[This is part 6 in a series on “Who Were the Biblical Prophets and What Were They Preaching?” See part one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

As further proof for the thesis that the prophets were necessarily preaching against people whose sins were namely of a political nature (that is they were trusting in human rulers, state militaries, foreign alliances, and perverting law, justice, and liberty), we can show how they were consistently hated and preyed upon by the ruling elite—both the political rulers and their religious allies—who they had brought a divine word against.

This segment will serve as a good follow up for the previous article that showed that the prophets were taking their message to the rulers themselves, which is used as further proof that this—condemnation for the sin and evils inherent to all political societies—was the nature of the ministry of the Biblical prophets. 

The prophets were unliked and preyed upon precisely because they were preaching that divine judgment was coming down upon the statist (ie., political) order of the day, which is always contrary to God’s political ideal of a free society run by families networked together under servant-ministers that do not exercise authority over other men — per Jesus himself (Matt 20:25). They were preaching against both the worldly-statist ideology as held by the people, and the evil practices of the rulers who that ideology has put into place. Statists are people who, in their lack of faith in the Lord, have placed their trust in men to administer systems of worldly governments and protect them from their enemies and provide law and order to society, and who will have to suffer divine consequences for placing their faith in men rather than God to protect them.

Naturally, statists do not want to hear that their societies are actually inviting judgment upon themselves for all these evils, since they placed their hope for salvation in these false kingdoms of false gods and believe that there is nothing wrong or ungodly about their acts. And this made it dangerous for anyone who came around to oppose the prevailing narrative that all was well in Babylon, or the modern equivalent, that a “Golden Age” is upon us and the next president is going to “Make America Great Again.”

The word of coming judgment

It was this type of ministry—delivering God’s warning of judgment for the sins inherent to all man-made political societies—that put the prophets on the radar of the ruling elite. For despising justice, perverting all that is right, and practicing bloodshed and iniquity, just like the Egyptian plunder systems of our day that call themselves the “United States,” the prophets had come to preach that “Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble” (Micah 3:12). The prophets were preaching that these people (ie., statists) were inviting God’s judgment upon themselves for all their evils, that their once-lively societies were going to become desolate for the political sins and accompanying injustices that went on within their walls. The prophets said how “their cities are laid waste, with no man, no inhabitant” (Zephaniah 3:6). They reported the message of a coming divine judgment to the people who practiced these evil ways of setting up human kings and furthering the man-made kingdoms of the world rather than God’s Kingdom.

“I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitants” (Jeremiah 9:11).

For all the idolatry in the land, which was surely no different from all the flag-waving, military-praising, and patriotism of modern American society, the prophets delivered God’s word of destruction upon a given people. They gave God’s word, “Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard” (Micah 1:6).

At other times, the prophets were delivering a post-destruction lamentation of the lands that had already been judged for their sins of idolatry and their political practices of setting up rulers and passing off the administration of law, justice, protection, and welfare to human rulers who perverted these things, rather than carrying out these godly duties themselves out of personal responsibility and love of their neighbors. They would more so observe that judgment has already come for the (political) sins of the land.

“Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wasteland and Jerusalem a desolation” (Isaiah 64:10).

Ideally, these post-judgment scenes, where whole statist societies had been invaded and destroyed, were meant to bring correction to a people for their wicked practices. But often the lessons were never learned, and even a previously repentant people would dive back into the same sins as before.

At any rate, such judgment was intended by God to show the people that their old statist fantasies of “their” land as “the best country ever with the most powerful military in the world that could never be beat” were indeed just fantasies.

“How lonely lies the city, once so full of people! She who was great among the nations has become a widow” (Lamentations 1:1).

As a way of shaming the once-proud statists who thought their “best country ever” couldn’t fall down, God destroys these societies and embarrasses these “superpowers” on the world stage.

“I will make you a ruin and a disgrace among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by” (Ezekiel 5:14). 

For all these messages that the prophets were bringing to the people of judgment against their land for the evil practice of setting up human governments and administrating these violent systems, they were obviously not popular among the people or the rulers, both who wanted to believe that they were doing nothing wrong and that judgment could never come upon them. 

