Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

I have already written how gun-owning Americans are quite a bit more interested in their guns than they are God, and how the former is virtually worthless without the latter — that is, without men having repented for their statism and deciding to trust in the protection of the Lord over the false protection of men and their own weapons.

Even though the two are often combined in some sort of “God and guns” combo (the worst being “God, guns, and Trump”), these men typically lean much more on the sword than they do the Lord. Many others, of course, don’t know the Lord at all and don’t claim to, and are rather naked and lost as they cling to their firearms.

But worst of all, most of these people are still highly statist, despite some little fantasy that may play in their head about resisting tyrants (hence the confused flying of the “thin blue line” flag next to a “don’t tread on me” sticker on their bumpers). Even though one would think gun-owners would shun the alleged need for men with guns who call themselves “the government” to protect them, most of these gun owners are still apologists for the alleged necessity of the statist system, if not outright worshipers of Pharaoh’s police and soldiers. They are “back the blue” and “thank a vet for your freedom” fools who also obsess over their own firearms.

Most men, for now, have put their faith in human government — in presidents, politicians, police officers, and even inanimate objects like flags and statues. They have fallen for these false idols as their “protectors.” They may own guns too, but this doesn’t stop them from believing that men who call themselves “the government” are needed to be the main gun owners in society — that a coercive monopoly, known as the State, is needed over law, justice, protection, national defense, welfare, schooling, roads, etc.

The State is a “god” to those who follow it, hence why men often react violently to those who point out their idolatry and criticize this institutionalized violence. We have millions of “stomp my flag and I’ll stomp your ass” idolaters who go into a rage when they see the idol of their godvernment being burned. And I have encountered more than one person online who has told me, “If you don’t think soldiers fight for our freedom, I dare you to say that to their face and see what happens.” They have apparently fought for our “freedom” so much, that they would inflict physical harm on me for disagreeing.

Perhaps the majority of American gun owners are duped by the false religion of statism, whether they profess to be Christians or not, making their possession of firearms more or less worthless, at best. 

Fighting with the Word

Being that most of our neighbors are statists who are lost in the world, our battle is clearly more spiritual and intellectual than it is carnal. We have a problem, not of a lack of weapons, but of a lack of men who know the Lord. We don’t need to go around putting guns in men’s hands, but rather arming them with the word of God. That is where our true power comes in, and it’s why God has given us His word and tells us to rely on Him (Heb 4:12; Eph 6:10). God says that His word is “like a fire” (Jeremiah 23:29).

Scripture is a greater weapon than firearms and holds the power to change men so much that there could be no excuse for needing a firearm to keep the tyrants away, because their repentance and conversion would do just that for them. 

In many places of scripture we see the power of God’s word and the power of God over the sword of wicked men who supposedly necessitate that we arm-up against them with physical weaponry. We may well have also been told that “man cannot live by guns alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (see, Matt 4:4). Jesus rebuked satan with the word of God, not with weapons. And as I already addressed, firearms without the wisdom of the Lord are more or less good for nothing, assuming they ever play a part in our battle for the hearts and minds of men, which is where our struggle lies.

Our power is in our words (Prov 18:21). It is hearing the word of God that men are changed (Rom 10:17). And this is what we try to do: show men their worldly follies, false religions, fallacies, and errors by falling back on the Word. To advance the Kingdom of God, God’s people must expose the lies of statism.

By simply going around and waking men up to the Lord and His word, we can tear down the statist religion which itself was not set up with guns (though they will shoot anyone who resists them) but endures primarily through great propaganda and through exploiting the tendency in men to buy into the sinful, worldly ideology of statism. As one Proverb tell us, 

“A wise man scales the city of the mighty and pulls down the stronghold in which they trust” (Proverbs 21:22). 

It is the job of every true Christian to go around and expose the false idols of the world to the still-lost, sleeping sheep who have bought into the evils of human government. 

Wisdom over weapons

What we see is that we do not need to be as physically strong as the state rulers to overcome them, and indeed we will never be as strong as them nor overthrow them by physical force. Again, the State’s strength is not even by its number of guns and soldiers, but through having successfully proliferated its lies and propaganda into the minds of the people whom they enslave, without which their guns could do nothing to us, because no one would submit to these false rulers and their false assertions of kingship, lordship, and sovereignty.

Our strength is in our wisdom, in exposing the popular lies—the “government is here to save us and give us law and order” sayings of men—to the people who bought into them. Thus, Solomon could say, “Wisdom makes the wise man stronger than ten rulers in a city” (Ecclesiastes 7:19). When men know that statism is a false god, the State has no power.

