[This is part 7 in a series “Who Were the Biblical Prophets and What Were They Preaching?” See part one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten]

Others have attempted to show some themes of the Biblical prophets before, but they have not always been pertinent to the thesis here that I have aimed to show in this article series: that the main message of the prophets was one that was coming out against the injustices and evils tied to the man-made kingdoms of the world (ie., “the State” in political philosophy), where they called men to repent for sins that were largely bound up with human government and rulers—idolatry, covetousness, slothfulness to seek God’s Kingdom rather than man’s—and be saved by God from these worldly systems of bondage. 

None of the themes listed here need to be thought of as being in some order that the prophets always preach or that things always went, and nor do they encompass every theme that we might pull from the prophets. Some of the Biblical prophets were pre-exile prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Micah, etc) who had a chance to warn people to repent before judgment came in the form of foreign invaders or utter social collapse or famine. Others were post-exile prophets (Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi) trying to lead the people back to the straight path after they had already found themselves far down the road of political bondage. To have numbered these themes should not cause one to regard them as some definitive path that mankind always takes. This is just a list of some prophetic themes, not a life cycle that humanity runs on. Indeed, though rarely, sometimes men will heed the calls to repentance and avoid judgment. 

Moreover, they need not be thought of deterministically either, as if these things just happened on some timeline that had nothing to do with man’s role in it. Rather, Scripture expresses a cause and effect universe of God’s laws implanted into the social structure. These effects we see, such as a people going into bondage to men, are casually related to people having willfully fallen into sin, refusing to repent, and bringing judgment upon themselves. They didn’t just happen automatically, and if they did there would have been no reason for the prophets to warn of judgment; the people wouldn’t have been able to turn back anyway.

Lastly, some of these themes overlap. Assessments of injustice, warnings of judgment, and calls for repentance may often be found together in a single verse, just as they may make up a paragraph in our own spoken ministries to the people. Awakening to the sin involved in one’s political captivity, weeping over sin that got you there, and cries for deliverance are often things that all happen at the same time, in scripture and reality. God’s compassion and mercy is often shown within calls to turn back to the Lord, etc. This is but an attempt to try and isolate these themes to understand them individually. However, we should know that, in practice, they are often inseparable in various ways. For this reason, some of our citations used to show these themes in the Bible may often be just as fitting in another category.  

Categorizing the teachings of the prophets 

A few consistent themes of the prophets might then be classified in a few different ways, all which may still be said to roughly resemble phases of history that mankind has fallen under through trifling with worldly systems of human government, which are raised up in sin and end in a weeping and gnashing of teeth, until they are started anew by men who never learned their lesson or only briefly pursued the Kingdom of God rather than man’s false kingdoms. 

1. Assessment: An assessment of a corrupt, plunderous, and violent society, namely a statist one that has perverted law, justice, and social order altogether and turned God’s natural order into a political plunder system. This is most often the scene the prophets are coming upon to give a word against. This often occurs up front in the writing prophets (eg., Isaiah 1, Habakkuk 1)

2. Warning: Warnings of impending judgment for sin, idolatry, covetousness, and overall injustices and evils intrinsic to worldly/human government. These warnings of judgment are always clearly connected to the evils being practiced in these political societies that substituted human rule for God’s rule, human legislators for God’s Law, or government courts for the personal responsibility of every godly man.

3. Pleading: Calls by prophets for the people to repent from these sins, turn back to the Lord, and learn to do right again, with the intention that a people would be restored rather than remain in captivity or a face a worse judgment than they were already under. 

4. Mercy: Along with many warnings of judgment are strong expressions by God of His willingness to change course and relent of the disaster He plans to bring upon a people should these people repent and turn away from their idolatries and evils themselves. God’s compassion for a people is expressed alongside His willingness to bring judgment upon them.

5. Rejection: Man’s refusal to heed the word of the prophets warning of judgment for sin is a common theme, where people reject the words of the prophets and don’t believe they are engaging in sinful behavior when they participate in and support the political plunder systems of the world, just as statists mock us today when we tell them to repent. 

6. Judgment: Judgment for the sins that a people refused to repent for, which often comes in the form of foreign invaders, being carried off into exile, or simply having to live under the corrupt system of human government that a people raised up over themselves.

7. Awakening: Waking up to the sin involved in these worldly systems of government once a people have found themselves in political bondage and are beginning to learn their lesson that sin leads to political slavery, tax bondage, and an assortment of political evils. 

8. Weeping: Weeping over the corruption, evils, and judgment that have come upon a society, whether a pre- or post-exile lamentation of the scene, where prophets and people alike see all the destruction that has come upon them.

9. Repentance: Cries of repentance to the Lord for deliverance from the bondage of Egypt following lessons learned from being under judgment, and a new pledge to correct your ways from the old evils.

10. Restoration. Finally, divine restoration from finding yourself into captivity to men and being liberated by God again from the Egyptian plunder systems that a people brought on themselves due to their own sins. Here we can also include the Messianic hope that was found in Jesus Christ. 

I wanted to just reference all these instances in parentheses for people to search themselves. But I believe in the power of God’s word, especially as spoken through His prophets, to change people, and so I want to spell them out here given that our people are so greatly in need of these words today.

Let us follow each category here. As I have laid them out, they are: the observations of the sins of statism, warnings of judgment, calls by prophets of God for repentance, offers by God of mercy, stubbornness to hear the word, divine judgment, realization of sin, lamentation of judgment, cries of repentance, and divine restoration. This list is not exhaustive. More cases of each could be found. However, it will serve here to give the reader an idea of each of these themes in the prophets. 

1: Assessments of corruption and injustice

As with all these categories, multiple lessons are often tied up into one, such that they can’t be perfectly isolated (and don’t need to be). Assessments of injustice, plunder, and wrongdoing are thus often accompanied by a call to repent and change your ways. Nevertheless, we may show some scriptures here that deal with the obvious corrupt political setting of these societies who the prophets had come to preach against. At other times, the scene is more indirectly painted, where calls to the people to correct their ways help to show us that something had evidently gone wrong in these societies.

It is instructive to point out that the first prophetic book in Scripture leads off by spelling out the scene of these evil statist societies in the first chapter and the first couple of verses, making it very clear that God’s complaint has everything to do with the political evils that men partake in and almost nothing to do with the idea of professing Christians today that God wants you “going to church” and partaking in a few Sunday rituals while remaining a worldly statist who defends the existence of human civil government, votes to raise up false gods, and overall believes in presidents, congressmen, police, and military, all who are perpetrators of the very type of violence and injustices that God says He hates more than anything.

“Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who act corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him” (Isaiah 1:4).

Lest someone just claim the prophets were speaking merely to the population and not of the statist society they had raised up, Isaiah made it clear that these iniquities, evils, and corruption were those which specifically emanated from the political system of the day, from those who took part in the politics of the world or supported it.  

“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). 

The words of the prophets, to be sure, were charges against state rulers, and not just accusations of injustices among a society of, say, private criminals or a morally degenerate people (though, these people are necessary for a statist system to even exist). 

“Then I said: ‘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). 

