Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

When one has seen the light of the Lord, and the darkness of the world is clearly exposed to them, many emotions are bound to arise. It is easy to be angry at the many perpetrators of evil in our world — namely, the men who call themselves “the government” and hide behind the pretense of moral legitimacy, legality, or the “public good” in order to rob and rule us. Some may become so angry with the evil rulers, even, that they begin to have thoughts of revolution or organized violent resistance to them.

However, these evil rulers—who remain evil despite this statement here—are also part of God’s sovereign plan to judge societies that descend into idolatry and show them just how evil and plunderous these man-made systems are that they thought (mistakenly) they could safely erect for themselves (e.g., Isaiah 7:17, 20; 8:7; 10:5-6, Jeremiah 5:15-17, Ezekiel 7, etc). God gives rebellious statist societies over to the very evils that they wished for by begging for a State (1 Samuel 8). For their rebellion against God, statist societies find themselves living under a system of plunder that they deserve. Although God does not prefer that we choose the statist path of political organization, God permits evil rulers to rise up to judge us for our direct or indirect complicity in the evil that surrounds us. He sends the state rulers to bring evil upon us for our persistent sinful faith in men and their devices. As one Bible commentator saw clearly, “The tyrants of the world are but the tools of Providence” (Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Isaiah 10:5-19). The inevitable effects of statist organization—rising taxes, rising prices, impoverishment, shortages of goods like food, unemployment, famines, conflict and war, incarceration, slavery—are divine punishment for the evil, idolatrous ideology of statism that men were clearly instructed by God to never partake in (Deuteronomy 18:9, Leviticus 18:25-27, 2 Kings 17:7-9, Ezekiel 20:32, Jeremiah 2:25, 44:17, Romans 12:2, etc). We were never to be a part of the statist heathen of the world who we have found ourselves associated with. The scriptures speak of God’s people as having “separated themselves from the people of the land to obey the Law of God” (Nehemiah 10:28).

In another way, some may even be angry with themselves for having been ignorant for so long, when they would be better off praising God for turning them from the satanic deceptions of the world system and accepting God’s grace. They may beat themselves up for having been fooled, though it would be better to just appreciate that they, unlike many others, have been granted sufficient humility to admit they’ve been tricked. The prideful refusal to confess that you have been fooled by the world’s puppeteers is a major component of what keeps men having their strings pulled by wicked and deceitful masters. It is a major display of renouncing a pride they once held in their love for the world.

Many other people, if they are to see any trouble with the world at all, are sooner to blame God than search their own hearts and intellect for errors. They despise or ignore God, institute statist systems, and then blame God (who warned against these ways) for the evils that have come upon them. This is what atheists think, with the famous “problem of evil,” even though most of these evils—nuclear bombs dropped on cities, millions dying in concentration camps and Gulags, impoverishment of whole societies, epidemics, homelessness, and food insecurity—are man-made and caused by the governments that most men support, which had to be idolized in order to be empowered to cause the destruction they do. Most evils are the effects of government intervention, which is something men support only when they don’t know God and have found themselves seeking a substitute. These types blame God for their own doing. They worshiped human rulers (against God’s counsel), ruined their societies (as God said it would), then asked “why would God allow this to happen if He was all powerful?” — even though God, through His word, has shown us repeatedly how to avoid such destruction and slavery: by making the Lord our God rather than men and by fearing God and His judgment rather than men and their systems.

Peace, security, abundance, and everything that is destroyed by human governments, comes when we follow after the Lord, rather than man’s farcical legal systems, which only pretend to provide these things (as the false-god institution of the State must necessarily do in its attempt to substitute itself as a “god”). God promises the glory through making the Lord our God, rather than by lifting up human rulers, who are nothing more than pretend-gods.

“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 28:1-2).

But these blame-God types (or even the millions of fooled “Christians” who don’t see it) don’t want to take responsibility and admit that they have been worshiping the false god of the State and that their own ideas—the ideologies of the world that they drew on their own over searching for God’s wisdom—are more to blame for the evils than anything.

The state of affairs in any society—ours is thoroughly political and statist—is but a reflection of the people’s own hearts and minds. The secular writer, H.L. Mencken, was not wrong when he pointed this out in regards to the presidential office of this country.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron” (Mencken, “On Politics”).

We shouldn’t be surprised of the makeup of politicians in this country, though it often seems amazing to some of us the types of characters who have made it there. They are but reflections of the people themselves, who, for wanting rulers, have hearts just as sick as the men who rule over them.

A Christian reaction to government slavery

So how should we react to the great evils that indeed abound around us? Are we to think God has forgotten us? There may be a Biblical case for God having temporarily turned His back on us and left us at the mercy of the sword, i.e., the State that our people begged for (Isa 1:15, 65:12; Jer 11:11, 11:14; Zech 7:13; Prov 1:28). Are we to lose our faith in God entirely? This happens to many who fall from the faith. The evils are, to them, proof that there is no God. Should we see the evils of statism as a judgment and curse from God upon us for our sin of believing in these men? There is a great Biblical case for this view. But, again, it requires that men own up to their sin (e.g., idolatry towards the State) rather than blame God, who is only carrying out His promise to rebuke and correct us for our own evils.

