[This is part 5 in a series on “Who Were the Biblical Prophets and What Were They Preaching?” See part one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven] 

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

It is popular in our time to think of a “prophet” as merely someone who foresees the future and tells of future events, often in a way that is entirely disconnected from the cause and effect universe that God has created where sin brings about bondage and destruction of society, and where obedience to God’s Law brings great blessings of liberation and prosperity. The prophet as someone who teaches the moral, ethical, or political laws of God is not understood enough today in a world where people who have adopted the title are mostly people who claim to have been given a divine word to predict some event on the horizon. Most people today who fancy themselves as prophets are date-setters for future events that they believe will soon come to pass, or even people who say that they have been given a special word from God. Much less common is the genuine prophet who, having read the Biblical prophets, is capable of teaching God’s laws to others, such as warning people of the judgment that comes upon societies that trust in human rulers to protect them and save them from their enemies. 

Under this popular and shortsighted understanding of a prophet as being merely someone who predicts the future, it is rare that someone recognizes the role of a prophet in bringing a rebuke to people in general and as someone who comes to pronounce judgment upon a society for the sins (eg., idolatry for human rulers) that they have partaken in. This function of the prophet has been easy to miss in a culture that already does not value evangelizing others to repent of their support for the kingdoms of the world and seek the Kingdom of God together, as well as among a watered-down Christianity that disconnects concepts like the Gospel and salvation from their political means and implications. These people have no reason to view the prophets as men who went around rebuking sin, calling others to repent, urging men to keep God’s Law and commands, and either explaining their current judgment as a result of sin or warning of coming judgment for the political injustices they have practiced in their society. The Biblical prophets are just thought to be men who God used to record future events that He planned to bring about on a certain timeline; the idea of a prophet as someone who explains God’s law so as to link sin or obedience to curses and blessings (respectively) is a much less popular conception in world of people who don’t think it matters much whether they live right by God or not. Prophets are typically thought of as men who were merely laying out future events that God had planned to bring about, rather than effectively economists who connected these events (whether bondage or liberation) to the preceding acts of the people (whether sin or repentance).

We may say that a prophet does foresee some, say, negative event, in the future, insofar as it is being explained as a consequence of sin. Babylonian kingdoms of the world, for instance, all destroy a people and then collapse themselves because they are raised up against God, not just for no reason. Aside from prophesy regarding a coming messiah or the future spread of God’s Kingdom over the earth, much of the prophesying of the prophets was teaching the people the laws and will of God, so that they would understand why they were in bondage (for their own iniquities) and what they needed to do to get out of it (repent from your support for false gods and turn back to the Lord). The prophet was not just someone through whom God beamed His timeline of future events to come to mankind; they were men who had been given a divine mission to rebuke statism, pronounce judgment upon these societies who practiced the evils involved in human government, and call upon people to repent from this ideology and behavior if they wanted God to lift them from their captivity and turn back the disaster He had allowed to come upon them for their own sins.

The sin of statism

In order to explain this role of the prophet as one who teaches God’s Law, so as to make straight the way of salvation and lead people back to an obedience that can avoid the disasters God assures will come upon all these sinful statist societies of the world that operate contrary to His will, we must point out that the message of the prophets was also and often taken to the rulers themselves who were directly (though not solely) responsible for the evils being practiced in their societies (the people themselves were and always are complicit as well).

Lest some statists who pretend to be Christians attempt to claim that the mission of the prophets was just some general or vaguely understood “sin” and immorality in society that leads God to bring judgment upon a people whose “sins” have nothing to do with the statism of these societies and the accompanying evils and plunders of these worldly systems that are really characteristic of sin, it is necessary to show that the prophets were often taking their message directly to the rulers. We cannot act as if the “sins” of the people are just “lying” or “lust” that has nothing to do with adultery and whoredom toward the kingdoms of the world, as churchians attempt to water things down to being, which allows them to wiggle out of being seen as overt and unrepentant sinners as they maintain their support for human civil government. No, it is really statism and patriotism and voting and all these political evils that is really what sin—violating God’s commands against having other gods and supporting theft and violence and murder—is all about. What God hates more than anything is for men to set up human rulers in His place and for men to seize these positions of power and act as false gods themselves. The Lord, as our King, does not share His throne with other men, and statism—both the ideological belief in human government and the practice of ruling over other men—is the chief way that men rebel against God and explicitly reject Him as their protector (1 Samuel 8).