That the prophets had come under fire from the masses and the rulers serves as further proof for this thesis that the prophets were preaching judgment against a people precisely for their statism, and not just some generic, non-political evils that individuals in these societies had practiced. It was necessarily the sin of statism, and not just some vague and undefined sin like “drinking alcohol,” that causes God to bring judgment against a people. Sin is the violation of God’s Law, and there is really no area of life where sin is more pronounced and evident than in the sin of statism, where men erect false gods to rule over them and their neighbors, where they covet their neighbor’s property for socialist benefits from the government, where they approve of the system of tax-theft that fund the operation of these systems, and where they accept the violence, murder, incarceration, and slavery that is always a necessary feature of human civil government. 

The danger of confronting state rulers 

One would think that the danger of confronting state rulers would be evident for anyone claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ, who was stalked by these people since His birth, when Herod ordered young males be killed in an attempt to kill Jesus. Jesus also referred to all these men of old who had persecuted those who didn’t want to hear the word that God was sending on these people so that they might hear and repent. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her” (Matthew 23:37).

Nevertheless, the majority of people who call themselves “Christians” today are statists, and far from criticizing the statist order around them as the prophets did, they call people to participate in these evils as their “civic duty” and defend human civil government as a blessing from God rather than the curse and judgment that it is upon a people who refuse to be ruled by God alone. In other words, most people who call themselves Christians today are the very type of rebels who the prophets were preaching against and calling to repent and turn back to the Lord. They are the very people lost in all sorts of worldly idolatries for the kingdoms of man, who seek to further these worldly systems rather than repent and seek the Kingdom of God.

But this type of prophesying of the sin inherent to these worldly political systems, which we should still be doing today, is the real stuff that works to turn the world upside. The rulers of the world are not threatened by men who seek to sit in pews, sing songs with other pew-warmers, and listen to the sermonizing of some false pastor. Indeed, they prefer that men complacently huddle in so-called “churches” every Sunday and take their idea of “worship service” no further than this, lest they actually start to act like a Kingdom people and begin to serve each other in a way that makes the kingdoms of the world obsolete and eventually abolished. It is even better when these false “churches” apologize for the existence of man’s false kingdoms. Rather, what threatens the kingdoms of man is a people who are actually seek God’s Kingdom, which entails the abolition of the kingdoms of man, not their reformation. They are threatened by this prophetic word that statism is sin and that men must repent from this worldly ideology and seek the Kingdom of God. It is for these types of things—a true call for repentance from worldly idolatry for human government and warnings of judgment for those who want to stay behind in Egypt—that men are harassed, thrown in dungeons, and hung on crosses. 

Naturally, the Biblical prophets were stalked by the statists who they preached against, which serves both as a proof that this is who they were preaching against and that their message had teeth: it was a condemnation of the violence and corruption inherent to human civil government, which is always turning away from God to pursue the worldly ways of man. For rebuking the statist order of the day, the prophets were coming under the radar of the statists whose artificial societies their words were working to turn upside down. (Compare this to the so-called evangelism of Christians today, whose idea of the “gospel” has been stripped of its political element of another Kingdom altogether, such that it is no threat to the rulers of the kingdoms of the world, and is no longer stopped by them either). No statist, whose religion is statism, wants to be told that their gods (eg., presidents) are going to fail them and that their idols are coming down. This is why we hear men say today, “Stomp my flag and I’ll stomp your ass.” They are offended because they are idolaters of the worldly system of human government. The reaction of statists to the words of God’s prophets (both Biblical and contemporary) is thus to fight against this word, which comes down on all the worldly systems and system-makers that they cherish and regard as their lords and saviors. People lash out against the anti-statist word of God because they are convicted of their own sinful role in it, and rather than to repent for these sins, they remain in them and seek excuses for doing so. Their anger is only proof that they are invested in other gods and kingdoms than the Lord and His Kingdom, which essentially exposes them as men whose allegiance is not to God, despite professing to serve Him. 

