[This is part 41 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 five, thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, forty, forty two, forty three]
Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris
Once we see that the idea of repentance points to a change of mind and not just some mere apology to God for some vaguely conceived sins that had nothing to do with the wicked works that led us into political bondage, we not only see that men must turn away from the worldly ideology of statism which has led them down the sinful political path of the world, but also that such repentance from the evil path of statism should be followed by turning toward the righteous path. Repenting from the sin of pursuing systems of human civil government and embracing the worldly political ideology that supports these systems must be met not with mere complacency, which has also worked to allow for the expansion of statism under the slothfulness of the people, but rather by becoming active in seeking the Kingdom of God as the real fruit of one’s repentance. For true repentance is not merely to get off the road to Egypt that has led men into bondage, which has sadly been too much to ask of most men, but to begin seeking the anarchistic Kingdom of God as the positive and active mark of turning around from your old wicked ways.
To be sure, we must in the very least turn away from evil and have nothing to do with the statists of the world who seek to further wicked systems of human government. We are called to “come out from among them and be separate” (2 Corinthians 6:17). Yet we often find in scripture that simply not doing evil isn’t good enough proof of one’s repentance, and that there is both a call to turn away from evil and to pursue the good. An excellent example of repentance as being both a turn from evil and a turn toward the good is found in Paul’s praise of the Thessalonians, who he says “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). We are not simply to turn from our idolatry and our adultery with the kingdoms of the world; we must respond to this by turning back to God as our only ruler and beginning to live like His Kingdom people who serve each other privately and freely without practicing the authoritarian ways of worldly kingdoms.
Repentance as a change of mind
In order to further the case that repentance entails not only turning our hearts and minds away from the kingdoms of the world, but also decidedly turning toward the Kingdom of God with these new hearts, let us provide some Biblical context for this idea of repentance. The Greek word for repentance in the New Testament is μετάνοια (Strong’s G3341), which gets transliterated as metánoia. It is defined literally as “a change of mind.” The origin word “repent” in the Greek is μετανοέω (Strong’s G3340), which gets transliterated as metanoeó. It is similarly defined as “to think differently or afterwards, i.e. reconsider (morally, feel compunction).” Another definition sums it up even more concisely as “to think differently afterward.”
Bondage and repentance
Though most Christians today conceive of repentance as merely some emotional weeping before God or profuse apologies for some vague sins that are entirely unrelated to their statist political ideology and their adultery to Egypts and Babylons that has led to their captivity under these systems of man, the real idea of repentance should bring to mind something more like men seeing that they are in political bondage due to their sinful ways of thinking and acting, and to subsequently realize their dire need to turn from these ways if there is to be any hope in avoiding the greater calamity that awaits all those who continue down this road. True repentance can never be divorced from the idolatrous and covetous practices which begged for rulers and which subsequently led men to become the slaves of these statist systems of men that they foolishly believed would protect, serve, and save them. A truly repentant people will make the connection between their iniquity and their captivity and “think differently afterward,” i.e., to see that it was for all their own political whoredom and lust for rulers that they found themselves under the boot of these governments and thereby wake up to the fact that salvation can only be found in returning their faith to the Lord.
Those who cannot even seen that they live in an Egyptian society rather than a “free country,” nor that this political bondage has come upon them because of their own whoredom for these system of men, have not yet arrived at a point of true repentance. For repentance is to see all the evils that have come upon you, recognize your own complicity in them, and turn back to God under the explicit mindset that this is the only hope to be redeemed from the statist bondage you are living under. Those who cannot even see that the existence of a State is proof that they are under judgment are far from repentance. True repentance is one that necessarily occurs in the context of a people who have gone into bondage for their own iniquities, who have now seen what they have done to themselves, and who now intend to change their ways. Those who cannot even see that the existence of a State is proof that they are a cursed people, or even worse those who think that human governments have been a blessing from God, are far from the repentant mindset that reflects on their old ways of thinking and renews their minds away from those ideas.
