[This is part 2 in a series on “Who Were the Biblical Prophets and What Were They Preaching?” See part one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

In other articles, I have explained how the State is at best a tool of judgment from God and not His perfect will or prescription for social order. It is not, as some frame it, our God-given institution for crime-fighting and upholding law and justice in society. All of these things that are frequently thought to be the proper, “God-given” domain of human rulers (namely that of law and justice and even the “general welfare” of “the people”) were handed over to human rulers only in our lack of personal responsibility to our neighbors and failure to administer the Kingdom of God. There is no area of social life that God’s Kingdom, as a distinctly different form of organizing society without authoritarian rulers, does not encompass and that should be left to human civil government to carry out. God did not give men human civil government for their law and justice and defense, while leaving everything else in their hands. Rather, the statist systems of the world are set up by men in their rebellion against God and His rule, and they function as a judgment upon the sinners who place their faith in worldly institutions to “protect and serve” them. As a repayment for this sin of outsourcing justice, law, welfare, and many other roles of social service that were to be carried out by godly men out of their own personal responsibility, this institution brings injustice, lawlessness, plunder, and destruction upon these societies as a way of God rebuking men for this sin, which ideally turns men back to the need to seek the Kingdom of God instead and stop idolizing the kingdoms of man and slothfully passing off their duties to authoritarian rulers.

Far from some God-given institution to ensure that our social order is free from criminals or to bestow great blessings of “law and order” upon society, statism is a curse upon a people who have refused to be ruled by God and went chasing after the kingdoms of men instead. The inevitable effects of setting up systems of human government, such as mass plunder, murder, and incarceration that should today be seen as the undeniable fruit of sowing these wicked seeds, are the price people pay for willfully going under and begging to have these rulers. The evils that come from statist orders are merely a sinful people reaping what they have sown in setting them up and supporting them, in going under the dominion of the devil and the man-made kingdoms of the world that represent the physical manifestation of evil on earth. For believing that human civil government is needed for law, justice, and order, men receive a perversion of justice that acts as judgment upon this sin.

This is what Christians today often fail to understand. They have interpreted God’s use of the State—as a judgment against an evil people who trust in these systems—to mean His political-theological prescription for law and order in human society. They have thought that human government is God’s means for us to turn to for justice and social order, an institution that He has set up to take care of crime and bad guys in society. They have failed to see that human government, with all the inevitable evils that follow from it, are precisely His way of judging a people who have turned to men as their kings and lawgivers rather than the Lord (Isa 33:22). They have failed to see that these systems originate in man’s rebellion against the anarchist social order of God, where God alone is our King.

A summary of the role of the State per God

In order to explain the role of the Biblical prophets and their ministry, who came to rebuke a people very much so for drifting off into a faith in human rulers and their armies that God saw as adultery against Him, I will briefly frame the role of the State in society once again for this article series, which serves a divine role of judgment against statist sinners and not a social role of “criminal justice” that was tasked by God with keep human society free, safe, and orderly. Again, it was man’s sinful belief that this is what the socialist institution known as the State did for him and his society that God used it to pervert the “law and order” that men believed could be obtained through it.

Briefly, the State is simultaneously (1) an evil institution set up by sinners who are rebelling against the rule by God and seeking to set up men in His place, and (2) a tool of God’s judgment against these very people who set up human human rulers and thus deserve to have all these evils come down on their heads as divine justice for turning away from the Lord as their only King.

Thus, it should not be thought that because (2) God makes use of worldly governments to be a terror to (1) an evil-hearted people who set them up that they are, therefore, set up by God, receive His moral approval, are non-evil, or that the sense in which they are “for our good” is anything other than as a teacher that turns us back to the Lord when we find ourselves suffering under their rule and judgment. Nothing could be further from the truth. The State is (1) an evil institution, indeed, so much so that (2) that it is uniquely suited to act as a judgment against the people who support human government rather than the government of God. States “serve” God by doing evil — by sinning. They bring evils upon a people who wouldn’t be ruled by God, so that they can realize the mistake of their rebellion. It is only in this sense that the State might be said to bring “justice” to a people: to repay them the evils they deserve for having been unjust. They are not God’s “servants,” in this sense, when they are acting as good guys upholding justice and “keeping God’s Laws,” as some would have it. They “serve” God precisely by being evil and bringing injustices to society.

