Leaving Egypt Ministries, Zachary Gomez

Many Christians today, upon witnessing the state of the world around them, reason that they must remain engaged in the politics of Egypt. They reason that if they don’t vote “godly politicians” (an astounding contradiction) into office who are supposedly “less evil” than the other one, then a “greater evil” will take over. They say if they had not done their “civic duties,” that “we could have had X in office instead of Y.” Showing their complete lack of faith in the Lord to save those who serve Him and walk in His ways again, they accuse all those who abstain from worldly politics as being “apathetic men who just want ungodly men to rule over them.”

This is an amazing claim for one who professes to trust in the salvation of the Lord! To say that one must keep piling into the Babylonian voting booths year after year if they do not want to be ruled by men is nothing less than an admission that repenting and serving God alone does not pay off! It is a claim that one must continue in their evils if they wish to be blessed! It is a belief that God would not protect those who sought to live under His Kingdom order! Instead of repenting and seeking the Kingdom of God again as the only viable solution to their bondage, these men effectively argue instead that we should remain unrepentant Babylonians! Those men who call themselves “Christians” but who vote for men to rule over them are like the people spoken of in the Bible who have said,

“It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty?” (Malachi 3:14).

Unlike prophets such as Jeremiah, who witnessed the prosperity and success of the wicked but chose to stay in the Lord anyway (Jeremiah 12), the thinking of many professing Christians today we believe they must keep voting is just the opposite: that it pays to be an evildoer and is a waste of time to serve God.

Of course, these men don’t think they’re doing this. Or at least they won’t admit this. They imagine themselves as heroic and godly men who are taking the Christian battle to the Babylonians by joining them at their own game. They think that by partaking in the sins of Babylon and seeking to influence her political elections, they are performing their “Christian” duties to be “salt and light” in a dark world. They think they are making sure “Christian rulers” (a contradiction if there ever was one) control the reigns of the devil’s government. They think they are the foremost Christian men in society who are “taking the gospel to the civil realm,” which only shows that they don’t even know what the Gospel of Jesus entails, because it is the gospel of another Kingdom altogether. 

Salvation from Egypt

This reasoning that we must stay behind in Egypt and try to influence her rulers and attempt to make their political systems align with our ideas or imitate God’s Kingdom is fundamentally rooted in a lack of faith in God, as well as a lack of proper conception of the type of salvation that the Lord provides for those who repent and seek His Kingdom. 

The Greek word for salvation in Romans 1:16, for example, is sótéria, and it means a literal rescue from destruction, deliverance from harm into safety, or preservation of physical life. This word and its definition in the Greek means the same as the Hebrew word for “deliver” (natsal) in Exodus 3:8, which reads: 

“So I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.”

Clearly, the salvation and deliverance spoken of in the Old Testament is one of physical liberation from the hands of human rulers. This concept is entirely lost on most every Christian today, who mostly suffer under this tendency to spiritualize everything. Their idea isn’t much more than this loose idea of being “saved into heaven when we die” because we “believed the gospel that Jesus rose from the grave.” It is hardly a gospel that compels them to repent of trusting in human government to save them, which, under this purely spiritualized and otherworldly concept of salvation, is not seen to be in conflict with their profession that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior — two political terms that are turned into nothing by Christians today. For most Christians, salvation is merely this vague idea of running around and saying “I’m saved.” It is their belief that, through a mere profession of faith on their part, that the Lord has granted them their ticket to heaven already. They even like to recall the year, month, day, and hour that they “got saved.” “I remember it like it was yesterday. It was June 27, 1982, at 10:30 on that Sunday morning, that that I accepted Jesus in my heart, just after I enlisted into the United States Marine Corps.”

Obviously, this entirely spiritualized conception of salvation, where men say a prayer and get to spend eternity in heaven and even continue in their evil ways while on earth, keeps them from seeing that they are in need of salvation — that they are still in bondage of Egypt and need to be rescued by God. Moreover, it keeps them from seeing that they are still in need of repentance. If salvation is just an otherworldly and spiritual matter, then there is no need to shape-up in the present and begin to seek the Kingdom of God today; our hopes and duties are largely matters of the afterlife (except, of course, getting other souls “saved” before the whole world goes to hell in a hand basket and our “gospel” evangelism is through).

Yet the salvation of the Lord all throughout the Old Testament is one of God’s people being literally rescued from the hands of their enemies, e.g., from Egyptians, Babylonians, or any other number of statist occupiers who had come upon them for their sins. The calls to God by the men of the Bible bear this out, too. They prayed to be physically liberated precisely from the grips of human rulers, whose bondage is just a much proof that God is judging a people who refuse to be ruled by God as His liberation from them is proof that He is saving a people.

