[This is part three in an article series on “statism and salvation.” See part one, two, four]

As we have discussed already, trusting in human government for protection is a means of distrusting the Lord and turning against His salvation. Since the type of salvation that God offers is not just a heavenly escape in the afterlife but a this-worldly salvation from our enemies (ie., from the States of the world that enslave those who go into bondage to them), trusting in these systems of men—in their presidents, legislatures, police and soldiers, laws and taxation—to “protect” you is a very explicit denial of the Lord’s salvation. The Lord our King wants to be our protector as much as anything else, such that seeking this from men is to abandon the kingship of the Lord for the false kingship of civil gods.

Statism as a curse 

Turning against God and denying Him as your King, as men do when they set up statist systems or trust in them for protection, is not without its consequences. The price men pay for not believing that God can and will protect them, and for thinking instead that States are needed in His place, is to bring upon themselves all the evils that they mistakenly believed required human government to avoid. For their sinful and faithless belief that they would be robbed, plundered, enslaved, and murdered without human government, men go into bondage to human rulers who bring all these evils upon them as divine justice and judgment for not believing that they could live free if they trusted in the Lord alone as their plan for peace, security, law and order. For the sin of believing they needed police officers to “keep the peace,” they instead live under the constant threat of getting their doors kicked in, hauled off to a prison for violating one of Pharaoh’s edicts, or shot by one of his agents. For getting things backward and believing that States, rather than God, bring peace and freedom to a people, men must face God’s judgment in the form of receiving all the evils they are due for erecting violent political institutions that they mistakenly thought were needed to avoid being robbed and killed. They must find out the hard way that these systems are the causes of the evils, not the means of preventing them.

Though men falsely expect salvation from the State and view it as a blessing from God, living as a slave under human government is actually a curse upon a people for not trusting in the Lord alone as their God. Living under the jurisdiction and “laws” of men and all the accompanying evils of these systems is the price a people pay for denying God as their King.

This judgment that comes upon a people in the form of state rule is the opposite of the salvation from human government that comes to a people who repent of these systems and seek God’s Kingdom. Though God literally saves His people from their enemies over and over, eventually He gets fed up with people who don’t believe it and who keep turning to false gods (as our people do today with presidents or the U.S. military, etc) for their protection, and allows them to suffer the consequences for their sins. God is always ready to save a people, or give them over to every evil they beg for. He is always ready to be merciful, or bring justice. God always prefers mercy to judgment and doesn’t take pleasure in punishing those who turn from Him. He would always prefer that men repent rather than be destroyed.

“But if the wicked man turns from all the sins he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the transgressions he has committed will be held against him. Because of the righteousness he has practiced, he will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Lord GOD. Wouldn’t I prefer that he turn from his ways and live?” (Ezekiel 18:21-23).

However, when people refuse to repent for their wicked ways, when they refuse to stop apologizing the systems of the world that operate on the police club and the bayonet and shouting slogans like “back the blue” and “support the troops,” God must teach them a lesson for their evils. When people refuse for so long to listen to the words of the Lord calling them away from the worldly systems of men, eventually God loses His great patience and shows men what it means to turn from Him, so that they may learn a lesson in violating the law-word of God.

“If you had repented at my rebuke, then surely I would have poured out my spirit on you; I would have made my words known to you. Because you refused my call, and no one took my outstretched hand, because you neglected all my counsel, and wanted none of my correction, in turn I will mock your calamity; I will sneer when terror strikes you, when your dread comes like a storm, and your destruction like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish overwhelm you. Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will earnestly seek me, but will not find me. For they hated knowledge and chose not to fear the LORD. They accepted none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof. So they will eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the waywardness of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them” (Proverbs 1:23-32).

