Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

It often easy for those who have become aware of their political bondage to blame the captors themselves for enslaving the people, and seeing themselves wholly as victims who don’t deserve to be enslaved by them. They see taxation as being an unjust theft against them, rather than as the consequence of sin and a judgment against a people who would not provide for their own people and outsourced their godly responsibilities to human rulers.

While the men who do operate systems of human government and support their existence are evil, we should also see that they only exist due to the sin that has put them into power. A better reaction to the political bondage surrounding us than growing angry or acting as a victim would be to weep at our role in it and repent of the sins that have led to it. We should see the captivity that we’re living under and recognize that it is a result of our own whoredom and adultery towards human rulers, their militaries, and other agents of these worldly systems.

Sin and bondage

As much as men may focus on the rulers themselves once realizing the corruption of their society, the truth is that it is only sin that leads to bondage and that men throw the yoke around their own necks through statist idolatry, socialist covetousness, and slothfulness to seek God’s Kingdom. It is not as if America is just a land where an enslaving elite suddenly popped up and dominated everyone because they had more guns. Far from it. This people bought into all the lies of these political systems. They believed that the “constitution” created “the best government in the world,” that it was made to serve them, that it’s a government of “the people,” that our Egyptian-statist system is a “free society,” that “the troops fought for our freedom,” and have said they “back the blue” all the way into a bondage of their own doing.

It is not just that men have been unwittingly invaded by tyrants who have outgunned and outnumbered them and that they are suddenly and mysteriously oppressed. This captivity was accompanied by all the inseparable sins that one will always find in a statist society, which is all the proof needed that a people are under judgment: patriotism, love of police and military, approving of socialist systems of public schooling and welfare, voting for men to rule over them, and many others that anyone who sees through the American scheme can easily identify. These people have praised human rulers, coveted their neighbors’ property, and failed to seek God’s Kingdom. They have idolized the false gods of the world against the Lord’s command to have no other gods, have sought the benefits of these system-makers who hand out welfare and retirement packages to ensnare a people into bondage who have a greater appetite for receiving them than they do a willingness to slit their throats before dining with a ruler, and have worked to further the kingdoms of the world through voting, campaigning for office themselves, and ideologically defending the existence of these systems.

There is no need to wonder how it has come to be that the people of the world are ruled by men: it is because they are shameless statists themselves who have rejected God and His divine natural order of liberty and have instead bought into the worldly ideology of political violence as a just and moral means for organizing society. We are not just dealing with a situation where a bunch of poor victims are being held hostage against their will by a military that is more powerful than they are, but rather a situation where men have begged to be ruled by other men in their state of sin. For a people to be living under men who have taken dominion over their fellow man is not proof that they were too physically weak to keep some invaders away. To be occupied by state rulers is proof that a people are under divine judgment for refusing to be ruled by God alone. It is not that men just get dominated by other men, but that God punishes the sin of turning away from him and seeking salvation in human civil government, which proves to be a curse upon them.

Though the state rulers are still evil, they are never just independently dominating a people whose only problem is that they aren’t strong enough to fend them off. It is not that we have failed to amass enough firepower to keep the statists away or that the American State works because it is stronger than us, but that our people have sinfully desired that men rule over them, that socialist systems of human government redistribute their neighbors’ property for them, and that we should work to reform and participate in these kingdoms of the world rather than seek the Kingdom of God. Were we to truly seek God’s Kingdom and keep God’s Law against setting up false gods and not coveting our neighbors’ property, we should expect that we could be liberated from this bondage and that God will bless those who seek His Kingdom. That we are still living in bondage just shows that we have not yet done this. We have compromised with the kingdoms of the world, accepted their benefits, used their currency, and whored ourselves out to the Egyptians for bread and protection, and have therefore reaped all the evils that are divinely due for those who trust in these false saviors.

Some people, under the assumption that we just got randomly conquered by political rulers without deserving it, wonder how it is that God has allowed statists to come rule over people being that they are evil and He is sovereign. There’s really no theological difficulty here. God warns us of all the evils that will come upon those who refuse to be ruled by Him (1 Samuel 8). In fact, He tells us that He will send them (Joshua 23:15), that He is behind both the blessings and curses (Isaiah 45:7). It is not that a population of innocent people found themselves dominated by evil statists without reason, but that these people have brought the bondage on themselves. God wills that man be free, but He also allows us to throw away our liberty.

