Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

The scriptures tell us that “it is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in men” (Psalm 118:8). This is not a passage without political significance. It is heavenly counsel that has everything to do with the futile political games that men are caught playing today, where they believe that the next set of men who make up the “government” will save them and fix their problems. It is not just better to trust in God, but useless to trust in men. We are to call on God, not governments, to “give us help against the enemy; for the help of man is worthless” (Psalm 60:11).

Perhaps the whole word of God might be summed-up in such a succinct message as this: trust in the Lord for everything, and rest not on the abilities of men (ie., presidents and congressmen) to teach or save. For what the scriptures are always trying to show us and tell us is that men always fail when the rely on the ideologies and law systems of men, ie., when they embark upon a statist course for the society and choose to organize along the means of political violence rather than God’s liberty. 

The philosophies of men

When we seek the counsel of men rather than God, we wind up standing behind the statist ideologies that support the world system. It is no coincidence that overt socialists most often renounce God: they are naturally arriving at a substitute religion. (The “Christian statist” is explained by the fact that they aren’t actually Christians, but just statists who use God’s name in vain). When men trust in men, ie., when they believe that wisdom is to be derived from the world rather than the Word, they believe in all the lies of the world, which are necessarily statist. They fall for the State itself, as well as all the “intellectuals” who provide academic cover for it, and all the common sayings that have been repeated for generations by those who have harbored such sinful beliefs themselves or bought into the propaganda that has been spread by the opinion-molders.

I have already commented on the inherent differences between a Biblical worldview and that of men — between necessarily anarchistic political theology and the necessarily statist ideologies of the world. The reason that most men lean toward the latter is because they have not known God or sought to know the Lord’s “politics,” so to speak. They have allowed, eg., the “Republican Party,” to form their ideas for them. And so they have repeated all the absurdities that we always hear circulating among the population. “We just need to vote red and everything will go back to normal.”

It has been this faith in the worldly philosophy of statism (ie., the idea that society can only be organized along the lines of political violence), which is only possible when men reverse Biblical counsel and trust in men rather than God, that has led us into slavery. The statist system does not rule by brute force alone, but is made possible only by millions of fools who, wittingly or unwittingly, sing the praises of their system. As I wrote in a previous article,

“[The State] rules not by force alone, but largely through fraud and deception. It debases people through what Frederic Bastiat called ‘mental slavery.’ Propaganda, patriotism, deception, fear, economic fallacies, fake enemies, lies, tricks, sophistry, euphemisms, phony claims to authority, fake science, and pseudo-intellectual justifications for intervention, are its main ways of controlling people and property — not pointing guns at our heads. This Egyptian system of ours ‘works’ because men have bought into the lies of Egypt, eg., that ‘we need armies and presidents to keep us safe and strong,’ not because Egypt was more physically powerful than us and outgunned us.”

God’s word vs. the philosophies of men

This is where the importance of having a Biblical worldview, versus having a worldly (ie., statist) worldview, comes into play. When men get their ideas from the world, so to speak, they run into men who defend a political philosophy that supports the world systems. They find a Marx, a Keynes, a Bill O’Reilly, or some other liar who supports what they want to believe about the world (eg., that governments “save” us). 

If men were in the scriptures regularly they could never be deceived by the endless, man-made philosophies of the world and their man-made systems. They would see that all the many variants of statism—socialism, communism, fascism, democracy, republicanism, democratic socialism, or the dozens of other ideas men invent—are really nothing more than false religions that merely masquerade as morally legitimate, economic, and “holy.”

It’s no coincidence either that we have been fed so many “different” versions of the same core statist ideology either. As the scriptures say, “God made men upright, but they sought many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). God showed us His ways and intentions, but men rebelliously went astray and wanted to rely on their own “wisdom.” It was only natural that when men departed from God for their wisdom, that we would be fed hundreds of slightly different variants of statism. This is simply men giving their own different branding to the same essential political philosophy of violence. “We’re not socialists, we’re democratic socialists” — “We’re not communists, we’re socialists, learn the difference! — “We’re not fascists, we’re communists…the Nazis weren’t real socialists.”