The most appropriate Christian response to the evils around us might be a sentiment that is expressed in the prophet Jeremiah, who is also known as “the weeping prophet.” (If anyone truly knew the evils of our situation, the appropriate emotional response would indeed be weeping, contrary to the rejoicing of the worldly peoples who love our Egyptian society and its offerings and say idiotic things like “if you don’t like America, the best country ever, then you can leave!”).

Upon seeing the great evils around him (a ruling elite, an occupying force, the slavery, starvation, etc), Jeremiah says, “Woe to us, for we have sinned” (Lamentations 5:16).

Notice, the prophet doesn’t blame God, even though things are evidently bad and may well have been sent by God; he knows that the sins of his people—idolatry towards the systems of men and faith in the salvation of political gods—are at fault for what God is still sovereign over (Jer 12:1). Other scriptures uphold this same idea. Nehemiah thus can say, “You are just in all that has befallen us, because You have acted faithfully, while we have acted wickedly” (Nehemiah 9:33).

There is no problem for us in admitting that God sends the evil, but for our own sins and not because God is an arbitrary tyrant, as atheists have claimed. The scriptures readily give us this understanding.

“I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

This was the message the prophets were always delivering to societies that were being turned upside down: If you keep doing evil, i.e., if you keep trusting in the systems of men, God is going to send calamity upon your society.

“Disaster will come upon you; you will not know how to charm it away. A calamity will befall you that you will be unable to ward off. Devastation will happen to you suddenly and unexpected” (Isaiah 47:11).

If we listened to God, we would obey His word rather than blame Him for the effects of denying it.

The terrible state of society—slavery by state rulers in his time and ours—was, for Jeremiah, no cause to give up on God. Rather, it was every reason to get back to God! Forgetting God is, after all, the very reason we have embarked on the statist path today and are experiencing the progressively harsh consequences of this great evil. And turning back to God is the only means for us to begin to undo the damage.

As Jeremiah makes clear, we’re in need of much confession of our sins—namely that of trusting in men to protect us rather than God—if we can ever hope to get out of our Egyptian bondage and turn back the curse of statism — which, again, we should have no problem with conceiving of its effects as a curse sent by God for the sin of trusting in men over the Lord.

But we first have to acknowledge the sin—the state worshiping of our people—which has led to our captivity if we are to even be aware of what we are lamenting and repenting for. Your average “this is a free country” American can’t do this because, one, they think this is liberty, and two, they think that have done no evil in getting themselves to this political state of things. Indeed, they think the evil, thieving, murderous political system they support has God’s blessing on it (e.g., “God bless our troops”). This is how lost men are. They don’t just not see the truth, but have bought into the complete opposite of the truth.

Prophets like Jeremiah, however, were leagues ahead of the average person today and had no trouble pointing out the slavery and our complicity in it, as well as seeking the Lord again to turn it back.

“Remember, O LORD, what has happened to us. Look and see our disgrace! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners” (Lamentations 5:1-2).

Our people, on the other hand, are still lost saying “God bless the U.S.A., our troops, our police officers, and all the men in uniform who give us freedom.” Not only do they not see the slavery, but they attribute their false freedom to their human gods who they regard as their “heroes” and saviors.

But men of God see the evil and know that we’re under a curse for our sins. We don’t blame God, but pray that He relent in the judgment that our people rightly deserve for believing in political salvation — that, e.g., “Donald Trump is going to fix our country.”

When we see that we are being poisoned through the air, water, food, and drugs, the checkpoints set up by Pharaoh’s officers to shake down God’s children who are traveling without Pharaoh’s permission slip, or the obvious clownishness of the satanic state system, what we should think is, “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

It shouldn’t make us mad or surprised to see what’s happening in our world today. We can’t be mad at God or (here’s a hard one) even the evil men carrying it out. “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

We shouldn’t wonder, like many of confused people who say the current Pharaoh is too senile to “run the country,” how “our country” fell into the hands of bumbling idiots. “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

We shouldn’t wonder how these evils have come upon us. The evil of effects of statism—taxation, plunder, kidnapping and incarceration, thousands of man made “laws,” scamdemics, slavery in general—are the punishment for the sin of worshiping States and trusting in human rulers for our “salvation” (e.g., Isaiah 10). State plunder is what idolatrous, statist sinners get, and deserve, for their evils. “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

These things—wars, prisons, global vaccine operations, chemical skies, social disorder, systemic injustice, rising prices—are exactly what you get when you seek, as our people have, the kingdoms of men (States) over the Kingdom of God. These aren’t “accidents” of a “broken political system,” but what (as God warns) these things will bring every time men set them up. “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

These political conspiracies to plunder and rule men are what always come against those who are foolish enough to allow themselves to be ruled by God-playing technocrats who tell us our world wasn’t made right and is in need of grandiose intervention by “expert” scientists, economists, etc. “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

Prayer

God, save us. Relent from Your judgment against us, which these state-worshipers certainly deserve for believing that the military are their saviors. They’ve got the stickers of the enemy plastered on their vehicles and are too stupid to see it. I know we deserve it, but please restore us. Regenerate some hearts. Turn back this most heinous and evil operation against Your land, water, skies, food, animals, people, and all of Your creation. Put a stop to it. Amen.