God’s offer of freedom and salvation through Him was always a simple one: “Whoever listens to me will dwell in safety, secure from the fear of evil” (Proverbs 1:33). But this offer—obey God and live free—was apparently too much to ask for people. They went and begged for human rulers to keep them safe, and so got the very opposite of a safe place, secure from the fear of evil: they got a police state where they must always worry that tyrants will come down on them for running afoul of one of Pharaoh’s edicts, that they will be robbed for all their worth by this gang of plunderers, and thrown in prisons if the regime doesn’t like them. 

The consequences for a statist people who whore themselves out to political rulers and effectively deny God as their ruler is to fall under the yoke and bondage of men, which God allows to happen as a recompense for this very sin of idolatry, covetousness of their neighbor’s property to fund these “public goods,” and slothfulness to the ways of God’s Kingdom. As He knew early on in His word, 

“These people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them. On that day My anger will burn against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, so that they will be consumed, and many troubles and afflictions will befall them.  On that day they will say, ‘Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is no longer with us?’ And on that day I will surely hide My face because of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods” (Deuteronomy 31:16-18). 

If men want to separate themselves from God by trusting in the false gods of human government, God weepingly and reluctantly allows it to happen. It is this sin of trusting in the violent systems of men that a people keep God’s genuine salvation away from them — that they invite enemies upon themselves rather than find protection from them. It is not that God cannot save, but that a backwards, statist people evidently don’t want to be saved and instead choose to trust in violent plunder systems in the belief that “law and order” comes from police states. 

“Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice. No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case honestly. They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies; they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. They hatch the eggs of vipers and weave a spider’s web. Whoever eats their eggs will die; crack one open, and a viper is hatched. Their cobwebs cannot be made into clothing, and they cannot cover themselves with their works. Their deeds are sinful deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are sinful thoughts; ruin and destruction lie in their wake. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their tracks. They have turned them into crooked paths; no one who treads on them will know peace. Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We hope for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in gloom. Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead. We all growl like bears and moan like doves. We hope for justice, but find none, for salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions are indeed with us, and we know our iniquities: rebelling and denying the LORD, turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lies from the heart. So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:1-14).

Whereas we might understand salvation as deliverance from enemies for those who cry out to God to be saved and renounce their evil belief that salvation rests in Egyptian political systems, on the other hand we should see that rebellion against God, which is primarily accomplished by seeking protection from men who call themselves “the government,” is cursed with statist captivity. When men are so hardheaded that they won’t trust in the Lord’s salvation and seek the protection of States instead, God gives them over to these evils they beg for.

“He delivered them into the hand of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them. Their enemies oppressed them and subdued them under their hand. Many times He rescued them, but they were bent on rebellion and sank down in their iniquity” (Psalm 106:41-44).

Just as God brings repentant men out from under the boot of worldly systems when they turn from them and cry out to Him for deliverance, so He delivers idolaters of these systems back into Egypt when they refuse to trust in Him alone. 

The consequences of trusting in statism

When men trust in States to “save” them (as they do anytime they trust in a State whatever), they are explicitly rejecting God’s offer, as a King, to protect and save them. 

“But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your troubles and afflictions, and you have said to Him, ‘No, set a king over us’” (1 Samuel 10:19).

When the Israelites sought a human king, which God clearly stated was a rejection of Him (1 Sam 8:7-8), they did it precisely because they lacked faith in the Lord’s ability to save them from their enemies and thought they needed earthly kings to fight their battles for them (1 Sam 8:20). Like the heavenly-minded Christians today who don’t regard the Lord as their King and at best have relegated His Kingship to some far-off date in the future where the Kingdom drops from heaven full-grown over night, the Israelites didn’t believe that God was their King in any sort of earthly sense that they could trust in Him as their army. Like statists today, they believed they needed tax-funded, socialist systems for their defense — that a “U.S. military” was needed if we are to expect to keep the “Germans,” “Chinese,” “Russians,” “North Koreans,” or any other number of boogeymen away. It was this belief that angered God. Seeking human kings is not just a rejection of God’s “kingship” in some sort of spiritual sense that is detached from any actual protection from enemies, but a rejection of God’s offer of this-worldly salvation — to be the one who fights our battles and enemies for us.