As such, the Bible records many instances of statists and the ruling “religious” elite coming down on the people who were preaching God’s word, which stands opposed to their systems they create against His will. These people fight against the essence of the rebuke of the prophets: that judgment is coming down on all these sinners and their sinful societies, ie., their political systems that have raised up human rulers rather than to have made the Lord their God and King. They don’t like to hear that their statist societies are backwards and bound for judgment, as with Americans today who think their “best country ever” and “most powerful military in the world” cannot fail them and say such foolish things as “God bless America” under the belief that their worldly kingdoms are right by God. And so they look to stalk and harass those who preach the truth. 

“Now the priests and prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the LORD, and as soon as he had finished telling all the people everything the LORD had commanded him to say, the priests and prophets and all the people seized him, shouting, ‘You must surely die! How dare you prophesy in the name of the LORD that this house will become like Shiloh and this city will be desolate and deserted!’” (Jeremiah 26:7-9). 

Why persecute the prophets? 

As further proof that the message of the prophets was necessarily a political one that came down against the kingdoms of the world, we see how these people and the rulers themselves sought the heads of the prophets, Jesus Christ himself, and the apostles after Him. They didn’t like this anti-statist message that told them that their corrupt (ie, political) societies were going to be destroyed for all the sin that is always a part of them. This is why Jesus was persecuted too: the Gospel of Christ is the gospel of another Kingdom that is not of this world. If you’re a worldly statist seeking to further the kingdoms of man, you simply can’t tolerate prophets of God going around preaching another, rival Kingdom that stands as a challenge to man’s kingdoms and preaches the ultimate victory of God’s Kingdom. This is why Biblical figures were persecuted.

“The priests and prophets said to the officials and all the people, ‘This man is worthy of death, for he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears!’” (Jeremiah 26:10-11). 

Naturally, the word of the prophets—God’s message rebuking the unjust and oppressive statist orders of the day—is seen as problematic by a religious-civic elite who, smartly enough, view such a call for repentance from idolatry as a threat to their supposedly sacred institutions of “church” and “state.” The prophets were targeted essentially for exposing statist corruption and explaining these political social orders as being rooted in sin and idolatry. This is what they were doing, and the persecution against them is but further proof of it. There would be no reason to stalk, cage, or kill men that were merely preaching some hyper-spiritual message about “believing in God.” Rather, the prophets were showing people that the statist/political societies were contrary to God’s will and that they don’t last forever.

This is one basic reason why the prophets were persecuted. Since state rulers depend on people believing that their salvation rests in men and that these systems of theirs can go on forever, they naturally do not like people who are preaching that their systems are based in sin and for that reason are bound for judgment. This is what the prophet Jeremiah had done. He had come to tell the people that, due to their sins, they were about to be conquered by the Babylonians — God’s typical way of bringing judgment upon a people who practiced such Babylonian ways themselves and thus deserved to be feel the weight of statist evils come down on them.

“This is what the LORD says: This city will surely be delivered into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it’” (Jeremiah 38:3).

This prophecy of judgment outraged the officials in the land, who had some interest in making everyone believe that all was well within their backward and corrupt societies, which the message of any prophet always undermines.

“Then the officials said to the king, “This man ought to die, for he is discouraging the warriors who remain in this city, as well as all the people, by speaking such words to them; this man is not seeking the well-being of these people, but their ruin” (Jeremiah 38:4).

They went on to drop him into what was either a dirty well or perhaps even a septic tank.

“So they took Jeremiah and dropped him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah with ropes into the cistern, which had no water but only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud” (Jeremiah 38:6).

The persecution of Jeremiah, who was the most persecuted of the Biblical prophets on Biblical record, helps us to present a solid case for the prophets’ ministry being highly political in nature. The prophets brought God’s warning of judgment to the rulers and the ruled and made it clear that it was coming due to their sins, which are the same ones apparent still in our society today: voting for men to rule over you, waving the flags of these empires, supporting their troops, saying “back the blue,” and in general embracing all the idolatry and patriotism involved in any worldly-human government like the “United States.”

