such an extent that they have thereby backed war crimes and supported corrupt governance which must be repugnant to God. It happened in Nazi Germany and it is still happening today in the USA — being defensive about the corruptions of the FBI and the CIA which they extol, wanting to believe so much (in the face of all the odds!) that one’s president is ‘a Christian’. I remember when many people were claiming to me that Donald Trump (who was brought up in Norman Vincent Peale’s wayward “church” in New York) had been “sent by God” and how he had a wonderful spiritual advisor/pastor. But it was all a QAnon chimera, and his advisor/pastor is a wacko female false teacher on the charismatic spectrum who you can see here praying for him in that pagan gobbledygook known as “tongues”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgowhCDa-s4&t=110s . The visible church really has become a madhouse.
So the fourth reason that so many Christians oppose all forms of civil disobedience is because of this confusion between patriotism and godliness.
The fifth reason that most Christians oppose all forms of civil disobedience is because of
v. A Fear of Repercussions
Many Christians are simply afraid of what might happen if they were to disobey their government. They cringe at the thought of being persecuted or arrested and don’t like to be out of favour with anyone. Such people can very easily be controlled, for fear lends itself to exploitation. But where there is no fear there cannot be such zombie-like control.
We must always recall the promises of God’s protection and also His promises of reward to those who hang on to the bitter end in the face of persecution and attack (e.g. Book of Revelation, chapter 2, verses 10-11). “The one who endures to the end will be saved”. The Lord has not given us a spirit of fear.
The sixth reason why so many Christians generally oppose the idea of civil disobedience is because of
vi. The Fear of Independent Thought Processes
There are many “control-freaks” in the Christian scene today. To such people, the idea of individual Christians committing acts of civil disobedience is abhorrent. This is because to them personally such behaviour is a tremendous threat. For they know very well that those who stand up to the phony control of governments will no doubt also stand up to the phony control which is exercised over the Christian body by ‘heavy shepherds’, tyrants, gossip-mongers and other kinds of tin-pot power-wielders. Thus, their opposition to people who refuse to support corrupt government and would rather expose it is because of their fear that such refusal and exposition might extend into their own churches and engulf their own power-structures!
We are not called to be blind followers of corrupt regimes — whether secular or ecclesiastical. We are called to be fearlessly independent thinkers who are dedicated to furthering the cause of God. It is not from God that we are to be independent but from manmade cultural or subcultural influences.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Finally, let us consider how there is often an interesting double-standard at work when professing ‘Christians’ frown down on those who refuse to kowtow to corrupt government. For many of those who disapprove of all acts of civil disobedience on their own territory willingly applaud Christians in far-flung places of the world who hold meetings or preach the gospel or protest government oppression and injustice when doing so is a clear resistance of their governments and a disobedience of their country’s laws. This is a real blind-spot and is indicative of the double-think of which so many professing ‘Christians’ today are capable.
For if all professing ‘Christians’ in the Western world think it is right for disciples of Christ in Third World countries to exercise civil disobedience in the face of oppressive, corrupt dictatorships, why do they judge it wrong for those in their own lands to reprove or expose any governmental corruption, oppression or injustice? It is because they mistakenly believe that Western governments are benign examples of social democracy (and are therefore incapable of the level of corruption which exists in far-flung regimes), rather than the fraudulent, warmongering, censorious, controlling centres of hegemony that Western nations are.
Surely this state of affairs has much to say about the hypocrisy and double-standards of “First World” Christianity. It might even point, once more, to yet another facet of the gathering apostasy.
CONCLUSION
Many have made the charge that I am being “unbiblical” when I take issue with various aspects of world government today. Especially they did so when I published a paper (which became a book) which was critical of the CIA as an instrument of corrupt government indulging in mind control and even in the occult. (You can download that book free of charge here). “Governments”, they say, “and their agencies, have been appointed by God, therefore you have no right to speak against them”.
After smugly quoting the first few verses of Romans, chapter 13, they continue: “Therefore, if governing authorities are God’s ministers to us for good, then we have no business in exposing their evils or resisting them”. I reply that I have no intentions of resisting them by violent means. The passage cited above is a warning to us not to “resist the authority” by disobeying the good laws of the land. I uphold that absolutely. However, there are important exceptions to this. For when God tells us to be subject to the governing authorities, He is not telling us to be toadies, to kowtow (or turn a blind eye) to activities which are abhorrent to Him or to practise things which are plainly against His own law. As I have already pointed out, when Peter was commanded by the authorities to stop teaching about Christ, he and the other apostles said: “We ought to obey God rather than men”.