As we see often, it was the evils inherent to man-made political systems—the same corruption, injustice, theft and murder enduring in our society today—that led God to send prophets to rebuke a people, whether the plunder of the state rulers themselves or the participation in it by the people who apologize for these systems and accept these tax-funded benefits as thieves themselves.

“The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice” (Ezekiel 22:29). 

The prophets spoke of a political society that had plundered the people for their own dishonest gains and transferred wealth from the poor to the rich ruling elite, despite operating in the name of the “general welfare” or “common good” of “the people.” 

“They have grown fat and sleek, and have excelled in the deeds of the wicked. They have not taken up the cause of the fatherless, that they might prosper; nor have they defended the rights of the needy” (Jeremiah 5:28). 

The word of rebuke that the prophets brought against a people was almost always the same: that these people, namely those who operated the socio-political order of the day, had corrupted everything that was true and right about God’s Law and commands. As they observed, 

“The law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted” (Habakkuk 1:4). 

The prophets were not just rebuking some generic “sins” of people, as modern Christians like to understand sin as just some inherent personal failings in a man that have nothing to do with their political idolatry. Their charge was against a society whose sins were necessarily of a political nature, where men had set up monopolistic and compulsory systems of human government that would use their control over law and justice to plunder the people. Their charges were against the very people (lawmakers, police, kings) who the sinful masses task with administering their law, justice, and order, as opposed to upholding these things on their own out of personal responsibility.

“For I know that your transgressions are many and your sins are numerous. You oppress the righteous by taking bribes; you deprive the poor of justice in the gate” (Amos 5:12). 

Their charges were explicitly against a ruling elite “who trample the needy” and “who do away with the poor of the land” (Amos 8:4). Their word of condemnation was not just against a bunch of “bad guys” or “criminals” in society, as statists might paint the scene, but against a thieving and scheming ruling elite who used the political system to legalize their plunder and enshrine their crime and theft into law. 

“Her princes are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves, leaving nothing for the morning. Her prophets are reckless, faithless men. Her priests profane the sanctuary; they do violence to the law” (Zephaniah 3:3-4). 

In short, the political scenes that the prophets preached against were a statist order of men who did the opposite of God’s instruction to do justice. They were people who did not obey the warning, “cursed is he who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow” (Deuteronomy 27:19). The prophets were often just directly reiterating these things: 

“This is what the LORD says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Do not shed innocent blood in this place” (Jeremiah 22:3). 

They were preaching against people who, just like the human governments of today, robbed, caged, and killed people in order to maintain a system of domination over their fellow man, even though the Lord had taught that “you must not defraud your neighbor or rob him” (Leviticus 19:13). They were men who rounded up and caged immigrants and cheered for their enforcement agents to do these things, all while pretending they were men who actually followed a God who said, “You must not exploit or oppress a foreign resident, for you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21-24). 

It was for all these evils that were and are always inseparable from man’s worldly political systems that God warned of judgment and called for repentance through the ministry of His prophets. 

“The LORD is angry with all the nations and furious with all their armies. He will devote them to destruction; He will give them over to slaughter” (Isaiah 34:2). 

2: Warnings of judgment  

It was out of this corrupt scene of political violence and plunder that came the warnings of judgment given to a people in the books of the prophets, again which are explicitly directed to state rulers who are in control of law, law enforcement, and justice, just like the modern equivalent who pervert these things. 

“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). 

Any Bible verse that leads out with the term “woe” is more or less a pronouncement of coming judgment upon a people. As one Bible encyclopedia explains, “The term ‘woe’ is…often used in the Bible to denote impending judgment or calamity. It serves as a prophetic warning or denunciation, highlighting the seriousness of sin and the consequences that follow.” It goes on, “In the Old Testament, ‘woe’ is frequently used by the prophets to announce God’s judgment against nations, cities, or individuals who have turned away from His commandments. For example, in Isaiah 5:20, the prophet declares, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who turn darkness to light and light to darkness, who replace bitter with sweet and sweet with bitter!’” Statists are people who call evil (human government) good and good (God’s anarchist society) evil, and for this moral compass they are a people whose evils are inviting God’s judgment upon themselves.

These are the same type of charges as Jesus gave when it came to His day and age against the Pharisees, who also managed a corrupt statist/religious system that had perverted the commands of God to serve others and had made the word of God to no effect by substituting man-made traditions and rituals for the pure religion of actually serving one another. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).

Thus it is very clear that the prophets were giving a warning of judgment against the statist plunderers of their day who conspire against people to rob them, charge them with bogus crimes against the State, and evict them from their homes and farms when they don’t comply with the local tax authorities.

“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” (Micah 2:1-2). 

The targets of a word and warning of judgment here bring to mind a ruling class as far down on the hierarchy as county judges, sheriffs departments, and local lawyers who work together to extort people to fund their own government operations, personal salaries, or personal expenses like houses, boats, RVs, and vacations. 

“Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, to place his nest on high and escape the hand of disaster!” (Habakkuk 2:9). 

To be sure, the prophets often make it very explicit that their warnings of judgment are coming upon state rulers themselves. 

“On the Day of the LORD’s sacrifice I will punish the princes, the sons of the king, and all who are dressed in foreign apparel. On that day I will punish all who leap over the threshold, who fill the house of their master with violence and deceit” (Zephaniah 1:8-9). 

These are the people who extort the masses, cage the poor, and perpetuate injustices in society, despite operating under the deceitful titles of “Justice Department,” “law enforcement,” or “public safety.”

Such themes of God siding with the people who are plundered by these statists runs throughout Scripture. “Do not rob a poor man because he is poor, and do not crush the afflicted at the gate, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who rob them” (Proverbs 22:22-23). God was preaching a word of judgment specifically against both state rulers and a statist people who whore themselves out to these men for bread and protection from their perceived enemies (eg., immigrants. 

“‘Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,’ says the LORD of Hosts” (Malachi 3:5). 

The prophets were always giving God’s word of warning to people that they would be judged for their actions, such as oppressing the poor, extorting the public, perpetuating injustices in society, and throwing people in jail cells for not registering their vehicles with the Pharaoh. 

“Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee, and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine abominations” (Ezekiel 7:8-9). 

The calls of repentance from the prophets were always necessarily warnings of judgment. They weren’t just calling people to “repent” and continue down road of statist evils and the associated consequences, such as all the professing Christians today who say they have “repented for my sins” but continue to be worldly people who seek the kingdoms of the world. The prophets called for repentance so that a people would cease their evil practices that brought judgment against them. 

“The LORD has a charge to bring against Judah. He will punish Jacob according to his ways and repay him according to his deeds” (Hosea 12:2). 

They were always warning a people that judgment would soon come upon anyone who would not turn back from their wicked ways (eg., support for political plunder systems), in hopes this would cause them to fear the Lord and do so. 

“Wail, for the Day of the LORD is near; it will come as destruction from the Almighty” (Isaiah 13:6).

The warnings by the prophets was for the people to get off the sinful path of political violence, which God makes as His target for judgment, and begin seeking the Kingdom of God where man’s political systems are abolished.

“Behold, the Day of the LORD is coming—cruel, with fury and burning anger—to make the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners within it” (Isaiah 13:9). 