Those who trust in States deny God, because God wants to be our protector as much as anything else. They think men are needed to “save” them. And for this reason demonstrate themselves to be a faithless and Godless people. For the issue of protection from enemies is inseparable from one’s trust in God and faith in His salvation. Those who seek it from human government show themselves to be enemies of a God who is not detached from earthly-human affairs and just floating around in the heavens waiting to receive people when they pass from this earth, but very much so wants men to trust that He works salvation and deliverance on earth for those who seek His Kingdom.

This statist rebellion against God, where men turn to human kings to protect and save them, must be punished. This is accomplished by God namely by allowing the statist rulers that men begged for as their “protectors” to bring all the evils upon them that necessarily come with these systems, all which they believed they would avoid by trusting in men rather than God. Essentially, God just allows States to do the very things they’re good at as His form of judgment against those who rebelliously turn to them. These institutions rob, cage, and murder people, and thereby accomplish God’s ends of bringing judgment upon those who have rebelled against God’s plan for social order of men living freely under His Kingship and its providential protection and provision of their needs. For failing to believe that they could trust in God alone and that a free society would serve their needs, they reap the injustices and wickedness of statism that they have sown by planting those seeds and harboring the sinful ideology of statism that accompanies these political systems. They learn—the hard way to be sure—the Biblical cause and effect that God made available to all men, but which was ignored by them in their stubbornness and pride: that there is only liberty under God, or slavery under men — that all those who refuse to be ruled by God will find themselves ruled by men.

Men rebel against God at their own peril. They do not escape God’s causal order by believing hard enough that they can fight against it. Those who seek the protection of men rather than the Lord are not off the hook for this grave sin of believing that men are lords and saviors, which they tacitly confess by merely supporting their existence in power. (Since it is rare for anyone to openly admit that they believe the State is their lord and savior, we must submit that this is necessarily what anyone believes by their mere support of these systems, in anticipation of the idolaters who claim to be Christians arguing that they don’t “actually” believe the State is their god, just that they are voting for men who will protect them).

Those who place their faith in the State for protection must suffer under the very bondage and oppression that they hoped to be liberated from by trusting in men as their saviors and rejecting the salvation of the Lord. Statism is a fatal error and fallacious idea of salvation from enemies that results in human slavery as divine justice for walking in this wicked and rebellious path. Faith in States brings the exact opposite of what statists thought would come from “serving our country” and trusting in it, as God’s way of showing people how stupid they are for thinking they could do without Him.

The price to pay for the worldly belief that “we wouldn’t be safe or free without the military or police” is to go into tax bondage to these men and fund the very people who oppress you — to send them thousand of dollars of your income annually to blow up children overseas and to fund the police who stalk you and trap you on your way home from work to harass you for papers before letting you get back home to your family. The price to pay for not making God your King is to suffer under the oppressive rulership of human kings, which is nothing like the light yoke that the Lord offers for those who keep His basic laws. The price men pay for refusing to obey basic commands against having no other gods and not supporting theft and murder is to live under tens of thousands of arbitrary “laws” and edicts of men. Those who can’t live by the Ten Commandments will have to live by the Ten-Thousand Commandments. 

