[This is part 10 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, and Revival. See part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

We have already asserted that the foremost “workers of iniquity” of Scripture and the world throughout all of history have been those men who rule over systems of human government and those who support these men and their systems. And we have also said that these evil systems of men serve as divine judgment against the wickedness and idolatry of the population whom they rule over, as well as eventually coming up for judgment themselves for their own evildoing. 

God’s salvation from wicked statists 

Yet we should go one farther and suggest that God’s judgment upon these state rulers, as seen in Biblical acts like God drowning Pharaohs and their pursuing armies in the seas, effectively serves as salvation for those repentant people who are leaving Egypt and seeking the Kingdom of God instead, i.e., those men who are turning away from the statist ideology and practices of the world like voting and fawning over politicians and who are now trusting in the Lord alone as their king and savior.

Few people ever link God’s judgment against statists with salvation for the repentant. This is mostly the case because they are statist idolaters themselves who don’t view human government as inherently evil, nor think of salvation as anything more than the distant idea of going to heaven when they die. However, this connection is frequently made throughout Scripture and the two ideas can often be found side by side. This is exactly what Moses told the Israelites as they were pursued by kings, armies, and officers during the exodus, if only they would trust the Lord and abandon their slavish, Egyptian ways of thinking they were still clinging to that kept them thinking it would be better to serve state rulers than trust in the Lord to serve up judgment against them (Ex 14:12). As scripture records, 

“Moses told the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the LORD’s salvation, which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:13-14). 

The salvation of God is that those who seek His Kingdom and live according to His Law and commands will never have to see another statist ever again. They won’t have to live their lives in fear that one of Pharaoh’s boots or badges will come scoop them up at any time and throw them in a cage for running afoul of one of Pharaoh’s thousands of arbitrary edicts that are designed precisely to ensnare men in the nets that these men cast to trap men, because they will be living in an anarchist society with the Lord as their only King and Savior.

As much as men, in their entirely spiritualized idea of salvation, say they are “saved“ today while still acting like Egyptians and Romans who raise up kings and presidents and fawn over their soldiers and police, they are actually a people who remain in political bondage for these very sins. They are a people who need to be saved, and who need to repent of their statist idolatry as their first step toward finding it. Anywhere there is a system of human civil government, there are unrepentant who need to repent and be saved from the civil jurisdictions of men. The existence of human rulers and idolaters who support them is all the proof needed that a people are not saved but are instead under divine judgment and all the curses that come upon a people for their disobedience to God’s Law. For a people who are saved—a holistic concept dealing with physical security and deliverance to safety—are a people who have been delivered from the hands of those evil men who call themselves the “government.” State rulers and the terrorists who enforce their legal decrees are exclusively a judgment against sinful people who would not make the Lord their King and who sought after other rulers in their rebellion against the Kingdom of Heaven. They are not a feature of a free society of anarchists who make the Lord their only God and who are saved from human rulers, either by God keeping them away from us or by destroying them outright. 

It is in these acts of divine judgment against the state rulers of the world that people are simultaneously delivered from their yoke. As we see in the Bible, acts of God’s justice against the wicked statists of the world are at the same time acts of salvation for those who are being freed from their rule. 

“As the Egyptians were retreating, the LORD swept them into the sea. The waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had chased the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.  But the Israelites had walked through the sea on dry ground, with walls of water on their right and on their left. That day the LORD saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the shore” (Exodus 14:27-30). 

It is saving people from statists, whether by physically destroying these wicked rulers or by otherwise keeping them away from us, that is the work God does for those who cry out to Him in repentance for the sins that had brought the Egyptians upon them in the first place. This was God’s promise to help encourage the Israelites in the first place, who were in the same type of bondage we are in today under the human governments of the world that are of the same lineage as the Egypts and Romes of the Bible that are shown to be enemies of God’s Kingdom.

“I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered My covenant. Therefore tell the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as My own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians’” (Exodus 6:5-7). 

It is through these very acts of salvation from statists that God says we will know Him. Anyone who doesn’t know the Lord’s salvation from statists—this is truer than ever with those who precisely trust in state rulers to protect, serve, and save them—is decidedly a person who doesn’t know the Lord at all. How could a man who trusts in Egypt and her kings, lawmakers, soldiers, and police officers be said to be a man who knows the Lord God as their savior, when His salvation is precisely to deliver us from the hands of these very men by judging them in destruction? 

This theme of salvation as coming in the form of God’s outstretched arm against the Egyptian rulers, armies, and officers is also seen in the many many other recollections of the exodus throughout Scripture. 

“He saved them for the sake of His name, to make His power known. He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; He led them through the depths as through a desert. He saved them from the hand that hated them; He redeemed them from the hand of the enemy” (Psalm 106:8-10). 

