Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

If you asked most any professing “Christian” today if there was any spiritual or moral problem between (1) serving the Lord and (2) serving the State as a soldier, police officer, or tax-collector, not only would they see no contradiction with this, but would probably go as far as to say that God blesses such service to Egyptian systems and that these men can rob people for Pharaohs and still remain devoted to the serving the Lord. There are millions of so-called “Christians” using God’s name in vain who post online such absurdities as “God bless our troops and police officers” on idolatrous posts that call upon men to worship these false gods and false “heroes.” There are millions of people who “pray that our police officers make it home safe” and don’t care one iota that their “jobs” are preying on the public and bringing back revenue to the false kings of the world. And nor do they pray for them to repent and turn away from their jobs as Pharaoh’s boot boys.

But this is what men have to say, not what the Lord says. There’s a great difference between getting a pat on the back from church-goers (some, I have seen, who even throw “military going-away parties”!) and getting approval from God and His word. In fact, one church I recently walked into was evil enough to have a sign by the door for all those who don’t worship the false gods of the world: soldiers, police, flags, national anthems, etc (which I heeded). 

Rather than allow the word of God to speak to them and confront them about their involvement in evil, namely their support of such a wicked system as human government, most men prefer to interpret the scriptures in a way that doesn’t indict them as guilty of being in need of great lifestyle changes. Many, even, will pull a select few scriptures—they won’t make any attempt at an exegetical defense of their rebellion against the Word—to justify their actions, such as continuing to be a police officer (i.e., an enforcer of Pharaoh’s decrees) while maintaining that they are “Christians.”

Very few Christians have ever added it in their creeds that military and police services are incompatible with claiming to be a Christian. Most churches, who through their 501c3 status are already pimps for the pagan empire that has permitted them to operate, are little else but propaganda machines for the ideology of statism — hence the flags in the sanctuary, the celebration of statist holidays, pledges of allegiance, state servants in their congregations, sermons about how great “America” is, etc. 

God vs. the (false) god-State

Though many people have conflated “God and country” as perfectly compatible, majority opinions or status quos are no proof of the truth having prevailed. If anything, we should be highly suspicious of any dominantly held opinions in our culture, for these are most always the lies of “the world,” i.e., the “truths” spun by the statist intellectuals.

In truth, there is no such thing as a compatibility between God and the State. It is entirely illegitimate to pretend as if the alleged (and violently-asserted) “sovereignty” of the State is equivalent (or at all comparable) to the Sovereignty of the Lord. 

It is not possible to serve the Lord God, and other false gods at the same time. The scriptures everywhere uphold monotheism, which isn’t just a principle that tells a man he is not allowed to adopt one of the “gods” (e.g., Horus) from the pagan pantheon’s many “gods,” but one that necessarily precludes a follower of the Lord from being a statist, i.e., from supporting the political system of human government in any way, whether spiritually, ethically, ideologically, economically, emotionally, or physically — whether worshiping it, venerating it, presenting it as morally defensible, apologizing for its existence, or (perhaps worst of all) putting boots and badges on for it. 

God’s people do not acknowledge the false gods of the world—politicians, presidents, police, soldiers, tax agents—as legitimate whatsoever; we acknowledge only the One True God as our Lord, not those who rule over us with the sword.

“O LORD our God, other lords besides You have had dominion, but Your name alone do we confess” (Isaiah 26:13).

The gods of this world—the politicians, their law enforcers, their soldiers—are false gods, and those who are serving God cannot also accept these other “gods,” either by worshiping them (as millions of idolatrous Americans do) or by strapping on boots and serving as one of them. That other men engage in these evils is no excuse for our participation.

“Though each of the peoples may walk in the name of his god, yet we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever” (Micah 4:5).

Who’s your god?

The powerful men of the world are necessarily competing “gods” with the true God, the Creator of the Universe, hence why they are worshiped by all their followers, whether the sickening idolatry for Donald Trump, the idiotic fan-girling for Bernie Sanders, or the “back the blue” crap we see from the lost sheep of the world who have gone astray from the Shepherd.  It is no coincidence that statists display their favorite politicians on their bumper stickers, lawn signs, or clothing: they are their gods. It is no coincidence that men put their statism at the forefront of their lives: it is their religion. The State is a false god, and this is why it features so prominently in the lives of men who sinfully buy into it.

To serve God, however, requires that men abandon their statism: whether their ideological support for the State, or God forbid, their physical service to it. Men have to make a choice between (1) God and (2) the State, between Christ and Caesar, between the true “King of kings” and the false kings of the world, which are mutually-exclusive choices. God’s people have to decide whether they are (1) on God’s team, or whether they (2) follow the false gods of the world. They can’t pick both, as those fools who wave American flags alongside Christian symbolism do. 

