Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

After a few hundred years of being freed from Egyptian captivity at the hand of God, where men were in spiritual and physical bondage to state rulers, God’s people in the Biblical narrative backslid and decided that liberty under God wasn’t good enough. They wanted man-kings to “be like all the other nations” of the world who likewise rebelled against God by setting up centralized state systems headed by kings, princes, and other officers and bureaucrats that accompany any such system (1 Sam 8:5). The decentralized, kingless social order—or rather the society where God was the King and protector—was no longer good enough for them, and they demanded a king other than the Lord their King. Like the worldly voters of today who tell us that we must have a president to protect us from all the other bad guys around the world and within the political system itself, they wanted to conform to the cultures surrounding them and go the statist route of setting up powerful human governments.

This human king-seeking, which came a few hundred years after having been divinely delivered from Egyptian bondage, was a sort of culmination of the sin against God among these people, as it is today among democratic voters. The request for a king reflected a long-standing pattern of rebellion against God’s leadership since their exodus from Egypt.

It wasn’t insignificant that they had asked for a man-king, as doing so is one of the chief ways of rebelling against God, despite the tens of millions of Christians today who tell us we “must” be doing the same. Man’s rebellion against God is characterized by the quest for political power. God could have told us in the Book of Samuel that the people decided to rebel and just become general moral degenerates or something of the like. But the fact that this rebellious episode was defined by the quest for a king shows us that such things as voting, worshiping politicians, venerating state armies, etc., is really what sin is all about. Such things are transgressions of the commandments of God to have no other gods. One of the greatest manifestations of sin is essentially politics — the one thing that is amazingly off the radar for most Christians, who find such “patriotism” and support for human rulers to be wholly compatible with their faith in God.

So much for being rescued by God from the hands of Pharaohs, the people of Samuel’s day, in seeking a human king to rule over them, decided they wanted to go back into Egyptian bondage and be under human rulers again. They forgot their Lord who rescues His faithful people out of Egypt and turned their backs on Him. They forgot God, who drowns Pharaohs and his soldiers and police officers in seas (Ex 15:4), and said that they needed the “protection” of a centralized system of government, like the one we have today. They wanted “a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:20). They didn’t believe that God would protect them anymore, but decided they needed to elect a man. They thought, like all statists do today, that they would be insecure without human rulers, when precisely the opposite is the case: establishing human rulers brings bondage. They said, like Americans and statists all over the world today say, that we needed governments, figureheads, executive power, legislatures, lawmakers, armies, soldiers, police officers, socialist welfare programs, etc. They forgot the voice of the Lord saying, “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2), and they went on to say that “X politician is going to save us from the Democrats.”

This is still what men are doing today when, forsaking God as their ruler (or Jesus as the only legitimate archist), they ask for men to rule over them—to wield the sword of the State—by voting, campaigning for politicians, and otherwise apologizing for the statist system and adopting its supporting ideology. They are forsaking God and demonstrating their allegiance to be with the kingdoms of men. By acknowledging such “democracies” and participating in them, they identify as citizens of the world rather than citizens of God’s kingdom.

It is thus no small affair that men—professing Christians worst of all—tell us of the alleged importance and “civic duty” to vote for rulers to govern us. By voting, men show just how much they are not ready to leave Egypt behind. They show, by putting their hand to such evils, that they love being in bondage, that they love following after the ways of the world than the ways of the Lord. They refuse to walk out of Egypt and listen to the Lord, but tell us, like those who complained to Moses that he was leading them to their deaths, that it is better to stay behind. Rather than to leave Egypt, voters tell us that we must stay behind and attempt to “reform” Egypt by electing new Pharaohs. They tell us that the next Pharaoh is going to “fix the country” and make everything better. Like any good false prophet, they tell us that all is well in Babylon and we just need to stick it out and have faith in this system to get on the right track again with the “right” man in power (just as the socialists tell us).

This was the bondage the Israelites wanted to return to when they sought kings to rule over them. God said it was a direct rejection of the Lord as King (1 Sam 8:7-8). Likewise, voting for “presidents” in so-called “democratic republics” is no different today, notwithstanding all the endless propaganda about how “God gave us a constitutional republic with voting rights and we’re lucky to have this system and need to exercise our civic duties.” It is a clear rejection of God to vote for men, regardless of the millions of men who will write “Christian” right next to “Trump 2024” on their bio as if they can have dual citizenship in the kingdoms of men that we’re called to walk away from and the kingdom of God that we’re called to become an exclusive citizen unto.