The only problem, for now, is that men don’t listen to us. They have shown that they despise the truth. They idolize those in power and believe that “truth” emanates from the “god” of government, rather than from the Holy Word of the Lord, thus giving power to a system that would otherwise be without strength. As Solomon said, against those who think guns are needed more than anything but won’t even renounce their statism when we point it out, 

“Wisdom is better than strength, but the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heeded” (Ecclesiastes 9:16).

We see how a single, poor wiseman—people like us—can “deliver” a city from their enslavement merely through teaching its people of the liberating word of God, which, without it, they have been enslaved.

“There was a small city with few men. A mighty king came against it, surrounded it, and built large siege ramps against it. Now a poor wise man was found in the city, and he saved the city by his wisdom” (Ecclesiastes 9:14-15).

Those of us who are led in the Spirit toward the truth have turned away from the ideas of revolutionary violence against the tyrants, seeing that the enemy’s physical arms are not the true source of their strength. Men of God know that “wisdom is better than weapons of war” (Ecclesiastes 9:18). 

Men are enslaved today because they believe wholeheartedly that statism is necessary to law, order, and society and civilization itself — because they have sinfully made the State into their god. It wasn’t because they didn’t have enough guns, which are more or less entirely negated when men are turned into statists. Men had to be made to believe in the lies of statism in order for such a system of political slavery to work. As the libertarian anarchist Murray Rothbard wrote,

“For [the State’s] essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the ‘intellectuals.’ For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, nor indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are…the ‘opinion-molders’ in society. And since it is precisely the molding of opinion that the State so desperately needs, the basis for the age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear” (Rothbard, Anatomy of the State, p. 20). 

If the State was not able to obtain its god-like status in the hearts and minds of men, it could never rule over us no matter how many weapons or footmen they had to carry out the agendas of Pharaohs. And we wouldn’t need any ourselves to threaten its existence, which would crumble as soon as men quit believing that Pharaohs, chariots, and horsemen are needed to protect them, quit voting for them, and quit believing that the plunder system they run can be fixed. This is why the State needs voters and men locked into its fake presidential debates, so that they are spiritually invested in such a false religion and work to keep it going. 

Our real “warfare” is the battle for men’s souls, for their hearts and minds, for their eyes and ears to be opened to the truth. Men are in bondage for their lack of knowledge (Isa 5:13; cf. Hos 4:6), not because another group of men, calling themselves “the government,” have more guns than they do. (Indeed, Americans are armed to the teeth, and yet most of these gun-owners are state-worshiping fools that pose little to no threat to the system that enslaves them and would sooner “back the blue” than they would resist a tyrant or fight the SWAT team away from their neighbors house as they stage a terrorist attack on his family). 

Tearing down statism without guns

Those who have sought to amass guns, rather than wisdom, as a means of fighting the evils in our world, have not understood the spiritual nature of the battle we are in. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, 

“For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). 

When we read the books of the prophets, we see that state power is torn down by merely preaching the word of God to people, not through starting revolutions. As God tells a prophet, 

“I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and plant” (Jeremiah 1:10).

We “overthrow” the evil kingdoms of men by bringing their spiritual slaves over to the word of God and to the protection of the Lord. To think we need to amass weapons to overcome the statists would be to severely devalue the power of God’s word to transform the hearts and minds of men. As God said, “Is not My word like fire…and like a hammer that smashes a rock?” (Jeremiah 23:29). A few scriptures can take on the kingdoms of men far more effectively than a few rugged bands of men who set out to attack the enemy without an ounce of godly wisdom in them.

The main “sword” that we use to change the world is the word of God. God has always made the point that His word is more powerful than physical weapons (Heb 4:12). More than any physical weapons, we need the Holy Spirit on us to protect us as we navigate this corrupt, violent, statist landscape that is full of mental slaves whose “god” is the system that we are trying to expose. We need to “put on the full armor of God, so that you can make your stand against the devil’s schemes” (Ephesians 6:11). 

We don’t have enough of God’s people out there exposing the evils of statism. Most men are still under the counsel of false prophets, who preach salvation through the State (even, unfortunately, many professing “Christians” who still trust in human “gods,” like “presidents” and such). 

There is no shortage of firearms in this false system called the “United States,” but a massive shortage of men rebuking the false religion of statism, which is the main enemy of the Kingdom of God. And it is a lack of the latter, not the former, that has us in a dangerous situation today. 

“For lack of guidance, a nation falls, but with many counselors comes deliverance” (Proverbs 11:14).