The calls for repentance were always bound up with warnings of judgment, on up through the New Testament where we hear Jesus himself say, “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). Moreover, calls for repentance were always calls to seek righteousness and change your ways entirely, not just to “repent” for some inherent sin in a man’s self, all while you keep believing in and practicing the statist ideology of the world under some vague and heavenly-minded notion that “I’m saved” and that the worldly politics of statism don’t actually contradict your claim to Christ as your King. The very thing that men need to repent from is statism and the worldly idea of salvation through human government, which negates the belief in salvation through the Lord and is the very cause of the political judgment that comes upon a sinful people. The sins expressed in scripture are almost always of a political nature: idolatry, raising up false gods/kings, covetousness, theft, murder, and seeking another kingdom than the Lord’s. The judgment warned about was precisely that which was coming upon evil people for evil practices like pursuing worldly systems of political domination.  

“Tell the righteous it will be well with them, for they will enjoy the fruit of their labor. Woe to the wicked; disaster is upon them! For they will be repaid with what their hands have done” (Isaiah 3:10-11).

The warnings of judgment were against a people who wrongly believed that their own statist systems would secure them from all their enemies, an idea that God disproved by sending Babylonians, Assyrians, and other statists against these people, who deserved to be dominated for practicing the same political evils as these evil men who God used as a judgment against them.  

“The great Day of the LORD is near—near and coming quickly. Listen, the Day of the LORD! Then the cry of the mighty will be bitter. That day will be a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, a day of horn blast and battle cry against the fortified cities, and against the high corner towers” (Zephaniah 1:14-18). 

They warned that the destruction of these evil political societies would surely be God’s work, too. 

“Alas for the day! For the Day of the LORD is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty” (Joel 1:15). 

The prophets had come to preach the casual laws of God to a people who, for practicing political violence, evidently had not figured out that these sins bring judgment, that statism brings about negative consequences upon a society of people who pursue this means of social organization. 

“For behold, the Lord is about to come out from His place To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; And the earth will reveal her bloodshed And will no longer cover her slain” (Isaiah 26:21). 

The people targeted for judgment are most often state rulers and their supporters, who, through the practice and ideology of political violence respectively, involve themselves in the very evils of statism that God hates more than anything. 

“I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless” (Isaiah 13:11). 

Those prideful statists who boasted that they had “the most powerful military in the world” and that “no one could ever conquer us” must have their pride exposed at the hand of God, who hates patriotism and praise of soldiers and police. God’s promise is to plunder the plunderers and to do to the “United States” the very things that they have done to other people around the world, or to send Babylonians upon a people who have supported their own Babylonian systems like the “United States” government.

“For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head” (Obadiah 1:15). 

3 – Pleas for repentance and correction

Though God would be just to strike a people dead the moment they thought to set up a system of human government in their hearts or to punish such a sinful people as ours today without any warning, it would not encompass His whole character as a merciful God, too. As such, all the instances of impending judgment against a sinful people—namely state rulers and all the statists who support them—are accompanied by calls for repentance, giving people the chance to turn back from their evil ways that have raised the brow of the Lord who is looking down upon all men who seek to raise up human rulers and man-made law systems in the place of God. Whenever God planned to bring judgment against a people in the books of the prophets, it was more or less always preceded by warnings and calls for repentance. 

“Now therefore, tell the men of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem that this is what the LORD says: ‘Behold, I am planning a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways, and correct your ways and deeds’” (Jeremiah 18:11). 

Though men were caught up in all sorts of evils like using the political apparatus to plunder and extort their fellow man, God was willing to send prophets to call these men to repent before He was willing to destroy them, while still warning of judgment in the failure to do so. 

“Therefore, O house of Israel, I will judge you, each according to his ways, declares the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, so that your iniquity will not become your downfall” (Ezekiel 18:30). 

Though these people in these statist societies were doing all the same things as ours still do today in the contemporary man’s rebellion against God, such as perverting justice, oppressing people, hustling them through their extortionist courthouses, running state welfare schemes that transfer money to the ruling elite rather than other people, etc., the prophets came along to tell them to repent and change course. 

“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17).

It was always these things—avoiding the evils of statism and caring for your neighbors directly and voluntarily out of personal responsibility—that were most important to God and which, therefore, angered him the most when people turned away from them. 

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). 

Some have argued that since Jesus has come to earth—that God became man and was crucified, buried, and rose from the grave—to die for our sins that there is no longer a need to repent and turn back to the Lord. This idea doesn’t hold up when it comes to New Testament, however. We constantly read things like, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19). This is the same message given by Jesus at the time when the Lord our King had come to earth to point us clearly toward another Kingdom. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2). We are still called today to repent from our sinful support for the man-made governments of the world and to seek another Kingdom.

4: God’s Mercy For Evil-Doers

As we have suggested above, God never metes out punishment even as fast as it would deservedly come if He had sent it (hence why the “United States” and all its evils and idolatry are still standing today). God always wants to give people a chance to repent, too, before He must bring judgment upon people who have proven to be unrepentant. This is a theme that is, of course, carried on into the New Testament. “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). 

Those who paint God as some angry tyrant bent on judgment against people obviously do not know Him. God would always prefer that men repent rather than be destroyed. It’s just that, if they refuse to amend their ways and abandon their evils, the socio-economic laws that He has implanted into the social structure cannot be violated, and men will face consequences for their sinful acts against their fellow man and against the natural anarchist order that God intended men to live under.

In defense of the God of Heaven, who is often mistaken as an angry and unhinged God of arbitrary judgment in the eyes of men who don’t like to confess their sins, we should always point out that God himself says He takes no delight in seeing men go down the wicked and ultimately destructive path of sin, namely those sins which are intrinsic to man’s pursuit of human government. 

“Say to them: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked should turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel” (Ezekiel 33:11). 

It is curious that people blame God for their societies falling apart, when not only is it their own work, but God himself, who indeed deals out the judgment, always adds that He is merciful and willing to reverse course if a people should do the same. The God of the Bible is one who tells a people that, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). The God of Justice is also a God of forgiveness. He always says that He doesn’t want to see a people meet a fate that is inevitable should they continue down the wicked path of sin and statism. 

“But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” (Jonah 3:8-9). 

It is not God, but a people themselves, who bring about their own destruction. Indeed, God and His word should mostly be seen as warning a people of the path of destruction they are on so that they can avoid it. Why else would God care to send prophets if not to save a people from their current collision course with His law?

“Therefore, O house of Israel, I will judge you, each according to his ways, declares the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, so that your iniquity will not become your downfall. Cast away from yourselves all the transgressions you have committed, and fashion for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 18:30-31) 

Though God is always ready to put anyone at the top of His list of a people deserving judgment, He also makes it clear that His mercy is always extended to a people. 

“At any time I might announce that a nation or kingdom will be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed. But if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent of the disaster I had planned to bring” (Jeremiah 18:7-8). 

Though statism brings about bondage and societal disintegration and ruin, notwithstanding the claims by statists that human government is necessary to “law and order” and civilization itself, the prophets were always sent to remind people that there is a way back, if these people want to begin to seek it. 

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place” (Jeremiah 7:3). 

The prophets always relayed God’s willingness to be merciful to a bunch of statist reprobates who deserved to be destroyed for all their evils, giving them more than enough chances to repent under the warnings of impending judgment for their current course. 