When will men learn? 

Maybe the reader is unaware, but the Israelites were in bondage due to the sin of idolatry for going under Pharaoh’s rule for his welfare; they were his tax and labor slaves. Their oppression wasn’t as severe at the beginning as it was at its end when they finally cried out to the Lord. And this explains that civil governments are used by God as tools of judgment so that we would cry out to Him to be our only ruler. This is where we are today, where it should be increasingly obvious to all men that when men don’t abide by God’s law and avoid forming systems of human government, that they will be made to pay this price for their erroneous and evil ways. Men could have listened to God and lived in His anarchist society and provided for each other freely, but they chose instead to go under human rulers and are reaping what they have sown today. Men could have followed God’s Law and lived free, but they chose to make men their lawmakers and live as slaves. As God explains though one of His prophets,

“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).

You would think we would have learned our lessons by now, considering our tax burdens and inflation have increased exponentially over the last 100 years. You would think the people would have started to come to their senses, realizing that we are ruled by satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles. You would think it would be more evident than ever that this is the way human civil government turns out every time a people walk down this sinful road and set up human rulers above themselves. But it remains to be seen if people are going to do anything more than complain, assuming they have even identified that something is wrong. It remains to be seen if the men who have realized that things are backwards will make the connection that it is sin that leads to bondage and that they must repent and seek God’s Kingdom if they want to be saved out of the kingdoms of the world. For now, it seems to be mostly empty and unproductive rage.

Finding faith again 

So what must be done, considering that we have found ourselves in Egypt and assuming we have now seen that we are in need of salvation? Be one who would be wise by seeking the kingdom of God as liberation from the destruction inherent in the rule of man. We do not need to know every detail of how our liberation might play out, but we must trust in God’s word that continuing on the current path of playing the whore with human government is one of destruction and cannot be continued on. This is good enough knowledge and wisdom for us alone. We don’t have to worry about what will come of “America” if we stop participating in her sham elections; she’s done anyway. Jesus preached, “repent and seek the Kingdom of God,” not stay behind in Babylon, participate in her politics short of faith or an exact vision of liberation, and maintain a trust that political systems can one day be “fixed” and “reformed” if you’ll gather all your “Christian” brothers together to pile in Pharaoh’s voting booths next election season.

Rather, all we need to do is to do our part: repent, obey, and trust in God again; God Himself will work out the details and do all the rest. Yet, men can never even do this. God would take care of us if we demonstrated a shred of willingness to serve Him, and men still want to argue that they must keep their faith in human governments, which don’t even take care of them for this pledge of allegiance!

To find the liberty and prosperity that men unprofitably seek in a State, all they actually need to do is start trusting in God again. They must abandon the worldly worries and fears sold to us by all those Babylonians who call themselves Christians: that “ungodly rulers” (a redundancy) will take over if we stop voting. Are we think that the Israelites should not have listened to the word of God because they could not have shown in advance how God will work such miracles as parting seas for them to cross on dry land as they are being chased by kings, armies, and officers of man-made political systems? There would have never been an exodus if listening to God’s voice hadn’t preceded their willingness to walk into the wilderness and risk the unknown, without a complete vision of how it was that God would liberate them from government slavery, feed them in the wilderness, and provide for them thereafter. The faith – a trust in God’s plan – came before the willingness to begin walking in a new way that they hadn’t yet known, and were even somewhat understandably unsure about as they walked on. The lack of vision didn’t keep them from repenting, as it does those men who continue to vote today and believe the United States government can be “reformed” or “fixed” if so-called “Christians” fulfill their so-called “civic duties” in Rome. Men must repent of any such delusions as these if they hope to make it out of Egypt alive. The narrow road has no time for men who think they can serve two kingdoms. The fall of Babylon will not be halted by men filling in boxes on a ballot. The time to seek God’s Kingdom exclusively is now.

What is needed above all is for men to have faith again, for them to trust that God would physically deliver those who get back to His ways, which require that they abandon their Egyptian practices that, in their worldly reasoning, are thought to be necessary in lieu of any earthly salvation from the Lord, which has been largely spiritualized into a heaven-only conception. What is needed is for all men who profess Jesus as their Savior to actually mean it and subsequently repent of their faith in human saviors, walk in the ways of the Lord again, and perhaps look toward an exodus of their own. There is no reason that salvation today has been diluted into a lesser concept than it was for the Israelites under the bondage of Egypt. Are we to think that the Lord Jesus Christ provides a lesser salvation than in the days of Moses and Egypt? Are we to think that the God who parted seas to physically deliver His people from the hands of their statist captors now only “saves people from sin” in some vague and generic sense? Are we to think that the power of the Almighty God who made man is limited to saving their souls into heaven when they pass from this earth? That would be an admission that it is God’s perfect will that men be ruled by human governments for the end of time, rather than a more accurate picture: that such systems exist only because the sins of the people whose idolatry, slothfulness, and diluted conception of the gospel and salvation keeps them from seeking another Kingdom and stands as a lack of knowledge that keeps them in bondage.

