Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

For the most part, Christianity today is filled with a great pessimism toward our earthly existence. An almost entirely heavenly-minded worldview pervades the thinking of most Christians, who largely lack a Kingdom-seeking mindset that works to abolish human government and bring about the natural order of Liberty as God intended it, where free people freely serve each other on their own out of personal responsibility and love for their neighbors. This occurs under a more or less totally otherworldly idea of salvation, where “being saved” consists of nothing more than being shipped off to heaven when we die. 

For many Christians then, there is a reluctance to be hopeful for anything that has to do with earthly life. Many of these types even conflate Biblical calls to avoid “the world” (ie., its political institutions) with being calls to shun the earth itself, and earthly existence is almost seen as a hopeless curse where the only expectation of things getting better for us is once we’re gone from here.

Naturally under this worldview of an almost cursed earthly existence that forsakes any duty to seek God’s Kingdom and thinks such efforts to be futile, there is a strong aversion to prosperity or any suggestion that God does not just want us to suffer down here below. Many Christians seem to think that God apparently just wants us to be poor and miserable this whole life, rather than be fruitful and multiply, as we would be if we had taken up the Dominion Mandate rather than passed off our earthly responsibilities to worldly-socialist institutions to “provide” for our people for us, only for them to plunder our wealth for themselves and bring everyone into the bondage of Egypt. To the contrary, God wants us to prosper. Why should anyone who believes that God made man and the earth to stand on think otherwise?

“Prosperity gospel” and theology 

This sort of anti-prosperity view where we only suffer down here below is prevalent despite God’s repeated promises to bless those who walk in the ways of the Lord (Gen 22:17-18; Ex 15:26, 20:6; Lev 26:3-12; Deut 4:40, 5:29, 6:2-3, 7:12-15, 11:13-15, 11:26-27, 28:1-14, 30:15-16; Joshua 1:7-8; Psalm 1:1-3, 19:7-11, 119:1-2; Prov 3:1-4, 16:7; Isa 1:19, 56:1-2; Jer 7:5-7, 17:7-8; Ezek 18:21-22; Mal 3:10-12; Matt 5:3-11; Eph 6:1-3; Heb 11:6; James 1:25; 1 John 3:22-24; Rev 22:7, 22:14).

But there are some reasons Christians are turned off at the idea of prospering. This skepticism of abundance and provision for those who seek to live out the ways of God is not helped out by the rightful repugnance to the “prosperity preachers” of the twentieth-century and on who have promised new corporate jobs, salary increases, mortgage approvals, piles of cash, and other worldly forms of prosperity for those who drop money in the false pastors’ buckets, but who do not even change their ways and begin to seek God’s Kingdom. These megachurch schemers and television “ministries” have perverted the idea of prosperity so much that many end up wanting to steer clear of the idea of prosperity whatsoever, even in a society that seeks Liberty under God. Much of the skepticism toward any idea of earthly prosperity whatsoever is a response to these types of “prosperity gospel” excesses, which became particularly prominent in the age of radio, television, and then social media, which made it possible for many greedy false pastors to arise who earned their millions by deceiving others into believing that they would receive many-fold rewards by picking up the phone and sending them money. 

But we should make a distinction between the riches promised within an Egyptian context, which very often only means to be a recipient of deceitful and bondage-inducing forms of worldly wealth in a society where human government doles out benefits, privileges, and cheap currency, and the type of prosperity promised by God for those who seek His Kingdom, which is just the idea that those who live in Liberty will be provided for in all their needs. This latter type of prosperity, which is entirely Biblical, is something other than the type preached today from the fraudulent churches and ministries of the world, who trick people into sending them money under promises of worldly-financial success so as to fatten themselves.

