[This is the part 8 in a series on “fear of the Lord” in the scriptures. See part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine, ten]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

I have already written how the idolatries and fears of men are in essence what leads to our captivity by state rulers. This is a basic explanation for how we got to where we are today, being absolutely plundered by people who call themselves “the government.”

The way out of our captivity is to fight statism through a fear of the Lord. But men still don’t see it. We are told by the masses that the way to get rid of other statists (e.g., the Chinese) and “bad guys” is statism. Ask almost anyone—your friends, neighbors, parents, or co-workers—what is needed to keep us safe and protected from other states and various threats to our safety in this world, and most all of them will tell you that we (supposedly) cannot do without government police and militaries. They keep the “bad guys” away. (One would think it would be laughable even to them to make such a claim, seeing the obvious and genuine bad guys in power. But the masses display an amazing inability to put two and two together). Even most “Christians” have sold-out to this idea that God doesn’t provide protection and that men are needed.

Though anyone with half of a brain should know that erecting states to ward of (other) states is “fighting fire with fire,” this is not common wisdom. The conventional “wisdom” of most men around the world is that governments—not God—are indispensable to “freedom” (and they don’t even know that what they have isn’t freedom). We’re told that in order to keep violent thugs away (e.g., “the Chinese” or “the criminals”), we must erect a gang of our own (or at least claim these oligarchic thugs are “we the people”). 

Though this gang, of course, becomes the very enemy that everyone was worried about in the first place and told us we needed a State for, this is nevertheless what most men believe.

But to erect a State for your “freedom” is to bring upon yourself the very occupiers and captors that you feared would come without them. This should be very obvious for Americans today, who are maybe finally beginning to see that they might want to worry a lot more about the enemy at home than the manufactured ones abroad — that you’re way more likely to be robbed, caged, or murdered by one of Pharaoh’s police officers than you are a member of the Kim family. Alas, we have very foolish neighbors and most of them are still ready to rally behind Pharaoh if they are told they’re being threatened by, e.g., the Assyrians. (This is why governments always have to use fear to control people). They’re fine with setting up “our” own North Korea, so long as it isn’t the other North Korea and so long as it’s called a “government of the people.” (Oh wait, even the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” does that too).

But God shows us that the way to get dominated by other enemies around the world is precisely to give into their ways: to adopt the methods of political violence of our neighbors as the supposed means of defending ourselves from them — to become the Assyrians to ward off Assyrians, to go communist to fight the communists. And He sends them as judgment for the sin of statism. When we find ourselves occupied by statists, this is how God wanted us to explain our situation:

“Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath the Lord brought upon them all this evil” (1 Kings 9:9).

Why is anyone surprised today to discover that we’re ruled by tyrants? As we see, statism doesn’t get rid of statism, enemies, tyrants, and otherwise being controlled by bad guys; it brings it on.

Returning to the Lord

What do we do, then? Are we forsaken? We simply stop believing in the statist lie that we’re left vulnerable to being dominated and conquered if we don’t have Pharaohs robbing us to fund Egyptian militaries and police forces.

In fact, we must believe the exact opposite: That this belief in Pharaohs and chariots and horsemen—this sinful trust in false gods—is precisely what opens us up to being dominated and controlled.

Our people are in chains today not because they trusted in liberty and God, but because they trusted in men. We have been cursed with statism for turning away from God. As one prophet tells us,

 “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the LORD” (Jeremiah 17:5).

Yet the chains are so refined they can’t even see what they have done, and by the time their captors are hauling them off to prison camps or kicking in their doors, they’ll have no idea what even happened — how their societies went from the imagined “free country” to an absolute slave society. (This necessary and predictable result of statism is already catching most old folks by surprise. “I just can’t believe what’s become of this country…I never thought things would turn out like this.” They foolishly thought they could patriotically stand behind such systems in their early days, without them eventually expanding before their eyes).

Breaking out of Egypt

The amazing solution all along to avoiding statism and domination by men—both a domestic tyranny that claims to be “we the people” or some conquerors that are bound to come when states are built—all along has been the most simple truth ever: To FEAR GOD! 

Dare I say, it’s almost a “secret”? It’s very obvious in the word of God, yet we are never taught this by any man. If you want a free society without Egyptian rulers everywhere, trust in God, because if you trust in men, you’re going to get Pharaohs and their footmen dominating your society and robbing you for all your worth in the name of your own protection. 

This is it. Amen. 

Being that men have always built up Egyptian militaries out of their own sin and claimed these were the best liberty-preservers the world has ever known (this has happened many times in history), which all have gone on to murder hundreds of millions of people who without the institutionalization of this plunder in a political system wouldn’t have been victims of genocide, this basic truth may well be one of the most important ones in the world:

“When a man’s ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7).

Serve God, and there is not a “China” problem. Put your fear and faith in God, and there is no need for searching for protection from sources other than God.

Serve Babylon, however, and bring upon yourself the Chinazation of your society that you feared — and maybe even some Chinese invaders. (Far from American state power protecting us from the ways of other statists around the world, the American model and the Chinese model are closely tracking each other today). 

If we trusted in the Lord for our protection, we wouldn’t be facing the very real threat of domestic statism we are today, which came from the conjectural fear of “bad guys” said to abound without Pharaohs ruling us, or the state-created problem that foreign states may actually want to attack us from “our government” giving them good reason to. 

The simple secret of God’s law

God’s law of liberty is truly a simple one: Trust God, and you can have it. The problem we have run into is that men trust in men (e.g., “The United States”) to bring it to them, when those men bring us bondage and prisons. 

If we just feared the Lord, the Egyptians would disappear!

