[This is part three in a series on “The Abolition of Statism and Liberation From Political Bondage”: See part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

The greatest endeavor that mankind could ever take up is to seek the Kingdom of God — to build God’s literal Kingdom of families gathered into small congregations in a voluntary and decentralized society where the authoritarian kingdoms of man and their “elected representatives” are abolished and replaced by freely-appointed servant-ministers who, making up the church, distribute the charity of these families in a wider network of social welfare that is not based on taxation and violence, but rather freewill offerings of people who love God and their neighbors.

Unfortunately, this is a contentious claim not only for the people of the world who don’t consider themselves Christians at all, but also among professing Christians who have been largely pacified toward any earthly understanding of the Kingdom of God, despite Jesus teaching us to pray that “thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” For most professing Christians, our only purpose here is just ride out our supposedly-cursed and sin-ridden existence on this corrupted creation that God made until we are shipped off to heaven when we die. “Religion,” in their mind, is just the vain rituals one does in a building once a week, not the method of providing for others’ welfare and protection; these things, they assume, are of a separate and distinct “realm” of human civil government of which religion has nothing to do with. Their understanding of a church is likewise not much more than a social club where mere professors of the faith gather weekly in a building to sing songs together before disbanding and returning to the ways of the world the rest of the week. That the true church should be fulfilling all the roles that have currently been usurped by human civil government in their own abdication of godly responsibility does not cross their minds.

The greatest endeavor of mankind—to seek the Kingdom of God and order society as God has willed it and commanded it to be—is thus mostly a foreign concept to churchians and non-Christians alike. They would be highly confused by any suggestion by a kingdom-seeker that the church ought to be acting as an actual kingdom-government, where neighbors are formed in actual congregations with one another under freely-appointed ministers for the express purpose of providing for each other’s welfare and needs through freewill offerings rather than through the forced sacrifices of taxation and the bankrupt bureaucracies of human civil government. It would be lost on most of them that worshiping God and congregating with your neighbors means to actually join together for the purposes of serving one another and coming out from under the yoke of Egyptian bondage that we have come under for our sin of deferring to the false gods of the world, and not just smiling at one another on Sunday morning and acting as if we have thereby done our part for God and neighbor. 

Despite our people’s apathy toward the Kingdom of God, whether they are escapist churchians sitting on their hands waiting for the end-times or “dominionists” who believe they are seeking this Kingdom by thrusting themselves into the voting booths and offices of worldly kingdoms that are contrary to Christ’s Kingdom, there is no greater cause for humanity today than to repent from our support and citizenship of the kingdoms of this world and to seek to enter the Kingdom that Jesus Christ has prepared for us. It means a return to God’s prescribed ways, in contrast to the worldly kingdoms founded on force and rebellion against His law. It rejects the false gods of the world who have led us into bondage and instead exists as a call to heed Christ’s command to love our neighbors, rather than covet their property through the socialist systems of taxation and their threats of violence.

The cause for conflict 

The problem for us is that most of the people of the world believe in the present ways of doing things from which we are advocating that men come out from. This is all they’ve ever known. They believe in the statist systems of the world and revel in the rebellion against God that these systems represent. They cheer them on, vote for these rulers, and claim that we can’t do without them. And when we tell men that they must repent of this statism, which is one of the greatest representations of sin on earth, they refuse to hear the word. Most so-called “Christians” defend worldly governments, even though Christ said His Kingdom was not of the world and that His servants are not to exercise authority and lord power over the people they serve, as do worldly governors.

We must understand that as we approach the people who need to hear this word and bring to them the gospel message of the Kingdom of God, that most of them do not want to hear it. The people of the world whom we must approach are by and large enemies of God who have hated His natural order and sought social order through man’s kingdoms. Taking after the prophets, we have to bring this message of God to them anyway, calling them to turn back from their evil statist ways and to seek the Kingdom of God with us. We must show these people that they have turned away from God by turning toward human rulers and that this is the source of all their problems, knowing ourselves that they don’t want to hear it and that this message is not a popular one.

“Therefore you must say to them, ‘This is the nation that would not listen to the voice of the LORD their God and would not receive correction. Truth has perished; it has disappeared from their lips” (Jeremiah 7:28).

