[This is part 31 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 two, thirty three, thirty four, thirty five]
Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris
In order for men to ever approach repentance for the sins which have led to their bondage, they will first have to even realize that they are an enslaved people rather than men who live in a “free country.” They will not only have to identify the political captivity they are living under, which has hitherto escaped their blurred visions, but to see that it has been the result of their own sins of seeking peace, prosperity, protection, and other benefits, through presidents and their governments who can only attempt to provide it by robbing and enslaving their neighbors. As it stands, the pride that comes along with the sin of statism clouds the thinking of those people who are deeply lost in patriotism and praise of rulers, soldiers, and police, who they regard as their gods, heroes, and saviors. They cannot even see that they are a people in bonds and shackles, much less that it has come upon them due to their own sin, and much less still that they need to turn away from the idolatry and covetousness that led to their enslavement.
Of course, blinding men to their own slavery with endless propaganda about a freedom and prosperity that doesn’t exist has always been a method of rulers to assure that the men whom they enslave are never capable of breaking out of their bondage. As one great line says, despite its likely false attribution to Dostoevsky, “the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.” Since repentance from the idolatry that led to our bondage would end it and lead to the abolition of the State, it has always been necessary for statists to assure that men never even realize they are slaves, so that they will remain far away from finding the solution. It is not possible for men to even faintly get the idea of repenting for the sins of statism that have led to their bondage—foremost among them their idolatry for men and their covetousness of their neighbors’ property through these socialist systems of government—if they do not even know that they are slaves. If men cannot even see they are a captive in Egypt, but imagine instead that they are “citizens of the free world,” then they will never see that there was any sin in the ideology and practices of statism that led them to the current society they are living in, since it will not appear to them that there has been any consequences for their beliefs and actions, which they believe to have resulted in nothing but blessings and liberty. By keeping men from seeing that anything has gone wrong in their society, the rulers of the world—though aided by the idolatry of individuals too—are able to keep men believing that they have not only done no wrong, but that they must have done a whole lot right in order to achieve a society that they believe to represent the pinnacle of peace, prosperity, freedom, justice, law and order. Under the many delusions of liberty and greatness today that they have been trained to think are connected to the Egyptian-statist system around them and their Pharaohs and armies, millions of Americans are wholly incapable of conceiving of true liberty or seeing the yoke around their necks. And so they are in a perfect position to remain as captives to the Egyptians. As Goethe wrote, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
The connection between sin and bondage
Given that scripture as a whole is God’s anarchist manifesto against the kingdoms of the world, perhaps one of the most curious failings of professed Christians throughout history has been to miss that statism—that is, the belief in, and the pursuit of, human rulers—has been the foremost sin of mankind. This has been largely because men have learned their ideas and ways from the world, rather than from the Lord, who calls men to seek His Kingdom alone. Though they claim to be Christians, they have received their politics from men instead of God, who counsels those hearers of His word to not walk on the evil path and to not chase after Egyptians as their protectors and saviors. They took their ideas from men who wrote constitutions, raised up presidents, and defended systems of human civil government as their source of justice and law, rather than the Lord their God who offers Himself as these things for those who will accept it (Isaiah 33:22). They believed in all the lies of the world and those of other professing Christians who told them that statism and patriotism—the essence of sin in God’s eyes—is compatible with their alleged faith in God as their protector and provider.
One reason that so few men are willing to see that statism is sin has then been that they are unable to see that it is bondage, believing instead in the lies of all the false prophets of the world who tell them that soldiers, politicians, and police have been their very source of freedom, law, protection, and justice. They do not think that their wicked statist societies are Egyptian at all, but instead believe that Roman systems like the “United States” and other devilish ones like it are a political model that represents “the free world” or, even worse, the ideal political order of God. A people who do not think they are enslaved while living under a statist plunder system will, therefore, be highly unlikely to recognize that it has been their own beliefs and practices—namely, their idolatry for rulers and their covetousness for their neighbors’ property as distributed by these rulers—that led them to where they are today: a statist slave society that they do not even find troubling and even believe that they should continue to participate in and work to maintain. A people who think that States are ordained by God for social order, rather than as a judgment against their wickedness, are not going to think there is any sin involved with raising them up or supporting them; they are going to think that, at worst, they merely deviated from the “godly” path that they were “supposed to” remain on and need only to get back to. A people who do not see that they are under God’s judgment by having human rulers over them whatever are not going to think that they need to repent from their support for the governments of men.
Yet this has always been the connection made in scripture. It has been the sins of the people themselves that wound them up in bondage to rulers, which is a punishment that is always guaranteed by God, who assures that all statist idolaters meet their just end of being dominated by the men who they sinfully turned to as their supposed protectors and providers instead of the Lord.
