[This is part 3 in a series on “Who Were the Biblical Prophets and What Were They Preaching?” See part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris 

In order to continue making the case that the prophets were sent by God necessarily to preach against statist (ie., political) societies and condemn a people whose central sins were supporting these worldly kingdoms and their agents, in this segment we will begin to set the political scene of the prophetic books by showing how the prophets called men away from trusting in human government to keep their societies safe and sound, which is nothing but a competing theory of salvation to that of trusting in the Lord alone to do it. For the Lord is not just our soul-saver who takes us to heaven when we die, but desires that men regard Him as our King in the very sense that people that men attribute to human rulers in their sin, such that trusting in presidents, congressmen, and “defense departments” for protection—or trusting in human government period—is the very thing that is to decidedly turn away from God.

This statist rebellion—the essence of man’s rebellion against God—is seen most prominently in Samuel 8, where the very way that men had abandoned God, according to God himself, was to seek a human king to keep them safe from the enemies (Sam 8:7-8). It is the ideology and practice of statism—the belief that human ruler-protectors are necessary to society as well as the act of actually ruling over other men—that is the chief way that men turn away from God, notwithstanding the utter lack of awareness and rejection of this truth among modern Christians today, whose vague conception of “sinning” is entirely stripped of this political element. In other words, seeking kings, presidents, police officers, and armies, as our people still do to this day, is always expressly said to be abandoning God, who wants to be all the things that men grant to human rulers in their idolatry. God has left no area of human life to the man-made system of human civil government, despite those who use “separation of church and state” to suggest that there is some role that God gave to human rulers that cannot be carried out by those who administer the Kingdom of God wholly outside of these authoritarian systems of the world. Neither justice, law, protection, or welfare were to be left in the hands of human rulers, and the utter corruption and perversion of these things today is a very judgment for having done so. All these things have been handed over to the State only in our rebellion against God, who wants to serve in the role that men pass off to human rulers in their sin. God wants to be our King, our army, and our welfare provider who providentially supplies us with all our needs, but men, in their sin, make “presidents” their “commander in chiefs” and outsource their duty to provide for the welfare of their neighbors to men who operate socialist “welfare” systems that bring a people under the bondage of taxation. It is all these things that truly represent man’s main way of turning away from the Lord our God. It is precisely statism that represents man’s forsaking of God for false gods, from the very early days in Genesis when Nimrod and Cain set up their own kingdoms, to the Israelites requesting a king, to the false “Christians” and people today who vote and beg for state rulers to serve them.

Turning men away from statism

In this article then, I aim to show the main points made by the prophets against a people who sought protection and aid in state rulers and their militaries, so as to show that this faith in politicians and soldiers to “save” us from our enemies is the very sin the prophets were addressing. I want it to be impossible for statist idolaters to claim that this was not the case, that the prophets were not criticizing a people precisely for their statism, ie., the belief in an alleged need for human rulers.

Moreover, I want others to see that humanity’s great error has been to trust in men rather than the Lord as our savior and protector, and even more importantly, to stop repeating these errors and seek the Kingdom of God instead of the failing systems of man that end in the same disastrous and destructive road of slavery and collapse every time. It has been the failure to see that God’s word condemns statism, warns of the judgment it will mean, and calls people to return to the Lord as their only God, that people have been able to repeat these same errors throughout history, with generation after generation falling into the same idolatry for human government as their fathers before them. For, after all, tens of millions of men in America claim to be Christians. They claim to believe in the word of God. It’s just that they have either never heard the words of the prophets against those who trust in Egyptians and Babylonians rather than the Lord to save them, which is possible given the lack of reading among our people today; or they do know these words but believe they say something else. Many millions of men in America profess that “Christ is King.” But they don’t actually believe it. This is just a slogan to them that doesn’t prohibit them from seeking man-kings under the devilish lie not participating in worldly politics “means that you approve of someone more evil getting into office.” The idea, however, is that if these things could be shown to be the case, if we can prove that the prophets are indeed rebuking the same type of statism held by the vast majority of so-called Christians today, that they would find themselves either in the position of abandoning their statism or abandoning taking the Lord’s name in vain and stop falsely calling themselves people who follow the Lord. Ideally, men would take us up on the former and realize that statism is completely antagonistic to faith in God.