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:6-7). 

The prophets’ frequent calls of repentance were often just inseparable from God’s extensions of mercy. They weren’t just telling people to turn back to God, but also making it clear that God is willing to take them back and change His plans of judgment against them. 

“Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity” (Joel 2:13). 

As much as men have whored themselves out to false gods in the voting booths of man’s kingdoms and committed adultery with the mighty men of the world by shouting “support the troops” and “back the blue,” still God extends His mercy to a people and gave His prophets a mission to pass this offer of mercy to a people who would confess their sins and turn back from them. 

“Go, proclaim this message toward the north: ‘Return, O faithless Israel,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will no longer look on you with anger, for I am merciful,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you have rebelled against the LORD your God. You have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every green tree and have not obeyed My voice,’ declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 3:12-13). 

God does not hold grudges. Even though a people have been singing national anthems, setting up presidents as their kings instead of the Lord, donning their homes and attire in patriotic displays of allegiance to worldly kingdoms, and overall trusting in man’s statist systems, the Lord says He is willing to forget these sins. But God wants to see a people turn away from their evils (eg., to stop supporting systems of human civil government that are built on idolatry, theft, and murder) and to seek His Kingdom instead, to get back to the pure religion of serving your neighbors freely and directly rather than the public religion of socialism where everyone is extorted under a political system that claims to exist for the “public good” but which really just ensnares men into bondage. 

“For if you really correct your ways and deeds, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow, and if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever” (Jeremiah 7:5-7). 

When people refuse to listen to the prophetic calls for repentance and to “turn from your wicked ways and keep My commandments and statutes” (2 Kings 17:13), God is left with no choice but to send judgment upon a people for their evils, which most often comes in the form of foreign statists bringing their brand of evils upon a domestic statist people who practiced political violence themselves. As the chapter goes on to say here, “So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, until He had banished them from His presence” (2 Kings 17:20). 

All these lessons are still relevant today, as we are still a people living in Egyptian bondage for our sin. We have not been utterly destroyed yet, but we are still under judgment in the form of all the corruption and plunder and captivity we are living under. Only due to God’s mercy have we not been turned to ashes yet for all the idolatry associated with the American Empire. But we cannot mistake this mercy for God’s lack of willingness to punish sin anymore. Men still need to repent and turn back to the Lord before it’s too late. Again, lest someone claim that “these are Old Testament commands” and that “Jesus died for our sins,” it is evident up through the New Testament that we still must repent, even as Jesus has reconciled us to God. In fact, New Testament language makes it seem even more urgent and inexcusable not to. “Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). That Jesus has reconciled man to God does not mean that men no longer need to repent. None of the New Testament authors said we need not repent, but rather that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).  

5: Man’s rejection of the prophets’s warnings

One major theme in the prophets, which has to exist as a category among a divinely inspired men who preached repentance upon a people who came under judgment anyway, is the flat-out rejection of their words — something any Christian Anarchist knows all-too-well today as we rebuke the same sins and idolatries that the Biblical prophets took on. In His mercy and compassion, God had always sent out prophets to rebuke people and call them to repentance for their sins (eg., support for political violence), but people rarely listened to them, just as they do today when they mock us for calling statism sin and for telling them to repent of their support for and participation in worldly kingdoms and to seek the Kingdom of God instead. This was the case too when the Israelites had sought a human king to protect them rather than the Lord their King, even after Samuel had warned that they would be a plundered and enslaved people for going down the statist road of sin (1 Samuel 8:10-18). 

“Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We must have a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to judge us, to go out before us, and to fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:19-20). 

This theme is an important one for showing just how much the blame for their own bondage rests upon the people themselves, as opposed to those who want to blame God or, say, “the democrats,” for bringing about their situation. Not only has God sent prophets in every generation to call a people to repent, these people have always mocked, ignored, silenced, persecuted, and even killed these prophets, making it very clear that they would be deserving of what was to follow.

As we have already shown, Scripture always shows us how God never just surprisingly brought ruin upon a people who were doing evil, but always sent prophets—an act of mercy itself—to warn these people first. But the main problem has always been that men wouldn’t listen. 

“Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments. However, they did not listen, but stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God’” (2 Kings 17:13-14). 

This theme of hardheadedness among the people in the books of the prophets is an important one to demonstrate given that judgment, which often meant God turning whole societies and people into an ash heap, is no laughing matter, despite the giggles of proud men that occur in times of pre-exile or when things are still chugging along deceptively decent in the peak days of the empire, which keeps people invested in the road to ruin. It is also important to show that it isn’t that God merely brought sentence against an innocent people, but that these people laughed themselves all the way to a hell of their own doing. Lest God be seen as some arbitrary punisher who just blows His top one day and brings a sword against some “good” people, a statist people not only bring judgment upon themselves, but they also ignore the ample warnings by God’s prophets that these plunderous systems that are raised up against God and His Law cannot last forever and will inevitably come crashing down.  

“I have also sent to you all My servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, ‘Turn now everyone from his evil way, amend your doings, and do not go after other gods to serve them; then you will dwell in the land which I have given you and your fathers.’ But you have not inclined your ear, nor obeyed Me” (Jeremiah 35:15).  

God always warned people to abandon their unjust and wicked man-made law systems that they had erected in their political rebellion to God, and they always hardened their hearts even further to His word. God always made it clear to men exactly what the result of their evils would bring, 

“But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing. They made their hearts like flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD of Hosts had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. Therefore great anger came from the LORD of Hosts” (Zechariah 7:11-12). 

Very often then, among the prophets’ calls for repentance then are refusals to actually heed the words.

“So tell the people that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Return to Me, declares the LORD of Hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of Hosts.’ Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Turn now from your evil ways and deeds.’ But they did not listen or pay attention to Me, declares the LORD” (Zechariah 1:3-4). 

God sent His prophets over and over with the same message to abandon your injustices and repent of your faith in human kings and kingdoms, and people have always just responded with stupid things like “this is a Christian country” or “if you don’t like it then leave.” Prophets have come to men in all ages telling them to stop waving government flags, praising presidents, supporting the troops, backing the blue, voting for congressmen, etc., but they didn’t want to hear it. They have been given the word of rebuke for their evils, but it went in one ear and out the other. 

“However I have sent to you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, ‘Oh, do not do this abominable thing that I hate!’ But they did not listen or incline their ear to turn from their wickedness, to burn no incense to other gods” (Jeremiah 44:4-6). 

God has gone to great lengths to show men that repentance—turning back to the Lord and away from the false kings of the world—is a path of avoiding judgment, and still they have not cared, continuing in the same sins as before.

“For the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, has said: ‘By repentance and rest you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence—but you were not willing” (Isaiah 30:15). 

As the ultimate proof of their hardheadedness, the statists of the world have not always just ignored the prophets of God but, as Jesus references, had killed them (Matt 23:37). Despite all the rebuke that God has brought against a people and all the warnings of judgment by His prophets toward a given people, 

“Nevertheless they were disobedient And rebelled against You, Cast Your law behind their backs And killed Your prophets, who testified against them To turn them to Yourself; And they worked great provocations” (Nehemiah 9:26). 