For this reason, it is really statism that makes up the main focus of the prophets’ message. The prophets were not just going around and saying “you’re all a bunch of liars who are smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol and saying you don’t believe in God and not going to church, so now God is going to kill you,” as an attendee of the false “church” today might have you believe is the nature of sin and judgment. They were specifically rebuking the statist order of the day that is still practiced in our time and supported among these very people who call themselves Christians, who still pledge allegiance to worldly kingdoms and put their hands to the politics of these kingdoms rather than to the politics of God’s Kingdom — hence why the typical churchian understanding of the prophets doesn’t address this political element to their ministries.

A message directed to the rulers

The main message of the prophets is thus often against the type of people who trust in presidents, militaries, legislators, and law enforcers to keep them safe and free, and the rulers themselves who directly operate these systems. They were criticizing them for not being Godly men who trusted in God alone to protect them. This shows us that we too must take this message of “repent and seek the Kingdom of God” to the people and the rulers as well, just as the Biblical prophets were doing. 

To show who the prophets were preaching to is thus a guide for our own lives. It is worthy then to demonstrate that their mission was very often directed to the false kings and kingdoms of the world, who are the very people who, for operating political plunder systems, have stood themselves and their people up against God and His Kingdom.

It is easy to show that this was the case. It is not just that we are inferring that the prophets were speaking of statism or taking their message directly to human rulers by pointing out that there were injustices taking place that evidently must have come from the State; the text often makes it clear that these were the men who were perpetuating it and who the prophets went to directly or who they intended to receive the word. Even common sense could tell us this, though. If the prophets preached on injustices, lawlessness, theft, murder, inflation, etc., who else could have been responsible for this but the people (the state rulers) who monopolize these things and control them? There is never really just a society of unjust and evil people who don’t also have a political system to further this immorality of the people on a legal and societal level. The characteristic outworking of an immoral and spiritually corrupted people is that they set up systems of human government to replicate the immorality on a national level. Everywhere there are an immoral and unjust people, there is a system of human government. Only ungodly people can be ruled, and anywhere there are ungodly people you will find rulers. There are no political societies on earth without ungodly men who make up their populace, no statist societies where all the people are innocent and merely found themselves ruled by men against their will and desire. All of these systems, seen very evidently in the United States, contain statist sinners who proudly proclaim their patriotic support for their country, who praise the military and police as their protector-saviors, and who believe that human government has supplied the very foundations to their “civilization.” Thus, the condemnation by the prophets of injustice, lawlessness, and great evils in society necessarily always referred to those which emanated from the political structure. Though we can suppose that the people were corrupt themselves too, as a population of people with corrupted hearts is always necessary to have a State anyway, we must be sure to point out that the message the prophets were delivering was largely directly to the political injustices that prevailed in these societies, not a just a society of bad guys and criminals that could be viewed apart from the statist order of the day.

The complicity of the population

As we have said, it is never just that a gang of thieves calling themselves a government have taken over a society and conquered a people who didn’t deserve it, especially within the Biblical context of God being the sovereign who metes out judgment on those who deserve it and protects and watches after those who seek His Kingdom. If you’re living under a State and on their tax farm, you and your people have evidently acted unjustly and have not lived as God has commanded. Because God liberates and protects those who serve Him alone and keep His commands. The practice of statism—violent political rule over other men—always requires the ideology of statism to exist within the people. There are no statist societies on earth that do not contain statists, as well as men who won’t repent for their bondage and begin seeking the Kingdom of God. These systems are able to arise because the people themselves are wicked-hearted and evil and set them up and support them in their sin, which God allows a people to do to themselves. The existence of human government is never the perfect will of God, but only a concession from the Lord to a people who begged to be ruled by men in their sin, which is the only sense in which government is “ordained” by God: to serve as judgment against a people who are wicked enough to set these systems up, and who must learn a lesson for their wickedness. The man-made kingdoms of the world can never be thought of as an autonomous evil that came upon a people who didn’t deserve to be destroyed, upon a bunch of a “victims” who never asked for it or never sought this path of self-destruction. It is impossible to imagine the existence of the “United States” and its mass extortion, incarceration, and murder of humans without millions of statists, patriots, idolaters, and voters to cheer them on. They exist as an inseparable force for the existence of any regime. And naturally the land is full of them. Americans are a people who repeat all the typical statist slogans of “the troops fought for our freedom” and “back the blue,” phrases that were surely present, in some slightly modified form, in all these societies who the Biblical prophets had preached to.