“This is a people plundered and looted, all trapped in caves or imprisoned in dungeons. They have become plunder with no one to rescue them, and loot with no one to say, ‘Send them back! Who among you will pay attention to this? Who will listen and obey hereafter? Who gave Jacob up for spoil, and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the LORD, against whom we have sinned? They were unwilling to walk in His ways, and they would not obey His law. So He poured out on them His furious anger and the fierceness of battle. It enveloped them in flames, but they did not understand; it consumed them, but they did not take it to heart” (Isaiah 42:22-25).
It has always taken prophets throughout history to tell men that they are an enslaved and plundered people, since men throughout history have invariably been idolaters who thought they lived in a “free county” whose soldiers “fought for our freedom” and provided them with “the best country on earth.” The idolaters throughout history have always been in need of one of God’s children coming around to speak an anarchist word to them, as they have been wrapped-up in all the conventional “wisdom” and ideology of the world that had led them to believe that human government is essential to liberty, law, justice, and order, rather than seeing that these political systems are always man-made evils that have been raised up in sin and exist as a judgment upon those wicked works that form and further them.
Learning a lesson in captivity
In hopes that they might wake up to their own sin and complicity in it all, God turns a people’s own statist idolatry into a judgment against them in the form of the evils of the State coming down upon them. He makes sure that the very thing they trusted in to save them—the State and its servants—becomes a terror to them and proves to be nothing but evil. Far from being the great source of protection and order that sinners thought the State would be in their misplaced faith in human systems of government, God sees to it that they plunder and enslave men and function as a form of divine justice against these people who have refused to be ruled by Him. God always assures that the sinful ideas of men—namely their quest for salvation through human governments—are turned around and that everything good they thought would come from doing evil only worsens their situation in the end. As men before had realized, “We hoped for peace, but no good has come, for a time of healing, but there was only terror” (Jeremiah 8:15). Those who believe in the gospels of false gods—that is, in the campaign promises of presidents who claim they will “save America” if only you will trust in them—must find out the hard way that these are false gospels and that forsaking God as your King doesn’t pay off in the end.
And yet even under judgment—such divine justice is present in the mere existence of human government—men still do not learn their lesson that walking on the path of sin (i.e., going down the political road of the world) leads to their own bondage and eventual demise. They still refuse to believe that their own sins wound them up as captives to human rulers, and still hold out faith that their evil political systems can be reformed or rebuilt.
Though the sin of statism (i.e., the idolatrous belief in human government) leads to the inevitable evils of human government serving as a judgment against such a people, such evils that will always emanate from the political systems of man serve the divine purpose of leading men to acknowledge the sins involved in raising up and supporting these systems and to thereby repent from these wicked beliefs and works and seek God’s Kingdom in repentance. The evils that inevitably flow from all systems of human civil government, all which are raised up in sin and rebellion against God, have always served the divine purpose of leading men to make the connection between their own sins and their bondage — to get them to see that they are slaves of men because of their own idolatry and covetousness. God has always intended that, under the harsh consequences of their own wicked pursuit of human rulers and lawmakers, men would see their own evil statist ideas and practices have lead to their captivity and enslavement under human rulers.
“When you tell these people all these things, they will ask you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced all this great disaster against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?’ Then you are to answer them: ‘It is because your fathers have forsaken Me, declares the LORD, and followed other gods, and served and worshiped them. They abandoned Me and did not keep My instruction. And you have done more evil than your fathers. See how each of you follows the stubbornness of his evil heart instead of obeying Me. So I will cast you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known. There you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor’” (Jeremiah 16:10-13).
If men do not want to realize that their prostitution with worldly governments is sin in the early days of founding governments and raising up these systems of state power, which should have been evident even at the outset of erecting such tax-based authoritarian systems of government, then God assures that they will eventually come to realize their political errors as these political plunder systems inevitably progress into an even more backward and corrupt form, which serves as God’s justice against all those whose sins led have them to living under such conditions as these.
Discovering the causal Law of God
At any rate, the purpose of God judging people for their sins, which often comes in the form of men falling captive to the human rulers who they trusted in to secure them, was always for them to make the causal connection between this enslavement and their own iniquity — that they would see that they have a boot on their necks, a camera on their house, and a tax bill in the mailbox because they were wicked idolaters who chanted “back the blue” and “support our troops” and raised up presidents to be their lords and saviors. The judgment against people that comes in the form of the evils of human government “naturally” proliferating throughout society serves to get men to see that this disaster has befallen them because they did not obey the Lord (Jeremiah 44:23). God brings these statist societies falling down so that people might realize their own errors—chiefly, that of seeking human kings and kingdoms rather than the Lord and His Kingdom—were behind the collapse of their supposedly-great societies, so that men might finally make the causal connection between sin and societal destruction that they refused to make when pursuing law, justice, and social order through human government. “Jerusalem has sinned greatly; therefore she has become an object of scorn” (Lamentations 1:8). God brings statist societies tumbling to the ground so that men might learn that their own wickedness—namely, the sinful act of raising up human rulers into political office or cheering their soldiers on in war—is the reason that “her people fell into enemy hands” and that “her enemies looked upon her laughing at her downfall” (Lamentations 1:7).
