Leaving Egypt Ministry, Obadiah D. Morris

Whatever one wishes to think of its origins, the “Fourth of July” is a day of peak idolatry for the empire. It is a day where all those evil things that God hated when He looked down upon all the past societies He destroyed are on full display: worshiping of false gods, waving the flags of the political regime, etc.

If the spirit of the day used to be one of throwing-off kings and their bondage, today it is one of embracing the bondage and accepting our status as slaves under the political elites. It is a day of pride in statism (e.g., claiming “this is the best country ever”), which is abhorrent to the Lord and decidedly disinterested in His kingdom. 

Even if this day’s origins were in killing kings and ending state rule (though it arguably wasn’t), the patriotic spirit today, which endorses the present regime as if it has been an unbroken string of greatness in government, is much more complimentary to political power than it is threatening. There is nothing more a State could hope for than for its slaves to be donning its flags on their clothing, cars, houses, campsites, etc. 

Not only can the State tolerate the festivities (parades, flags, etc) of this day, then, but they positively work in its favor. It is the very idolatrous activities of people on this day that empower the evil regime to exist. 

Even if the holiday has morphed in meaning and rituals since its earlier days, what it has become today—the annual pledge of allegiance and “happy birthday” to the State—is surely anathema to both Christianity and liberty. 

Furthermore, such things as cookouts and beer are the very things that keep Americans in a comfortable slavery and a false sense of liberty and prosperity. The nature of the festivities today—alcohol, barbecues, sports, parties—are “bread and circuses,” i.e., things that serve to pacify slaves.

As one prophet noted,

“This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness” (Ezekiel 16:49).

Americans today are complacent about the evils because as long as the food and entertainment are flowing, as long as the police haven’t drug them personally out of their vehicles and beat and caged them yet, then there must really be no evils going on or nothing to complain about. This is a day for the false sense of liberty and prosperity to reign. 

Whatever the merits or arguments for the political revolution on which this state holiday is based, it is today nothing more than a day for state worship and ignorance of the political captivity we live under. It is a day of ignorance for all the troubles we face and a day to put us off our guard and act like it is all sunshine and barbecues under the empire when it’s not. It is a day of acting like a massive state system has not grown up since 1776, of acting like we have some “limited government” paradise, and of acting like the plunderers never came back in to control people and property after being permanently cast off by revolution. 

Anyone who sees the urgent problems in our world should find a celebration of any kind to be awkward, to say the least. There is a vast discrepancy between the celebrations of this holiday and the system as it stands today. Babylon is falling, and our people, in a great display of passivity and idolatry, are out shooting fireworks thinking that everything is great in the land, that we’re an exception to the laws of God, and that we will never come under judgment for our evils. 

As if the scamdemic never happened, not to mention all the evils leading up to this point, Americans are back to Babylon-as-usual on this day.

But wasn’t it about liberation?

I think there are a lot of problems with even embracing the “real spirit” of the revolution. While there was plenty of religious sentiment among these men, this revolution and “secession” appears to ultimately have been a political event, not a true breakaway from politics. The Declaration, for instance, was passed by the “Congress” of the day. The Continental Army was a new centralization of force that would later become the standing army. And the aims were at creating a new Republic, not breaking away from statism altogether. 

The Christian idea of secession—of liberty under God and free people getting away from “states” entirely—is different: It involves separating ourselves into private communities that obey God, not breaking ourselves away from kings only to form “states” and, soon after, “constitutions” and national governments. 

Thus, to “get back to the real meaning” is still incompatible with the kingdom of God. Even if we wanted to talk about the founding of “The United States America,” then, this doesn’t represent the Christian ideal of free people in free communities; it represents a statist idea of believing that things work when men come together in a government (albeit supposedly “limited” ones and ones that are, at least ostensibly, not part of the British crown).     

While they may have thrown off foreign kings, Americans were never free from political elites telling them what to do. To establish a domestic government was then just as evil and unchristian as to live under the British crown. Any goodness in throwing off foreign kings was counteracted by embracing domestic statism. 