Where the worldly statist philosophy leads us 

The philosophy of the world is statism and its many variants, all which are the same in principle (they all support political violence) even if they call themselves something else or may choose to differentiate themselves aesthetically (so that, eg., Marxists and Nazis can pretend that they are different from each other while ultimately pursuing the same agenda of state domination, albeit with a different flag and attitude). 

Our statist society is easily understandable: Overt and unrepentant sinners worshiped men, instituted in the State, as their lords and saviors, and so they got a well-deserved political slavery upon abandoning God and His kingdom — a kingdom which, however, requires a little faith in its liberty, and usually scares people back into the arms of Pharaoh. As in the Biblical story, men are more willing to reminisce about the deceptive comforts of their Egyptian society—Pharaoh makes sure the football, beer, and chicken wings are abundant for now—than to walk in the desert on God’s call. 

Most men don’t want to believe that God will provide for us if we walk with Him, which necessarily means to turn back from all our statist practices whereby we place our faith in men. And so they tell us (essentially) that God’s liberty would be chaos, disorder, lawlessness, and “anarchy.” They can’t imagine a world without men ruling over them. Men want to keep believing in national armies and police states to keep them “free,” and so they got the police state society that coerces hundreds of millions of people into their plunder scheme. 

They did not see that the way to stay free is precisely to trust in God and to never believe that Egypt was going to save us. Instead of trusting in God and forsaking man’s systems, men went whoring after statist systems to keep them “safe” and “free” (that is until it all falls apart). They trusted in men and forsook God instead. 

Blessings and curses 

The scriptures are virtually always running this narrative of men turning toward false gods (e.g., kings, presidents, politicians, police officers, soldiers) and their corrupt, unjust “law” systems, and reaping the consequences at the hand of God as a punishment for their sin (which may also be thought of as a “natural” effect of state intervention). 

Whoring oneself out on the altar of the statist religion is precisely why, written all throughout the scriptures, God forsakes a people and leave them to suffer under the effects of their misdeeds: “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and have worshiped and served other gods” (Jeremiah 22:9). 

In the scriptures, blessings come down only upon those men who are obedient to God and His law order, which necessarily prohibits men from setting up statist systems. When men mess around with evil, sinful statism and believe that societies based on theft and violence are morally acceptable and economically workable, they get cursed with the very effects of statism itself: taxes, inflation, unemployment, homelessness, famines, war, conflict, concentration camps, prisons, etc. (You know, all the things we are experiencing today).

The terrible things that we know, as economists, come from state intervention into the private-natural order are, in effect, God’s judgment upon those who are foolish enough to fall prey to these schemes. 

When God has seen enough of this statism, based in the worship of false gods claiming to be the just and legitimate authorities, He wrecks the statists and their bogus societies. As one prophet reported, 

“The LORD could no longer endure the evil deeds and detestable acts you committed, and your land became a desolation, a horror, and an object of cursing, without inhabitant, as it is this day” (Jeremiah 44:22). 

This is how foolish our people are, having bought into the ideas of the world: Far from being a “blessing from God,” as our people shamefully believe the State represents, statism is a curse upon a sinful people. Statism brings evils to any social order that experiments with such political violence, and it does so as divine punishment upon those who, in their sin and rebellion, are confident enough that they can abandon God without facing judgment in the form of great social problems and tyrannies.

Blessings come to those who obey God’s way, which is necessarily opposed to man’s way (Deut. 26:3-14). We are not “blessed” to be living under the kingdoms of men today, but precisely cursed, as evident in the dismal outlook of our continued political course. 

Ruling through fear

When men buy into the ideologies and systems of the world, they necessarily “fear” those systems (ie., trust in them) and place all their faith in them for salvation. Statists are man-fearers, rather than God-fearers. Thus the State is able to get its rule over on these man-fearers by creating all sorts of lies about the chaos and disorder that would allegedly abound without their robbery and rule over men and their property, all while creating those very things themselves. “The bad guys would take over without the police” — “who would educate our children?” — “thank a vet that you aren’t speaking Arabic!” 