We should not then conflate the “prosperity gospel” as it’s called today with the prosperity that God indeed provides for those who live freely under His Liberty. We should not let televangelists and false pastors ruin a theology of prosperity merely because they falsely promise rewards to those who start writing checks to them. We should not throw the baby—God’s promises of blessings to those who seek His law-order of Liberty—out with the bathwater of corrupt wolves in the false churches. We cannot let the abuses of false pastors who manipulated gullible people into donating money to them cause us to turn away from God’s promises of material blessings for obedience, which is still His word. The only thing worse than this “prosperity gospel,” that indeed falsely promises worldly rewards and luxuries like yachts and corporate jobs for for anyone who gives up a portion of their income to these false prophets, is a theology of poverty where God supposedly just wants us to be broke down here below and never achieve a social order where we are no longer plundered by a parasitic ruling elite that robs the population and saps their private production of being a great, albeit decentralized, means of producing wealth. The prophets consistently speak of the rewards that come to those who do things as God intended, which necessarily means to abandon the worldly ways of political violence.

“They will no longer be plundered by the nations, nor will wild animals devour them. They will live in safety, and no one will make them afraid. I will provide for them a land renowned for its crops, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations” (Ezekiel 34:28-29).

The Gospel of the Kingdom of God

The idea that God doesn’t care to prosper those who seek His Kingdom, which to be sure is sought wholly apart from the political plunder systems of the world, ignores too much Scripture on the side of blessings to the obedient. Yet, as we have said, many Christians object to the idea that God will do good things for those who seek His Kingdom, even when Jesus confirms it (Matthew 6:33). The general mindset of many Christians is that we’re only here to suffer on this earth, until we are saved into heaven one day and live an afterlife of eternal bliss in the heavens. Their idea of blessings of prosperity are, at best, often loosely conceived ideas of spiritual, eternal, and otherworldly ones. There is hardly any conception of being saved from our enemies on earth by God or being prospered by Him in the here and now, despite all the Scripture to support it. 

However, if God tells us to seek Liberty under His Kingship, then we should likewise expect that we will be provided for in this society that forsakes the systems of man to serve God, and likewise should expect curses of impoverishment for forsaking God to serve the systems of man. God does not just tell people to live freely under divine rule but then leave them hanging. Far from it, Jesus says that all those who seek His Kingdom will be provided for, which is the whole nature of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God that He preached: that peace and prosperity is actually hopeless under the man-made kingdoms of the world, and only possible when men are Christarchists and have no King other than the Lord their God. The Gospel is the gospel of another Kingdom, not just reciting some historical facts about Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection.

We should then take issue with the idea that our life on earth is to be one of nothing much more than suffering, which ironically leads men into the very inactive and irresponsible mindset that permits suffering and oppression to take over! For it has been mankind’s very slothfulness to the ways of God’s Kingdom—the Dominion Mandate that calls us to produce and multiply and the Gospel message that calls us to seek God’s Kingdom—that has allowed for the proliferation of the false, worldly kingdoms of human rule, which have their own way of driving men into hopelessness and not believing in Kingdom-prosperity under Christ. The problem is not that God won’t prosper us, but that few professing Christians today live like Jesus is their King and have therefore only reaped the judgments that come under these statist systems where men make other men into their gods. Most of them indeed either sit around and do nothing, awaiting a future king, or even worse, buy into this “two kingdoms” theology where they loosely believe in the idea of a heavenly king, but believe they are called to actively accept citizenship under worldly kingdoms and participate in their elections and political offices, when they should be repenting and seeking God’s Kingdom on earth.

But since Christians today have not taken ahold of the true Gospel of Jesus, which is the good news that there is a better life under those who seek the Kingdom of God and leave behind those of the world, they have not actually sought this Kingdom-government but have contented themselves with living under and serving worldly kingdoms. It is no wonder that we are still struggling to get ahead: the blessings that God promises are attached with obedience, not with the disobedience of men who raise up civil rulers to conduct their societies and welfare arrangements for them. Again, even worse, many Christians have believed that these kingdoms can be made to serve them and that one can find salvation in them by electing new false gods to political office who are supposedly less evil than the last ones. They have thought that the only way to live a better life is to seek such things through human government, which is nothing more than to believe in a false gospel and bring the curses of disobedience upon yourself. Since “the gospel” to them has not been the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, but merely a shortened and almost meaningless term, they have not found it contradictory to claim to be a Christian while seeking worldly political orders at the same time. 