But what happened anyway?

I don’t wish to argue here the history of this cause so much as to comment on the appropriate action for the Christian considering what this day has become and how it is celebrated today. 

However, it is still important to ask what it did for us today and why people are still celebrating it. Such an event evidently didn’t bring us any liberty today. And no one seems to care. But it arguably didn’t bring any liberty ever. As H.L. Mencken commented over a century ago,

“There is seldom, if ever, any evidence that a new government that comes from a revolution will be any better than the old one. On the contrary, all the historical testimony runs the other way. Political revolutions do not accomplish anything of value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one gang of thieves for another…The American colonies gained little by their revolt in 1776. 25-years after the revolution they were in far worse conditions as free states than as colonies. The new government was more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical.”

As we see, things aren’t looking good even if one wants to try and defend “the real history” of this day. There was no lasting independence, if any at all, that came from this revolution. Not only should this be obvious today, but it was obvious in the very immediate years following the Revolution. Not even more than a decade could pass before there was a Constitution to centralize government further than it had been prior to the Revolution. From there on out, the American State was to progressively grow in its evils. 

Why celebrate?

What’s to celebrate when, at least in our times, no chains are being cast off, and no efforts are being made to free our people from political slavery? This is what we were called by God to do. “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6). 

Our people are in captivity and everyone is partying in the police state as if nothing is wrong. There is no reason for the Christian to be awestruck and excited on this day, but every reason to weep further at what our world has become. July 4th is a temptation to Christians to give into the idolatries of their neighbors. 

We don’t need political revolutions 

The fact that Americans are largely unrepentant statists today brings up a greater problem: Even if we were to get back to the “real spirit” of revolution (attacking rulers), it would only once again mean great evils in its place because men largely do not know God’s liberty. 

Americans are largely statist idolaters, just like all those wretched societies in the scriptures that ended in flames. This sinful idolatry for statism is why we have found ourselves captives. 

So it doesn’t even make sense to say we need to get back to the spirit of revolution, even though few who celebrate this day seem to have this notion at all. The real revolution that is needed is not a shooting war, but spiritual regeneration — for men to purify their wicked hearts and see the evil in their flag-waving, love of police and military, etc. 

The prophet Ezekiel taught that repentance was what is needed:

“If the wicked man turns from all the sins he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the transgressions he has committed will be held against him. Because of the righteousness he has practiced, he will live” (Ezekiel 18:21-22). 

What we see on July 4th is the opposite of repentance: It is to accept the American system as a lovely system that’s compatible with God. It is an ignorance of all the evils that it has committed and still commits. 

Judgment is coming upon this country and men need to be repenting instead of celebrating. Statism and its evil effects are punishments for violating the laws of God and deviating from His natural order. But God is a merciful God who will forgive statists. God tells us that we can avoid the disasters that come from statism if we turn back to Him.

“If that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent of the disaster I had planned to bring” (Jeremiah 18:8).

Far from turning from the evils, though, the celebrations of most people on July 4th are a further embrace of them. 

Without a change in men’s hearts, then, violent revolution will get us nowhere. But with a change in men’s hearts, it won’t be needed! If this is true, then the Christian has no more need for a celebration of the spirit of revolution than he does the modern interpretations of blindly waving a flag for the tyrannical socialist state. A revolution without repentance does not bring about change, and repentance would avoid the need for violence. 

If there was a radical, libertarian, secessionist spirit in the early days of this holiday, it is not what animates men when they wake up on this day and prepare to celebrate. For many of them, it’s a day to wear your “thin blue line” gang-symbol t-shirt out in public and show your support for the police state. 

Though one could argue that this day has deviated from its roots, that men used to do mock funerals of the king and understood this day as being associated with killing tyrants, it would seem more sensible for us to avoid this day entirely rather than to try and show statists how they’re doing it wrong. 

Though one could argue that such a day has been perverted by the state rulers by burying the secessionist narrative and turning people toward vague notions of “America” and “freedom” and getting men to celebrate the status quo, it still just doesn’t seem right to be the guy sitting around with all the other heathen statists thinking that you’re at least celebrating “what it really means.”

