Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris
That many social-political problems abound in our world today has caused many of Christians to think that this presents the case that we “must” be involved in politics. “Christians must vote!,” they tell us. “There is too much evil in the world not to vote.” In another great twisting of the truth, they tell us that it is the one who abstains from this wicked deed of raising up rulers who is the one with blood on their hands, not the Babylonians who engage in this worldly evil. Or another favorite, that the only people who have a right to complain are those who directly contributed to these evils, when the truth is that the only people who can truly have a problem with the Egyptian slave society around us today are precisely those who are repenting from these evils!
These idolaters are especially offended by polls showing that tens of millions of Christians—praise God for those seeing the truth!—plan to abstain from the 2024 election. To us, this is progress, but for them it is appalling. They think the self-evident “Christian” position is that we must go down to Egypt and mark a box for a Pharaoh. They cannot even imagine that some people are repenting from these wicked deeds and seeking another Kingdom altogether that is not of this world and its plunder systems.
How did we get here?
The one thing about all those men who complain of the utter corruption and perversions of justice and law in our society today is that they never pause to reflect on how these evils came to be in the first place or stop to see that their own involvement in politics and their ideological support for the State in principle is the reason that our social order was able to progress in this direction. And for the most part, they still aren’t even aware of how long ago it was that these things have been manifesting. In their eyes, “our freedoms are on the line” in the future. They still haven’t even seen that the country they still idolize has been an Egyptian system from the start, as all States are.
When they do sense that things are heading in a bad direction, it is just an anomaly that it turned out this way, an accidental deviation from the good and intended course that it was “supposed to” be on as set by “our founding fathers.” The sin of supporting human-kings and “constitutions” in the first place had nothing to do with it; we just had the “wrong men” (ie., “the democrats”) in power who “messed it up.”
Furthermore, they never once stop to see if these things we’re experiencing today, which they are increasingly aware of and angered by, are judgment by God for the very wicked ways that they still condone, i.e., that our people’s moral and spiritual approval of the violent establishment of political rule over our society is the very cause for the divine justice we are evidently under today.
If men cannot identify the root causes of the problems today—the sins that raised up rulers bringing them into bondage—then they will not only fail to identify the solution, but will actually advocate for more of the very evils that led to the current situation which they lament! If they cannot see that the sins of statism, whether simply believing in human government or actively endorsing men for political office, are the reason they have wound up as captives in Babylon today, then they are likely to propose the very causes of the social disintegration they are living under today as the alleged solution, while furthermore criticizing the only real solution (repenting from these evils) as an ineffective and naive one that must be rejected. Rather than call for men to repent of their evil ways, which has been the source of all their problems, they thus claim that we must all throw ourselves into the politics of the world, which again is the original cause of the problems they complain about.
The real question is, why have things come this far anyway? How is it that society has gone so far off the rails? They don’t care to ask. They don’t care to seek fundamental causes. They never get to the bottom of it that men are in bondage due to the very sins that they still champion as the solution to their social ills. All that matters to them is that they are this way (for some reason), and “now we must keep voting.” But to say that more politics is the solution to the problems caused by politics is akin to the alcoholic continuing to drink while complaining about his failing liver.
Voters trust in men rather than God
If they knew the Lord, instead of knowing only the state violence that they learned from the world, they would never think that more politics was the solution to these problems. They would see that it is God who “makes peace at your borders, [who] fills you with the finest wheat” (Psalm 147:14). And they would trust their security and sustenance to God. That they don’t really shows where their allegiance lies.
But they do not take their counsel from the Lord when they set out to do such idolatrous and blasphemous things as voting (Isa 30:1). They are people who “follow their own imaginations” (Isaiah 65:2). They do not care that we are not supposed to be walking in the ways of everyone else, who tell us that we should be engaged in political systems (Isa 8:11, Ezek 2:8). They are people who are going back to Egypt against the Lord’s caution (Jer 42:19).
Not only is God sufficient for all these things that professing Christians tell us a State is needed for (“Candidate X is going to secure Y”), but moreover we should see that when these things are not the case—when men are pouring over the border or there is a lack of peace in the land—that just maybe it means that God is not with such a people and is giving them over to their own sins, or in other words is allow such people to reap the evils they have sown.
America under judgment
How could politics, voting, or otherwise giving your support to the State help with these problems that are precisely divine judgment upon a people whose sins are those very things these men are telling us we must double-down on? “You need to vote!” How can continuing in ours sins solve the problems that have come about due to them? And why is repentance from evildoing never a solution to these men?
It is like they recognize the curses, albeit without making the causal connection between these effects and their own sins, but refuse to repent for the causes. Men are angry with the way statism has turned out (their money is being used to fund foreigners), but they have not renounced this evil and repented from it. They have remained hardheaded even under the harsh judgment of having to live under the statist rule which they themselves begged to have come down upon their heads, although which they imagined would save them instead of enslave them.