God and prosperity 

Many Christians today do not think of prosperity or blessings for doing things the right way—living freely under God—because they do not even believe in the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, which we are to seek, trusting in God alone to provide for us in the absence of human rulers whose gospel makes the rival claims of peace and prosperity under Caesars and Pharaohs — and it may well be their lack of belief that God will provide for us under His Liberty that they fail to seek His Kingdom. What we see today is mostly a rejection of the idea that we could prosper in a free society under God’s rule, mostly because so many Christians today adopt a purely otherworldly idea of salvation and of the Gospel of the Kingdom. To believe that God will prosper those who seek to live out this Liberty under God is likely to be derided as a “prosperity gospel.” But, as we have suggested, this is to conflate the false idea of the “send money to our church to get rich” with the many Biblical promises of prosperity to those who follow the ways of the Lord. We cannot dismiss the latter just because the former is indeed a money-making scheme of false prophets, who are indeed the greedy people who value money over the things of God and are in need of such Biblical warnings about the love of money. 

The aversion to prosperity among many Christians today is probably in the most part due to not conceiving of the Gospel as a political message of the peace and prosperity of another Kingdom other than the kingdoms of the world, which has its own “government” method of distributing welfare and charity, albeit not like the authoritarian systems of the world that attempt to do it through taxation and violence. The Gospel to them is just this generic message that is reduced to being called “the gospel,” without any real understanding of what a gospel really is or the political theory that is necessarily a part of what we call a gospel, whether this is the anarchistic gospel of Jesus Christ where men find blessings under His Lordship, or the false gospel of peace and prosperity under false gods like Caesars and false kingdoms like Rome, which we know eventually fail to serve men after reaching a brief height of worldly riches and gains, mostly through plundering others. For most Christians, saying that “Jesus died for our sins so that we can go to heaven” is sufficient explanation of “the gospel” message; describing another Kingdom where men find peace and prosperity by making the Lord their only King is completely off their radar. It is common to hear those people who do not believe in seeking the Kingdom of God, who do not believe that God has provided us a political ethic, that “we should just stick to the Gospel and leave politics out of it.” These people show that they don’t even know what the Gospel is all about — that gospels are necessarily political in nature (though not in the sense that we are to engage in the politics of the world). It is about the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, of the salvation in Jesus Christ from the man-made kingdoms of this world that terrorize and impoverish people under the rule-by-men.

It is no coincidence that there is a strong contempt for prosperity alongside this otherworldly thinking of most Christians. If one’s only idea of “religion” is to secure their ticket to heaven rather than care for their neighbors and serve each other freely, why even think of seeking a society where your neighbors aren’t robbed by human government? Why even attempt to change the social order around you to a godly one where men can find peace and prosperity? If earth itself is coming to an end soon, these things would be hopeless anyway. 

The false version of prosperity 

We can always consider that we are warned against those who sell themselves out entirely to obtain great abundance under the political systems of the world that tempt men into this trade. And I think there is a distinction to be made between worldly prosperity and Kingdom-prosperity. But we can criticize the boats and RVs and Harley Davidsons that soldiers and police officers can earn by serving the wicked system of human government without throwing out the idea that God will prosper those who seek to live freely under Him, even if it’s a more even, shared, and steadily-expanding prosperity than the type we’re used to in our inflationary, fiat currency world, where the money printers of the empire can be fired up and credit extended to debt-slaves to purchase all the toys their hearts desire. We can criticize the worldliness of what is known as the “prosperity gospel,” where men will get better jobs and riches in a corrupt, statist society that feeds the beast system, without throwing out the idea that God will bless and provide for those in His free society.