The lack of desire for freedom

For this reason, it is somewhat awkward to preach a gospel of repentance to the rulers themselves, who have come upon us for our own iniquities (Ezekiel 39:23). It is to tell them to stop ruling over a people who evidently want rulers. It is like telling an abusive husband to stop abusing a woman who won’t leave him. The problem is that people are ruled by men because they want to be. The political rulers are not just keeping millions of slaves who want to get out of bondage but are not strong enough to fight them; these people vote for them, seek legislation from them, accept their benefits, apologize for their existence, and defend them as necessary to security and civilization itself.

To take this abolitionist message of “let my people go!” to the rulers—something that we must do anyway—is thus something like telling a dog beater to free a dog that is so used to being beaten that it wouldn’t run away even if the man let go of its leash or unchained it. What is really needed is to convince the dog that it should stop running into the abusive arms of the dog-beater, and that the Lord has come to set those free who seek His Kingdom and who repent from and come out of the kingdoms of the world. That men accept and love their bondage (“I’m a proud American”) is just as much a problem for us as those who keep them there, if not more so considering that their rule is only made possible by those whose sins wind them up as slaves to men. We have a situation where most people love being slaves to human government, making our spread of the Gospel a curious endeavor that should prioritize the people first. When the prophet Isaiah initially went to the people with the word of God, he asked, “Why do you want more beatings? Why do you keep rebelling?” (Isaiah 1:5). Our people are a bunch of hard-headed statists who like being beaten and caged. They are a people who won’t hear the truth and wake up to the wickedness of the society around them that God has meant to be a rebuke for their own evils. They have loved their chains. They have praised their captors as doing “a good job.” They have called Pharaoh and his chariot-operators and horsemen their “heroes” who “keep the country free” and “keep us safe at night.” They have loved their political slavery and the evils of statism that have come upon them as a curse for their sin. They have refused to be corrected by these evils and make excuses for their own bondage, even as God meant the evils of statism to be a harsh rebuke for their sin. As another prophet said to God,

“You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent” (Jeremiah 5:3).

God will allow the statists to cause famines and desolation for tens of millions of people and still they will apologize for the socialism that is inherent all human civil government.

“‘I afflicted all your cities with cleanness of teeth and all your towns with lack of bread, yet you did not return to Me,’ declares the LORD. ‘I also withheld the rain from you when the harvest was three months away. I sent rain on one city but withheld it from another. One field received rain; another without rain withered. People staggered from city to city for water to drink, but they were not satisfied; yet you did not return to Me,’ declares the LORD” (Amos 4:6-11).

God lets people who beg to have masters to become slaves to these men, and still they won’t wake up to their bondage.

“Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. For the LORD has brought her grief because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away as captives before the enemy” (Lamentations 1:5).

As much as God has used the rulers of the world to bring evils upon the wicked works of the men who set them up, it has often done no good because they didn’t change their ways anyway and continued to beg for new Pharaohs to right the wrongs of the last one. “In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction” (Jeremiah 2:30).

It is therefore a little out of order to go to the rulers first and tell them to let the slaves go; these people have apologized for their own slavery and proudly claim they need these men to stand over them. God has already used the human rulers of the world as a means of waking a people up to their own bondage and seeing their complicity in it, ie., their failure to make the Lord their only God. “Therefore I am striking you severely, to ruin you because of your sins” (Micah 6:13). The evils perpetrated by the rulers themselves have already been used as a divine punishment upon the people whose sins had set them up, in order that they might turn around and change their ways. “I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins” (Jeremiah 30:14). The tyrannical conditions that will always come about for all those who trust in human rulers—rather than the Lord—to stand over them are meant to show men just how much they have rebelled against God and just how much they need to return to the Lord, who has judgment to deal out to those who turn from Him. “Because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins I have done these things to you” (Jeremiah 30:15).