“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!” (Joshua 24:15).

God’s people do not walk after the false gods of the world: the presidents, kings, princes, police, soldiers, and all the other men that our society at large has regarded as “heroes” and “saviors.” Anyone who follows the Lord has to make this decision, and do so decisively. As the prophet Elijah said, 

“How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him. But if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).

When men strap boots on for the State, they have chosen to serve another “god” than the Lord; they have put their feet to evil and have agreed to shed blood for money (Proverbs 1).  

Mainstream Christianity today

But this idea that the political “gods” of this world are compatible with the Lord our God is mostly what we get today in many so-called churches, where, far from rebuking men who walk the evil path and calling them to repentance, congregations are found praising police and soldiers as “heroes” and flying “thin blue line” flags on their homes. Many churches celebrate statist holidays like Veterans Day, Memorial Day, July the Fourth, etc. Many of them say the “pledge of allegiance” to Caesar’s government. Many of them trot soldiers down the aisle and praise these men as their alleged freedom-givers. 

Part of this has been made possible from the false notion that while Jesus is King in heaven, that His heavenly reign is apparently of no effect down here below, such that while our the Lord is sort of “spiritual” God who saves us and brings us to His heavens when we die, we are (supposedly) in need of man-kings in the meantime to order our societies for us. As such, men seek the “wisdom” of men rather than that of the Lord, and they buy into the worldly ideologies of statism that inform us that political violence is (supposedly) “necessary” to civilization, law, and order. 

But these men certainly are not following the Biblical instruction to make all things captive to Christ when they permit the philosophies or prevailing opinions of the world to influence their thinking; they are picking and choosing which parts of their lives they should submit to the Lord; it’s fine, in their eyes, to put their feet to evil if it’s “just a job.”

The Christian writer David Chilton explained this all-too-common attitude which makes Jesus into some spiritual soul-savior rather than God in all respects of one’s life. These Christian compromisers say, 

“Sure, Jesus is God. I worship Him at church and in private devotions. But I can still keep my job and my union status, even though they require me to give technical homage to pagan deities. It’s a mere detail: after all, I still believe in Jesus in my heart'” (Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 163). 

Doing evil for a “job”

This sums up perfectly an interaction I once had with a State Trooper one time who pulled a U-turn just to give me a seatbelt ticket, as I rode through a small town at about 25 miles per hour. I told him that he ought to return to the Lord and stop robbing God’s children for a job, to which he responded, “I’m saved.” At another time, I called a town cop to repent as he was shaking people down in one of his “license checks” through town, to which he replied, “I go to church every Sunday.” These are the mental tricks men use to justify their service to evil — “I asked Jesus to save me…I go sing in church with my mom every week.”

When Jesus is made into nothing more than a soul-savior who saves us from our sins without an apparent need to repent and be born again, men do not believe they must submit their whole lives to the Lord. Many indeed believe it’s a license to continue in their sin, taking up this idea that we’re all irredeemable, lost sinners who really can’t do anything to better our lives. And if we want to keep serving Pharaohs, “I’m saved.” In this view, it’s fine to extort people so long as you vaguely profess Jesus as your Lord, and as long as your transgression of God’s law is committed while wearing a badge. It’s fine to continue walking on the evil path, so long as you vainly profess some loose notion of the Lord from your lips.

Many Pharaoh-servants believe that they are followers of the Lord and have even convinced themselves that they’re the “peacemakers” Jesus was talking about. It isn’t as if they all admit that they’re pagan statists; they think they’re doing “God’s work” out there as they bring violence upon the public.

Apparently, most professing Christians today don’t believe you have to walk after the Lord and keep your feet from evil, i.e., to keep from putting on boots and wearing a gun in the enforcement of Pharaohs false “laws”; a mere profession of faith is good enough. But the scriptures seem to offer the opposite view.

“God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth” (1 John 1:5-6; cf. John 3:21, 8:12, 8:55, 12:35; 2 Cor 6:15; Psa 5:4-6; Prov 2:13).

A mere profession that you know the Lord is not good enough if you’re still strapping boots on your feet to defend the plunder of the worldly empires. 

“If anyone says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).

And just in case anyone wants to somehow imagine that “law enforcement,” i.e., the people who kidnap, cage, or kill men who don’t obey Pharaoh’s edicts, are somehow exempt from these claims, the scriptures often zero in specifically on such political behavior. 

“Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frame mischief by a law?” (Psalm 94:20).

Notwithstanding the statist claim otherwise that “law and order” comes from men who call themselves the “government,” God is very much concerned with “legislators” and their “law enforcers,” as these political systems go against His idea of law and order in every way. God condemns these political actors who “pass laws” that supposedly give “governments” a right to do things against people — “laws” which only impoverish and hurt the very people they claim to protect. 

“Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees. to deprive the poor of fair treatment and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people, to make widows their prey and orphans their plunder” (Isaiah 10:1-2). 

It doesn’t matter if governments claim to be based on mottos like “In God We Trust.” Men have always claimed God while they commit plunder, but it doesn’t make it any less plunderous or ungodly. 

“To the wicked, however, God says, ‘What right do you have to recite My statutes and to bear My covenant on your lips?” (Psalm 50:16).

What is important is that States and their servants are, in fact, plunderers to uphold a system of robbery and slavery. These scriptures are speaking precisely of men like Pharaoh’s “law enforcement” officers who have signed up to violently enforce the edicts of the false kings of the world and their false lawmakers. 

“No, in your hearts you devise injustice; with your hands you mete out violence on the earth” (Psalm 58:2).

But don’t they trust in God?

Many people are all too willing to buy into lies at face value. Since police write “In God We Trust” on their plunderous police vehicles that are used to prey on the populations they claim “jurisdiction” over, we’re supposed to believe that it’s true. 

Frankly, we have to get comfortable with the idea that there are millions and millions of imposter Christians in the world who make false claims of serving the Lord. There have always been people who claim to know and serve God, but who indeed rob and murder people instead, such as the “police” in our times who believe that a badge excuses their evils. This is nothing new. There’s no scriptural reason to take a man’s word for it that he knows God, if his feet continue to walk in the evil path. Indeed, this is how we know he doesn’t. God calls us to change our ways and turn away from such plunderous activity, which is inherent in all political action. 

“Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: Correct your ways and deeds, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words, chanting: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’ For if you really correct your ways and deeds, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow, and if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. But look, you keep trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before Me in this house, which bears My Name, and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue with all these abominations’? Has this house, which bears My Name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Yes, I too have seen it, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 7:3-11). 

We know men by their fruit, not their vague professions. We cannot serve the statist systems of the world and claim to be servants of the Lord. As David Chilton said, 

“Christ’s Lordship is universal, and the Bible makes no distinction between heart and conduct. Jesus is Lord of all. To acknowledge Him truly as Lord, we must serve Him everywhere” (Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 163).

Earlier Christians

This popular fraud today, where men can pretend to be “Christians” on “Sunday” while strapping on boots for Pharaoh Monday morning and robbing God’s children as they travel around without his permission slips called “drivers licenses” and “registration” was not always with us. Jesus is not just our soul-savior who we confine to private prayer or weekly worship service or trust in for the salvation of our eternal soul, but the King of our lives. The earliest Christians (e.g., the apostles) were well-aware that their allegiance could only be to one sovereign and that they had to choose; the other was completely invalid and contradicted the other. As Chilton said, 

“Jesus was not ‘God’ in some upper-story, irrelevant sense; He was the only God, complete Sovereign in every area. No aspect of reality could be exempt from His demands. Nothing was neutral. The Church confronted Rome with the inflexible claim of Christ’s imperial authority: Jesus is the only-begotten Son; Jesus is God; Jesus is King; Jesus is Savior; Jesus is Lord. Here were two Empires, both attempting absolute world domination; and they were implacably at war” (Paradise Restored, p. 162). 

A man cannot have two kings, both Christ and Caesar. As Jesus the King said Himself, a man cannot have two masters (Matt 6:24). If you proclaim Jesus Christ as your King, you simply cannot go on serving the (false) “kings” of the world, who merely claim kingship in order to attempt to usurp God’s throne in their own pride. And if you do go on serving man-kings, as men do when they agree to enforce the “laws” of Pharaohs or fight in their wars as soldiers, there exists the very evidence that you don’t regard Jesus as Lord and King. Again, as the early Christians saw, service to the One True King meant that a man must inevitably find himself at odds (or even in the dungeons) of the false kings of the world. As Chilton said, 

“Faith in Jesus Christ requires absolute submission to His Lordship, at every point, with no compromise. The confession of Christ meant conflict with statism, particularly in the provinces where official worship of Caesar was required for the transaction of everyday affairs. Failure to acknowledge the claims of the State would result in economic hardship and ruin, and often imprisonment, torture and death” (Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 163). 

To support presidents, politicians, police, etc., is to deny Jesus as the King (John 19:12-15); Jesus’s Kingship is clearly a rival to the (false) kingdoms of men of the world.  

Despite the fact that the modern “church” today tells men that they can serve the State and still be a Christian, and even praises them for their military service and treats them as extra-special members of the congregation (when they’re really its overt and willful sinners), it is patently obvious to anyone who knows the Lord and His will—to the sheep that hear His voice—that Christians cannot serve Pharaohs and remain Christians. To serve the State is to reveal oneself as having allegiance to another god and another religion.