Trusting God’s plan

We are out of time today for the persistent hangup that men have had of remaining in the political practices of Egypt in their lack of being provided a complete vision of what things might look like if they trusted in God alone, which is to say, trusted in His anarchy. This is how men have reasoned up to this point. Without a complete vision of how things might go well for them if they did right by the Lord again, they come to think that they may as well keep dabbling in the politics of Egypt, hoping that something will come of this futile goal — in incremental win. Of course, all they ever reap are more evils from this sin. Nothing ever gets better, yet they continue voting and cheering on politicians anyway. Everything gets worse, and they think the only problem is that there aren’t enough Christians participation in the politics of Rome. Rather than see that it is their own failure to repent that is the problem, they blame the problems of the world on non-voters who they say are just “sitting on the sidelines” (as if their voting is not one of the most apathetic and worthless things a man can do).  

As much as it is often cited in a way that tends to dilute its meaning, as many popular (though powerful) verses in churchianity are somehow made into, this well-known verse from Jeremiah is very pertinent here, considering that it was given to a people in a similar bondage as us today. 

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). 

This message was given to the Israelites in Babylonian exile. The faith in God’s plan was one they needed not on a good day, but one as a people who had been carried away captive in Babylon. Those professing Christians today who reason that we must continue in our Babylonian ways by voting and supporting human government fail to realize that it is these very worldly practices that have wound them up in a similar captivity today. Those people who, upon seeing the degeneration of social order under a State, somehow reason that “now is not the time to back away from politics,” fail to see that it is in these very moments that they need to return to the true faith and repent from their Babylonian ways. For, contrary to the standard take that these things would prevail in an anarchist society, the chaos and disorder that they cite as the supposed reason that we must “stand behind law enforcement” more than ever before already exist because of their unrepentant, statist ways.

The Hebrew word translated into “peace” or “prosperity” in Jeremiah 29:11 is shalom, which has similar meanings as salvation. In the same way that salvation should not be limited to the modern meaning given it today, shalom is not merely a “spiritual” type of prosperity where God, say, just fills our minds with happiness and joy, but a holistic one dealing with physical liberation from bondage. It is defined as “peace, well, welfare, safely, safety, well-being, peacefully.” As seen in the context of the Israelites in Babylonian exile, God is clearly speaking of just this type of salvation: to free men from under the hands of state rule. 

The salvation offered by the State and its false prophets is a false one, used to hide the glaring cracks in a system that has been set up against God and His rule. The political promises made by statists are false gospels, meant to cover up a failing kingdom that cannot last. They promise to “Make America Great Again,” knowing that she’s dying. This is why the prophets have wrote, “They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). Statists and their false prophets work to deceive men into thinking they must place their faith in systems of human rule, because these systems are always bound for destruction and can only ever at best “work” by deceiving men and making them believe otherwise. 

Godly men know better than to fall for the lies of state rulers and their supporters, which is to say, to believe in most any idea that exists among the masses today. They are never tempted by Babylon and her temporary and even bondage-inducing prosperity and benefits, and focus only on getting back to serving God again. They know that this is the only true hope for salvation, which is to say, a peaceful society where men are no longer plundered by Egyptians and under the yoke of Pharaohs. “The LORD gives His people strength; the LORD blesses His people with peace” (Psalm 29:11). 

Trusting in God again

What we need today is to trust that if we got back to the Lord’s ways again, which we have so greatly deviated from by having gone down the political road of man, that His plan for us is already prepared. What men need today is to stop pondering every detail of how God might liberate them if they served Him again, and just start serving Him once again. Jesus’s main message to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” was followed up with “and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). This worldly idea that one be involved in the politics of human civil governments, lest they be “so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good,” is nothing but a claim that they must delay serving God until they can see results. These men have their reasoning backwards. Scripture says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). How can men expect to see results without serving God first? Why should they expect that God will bless their Babylonian political ways? They are attempting to be blessed by God without lifting a finger to do as He says. Scripture, however, speaks of serving God first and then having the way provided before you. 

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6). 