The denial of the sin of statism
The problem today is that men remain in denial to both the sin of statolatry and the consequences of this sin that is found in their political bondage under men. Not only do they deny that their statist societies represent a systematic slavery of the people, but they also deny that there is any sin in having raised up these systems or becoming one of their supporters once they have been put in existence by idolaters of a previous age. And it has been for this very reason—the denial of sin—that God has judged people before. “Behold, I will judge you, because you say, ‘I have not sinned’” (Jeremiah 2:35). Statists have not yet had the humility of the Biblical prophets to see where they have gone wrong, confess these sins, and vow to turn another way.
“Let us lie down in our shame; let our disgrace cover us. We have sinned against the LORD our God, both we and our fathers; from our youth even to this day we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God” (Jeremiah 3:25).
They have not yet admitted before the Lord that they have done evil by whoring themselves out to the kingdoms of the world for protection, law, justice, and order, which they either believe exist to serve them or which they believe could be moulded into “godly” institutions that uphold “God’s Law” (though they are institutions that are always founded in violation of His commands against theft and murder). The statists of the world have not yet said, “We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, the guilt of our fathers, indeed, we have sinned against You” (Jeremiah 14:20). Rather, they point to their “founding fathers,” presidents, soldiers, and police as their heroes and liberators. They refuse to believe that their statism—this worldly ideology that defends human rule, as well as the practice of raising up rulers or ruling over men yourself—has been a sinful one that has landed them under the Egyptian boot. Indeed, they still think the boot is the source of their freedom and “independence” and they celebrate it with national holidays and shoot off fireworks in the air believing they are free men.
God’s mercy
Since people don’t see statism as sin, they naturally don’t think they need to repent of this idolatry. Many Christians today seem to believe they are saved simply because they profess a loosely defined “faith,” which, in their mind, does not require them to repent of the wicked ideas and evil deeds tied to their ideological or physical support of the kingdoms of this world. Rather than seeing Jesus as the King of a literal Kingdom who calls them to abandon their support for worldly governments and seek His Kingdom alone, they treat their professed faith in Jesus as merely the “religious” part of life that secures their place in Heaven, leaving them feeling free to adopt (statist) political ideas that contradict and rival the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Many, if not most, professing Christians today have thus avoided true repentance, which always means leaving behind the ideology of the world to seek the anarchistic Kingdom of God, by failing to see Jesus as the King of another Kingdom who requires all those who follow Him to abandon their Roman ways and turn from the destructive path of statism they are currently on.
Though the Lord is merciful, compassionate, and forgiving, His grace is not a license to remain in sin. People must still repent of the wicked statist practices they have participated in if they hope to avoid the judgment that comes to all who walk in the political ways of the world. Simply claiming to “believe in God” while continuing to support and advance the kingdoms of the world is to remain in sin and to live as one who is still facing God’s judgment.
“The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness, maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:6-7).
If men do not wish to repent of their evil walk down the statist road of the world, then they will reap the curses of disobedience that come upon all those who continue in their sin.
“If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins. I will send wild animals against you to rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and reduce your numbers, until your roads lie desolate. And if in spite of these things you do not accept My discipline, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me, then I will act with hostility toward you, and I will strike you sevenfold for your sins. And I will bring a sword against you to execute the vengeance of the covenant. Though you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied” (Leviticus 26:21-26).
To avoid the curses for disobedience that come upon all those who go after the statist kingdoms of the world, men must repent of this sinful path and seek the Kingdom of God alone. They must become new men in the Lord who are converted to His ways (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:10). They must become new men in Christ and turn away from the evil ideology and practices of the old sinner in them, who once justified the existence of human government, voted for human rulers, or enlisted in their military or police academies when they were still lost in the world. Those who defend the existence of human government, or even worse those who serve these systems for a paycheck, only prove themselves to be unregenerate men who have yet to be changed by the Lord. For the Lord turns men into righteous anarchists who are focused on seeking His Kingdom alone when He transforms their hearts, minds, and soul. He never allows men to remain statist idolaters; that is the work of the devil.