When men fear men (e.g., conservatives’ fear of China or “the criminals”), they justify a domestic State (human kingdoms) for their “protection,” which brings a tyrannical police state. They set up terrorist systems in the hypocritical name of fighting a “war on terror.” This is why we’re exhorted to fear God only, so that we never give into such evils. This is why we’re told to “be not afraid of the Assyrian” (Isaiah 10:24). It’s God’s law that fearing men helps to advance state slavery. 

Men who trust in statism to protect them from “foreign states” or “the criminals” bring their very fears of tyranny upon themselves. If men are so foolish and sinful as to want kings over them, God lets these kings absolutely dominate these foolish sinners, who “will plunder them, seize them, and carry them off to Babylon” (Jeremiah 20:5). 

Trusting in God 

The statist ideologies that prevail in men are proof that men have never known the basic scriptural truths about our social world. Far from leaving men vulnerable and unfree, the fact is that God smashes statist orders because they are based in sin — whether He does so as your ally, who is protecting you from them, or does so as the divine rebuker, who destroys the systems you supported and live under. 

But men forget their God (Hosea 8:14). They don’t believe that God will protect them and that States are not needed for protection, or indeed that you would precisely want to avoid statism if you wished to remain secure from judgment. Our people forgot God the deliverer. As the prophet Isaiah said, “You have forgotten the God of your salvation” (Isaiah 17:10). They forget that He wrecks statists and leaves them to starve. “They did not remember His power, The day when He redeemed them from the adversary, when He performed His signs in Egypt, and His marvels in the field of Zoan, and turned their rivers to blood, and their streams they could not drink” (Psalm 78:42-44). They claim instead that only powerful Egyptian systems can keep them free and that they should “thank a vet” as soon as they wake up in the morning rather than pray to the Lord for the deliverance of our people from the hands of Pharaohs. 

Getting back to God’s word

The main problem is that the ideas that men have about our world and how it works didn’t come from God, but from men (whether their “own” ideas or those they took from some crony intellectual). Men aren’t in the scriptures seeking to understand God’s kingdom and the nature of the plunder systems around them. When they do read, it’s the safe books of mainstream publishers — some crap you would find in a corporate bookstore or the recycled books on a thrift store shelf. But you’re not going to learn about God’s kingdom, or the captivity of God’s people, in a Bill O’ Reilly book. 

The scriptural teaching that men become slaves to other men when they forsake God, and not (as the statists of the world tell us) when they forsake constructing national armies, would become basic knowledge if men learned about our social world from the word of God rather than some other, non-Biblical source, eg., a military veteran who has repeated the same lies and sins as man have for generations that “our military fights for freedom” and “you should thank a vet that you’re even alive today.” (Notice how much statists always try to steal the glory from God: it is “veterans,” not the Lord, who we supposedly have to thank for being here today!). 

If men read their Bibles they would know Egypt doesn’t protect them, but enslaves them, and that it’s never safe to call for the formation of state armies and state wars to protect you, and that it comes with a price. As the prophet said, 

“You are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him” (Isaiah 36:6).

Alas, most of our men are not men of the scriptures, as they ought to be, but are fools of some crony intellectuals, or even men who trust in their own wisdom and haven’t humbled themselves enough to know the Lord. Most of our parents are filled with the “wisdom” of the world rather than the word of God. They don’t read the prophets, who rebuke the statist systems that men trust in and venerate today as central to civilization itself. This is why they think they can trust in the Egyptian model for a stable and free society, only to find out it leaves everyone broken and desolate in the end. And so they don’t see that Pharaoh king of Egypt is a liar and enslaver who offers false protection in order to gain slaves. They think we just need a new Pharaoh, and that they can wait four years to get one.

If our people were in the scriptures daily, rather than willful dupes of some hucksters on television, some false preachers, or some other charlatan whose personality impressed them enough, they would have never fallen for the idea of protection through plunder (something which should seem fallacious and contradictory on its own). They would see that these men are false gods offering a false salvation. They would never vote for men to fix their societies. They would know, “Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save” (Psalm 146:3). 

Fearing God in hard times

The trouble is trying to get men to trust in God as the rulers are deliberately creating panic in order to get people to believe in them (e.g., wars, scamdemics, etc). When these moments come, though, most men cave and think they need Egypt to protect them. Sending some skyscrapers crumbling to the ground has a way of uniting statists of different stripes to a common cause of vengeance and bloodshed.

