[This is part 35 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, Salvation, and Revival. See part one. two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty, thirty one, thirty two, thirty three, thirty four, thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, forty]
Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris
If it seems that we have focused on the statist rebellion against God by man as the defining mark of his revolt against God’s rule and Kingdom, it is because modern Christianity has almost totally failed to recognize this evil and has thus naturally failed to call men to turn away from this sin and seek the anarchistic Kingdom of God in repentance for having walked the wrong way. Descriptions of repentance in mainstream Christian circles often explain this concept as nothing more than some ill-defined turning away from sin, which is likewise vaguely conceived and rarely ever connected to the wicked acts of raising up rulers and lusting after the kingdoms of the world and prostituting themselves out to Pharaohs, solider, and law enforcement officers for peace, protection, and safety in their adultery with Egypts and Babylons.
It is in the cause of leading men to repent, i.e., to turn away from the wicked Egyptian path they are currently on and back toward the godly path of seeking God’s Kingdom exclusively, that we must identify the statist road of the world as a most sinful one. If we are to ever expect men to turn away from the sinful ideology and practices of statism, whereby they have lusted after Pharaohs, soldiers, and police officers to be the lords and saviors of their social order, then we must show that these things have been the essence of their revolt against God and His Kingdom order, so that repentance can be defined in terms of turning away from specific wicked acts like raising up rulers and fawning over their lawmakers and law officers, which—not coincidentally—is a widely prevalent idolatry in an ungodly society like ours.
Repentance in light of sin
It is only after we have sufficiently established statism, defined here as both the belief in human rulers as well the practice of raising them up or serving them directly, as among the chief sins of mankind that we can begin to explain what true repentance looks like in relation to these sins. For if we do not know what the sins of mankind entail, or at the very least have not placed man’s lust for human rulers at the top of the list, then we cannot know what it is that men need to turn back from. “Repentance” will continue to be thought of as nothing more than a vague confession by men that they have “repented of my sins,” even though they have not turned back from the statist thoughts and ideas that precisely mark a man as evil, ungodly, and unrepentant. Indeed, it has been the success of this diluted notion of repentance that has always allowed men to persist as ungodly statists whose political ideas, from the mere belief in human government to the idea that Christians can serve these wicked systems, prove them to be unrepentant men who, notwithstanding their vain professions of His name, do not know the Lord whatever.
It is only after we have shown that statism is sin that we can really begin to show what true repentance looks like and what it doesn’t look it. The main wickedness of men has always been found in their idolatry for human rulers, their covetous practices of seeking their neighbors’ property to fund these socialist systems of defense. justice, or welfare, and their slothful outsourcing of their personal responsibilities to serve their neighbors directly over to human rulers who do it under compulsion and threats of violence. Once we show that the political harlotry of mankind has been characteristic of their sin, it is easy to then see how all those men who have not turned away from the voting booths of Babylon or the recruiting stations of Pharaoh’s military and police forces are not repentant men, but rather men who still remain in all the wickedness of the world that they have yet to remove from their being.
Yet the bar for the godly man is even higher than merely turning from their idolatry for human governments, which is depressingly too much to even ask of most professing Christian men; it is necessary to also seek the Kingdom of God as one’s means of truly turning around from their wicked ways and back toward the way that is right. This means that those who may have abandoned their support for human governments, but who still refuse to actually seek the Kingdom of God by gathering together with men for mutual service to one another, are not truly repentant either but have only come to a baseline standard of turning from their overt idolatry. However, things still look worse for those who have not even done the requisite turning away from their support for human government to even be in a position of seeking God’s Kingdom. Once we see that repentance entails not only turning away from one’s idolatry for human rulers but also positively seeking God’s Kingdom and looking to bear fruit in this cause, we can show that all those men who still believe in human civil governments—much less those who serve these systems in office and war—have not repented at all but are still the same old Babylonian whores of the Bible who were rebuked by the prophets of old as being lost in the world and in need of returning to God.