The apostolic voice of Paul said: “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of humans” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 23). On this basis, I do not wish to become a slave of the New World Order, which has been set up by ungodly people to overturn everything which I hold precious in the Lord, and which has been conceived as the vehicle for Satan’s strategy in the setting up of a one-world government and the revealing of the Antichrist.
I will obey the laws of the government of my land, insofar as they correspond with the laws of my God and are for the public good. But I will never submit to any laws, precepts, commands or coercions which cannot be sanctioned from the sacred texts and which are plainly not for the good of humanity but are designed rather to cause harm and enslavement through lies and the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’. Neither will I submit to any manipulations or programmes of mind control, psychological operations or false flag operations. Neither will I blindly or dumbly accept government lies and disinformation. Neither will I prop up their evil aggressions and warmongering as a foreign policy. Neither will I pretend that their skullduggery is a benign and helpful force for humanity. Neither will I explicitly nor implicitly give credence to their ungodly governance and dissembling duplicity. Instead, I will expose, confute and refute the works of darkness, just as the Scripture says (Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 11).
Old Testament Prophets Rebuked Evil Government
I have good precedents for this in the sacred texts: The Old Testament prophets did not merely denounce spiritual adultery; they also took the leaders to task for oppression, exploitation and acts of repressive violence. The Scriptures are brimming over with such examples (e.g. Book of Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 17; chapter 33, verses 15-16; chapter 49, verse 26; Book of Jeremiah, chapter 22, verse 17; Book of Ezekiel, chapter 18, verse 12; chapter 22, verse 7; Gospel of Luke, chapter 3, verses 12-14).
In the New Testament, James clearly states that the two signs that there is true religion in the soul is a compassion for all weaker, oppressed people and keeping oneself from being morally tainted by the corruptions of the world (Letter of James, chapter 1, verse 27). If ever there was a rallying cry for us to dissent from supporting exploitative and warmongering governments, it is in that Scripture.
If you think that real Christians shouldn’t say things like this about governing bodies, you will have to take issue with the Old Testament prophets, who continually exposed not only the religious corruption of theocratic Israel but also the political corruption which led to social oppression (e.g. Book of Micah, chapter 3, verses 1-2 & 9; Book of Jeremiah, chapter 2, verse 34; chapter 5, verses 27-29; Book of Ezekiel, chapter 22, verse 29).
Professing ‘Christians’ in their droves have stood quietly by for centuries while successive despots massacred millions. In some notable cases, they even instigated the massacres (Inquisitions, Crusades, burning countless hordes at the stake, etc.). However, the word of the Lord, through Isaiah, says: “Rebuke the oppressor” (Book of Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 17). And so I will! Vigorously.
The Lord Jesus Rebuked Evil Government
If you then go on to tell me that “Jesus didn’t expose corruption among the authorities, so why should you?”, I will respond energetically by saying: “Try reading chapter 23 of the Gospel of Matthew for one of the most blistering attacks on the corruption of rulers [those who “sit in Moses’ seat”] that one could ever read”. Broods of vipers are just as active today as they were then — probably even more so!
Thus, verbally and in writing I will assume a benign but unswerving “prophetic” role (in the broadest, truthtelling, forthtelling sense of the term) concerning corrupt and godless government. I will refuse to be led up the garden path by their machinations, manipulations and outright murderous lies. I will remind them of what God requires of them and in what ways their actions are of the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’. I will respect them as God’s appointed lawmakers for the good of the people, but I will never condone them as Satan’s co-opted lawbreakers and takers of lives. I will be a terrible thorn in their side but never a knowing knife in their heart.
The Ominous Parallel
The power which showed itself in Nazi Germany for a brief time is the same power which lies behind the empire of the New World Order today, spearheaded by successive “neo-conservative” usurper governments (of both red and blue, including the present one) and pseudo-liberals in the USA. Make no mistake, this is not merely a political or governmental scenario. It has massive spiritual ramifications for every disciple of Christ alive today.
