Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

I have written before that the statist evils of our world are a curse from God for rebelliously approving of the worldly ideology of statism (see here and here). And I have written how the tremendous difference between the anarchistic political theology of God and the highly statist philosophy of the world is a sort of proof for the divine inspiration of the scriptures. And I have also written how God destroys these systems of statism every time.

But I want to take a small step back and suggest that the very existence of statism, and the evils that such a political idea and the institutions that it breeds bring upon society, provide us with evidence for God and that God even tells us as much.

Men who refuse whatever to admit to God are often stuck in very stubborn ways of thinking. We’ve all heard the calls from naysayers and skeptics to “prove that God is real!” For some reason, debates about God are confined to the narrow-minded question of His existence. Men rarely want to soften their hearts and humble themselves enough to know God, which is certainly needed, for a proud heart is never going to find God. They usually just remain in worldly ways of thinking and lack the spiritual maturity to get to know God outside of their traditional forms of proof like seeing something with their own eyes. Few want to delve into the word of God unless it can first be proven that it is God’s word. And so they will stall and stop at the question of existence and go no further.

How does God reveal Himself? 

We see this stubbornness of heart today as men still refuse to return to the Lord even as things become more apparently derailed in our society and massively off-course from the intended paths of the Creator. They are not willing to see the evils of human government and think that perhaps God is real, and that He is judging us. Men most often avoid the truth of God when we lay it on them. They claim that “God isn’t real” and proudly believe they are exempt from God’s judgment when they rebel against a free social order and use the sword of the State against their neighbors (eg., proponents of “democracies”). When God told Moses to go tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to free the Israelite slaves, the king replied,

“Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2). 

Pharaoh refused to know the Lord when told that he needed to give up his captives. So how did God reveal Himself? How did He prove that He exists? With repeated, incrementally-worse judgments — which necessarily come as punishment for setting up statist plunder systems that enslave men. God sent ten plagues upon Pharaoh’s Egypt to reveal Himself, even knowing that it wouldn’t work and that the Egyptians would still refuse to believe. He might have shown His face if He wanted, which I guess is what atheists are expecting, but it was through signs and wonders—God’s outstretched arm upon kings, princes, soldiers, officers, and all others who support Egyptian plunder systems—that God chose to reveal himself to the Egyptians. 

The progression of tyranny 

So how can we know God is active and working today? Are we supposed to give some scientific or mathematical proof of God? Are we to arrive at God through mere philosophical reasoning? Does God need to give us an audible voice? Work a miracle in our life? Just what kind of evidence would satisfy the atheists who are stuck on the question of existence? 

Just as God worked signs and wonders upon Egypt (eg., plagues of frogs and flies and rivers of blood), we might suggest that one evidence for God is a socio-political one, as seen in the case of Pharaoh’s Egypt coming under judgment and in our world today. This is what I propose here: that the existence of a statist system, and the progressive unraveling of social order under this statist system, is evidence for God, being that such things are precisely what God promises will come when we trust in men rather than Him.

The very notion of people going under the power of government, and not just its collapse, is evidence of God’s existence, because He prophesies (Romans 1) that those who reject God’s rule will be given over to a reprobate mind to serve the gods they raise up in civil office.

The existence of a State is itself a proof for God and proof that we have come under divine judgment. If men obeyed God, they would have never set up man-kings (1 Sam 8:7-8), and they wouldn’t be being plundered as a result (1 Sam 8:11-17). God (reluctantly) gives men over to human rulers when they forsake their true king (1 Sam 8:9), and the evils that they bring upon us, as a result of our own evils of supporting them, are evidence that God is judging us. We don’t need some physical evidence to “see” the Lord. “The Lord is known by the justice He brings” (Psalm 9:16).

While the mere existence of a State might be sufficient evidence for God, being that God gives men such an evil institution when they beg for one, a “mere existence” of a State is never all that we experience with such an institution. The State is never just some neutral, “limited” institution that is sitting around idle with no intention of not embarking upon an agenda of total control. There is no such thing as a benign or benevolent State that restrains itself to some “limited” and “socially necessary” function. Statism inevitably degrades into worse and worse forms, and judgment necessarily progresses. The longer men refuse God, the worse the statist society advances. The very erection of a State in the first place, and not merely some wrong-turn later down the road, is based in sin. (God never commands men to set up a State). It wasn’t that the constitution didn’t contain the seeds of destruction and “wasn’t supposed to” become what it did, as if the greater degree of statism today is some “unconstitutional” accident that got messed up somewhere along the way, but that it indeed gave way to everything we should have expected the original erection of such a political system to give us.

The problem is that even before such statist punishment worsens, men still don’t want to come to know the Lord. The first “plague” isn’t bad enough, and nor is the second, third, etc. Being attacked by the Federal Government in the “civil war” wasn’t enough to turn men back to God, neither was the “Great Depression” they rigged for us, nor the “World Wars” they schemed up, nor the events of September 11th, 2001, nor Operation Covid 19. Men kept asking for more and more punishment. 

God gives early warnings, but men don’t listen (Ex 7:16). If men don’t want to know the Lord the first time they are told, such as when they erected statist systems (eg., “constitutional republics”) in the first place which they refused to turn back from, then God will make these systems grow even more evil than they were in their origin, as we are seeing today. 

It wasn’t until many plagues had been sent upon Biblical Egypt that Pharaoh had finally (half-way) decided to let the slaves go (only to pursue them on the way out), and that the Egyptians finally considered that God may be active in judging them for their enslavement of people. 