In short, we can’t see a statist society as one of men who are pure and innocent victims of a gang of rulers, of a people who got dominated by men but didn’t ask for it or deserve it.  Rather, these rulers exist because the evils of the people allowed them to. Our people have voted these men into office, turned to them for salvation from their enemies, taken their benefits that are paid from coveting their neighbors’ property, slothfully sat in so-called churches rather than serve one another, and have failed to seek God’s Kingdom and administrate His government on their own through non-authoritarian means. 

Human rulers then exist as a judgment against people who do commit these sins. They bring about all manners of evil (taxation, inflation, incarceration, murder) upon a people who were evil enough to place their faith in kings and princes rather than the Lord their God. It is in this sense that they are “ordained” by God — a word that has both deceived people into thinking that “God gave us government” to protect us, and allowed them to deceive others into thinking its existence was a blessing from God for our social order when the only sense that state rulers are “servants” of God is that they are highly capable of bringing evils upon a people who have turned away from Him precisely by setting up systems of human government.

The point here is that state rulers are not solely to blame for the existence of political plunder and a population of people in slavery, as “secular” libertarians or anarchists tend to view the scene before us, where some statists just took over and dominated everyone else who didn’t deserve it. Rather, they are merely the result or consequence of an evil people whose sins of commission (idolatry for rulers, voting for false gods to rule them, accepting their benefits) or sins of omission (the failure to seek God’s Kingdom) allowed them to exist. The people in any statist slave society are just as much to blame as the men who operate these systems, because without the slavish, sinful mentality among men who make excuses for the alleged need of human rulers, they wouldn’t be able to exist.

The evil of state rulers 

However, state rulers are still evil themselves and still directly and first-handedly commit acts that are in violation of God’s Law. As much as they are a judgment against a statist people whose sinful ideology empowers them, they are also practicing statists whose actual sword-bearing, baton-wielding, and boot-stomping is anathema to the Lord and His ways. Indeed, this is why God uses them against a people who support them: because the ways of such a people—namely their evil support of human government—are against the Lord and His ways.

As such, it is not out of place that the prophets should focus on the rulers themselves too, as well as the evil hearts of the people in these societies. Both the rulers and those who apologize for their rule are sinners par excellence. The rulers are not exempt from this charge just because the people deserve the injustices that they bring to society. They are also partakers in the sin, albeit from a different role of actually being used by God to judge the masses who set them up in their sin. 

Although the deeds of the rulers in any society are never really separable from the sins of the people who allow them to exist through their statist ideology and idolatry, such as seen in the United States where men fawn over presidents and they say “support the troops” and “back the blue,” it is still worth it to point that the prophets often took their message straight to the rulers, whose evils, although acting as a form of judgment against those who begged for these people to exist, are still detestable to God. Although saying “back the blue” is also evil and brings a police state upon a people who ultimately deserve it, there is still a great evil involved with actually carrying out these deeds and ruling over other men and being one who has actually signed up to put a boot on their neighbor’s neck instead of just rallying for it on the sidelines — hence why God always destroys the state rulers too (eg., treading down the Assyrians after they had been used to tread down those sinners who supported them and deserved to be treaded on by them).