Though the typical, diluted understanding of repentance that never leads anyone to turn from their prostitution with the kingdoms of the world—whether their ideological belief in human government, raising up rulers in their phony elections, or running for office themselves—would have men believe that they do not need to specifically renounce their worldly-statist ways, the real idea of repentance carries the idea of men reflecting upon their errors and thereby remedying them and changing their ways. True repentance entails men recognizing that the political systems they live under exist as divine judgment against the very sins of supporting those systems, and realizing the immediate need to get off the wicked statist road that has marked their walk on the worldly path. True repentance is seeing that the statist path has been the ways that they walked in when they were their old selves who were still living in darkness and making excuses for the alleged necessity of political evils to “order” society. The Apostle Paul even uses this type of language when speaking of God’s work as having been one that precisely transferred people to another Kingdom. “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). To be truly repentant is to repent unto another literal Kingdom and its jurisdiction—to no longer identify as an “American” but instead as a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
The watered-down idea of repentance
Though millions of men claim to be repentant today and have never even seen that repenting of statism is a bare minimum requirement to be a person who has truly changed their mind away from the things of the world, nevertheless we must assert that anyone who has not turned away from the political path is not a repentant person.
This assertion immediately raises the very interesting scene that true Christians have always found themselves in. How is it that the masses of professing Christians are actually false converts who have never turned back to the Lord but have remaining in their statist ways? How is it that these people have long been able to get away with this? How is it that there are hundreds of millions of people who call themselves Christians yet who are indistinguishable from the people of the world whose worldliness has always been characterized by their statist ideology? How it is that most of the people who claim the Lord’s name are actually just Romans?
For one, there is always the problem of individual sinners’ ability to keep themselves from accepting any radical conclusions that would force them to change their ways. The statist masses have not strictly been in need of institutionalist propagandists in the churches, seminaries, Bible colleges, or universities to blind them to the reality that their statism has been most sinful; they were always quite capable and ready to do this on their own and even needed to in order to justify their worldly politics.
Yet in order to supplement the sins and deceptions of the people, as well as to assure that fewer men would discover the truth on their own, there has always been an army of false prophets and false pastors of the institutional churches of the world who have deliberately diluted every major Christian concept—from sin, repentance, salvation, and the gospel—in a way that not only does not require anyone to turn from their statist ideology and political participation, but even actively encourages their participation in evil. When relying on the self-deceptions of the people wasn’t good enough or stood the risk of men arriving at the truth independently, there has always been a gang of false shepherds, false teachers, and clergymen of these churches to deceive the sheep, scatter the flock, and help lead them back into Egypt. In addition to the self-deception and lies that men are quite capable of coming up with on their own, they have also—for good measure—been under the false doctrines of theologians, authors, seminary professors, and other liars in mainstream Christian circles who have led them astray. As the prophets often put it, “the lying pen of the scribes has produced a deception” (Jeremiah 8:8). If men’s own blindedness wasn’t good enough and couldn’t be trusted to assure that they remain Egyptians rather men who repent and turn back to the anarchist ways of the Lord’s Kingdom, there have always been blind guides to seal the deal and reassure them in their blindness (Matthew 15:14).
The widespread dilution of such important Christians concepts as sin and repentance, coming both from the people themselves and the false teachers who form the ideas of official Christianity, helps to explain why so few professing Christians today not only fail to turn away from the evils of statism, but moreover fail to seek the Kingdom of God after repenting from the wicked works of worldly politics: they have never been able to even identify what their sinful course has been, much less what they must do to turn away from it. The concept of repentance, which implies a radical change of heart, mind, and direction, has received the same treatment as most other Christian concepts in the hands of men who had an incentive to dilute these ideas in a way that would not indict them as guilty of certain sins like idolatry for human rulers. Just as men have diluted the ideas of sin to not include their wicked statist philosophy and practices, so they have diluted repentance in a way that does not require them to turn from these ways. If “sin” is just some unspecific acts or ideas of men, then repentance is likewise just some vague concept that doesn’t force anyone to change their old ways and practices. It can be thought of as merely repenting from some equally-vague sins, which thereby allows men to remain in all the same statist ways they held before even arriving at the idea that they need to change their minds and turn another way. If repentance does not include turning away from the statist ideology and political deeds of the world as the most meaningful way of truly turning from the old path of statist darkness that you once walked on, then men do not feel as if they must turn away from the ideas they previously held before ever even approaching scripture and finding out that God wants them to change their minds and something or another. They can continue believing in human governments, keep raising up rulers each election season to rule over their neighbors, and keep thinking that they can use these systems of men to expropriate their neighbors to provide them with benefits; the biblical idea of repentance can be written-off as regarding something other than turning away from one’s political ideology that they picked up when they once walked in the darkness of the world. Statism is the very politics of the world that men were to avoid in the first place or repent from holding onto if they had already picked it up. Statists are the very people who have been “taken captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8). Their ideas were fed to them by the authoritarian thinkers of the world who held to various socialist and collectivist notions about forcibly organizing society around the State, not by Christ who commanded His followers to have no benefactors who exercise authority over others.