God tells the obedient, ie., the men who walk in His ways and refuse to turn to the human idols of the world, that He will make our land secure. “I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to fear” (Leviticus 26:6). If we don’t have these things, as many of these people recognize, it stands to reason that we have not done right by God. We have set up human rulers against His will, who have (rightly) brought judgment upon us. Indeed, God even promises to send foreigners to a people who will not obey His paths.
“Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours. They will have money to lend you, but you will have none to lend them. In the end they will be your rulers” (Deuteronomy 28:43-44).
The only reason these people are shocked and appalled by “their” government sending money to Ukraine, subsidizing immigration, etc., is that they have never known God in the first place, who promises the downfall of all societies who trust in men rather than God. And so all they know is to keep doubling-down on their faith in godvernment to save them, when that faith is the very reason they are being failed already.
Rather than look at these rulers and see a need to confess their sins and repent, millions of professing Christians continue in the same old evil paths as always. Rather than turn from their ways, these idolaters tell us that we need to get a strong man into power who can “secure our border” or “fix our country.” Not only do statists not realize that this is what God does, nor that they are forsaking God in the process, but they continue to engage in the very same things—support for human government—that has brought the judgment in the first place.
Adding sin to sin
The “Christian statists” (contradiction) are in the contradictory position of complaining about the effects of sin—bondage, invasion, the destruction of social order—while calling upon men to dive in even harder for the very sinful acts that have brought us to here: voting, praising men, saying we can’t do without governments, etc. They are hypocrites, for they pretend to have the Lord as their King, but also vote on man-kings to rule over them, advancing the bondage they complain of on the other hand. They say they believe God will solve their problems, but tell us that we also need men to rule over us.
What they are doing, as the prophets might say, is “heaping sin upon sin” (Isaiah 30:1). For all the enslaving effects of sin (eg., idolatry for rulers) playing out today, they tell us we need more of it! They never thought once to weep over our situation or reflect upon the sin in it all, but just to (sinfully) tell everyone they need to go down to Egypt’s polling stations and cast a vote for a Pharaoh who they wrongly believe serves them and the Christian cause. They never once thought to repent to turn back their bondage and indeed have even come to reject the idea of repentance in favor of continuing in their wicked ways. All these false Christians who tell us that “we have to vote or else evil men will take over” are effectively arguing that we must not repent or else things will go bad for us! Because to abstain from the politics of the world is part of repenting and turning another way, which they contend is a bad thing. These statistics idolaters have a completely perverted reality, because God has given them over to a reprobate mind to believe that blessings come from evildoing and that righteousness results in curses.
Trusting in God
When will men truly rely on God for all things? When will they realize that if they’re tired of taxes, inflation, subsidization of foreign war allies or immigration, that the last thing they should do is keep their faith in government and the first thing they should do is repent and trust in God?
Though evil prevails, this is no reason to compel us into political involvement — which again is the very reason we have made it here. The Biblical spirit is altogether contrary to the statist spirit that tells us we must partake in evils because others are doing the same. Instead, scripture tells us to “be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men prosper in their ways, when they carry out wicked schemes” (Psalm 37:7). That evil men rule the world—all rulers, to be sure, are evil—does not compel us to join them and do the same. This would only make us evil, too. Contrary to the statist who see that evil men rule over them and conclude that they must take part in these evil systems themselves as voters or as men running for office themselves, the Biblical spirit is one of fretting not and trusting in the Lord. The hour upon today does not call for more evildoing on our part to combat the evildoing of other men, but rather for us to have faith in God and trust that evil can be turned backed solely by placing our faith in Him to heal us and restore as the days of old. It is on us to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, trusting that all other things will be added unto those who do this. As for taking care of the evil men who rule the world, this is a job that all those who trust in the Lord must hand over to Him. Far from beating the Babylonians by joining them, the Biblical message is to be unchanged by their existence and to trust that their end is in God’s hands.
“Do not fret over evildoers, and do not be envious of the wicked. For the evil man has no future; the lamp of the wicked will be extinguished” (Proverbs 24:19-20).
For now, men still have things confused and backward. They tell us, essentially, “Now is not the time to repent and walk away from Babylonian political systems and trust in God alone; we all need to get behind this man who is running for president.” They didn’t want to believe the prophets who expose these men as nothing more than scheming plunderers.
“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).
Voters, and all statists who support the political systems of the world, are the same people from the scriptures who the prophets called upon to turn from their ways, but would not listen in their stubbornness. They don’t listen when we call them to walk away from Babylonian systems, because they are in love with the world.
“These are a rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to obey the LORD’s instruction” (Isaiah 30:9).
They will pay for their idolatry. Their idols will continue to fail them. Maybe then they will wake up. Who knows?
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