In short, the other side of the coin of God’s judgment upon statists is His salvation and redemption for those who are enslaved under these systems. Egypt is judged, Israel is saved. God smashes States so that people who repent of statism can be freed from their shackles and learn how to serve the Lord alone again in an anarchist society. Statism is a judgment upon the sins of men, a curse upon wicked people who idolized human governments and their rulers, i.e., who walked in the ways of the world and made covenants with false gods who they were told to have no covenants or constitutions with. Salvation is liberation from statism, a blessing of freedom from human oppression that once existed upon a people who had turned away from God’s natural, anarchistic order to be ruled by men instead, as the chief expression of their sin against God’s commands and laws. 

Anyone who conceives of salvation as merely some deliverance of their eternal soul into heaven when they die—the popular and diluted church teaching of today that allows men to trust in government saviors on earth—would have to contend with the Biblical statements of salvation and deliverance, which almost always deal with being saved on earth from real-world enemies. It was in this very context—God’s judgment upon the statist predators who followed the Israelites out of Egypt—that Moses praised God as a savior. 

“I will sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted. The horse and rider He has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. The LORD is a warrior, the LORD is His name. Pharaoh’s chariots and army He has cast into the sea; the finest of his officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have covered them; they sank there like a stone” (Exodus 15:1-5). 

John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, gives us the same understanding of salvation too: as the acts of divine deliverance from the hands of statists who ruled over us when we were still overt and unrepentant sinners who were under judgment for our worldly ways of thinking, when we did not yet know the Lord as our savior. 

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, as He spoke through His holy prophets, those of ages past, salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant, the oath He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us deliverance from hostile hands, that we may serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives” (Luke 1:68-75).  

The salvation of the Lord is to literally and physically save repentant people (i.e., those anarchists who have turned away from the kingdoms of the world and are seeking God’s Kingdom now) “from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.” The rulers of the kingdoms of the world hate us and want us dead, yet God loves us and will remove these wicked men from the face of the earth if only we would turn away from the faith, trust, and allegiance that men have placed in human governments as the greatest manifestation of their sin against God and His Kingdom. 

It is state rulers who are the wicked men of scripture and history, and it is these men who are the very people God saves us from and who we ought to be crying out to God for salvation from today. 

Salvation for the repentant 

Though a sinful people who walk the statist road as the chief outward expression of mankind’s rebellion against God must live in fear that one of Pharaoh’s agents may kick in their door and terrorize their family at any moment, the salvation of the Lord is precisely that God delivers His people into safety from the evil statists of the world who once preyed upon us when we were held in political bondage by the sins of idolatry and covetousness that brought us there. Salvation from state rulers was always God’s offer, but men rejected it precisely by turning to state rulers themselves to be their lords and saviors. As God said just after speaking on those statists who “go down to Egypt,” “seek shelter under Pharaoh’s protection,” and “take refuge in Egypt’s shade,”

“By repentance and rest you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence — but you were not willing’” (Isaiah 30:15).

As much as statist idolaters want the easy way out by claiming that they are “saved” on mere professions of faith, without changing their worldly ways, God is only looking to deliver a repentant people who sincerely turn back to Him as their only God. Statists do not even desire to be saved by God, because they are overt sinners who trust in men to save them. Whereas men of God can say “the LORD is on my side; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Psalm 118:6), statists say that men surround them as that they need a human king to save them (1 Samuel 8:20). Statists are the people from the Bible and the population who “forgot God their Savior, who did great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea” (Psalm 106:21-22). Instead of making the Lord their God, King, Savior, and protector, they desire to be enslaved by false gods—that is, the human archists of the world—who they trust in to “save the country,” “protect and serve” them, and “fight for our freedom.” And so God gives them over to the statist slavery they beg for instead.

Men can either have liberty under God, which is only found in a society of repentant anarchists who make the Lord their only King, or they can have slavery under human government, which will be the case anytime people reject the Lord as their God. Only those anarchists who have turned away from the kingdoms of the world in repentance for their Babylonian ideology and practices, and who have turned back to the Lord as their only God, will ever find salvation from the Egypts, Romes, and United States’ of the world, all which exist as judgment against sin. Though God smashes statists for those who make the Lord their only King again, the overt and unrepentant sinners of the world make saviors out of the very men who God uses as judgment against them and who He eventually brings to an end. Notwithstanding the millions of statists who tell us they’re “saved” on account of their mere belief in God, those idolaters of human civil governments are the main sinners in the world who God has left to be destroyed by their own devices. They are men who have made gods and heroes out of men and who, far from nearing the salvation of the Lord, have brought a just sentence against themselves in the form of living as captives to these human rulers.