Often in the Bible, a word of prophetic rebuke against worldly men who trusted in worldly systems instead of the counsel of the Lord seemed to only drive them further into their reprobation, further into their inability to see the truth even if it smacked them in the face or wound them up on a labor camp. 

“Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah, by all of His prophets, every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways… Nevertheless they would not hear, but stiffened their necks” (2 Kings 17:13). 

The prophets’ assessment of the political scene before them also mentions how these people evidently had rejected God and His word. 

“Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled! She heeded no voice; she accepted no correction. She does not trust in the LORD; she has not drawn near to her God. Her princes are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves, leaving nothing for the morning” (Zephaniah 3:1-4). 

A people who practice the statist method of organizing their society—a foundation of political violence—are often observed to be a people who obviously do not know the Lord and had rejected His word, hence a call by the prophets for them to listen. 

“Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a case against the people of the land: ‘There is no truth, no loving devotion, and no knowledge of God in the land! Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another’” (Hosea 4:1-2). 

This type of refusal to heed God’s warnings can only go on so long before mercy turns into judgment. Once men refuse to listen to God and His prophets for long enough, He has no choice but to go through with the judgment against a people who would not turn back from their evils, such as supporting tax systems that plunders the people for trillions of dollars and spends hundreds of billions on war toys to explode children. For these sins of statism on one people’s behalf, God brings the evils of statism against them from another people. 

“And though the Lord has sent all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid any attention. They said, ‘Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways and your evil practices, and you can stay in the land the Lord gave to you and your ancestors for ever and ever…But you did not pay attention or listen to me,’ declares the Lord…Therefore the Lord Almighty says this: ‘Because you have not listened to my words, I will summon all the peoples of the north and my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants’” (Jeremiah 25:4-9). 

As merciful as God is, He eventually loses patience with unrepentant statists who hate truth and correction. God’s patience and the refusal of men to listen to His extensions of mercy are often then coupled into single verses. 

“For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you warned them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you gave them into the hands of the neighboring peoples” (Nehemiah 9:30). 

God can only tolerate statists mocking Him for so long until they must learn the hard way that He was not lying that these men are sinners par excellence who are deserving of judgment for their evils.

“The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and did not spare young men or young women, the elderly or the infirm” (2 Chronicles 36:15-17). 

It isn’t that God doesn’t warn a people of the judgment and bondage that follow sin, but that men always refuse to listen and now—more undeniably than before—deserve to find out the consequences of rebelling against God and pursuing the worldly systems of human rule instead. 

“I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague and will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth—a curse and an object of horror, of scorn and reproach, among all the nations where I drive them. For they have not listened to my words,’ declares the Lord, ‘words that I sent to them again and again by my servants the prophets. And you exiles have not listened either,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:18-19). 

If I may briefly include a bit of my personal testimony of coming to the know the Lord and realizing that the Bible was the word of God, it was this theme in particular among the prophets—the hardheadedness of people to hear these words to turn back to avoid judgment—that produced in me a great emotion for how God felt toward a people who I have spent my life warning too, who fight tooth and nail to cling to their idols and continue in their evil support for human government despite all the clear proof and warnings of the negative consequences that follow. It is my hope that listing some of them here might allow them to have as profound an impact on others as they did for me. The blatant rejection of God’s word by men and God’s own realization of it played no small part in showing me that I was handling a sacred text, which had still not been heeded by the masses of people who possess it and who claim to be followers of the Lord. Rejecting God’s word is the same thing all these people are still doing to this day when they apologize for man’s political systems and refuse to admit any sin in it or repent for these wicked ways. 

6: Judgment for unrepentant evil-doing

As we have said, once people reject calls to repentance by prophets of God and show that they do not wish to accept God’s offers of mercy to relent from completely destroying statists and their man-made kingdoms, then judgment must go forth and these people must be punished for their sins and idolatries connected to their support for or participation in worldly politics. The evil ideas and practices of men who believe in human government must be brought down on their own heads. 

“The end is now upon you, and I will unleash My anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and repay you for all your abominations. I will not look on you with pity, nor will I spare you, but I will punish you for your ways and for the abominations among you. Then you will know that I am the LORD’” (Ezekiel 7:3-4). 

This judgment is never arbitrary or undeserved, either. Statism is the practice of evil, and for God to punish statists is but to return to them all the evils they have perpetrated against other people. For all their own wickedness, they must now get a taste of their own medicine, so to speak, and so God “brings judgment on all mankind and puts the wicked to the sword” (Jeremiah 25:31). For taking after the Babylonians yourself, as all statists do, God sends other Babylonians against you as a just retribution. 

“I will punish you as your deeds deserve, declares the LORD. I will kindle a fire in your forest that will consume everything around you” (Jeremiah 21:14).

Eventually, God’s tolerance for political plunder and patriotism runs out, and justice for these injustices must go forth.

“Now look, I strike My hands together against your unjust gain and against the blood you have shed in your midst. Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the day I deal with you? I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will act” (Ezekiel 22:13-14). 

All the prideful and patriotic men who rule over others and root “USA! USA!” in support of their false kingdoms need to be wrecked for their sins. 

“I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless” (Isaiah 13:11). 

God always makes it clear that the judgment came due to unrepentant sin, ie., due to the injustices, evils, and idolatry practiced by these people in their statist societies. 

“I poured out My wrath upon them because of the blood they had shed on the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols. I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered throughout the lands. I judged them according to their ways and deeds” (Ezekiel 36:18-19). 

For all the plunder practiced by the people of a statist society, the prophets forewarned that judgment—coming in the form of plunder returning on their own heads—was approaching, and that although it was at the hand of God who deals out blessings and curses, it is also clear that it is always ultimately the fault of the people themselves who partook in these evils, whether as a government agent themselves administering the plunder system or as one who apologizes for them and cheers them on from the sidelines. 

“The earth will be utterly laid waste and thoroughly plundered. For the LORD has spoken this word. The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and fades; the exalted of the earth waste away. The earth is defiled by its people; they have transgressed the laws; they have overstepped the decrees and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse has consumed the earth, and its inhabitants must bear the guilt” (Isaiah 24:3-6). 

For shouting “back the blue” and “support the troops” and “Trump is our president,” all while these men plunder and kill God’s children, these statist idolaters are wrecked and repaid for their sins. 

“Then the earth will become desolate because of its inhabitants, as the fruit of their deeds” (Micah 7:13).

All the proud statists who once thought their kingdoms were forever and that they would never come under judgment for their plunder of their fellow man will now have to face God. 

“I will make the land a desolate waste, and the pride of her strength will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will become desolate, so that no one will pass through. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I have made the land a desolate waste because of all the abominations they have committed” (Ezekiel 33:28-29). 

7: Awakening to the sin that led to bondage

Since men never want to listen to prophetic words to repent before they find themselves in bondage, it is often only after they have come under judgment—after the Babylonians have already broken through the gates and walls of the city—that they begin to become capable of putting two and two together and start to understand the causal laws of God that sin leads to bondage. It often takes a scene of post judgment before men are able to connect the dots and realize their own role in everything that has gone wrong in their society. It often takes a famine of bread in the land for men to realize that there has been a famine of the word of God. Indeed, this is why God has to bring judgment upon a people who didn’t want to know Him and His word to begin with. 

