Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

Since most people have not relied on God and His word for their wisdom, they have naturally been fooled by the teachings of men, which almost always involve some sort of idolatry toward the State and its rulers. If you told the average American that we should give up on trusting in police and military for our protection and rely on God, they would have an intellectual aneurysm and race to defend their false god State in any way possible. Even most of those who claim to place their faith in the Lord would be left wondering how God is going to keep, e.g., the ‘Chinese,’ away. They have not seen, as I have already written, that God provides defense services (so to speak) just as much as anything. The non-believer would find such a comment to be plainly absurd. Most often, both believers and non-believers join together in the belief that to have “national defense” or “freedom from enemies,” they need man-gods (presidents, armies, congressmen) to “protect” them. (In reality, to rob them and tell them that there’s no other means of protection except to be robbed by men calling themselves the ‘government’).

Thus, hundreds of millions of Americans (whether professing God or not) believe the lie that the State defends them and is absolutely needed for “national defense.” “Without the military,” they tell us, “who would protect us?” Or, “Without the military we would have been invaded already…The military keeps us safe and free.” They have been trained by their masters to think that everything they have (or everything they think they have), in a clear forsaking of God, comes from Pharaohs and Egyptian systems. They imply that if we chose freedom instead of statism, we would be left open to attack by numerous “enemies” and “bad guys” that have been implanted in their heads. (I say imply, because statists, preferring to conflate statism with liberty, don’t want to admit to abandoning liberty by relying on a State for protection, though they subconsciously realize this by suggesting that a government is needed to prevent us from living under what, in their minds, would be vulnerable state of freedom).

But this is precisely the opposite of what the scriptures teach and it shows just how much our people have bought into the ideas of men instead of learned at the foot of the Lord. Contrary to the sayings of statists that they’ve been taught or picked up on their own, the scriptures teach that when men rely on God for their protection, i.e., a free society that has not set up rulers as the “protectors,” they need not worry about any foreign enemies. As one scripture succinctly puts it, “When a man’s ways please the LORD, He makes even the man’s enemies live at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7). 

And not only is God with those who rely on Him for protection, but the precise way to give up your freedom, invite foreign invaders, make enemies around the world, and bring about all the things statists believe they are avoiding by instituting a State, is by trusting in a state military to “protect” you. 

It is not staying free and trusting in God that brings slavery and robbery, but setting up a state system that extorts the people of trillions of dollars worth of property annually to fund its protection racket. It is not avoiding state militaries that bring enemy invaders from across the world, but setting one up that causes others to hate us and perhaps plot against us. It is not forgoing state militaries that bring “the terrorists,” but setting up statist terrorist organizations that drop bombs on children and families around the world. It is not remaining in the Lord that makes enemies across the seas, but setting up an evil government that intimidates people around the world and makes them hate “us.” (No wonder one of the old Pharaohs had to spin the lie that “they hate us for our freedoms”).

Avoiding statism

But statist logic (the “wisdom” of men) gets all this backward. It tells us that the existence of enemy states necessitates that we have a State of “our” own to keep “us” safe (which, of course, is never ours, but simply a giant plunder institution that transfers wealth from the private economy to the military class and sacrifices our children to war). They have been so afraid of foreign statists—ah!, ‘the Chinese’ and ‘the Russians!’—that they have concluded that they must adopt their ways (i.e., state violence). Their logic, though they would never admit that they have reasoned this way, is that the only way to combat socialism is to go socialist yourself.

But the scriptures warn us to not copy our neighbors no matter how statist or evil they are. 

“You must not follow the practices of the land of Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not follow the practices of the land of Canaan, into which I am bringing you. You must not walk in their customs. You are to practice My judgments and keep My statutes by walking in them. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 18:3-4). 

We are told to never copy the ways of statists just because that’s what they do and it seems like the only hope for protection.

“When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not imitate the detestable ways of the nations there” (Deuteronomy 18:9).

Foreign states and militaries are not an excuse to statize and militarize your own society; it is a further reason to rely on God. To be sure, the Israelites were being pursued by an army as they began to walk out of Egyptian slavery. 

“Pharaoh prepared his chariot and took his army with him. He took 600 of the best chariots, and all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them…The Egyptians—all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, horsemen and troops—pursued the Israelites” (Exodus 14:6-9). 

Now, upon seeing these foreign statists, did they all turn around, as our people do today and say, ‘the only way to combat Egyptians is to have an Egyptian system of our own’? To the contrary,

“As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and saw the Egyptians marching after them, and they were terrified and cried out to the LORD” (Exodus 14:10).

This is far from what our people say today. They cry out to Pharaoh and his Egyptian system to protect them, even though this is the path of slavery and the very thing we should be seeking to avoid. Now, it’s true that many people have the Lord in their lips, of course, as many people claim God who don’t know Him. But usually God and the Egyptian State are seen as compatible rather than mutually-exclusive, and the best Americans can muster is to say ‘God bless our troops’ rather than truly rely on God for their protection. 