We are then dealing more so with the problem that people have loved being slaves, than that another segment of men, calling themselves “the government,” have loved to do the enslaving. We are dealing more so with a people who have fought against those who deliver the word to them to turn back to God and seek liberation from the bondage of the kingdoms of the world through Him, than we are a people who are just keeping men in bondage by their might alone. The Lord has always been waiting to take His people back in, but they have not wanted it.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37).

What is really needed then is to reach the people first, and then go to the rulers — to bring this Gospel of the Kingdom of God to individuals on the ground and in the streets, showing them that Jesus Christ came to free men from the bondage of the kingdoms of the world and bring us into a new Kingdom where the Lord alone is our King. It is no use telling the rulers to free a people who don’t want to be free; we need to first show these people that there is freedom from the bondage of men to be found in the Lord. Taking this message directly to the rulers is then to argue on behalf of a people who don’t desire us to do so or deserve that we do it.

In some sense then we are getting ahead of ourselves to take this message of repentance from statism—both the ideology that approves of these systems and the practice of ruling over others—to the rulers themselves or at least to the rulers alone. It is the people who are most in need of it and who bought into all the lies of these system-makers who indeed plunder them for all they’re worth, as God could have told them would happen if they had heard the voice of the Lord before. Human rulers are only a consequence of the sins of the people who set them up in their rebellion against God. They wouldn’t exist if men hadn’t allowed them to and had repented of the subject citizenship that has led to their civil slavery, if they had made the Lord their only King and sought His Kingdom at the exclusion of the kingdoms of the world.

Giving the Gospel to the rulers

Nevertheless, the Gospel message can and should be taken to the rulers themselves, who are also going against the commands and laws of God, who never gave man dominion over other men. As much as they act as a judgment upon a people who wouldn’t be ruled by God, those who take positions of political power are simultaneously sinners too who are fighting against God. God makes use of them to judge people who have only begged to be invaded by men (Isa 10:5-6), but they are not self-conscious “servants” of God who uphold His Law (Isa 10:7). Both those who raise up human government as voters and those who occupy its seats of power are sinners who are in rebellion to God. As much as we should take the message to the people first who are mostly responsible for raising them up, those who take positions of power also need to hear that they must turn from their wickedness, repent from their plunder, resign from their positions of power, and join us in seeking God’s Kingdom.

The Bible is filled with God giving a word to His people to take directly to the rulers themselves, the most well-known and relevant case for us being God’s command to Moses to confront Pharaoh and the system of Egyptian bondage and demand the release of the Israelites. To bring a demand for release of the captives—who may have indeed brought the bondage on themselves at one point—to the rulers themselves is both entirely Biblical and something we should still be doing today. These are the very things that God had commissioned His people to do before. As He spoke to Moses,

“So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10).

Of course, few people think like the Biblical prophets today. They are more inclined to spread the word of false prophets, like the pastors of the institutional “church” who tell everyone that God has “ordained” human civil government for the purpose of providing justice to the people, rather than the truth that statism comes upon a people as a judgment. Perhaps the fear of the lion’s den keeps them from doing it. Preaching the Gospel to the rulers of the world has always been a dangerous business. Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets were all stalked and murdered for doing it. Yet they still knew their duties and responded that “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). No one wants to find themselves raped or beaten to death in the evil rulers’ system of mass incarceration today.

However, we have a duty to carry this word of God to others, both the people who set up rulers in their sin and the sinners who take these seats of power. We have a godly obligation to bring this message of repentance to both the people in bondage due to their own sins, and the people who administer these systems over other men. We should call upon the people to stop raising up false gods if they want to be free, and call upon these false gods themselves to abandon their posts and serve the Lord alone.

Copy this and send it to state legislators, governors, U.S. Congressmen, Senators, presidents, and other human rulers who act as false gods. Get this into their hands so that they could never claim they weren’t told.

Here is a message we might send them:

God does not share jurisdiction over man with any other ruler, nor does he justify any office, institution, or policy that exists by the covetousness of taxation. He came to liberate man from the dominion of man, and the office of [governor] claims dominion over subject citizens. Let my people go, so they may seek God’s Kingdom, free from the bureaucratic tyranny inherent to manmade administrations.