We are trying to bring the truth—that God’s Kingdom is an everlasting one and that the kingdoms of men repeatedly fail and destroy everything—to a people who have loved lies more than they have loved God.

“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,’ declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:3-5).

Naturally, advocating another Kingdom, one that does not rely on authoritarians who offer people stolen benefits to tempt them into going into bondage and apologizing for their existence, means that we are destined to run into opponents of our efforts. We are bound to clash with the people of this world who, both ideologically and physically, have not repented for their sinful statist beliefs and allegiances and still believe that these men and their systems are their lords, saviors, and gods. That the State is the god of worldly people explains why they are offended in our righteous criticism of these systems as being based in sin, idolatry, and evil. This is why “patriots” go into a violent rage when someone burns an American flag or says something bad about a solider or police officer. To preach another Kingdom tends to cause outrage in the rebellious masses who proudly support the political systems of the world. 

Because the way of the Lord’s Kingdom is not like the kingdoms of the world, eg., the Babylons, Romes, Egypts, and Americas that most people patriotically and enthusiastically support, we are likely to meet resistance to our ideas. To preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, as opposed to the gospel of salvation through the State that most men believe in and welcome, is highly likely to offend those who are still waving the flags of their beloved empires and emperors from their houses and haven’t woken up to the plunder schemes of men yet.

Our point is that one should anticipate great pushback as we begin to spread this message around our communities, which are populated by people who are lost in the world and have never even thought of a need to come out of it. Jesus warned us that this would be the case with the people who still love the world, such as those who still root for “America!” as their false god.

“If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world” (John 15:18-19). 

There is little reason to wonder why worldly people (ie., statists) hate those who preach the true Gospel of the Kingdom or God. The Kingdom of God is a rival kingdom to the kingdoms of this world, hence why Jesus himself and the apostles were persecuted for preaching it. (If Jesus was merely preaching that He was a soul-savior of men, then there would have been little reason to come down on Him. What would the state rulers of the world care that a man claimed to look after men’s souls in the afterlife? And what would they care if some men believed him? Obviously, Jesus was preaching a rival kingdom that stood expressly at odds with the Roman and Egyptian kingdoms of this world that are based in violence and theft, and for this He and the apostles had to be dealt with). We should then expect to run into enemies of our mission as we begin to advance this kingdom message, including the state rulers themselves which all the people of God always clashed with (Ex 5-12; 1 Kings 18:20-40; Isa 7:1-17; Jer 37-38; Dan 3, 6; Matt 14:3-12; John 18-19; Acts 5:17-41). 

Part of our kingdom-seeking mission, which doubles as a plan to abolish the State, will be preparing ourselves for resistance to these ideas and downright persecution by the people who seek to hang on to such plunder systems as we are attempting to escape from. The political rulers of this world enrich themselves from plundering the productive efforts of those who they rule over, and none of them will easily give up control over their plantations and the tax-cattle they have on them. Should our efforts expand and begin to catch on, as they will when God is on our side, we should expect the system-makers and their supporters to join forces against us. 

Encountering resistance

Here is where Biblical lessons on perseverance for the Lord come into play (Matt 5:10-12; John 16:33; Rom 12:12; 1 4:12-14; James 1:12). Though most men are willing to choose peace and compromise rather than confront the world with the truth and gain enemies, that most people will inevitably fight against this message should not be a deterrence to delivering it to them. We must do the work of the Lord regardless of how men react. Our mission field is enemy territory, to be sure. But we act knowing that God is with us in our evangelism (Matt 28:20), as our only alternative of inaction is to wither away as subject slaves to civil institutions and fail to carry out the will of God. Resistance to the message is to be expected in the early days of launching a revolutionary abolitionist movement, before people are able to see that it is the way out of the kingdoms of men, which represents another kingdom entirely from the violent, political kingdoms of this world that men have known so far.

The point of this step in our kingdom work is just to point out that we should be prepared for the worldly ideological terrain we will traverse, which is yet another reason that we must become highly ideological for the cause, so that we cannot be moved and deterred by the arguments that will be presented by the people of the world against the Kingdom of God, but rather that we should be ready to tear them down and remain strong in our convictions, knowing that we are up against wolves and lost sheep. We are about to take the most important message that mankind could ever hear—the Gospel of the Kingdom of God that there is salvation in Jesus Christ from the kingdoms of the world—to a people who have hitherto refused to obey the Lord, which has been the case for millennia.