Understanding this, we can see why there is no conflict between the prophets rebuking the statist orders of the day and the evil people in them, while at the same time explaining that these systems act as a judgment upon them. It has been one of the great errors in Christianity to infer that because the State is “ordained” by God to (2) serve His end of judging a wicked people who deserve to fall under human rulers for their very lust for them, that we could support them ourselves or that these systems are non-evil. Indeed, they are evil, and that’s why God brings judgment upon a people who support them. A people who trust in human government are evil themselves and deserve to experience these evils returning upon them. They deserve to find out the hard way the implications of believing that human rulers, who can only be funded through robbing our neighbors, should be tasked with protecting our people, upholding justice in society, or feeding those in need — all things that men would be doing themselves in an voluntary, anarchistic society if they truly loved God and their neighbors.

The State as evil and as a form of judgment

When we point out that the prophets were criticizing statist societies much like ours today, we have to understand this sort of dual sense of the State as both (1) an evil institution that is sinful to support and (2) which “serves” God’s purpose of judging sinners by it being evil itself, or else we might fail to understand what the prophets were doing and merely think the State is “ordained” for law and order rather than as judgment, which could make men think that it is not evil to support this institution.

It was the very evils, injustices, plunder, and bloodshed that are bound up with worldly (human) governments that the prophets were always addressing in their rebuke of various societies of their day — both that which was practiced by the rulers themselves, as well as those who supported them in their idolatry for the existence of human government. They were telling men that their idolatry for human rulers and human government, with all the violence, plunder, and general evils that these systems entail, was the cause for their current situation, which was divine judgment that had come in the form of those very evils they supported. For the statist belief that social order and justice is only possible with human rulers who are funded socialistically by robbing our neighbors, they reaped social disorder, lawlessness, mass theft and extortion, and systemic injustices (you know, all the things that statist sinners tell us would be prevalent in an anarchist society that had God as its only ruler). The prophets were warning average men, whose wicked hearts supported these systems, that chasing after worldly powers leads to Egyptian bondage, as well as warning those Egyptians—a metaphor for all statists—who keep men in captivity as God’s form of judgment against a people that they are themselves due a Day of the Lord for their own evils, after God has made use of them against the subject-citizens who first needed to be harshly rebuked for their sin of setting them up and supporting them, which was accomplished merely by having to live under these system makers and their many schemes, from “world wars” to global scamdemics.

This lack of understanding of the State today as seen in the prophets, where political rulers—as wicked as they are themselves—are used by God to judge a people who believe in these practices, are largely what prevent men from understanding political theology today, where human government is often justified from the famous words of Paul in Romans 13, which all statists think is a positive case for statism when it is but another explanation, consistent with the rest of Scripture (eg., Samuel 8), that a people pay taxes because they are under judgment for these very sins and evils of setting up and supporting human government. When people cannot understand the sense in which the State is “ordained” by God and act as His “servants” and “ministers” for judgment against statist sinners, they end up imposing their own worldly-statist politics upon the word of God and and assume that systems of human government exist as a blessing and as God’s provision for justice and law in society, rather than precisely a curse and God’s tool of judgment against a people who wouldn’t be ruled by Him alone.

In the Bible, States are used by God as a form of judgment against a people whose wicked hearts support these systems. They are a means of punishing a people who buy into the evil, worldly philosophy of statism. Going into exile to the Assyrians or Babylonians is a means of God serving divine judgment upon a people who chased after worldly powers themselves, as a divine rebuke against their statism. To be sure, States are set up by sinners. But God, the Sovereign and King, uses them to become a curse upon a people who trusted in them for their salvation.

One error that many men make today when trying to understand the political theology of God is to think that these States are non-evil because God has a use for them in judging the wicked works that set them up. Because God makes use of them as judgment against a people, men figure that they can support them or that they exist as justice-providers for society. But this is the very reason God brings these States upon people: for the ideology of statism (ie., the belief that men are in need of human rulers), which proves a man to be sinful, idolatrous, and evil. For this sin of seeking other gods than the Lord, God allows the States, which men have set up in their own sin, to serve as a divine punishment for their own evils.

This may seem hard to understand at first. Indeed, few men are able to see it, despite it being an essential lesson of Scripture that the sin of statism leads a people into bondage. How is it that States are evil and yet God makes use of them? Wouldn’t that mean He morally approves of them? The point is that state rulers are particularly suited as agents of judgment and “justice” against a people who apologize for the existence of presidents, congressmen, government courts, soldiers and law enforcement agents, precisely because they are evil! All these state rulers in the Bible who God called His “servants” and “ministers,” whether the Assyrians or Babylonians, were evil and violent people who, for this reason, were particularly able to perform the acts of divine judgment against a people who deserved to be on the receiving end of these evils for their own evils in supporting such systems.