God always means for His judgment (eg., being carried away in exile or finding yourself in Egyptian bondage) to wake people up to the fact that their own sins played a role in being handed over to their enemies.

“The nations will know that the house of Israel went into exile for their iniquity, because they were unfaithful to Me. So I hid My face from them and delivered them into the hands of their enemies, so that they all fell by the sword” (Ezekiel 39:23). 

It is usually only after a people have found themselves making bricks for Pharoahs, being marched into exile by Babylonians, stuffed in a labor camp, or thrown in prisons for failing to comply with government tax laws, that they begin to realize their it was their own idolatry for human government and their own acts of voting to raise up false gods that brought these things upon themselves. The judgment was meant to be a teacher. 

“And when the people ask, ‘For what offense has the LORD our God done all these things to us?’ You are to tell them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so will you serve foreigners in a land that is not your own’” (Jeremiah 5:19). 

What men need to realize is that the judgment that has come upon them, ie., their enslavement to human domination systems called “government,” has been the result of their own sins that set these systems up, supported them, defended them, and took benefits from them that they handed out to create dependents who could be ensnared into bondage. What is required for a people to truly wake up from the enslavement of statism is not just to make some vague assessment that statism is slavery or that taxation is theft, but to see that all these things are the price men pay for turning away from the Lord as their King and begin to repent. A people who are truly waking up must be able to look at the political captivity they are in and make this observation: 

“All this happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods and walked in the customs of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites, as well as in the practices introduced by the kings of Israel” (2 Kings 17:7-8). 

Men must realize that the evils of human government have been a judgment for their sin, not just some accidental deviation of some supposed “God-ordained” role of things they “should” be doing “if only they obeyed God” or if the rulers vainly professed their faith in Christ again. Men must see the evils that have come upon them as an inherent part of human government and repent from statism entirely and with their whole hearts and turn back to the Lord as their sole King. They must realize that their own sins contributed to the bondage that they found themselves in, that their own failure to obey the word of the Lord led them there, that “they served idols, although the LORD had told them, ‘You shall not do this thing’ (2 Kings 17:12). 

In many instances, God means for the post judgment world a people have found themselves in to cause them to reflect upon the evils of their whoredom and adultery to other kings, kingdoms, and militaries than the Lord himself who wants to be all these things for us. As God said through the prophet Ezekiel, 

“Yet I will leave a remnant, for some of you will escape the sword when you are scattered among the nations and throughout the lands. Then in the nations to which they have been carried captive, your survivors will remember Me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts that turned away from Me, and by their eyes that lusted after idols. So they will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their abominations. And they will know that I am the LORD; I did not declare in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them” (Ezekiel 6:8-10). 

Though men once ignored God’s prophets who warned that idolatry and theft, such as that which is bound up with human government, would bring judgment upon them, there’s nothing like having a boot on your throat to make the reality all the more apparent to men that they have gone down the wrong road and that God’s protection is far from people who trust in men as their saviors (Hosea 13:10). Eventually, men will need to realize that their sins—their adultery for human rulers to protect them—have separated them from God and realize the need to turn back. 

“But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). 

This moment of awakening, which usually comes after the “good old days” of the empire bring the bad new days of its downfall, is even something God waits for and the prophets express explicitly. 

“Then I will return to My place until they admit their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me” (Hosea 5:15). 

It often takes the hard reality of experiencing all the evils that have become of a people who have turned to the kings of the world rather than the Lord their God to wake up to the imperative and pressing need to turn back to Him and abandon all their old practices (eg., voting and believing in human government) that led to their lamentable situation. A people who are coming to their senses again, after being wrecked by God for their refusal to repent prior to their now-evident judgment, are a people who begin to change themselves and make their ways right with God again. 

“Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD. Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven” (Lamentations 3:40-41). 

Men must realize that it has been their own sins, such as looking to human government to save them, that has caused them to go into bondage to these systems, which is nothing but proof that a people have been separated from God, who saves a people who follow Him from these very systems. Before a people can even begin to cry out to the Lord for His salvation from the slavery of man’s kingdoms, they must first realize that, by trusting in human government, they have been a people who have decidedly not sought the Lord. For a people to even think about crying out to God to save them from being dominated by evil men, they must first realize that it has been their own evils and sin that have caused their separation, and not that God is incapable of doing so. 

“Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice. No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case honestly. They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies; they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity…Their deeds are sinful deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are sinful thoughts; ruin and destruction lie in their wake. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their tracks. They have turned them into crooked paths; no one who treads on them will know peace. Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us” (Isaiah 59:1-9). 

8:  Weeping over the sin and bondage 

It is often only after a people have been destroyed that they can begin to see what has happened to them, so that they might be able to approach repentance and cries for divine deliverance from their bondage. The realization of the need to repent and turn back to God is necessarily accompanied with weeping, not only due to the level of evil that has come upon a people who might naturally begin to cry out for food or drink or relief from tyranny when living under the collapse of human government, but also due to their realization of their own terrible role in it. This theme of observing what has come upon a people and lamenting over the circumstances is another common one in the Biblical prophets — especially among the one who has been dubbed the “weeping prophet.” 

“My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Crash follows hard on crash; the whole land is laid waste” (Jeremiah 4:19-20). 

Like all of these categories here, it is difficult (and not needed anyway) to present them as isolated themes. The connection between sin and bondage, which we have thrown into the awakening stage, is often bound up with an observation of the lamentable situation they have found themselves in. 

“Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits” (Lamentations 1:3). 

This weeping is necessarily accompanied by a realization that one’s sin has led to their lamentable situation where God has turned His back on a people who, by turning to worldly systems, had turned from Him.  

“So put on sackcloth, mourn and wail, for the fierce anger of the LORD has not turned away from us” (Jeremiah 4:8). 

This sad state of affairs of a people who are under judgment often comes about naturally out of these very circumstances. What else is there to do once a people have found themselves in political bondage but to weep over this situation that their sin has produced?

“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground” (Lamentations 2:10). 

We see that this type of sorrow, such as weeping over the sin in the world and subsequent bondage it has brought upon our people, is good for a man, because “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation without regret” (2 Corinthians 7:10). To be sure then, weeping is not just an Old Testament concept found in the prophets. The apostles have counseled the same. “Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom” (James 4:9). Even Jesus’s Sermon on the Mountain confirms that it is good to weep. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). Prideful statists are incapable of mourning and repenting, because in their pride they believe that all is going perfectly well in their Babylonian societies. It is precisely the case that when things are going too good in a worldly empire that has not yet been utterly destroyed by God for its sins, that people remain too proud to repent. They still think they’re living in “the best country in the world.” They can’t see any reason why they should repent, because the heavy hand of divine justice is not yet completely upon them. However, once it is fully apparent, once things begin to fall apart in their worldly kingdoms that they once placed their faith in for salvation, then it becomes more evident than ever that God is not with these people who once said “God bless America” in their pride and believed they had God’s favor. 

Thus, it is often only after judgment and the beginnings of an awakening that a people can begin to weep at the evils that God handed them over to for their own sin, where they can say and indeed see it for themselves now, 

“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people how is she become as a widow she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary” (Lamentations 1:1). 