It is not possible to violate God’s law order and get away with it, as men attempt to do when they set up governments and believe that they can arrange artificial societies by force — that they can bring order through the police club or intervene upon the economic system and magically produce prosperity through socializing it and bringing it under the jurisdiction of false gods. God has implanted in the social structure a law that prohibits men from violating His ordinances without paying a price for it. God assures that all economic intervention by central banks and governments results in impoverishment and inequality to a people and that all “laws” enacted by the “legislatures” that men set up in their sin will only reduce their liberties. God assures that the sin of statism puts a people further and further into a hole until they realize too late that they can’t climb out of it anymore and must now face social collapse, great tyrannies, famines, and death. The severe repercussion men must face for turning away from the Lord and failing to believe in His salvation is to become the captives of men and suffer under their jurisdictions and false law orders. Since God never calls us to political power and specifically condemns it, advancing the power of the man-made kingdoms of this world, which is outside the scope of God’s will and commands, is never without its negative consequences and tyrannies. It means police states, kidnappings, prisons, surveillance systems, federal agents, secret police, spies, gulags, genocides, checkpoints, censorship, millions of bureaucrats, shortages, price inflation, wealth transfers, famines, moral decline, coercion, taxation, conscription, war, home invasions, chaos, disorder, distortions, lawlessness, conspiracies, corruption, privileges, scamdemics, mass vaccination schemes, global psyops, false flag events, human sacrifice, organized and legalized crime, child trafficking, and mass death. 

Mocking statists

God punishes statism—the advocacy and existence of political power—with statism itself. The evils that are sure to come from these systems are the price men pay for apologizing for their existence in their sinful belief that God alone cannot be trusted for protection and liberty. And because we’re talking about betraying God for the kingdoms of men, it wouldn’t be good enough to just let a people go into slavery under human government. God mocks those who blindly trust in the false salvation of statism to protect them from their enemies, which betrays the true salvation that He offers. He makes fun of a people who learn all too late that relying on the State to “save” them and “fight for our freedom” was a total mistake and tells them to trust in their political gods if they’re so good as saving them!

“You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against Me— against your helper. Where is your king now to save you in all your cities, and the rulers to whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes?’” (Hosea 13:9-10).

If men, in their rejection of divine protection from God, believe governments save them, then, God says, turn to your false gods for your salvation and  protection, because He’s not listening anymore!

“Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, saying, ‘We have sinned against You, for we have indeed forsaken our God and served the Baals.’ The LORD replied, ‘When the Egyptians, Amorites, Ammonites, Philistines, Sidonians, Amalekites, and Maonites oppressed you and you cried out to Me, did I not save you from their hands? But you have forsaken Me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you in your time of trouble” (Judges 10:10-14).

When men rebel against God by setting up human rulers and governors, who always end up failing them, God laughs and tells them to turn to their gods. When men expect false gods like “presidents” and “congressmen” to “save” them and police and soldiers to act as their “heroes,” God turns back on His offer to save a people.

“They have returned to the sins of their forefathers who refused to obey My words. They have followed other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the covenant I made with their fathers. Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I am about to bring upon them a disaster that they cannot escape. They will cry out to Me, but I will not listen to them. Then the cities of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to which they have been burning incense, but these gods certainly will not save them in their time of disaster” (Jeremiah 11:10-12).

Statism and salvation 

It is never just the ideas floating around the world that lead a people to their position. It is ultimately a people’s own idolatry and sloth that leads them evil worldviews, which explains why bringing people to the truth is not simply one economics lesson away. Men are emotionally, spiritually, and religiously invested in their gods and idols. They are not easily convinced that state intervention actually impoverishes them, no matter how much historical or logical proof you provide them. People are not propagandized into bad ideas so much as they were already prone to bad ideas that were bolstered by propaganda.

However, the existence of these propagandists and false prophets surely helps to lead people down the wide road to destruction. It provides them with a seemingly systematic, doctrinal, and developed edifice that most men hold to as a means of justifying their own views. It makes it to where they don’t have to be alone in their ideas and can find a home among the masses who share it and have made it into an almost official and unquestioned doctrine that all men should believe. And since few men want to stand alone and challenge prevailing views, they accept whatever everyone else believes and call it quits on any independent investigation into these ideas which might cause them to be cast out and branded as a heretic. Theologically speaking, the general idea that “Jesus saves us from our sins so we can go to heaven when we die” or more or less not to be questioned at all. Once suggest that we are to seek the Kingdom of God on earth and that Jesus came to liberate men from physical bondage, and you will find yourself attacked by most people who take comfort in the escapist view of getting off this earth that doesn’t require them to have any duties or obligations to their neighbors, at least not much more than asking them if they know where they’re going when they die or if they want to tag along to church with them.