Besides, the prosperity that God promises is attached to obedience and being a doer of His word, ie., seeking His Kingdom, and not merely being a “believer,” as the “prosperity gospel” scheme of the false churches would have it. So we are speaking of a different kind of prosperity here, which would exist for a people who sought the Kingdom of God and lived freely in obedience to His commands, not merely the so-called “name it and claim it” idea of modern churchians, where believers achieve financial success in our Egyptian society, working through its means. True believers don’t want more of Caesar’s debt-notes anyway, but to live freely and to be contented with whatever God provides to those who follow His ways, which will not mean utter poverty. Moreover, this “prosperity gospel” as we know it today in the churches is an almost new agey, “law of attraction” type of belief where men speak wealth into existence in their lives. It is not even the theological idea that God will bless a free society with enough abundance to satisfy them, but more so the idea that great riches will come to them today, in their Babylonian plunder societies.

What I aim to show here is not so much that God is handing out mansions in gated communities and country clubs for anyone who donates money to some greedy “ministry” that in turn squanders it on their own desires, but that God will not let His people starve who strive to live out the Dominion Mandate and seek His Kingdom. I am not speaking here of this “prosperity gospel” of greedy “church” leaders who prey on the poor and tell them that they will get rich by tithing to their church, but again only of the more theological idea that God will bless a people in a free society under His Kingship. 

Views of prosperity among Christians today

Even if a good number of Christians today believe God wants them to prosper then, their idea is not so much the theological idea that God will bless obedient Kingdom-seekers, but more so the idea that tithing to a church will bring them “sevenfold” rewards and such, all in the context of our statist society and its indeed tempting luxuries, like boats to go ride off into the ocean with and forget about your duty to your neighbors. This latter idea can be easily criticized without neglecting the idea that God will provide for those who seek His provision, rather than the false aid promised by politicians. 

Furthermore, we need not deny that there is likely to be great persecution involved with those who seek God’s Kingdom, which necessarily means to abandon man’s kingdoms, which in turn means angry Pharaohs chasing down the slaves that are walking out of their bondage. Indeed, we can almost guarantee that initial efforts to be liberated from the bondage of human rulers will mean that the statists come down on us for seeking to reduce the number of tax-slaves on their political plantations. We are told indeed that “all who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). But I believe that we can accept this while still upholding the idea that blessings await those who obey God rather than men and who make it to the desert and stop serving the Egyptians as their lords and lawgivers, and that this is the type of prosperity that Scripture speaks about. While Egyptian slavery means persecution and suffering, there is a prosperity that awaits a people on the other side, who repent of the subject citizenship of worldly kingdoms that has made them into impoverished political slaves, and seek God’s Kingdom-prosperity outside of these political structures. 

At any rate, many Christians still object to the idea of any earthly prosperity or rewards at all. Everything is entirely a loss during our earthly existence, and our only hope is in heaven when we pass away from here — an almost ungodly pessimism that treats God as if He created us to just fail at every turn while we live down here below on His cursed earth and sick social experiment. Many of them don’t want to believe that God wants us to be prosperous and free, perhaps because it goes against their doom and gloom view that the end of the world is just around the corner, and that such evils are even the triggers of the Second Coming that should not be avoided.

To reject the idea of prosperity under God though would seem to deny His word. If God didn’t care about our health, wealth, and liberty, He wouldn’t have told us so. But He does. He tells us that we can either be cursed when we walk away from Him, as we do when we seek statist systems to rule over us, or that we can be prosperous when we walk with Him (Deut 28). He tells us that we can either make the Lord or our King and live free, or we can reject the Lord and make men our kings and suffer under taxation, kidnapping, and slavery as a result (1 Sam 8).

This anti-prosperity sentiment likewise ignores the things we are taught in the Bible and even neglects to see God as caring about us at all, just as they do when they don’t believe in God’s ability to save us from statists. They don’t actually believe in the blessings that God promises those who seek His ways, ie., those who avoid the plunderous statist systems and trust in the Lord for their security and wealth instead.  