And so our people have gone into bondage for not obeying God and (as instructed) turning away from the evil kingdoms of the world. They did not fear God and His warnings of the curses that would come upon a people who thought they could practice the ways of the Egyptians again. Those who can’t obey God and walk after His ways get political slavery in return. When men refuse to obey God by seeking human rulers, God assures that they get what they ask for. “The LORD will return you to Egypt in ships by a route that I said you should never see again” (Deuteronomy 28:68). A people, like ours today, who seek political rulers, will find themselves living in captivity. As one prophet said, “They came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of the LORD” (Jeremiah 43:7).

Cause and effect 

It is no mystery why things have become the way they are today, with political dramas and evils prevailing in our society. God warned us precisely what would happen when men sought after these political systems where man-kings ruled over other men, rather than the Lord by divine providence (1 Sam 8:9-17). We would be taxed, bombed, killed, conscripted, enslaved, caged, threatened, and every other thing that is becoming evident even to the people who tell us that we must vote our way out of the evils, but who don’t realize we voted our way into them, making a wicked vow to support such a system.

What is curious, from a cause and effect perspective, is that people should continue to vote under the idea that “the stakes are high” and things are worse than ever, because things are getting worse precisely because men have turned their backs on God by things like voting and worshiping state rulers. They sought human kings (called “presidents” today) to stand over them and tell them what to do and how to live. But if things are bad, if things are just like how God promised they would be if we went after such systems as we have set up today, it stands to reason that men should repent! But voters essentially tell us that we should keep sinning, that we should keep doing Egyptian things. 

The prophet Samuel warned what would happen when men rejected God, and many men are able to see these effects. In fact, they tell us they’re why we “must” vote: “things are worse than ever…if you don’t vote you support more taxes and inflation.” But they evidently don’t see the causes if they argue that the effects justify doubling-down on prostituting ourselves out to Egyptian system-makers by voting. To get rid of the problems of statism (which they don’t recognize are the problems of statism), they tell us that we must keep advocating for statists to rule over us. This is the same thing all statists do when they tell us that the effects of intervention (say, rising prices from monetary inflation) require more intervention (say, price controls to fight the price inflation).

Many perversions abound along these lines. One professing Christian submitted that it is non-voters who actually keep us in Egyptian bondage, as if Moses had called his people to stick around and advocate for a “better” Pharaoh rather than to tell the Pharaoh to let God’s people go and everyone to get up and leave. But this either shows them to be deceived or one of the deceivers (anyone who knows better, like a pastor spinning these lies, is more likely of the latter). For the way out of Egypt is repentance and walking away from these systems of bondage, to no longer acknowledge their existence and beginning to live as Christ commanded us to live, which is the opposite of the kingdoms of the world that exercise authority one over another (Mark 10:35-45).

Renewing our minds

Unfortunately our people have only known the ways of the world, which is where they get their ideas from, eg., that “we have to vote” or that “we need a government to rule over us.” If men had known the Lord or made any attempt to receive their wisdom from the Most High through His word, they would never spout the nonsense they do today about the alleged necessity of choosing between lesser evils, and they would never make excuses for their idolatry. They would see that we are to put our faith in God for everything, including protection from enemies.

But what men have been made to believe today—the next Pharaoh is going to heal our land and save our country—is pure foolishness and lies that they have bought into. The way out of Egypt is to completely reform our thinking and change our mindset from the ways that we have learned from the world. It is to start thinking, as the early Christian writer Speratus (martyred 180 AD) said, that “I recognize no empire of this present age.” But when men vote, the accompanying recognition of the empire is in full effect, both in their personal identity and what they see as their civic duty. “I’m an American and I’m going to exercise my constitutional right to vote.”