Though some vague claim of repentance that never leads men to turn from their statism has long been sufficient among mainstream Christians to be counted among the Lord’s repentant people who have supposedly turned back to His ways, the real idea of repentance—this idea of changing your mind and thinking differently—should bring to mind the idea of looking back on your old statist ways and subsequently turning from them. True repentance should be seen as turning from these ideologies and behaviors that you picked up from the world, its people, and its crony philosophers when you were still a blind Babylonian who was prostituting yourself out to human rulers as the characteristic mark of a man who does not know the Lord as his God. True repentance looks like reflecting on one’s beliefs in human government, their support for rulers, or even their direct service to these systems, and seeing just how wrong, evil, and worldly it has been to be one of these men.
Defining sin to understand repentance
It is no surprise that men have not seen repentance as necessarily entailing a need to turn from the statist ideology and wicked works of the world which raise up rulers and approve of their existence: they have not seen these acts as the main sins of men and the primary way that they have revolted against God’s rule and rebelled against His anarchistic ordering. We must necessarily define the idea of sin—namely the acts of breaking God’s laws and falling into idolatry for false gods and their systems of government—before we can understand repentance. In order to see what true repentance looks like, we must first establish what the wrong ways of men have been and looked like. What exactly has been definitive of man’s abandonment of the ways of God? What ways and ideas have been characteristic and definitive of man’s rebellion against God? What are the wicked practices that we may describe as sinful?
The problem has always been that mainstream Christian circles—in many cases by design—have never really properly defined sin and rebellion in a way that must necessarily include man’s whoredom with Babylons and Egypts for protection and bread, despite scripture describing this as the real adultery and prostitution of mankind (Ezekiel 23). Once we establish that the primary sins, wickedness, rebellion, transgression, and iniquity of man has always been their adultery with human governments and their armies and police forces who they have turned to for protection, justice, order, or “general welfare,” we can then show exactly what it is that men need to turn from if they are to be considered repentant, and we can furthermore reveal such common slogans as “back the blue” and “support our troops” to be the very things that we can expect to find among an unrepentant people who still need to turn from their old and evil ways. Without showing that statism is sin and even the primary way that men have always revolted against God, men will never arrive at true repentance and will only ever continue in the statist ways of the world that have marked them as rebels against God’s anarchistic Kingdom. In order for men to know what they must turn away from and turn toward, they must first be able to see in what ways they have gone wrong. Perhaps one of the greatest problems in mainstream Christianity has always been that there has nary been a man with a loud enough voice showing others that their belief and support for human governments is sinful and that they need to repent and return to the ways of God’s Kingdom. Just the opposite has always been the case. The most popular men in mainstream Christianity have always been statists who led men down the sinful path of the world that caused the Babylonian boot to come down on their heads. The false Christianity that has always been its mainstream form has always consisted of men who did just the opposite than lead their people out of Egypt by showing them that their Egyptian ways were sinful and that they needed to repent and return to God’s ways.
“The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading” (Lamentations 2:14).
Unlike the statist idolaters of the world who have always been able to dominate what appears to be Christianity and who will probably always be able to dominate this given that only a few men will ever find the narrow gate of God’s Kingdom, true prophets of God are to rebuke people in their sins. “Cry aloud, do not hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Declare to My people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1). They are to tell people that their own iniquities have led to their captivity (Ezekiel 39:23). Alas, we have never had a platform big enough to be heard from and probably never will. The false representatives of a false Christianity have always been in charge, and they will never teach these things because their purpose is not to. Yet we seek to show men that statism is sin and that repentance is to turn from these ways because it is our godly mission and even commission to do so. We seek to show men what their evils have been and call upon them to repent because it is our godly obligation. We seek to define the sins of men so that they can even know how to turn from them if they so desired, unlike the false prophets of the world whose jobs are either to not rebuke sin or positively encourage it.