Trusting in the Lord again
Another reason many people today refuse to repent of their sinful statist ways is that, instead of trusting the Lord’s promise that “all these things will be added” to those who seek His Kingdom (Matthew 6:33), they make a sort of cost-benefit calculation in human terms and conclude that repentance is not really worth it — that it doesn’t pay to stop being a Roman and may even leave them open to being ruled by even more evil men than at present. In their own worldly wisdom and ways, they decide they may as well remain sinfully involved in the politics of Egypt under the excuse that “evil men will take over the government unless we keep doing evil ourselves.” They do not truly believe that God will return to those who return to Him, and instead think they must keep living like Romans for now, so that other Romans don’t take over these Roman political systems that can never represent God’s Kingdom anyway. They fear “democrats,” “communists,” and other pagans, rather than the Lord their God who would keep these men away if only they would trust in Him alone rather than continue in the sins of statism.
For the lack of faith in God to provide their freedom for them and their stubborn refusal to repent of their statist ways and seek His Kingdom alone, the people of the world today remain the slaves of human governments, which is where they have placed their faith instead. For being more worried about all the bad things that would supposedly happen if they turned away from the sinful path of the world, they reap all the evils that are sure to come to all those who sow the evil seeds of statism. All men who remain in the sin of worldly political participation are men who refuse to do as God says and trust that He will deliver them. They are men who instead prove themselves to be ungodly and unfaithful men who believe they must compromise with the government of the devil to assure their “freedom” and “security.”
The problem with our people today is that there is an utter lack of faith in the Lord and His salvation, despite tens of millions of men who say they trust the Lord as their savior, but whose trust is actually in the Roman systems of the world to secure them. The Lord our God would literally and physically save us from the bondage of Egypt again and provide us with an exodus from the grips of modern Pharaohs and their law officers if only we would repent from our sins, abandon the wicked practices of worldly politics, and truly seek His Kingdom with our neighbors. Our Lord stands ready to save men today from the consequences of their own evildoings (i.e., the political bondage that comes upon those who trust in Egypt for protection and Rome for bread), but they choose to continue on the wicked statist path of the world instead, which only causes a separation between themselves and God and keep them under the yoke of men.
“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” (Isaiah 59:1-8).
Though men today think they should be saved merely for claiming to believe in the Lord as their savior in some loose conception of the term, all while they continue to think and act like Romans, the reality is that God is not going to save a people—that is, physically deliver them from a political captivity that currently serves as His judgment against the statist sinners of the world—who continue on in the sins of statism and refuse to repent. As God reluctantly concedes, these idolaters can continue on their path of domination and destruction at the hands of the false gods who they have trusted in to save them. God is looking for repentant men who turn away from their idolatry and support for the governments of the devil. He is in search of men whose feet stop running to evil and bloodshed and who see that their statist walk has been a rebellious one and who then repent of this unrighteous course.
Since men have only ever really conceived of sin as some vague and inherent failing to mankind and have only seen salvation as their ticket to heaven upon their vain professions of faith, they have not thought that they needed to actually turn away from specific practices like raising up rulers, nor that they must do this to avoid the consequences that come to a people who continue on this wicked path. Yet it has always been very specific sins, such as the violence that is inherent to the ideology of statism and the wicked works of raising up these systems and serving them, that have brought a people under judgment and which God’s word has called them to repent from.
“For our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions are indeed with us, and we know our iniquities: rebelling and denying the LORD, turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lies from the heart. So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter. Truth is missing, and whoever turns from evil becomes prey” (Isaiah 59:12-15).
The narrow road that few men find
The primary way that men turn away from God is by turning toward the kingdoms of the world. The essence of true repentance is thus turning away from the wicked path of statism, where men once raised up rulers when they were still living in sin and darkness.
However, this has been hard to do in a world where ninety-five percent of men who call themselves Christians are actually Romans. The majority of so-called Christians in our world are, in fact, statist idolaters and therefore false converts. This makes it difficult for anyone who finds themselves walking among these men to go against the accepted wisdom of these idolaters, who widely argue that human governments can be made to serve God and are supposedly His ordained system for providing law and justice in society, when in fact they are the work of sinners who outsourced their personal responsibility to their neighbors to authoritarian plunderers who rob them for all they’re worth.
Aside from the undying idolatry in men that compels them to become Babylonian whores, another reason that men have yet to repent of their statism and come to see their statist society as an Egyptian system instead of a “Godly” or “free” one is that it is has been simply unpopular to do so, and most men are more interested in making friends and being fun at parties than being right with God and preaching the truth. As the prophet Isaiah says, “whoever turns from evil becomes prey.” To repent from statism in a world of idolaters who call themselves “Christians” is to become isolated from the community of professed believers, unwelcome in the so-called churches of these men, or mocked at the dinner tables of families who claim to know the Lord but who make Caesars and Pharaohs their kings instead. In other words, to truly repent is to invite ridicule and persecution upon oneself by the lost sinners of the world, who have been deceived by a spirit of evil into thinking that God approves of their wicked belief in human civil government, such that they could attack those people who have the true faith: Jesus as our sole and exclusive King, to the abolition of human kings and their governments.
Leave a Reply