Until Christians understand the fact that politics and governance engender spiritual fallout, there will continue to be a vast veil of ignorance in the compromised churches. A missionary in Peru wrote the following words to me:
“It is a terrible reality that many Christians can be complicit in murder and genocide simply through silence. I have just read a book on Nazi Germany and how the Church was complicit in its support of Hitler. The majority of Pastors signed allegiance to Hitler and the confessing Church also capitulated through the persecution. Out of the thousands of Pastors very few stood up against the injustice and murder. In times like that Bible Study and prayer in silence without standing up against injustice is to be complicit with tyranny. One man shamefully mentioned that behind his Church the trains used to pass and they could hear the sounds of the Jews screaming as the train went by. He said they all just sang their hymns louder to drown the cries! These so called Christians who write such words want to forget about justice and have their Bible Studies and prayer meetings. But in some circumstances such as took place in Germany Christians who fight for justice would have the choice of living or dying. Saving their lives for Hitler and their country, or standing with the oppressed and persecuted. Losing their lives for Christ and the Gospel was a path few chose, but the sifting of the Church blew away the chaff and revealed what higher critics and liberalism left in the Church in Germany. The Cross was replaced with the Swastika in the Churches. These same people who interpret Romans 13 in the same way will also go along with the tide of iniquity when it comes, and find comfort in their Bible Studies and prayer while the Antichrist goes about his vile wickedness. I for one pray that if we ever find ourselves in the same situation that by the grace of God we will be willing to give our lives and stand with the oppressed and persecuted whatever the cost. There are many striking parallels between what happened then and what is gathering pace in our day, especially in the churches in America”.
These parallels are very sobering. As I have stated above, the church has been infiltrated by enemy forces whose goal is the complete destruction of true Christian witness and credibility. They peddle false doctrine; they engage in the antics of the circus; they undermine pastors and teachers; they spread lies and slanderous rumours about good Christian ministries; some even pose as genuine Christian ministries and set up websites from which they gain a following and then publish damning articles to destroy other ministries — especially those which have been efficiently exposing the works of darkness. All this and more is happening today, and most professing ‘Christians’ haven’t even got a clue about it, and if they have a clue, they wouldn’t act on it anyway.
All this has enormous implications for the future: If professing ‘Christians’ today are so blind that they are programmed to believe the current lie being distilled through the media about a phony “war against terrorism”, programmed to accept whatever anyone in a suit in secular or pastoral authority tells them, programmed to believe everything they read in books, on the internet and in the media, how will they cope when the biggest lie of all time comes to pass (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 11)?
My reason for sharing all this with you in this paper is not to fill your hearts with fear or to make you a victim of paranoia about where the world is heading. But I do want to discourage you from making an idol out of your country, your government and your military or security agencies; I do want to deter you from false notions of patriotism; I do want to enable you to see through the charade of “democracy” today, and to encourage you to look beyond and behind what your government or the Illuminati-controlled mainstream media tells you.
Our Business is Undeception
Remember this: The disciples of Christ, above all other people, are in the business of UNdeceiving people. The business of the true disciple of Christ is to bring people out of bondage and illusion into the light of genuine understanding. The business of the true disciple of Christ is to see right through the foolishness of this evil world and to stand apart from it — not to assist it or propagate it.
How often have professing ‘Christians’ merely propped up evil and corrupt regimes — whether in Germany, South Africa, the United States of America, or wherever? If I had lived in Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa I would have been incarcerated or even assassinated by the corrupt powers there because, as a faithful disciple of Christ, I would not have been able to support their destructive policies and keep my mouth shut.
If I lived today in neoconservative America, I would no doubt have the Homeland Security apparatchiks constantly breathing down my neck because I cannot support their perverted understanding of patriotism or go along with their pretended “war against terrorism” which is really a facade to bring totalitarianism in by the backdoor!
The time has come, as radical disciples of Christ, to stand up and be counted. It is not our place to be manipulated by a compromised media and corrupt government, but rather to “expose/reprove/confute/refute the works of darkness”, so that we are better equipped as evangelists. Yes! As evangelists! How can people take us seriously as purveyors of spiritual truth if we so easily accept and propagate worldly lies? Surely, the two are entirely incompatible.