Lamenting over the judgment that has come upon you for your sin, or which is soon to expand, is a part of repentance. It is a change in attitude from the formerly prideful ways where men fooled themselves into thinking their current path wasn’t one of destruction. 

“Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich” (Micah 1:8). 

As we see, it is often under judgment that a people mourn over their captivity and are led to cry out to the Lord to deliver them from it. But sometimes, this message of awakening to, confession of, and remembrance for the sins that led to bondage comes after God decides to restore a people out of His own will, as a word to them to not backslide and remember what He has done for them. In other words, restoration is just as much proof that God is actively working on a people as is the judgment He brings upon men who rebel against Him. 

“Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD—let it be known to you. Be ashamed and disgraced for your ways, O house of Israel!” (Ezekiel 36:31-32). 

Though God may punish a people by sending them into bondage to human rulers, He means for this bondage to be the wake up call that men, who wouldn’t listen the first time, were evidently in need of to turn back to Him. Going into captivity to men, who bring all the evils upon people that human governments always do, was only ever meant to lead them back to the imperative of living under God’s exclusive kingship.

“But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and listen to His voice” (Deuteronomy 4:29-30). 

9 – Cries for deliverance from captivity 

This ability to confess one’s sins and cry out to the Lord is, of course, a common theme throughout Scripture. We read the Psalmists saying, 

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:1-4). 

But it is often only after a people are humbled through harsh judgment (eg., Babylonian invaders, great famines, domestic totalitarianism) that their hearts become soft enough to repent of the sins that had led to a bondage which they were once too proud to realize they were in or which they had even mistakenly identified as “freedom” or a “free country.” It is often only after they find themselves paying trillions of dollars a year in taxes to fund a war-machine and foreign enemies that they might begin to second-guess their belief that it was “necessary” to their security and freedom. Usually things have to become bad enough first for the complacency to be broken to a point that it is no longer possible to contend with a straight face that “government is necessary to fight crime and have law and order” when it has become evident for even the ungodly to see that the statist idea has led to nothing but corruption, injustice, mass theft against the public, and lawlessness — all the very things statists were once able to claim were the problem with anarchism, which eventually comes to be seen as the only viable solution to the evils that are now seen to be inherent to human government. After realizing what they have done to themselves and weeping over their own sin and repenting, then they can begin crying out to the Lord for deliverance from their enemies, which they once sinfully sought in worldly kings and kingdoms rather than through the Lord. 

As we see in Scripture, we may even pray to the Lord that He will forgive repentant people who confess that their sins have led to their bondage and that they are in need of deliverance.

“When they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin—and You become angry with them and deliver them to an enemy who takes them as captives to his own land, whether far or near, and when they come to their senses in the land to which they were taken, and they repent and plead with You in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and done wrong; we have acted wickedly,’ and when they return to You with all their heart and soul in the land of the enemies who took them captive, and when they pray to You in the direction of the land that You gave to their fathers, the city You have chosen, and the house I have built for Your Name, then may You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, their prayer and petition, and may You uphold their cause. May You forgive Your people who have sinned against You and all the transgressions they have committed against You, and may You grant them compassion in the eyes of their captors to show them mercy” (1 Kings 8:46-50). 

As seen in the lengthy passage above, it is often only after a people come to their senses, which usually only comes after a divine dose of hard judgment, that they learn how to confess their sins and cry out to the Lord again for salvation. This was the case in many Biblical stories, one of the earliest being the Israelites in Egypt, working as slaves to the Pharaohs and their political system. 

“And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God” (Exodus 2:23). 

It is these cries for salvation and restoration, which are accompanied by acknowledgment of sin, weeping over bondage, and repentance, that God says He hears: 

“I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God. After I returned, I repented; and after I was instructed, I struck my thigh in grief. I was ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth’” (Jeremiah 31:18-19). 

As always, the themes all naturally mesh together. Part of the cries for repentance are not only an acknowledgment of sin, but an explicit acknowledgment that the judgment was from God for your own evils. 

“Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bind up our wounds. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His presence” (Hosea 6:1-2). 

The cries of restoration we need to be making are necessarily of a political nature, and not that God shall reform the man-made kingdoms of the world, but that He should free a people from these systems who now repent and trust in the Lord as their only King. The prophet Hosea gave a guide as to what a people crying out to the Lord might say, which precisely included a confession that we will not longer trust in human rulers or their armies to save us! 

“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled by your iniquity. Bring your confessions and return to the LORD. Say to Him: ‘Take away all our iniquity and receive us graciously, that we may present the fruit of our lips. Assyria will not save us, nor will we ride on horses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods!’ to the work of our own hands. For in You the fatherless find compassion’” (Hosea 14:1-3). 

10 – Restoration and Hope

An overall picture of prophetic themes would be incomplete if God had only brought judgment upon a people for sin but never brought them out of it for repentance. As much as this often comes after harsh judgment, it is nevertheless part of the complete picture. Once a people make their ways right by God again, ie., once they no longer pursue the violent, man-made kingdoms of the world as their means of social organization, then they can begin to look towards divine restoration rather than judgment. This was a theme common all throughout Scripture, where both judgment and liberation have served as proofs that God is with a people and sends both bondage upon the disobedient and liberation for the repentant. 

“When all these things come upon you—the blessings and curses I have set before you—and you call them to mind in all the nations to which the LORD your God has banished you, and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey His voice with all your heart and all your soul according to everything I am giving you today, then He will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you from all the nations to which the LORD your God has scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the farthest horizon, He will gather you and return you from there” (Deuteronomy 30:1-4). 

Just as God sends judgment upon a people who wouldn’t turn back from their evil ways, so He delivers people who repent and look to God again as their King from the bondage that had once come upon them for their sins. 

“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore you from captivity and gather you from all the nations and places to which I have banished you, declares the LORD. I will restore you to the place from which I sent you into exile” (Jeremiah 29:12-14). 

It doesn’t matter if these people had already screwed up in the past and found themselves living as captives under absolute tyrants, because it was God who sent the statists as a judgment upon and God who can remove them. 

“But if you return to Me and keep and practice My commandments, then even if your exiles have been banished to the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for My Name” (Nehemiah 1:9). 

When men don’t want to obey God’s Law, He hands them over to the tens of thousands of man-made “laws” that are impossible to live under as a judgment for refusing His commands against raising up false gods. “For they did not practice My ordinances, but they rejected My statutes and profaned My Sabbaths, fixing their eyes on the idols of their fathers. I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live” (Ezekiel 20:24-25). But these stories of judgment are often followed by restoration (Ezek 20:33-44). And it is in these times too that men can begin to remember the causal laws of God that sin leads to bondage and repentance leads to liberty under God. 

“There you will remember your ways and all the deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you will loathe yourselves for all the evils you have done. Then you will know, O house of Israel, that I am the LORD, when I have dealt with you for the sake of My name and not according to your wicked ways and corrupt acts, declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 20:43-44). 

God never just judges a people and leaves them hanging, or does so for the sake of doing it. The tyranny of statism is ultimately justice against a people who have been unjust. A people who are under taxation are a people who are under judgment for their refusal to be ruled by God. But just as much as God acts justly in punishing those who turn from Him, so He is merciful on those who turn their faces to Him rather than their backs. Just as God makes a land desolate for their sin and curses a people who make men their gods, so these stories often end with promises of restoration, too. 