Nor do things look good for statists on the gospel front, which has been yet another diluted concept that has thereby allowed men to continue in their support for human governments while claiming to be repentant men who know the Lord. Once it is seen that gospels are political messages of conquering kings, whether the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom or the false gospels of Caesars who promise peace and prosperity under their rule, we can show that all those men who still vote for politicians to “save our country” are men who have yet to “believe the gospel” of Jesus that rivals the gospels of false gods, which men show they really believe in when they trust in presidents and congressmen to turn their backward societies around instead of God.
Churchians as unrepentant
Moreover, once we show that the pure religion of Christ entails actually serving each other again and not just slothfully sitting around in the so-called “worship services” of modern churchianity that are actually devoid of true worship, we can see that all those men who apathetically sit around in pews and substitute Sunday singalongs for actual service to one another are also men who have not sought out the ways of the Lord and by looking to build up their neighbors to love and serve them in a network of congregations that maintain a daily ministration of charity to the needy who are gathering with them. Furthermore, we can show that these churchians have been the very people who are responsible for the upbuilding of the human governments of the world, since instead of serving their neighbors directly and freely and keeping the weightier matters as commanded by Christ, they outsourced these duties over to human rulers who fund their schemes by robbing their neighbors who they are called to love and serve. Hence why they are sitting in so-called churches rather than building another, literal Kingdom that, if sought and furthered, would make the governments of men obsolete.
Though we take no pleasure in saying it, the reality is that most of the men who claim to be repentant today simply do not even know what it means to repent, for they are either actively partaking in the sins of statism that make a man an idolater who covets the property of his neighbor, or they are apathetic toward the work of furthering God’s Kingdom, which leads to the same result anyway by allowing for man’s kingdoms to flourish in the void they have left in refusing to take up the righteous work of seeking another Kingdom that would abolish the violent governments of the world. Though there are tens of millions of men in America today who claim to have repented, the vast majority of them are lining up at Rome’s polling stations each election season or sitting in the pews of their churches of dead religion, respectively furthering the kingdoms of this world by commission or omission.
Though men never like to be rebuked and do not want to hear that they have been statist idolaters or slothful pew-sitters, because they have been under a strong delusion to believe that politicians serve them or that their pastors are true shepherds of a flock of people seeking God’s Kingdom, it is necessary for someone to say that most professing Christians are, in fact, false converts whose hearts are still set on the ways of the world. If we do not assert this, then they will be able to continue living on in their worldly-statists ways and never turn back to the Lord. Yet what we seek is their repentance, for every man who claims to know the Lord to not just turn away from the Egyptian path of fawning over Pharaohs and police officers, but back to the straight and narrow path of seeking God’s Kingdom as the full proof that you have repented from the wicked path of sin.
A diluted understanding of repentance
As with most essential Christian concepts that never really bring anyone to change their worldly ways, i.e., the ideas and deeds that are characterized by man’s support for human governments, the concept of repentance, which is pertinent here for being the main idea of changing one’s direction back to God, has received the same treatment in the hands of these men. Sometimes out of ignorance in the hands of blind men, and sometimes out of malice in the hands of false prophets who sought to deliberately hide the truth and keep men from it. From the so-called pastors, priests, and theologians of the institutional churches and seminaries, to the average man who came around to Christian ideas on His own, the idea of repentance has rarely led anyone who claims to have done it away from the belief in human rulers and the wicked works of raising them up, which isn’t at all surprising given that they are men who are guilty of these sins and remain in a position of refusing to turn from them.
Since many professing Christians today refuse to repent for their idolatry for human government, believing that it does not represent the chief sins of mankind to have abandoned God to be served by men, it was necessary for them to water down the meaning of repentance in the same way they handled the ideas of sin, salvation, and the gospel, all which are necessarily political concepts that, if truly heeded, would force men to adopt an anarchist conclusion that is at odds with the world and its institutions and ideologies.