Trusting in Egypt or God

The statist sentiment of men wanting to serve states and trust in Egyptians was, to be sure, present even in the exodus from Egypt. There are always people who fight against leaving Egypt and want to keep trusting in the false god State (like hundreds of millions of Americans today), and thus go right back into Egypt. Men are always afraid to walk on faith and trust that God is going to be with them. As the people said to Moses, 

“What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Did we not say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:11-12). 

But Moses told the people a crucial lesson that statists and other military-worshipers in our time still don’t want to understand: that God is our defense. As he said, 

“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the LORD’s salvation, which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:13-14). 

But statists have perverted every word of this today. When they tell us that we couldn’t do without a military, they are telling us that the only way to “never see an Egyptian again” is to adopt the means of the Egyptians ourselves, i.e., to form a state military. Here again we see just how out of line with the scriptures statists are. For God tells us that the way to never see an Egyptian again is to trust in Him for our protection!

How men become captives

We should see now that statist logic is the opposite of the truth and the word of God. Far from being the means of protection, trusting in state systems is the very way that men wind up as captives. In all the instances of invasion in the scriptures, men are conquered not because they failed to set up Egyptian systems, which is what statists tell us today, but because they didn’t trust in God. 

For but one example, God explains the causal reality of why the Israelites later experienced trouble, after they had sought kings for their protection (1 Samuel 8). Why did the invaders come?

“All this happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods and walked in the customs of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites, as well as in the practices introduced by the kings of Israel. The Israelites secretly did things against the LORD their God that were not right…They served idols, although the LORD had told them, ‘You shall not do this thing'” (2 Kings 17:7-9, 12).

When men trust in statist systems for their protection, they bring themselves into statist bondage. Far from being a means of protection, statism gives the statists their biggest fears: being conquered by enemies. The way to bring Egypt about is to adopt its means, not (again, as statists tell us) to remain free and in the trust of the Lord. 

Conclusion

We can acknowledge that the ends sought by the ignorant statists (but not the ones doing the fooling), such as national protection or prosperity, may be genuine — that some statists (though not all) actually believe they are securing liberty or helping the poor by pursuing the means of the Egyptians (i.e., state violence and raising up armies funded through enslaving the rest of the population). But the statist’s hopes that this will bring liberty don’t change the actual outcome of Egyptian slavery that must necessarily result. There is still a divine law in effect regardless of their feelings, which cannot be violated. As the secular economist Ludwig von Mises once said (though he wouldn’t consistently apply this to state militaries as we are), “However good intentions may be, they can never render unsuitable means any more suitable” (Mises, Planning For Freedom, pp. 7-8). You can’t just wish for government to bring freedom and, voilà, that’s what it will do; these means (violently funding armies by robbing the people) have definite effects (Egyptian slave societies) that are not just praxeological alone, but stand on the word of God and His promise to render judgment on those who disobey these laws.

By telling us that we need a State to protect us from statism, i.e., that adopting the means of the Egyptians is the only way of dealing with other Egyptians, statists send us back into Egypt, i.e., back to the society of political plunder. It is only by trusting in God as our protector that our enemies are kept away and we can live freely; statism invites them, whether foreign invaders, terrorist attackers, or the very tax-funded domestic plunder state itself that we’ve all been made to fund and live under.

The fear of liberty, exemplified in people reacting against scriptural lessons that attempt to keep us from trusting in human governments, is more or less wholly rooted in a lack of fear of the Lord. Anyone who believes—this is true of the “Christian” just as much as the atheist—they need man-made governments and their police and military to protect them does not trust in God. They do not believe the scripture, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). They do not believe that “when a man’s ways please the LORD, He makes even the man’s enemies live at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7). 

Prayer

Lord God in Heaven, I pray that you’ll keep working on the hearts of our people down here below. They are living in bondage and their captors have convinced them it’s freedom. They have been told that they only thing keeping them going is the existence of the people who plunder them for all they’re worth. It makes it really hard for us to wake people up when they don’t see the slavery around them. They don’t see that trusting in state militaries is how you get the socialist slave society that they are ostensibly against. They have been blinded by Pharaohs and false prophets. They have been raised in a society that purposefully conflated “God and country” to keep them confused about Your will. They have no trouble justifying our militarist society in Your name, and they even have false prophets called “chaplains” to reassure those who directly serve them that the evils they are committing can be reconciled by You. Wake these people up, Lord. Put Your word on their hearts. They follow in the sins of their fathers, who repeated the same lies they were told, that serving the State and serving the Lord are conducive to each other. But we know, Lord, that we’re nothing without You. We know the bondage came about because men gave up on You and forgot about the signs and wonders you did on the Egyptians before, and many times throughout history as You toppled empires. We’re sorely distressed down here, surrounded by Egyptians who pretend to be our “protectors” and Pharaoh-worshiping neighbors who think we’re crazy for not joining them in their support of Egyptian systems. Be with us in this terrible time where the militarist police state continues to expand because our people have been too stupid to understand Your ways. They’ve become a grave threat to our property and bodies, but we know You Lord are watching over us. Amen.