“I will restore My people Israel from captivity; they will rebuild and inhabit the ruined cities. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will firmly plant them in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land that I have given them,’ says the LORD your God” (Amos 9:14-15). 

Again, just as God is merciful enough to send out prophets to warn of coming judgment to men, so He is also merciful enough to bring the judgment to an end for a people who eventually listen. 

“I will surely gather My people from all the lands to which I have banished them in My furious anger and great wrath, and I will return them to this place and make them dwell in safety” (Jeremiah 32:37). 

Some depictions of restoration or liberty under God by the prophets give a more general picture of mankind being liberated from the nonsense of statism altogether. Perhaps the most famous vision of divine restoration is the one given by the prophet Micah.

“‘On that day,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will gather the lame; I will assemble the outcast, even those whom I have afflicted. And I will make the lame into a remnant, the outcast into a strong nation. Then the LORD will rule over them in Mount Zion from that day and forever’” (Micah 4:6-7). 

The prophets also spoke of a day when people would no longer even need these prophetic warnings of impending judgment for sin, and nor would their be any excuse for human lawmakers to “impose Christian morality” with the sword, because the laws of God would be written on their hearts. 

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people…For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more’” (Jeremiah 31:31-34). 

They spoke of a day when people would no longer chase after their false idols and false gods.

“For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:24-28). 

Overall, restoration following repentance following awakening following judgment following a failure to heed God’s word is often depicted in the prophets.  

“In that day the LORD will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, O Israelites, will be gathered one by one. And in that day a great ram’s horn will sound, and those who were perishing in Assyria will come forth with those who were exiles in Egypt. And they will worship the LORD on the holy mountain in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 27:12-13). 

If the message of the prophets often seemed like a pessimistic outlook, which was only due to the sins of the people that had them headed for hell, it was almost always accompanied by signs of hope, by words of lamentation, and by cries to God to restore the people from their bondage. The very last words of Jeremiah—one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible—was a prayer for divine restoration after seeing what had come upon them for their sins. I will quote it in full: 

“Remember, O LORD, what has happened to us. Look and see our disgrace! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners. We have become fatherless orphans; our mothers are widows. We must buy the water we drink; our wood comes at a price. We are closely pursued; we are weary and find no rest. We submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread. Our fathers sinned and are no more, but we bear their punishment. Slaves rule over us; there is no one to deliver us from their hands. We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin is as hot as an oven with fever from our hunger. Women have been ravished in Zion, virgins in the cities of Judah. Princes have been hung up by their hands; elders receive no respect. Young men toil at millstones; boys stagger under loads of wood. The elders have left the city gate; the young men have stopped their music. Joy has left our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this, our hearts are faint; because of these, our eyes grow dim — because of Mount Zion, which lies desolate, patrolled by foxes. You, O LORD, reign forever; Your throne endures from generation to generation. Why have You forgotten us forever? Why have You forsaken us for so long? Restore us to Yourself, O LORD, so we may return; renew our days as of old, unless You have utterly rejected us and remain angry with us beyond measure” (Lamentations 5). 

How many people are doing this type of weeping and prayer for restoration today? Very few. Most Americans are still in the middle-of-judgment, denial-stages of these prophetic themes, where things have not gotten bad enough yet to repent and turn back to the Lord and are still “good” enough to mock the prophets who warn of further judgment for these political sins practiced in this land. Those who do partially realize that things have gone wrong in our world are often praying in vain for things like God “healing our country,” when socialist ideas and pursuits like “our country” are the original sins that landed us here. What we really ought to be praying for is divine deliverance from the hands of men, who have gotten their hands on us because we have raised up false gods in the voting booths of worldly kingdoms rather than sought God’s Kingdom instead. We ought to be praying, “Restore us, O God, and cause Your face to shine upon us, that we may be saved” (Psalm 80:3). 

Men were not made by God to live in bondage to other men, but God also never wanted His people to turn away from Him and set up other kings. These sins had to be punished, but God, in His mercy, always gave us stories of restoration from bondage, too. 

“The LORD has taken away your punishment; He has turned back your enemy. Israel’s King, the LORD, is among you; no longer will you fear any harm. On that day they will say to Jerusalem: ‘Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands fall limp. The LORD your God is among you; He is mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.’ ‘I will gather those among you who grieve over the appointed feasts, so that you will no longer suffer reproach. Behold, at that time, I will deal with all who afflict you. I will save the lame and gather the scattered; and I will appoint praise and fame for the disgraced throughout the earth. At that time I will bring you in; yes, at that time I will gather you. For I will give you fame and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your captives before your very eyes,’ says the LORD” (Zephaniah 3:15-20). 

Notice how Scripture says Israel’s King was the Lord. This has always been the anarchist theme of the Bible: people abandoning God as their sole King, God punishing them for turning the statist route that makes men into kings, and back and forth, sometimes repenting and being restored, and often just falling right back into the same sins and being divinely rebuked again. It is the same story of mankind today. Statists have set up man-kings in their rebellion against God’s Law that commands us to have no other gods, we have gone into captivity to human government for this sin, and must repent and turn back to the Lord if we hope to be delivered from it and live under the Lord’s Kingship alone. 

Today, our hope is in Jesus Christ and His Gospel of another Kingdom with Him as the head, which is apart from the world and its systems, where men can repent from their subject citizenship under worldly kingdoms and begin to seek this Kingdom of God and life as free souls under the Lord’s exclusive rulership. 

The Lord is still waiting today for men to turn back to Him as their exclusive King if they wish to be delivered from bondage (which, of course, requires recognizing their bondage and the connection to their own sin first). This theme is persistent throughout all of Scripture. 

“For if you return to the LORD, your brothers and sons will receive mercy in the presence of their captors and will return to this land. For the LORD your God is gracious and merciful; He will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him” (2 Chronicles 30:9). 

Men must abandon their worldly idols and their false gods—repent for their belief in human kings and legislators—and turn back to the Lord alone. As the apostle said, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). 

Conclusion

These themes of the prophets more or less represent the ebbs and flows of human social order throughout time. They paint a scene where men fall into the sins of statism, get warned of the judgment that follows, are called to repent by the few men who see the disaster on the horizon, refuse to hear these calls, fall under divine judgment, sometimes realize their mistakes, lament over the bondage they have found themselves in, begin crying out to the Lord for salvation, and are delivered from the consequences of their sin. These themes more or less cover the history of mankind, from sinful men raising up human government in their rebellion against God, to these men finding themselves in the bondage of Egypt as judgment for this sin, to their societies being almost completely destroyed, and the cycle repeating from the top, often without men ever learning the lesson and seeking the Kingdom of God at the exclusion of all other kingdoms, except for short moments until they backslide and slip back into their old ways. 

These themes of the prophets reveal that a decentralized, anti-statist order where men trust in God alone as their King is the “secret” to success, and that trusting in the corrupt and unjust systems of men is sinful and leads a people away from God and into bondage. The prophetic themes help to defend an anarchist political theology by showing that the very sins which bring a people into bondage are of a statist nature. The prophets’ warning against trusting in human rulers and their armies provides great anarchistic threads to make a case for Christian Anarchism.