Confessing our complicity

What very few men are willing to do, upon recognizing the statist slavery, is admit that they had anything to do with it. From the average conservative’s perspective, it’s all the “democrats’” fault; their police and military worshiping, pledging of allegiance to the regime, singing its national anthems, and waving its flags supposedly had nothing to do with raising up the evil system of statism as we know it.

But a real approach of a godly man is to acknowledge that we did wrong (ie., worshiped men and put them into power), and that this has led to our captivity. We should be able to say,

“From the days of our fathers to this day, our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities, we and our kings and priests have been delivered into the hands of the kings of the earth and put to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation, as we are this day” (Ezra 9:7).

The evils of statism before us should have caused us to learn our lesson, that we’re evidently living under a cursed system as part of God’s judgment for such a grievous sin as worshiping human rulers. Our statist society should cause us to wake up to our role in it. The pain of statism—the tax burden, the inflation, the wars, the constant threat of violence by the State—is meant to cause men to repent, “to plead with [God] in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and done wrong; we have acted wickedly” (1 Kings 8:47).

What God often looked for in His word was for men to just confess their iniquities, which statists can never do (Leviticus 26:40; 1 Samuel 7:6; Kings 8:47; Nehemiah 1:6, 9:2).

Returning to the Lord

The last thing we should do when things get bad is forget God, because forgetting God is the cause of our troubles in the first place. We ought not act like God has forsaken us because we have for long forsaken our Lord, that God is no longer Sovereign because we are occupied by men who call themselves “the government.” Jeremiah didn’t. “You, O LORD, reign forever; Your throne endures from generation to generation” (Lamentations 5:19). God is in control even as the evils come against us; He sends the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or whoever, as punishment for thinking these tyrants are order-keepers (Isa 7:18-25, etc).

The great hope is that if God is Sovereign even over the evil State (which is nevertheless evil even as it is used as a tool at the hand of God), we can believe that He can also turn back this great evil. But we can’t go on with the same errors: believing that statism is freedom and that men are the ones who keep us safe. It is this sin, which fully lacks faith in God and places one’s fear in men, that God gives men over to evil men who pretend to be their “protectors” and “law enforcers.”

Like Israel in the instance of Jeremiah under the captivity and fall of Jerusalem, we should be acknowledging the political slavery, confess our complicity in it, and beg to God for forgiveness and restoration. “Restore us to Yourself, O LORD, so we may return; renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21). Amen.

We have to acknowledge that only God can save us from our enemies, and that men who claim to be our protectors and “law enforcers” are false saviors who have come to plunder and enslave. We have to admit that we’re nothing without God. “Servants rule over us; there is no one to deliver us from their hands” (Lamentations 5:8).

But, if God should not wish to hear our cries this late in the game, the attitude to keep in regards to the evil of our society (again not turning to blaming God) is that God justly allows the State plunder to happen as a necessary consequence or effect for worshiping the beast, as so many of our people have done. After pleading for restoration, Jeremiah adds, “unless You have utterly rejected us and remain angry with us beyond measure” (Lamentations 5:22). If God, working through the evil State, wants to absolutely wreck us so that we should understand the great consequences for idolatry and maybe learn a lesson, we will have to understand.

Prayer

Lord I pray you are not angry with us beyond measure. The political slavery we have found ourselves in is certainly of our own doing. Our people have worshiped human rulers as gods and made it possible for them to enslave us as their captives and tax cattle. We have all taken part in it in ways that we never intended to. I know that through the Holy Spirit men can be turned from their evils, that they can see they have chased after the false gods of the world who call themselves “the government.” Please God, I beg, send your Spirit through men with force, that they will give up the evil, Satanic ideology of statism that has possessed them for too long. Let Your word be as a fire to them. Make men repent for their statism and their service to the devil. Turn our people back to Your kingdom and away from the kingdoms of men. Build up some remnant that we may be a sign unto others to follow in the light. Restore the world. Stop these evil operations against us, and don’t let them get worse. Cause a disruption in the tax agents’ operations against us. Break the money printers of the central bank. Bring these men to nought. Turn the wicked men away from us and purge their hearts of the evil they have in them to destroy Your people. Amen.