Taking the prophetic rebuke to the rulers  

As such, the ministry of the prophets was often directly to the state rulers themselves, who physically administered these plunderous, man-made kingdoms of the world that are both raised up against God by sinners and a tool of His judgment against those who form and support these rebellious institutions. It is state rulers, as well as the people who support them, who are the ones who carry out the main evils in any society where God is condemning the injustices of a people, which were not just among them as individuals but were part of the prevailing legal systems of these political societies. Though many modern Christians like to present sin as nothing more than the personal failings of individuals without any political element to this sin, there is really no greater manifestation of sin—the violation of God’s Law against raising up other gods, robbing your neighbors, or murdering them—than statism, with all its rulers (gods), theft (taxation), and murder (war). Even the popular concepts of sin, such as adultery, which churchians keep safely confined to spousal infidelity, very often to refer to the type of statist sins (trust in the military) that these same people can be caught practicing.

Thus when the prophets come to rebuke “sin” or “sinful” societies, they are not merely telling the people to straighten up their own personal act (eg., stop drinking hard liquor and being mean to their wives), although the failings of individuals and their character is much at the root of all social problems; they are condemning the statism in these societies, where sin has manifested into political plunder systems and has been enshrined into law. When the prophets had come to criticize the corruption, injustices, bribes, and other schemes of a people, they were not just talking about the moral character of the people themselves, who however are always at the root of all these statist systems, but were referring very much so to the legal-political order in existence among these people. As Isaiah made clear, the injustices were coming at the hands of the rulers (who, of course, were supported by the evils of the people too).

“Your rulers are rebels, friends of thieves. They all love bribes and chasing after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, and the plea of the widow never comes before them” (Isaiah 1:23).

And this message was directed to them.

“Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah!” (Isaiah 1:10).

The prophet Micah had a similar phrasing directed to the rulers, who he had, in very harsh terms, linked directly to the evils and injustices against other men that we have been saying are inseparable from these statist societies.

“Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice? You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones. You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron” (Micah 3:1-3).

Again, we are not just supposing it was the case that the rebuke of injustices must have referred to the men who control the political-legal system in a statist society. This is made clear in all the instances when the prophets were sent directly or the ruling elite. For instance, when God sent Ezekiel to “take up a lament for the princes of Israel” (Ezekiel 19:1). In this case. Ezekiel was sent to analogize the cruelty and oppression of the kings of Judah to lions, who, like Micah said, eat the flesh of the men they rule over, strip their skin, break their bones, and chop them up.

We cannot think that the corruption, injustice, and wickedness that the prophets criticized had nothing to do with the practices of rulers and the worldly systems of human government themselves. The political apparatus in any society is always the main instrument of carrying out these corruptions of God’s Law order in any society, and they are likewise always the main targets of the prophets’ preaching. As much as they are supported by the ungodly men whose sin allows for their existence and who must be rebuked too as idolaters who need to repent, nevertheless the systems themselves are wicked and evil too and all those men who man them are violent sinners. They are the main people we are speaking of when we point out that a society is corrupt, unjust, and backwards. When the prophets speak of injustice or unrighteousness, we are not just assuming that they might be referring to the ideology and practices of those who believe in human government and those who administer these political institutions. These things are always bound up with statism. Righteousness, justice, and morality in God’s eyes is defined by abstaining from all the practices that are inherent to statist systems, and to actually provide for your neighbor’s welfare freely and directly, rather than to do so through violent, tax-based systems that bring your neighbors into bondage. God defines a righteous man as one who “does not oppress others,” “does not commit robbery,” who “gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with clothing” (Ezekiel 18:7), and who “withholds his hand from iniquity and executes true justice between men [and] follows My statutes and faithfully keeps My ordinances” (Ezekiel 18:8-9). All systems of human government, by their very nature, commit these unrighteous acts and cannot avoid committing them so long as we are to continue to call them a government of men. If they didn’t rob, steal, transfer wealth to themselves, pervert justice, and corrupt society, then they wouldn’t be a government of man. This is what all human civil government does. They are all funded by robbing people, which they call taxation, and are all backed by the violence of the sword for anyone who doesn’t comply with them. There is no such thing as a righteous statist. Statists are, by their very nature, unrighteous men who hate God.