The “Fourth of July” has become a day to worship a false god, the State. 

Through Christian eyes

Even though I don’t think “independence from the king” ever meant “independence from political rulers,” I think what’s pertinent for us now is what such a celebration of “independence” means today, regardless of any history behind it (which still doesn’t look too good). Debating the merits of the revolution from a historical or philosophical perspective is not the purpose of this article.

One would be on sketchy ground to even try and make the Christian case for the Fourth of July under the assumption that the revolutionaries freed us from statism (they really didn’t). 

But this is hardly the case anyways. Most articles that attempt to reconcile the celebration of the Fourth of July with the Christian faith go much further to praise the military for “the freedoms” that they (supposedly) fought for. 

As one foolish article says, “We often forget our freedom of religion and other freedoms can only continue if our armed forces protect our nation and national interests.” 

This is the same thinking that gets every society in trouble in the scriptures: “Without Pharaoh, we wouldn’t be eating.” Freedom is all of a sudden attributed to “great men” and “founding fathers” instead of God. This is the thinking of all statists, who repeatedly tell us that, “without a State, everyone would be uneducated, left open to criminals, etc.”

We were supposed to always believe (or rather know) that, on the contrary, we are left unprotected and vulnerable to political rulers only when we don’t have God, not when we don’t have a state military. Any man of the scriptures would know how much the logic in the above article has been twisted. For in the scriptures, men get conquered precisely when they trust in Egypt (militarism and statism) to protect them. (See the prophets).

The statist spirit on days like this is when, in the eyes of God, men might as well be worshiping Satan directly. It is this type of stuff—sinful idolatry—that makes statist evil possible. It is this type of spirit that false gods (the State) live and thrive on.

Even if we are to conceive of the eventual Declaration of Independence as divine deliverance from other kings or from statism in general, this is no longer the case or spirit of this day. The spirit is a celebration of a slave society that men are too blind to see. 

What is perhaps more relevant for us than “the real meaning” of July 4th is that the essence of sin in the bible prevails on this day: statolatry (i.e., idolatry for a government). There are millions of state flags plastered everywhere and millions of statists running around in excitement with their false idols (e.g., flags) on their clothing, homes, vehicles, etc. July 4th is a scene from Babylon, not the kingdom of God. 

The fact is that this is a day of sinful idolatry for the nation-state. It’s a day of flag-waving and foolish national pride. The Christian on this day should feel like any of the prophets, who were among the last to see that things were crumbling in their society all while everyone else was having a good ol’ time with their sparklers thinking that we would be fed under Pharaoh’s rule forever. 

This is a day of “patriotism” toward the State, which is the central sin in the scriptures: Men making men their gods and attempting to be gods themselves. This patriotism is anathema to the Lord. God is to be our only God; the gods of the State are diametrically opposed to God, who, as a “jealous God,” wants exclusive lordship and teaches us that this very thing (monotheism) is what’s necessary to liberty! Once men forsake God for other gods, e.g., the State, they have entered into the land of Egypt. 

What matters now is the spiritual evil and sin behind such a day as this, when idolatry, support for empire, and outright ignorance, are at an annual high. It is a day that abounds in the foolish pride that this is “greatest nation in the world,” a mantra that is anathema to God. It is a day, if any, that we might expect God’s wrath to come down upon us. 

Of course, the masses and even average Christians generally don’t perceive this. Most of them lack discernment for such evils. Many conservatives think that the problem with the country is that there isn’t enough flag-worshiping going on anymore, and they fail to see the log in their own eyes when they criticize their political and cultural enemies. 

Conservatives, for instance, think that American flags are the way to combat “pride flags,” when it’s only a different form of foolish pride. They don’t see that the American flag is indefinitely more evil, being that it represents a murderous State, and they don’t see that their flag-worshiping has done entirely more to advance the socialist agenda (if only by creating passive statists) in America than homosexuals. 