To reject the idea that God wants us to prosper is also to necessarily deny that there are consequences for trusting in the statist gospel that salvation is found in man’s political systems. God’s promises of prosperity for those who seek His ways are precisely contrasted against the curses of poverty for those who refuse His counsel and warnings. If we deny that God wants to prosper us, we must also deny that He judges and curses those who seek to defy Him by setting up systems of human government who make promises of great rewards for all those who trust in their system of false gods and false religion. Whereas God promises prosperity to His Kingdom-seekers, He also warns of the poverty that comes to those who fail to seek it: We do not prosper when we seek salvation in the kingdoms of this world, when we place our faith in the City of Man, which is the very plunder system that we need saved from. Rather, we get systematically extorted by these socialist operations until wars and famines and economic depressions wipe out all wealth and capital. We are living under the curse of statism today—the tax plunder, threat of imprisonment, and predation by police forces who patrol the plantation we now live on—because we failed to seek God’s kingdom and trusted in man’s kingdoms instead, believing that this wasn’t our earthly duty. However, God promises prosperity to those who will turn away from these socialist systems of the world.

Prosperity and the Lord

Despite the general opposition to the idea of prospering here on earth among many Christians today, Christ has promised blessings for those who seek the Kingdom of God, ie., for those who turn away from the kingdoms of this world and put their total faith in His providence and salvation. Should we begin to do so by turning away from the world, shunning its voting booths, repenting of the idolatry for man, and turning down the benefits and privileges handed out by governments which are to covet our neighbors’ property, then we need not worry about being provided for by God alone. As Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” (Matt 6:33). God will give to those who truly believe in Him.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Part of the salvation that the Lord provides for those who seek His Kingdom is not only to secure us from our enemies (eg., from the statists who plundered us when we were captives of the Egyptians due to our sin), but to also prosper us and make sure that we have everything we need in this Kingdom. Not surprisingly, the psalmists also prayed for a salvation that dealt with being made prosperous.

“O LORD, save us, we pray. We beseech You, O LORD, cause us to prosper!” (Psalm 118:25).

The type of prosperity we seek is not a worldly one where we remain in Egypt and beg for a share of the fiat currency that is flying off the money printers, but to be prospered in a society where men live as free souls under God and have not erected any such centralized, socialist systems of robbing their neighbors — to be saved out of the systems of man and into God’s Kingdom and the prosperity that comes with it.

The type of prosperity that God promises is not the success under worldly political systems, which He indeed promises are headed for failure, but to be provided for in a free society. When we speak of prosperity then, we are not necessarily speaking of it in the context of our present politically-run societies, which is precisely where men might be tempted with worldly riches or even state privileges and paychecks to keep them from seeking God’s Kingdom, and which is also the sense in which the love of money is the root of all evil. We are speaking more so of the theological idea that if we obeyed God and sought to live freely, God would provide for us.

Blessings and curses 

Besides the lack of understanding of the Gospel of God’s Kingdom and the understandable disgust for the false prophets in the so-called churches, another source of this anti-prosperity sentiment among many Christians today, where God apparently only wants us to lose and suffer here on earth before our eventual evacuation to heaven, is probably owing to their lack of knowledge of Scripture, particularly their lack of familiarity with the Old Testament in favor of a Gospel-only reading of the Bible. For if they were aware of Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26, two cornerstones of a theology that shows us blessings for obedience and curses for turning from God’s ways, they would not be so hostile to the idea that God indeed blesses those who seek to stay in keeping with His law-order — that is, those who avoid setting up systems of human civil government that only plunder wealth and impoverish men, but instead organize with their neighbors on a voluntary, decentralized basis and provide for each other’s welfare freely. 