When God speaks of these acts, then, we can necessarily conclude that they are referring to the acts of the rulers in society, which is always made abundantly clear anyway by the time the Lord says that judgment is coming upon Pharaohs and kings and their officials. As in the case of Ezekiel’s prophesying to the princes, we see God say how “every prince of Israel within you has used his power to shed blood” (Ezekiel 22:6). As much as the people themselves are complicit through their support of these systems and even deserve to be judged for this sin of statism, the main plunderers in any society are still the state rulers, not just some private street criminals whose theft of street vendors caused God to send prophets upon a people. The prophets were speaking directly to and of the state rulers when they had brought their word to them and to us. 

“The conspiracy of the princes in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing its prey. They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her” (Ezekiel 22:25). 

More than any private criminals in society, who we can always still admit will be a part of any society whose morals have been corrupted away from God, it is really the political ruling elite who carry out the main plunder in a society that is worthy of God’s condemnation through His prophets, who were sent to bring the word and warning of judgment upon a people (both the rulers and their supporters) who practiced these wicked ways. It is state rulers who carry out the main predations upon other people in a society of people with corrupted morals, who as such were named for their evils. 

“Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives for dishonest gain” (Ezekiel 22:27). 

As much as we may also understand the state and its evils as judgment upon the wicked works of a people who shout “USA!” and “support the troops” from the sidelines, the State and its actors are still guilty for carrying out these evils, too. Unsurprisingly, the prophets brought the word to them as well, as in the case of Ezekiel, who was  sent to give a word to the rulers of Tyre as well (Ezek 26-28). Like any state rulers, they were charged with being proud and acting as gods (28:2). He prophesied against the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, too (Ezek 29), calling him a monster (29:3). 

We can see where the loyalties and allegiances of a statist people lie when we point out that God also judges the state rulers who were once used as a judgment against the people, as this presents a moment where people must decide whether they stand with these statist systems that are raised up against God, or with God who is actively destroying them for their sinful behavior of ruling over other men. Those statists today who praise presidents and congressmen as their gods and saviors would not like to find out that the pronouncements of judgment given by God through His prophets often included a direct attack on the bodies of these rulers. 

“Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt. I will break his arms, both the strong one and the one already broken, and will make the sword fall from his hand” (Ezekiel 30:22). 

Summary

In order to show that the essence of the Biblical prophets’ ministry was a rebuke of statism, we have tried to show here that they were bringing this word directly to the rulers themselves as well as making it clear that it referred to them. It does not require much detailing for anyone with even a basic experience with Scripture to know that this was the case. The prophets were taking their message to both kings and commoners. Moses was sent to go directly to the Pharaoh to tell him to let God’s people go whom he had kept in bondage. Elijah took the word to king Ahab (1 Kings 18:1), telling him that he and his people have helped lead everyone into idolatry and “have forsaken the commandments of the LORD and have followed the Baals” (1 Kings 18:18). This was Elijah’s response to king Ahab’s initial charge against the prophet that this word, which threatened the very idolatrous-statist order that the ruling elites were trying to maintain, was causing trouble under a political order where paganism and statism were working together to secure each other a place in society. (Even though they are the real enemies of the people, the state rulers of the world view those who preach the Lord’s word as the troublemakers, since this gospel agitation is the very thing that can shake up the lies these system-makers use to maintain their power). Elijah had come to predict that the Baal worship in this society would lead to drought as a form of judgment against these people. The Baal-dolatry of these people was not just some curious pagan religion, but symbolized statist alliances with Phoenicia.

By showing that the prophets were rebuking state rulers directly, it is that much easier to make the case that God’s gripe with men has often been for the very sins of statism: apologizing for the existence of human civil government or actually manning these institutions and administering the man-made kingdoms of the world, all of which are set up against the Lord and His Kingdom, and all of which do nothing but plunder and enslave humanity. The prophets were not just criticizing the people themselves, whose sins had raised these systems up; they were taking the word directly to the rulers, showing us undeniably that God’s main issue with people throughout history has been the sin of statism.