These unquestioned theological ideas help to lead men into a statist worldview under the notion that God’s word is not political or ethical or legal in nature, but nothing more than a document about going to heaven when they pass from here. This common conception of salvation as a purely heavenly idea then assists this lack of earthly hope in the here and now that leads men to justify their earthly quest for state rulers (though, again, it is ultimately the idolatry in their hearts that does it). When men don’t see that salvation—God delivering His people from statists—is very much so about liberation from Egyptian captors, such as in the case of the exodus with Moses at the Red Sea, they are able to turn around and do something entirely contrary to this Biblical message: They trust in the very worldly institutions that they need salvation from for their salvation! People put their faith in the State—in so-called “defense departments” and “law enforcement” agencies—to save them, when these are the very enemies of God and liberty that we need to be freed from! Moses and the Israelites were saved from Pharaoh and his system of Egyptian political bondage, and yet many men today who call themselves Christians say we need Pharaohs and Egypts to be protected! Thus, they vote for men who they truly expect to save them, eg., from the “Democrats” or the “communists” or immigrants or whoever.

These statists have it entirely backward. If they had read the prophets, they would know that States exist to bring judgment down upon backward people who trust in these rulers, and that salvation is precisely being saved from statists! God curses those who disobey His instruction to walk in the straight path and “have no other gods before Me” by allowing them to be ruled by men, and He blesses those who seek His Kingdom and make Him their only King by granting them liberty under God.

Ironically enough, even though millions of Christians believe that our only hope is ultimately in heaven, this escapist belief where we never achieve victory on earth somehow leads them to actually engage in the very things that thwart God’s kingdom! They begin voting and seeking “Christian politicians” (contradiction) in the belief that we should “at least” try to make the State a little better in the meantime, all while a State wouldn’t even exist if they sought God’s Kingdom. Rather than do anything to make our society better and more Godly, their doom and gloom vision of the world leaves them content with the idea that everything will only continue to get worse — but at least they will be “saved” in the end! With a mindset like this, which doesn’t care at all for the real good news of the Gospel that Jesus came to redeem man from the dominion of man, indeed society will get worse and worse. This position exposes a double-laziness in most modern Christians. Whereas a lack of responsibility to God and neighbors originally led to the circumstances we’re dealing with today, now they want to also escape the effects of this irresponsibility and be “saved” from any more responsibility. 

Statism as a lack of faith in God

Despite God always promising salvation from enemies, men have sinfully trusted in the false salvation of statism to keep the “bad guys” away, not realizing that by doing this they are doing the very thing that invites the bad guys in. To trust in human government for protection is the very thing that brings God’s judgment upon a people in the form of tyrants, rulers, human lawmakers, enforcers of human laws, invading armies, and all other sorts of evils. Rather than seek salvation in the Lord, which means to trust in God our King to protect us, they abandon the Lord as their savior and trust in men, who, in the form of great injustices, bring judgment rather than the “freedom” they thought they would attain.

Statists are people who do not trust in the Lord’s salvation. They are people do not believe in God’s ability to destroy state rulers for us and deliver us from their bondage when we repent and seek His Kingdom. They are people set up and support rulers in the belief that is the only way they will find protection, when God always teaches us that He will smash these people for us if we avoid rejecting Him by asking state rulers to protect us. They are people who “forgot God their Savior, who did great things in Egypt” (Psalm 106:21). They are people who simply have no faith in the Lord.

This is the problem with those who have been taught by churches and false pastors who have been sent to spiritualize the message of God’s literal Kingdom that our only hope is in the afterlife in heaven with the Lord when we die. When men don’t think of God as a literal savior who has acted on earth and continues to do so, they’re likely to believe that men are needed to stand in the gap — that they need to erect States in God’s apparent absence from any earthly role of protection down here below. For this great error, they find themselves living in captivity to men when they could enjoy liberty under God.