For this word of judgment upon a people and ruling elite who wanted to believe and teach that their was no sin in their societies and no incoming judgment for this sin, the prophets faced hostility, violence, or attempts to silence them — both by the rulers and the “religious” establishment that has always been bound-up with the political system in an unholy alliance of “religious” men who pretend to know the Lord and political plunders who depend upon their endorsement and presentation as having been “ordained” by God to watch over everyone and provide law and order to society. For this word of judgment and call to repent that confronted worldly powers with a divine condemnation of their injustices, the prophets were hated, persecuted, thrown in jails, or killed.

Preaching to hardheaded fools 

What we see is that the God-given mission of the prophets was most always to bring this word of repentance and judgment against a statist people and the rulers themselves, who most of the time fought against these words and chose to beat and cage them rather than repent. The prophets always knew this was their appointment. 

“The LORD sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that you have heard. So now, correct your ways and deeds, and obey the voice of the LORD your God, so that He might relent of the disaster He has pronounced against you” (Jeremiah 26:12-13). 

The prophets were necessarily always being sent into enemy territory (ie, into statist lands) to preach repentance and judgment upon a hardheaded people who had strayed so far from God’s ways that they often weren’t even aware of it, just as in the “United States” today where people think “America” is God’s blessing upon the earth rather than a curse for a people who chose to be ruled by men rather than by God. 

“‘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’” (Ezekiel 2:3-4). 

Although there is no Biblical account of persecution against Ezekiel, it is here at least implied that the message he was delivering had the potential to invite it, being that God warned of rebellious people who would be hostile to such a message. As with other prophets, Ezekiel was sent by God to deliver a rebuke of the idolatry and injustices occurring to a people under exile. 

The rebuke of sin 

The message of the prophets—a condemnation of political society and all its inherent corruption and injustice—was obviously a risky mission in a world full of statist idolaters, one which they were nevertheless commanded to deliver confidently (Jer 1:17). The people who were living in sin and didn’t want to repent from their wicked ways were liable to want to shoot the messenger. Indeed, they desired false prophets instead who would lie to them about the conditions and future of their societies, which they didn’t want to believe were sinful and would be destroyed. They wanted men who would avoid calls of repentance for allegiance to worldly governments and their armies and who would instead affirm their sinful ways, not men like the prophets who God sent to preach a coming judgment against their idolatry and injustices. This was made very clear by the people who fought against the ministry of Isaiah, who God knew He was sending against a people who were deeply lost in their sin and did not want to be told to turn away from their man-made kingdoms and back to the Lord. 

“For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, ‘Do not see,’ and to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel’” (Isaiah 30:9-11). 

This is how men across the world and especially in America today react against the word of contemporary prophets who rebuke the sin and idolatry of statism. They say to us, “Let us hear no more about God.” They want to trust in their false gods (eg, their presidents) and their false religion of statism. They want to keep believing that salvation will come through the voting booth, the next presidential administration, or the next legislative session. They don’t want to hear that only the Lord saves, despite being people who claim to follow Him. They don’t want to hear from people like Isaiah, whose message condemned Judah’s rulers for oppressing the poor and trusting in foreign alliances instead of the Lord to save them. Instead, they want their false gods to prophesy lies unto them of a coming “Golden Age” where we “Make America Great Again.” 

Persecution for exposing statist plunder 

Though the only sources for Isaiah’s persecution are extra-biblical accounts, which we shouldn’t have much trouble accepting given the nature of all the prophets’ ministries, the persecution faced by Jeremiah was well documented throughout the book bearing his name. The accounts of persecution against Jeremiah are particularly relevant for proving the political nature of prophetic ministries in the Bible, since, for one, Jeremiah is a “major prophet” who cannot be dismissed as obscure, and secondly, clearly prophesied against idolatry, social injustices, and the people’s reliance on corrupt kings and foreign alliances. 