The point is that all these increasing judgments, from the ten plagues upon Egypt to the endless statist schemes in our time, are meant to be proofs of the Lord. God’s punishment upon statists is intended to wake them up to His existence.

“The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen” (Exodus 14:18).

It is these acts of God where He reveals Himself (Ex 7:17, 8:10, 8:22). As the prophets reiterate, God says,

“I will display My glory among the nations, and all the nations will see the judgment that I execute and the hand that I lay upon them. From that day forward the house of Israel will know that I am the LORD their God” (Ezekiel 39:21-22; cf. Ez 39:7).

The prophet Ezekiel in particular went on with this theme of God judging wicked and prideful societies as a means of revealing Himself.

“Behold, I am against you, O Sidon, and I will manifest my glory in your midst. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments in her and manifest my holiness in her” (Ezekiel 28:22).

The prophet continues,

“I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” (Ezekiel 36:23).

Sometimes it isn’t until things become so bad, namely by the sinful system of statism turning so tyrannical, that men come to know and fear the Lord through these very judgments. As the prophet puts it again,

“I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them” (Ezekiel 25:17).

God’s liberating power

But these proofs work both ways. We can know the Lord not just by the judgments that He brings for our disobedience to His word (namely by our establishment of human governments that destroy everything), but also by the deliverance from statist bondage that God would bring if we walked with Him and refused to support these systems.

“I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as My own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:6-7). 

One way of knowing the Lord then is to observe the Egyptian bondage we are living under; another is to experience the liberty from it that could be attained if we strived to depart from it and return to God. We can “know the Lord” when He destroys the statist systems that come against us. As God speaks of people He frees from the plunderers,

“They will live there securely, build houses, and plant vineyards. They will dwell securely when I execute judgments against all around them who treat them with contempt. Then they will know that I am the LORD their God” (Ezekiel 28:26).

God’s destruction of evil men who plunder His people is thus another proof of God, too. As one scripture says, “The Lord is known by the justice He brings” (Psalm 9:16).

How long will men remain fools?

The question, I suppose, is how much punishment at the hand of man-kings will men take before they return to the true King? Will men come to know the Lord once governments dump fluoride in the water and make it undrinkable (Ex 7:17-18)? Will they come to know the Lord when their skies are polluted with spraying operations (Deut 28:24)? Is attacking the food, water, and air not good enough? (Evidently not). 

Even when men have a chance to reflect on God’s judgment, they often still dismiss His existence (Ex 7:22-23). Men still ignore God even under repeated judgments (Ex 8:19; 9:7,12). 

It is only gradually that men might start to believe that God might have a part in the evils that are coming upon them for their sins of supporting systems of slavery (Ex 9:20-21), and really only after these evils become too prevalent to deny. It is only slowly and half-heartedly that men begin to confess their sins after seeing the evils of their political societies advance. As Pharaoh insincerely told Moses, which Americans still aren’t saying today as they remain hopeful that the next president will save them, “This time I have sinned…The LORD is righteous, and I and my people are wicked” (Exodus 9:27).

Moses, of course, knew Pharaoh’s plea wasn’t genuine and that he had not really become a God-fearing man (Ex 9:30), which is evident only in those who have nothing to do with the systems of men. Men only tend to get scared once things get bad and they had already forsook the Lord too long. But in times of relative peace men grow complacent again and forget the Lord and His power (Ex 8:15). A period of calm causes men to return to their old, judgment-inducing ways (Ex 9:34). 

Learning from evil

But as I have written, men are notoriously hard-headed. The natural man is so spiritually blinded that by the time they are standing in the ash-heap of their former societies that have now gone to decay, they will still be saying (assuming there is any sustenance left to give life), “Where is the proof of God?” A whole police state can grow up around them, and they will still say, “Where is the proof of God?” They can be thrown in a cage by Pharaoh’s demonic agents who they allowed to rise up and will still say, “Where is the proof of God?” Men who call themselves “the government” can come and haul whole segments of the population off to concentration camps, and they will still say, “Where is the proof of God?” Indeed, many people will say that these evils are the fault of God or the proof that He doesn’t exist, rather than to look at themselves, their rebellion against God, and see God’s hand in it. 

While God brings judgments on societies—often in the form of sending evil and plunderous statists against a people who more or less begged for it—as a means of attempting to wake men up to the evils they have committed and cause their repentance, unfortunately men never really learn before it’s too late.

Though they are self-conscious plunderers, even the rulers themselves don’t really want to know God either and see that what is coming upon their societies is part of God’s judgment. “Though I will multiply My signs and wonders in the land of Egypt,” God said of His planned destruction as a form of judgment, “Pharaoh will not listen to you” (Exodus 7:3-4). 

God’s punishment upon statist societies, which we are undergoing today, is meant to be a way that people can and should come to know the Lord. “The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand against Egypt” (Exodus 7:5; cf, Ex 10:2).

Will men learn?

We might ask men this time around to consider God’s existence and His providential law that political intervention destroys society as the statist system that they have allowed to rule over them progressively drives things into the ground, because the effects of such a sinful system as statism—taxation, inflation, wars, prisons, police states, concentration camps, global vaccine schemes—are the result of having strayed from God and His continuous proof of His existence. 

God is always asking His people, amidst the calamity He is bringing upon them through the evil effects of government, “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?” (Exodus 10:3). If Operation Covid 19 didn’t humble men and bring them to the Lord and expose the evil forces behind the world systems, we might pray the next scheme of the global elites will do it — though the next “plague” will probably be worse than the last.