Those who argue that we must keep voting and running for office short of any signs of God acting on our behalf — a thinking that is really possible only under the entirely spiritualized concept of salvation today — are essentially reversing the order of things, expecting God to serve them without hardly lifting a finger to serve Him, and indeed even positively putting their feet to evil. Again, scripture has things running in the opposite direction: 

“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). 

We must repent of our wicked ways first if we expect the Lord to save us. The argument of voters, however, is essentially that the Lord is not coming to save us and that we need to save ourselves by voting in new Pharaohs to do it in His supposed absence. Statists, you see, are the epitome of faithless men, despite their self-assurance that that they’re the Lord’s true activist faith-warriors who are taking their “Christianity” to arena of civil government. 

The type of unfaith seen among modern Christians is not like that of the men of the Bible. Did Moses know how God would deliver the Israelites from Egypt? No. I’m sure it seemed crazy to think about how such longstanding bondage could be overturned. But he went and preached the gospel to them anyway and told Pharaoh what the Lord said to say to him. Did the Israelites know how they would be freed? No. But their responsibility was to believe and obey the instructions God gave them through His servants Moses and Aaron. We’re in worse bondage than they were and somehow most people are still under the delusion that they’re free. Maybe our bondage has to get even worse before people cry out to God in repentance for His salvation.

It remains to be seen what it will take to get men to wake up to the reality of their political enslavement, repent for the sins that landed them here, and start to seek God’s Kingdom again as the only answer to our captivity. Maybe it needs to become even more evident that the politics of the world is not only not a solution, but has been the sin that has caused all our problems. Where is the bottom for these people?

Seeking God’s blessings again

So long as men think they must flirt with the politics of the world “lest we be of no earthly good” (as if worldly ways make them of any earthly good or that worldly politics exhausts the means of social change), they will not find the salvation they believe will come from this behavior that they likewise fail to recognize as sin. Scripture speaks of being blessed from serving God alone. There is no Biblical message that blessings necessitate one’s involvement in the political ways of the Egyptian systems of the world; these are precisely what bring curses upon men.

Rather, what God tells us to do in order to find the blessings that faithless men still expect to find by acting like statist whores is simply to follow His ways again, which is to say, to trust in His anarchist society and recognize that His word forbids men from setting up human rulers.

“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock— the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The LORD will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will march out against you in one direction but flee from you in seven. The LORD will decree a blessing on your barns and on everything to which you put your hand; the LORD your God will bless you in the land He is giving you. The LORD will establish you as His holy people, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will stand in awe of you. The LORD will make you prosper abundantly—in the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your land—in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, His abundant storehouse, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you will only move upward and never downward, if you hear and carefully follow the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am giving you today. Do not turn aside to the right or to the left from any of the words I command you today, and do not go after other gods to serve them” (Deuteronomy 28:1-14). 

As you see, human rulers or their systems of tax bondage fit nowhere into this picture of God’s blessings; these things are the curses of going under human rulers, as described in both 1 Samuel 8 and the rest of Deuteronomy 28. For men to have ever said such absurd and evil things as “God bless America” while living in bondage to human rulers is really all the proof needed that the vast majority of professing Christians today do not know the Lord and only at best take His name in vain. Men who know the Lord recognize state rule as judgment upon sin, and men who defend human government as God’s great blessing upon mankind for “law and order” prove that they don’t know Him.

Not only do people have a lack of faith in God, but even the vast majority of professing Christians don’t even know the meaning of the word “salvation.” Most people either believe they are already saved or don’t need to be saved, or can lean on worldly pragmatic means for salvation. But the reality is that if we’re paying taxes, then we are under judgment for the sin of raising up other kingdoms than God’s, and we are in need of being saved. We are in bondage to men due to sin and are in need of divine deliverance. Obviously, raising up another ruler, who will just continue taxing us like the last ruler, is not the solution. We are in need of God’s hand, either to part the seas and provide a way out of Egypt for the repentant, to crush Pharaoh and his officers so that they will leave us be, or to otherwise grant us the liberty to live apart from these rulers of the world. 

Prayer

Lord, my heart is heavy sometimes with the burden I carry for my brethren, who remain hardened and lacking in sincere faith in You, though they claim Your name. Maybe there is strong delusion You’ve allowed to cloud many minds. But if there is an ounce of humility left in someone’s heart may they be convicted by the Holy Spirit to return to You in sincere faith and trust. Because my eyes sometimes fill with tears in lament over our bondage. I long for freedom. And I desire that we could be a whole Body. May the seed of Your word find good soil. And may it find repentant hearts that produce a harvest of righteousness for Your Kingdom. In Jesus’ name, Amen.