When they criticize us non-voters as “sitting on the sidelines,” they are really only mad that we won’t join them in their worldly pursuits and idolatries. Voters have brought these evils upon themselves in their own sin and rejection of God of seeking rulers over them. And rather than confront this, they like to blame those who have had nothing to do with these systems whatsoever and have instead called people away from them. Rather than confess their own complicity in their own bondage, they blame the people who are calling for others to walk away from these systems. Rather than weep and repent, they tell us we must continue in the same old errors as before. They have refused to own up to their own sin—asking for human kings to rule over them, their enemies, and their neighbors—and turn from their wicked ways, which has brought the calamity that they are now angered about. They continue to fight against the evils with the same old means that brought them about, all while blaming others who haven’t partaken in these sins for being the problem. Those who refuse to walk out of Egyptian systems make any excuse to not repent. They will tell us that there is no Biblical case for not seeking after human kings to rule us instead of God, or that, if there is, God doesn’t oppose it.

Back into bondage

But hundreds of years after the exodus from Egypt when the Israelites sought a king again, God said this was expressly a rejection of Him. This isn’t some irrelevant Old Testament passage that doesn’t apply to us anymore; it is perfectly applicable to what voters are doing today. God told us these things for a reason. His word didn’t become moot or outdated, as the voter-idolaters want it to be, so as to exempt their whorish ways to the kingdoms of the world.

Calling for men to rule over us, as voters do when they have it in their hearts to support them and check their ballots and make a vow to false gods, is how a people go into bondage. Voting is to sin against God, which leads men into captivity.

“Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land, marched up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried away the Israelites to Assyria, where he settled them in Halah, in Gozan by the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes. All this happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods and walked in the customs of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites, as well as in the practices introduced by the kings of Israel” (2 Kings 17:5-8).

Those who vote for men are following after the customs and practices of the world, which tell us it is “our civic duty” to participate in worldly systems. By doing so, they keep themselves in bondage to men and their enslaving systems of taxation in exchange for “protection” and “welfare.” They show themselves to not be Christ-followers at all by choosing other “gods” to serve and to be served by. They do not keep God’s commandments to not follow after other “gods” and turn from their evil ways (2 Kings 17:13), but they fully embrace them and believe that these men (eg., Trump) are going to fight their battles for them and protect them from “the woke Marxist left.” They won’t trust in God (ie., avoid these systems altogether) to fight their foes, both real and imagined.

The idea that “we have presidents today and not kings” just shows how lost and confused they are. All the false human rulers had to do was change their titles and call it a “constitutional republic” and millions would fall for the old tricks again. Americans are enslaved to endless propaganda about how “exceptional” their form of government is, such that they can even view every other State around the world as evil but their own. Many statists are thus nearly anarchists in regard to every other government but the one they have been made to believe is “theirs” through endless “we the people” and “the free world” type of propaganda. The North Korean government is evil, the Chinese government, the Russian government, etc., but not “ours.”

Being overloaded with thousands of fallacies about how good “their” government is keeps men who live under dying empires ensnared to the very philosophies that are dragging the empire to the ground, as God’s way of sort of guaranteeing its decline by giving the people over to an unrepentant mind and heart. 

Such people can surely not get out of bondage with the slave-mindedness they have today. If they were to give it up, they would never believe that voting would cure their problems or provide the way out of Egypt. But if they continue in it, voting most surely won’t do anything for them, since they know nothing of self-governing but instead support men who will take care of all their problems for them — who will “fight our battles for us” (1 Sam 8:20). It is rather humorous that an already slave-minded people think they are going to vote their way out of their slavery. As Alexis de Tocqueville once said,

“It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants” – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Though all governments are bound to become absolutely tyrannical as their existence presses on through the decades and centuries, and are raised up in theft and violence in their origin, it is most surely the case that only a terrible one can result from people who have an undying need for human masters to guide their lives for them. If people truly woke up to the evils of the world, they would no longer call for human rulers to stand over them, and they would realize the sin and rebellion in doing so. But so long as they’re sleeping and believe they are in need of human rulers, these men who participate in political systems will do nothing but support fools and tyrants to rule over them, for they do not know the first thing about liberty.

Conclusion 

God wants to be our King. God is our King. But men deny His Kingship when they regard other men as kings, as they do when they head down to the polls confessing, “We have no king but Caesar”(John 19:15). When men chase after man-kings, ie., when they vote in Egyptian elections, they show themselves to be enemies of God and advocates of human rulers as substitute gods.

The only way out of Egypt is to make God our God again, to turn away and repent from our involvement in the world’s political systems. By remaining in them through voting and participation in other ways, our people show that they only want to remain in Egypt and deny the Lord their God. They are not seekers of the kingdom of God, but proud slaves to the kingdoms of men.