As per usual, the people (the commoners, priestly class, and state rulers themselves) came down against the prophets because they didn’t want to hear that their societies were corrupt and evil, contrary to the design and intentions of God, and for that reason bound for judgment. For prophesying judgment against Judah and its officials, Jeremiah was placed in the stocks by a temple official, as well as mocked and plotted against by others for this message of “doom” that no statists want to hear is the fate of their political societies which they mistakenly believe are the source of their salvation, prosperity, and freedom, just like Americans today who claim “the troops fought for our freedom” and tell us how “you should be thankful to live in the United States.”  

The word that preceded this account of Jeremiah’s persecution was one that was being delivered to the rulers and the people for the political evils they had perpetrated in society, again showing that these are the types of missions that God had sent His prophets on. 

“Proclaim there the words I speak to you, saying, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and residents of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on this place that the ears of all who hear of it will ring, because they have abandoned Me and made this a foreign place. They have burned incense in this place to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have ever known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent” (Jeremiah 19:1-4). 

To put shame to the pride of statists that leads them to believe their worldly systems of government are so powerful that they will never meet God’s judgment, such judgments by God often entail a direct refutation of all the typical slogans and ideas of statism, such that “we’re the most powerful country in the world and no one could ever touch our military.” Contrary to the sinful statist idea that human rulers and their militaries are necessary to keep enemies away, God disproves them by showing that their wicked ways are the very things that invite enemies upon them, who God assures are sent. 

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. And in this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. I will make this city a desolation and an object of scorn. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff at all her wounds. I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress inflicted on them by their enemies who seek their lives’” (Jeremiah 19:6-9). 

No statists, neither rulers nor their supporters, want to hear such a message as this. They want to keep believing that their kingdoms are forever, probably not even realizing they are mocking the everlasting nature of God’s Kingdom by making such claims (Dan 4:3; Micah 4:7; Luke 1:33). For this they become violent and seek to silence or punish those who deliver such a divine word against them. No one who believes that their presidents are going to “save” them and make their country “great again” wants to hear that God has other plans for these sinners — that, far from these people existing forever to keep these plunderous kingdoms of men going, “the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled” (Jeremiah 19:13). (“Houses,” to be sure, does not just refer to the residences or dwelling of individuals, but to royal houses. The word “house” in this sense should bring to mind the “White House” or “Buckingham Palace” or even the “House of Representatives” just as much as the houses of non-royal persons, which are naturally included in such judgment against a people and their political system. This word should also bring to mind the monarchic nobility of a society or a royal dynasty, like, say, the “House of Hohenzollern” of 19th century Germany).

With words like this, it is not hard to see why heads of state, or their idolaters among the populace, do not want to hear this message. They want to be sold on lies by false prophets of a restoration, renewal, and revival being underway in their worldly kingdoms, not that they are raised up against God and scheduled for judgment. They want to be able to say “America is back” with a straight face, without anyone or the conditions of the society itself to contradict their bald-faced lies. Yet this is the message the Biblical prophets brought against the people, which in turn brought their persecution and which distinguished them from the false prophets of statism who work to spin the opposite lie that, say, “America is forever.” God had given His prophets another, much less popular message.

“This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and on all the villages around it every disaster I have pronounced against them, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed My words’” (Jeremiah 19:14). 

It is for these pronouncements of judgment upon statist societies, which idolaters regard as the salvation for society and civilization, that brings out the persecutors.

“When Pashhur the priest…heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks” (Jeremiah 20:1-2).

Immediately upon his release from the stocks, Jeremiah continued to preach this word of the Lord to a people who didn’t want to hear it: that, far from keeping them safe and free as Americans imagine today, their wicked ways (eg, their political practices) would invite the very enemies upon them who they thought they would be protected against by trusting in human rulers, and that they would come as a judgment for this sinful belief and practice.

“I will hand Judah over to the king of Babylon, and he will carry them away to Babylon and put them to the sword. I will give away all the wealth of this city—all its products and valuables, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah—to their enemies. They will plunder them, seize them, and carry them off to Babylon. And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, will go into captivity. You will go to Babylon, and there you will die and be buried—you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied these lies’” (Jeremiah 20:4-6). 