Since man’s rejection of God has been characterized by their quest to be ruled by men instead of God, repentance must necessarily be defined in this context and shown to be a turning away from the sins of statism to trust in the Lord as our only King again—as some people in an a past age had once known how to do before losing their faith in God to be their sole provider and falling into the evil idea that they needed human rulers and their systems of government to be their protectors and saviors. True repentance is to turn your faith back to God as your sole protector and away from the faith that statists place in Pharaohs and their soldiers, lawmakers, or law enforcers as their protectors, upon realizing that this is precisely the way that men forsake God and go astray down the path of the world. The sins of man were not just their personal moral failings, as much as we may consider this as part of the overall picture, too. The sins of man have, more specifically, been defined by turning away from God in certain ways. Thus repentance, more specifically, deals with coming back to God’s ways—to “return to the One against whom you have so blatantly rebelled, O children of Israel” (Isaiah 31:6).
Once we see that the literal meaning of repentance describes a “change of mind” and that the statist ideas and practices of men have been the foremost ways that reveal them to be people who are minded in the ways of the world, we can then show that this must clearly mean a change of ideas and ideologies from the political thinking that prevails in the world, which has always been the statist philosophy that supports the socialist institution of human civil government.
Transforming from your old statist self
Another Greek word closely related to the root words that get translated into “repentant” or “repentance” is μεταμορφόω (Strong’s #G3339). This word is transliterated into metamorphoó, which the reader might recognize as the root of the English words metamorphosis or metamorphize. It is a verb that gets translated as “to transform” or “to change form.” The Apostle Paul uses it in a popular passage that has everything to do with an inward transformation of a man renewing his thoughts and actions away from the ways of the world, which again have been characterized by man’s wicked pursuit of systems of human government to serve them and to save them and by holding to the political ideology that supports this world order. Though other renderings of this passage are better known, the New Living Translation (NLT) gives a rather good and clear translation of this popular passage from the book of Romans that is relevant to our discussion on repentance:
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2, NLT).
To not be conformed to the world means to not go after the Egyptian statist ways of the unrepentant masses who whore themselves out to Babylonian rulers for benefits, protection, law and order, and salvation in general. To be transformed away from the thinking of the world is to have turned away from the statist ideology and practices that are definitive of what we mean when we speak of “the world.” Though the people of the world follow after the thinking and instruction of its philosophers, whose many political variations are all centered around the polis or “the State,” a godly transformation is one where men change their minds away from the thinking and practices of worldly-statist ideologues who tell us that human governments in some form or another are necessary for peace, prosperity, and security. A truly repentant man, who went through the process of becoming a “new person,” could thus never be a constitutionalist, democrat, socialist, social democrat, democratic socialist, communist, fascist, or any other variety of statist among the numerous styles and forms that have been invented by men who were walking, thinking, and speaking under the unrepentant and unreformed mindset of the world. The Biblical instruction to change our minds—that is to repent—is one that cannot be separated from a specific call to not be like the statists of the world, whose claims that “the military fights for our freedom” or “the police are here to protect and serve the public” are the main things that expose them as ungodly and unrepentant men. Instead, the call to repentance is inseparable from divine instruction to turn from these statist ways of thinking and let the Holy Spirit transform you into a new man with God’s Law written on your heart.
Statists as unrepentant
Once we see that man’s sins are characterized by their political whoredom with the kingdoms of the world and that true repentance is to turn back from this rebellion, it is easy to show that statists are the greatest example of the persons whom we can call unrepentant sinners who are still minded in the ways of the world. We cannot say that statist idolaters (i.e., men who think human governments should even exist) are men who have changed their minds about their old ways of thinking and acting. They are precisely people who still cling to the politics of the world and are representative of what we call “worldly” people. A “worldly” person is not just someone who listens to “secular music” or still likes sports or partying (though I believe that the spirit should be calling us away from these things, too). A “worldly person” is better defined as someone who still holds to the political ideology that supports the institutions of the earth and was invented by them to justify their own rule, which is the statist idea that men are in need of human civil government to provide for their “law and order” and secure society and civilization for them.