Not being Bibled on the schemes of the rulers, men are likely to give into fears manufactured by the political machine that intend to whip the people into line. They give into the fear set before them. As God tells us, “‘I am the LORD your God. You must not fear the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.’ But you did not obey Me” (Judges 6:10). Out of the many conjectural threats and risks of liberty, eg., “the bad guys will come and control us,” men give up their liberty to state rulers who make all their worst nightmares come true a thousand-fold. 

Men always want to forsake God at the worst time: When the statist false gods are intentionally destroying their society to make it appear as if they are even more indispensable than everyone thought they were before. We somehow suffer under a phenomenon where the more the false gods destroy society with their intervention, the more that people beg for them to solve the social issues which were themselves caused by political intervention. 

But this alleged need for more statism once the effects of statism become even more evident is, of course, part of the planned chaos: (1) destroy society, and (2) cause people to clamor for even greater restrictions on their liberty. What men call “late-stage capitalism” is, however, merely the effects of decades upon decades of statist policies that have precisely negated any real claim to a free market. To say that “socialism” is needed to fix the problem ignores that socialism has already come to create the problem. As the free market economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out, 

“Anti-capitalistic policies sabotage the operation of the capitalist system of the market economy. The failure of interventionism does not demonstrate the necessity of adopting socialism. It merely exposes the futility of interventionism. All those evils which the self-styled ‘progressives’ interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism are the outcome of their allegedly beneficial interference with the market. Only the ignorant, wrongly identifying interventionism and capitalism, believe that the remedy for these evils is socialism.”

But this is what happens when men are unrepentant, when they don’t learn their lessons in the evil of government and continue headlong into their trust in men and abandonment of God. As the prophet pronounces judgment on these people,

“‘Woe to the rebellious children,’ declares the Lord, ‘to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping sin upon sin” (Isaiah 30:1).

Once men are committed to statism as a plan for salvation, they often can see no way out of their troubles but to continue on that destructive course. 

Mises went on to explain how a conundrum develops where the political interventionists keep intervening to try and solve the problems caused by the previous interventions (one of his examples, interestingly enough, was price controls to try and stop their own inflation, which we are seeing proposed again today).

“If the government, faced with this failure of its first intervention, is not prepared to undo its interference with the market and to return to a free economy, it must add to its first measure more and more regulations and restrictions. Proceeding step by step on this way it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared. Then socialism of the German pattern, the Zwangswirtschaft of the Nazis, emerges.”

Only when men repent from statism can they turn back their societies from the path of destruction that this abandonment of God has set them on. This is easier said than done. Having bought into the narratives of the world, it becomes very difficult to wake men up to their slavery. Americans were raised on all sorts of pro-State, patriotic propaganda (“this is a free country”) that is not easily broken. 

Waking our people up

If men are ever going to wake up, they are going to have to come back to God and get to know the Lord and His word. The average person has no idea what’s going on, and it shows in their relative excitement for the world and their participation in the political clown show. The problem with society in the eyes of a generic American conservative is that there aren’t enough police or military or laws or harsh judges, that “the kids don’t respect the flag and authority as much as we used to…back in my day we proudly said the pledge of allegiance and put our right hand over our hearts when the teacher told us to.” They can’t see that it is this very idolatry toward the State, which comes from the worldly ideas of men, that got us to where we are — that these people were helping to sow sinful seeds even though they act dumbfounded today as they reap an evil harvest. 

Our people have believed in fallacies that are not supported by the word of God, and have thereby threatened the social order that they claimed they were protecting by robbing it and preying on people. Our people have sought after the ideas of men and have made themselves captives to their systems and these systems’ supporting ideologies. 

Prayer

O, dear God, our brothers are in prisons and our people are threatened at gunpoint by legalized criminals who call themselves “governments” if they wish to remain on the free-range plantation. Be with us, Lord, we’re surrounded by evil men who love plunder and glorify the violence of the State. Keep them far away from us. They have had so much power because they have successfully deceived most all the men in the world into worshiping their captors. Lead Your people back to Your word and show them the things You have shown us. Get them to come out of Egypt and to stop rooting for their own bondage and that of their neighbors. Amen.