Celebrating the “Fourth of July” as a Christian might be further dismissed simply on the grounds that it’s not a Biblical holiday. Whereas something like Passover acknowledges God’s deliverance from slavery, the spirit behind the Fourth of July celebrations today is something more like staying behind in Egypt but shooting off fireworks once a year and pretending that you’re not still under the rule of Pharaohs. 

There is another basic reason: The Christian is to give his praise to God and God alone. We are never to thank the government as our savior, and yet such a day as this precisely tries to transfer importance from God to Pharaoh.  

We cannot believe, even for a second, that liberty comes from politicians. Men of God don’t need kings, presidents, supreme courts, legislatures, police, politicians, bureaucrats, state systems, etc.

As Isaiah says,

“The LORD is our Judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our King. It is He who will save us” (Isaiah 33:22). 

Where our thoughts maybe should be

As the foolish, idolatrous masses wave flags and worship the State as their deliverer, in an unwitting substitution of the State for God, the Christian ought to be shut up in a room weeping over the statolatry that prevails in our society and has led us to such a corrupt society. 

Far from being something acceptable for the Christian to celebrate, such state worship as that which occurs on July 4th (even if “this wasn’t the meaning”) is precisely the type of event that precipitates God’s judgment upon a people. (A typical story of the prophets is something like this: God saves His people from tyrants, they fall back into idolatry, and then He punishes them again with more of the state rule that they deserve). Days like these are filled with the statist spirit that God abhors.

The best thing, perhaps, for the Christian to be doing is praying through the fireworks. We should be praying for the deliverance of our society, understanding and wisdom for our people, and a restoration of this deviant social order back to the ways of God. With each bang, we should hurt that someone thinks things are going good, that the status quo of statism is sustainable, and that the future is bright.  

The assumptions behind the celebrations on this day are counter-productive to the work that we ought to be doing toward the kingdom of God, which acknowledges our Egyptian society and seeks a way out. A celebration says, instead, that we don’t need deliverance, men already saved us and are still protecting us, and life in Egypt isn’t all that bad. (“Other places are worse,” the slave-minded men tell us). 

Our society, especially on days like this, is the scene that the prophets were witnessing and speaking out on: A setting of political slavery, yet where everyone is partying below instead of asking God to remove the evils from among us. 

As Isaiah said, 

“This is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, ‘Restore'” (Isaiah 42:22). 

We are being massively plundered and the only cries that one hears is “America!” and the screams from scoring a point in cornhole from men hugging beers to their chests. 

But as Isaiah saw, no one really cares about the corrupt political order, based in idolatry, that leaves people desolate and destroyed.

“Who among you will pay attention to this? Who will listen and obey hereafter?” (Isaiah 42:23

How can we celebrate when our people are in captivity?

With each blast of sound and light, we should cringe at the ignorance of our people, who have gone into captivity and have not even known it. We should hurt for our people who see nothing wrong in this country and celebrate “independence” under the delusion that they have it or ever did. 

Conclusion

The overall problem, I think, with even the “real meaning” of this day is that it still causes men to look toward entities such as “the United States” as their savior (even if they are looking at this entity in a “limited,” late-eighteenth-century sense) rather than God. They start thinking about “states’ rights” and “republics” more than the kingdom of God that is outside and apart from these political orders entirely. It brings to mind forming individual “states” rather than walking out of Egypt and leaving behind all these false notions of political societies. 

Even if God and secession were tied together in that time, we should be focused more on God than on old Declarations by politicians, political secessions, etc. July 4th is not a day for Christians to look toward old political revolutions, and especially not the modern holiday practices of ultra-statism. 

We should be thinking about our God that delivers His people from Egypt, and yet here men are celebrating Egypt’s birthday instead of thinking about getting free. These people are scared of liberty. They associate God’s liberty with “anarchy” and “lawlessness” and reason that “it would be better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:12). We’re in need of a modern-day exodus, and yet here men are, with every blast of the fireworks, reasoning that maybe things aren’t so bad under Pharaohs after all.

What we see today are mostly fools, not men ready to put in kingdom work.