The Biblical deterrence from statism 

Once we read the prophets, we see just how out of line the statist ideology of men is today with the word of God and thus God himself. To adopt and support the worldly ideology of statism while claiming to be a Christian either shows that a man is entirely ignorant of God’s word, or that he is a false prophet who has come to deceive other people who might actually desire to be faithful Christians. Anyone who is still involved in the statist idolatry of the world, ie., the sinful belief that human rulers are needed in order to have protection, security, national defense, welfare, or society in general, has either not understood the lessons of the prophets and of the rest of Scripture, such as the warnings in Samuel 8 against the statist idolatry of desiring a human king, or they are active in perverting it and keeping the truth from others.

At any rate, statists simply do not heed the word of God, “Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save” (Psalm 146:3). They still believe that men are their saviors, deliverers, and liberators, and that “without the U.S. military we’d be speaking German.” They still believe, insanely, that a society that doesn’t become Babylonian itself will be left vulnerable to other Babylonians — that foreign statism must be matched with a statism of “our” own, that you can only fight socialism with socialism. The statist position is that it is not sufficient to trust in God in order to keep the statists away, and that human rulers are “necessary” to stand between us and them and “keep us safe” and “fight for our freedom” against a myriad of foreign enemies — some of them real, most of them imagined, many of them created through raising up a statist system and drawing everyone into identifying with the “nation state,” but none of them that cannot be dealt with by God for those who trust Him.

The prophets continue this same warning from Samuel 8, showing people that all these things (tax bondage, slavery, wars, famines, invasions, etc) have all been the effect of their own sin of setting up human kings rather than trusting in the Lord alone as their King. They warn people against seeking protection and security in Egypts and Babylons, which are statist plunder systems that bring people into bondage to their rule, not benevolent “representatives” and “servants” of the “public good” who keep us safe and free for the small price of paying taxes to them. 

All statists are involved in the very sins that the prophets rebuked, for the very statist position is a claim that Egyptians—both Pharaohs and their chariot-operators and horsemen—are needed to “fight for our freedom” or “keep our streets safe at night.” We are told that without presidents, lawmakers, law enforcement and soldiers, that we would not be free or secure — the very worry that the Israelites had when they asked for a king to “fight our battles for us.” Statists are people who have simply placed their faith in men rather than God. They are men who serve and support the kingdoms of the world, not the Kingdom of the Lord. They have not, as the prophet Hosea counseled them, confessed that they will no longer believe that Assyrians will save them or that their armies are necessary to their freedom. They have not been able to profess, with Scripture, that “some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). The statist position indeed exclaims the opposite: “Some trust in God for their freedom and security, but we will trust in chariots, horses, and the name of our president.”

Again, the point is that if men had known the prophets, they might see that this is always what they were teaching and, therefore, that their statist ideology is the very sin that the prophets were rebuking. If men knew the prophets, who particularly showcase God’s will, they would see just how foolish they are for turning to the human governments of the world for their salvation. They would see, rather, that they should “put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?” (Isaiah 2:22). If statists knew the prophets, they would no longer be statists who think that the U.S. government is a blessing to us and would see rather that it was the opposite.

“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes mere flesh his strength and turns his heart from the LORD” (Jeremiah 17:5).

They would know that trusting in presidents, congressmen, supreme courts, soldiers, police, and all the other supposedly heroic and salvific figures of the pantheon of statist gods, is to expressly abandon God and His teachings as spoken through His prophets. They would know, 

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the LORD” (Isaiah 31:1). 

That men apologize for the alleged need for state armies and government police today, all who are funded through the socialist method of taxing our neighbors, is the very proof of their ungodliness (or perhaps more accurately, their love of other gods than the Lord). For statism, both the ideological belief in human rulers as well as the practice of setting them up or ruling over other men, is the very thing that men do when they are rebelling against God. Far from just being some innocent politics that men believe they can hold in addition to claiming the Lord Jesus as their King, statism is the chief characteristic of a people who have turned away from God and not known Him as their only God. If people knew the prophets, they would never trust in “presidents” and other worldly kings as their lords and saviors, and that they do trust them is all the evidence needed that they don’t know the Lord. If they did know Him, they would see that the word of God rebukes this sin and promises destruction for all those who fall into it, as our people have done today, whether the fake Christians who seek their favorite “Republican” candidate or the regular old worldly socialists who make no claims of the Lord and—rather consistently and non-hypocritically—vote for men to rule over them. They would see that this faith in man-saviors that is the essence of statism always backfires on a people, precisely because it is an opposing religion and ideology to that of the Lord.

“Look now, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him” (Isaiah 36:6; cp. 2 Kings 18:21).

The main way that men have always rebelled against God and continue to do so today has been to seek protection in the kingdoms of the world and their human rulers, which, by the time of the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4, is clearly to make a treaty with the devil.