Yet this often seems too optimistic to many Christians who have been trained in a defeatist eschatology to only suffer down here believe on earth. It’s almost like they want things to go bad as part of some inevitable destruction of earth. The only blessings on their mind are more so spiritual or eternal ones.

We must then combat this idea that the blessings God speaks of are merely “spiritual,” which apparently just means that the Lord will fill our hearts with joy, but not our stomachs with bread. The types of blessings we read of in Scripture are not merely some spiritual blessings, which many Christians might make them out to be. It is not just about joy or peace in our hearts or a ticket to heaven, but real, material blessings for those who order their societies as God intended them to be—free from human domination systems that call themselves “governments.”

“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed” (Deuteronomy 28:1-5). 

These are tangible forms of prosperity: crops, livestock, and wealth for those who avoid political plunder systems and live freely under God as their only King — not merely some type of “spiritual wealth” that has little to do with our earthly lives. God is not just speaking of some sort of “spiritually rich but materially poor” type of idea, which may well be another one of the Platonic effects that has been snuck into modern Christianity, which prefers the “spiritual” to the material.

Those who listen to the voice of the Lord, who tells us to avoid the ways of the people of the world who set up human kings and presidents to rule over them, who he warns will plunder their crops and kidnap their children (Samuel 8), are blessed for having done things the godly way and lived freely among their neighbors rather than ensnare everyone in a socialist system of political bondage. 

“The LORD will decree a blessing on your barns and on everything to which you put your hand; the LORD your God will bless you in the land He is giving you” (Deuteronomy 28:8). 

What God is offering is real, concrete ways by which men can prosper — namely by obeying His commands, which call us to avoid setting up false gods and the systems of theft and murder that all human civil governments are based upon. The reasons for our prosperity or our decline are no mystery either. We can keep God’s Law, which forbids us from setting up human government, and prosper in the absence of these political plunder systems; or we can go against God’s commands, set up false gods, and fall under the plunderous judgment that human governments bring upon all those who trust in men to protect and provide for them. The path of prosperity is always clear: 

“This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in all you do” (Joshua 1:8). 

The blessings and curses of scripture are what might be called “cause and effect” by economists, where men either find prosperity and harmonious social order in a free society, or conflict and poverty and in a statist/socialist society. But we are really speaking of the same thing here, albeit the former recognizing that these are God’s Laws and not merely the “laws of economics.” God warns us that we can either follow His commands, such as avoiding having other gods (eg., human rulers) than the Lord, and be blessed with peace and prosperity; or we can ignore God’s commands, such as by setting up human rulers, and be cursed with political bondage and impoverishment.

“You are to keep My statutes and carefully observe My judgments, so that you may dwell securely in the land. Then the land will yield its fruit, so that you can eat your fill and dwell in safety in the land” (Leviticus 25:18-19). 

God is speaking of actual or real security and safety here: freedom from statist plunderers for those who abide in Him alone. Men find themselves ruled by a gang of thieves who call themselves the “government” only when they fail to trust in God to provide for them, who, as a result of forsaking Him, sends all the curses of man-made political order upon them: taxation, inflation, arbitrary decrees, systematic injustice, incarceration, labor camps, surveillance states, police raids, etc. 

The blessings that God offers is for men to thrive in a society that seeks to be ruled by Him alone. When people seek to do things God’s way, as opposed to the violent political ways of the world, they will actually find the peace and prosperity that is falsely promised by these systems of human government, which is temptation to get men to place their faith in false gods, hence the tens of millions of statist idolaters in America who admit that they do not believe there will be peace, security, or prosperity without their man-gods ruling over them. To enjoy these blessings, however, men must abandon this false gospel of Rome that promises peace, protection, and prosperity through political violence, and believe instead the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, that such blessings and enduring prosperity exists only for those who avoid these evil political systems and obey God rather than men. God has always promised prosperity to those who avoid the evil path of statism, but they have to listen to His words. 

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or set foot on the path of sinners…but whose delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does” (Psalm 1:1-3). 