It is in the political ideology of men that find out whether or not their alleged faith and fidelity to the Lord is true. As much as the statists of the professing Christian world will fight against this fact on the grounds that Christianity is nothing more than some religio-spiritual aspect of a man’s life that is based only on their professions of faith (which, for them, conveniently never has to mean turning their faith away from Egypt), the statist politics of man are truly where they are exposed as false converts. Because Christianity is not just some “religion” or set of theological doctrines that get a men to heaven when they die; it is another way of living life on earth and serving and loving our fellow men without ruling over them (Mark 10:42-45). Though men have illegitimately separated the ideas of politics and religion today, the truth is that Christianity is a politics because it does speak of the means by which we are to serve others and organize our society, which is to be done by the pure religion of providing for our people freely and voluntarily, as contrasted to the public religion of socialism that operates on compulsory taxation to maintain their system of charity rather than freewill offerings of God’s Kingdom model. When men do not turn away from the statist model of social organization, which is based upon robbery and violence, they show themselves to foremost among the men who we must insist are wicked, ungodly, and unrepentant men. There’s simply no such thing as a statist who knows the Lord. To know and fear the Lord is to turn from evil (Job 28:28). If you haven’t turned from the wicked statist path of the world and are still voting for human rulers or serving their violent systems of government, then you don’t know God.
As much as men who are guilty of the sins of statism and refuse to repent do not like to hear that the gate of God’s Kingdom is too narrow for statists to enter it, the truth is that those who hold to one of the many variations of the statist ideology of the world are people who have not changed their ideas and repented and who are overall far from the Kingdom of God. All statists are people who remain the same worldly person they were before they ever picked up a Bible, but who have now added the sin of taking the Lord’s name in vain on top of their wicked support for the governments of men. Statists are unchanged men who hold to the same worldly ideology they had before they claimed to have repented and underwent a transformation to the Lord Jesus as their King and Savior, which is to say, they haven’t repented at all.
As much as modern Christians do not like it when men of conviction confidently assert truths that overthrow their worldly political views and which force them into a position of true repentance, mostly because they realize they are guilty of these charges, the fact remains that the statist ideology in men is the foremost proof that they have unrepentant minds and unregenerate hearts. In no other ideas or deeds is the sin and idolatry of men more evident than in the belief in human governments and their active participation in the politics of these systems of man. If men have not realized that they need to turn away from the kingdoms of the world, then they have not even seen the message of Jesus whatsoever. For the announcement of a Kingdom that was “at hand” was precisely made to produce the effect of repentance upon hearing it. To accept the Gospel of the Kingdom of God was intended to lead one’s allegiance away from the kingdoms of the world, such that anyone still maintaining their faith in human governments is decidedly someone who has not believed the gospel that Jesus preached. If men have not transferred their allegiance away from their current faith and fidelity in human governments, as seen in their pledges of allegiance, patriotism, or praise of the human rulers of the earth, then they have not truly repented. If men have not turned their hearts and minds back to seeking the Kingdom of God exclusively upon the proclamations made by Jesus that God’s Kingdom was “at hand,” then they have not truly “believed the gospel” and are not even Christians.
Once we see that the Greek word metanoeó, which is translated as “repent” in Mark 1:15, means to “think differently” and “reconsider,” it is safe for us to submit that the statists of the world who claim to be Christians are frankly false converts who still think and act like Romans, raising up Caesars to rule over them, serving them in their armies, accepting the deceitful bread they feed men on to ensnare them into bondage, and believing their gospels of bringing peace and order to the land and “make America great again.” All statists are people who hold to the ideology of the world and who add to their sins a hypocritical claim that is not even made by ungodly socialists who do not even attempt to reconcile their statist political ways with God and quite consistently realize that “ungodly” and “statist” go hand in hand: that they are Christians who know the Lord. All statists, to be sure, are ungodly and unrepentant people. Yet those who claim the Lord’s name are in the even worse position of downright hypocrisy and blasphemy. In addition to their sinful belief in a State, they add the wicked claim of being servants of the Lord, which really makes them worse than the “godless communists” who they spend most of their time criticizing.