It is not hard to see why statist idolaters have an incentive to dilute the concepts of sin, repentance, salvation, and the gospel in ways that do not confront their idolatry for human rulers or their covetous practice of seeking the violently-funded services of human governments: they wish to keep claiming they belong to the Lord while remaining in the political ways of the world that are contrary to the ways of His Kingdom. By turning sin and repentance into something vague that excludes their wicked practice of raising up rulers, they can claim to be repentant servants of Christ while in reality existing as His enemies (James 4:4). By diluting the concept of repentance into mere sorrow for personal sins, rather than any kind of change in mind that results in a change direction, many are able to continue thinking and acting like Babylonians (i.e., believing in human rulers and putting them into office) while calling themselves “godly” men.
It has been largely under this great dilution of such essential concepts like sin and repentance, both which respectively have everything to do with idolatry for human governments and turning away from these ideas and practices, that the vast majority of professing Christians today are largely statists whose politics reveals them as men who actually hate God and their neighbors. If repentance is reduced to a nothing more than some vague idea of “turning from your sins” that neither details what the sins of mankind have been nor shows them that their statist rebellion has been the primary way they have turned away from God’s Kingdom order, then men who wish to remain statist idolaters can conveniently make room for their refusal to turn away from their misplaced trust and allegiance to human governments and their “commander in chiefs,” armies, lawmakers, and police forces to protect, serve, and save them. If sin is reduced to nothing but a concept of the intrinsic failing of a man that has nothing to do with his specific ideas and acts—namely, the idolatry for human rulers and the quest to further their system of governments—then men have a convenient way to remain in all these sins while still claiming to be repentant men who have turned back to the Lord. In this way, they are able to do all the things the Lord hates, such as seeking human kings as their protectors and participating in the violence of human governments, while never having their Christian claims contested. Hence why most any professing Christian today would fiercely combat the assertion that a man’s statist beliefs, which indeed show where his true faith and allegiance lies, negate his claims to being a Christian: they have never conceived of faith, belief, trust, sin, repentance, or salvation as having to do with anything more than some watered-down and ill-defined notions that don’t force anyone to turn from their trust in human rulers.
Repentance as more than feeling sorry
Though the common conception of repentance today does extend much beyond some idea of having remorse for their existence as a man, repentance was always more than some vague idea of turning from one’s ill-defined sins or feeling sorry for them, which is what’s typically presented to men when these issues come up. As one lexical overview says, “Throughout the New Testament [repentance] is never presented as mere remorse but as a wholehearted response to divine truth that issues in faith, obedience, and fruit worthy of repentance.” The divine truth that should come upon all men and lead them to true repentance is that the Kingdom of God is an anti-statist society that is not of this world and its statist systems, and that the authoritarian governments of men have come upon us due to sins like idolatry, covetousness, and the slothfulness to serve each other freely that are related to the ideology and practices of statism.
Though we may in some ways think of repentance as a sorrowful reflection on one’s own sin, errors, and misdeeds, such repentance should truly result in men specifically turning away from the kingdoms of the world that have been raised up and furthered in man’s sin and rebellion against God. For in no other way than in the erection and advancement of human governments has man’s revolt against God been more manifest. It is in the origins and upbuilding of man-made kingdoms where we find man’s foremost rejection of God’s rule.
Once we have established that the sinful and rebellious path that men have gone down has been the statist path of the world and its politics, it then becomes easy to demonstrate what repentance looks like in relation to these sins, without which the idea of repentance is left in a similarly vague and misleading shape as the diluted meaning of sin that is common today. Once we have shown that the chief expression of man’s sin has been his idolatry for human rulers, his covetousness of his neighbors’ property to have these men provide him with socialist law, defense, justice, or welfare, or his general failure to seek the Kingdom of God as a literal and alternative society to the violent kingdoms of the world, it then becomes easy to show that repentance has everything to do with turning from the evils inherent to the ideology and practices of statism, which as further evidence of their wickedness have landed the people in physical bondage under the governments of the world as divine judgment for their iniquity.