As Moses said to his men,

“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” (Exodus 14:13). 

Our people have got this so twisted now they can’t see the way out. They tell us that the only way to never see Egyptians again is to trust in…well, Egypt!

Men trusted in men instead of God

God teaches us that the narrative of men—you have to have an Egyptian system if you want to be protected from Egypt—is a lie and a tool for enslaving populations. 

We learn in the scriptures that the means of driving away our enemies—even statists may think they’re opposing Egyptian systems by implementing supposedly “limited,” “republican,” “constitutionalist,” or “capitalist” versions of the same fundamental system—is not erecting statist systems of our own, which most men tell us is the case, but (simply) following the ways of God.

“If you carefully keep all these commandments I am giving you to follow— to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him— then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and stronger than you” (Deuteronomy 11:22-23).

But men surely don’t believe it now. They tell us that “the Russians” are too strong for us to forgo a military of “our” own. They trust in Egyptian militaries to keep them “free” (and are shocked when their societies turn out to be blatantly socialist). They trust in state militaries and don’t trust in God, period. They trust in men. They don’t believe the proverb that our enemies go away when we trust in God.  

They have given us the opposite teaching of this proverb: “Your enemies will go away if you trust in Pharaohs.” They have perverted the proverb into something like this: “If you trust in man’s political systems of law to keep you safe, they will drive out your enemies.”

Fearing God to keep us from men

Most of our people have been trained by their masters to see armies around the world and reason that they need one of their “own” (which, of course, only claims to be theirs in order to grow up). 

But the word of God teaches us otherwise:

“When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you” (Deuteronomy 20:1). 

Our people have done the opposite: They saw the horses and chariots of men overseas, and they said, “we want some, too!” They didn’t say, “we will trust in God.” That said, “If they have Pharaohs, then we’re going to need some too…the only way to keep Pharaohs away is to install your own.” (Conservatives commit this fallacy just as much as any other socialist who thinks they will get to decide who is in power once the system is created). 

The truth is that we avoid men, not when we trust in state armies, but when we fear God. 

Most men, of course, think that bad things—armies, invaders, criminals, etc—come upon us when we don’t have political plunder systems set up to provide soldiers and “law enforcement” agents to keep us “safe” and “free.”

But the word of God tells us something else: that these fears actually come upon those who trust in “governments,” and that God will plague our enemies for us if we would only trust in Him to do the job instead of “the army.”

“The Lord will remove from you all sickness; and He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will lay them on all who hate you” (Deuteronomy 7:15). 

The foolishness of our people

Men have been made to believe that “the government” is “ours,” that the political plunder system of Egypt is “We the people” or (at least) “was supposed to be” (until, say, “the democrats” took over”). This idea that “the State is us” is one of the biggest tricks the rulers have ever played on the people.

And this is generally how all statists act. “Statism isn’t bad as long as me and my people are the one’s controlling it.”

A most blatant expression of this in modern times by one of our recent Pharaohs was that even a dictatorship would be fine, “just so long as I’m the dictator.” 

We should never think a statist is one of us because they hate some other statists that are different from them. Marxists have always derided the “capitalist state” while—here is their trick—calling for totalitarian expansion of the State on their terms. They think that all is great so long as “their” people are in charge. They think that it is completely fine to set up these systems so long as no other political parties or infiltrators gain control of the state apparatus. 

But as the economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out, “The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends” (Mises, Marxism Unmasked). This is always what happens when men allow for political power that they believe can be contained to their set parameters, showing how foolish men are to claim that actions of the State are “unconstitutional” — as if things wouldn’t turn out like this and fall into the hands of men intent on plunder.

And he was not wrong to say that “every socialist is a disguised dictator.”

And when the statist system that they otherwise and in principle approve of gets into the hands of other people, only then do they pretend to be angry and upset at the way things have gone — again, being true as much for the socialists who hate when “capitalists” control the State and “conservatives” who are upset only when “the democrats” are controlling what they otherwise think is a system that serves them. 

Though our people are so fooled, they wait out the destruction in the belief that “we’ll beat them at the polls in the next four years.” They think a system that is designed to plunder men can be “reformed,” or that if we all just poured into the voting booths that things would get better.

This is true for all statists, “Republicans” just as much as their alleged “Democrat” enemy that they think they’re so different from. They are all idolatrous state worshipers. None of them have a problem with the State per se, but only a political system that they don’t control or doesn’t consist of who they consider “their” people. All statists, no matter the stripe, tell us that we have to have men for our “protection,” “law and order,” “prosperity,” “peace and freedom,” “equality,” or whatever the individual’s reason may be. 

They easily fall into the trap of believing that statist systems can work so long as they are the ones who get to control it, as if the path of such an enterprise as statism—a gold-mine operation for criminals of using the political means of force to legally plunder the masses and transfer property to yourself and your friends—can really be reigned in and kept in the hands of “the people.”

Evidently, there is no such thing as a “limited government” or a “constitutional state.” History has borne it out. There is no more need to theorize if a State can be kept to some theoretically “limited” scope. The theory is over. All States are systems of plunder, put together in a conspiracy of wannabe ruler-gods, which strive to dominate their populations as much as they can get away with. There is no such things as a “benevolent” and “selfless government” that operates in the best interests of “the people.” Such slogans as “we the people” are socialist myths to get people to submit to tyrannical regimes that are bent on robbing and killing people. 

All States are criminal gangs that, far from being subordinate to “the people,” are the very plunderous enemy God told us about all through his word. The only thing left to do now is trust in God; the sinful and foolish trust in men has turned our society into a most dangerous one.