“‘Woe to the rebellious children,’ declares the LORD, ‘to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin. They set out to go down to Egypt without asking My advice, to seek shelter under Pharaoh’s protection and take refuge in Egypt’s shade’” (Isaiah 30:1-2).

The main men who are “living in sin” today are statists, such as the tens of millions of Americans who say “support the troops” and “back the blue” while kidding themselves that they are godly men. Notwithstanding the tens of millions of false Christians in the world who would vehemently disagree and defend their false gods and idols, the primary way of rebelling against God is to set up human kings like “presidents” and seek protection and aid in the “United States military.” All throughout the words of the prophets, it was more or less trusting in the protection and provision of human rulers that was characteristic of man’s sin and rebellion against God, and thus the very thing that invited His judgment. It was turning to human rulers to “fight for our freedom” or “keep us safe from criminals” that God saw as turning away from faith in the Lord to provide and protect. 

“Ephraim has become like a silly, senseless dove—calling out to Egypt, then turning to Assyria” (Hosea 7:11). 

If the people back in these days had listened to these prophets, and if the people of our time had read and understood them, perhaps they would know that not only will these men not save them, but that they will be a judgment and curse against them, just as the “United States” government is today for all those who trusted in these rulers to “keep the Chinese away” of “protect us from bad guys.”

“When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, then Ephraim turned to Assyria and sent to the great king. But he cannot cure you or heal your wound” (Hosea 5:13). 

The futility of statism

Though statists believe, in their sin, that human government is going to protect them from bad guys and keep “law and order” in their perverted societies, the goal of the prophets was always to show that these rebellious political ventures and foreign alliances and allegiances were both hopeless and sure to result in judgment. The price to pay for not trusting in God was to go into bondage to state rulers, find yourself occupied by foreign armies, be carried away captive into a foreign land, or in some other way to have your life and society completely destroyed by the very type of statists that you had trusted in for your protection.

The prophets worked to show that what statists mistakenly believed would be their salvation, would actually end up being their worst nightmare. They worked to show that you cannot actually turn from God as your protector and get away with it, and that all these systems of human government will only turn out to be tyrannies that ruin the very society, order, and civilization that men mistakenly thought could only be obtained through them. In short, that it wasn’t even worth it to forsake God and seek security in men, but worse than worthless, as it only brought injustice and insecurity to what would become increasingly difficult to refer to as “society” at all.

“Now what will you gain on your way to Egypt to drink the waters of the Nile? What will you gain on your way to Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates?” (Jeremiah 2:18).

As a matter of upholding His Law, which men violate to their own ruin when they set up systems of human government or appeal to them for aid, God brings judgment upon a people to prove just how misplaced their faith was to trust in men rather than the Lord. To make a point to the godless statists of the world who thought they could defy His Law and set up systems of human government, God makes these systems backfire in the statists’ faces to prove to all these patriots and socialists that their cheerleading for militaries and socialist welfare programs were set up against Him.

“Those who made Cush their hope and Egypt their boast will be dismayed and ashamed. And on that day the dwellers of this coastland will say, ‘See what has happened to our source of hope, those to whom we fled for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?’” (Isaiah 20:5-6).

God must prove the people wrong who thought that “taxation is the price we pay for civilization,” that it was “at least” worth it to give up a little liberty for security, that accepting human government was a decent trade off for the alleged horrors of the “anarchy” that would exist if they had trusted in God alone. He must prove that the statist bet wasn’t worth it at all and only resulted in tax bondage without even any security, civilization, law, justice, peace, prosperity, or freedom to show for it.

“Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame, and the refuge of Egypt’s shade your disgrace. For though their princes are at Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes, everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them. They bring neither help nor benefit, but only shame and disgrace” (Isaiah 30:3-5).

Preaching to men today 

What we have today is still largely a people who have either not read or not understood the Biblical prophets, including the vast majority of self-called “Christians” who are indistinguishable from the statists of the world and share a god in the State with them. Our people today are still trusting in Egypts, Assyrians, Babylons, and Americans to save them and their societies, all while these statist social orders destroy everything and are evidently nothing but a judgment against them. And this is why I pray to God to keep the fire burning in my pen. If people knew the prophets, they would know that “Egypt’s help is futile and empty” (Isaiah 30:7). They would stop making statist regimes their “source of hope” (Isaiah 20:5-6). It should be impossible for the average military- and police-praising American to continue in their idolatry for state rulers as their “protectors” and “saviors” if they saw that the essence of the rebuke coming from the prophets was targeted toward a people who precisely had “put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen” (Isaiah 36:9).