“‘Son of man,’ He said to me, ‘I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against Me. To this very day they and their fathers have rebelled against Me. They are obstinate and stubborn children. I am sending you to them, and you are to say to them, ‘This is what the Lord GOD says.’ And whether they listen or refuse to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. But you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns surround you, and you dwell among scorpions. Do not be afraid of their words or dismayed by their presence, though they are a rebellious house. But speak My words to them, whether they listen or refuse to listen, for they are rebellious” (Ezekiel 2:3-7).

Men are in deep rebellion against God today, as evidenced by our bondage to Caesars, who otherwise wouldn’t be ruling over us if we had made God our King. We live under the rule of Caesars today because men forsook God as our only ruler and pursued false idols as their saviors. That’s why we’re not free. That’s why we must repent. Yet, as we make this call to repent, many people are inevitably going to argue that God intended us to live under human rulers, rather than to see these men as divine judgment for the sin of statism. So-called “Christians” are some of the worst offenders, making them our main mission field. They are the quickest ones to try and make the case that God “ordained” government for social order and to try and rebut the truth of the matter: that the evils of statism are but the divine consequence of the wicked works that has set these systems up.

As we begin to preach this word of God of another Kingdom that stands opposed to the kingdoms of the world from which men need to repent of seeking and serving, we must expect that thousands of people will arise against us to contest the message that God has always given to his prophets to repent and seek another way. Most people simply hate the truth and fight against it. As one prophet says, “They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly” (Amos 5:10). This goes for both the rulers themselves, and the people whose terrible ideas and sinful ideology has empowered these people to rule over other men. These statists—both the practicing rulers and those who hold their empowering ideology—are people “who despise justice and pervert all that is right” (Micah 3:9). They don’t want to be told that what they’re doing is the wrong way and not the way of the Lord, and so they fight against it. These are the same people that stalked the prophets and killed them in the Bible for speaking out against their ways. The evil people of the world are sure to come out against us once we begin to bring their evils into the light and confront them. As the Bible always detailed this conspiracy, “The wicked scheme against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them” (Psalm 37:12). Most people, who mock this message about seeking the Kingdom of God, are proud men who simply hate correction. As Scripture says, “A mocker does not love to be reproved” (Proverbs 14:15).

We must be prepared for these encounters and for the completely inability of some men to recognize the truth when confronted with it, and for them to not only react confusedly but to lash out against this attack on their sinful worldview of statism. Indeed, since we are seeking another literal Kingdom and preaching a Gospel that opposes the kingdoms of this world, we should expect to be downright persecuted for our work — at the very least, that many enemies will come against us who want to cling to the old, dying ways of the kingdoms of this world that they have idolized as their gods and which they do not want to abandon. The Christian abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, foresaw as much in his 1838 Declaration of Sentiments:

“In entering upon the great work before us, we are not unmindful that, in its prosecution, we may be called to test our sincerity, even as in a fiery ordeal. It may subject us to insult, outrage, suffering, yea, even death itself. We anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, calumny. Tumults may arise against us. The ungodly and violent, the proud and pharisaical, the ambitious and tyrannical, principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places, may combine to crush us. So they treated the MESSIAH, whose example we are humbly striving to imitate. If we suffer with him, we know that we shall reign with him. We shall not be afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. Our confidence is in the LORD ALMIGHTY, not in man. Having withdrawn from human protection, what can sustain us but that faith which overcomes the world? We shall not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try us, as though some strange thing had happened unto us; but rejoice, inasmuch as we are partakers of CHRIST’S sufferings. Wherefore, we commit the keeping of our souls to GOD, in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. FOR EVERY ONE THAT FORSAKES HOUSES, OR BRETHREN, OR SISTERS, OR FATHER, OR MOTHER, OR WIFE, OR CHILDREN, OR LANDS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, SHALL RECEIVE A HUNDRED FOLD, AND SHALL INHERIT EVERLASTING LIFE.”