For preaching the word of God, those around him had said among each other, “report him! Let us report him!” (Jeremiah 20:10). The modern equivalent of this is all of our neighbors, church-goers, and online foes who will call the police or tag a federal agency like the FBI for our message that they view as “terrorist” or “treason” to their country, again showing how true it is that any truly prophetic call to “repent and seek the Kingdom of God” is necessarily a political one that stands opposed to the false gospel of the kingdoms of the world that promise salvation within their systems. What statists cannot tolerate is people going around preaching the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God of salvation and liberation in Jesus and His Kingdom, which is the only real threat to the kingdoms of man that depend upon man’s rejection of this Gospel. 

To denounce statism as the prophets had done, and for destroying all the lies of the people that permit these systems to operate, both the people, the religious establishment, and the rulers themselves came down on the Biblical prophets and still must do so today against those who call out statism as sin and idolatry and agitate for men to repent and be baptized into the Kingdom of God instead. So for calling for repentance to avoid divine judgment that would come in the form of a Babylonian invasion to plunder everyone for the very Babylonian (ie, statist) sins they practiced domestically and for indicting the temple establishment and royal court for leading the people into idolatry and oppression, the prophet Jeremiah was beaten and publicly humiliated as an attempt by the ruling elite—often in history a collaborative effort by a religious establishment and political caste of rulers—to preserve their political plunder system.

Shutting up the prophets of God  

The words of the Biblical prophets contain a call to repentance from idolatry and a warning of judgment against all political orders that are just too much to allow to spread among people in a society that depends upon men being lost in sin and the ideology of the world.  Thus, the religio-political regime looked at the prophet Amos in the same way as the priests had thrown Jeremiah in the stocks, wanting to get rid of this man and his word from God against the kings and their country.  

“Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words’” (Amos 7:10). 

A prophetic word from God is the most dangerous thing to a statist society, because it threatens to turn people away from the sins that are needed to empower the existence and continuation of human civil government. Human government is set up by sinners in their rebellion against God and could not go on without them. Human rulers could not exist among a population of people who repent and seek another Kingdom and no longer raise up false gods to “save” them from their “greater evil” political enemies. The human governments of the world have their origins in sin and depend upon it to keep going. To have men come along and denounce statism as the characteristic act of sinners is then highly intolerable for those who are attempting to do the opposite and inculcate sin into the population through various forms of statist propaganda like patriotism, veneration of the military, driving men into voting booths of these pagan kingdoms, getting them waving the flags of these empires and singing their national anthems, etc.

Thus these truths of the prophets—trust in God alone and turn from your idolatry and sin—are always unwelcome in statist societies, both among the ungodly men who cheer for these systems and the ungodly men who run them. This is still seen today in the common statist reaction of telling people like us to “leave the country if you don’t like it.” Anytime you charge that statism as sin, which is the truly prophetic work of the Lord, the statists tell you “leave the country then” or “move to Somalia.” This is what they did to the prophet Amos, showing this reaction by statists, which they think is a genius reply on their part, is a truly ancient one. 

“Amaziah said to Amos, ‘Go away, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah; earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. But never prophesy at Bethel again, because it is the sanctuary of the king and the temple of the kingdom” (Amos 7:12-13). 

Just as the people had said to Isaiah, who wasn’t prophesying the lies they wanted to hear, and to Amos, whose prophesying they wanted to go away, so they also wanted Micah to shut up and stop delivering this rebuke of statism and the injustices and evils that are always part of these societies.

“Do not preach,” they preach. “Do not preach these things; disgrace will not overtake us’” (Micah 2:6).

Like all statists, they were so proud as to not think that judgment could befall them for their great sins, ie., their support for and practice of plundering the masses with their political systems, and they didn’t want to hear it called out any longer. 

Micah was preaching the same message of judgment upon the statist plunder society as all the other prophets, and so they wanted him to shut his mouth, lest someone might listen to this word and repent. 

“Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands. They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance. Therefore this is what the LORD says:  ‘I am planning against this nation a disaster from which you cannot free your necks. Then you will not walk so proudly, for it will be a time of calamity’” (Micah 2:1-3). 