These acts of judgment often came in the form of foreign statist invaders who repaid a people for their evils of seeking the protection or aid of some foreign army or Pharaoh from some other alleged enemies (eg., the Assyrians), rather than trusting in God alone. But it is equally accomplished by falling under the tyranny and mass legal plunder of human rulers on the domestic front who men had trusted in to “fight for our freedom” and “keep us safe” from various boogeymen who often serve as the alleged reason a State is needed. Americans need not be invaded by the “Chinese” government to find themselves under judgment. Such judgment is active and ongoing today in the domestic occupation by the “United States” government. But if the foreign invaders did arrive as a form of judgment, if “United Nations” troops marched the streets of America under the guise of maintaining order, it would not be surprising to anyone who knows the prophets and sees that a people who trust in human rulers (eg., the “United States Government”) should expect themselves to be ruled and invaded by foreign enemies for all the grievous sins of idolatry, patriotism, voting, and a general approval of the existence of human civil government that they have partaken in. Of course, we already are.

Moreover, anyone who knows the Lord should see that all these worldly systems of human government always end in a weeping and gnashing of teeth. They always come tumbling down due to their own evils, which serve as another form of judgment against a people whose lives have been tied into their economic and political systems and who have come to depend on their system of central bank credit creation and handouts, a deceitful meat that they have eaten to go into bondage to these men, which in the process has caused them to forget how to live any other way.

Thus, while States act as judgment against a people, they are also due for judgment themselves. Whereas God, say, uses the “United States” and all its plundering and violence to judge a people like ours who have idolized these systems, voted for these men, trusted in them for protection and aid, and bought into all the mythologies about “founding fathers” and “constitutions,” eventually these systems themselves mist be judged for all the evil that they are too, which may well once again serve as a judgment upon the people as these artificial social orders come crashing to the ground. For though it was the evil in the hearts of the people that called upon these systems to exist, which deserves to be punished by these systems, the systems and those who command them are also evil and must be punished for their evils, too.

Isaiah 10

Accordingly, the prophets preach both judgment that is coming down upon a statist people who looked to worldly rulers to protect them from their enemies, and a judgment that God brings against the rulers themselves. As seen in the prophet Isaiah very clearly, God also has an issue with the state rulers themselves, who He also uses as judgment against a people who, for their lust for these rulers, deserved to be on the receiving end of their schemes. But to be sure, these “presidents” and “legislators” and “congressmen” are still evil, too — just as are the people who vote for them and believe they should exist.

“Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of fair treatment and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people, to make widows their prey and orphans their plunder” (Isaiah 10:1-2). 

What people struggle to understand is that God’s use of worldly systems of human government as a form of judgment against a people does not make them non-evil. As we see in the Bible, God uses these States precisely against statists who believe in these systems, because these systems are particularly adept at plundering and enslaving, which is the very type of judgment that needs to come upon a statist people who approve of them in their sin, so that they can come to feel their own wickedness in a very real and personal way. Though God says that these States are His “servants” or the “rod” of His anger does not mean that these institutions are not evil themselves or that God wills for us to turn to them for the provision of justice and law in society. Again, States are evil systems that pervert justice, and that’s why they work as a tool of judgment. As the prophet says, 

“Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger; the staff in their hands is My wrath. I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets” (Isaiah 10:5-6). 

States work to “judge” statists, by bringing taxation, inflation, violence, conscription, incarceration, etc., upon a people who, wittingly or not, begged for these things by asking for human rulers. But though they have functioned as a means of dealing out judgment to others, these acts are also wicked themselves and are not exempt from judgment either. After God makes use of the Assyrians and their exceptional ability to plunder, He turns around and judges them, too. The tool of judgment becomes the target of it, and the plunderers, who once plundered the evil-hearted statists who needed to know the effects of their own sin, become the plundered.

“When the Lord has completed all His work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, He will say, ‘I will punish the king of Assyria for the fruit of his arrogant heart and the proud look in his eyes’” (Isaiah 10:12). 

Human civil government—commonly known as the State—is thus simultaneously two things: (1) an evil system that sinners set up in their rebellion to God, and (2) a means of dealing out divine judgment upon a people who are wicked enough to set them up. But the State is never some non-evil justice-provider whose mission gets perverted only when it deviates from some supposedly limited, “God-ordained” role of keeping the “law and order” in society, such that all that is needed is to “reform” it and get “godly politicians” back in office to refocus its mission once again. Rather, it is always evil, always a method of judgment against an evil people, and always due for judgment itself. 

The point here is just to lay the context out of the prophets’ preaching of repentance and judgment, which is given to both (1) the evil men who beg for rulers and deserve to be judged by them for their evils of believing they are needed rather than trusting in God as our protector, and (2) to the people who actually do the ruling over other people.