As a brief aside and part of my own testimony, it was at the end of Lamentations 5, on the porch of my Blue Ridge Mountain home, where I wept over the statist captivity that we are living under and saw it fully as the consequences of our sins and not just the successful conquering and plundering of wicked men who just somehow or another managed to beat their way to the top of society. It was on that day, a cloudy one which I recall, that looking out over the river I shed some holy tears over the Egyptian police state society we have found ourselves under, fully realizing that it has been our own fault and that we have done it to ourselves—that our enslavement under human governments has been the divine judgment against all those men who have refused to be ruled by God alone, rather than merely the conquest of some successful usurpers who climbed to the top of society against the will of the people. It was there, too, that I shed the last remains of any sort of revolutionary or militant spirit that is found in men who think they are unjustly dominated by men rather than seeing that they have done it to themselves and found themselves living in captivity due to their own sins. It was there that I began to see the success of the State as one that had come about due to the consent and agreement of the people whose sins had raised it up and furthered it, rather than as a wholly mysterious oppressor that dominated men who didn’t deserve to fall victim to it. I had new eyes, new ears, and a new heart to see that we have become the captives of men because our people have idolized them, turned to them for benefits that were to be paid through robbing their neighbors, and otherwise failed to seek out the anarchistic ways of God’s Kingdom by serving one another freely and directly. I cried to the Lord in deep repentance that day and simultaneously asked Him to restore us as the days of old and put a new heart in these people to show them that their bondage has been one of their own doing and to wake them up from their slumber and lead them to the true repentance that is found in completely turning away from the sins of partaking in man-made political systems, and to go even further, the sins of failing to build up and serve your fellow men as citizens of God’s Kingdom.
This weeping over the statist slave society that has come upon us is available to anyone who will humble their spirit and seek out the ways and wisdom of the Lord; I never asked for it and it caught me by surprise one day as I was reading the Scriptures outdoors. As much as I don’t want to sound like one who suggests that a repentant, spiritual experience as mine must be the same for others, might I dare to posit that if anyone has not yet realized their society is not only an Egyptian one that furthermore has been the result of their own sins, they are far from repentance and have never truly had the spirit of the Lord come upon them in a way that has revealed to them all the ways that they and their people have gone wrong in the statist plunder system they are living under: the people have rejected God, strayed down the political path of the world, and are now paying the price for it.
To be sure, repentance may indeed include weeping and regret. But weeping and regret alone are not repentance. A mere feeling of sorrow that has not seen the Babylonian boot on our necks as the price that men pay for abandoning God’s rule does not go far enough in identifying the sins of men, which are much more than one’s mere personal or moral failing but one that has everything to do with man’s adultery with Egyptian-statist systems of government that represent the kingdom model of the world rather than the anarchist political order of the Lord.
Turning back to the Lord alone
The watered-down, mainstream Christianity of our time that never actually repents from walking in the wicked political ways of the world that has led men into the bondage of Egypt, nor which recognizes the statist landscape as a judgment for the sinful ideas and deeds that they still need to repent from holding onto and practicing, has understandably made little progress in changing the social order around us. The best that most men can come up with is to pray to God to save them personally into heaven when they die; calls for a restoration of the earth back to God’s ways are almost wholly absent from men today, who cannot even see that their statism has been a deviation from God’s anarchy, much less that they need to repent from this worldly course. The farthest most men go in prayer today is to ask God for personal blessings for their individual lives—for the Lord to give them their dream job and house. Almost no one today is weeping over the bondage that we have come under as a result of our own sins. There are always ten-thousand professing Christians defending the existence of human civil government for every one prophet who calls men to abandon the ways of Egypt, and that’s a generous number.
The real cries that we need to make to the Lord today are not mere regrets that do not identify the sins of man as the statist ideas and practices that have led to their captivity under human governments, nor vague sorrows that fail to connect the political slave society around us to the sins which raised them up, but rather a lament from exile that fully sees the yoke of bondage as one of our own doing. The type of weeping that should be done as part of one’s repentance is something that must be in clear recognition of the Babylonian captivity that has come upon you and your people because of your own wicked ways (Psalm 137). Repentance is never just a recognition of some individual moral failing or turning from one’s personal sins as it is often summed up today, but rather a much more concrete acknowledgment of the specific sins of idolatry, covetousness, and sloth that had men placing their faith and trust in human rulers and their governments for salvation, only to find themselves living in an Egyptian police state society by the end of it all. True repentance is bound-up with men awakening to the fact that they squandered liberty under God for slavery under false gods, that they have traded out the true protection, prosperity, and order that only God can grant for a perverted and corrupted system of law and justice that is always guaranteed in statist societies and which comes upon men precisely as divine justice for these sins.
