Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

For many professing Christians in the United States, Caesar’s flag (which they do not even recognize as the flag of their enemy) is an idol that they have unwittingly adopted (I say unwittingly, because many of them swear by the Lord but don’t realize that statism is a primary way of betraying God for false gods, and might be disturbed if they ever came to their senses on this). 

It is no insignificant thing that state flags fly on the homes of Christians and in the churches of this country. For the symbols of the state-gods are not merely innocent decorations, but rather demonstrate an allegiance to the kingdoms of men, which they likewise pledge to and sing secular anthems for. 

Since the flag is one of their idols, and the State and its accompanying ideology their religion, these men naturally get mad when they see or hear of someone burning a flag. Their god is being attacked, after all.

It only makes sense then that a former Caesar who is back in the running again for emperor has recently proposed harsh punishments for stepping on or burning American flags. In a recent speech, Donald Trump says, 

“I want to get a law passed…you burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year. We gotta do it.” 

He was, of course, met with a great applause. The president, at any time, only ever really reflects the heart of much of the people. And since the heart of the people loves state violence, they naturally roar when one of these agents of statism proposes to come down harder on its enemies.

Trump repeated his idea,

“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag.” 

Surely many millions of Americans would be excited to hear this type of rhetoric. A large segment of the American people, aided by false gods like Trump, have gone away backward and been given over to a reprobate mind, where they are unable to see the truth. They do not get excited about the things of God, but only the thoughts of increased state violence against people who don’t conform to their ways. They are attracted to the words of men, not the word of God, and wouldn’t even want to hear what God had to say about their idolatry. As one prophet said, “The word of the LORD has become offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it” (Jeremiah 6:10).

Trump went on, thinking that such a threat of violence (which is all the State ever is) would be good enough to keep men from burning the idols of the State (which, for wanting to prosecute men over, more or less proves they’re “sacred” objects of the statist religion).

“We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence. When they’re allowed to stomp on the flag and put lighter fluid on the flag and set it afire, when you’re allowed to do that — you get a one-year jail sentence, and you’ll never see it again.”

God vs men

But what does God have to say about these things? Are we to keep idols around and even venerate them, as the statist religionists do? 

At one point, God instructed His people to do the following:

“Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn up their Asherah poles, cut down the idols of their gods, and wipe out their names from every place” (Deuteronomy 12:3).

If men really wanted to serve God, they would, at the very least, start destroying their own idols. Heck, they might go tear down Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, etc — which will come down one day. But they would at least scour their own possessions for symbols of the state religion and prepare them for destruction. Scripture speaks of men in the past having “broken the images” of such false gods (Numbers 33:52; 2 Chronicles 31:1).

The American flag is equivalent to a “carved image” in the Bible that we are commanded to not make, display, or worship (Ex 20:4-5). Any real Christian would burn their American flag knowing that they can only serve one King.  

A true revival

Here’s an idea for truly bringing our communities to repentance, which must include renouncing our statism and not merely some vague profession of faith: create an event where everyone in the neighborhood and beyond joins for a bonfire night of burning idols and preaching God’s word. Everyone tears the flags off their houses, removes their stupid “thin blue line” bumper stickers from their cars, sorts out all the “America” shirts from their dressers, grabs their “U.S Army” hat off the rack, pulls their pocket constitutions off the bookshelf and any other statist literature they possess, and chucks these things into a fire and prays to God and tells the Lord they’re sorry for ever being fooled by the worldly statist ideology and that they only have one King now and see the truth. 

Are men ready for this today? Maybe some, but not all. Americans are still a highly idolatrous people. Many of them still have a “stomp my flag [idol] and I’ll stomp your ass” mentality. 

But what we need again today is for men to “burn their idols in the fire” (Deuteronomy 7:5). 

If they want to arrest us, as Caesar wants to do, then so be it. It would make it all the more clear who the men of God are and who the tyrants are, and it won’t be the police or their statist supporters, who will be showing that they refuse before God to give up their statist religion. And we should do this once a month until men have burned all their statist paraphernalia.

If tearing down idols and burning them means the threat of being thrown in a cage, then so be it. We must obey God rather than men.