No Submission to Satanism
Rather than being on the brink of a global revival, as is mistakenly imagined by so many Christians today, the world is gradually building up to a state of planetary Satanism. If you think that is an extreme remark, you should check out the last book of your Bible, the Book of Revelation. In the prophetic chapters 13 to 19, we see the clear implementation of a totalitarian regime which is not only satanic in the broadest sense but which is in the service of the demonic realm and which actually pays homage to the prince of darkness himself, the fallen archangel Satan — though he will not be seen as evil but as a saviour in counterfeit of the true Christ. There, we see that the devil delegates his evil power to a world leader whom John refers to as “the Antichrist” (First Letter of John, chapter 2, verse 18) and Paul calls the “man of lawlessness” or “son of perdition” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 3). Make no mistake about it: that will involve outright sorcery — “accompanied by the working of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and pseudo-wonder” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 9). That is Satanism and that is what all the developments of this evil age and this corrupt world are moving towards.
After the Antichrist is revealed to the world, the Scriptures state that “they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast” (Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verse 4). The beast is the satanic world-system which issues ultimately in the Antichrist and the dragon is Satan or the Devil (cf. the Book of Revelation, chapter 20, verse 2). We are heading towards a world in which most alive at the time will be caught up into blatant Satan worship without even realising that is what it is, the foundations of which are being laid down even as we read these words.
The whole of the time from the Ascension of Christ until the present has been the subtle build-up to the moment when this satanic world leader will be revealed. The ‘spirit of the Antichrist’ operates in secret throughout this age, until the actual Antichrist arrives on the scene. That is why it is called the “mystery of lawlessness”. It is a mystery which will one day be revealed. If you are alive at that time, you will have to decide whether you are going to serve Satan by being complicit in his government or whether you are going to serve God and refuse to go along with the evil machinations of government. If you take the latter course, it will be one of civil disobedience, and the Lord will approve of it and will reward you accordingly. The same goes for our own times today, which are surely just a preparatory period for that ultimate evil government.
The business of the disciple of Christ (and, above all, the business of church elders) is truth and the dismantling of falsehood in all its forms — even though it is guaranteed to get his character assassinated by mainstream ‘Christians’ or her body assassinated by the big players in the secular scene.
The disciple of Christ cannot proclaim the gospel with any credibility if s/he either ignores or gives the nod to institutionalized corruption of any kind. Neither can s/he be expected to be taken seriously as a servant of truth if s/he is a sycophant to corrupt powers and if s/he toadies tamely to oppressive or destructive regimes.
How can someone who is plainly brainwashed by the crude manipulations of this world have any credibility whatsoever as an evangelist telling the truth about Jesus Christ who is Himself the embodiment of truth, life and the pathway to God (Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 6)? Surely, to be credible evangelists and disciples of Christ, those disciples must be willing and able to stand up and be counted as those who resist and expose evil, whether it is in the world or (especially) in the church.
Our submission to government will always be conditional on whether or not we are being asked to submit to demands which are incompatible with the law of God. The more evil or corrupt a government becomes — i.e the more it moves away from fulfilling the mandate from God to enforce civil order and care for the welfare of the people — the more disciples of Christ will have to resist its evil and corruption.
The early church understood this well. In times of open persecution, the real church always knew it. But in today’s religious atmosphere — where religious fashions and fads and deciding which endless soppy choruses to sing in church are more important than being the spiritual people of the counter-culture — Christianity at large (though with notable exceptions) has become synonymous with the achievement of temporary earthly elements such as health, wealth, “wokeness” and community status.
A knowledge of true history empowers us to understand the present. Most of the evils happening today have happened earlier, in one form or another; though they may be more potent now and especially in the future. So, when all the forces and powers of darkness begin to come together openly as an enactment of persecution and murderous mayhem, if we understand history, we will not be blown away by the events of the day. We will have a context by which to understand what is happening to us. We will have the lessons of history to enable us to understand the circumstances of the present and the future.
Then we will also have the courage of our convictions to do what is right in relation to government and authority, regardless of what others may reproachfully say. More importantly, we will seek and have the approval of God.
Alan Morrison
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[For further information, the author can be contacted at diakrisis-project@outlook.com or under-the-radar@outlook.com
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© 2023, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. [The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]
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