The type of repentance that we need today is one where men realize that their main sins have been their statist whoredom of trusting in false gods to save them, so that they can then turn back to the Lord in remembrance of God as their only savior from the Egyptian slavery that has come upon them due to their sins of placing their allegiance in human governments and attempting to have two masters when Jesus himself said that it isn’t possible. The type of repentance we need today is men remembering the words of the Lord calling them to an exclusive faith in His salvation, kingship, and rule.
“Yet I am the LORD your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but Me, for there is no Savior besides Me” (Hosea 13:4).
Prayer
Lord, we request of You today to wake our people up from the darkness of statism that clouds their vision and has stopped up their ears to our calls to repent from their idolatry and evils that have brought our people into captivity today under men. They are running out of time to repent if the episodes of hardheadedness and judgment in Your word are any guide. Lead our people to see their political sins so that they will know true repentance as turning away from the Egyptian systems of the world that have ensnared them into bondage and have even corrupted their minds away from You. Change the ways of these men so they will not destroy themselves, or at the very least keep them from dragging everyone down with them. Do not allow us all to be destroyed here under such wicked systems as the United States that have come upon us due to the sins of these people who have made these men into their gods and have idolized her presidents, congressmen, soldiers, and law enforcement officers as their saviors and protectors. There are some of us here who look to You as our only King, Lawgiver, and Savior, and we look to lead others to Your word too, as much as they do not listen to us. We beg of You to show others what You have shown us, so that they will not be destroyed in the Day of the Lord that You always have planned against all men who turn from Your ways to the political ways of Babylon that are detestable to You. We ask that You will divinely turn back the hearts of these wicked people and cause them to realize the evils they have done in raising up rulers and their violent systems of government, before You leave them utterly desolate and left for dead under political evils that have been of their own doing, which we understand You must use as a rebuke to the sinners who refuse to be ruled by You alone. Let the current evils be enough of a divine rebuke to wake men up before things become even worse and before Your anger can be contained no more against these idolaters. Undo the reprobate minds of these men that You have given them for their wicked beliefs in human rulers, and show them how to repent for their sins of seeking these men to be their gods and masters. Turn back the strong delusion of statist ideology that you have sent upon these men who profess Your name in vain, so that they don’t carry hundreds of millions of people into the pit with them. Give them hearts of flesh again and undo the hardened hearts that You gave them for their refusal to listen to Your words. Press Your Law on their hearts as You did ours. Show them that all the evils they are living under today have been but the price to pay for the iniquitous practices related to their love of human governments, which You have sent upon them to chastise them for their sinful ways of trusting in men to save them. Return the minds and works of these people away from the kingdoms of the world and back to Your Kingdom. We cannot do it without You. Lord, they rarely listen to us and mostly use Your word to justify their own wicked works! Bring these men back to our side and help them join us in building Your Kingdom order as a separate society from the wicked statist systems of evil men, which we know fail every time. God send us men as co-laborers in your cause, and we promise to build with them and gather for Your work. Yet if they refuse to listen to You and be changed, then we plead with You today to spare those who have repented from the judgment that must come upon these men and to allow us to seek Your ways on the outskirts of the failing kingdoms of the world that we know You must turn into an ash heap for being raised up against You. Save some current idolaters from disaster if it be Your will. We are ready to teach them and serve them if they will come out of Egypt in their hearts and minds and in the works of their hands, which are currently checking ballot boxes of false gods or putting on uniforms to kill for Pharaohs and enforce their laws. Yeah, we confess here today that we will take them in if they repent and that we will begin forming them into Kingdom congregations under Your kingship if they will leave behind their covetous practices of forming and furthering socialist systems of government and join us. But if You must destroy them, we understand, and ask here today that You will spare us from that day of disaster. Amen.
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