What statist wants to hear that what they believed will be their salvation, God plans to be their demise? The natural reaction to the anti-statist prophesy of God’s word is then to either wish to silence us into irrelevancy, or to incarcerate us and kill us when that is not possible. It is always in the interest of state rulers to assure that the masses do not hear a word from prophets of God, Biblical or contemporary, that might threaten to wake a man up to his idolatry and cause him to repent, although the ruling elite can mostly rest content knowing that the idolatrous masses who raised them up won’t listen to us anyway. Oftentimes the latter bet is good enough: the people won’t listen to us anyway, and the state rulers needn’t work too hard to maintain their power and narratives; the people do it for them. Idolatry is so strong in men that they never want to hear the words of the prophets and repent from their statism and turn back to God, precisely because it requires that they abandon their false ruler-gods who they have for so long regarded as their lords and saviors. Besides the embarrassment involved in turning away from mistaken ideas you’ve embraced your whole life, others have an even greater conflict of interest against the truth, having obtained seminary degrees, positions in the false church, or employment with the State, which would mean that they would be out of jobs or that all their work would have been wasted if they confess that they had been fools this whole time.

Often then, these people just prefer that true prophets of God are silenced, whether they are censored on the internet or reported to the police for evangelizing outside of so-called churches or on the street for people to join God’s Kingdom network and build this Kingdom together. As one commentator says of the words given to Micah to stop prophesying, 

“It was a prohibition laid upon the true prophets, whose hearers were so far from amending and turning unto God in compliance with his counsel, and obedience to his commands given out by his prophets, that rulers and people agree to silence the prophets, and expressly forbid them to distill or drop their severe predictions against the kingdom” (Matthew Poole Commentary, Micah 2:6). 

If any such preaching gets out of control, however, and threatens to turn the world upside and cause the masses to begin to seek God’s Kingdom, which necessarily implies the abolition of man’s kingdom, then things will turn violent and the state rulers will do all they can to come down on us. This was the case among early Christians who were taking the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to others in a way that was threatening to the statist order around them, such that those preaching this message either needed to stop preaching it, be thrown in jail, or killed. The apostles of Jesus Christ were thus ordered to shut their mouths about this Gospel of Jesus of another Kingdom under His Kingship, as with the prophets of old who called for men to repent and turn back to God, because this message from God stood as a threat to the false kingdoms of the world that they were working to maintain through their lies and their persecution of true prophets. 

“They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and released them” (Acts 5:40). 

The word of God stands as a constant threat against the kingdoms of man that have their origins and daily operations built against God and His Kingdom, and so it has always been necessary for these human rulers of the world and its systems to attempt shut people up so that they do not work to wake others up through their prophesying and evangelizing to other men who lost in the bondage of the world.

“‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,’ he said. ‘Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching’” (Acts 5:28). 

Jerusalem was filled with lies that helped the corrupt political system to keep chugging along, as in America today, where the so-called churches apologize for the existence of human civil government and statist intellectuals in the universities other sources of influence sell the people on the same worldview. These places cannot tolerate people who are filling the land with the teachings of God, who opposes their political practices.

Prophesying today

We are in the same position today as we take the lead of the Biblical prophets and call for a great repentance of the sin that has led to political bondage — as we call for men to abandon the idolatry and patriotism that supports the State, withdraw from seeking the benefits of these systems that entail coveting their neighbors’ property, and seek the Kingdom of God outside of the political institutions of the world. As with the Biblical prophets, we will most certainly face political persecution as we began to build God’s Kingdom and abolish the false kingdoms of man through our charitable works to our neighbors that will make these violent systems obsolete. Yet Jesus the Christ tells us to take this as proof that we are doing His work.

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you” (Matthew 5:11-12). 

Let us continue today to take up the work of the Biblical prophets and condemn statism as sin and point out the inherent evils and injustices of these societies as the consequences and judgment of sin, as well as warn of further judgment so long as men continue down this wicked path of seeking law, justice, and order through human civil government, rather than administrating these things themselves in a free society under God.