When men fear the Lord so much that they wouldn’t dare set up systems of human rule, knowing all the judgment that comes with this sinful and fateful decision, there are rewards that await them. 

“Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands. Their children will be mighty in the land…Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever” (Psalm 112:1-3). 

The anti-prosperity crowd has a lot of work to do if they want to try and spiritualize away these promises of real blessings that come to those who obey God, which is accomplished by repenting of our support for the kingdoms of the world and living freely under God, refusing to set up political domination systems over our fellow man, and providing for others directly out of love of the Lord and our neighbors. God is speaking of far more than just heavenly rewards here.

“My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life for many years and bring you peace and prosperity” (Proverbs 3:1-4). 

The Bible is a political-economics textbook that shows men that they can either obey God and be blessed, or obey men and be cursed. Though God really doesn’t have to provide a reason for men to obey Him, we are still not just told to obey God rather than men without any incentive, but promised blessings for doing so. As the prophet says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD” (Jeremiah 17:7).

Though God promises prosperity to the obedient Kingdom-seekers, on the other hand, cursed is man who makes human rulers his gods, whether American “presidents” who pretend to be “Christians” or openly socialist dictators like Lenins who make no such claims. When men ignore God and set up human rulers, they find neither the peace or prosperity that these systems falsely promise, because statism is a system of false gods who men falsely trust in as their lords and saviors. God has to punish a statist people with bondage and impoverishment for their sin of erecting human rulers, because these are false god systems that are set up against Him and must therefore be proven to be set up against God’s Law.

Curses for disobedience 

When men do not trust in God’s provision, which they demonstrate to be the case namely by erecting or supporting systems of human government to provide for their protection and prosperity (or in other words their salvation), they will find themselves enslaved and impoverished by men who claim to exist for the “public good,” but who in fact plunder them with taxes, monetary inflation, and thousands of other enslaving, man-made decrees they call “laws.” 

“If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, as well as the produce of your land, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. The LORD will send curses upon you, confusion and reproof in all to which you put your hand, until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the wickedness you have committed in forsaking Him” (Deuteronomy 28:15-20).

Serving God alone

The causal connection is always clear: the curses that come upon a people are for turning away from God’s Law, which they do namely by erecting systems of man-made “law” in their sin. 

“All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, since you did not obey the LORD your God and keep the commandments and statutes He gave you” (Deuteronomy 28:45). 

Men can either make God their King and live freely and prosper in this freedom, or they can make men their (false) kings and suffer for this sin of seeking men to rule over you and “protect” you. They can either find the genuine protection that comes from trusting in God alone to secure and prosper them, or they can trust in evil things like “Defense Departments” to “secure” them and find themselves ruled by men who hate them. The connection is clear: 

“Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in all your abundance, you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you” (Deuteronomy 28:47-48). 

When men set up systems of human civil government for their protection and aid, they must expect nothing less than to be plundered by them, to have their prosperity literally eaten up by tax predators who claim to exist for “public welfare” and parasitic inflationists who claim to “stabilize prices” and conduct “monetary policy” for their societies to avoid economic cycles, but who actually bring all these evils upon them.

“They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish. They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you” (Deuteronomy 28:51-52). 

The choice of liberty and prosperity, or socialism and impoverishment, is up to men to choose, who can either obey God and live freely under Him, or disobey Him and set up worldly political systems as their means of organizing societies. God leaves it up to us. Men can either live free and prosper for it, or they can squander their liberty and hand it over to tyrants who will erect a million different “laws” and officers of the “law” to drive their societies off a cliff. Unfortunately, men most often choose the latter, being tempted by the false prosperity that appears to exist under political regimes that may plunder their way to the top for a while, but which eventually end in the weeping and gnashing of teeth after a few generations. But we always could choose the path of liberty that God will most certainly bless, which however requires men to repent from their idolatry for human rulers and seek the Kingdom of God. God will have it either way: 

“Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you” (Deuteronomy 28:53).