Notwithstanding the vague calls of repentance from some vague sin that we find among mainstream Christians today, who evilly attempt to reconcile their statism with their professed devotion to the Lord, the main thing that men must repent from is their service and support for the statist kingdoms of the world that they once believed in while they were still lost and unrepentant sinners who had not yet renewed their minds and transformed into true Christians. The statolatry of mankind—hence its prevalence in an ungodly society as ours—has always been the primary manifestation of sin in the world that has characterized a people as unrepentant. It has always been all the things which are not coincidentally found in American society that reveal a people to be overt and unrepentant sinners who still need to turn from their wicked ways. From the flags on their porches, thin blue line stickers on their vehicles, or “support our troops” slogans that are widely found among them, these things are the very displays of a people with hardened hearts and wicked thoughts who have not yet turned back to the Lord their God and came out of Egypt in their minds. For repentance deals not just with some vague and vain professions of turning back to the Lord that do not lead one to abandon their whoredom with Egypt and adultery with Babylon, but with a change of one’s loyalties and allegiances they have had to the systems of human government of the world that are based in sin, rebellion against God, idolatry, theft and murder, and turning back to the Lord as one’s sole King and Savior and carrying out the work of furthering His Kingdom. Repentance is to turn away from the statist ways of the world and back to the Way of the Lord.
The hardened hearts of statists
Notwithstanding their claims of being repentant men who have made the Lord their only King, statists are the very people who stand as the examples of men who have not repented—that is, men who have not changed their ways and renewed their minds. Statists are people who have not reconsidered their ways at all and have done nothing but fight against our rebuke of their idolatry at every step of the way and resist any correction we have tried to give them. They are people who have not turned from anything important at all and have refused to hear and heed both the words of God and the words of His prophets who have tried to teach them His ways. They are people who even grow angry with us when we tell them that they are still walking in the ways of the world which are defined by walking on its political path.
Once we see that statism is not just sin in some general sense but rather contains the ideas and actions that have been representative of man’s primary rebellion against God, it is not hard to see why it is that so many people resist correction at this point and have never even seen it themselves. The hearts of statists are calloused and have grown cold precisely because these ideas and practices are really foremost among man’s sins. If the idea of “sin” was as simple as stealing money from your grandparents or taking a candy bar from the store, we might expect that men would have turned from these things long ago; these are light matters that are easy enough for most men to agree upon. The reason that men remain diehard idolaters of human governments is precisely that statist idolatry represents the main sins of mankind which they have always struggled to leave behind. The idolatry of statists has always been representative of man’s love for the world, which is why he has not yet gotten over it and why it is that he still needs to turn from it.
Repentance in the prophets
When we look at what repentance looked like in the books of the prophets, who all wrote in the context of the sins of idolatry and came out to criticize the alliances and lust that men had for human rulers and for foreign armies that led their people into bondage, we see a much different idea of repentance than that which prevails today, which for the most part consists only of the idea of men turning from some vaguely-conceived “sins” that never include their faith and trust in human rulers to save them and even purposefully exclude this foremost iniquity from being among the most important and urgent things that they need to turn from. The calls for repentance in Hosea, for example, were specifically admonitions to turn back to the Lord and away from the statist faith that men had in worldly governments and their armies to protect and serve them, which are the sins that wind men up in bondage and bring them to a social condition of being in need of great repentance. Unlike the false converts today, who claim to be repentant while still voting for presidents, trusting in legislators to heal their lands, supporting their troops, or praising their law enforcers, Israel was being called by the prophets to turn back from this very wicked faith they held in men.
“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled by your iniquity. Bring your confessions and return to the LORD. Say to Him: ‘Take away all our iniquity and receive us graciously, that we may present the fruit of our lips. Assyria will not save us, nor will we ride on horses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods!’ to the work of our own hands. For in You the fatherless find compassion” (Hosea 14:1-3).
How many professing Christians today are making this kind of repentance? Most of them are indeed attempting to have it both ways. They wish to claim that they trust in the Lord while they still believe that the Assyrians will save them and that they may ride on horses to feed their families and operate Pharaoh’s chariots to “fight for my country.” Many of the professing Christians of the world today are people who claim to trust in God but who at the same time raise up presidents and congressmen to save them. They are the people who the prophets said have “scattered their favors to foreign gods” (Jeremiah 3:13). They are people who say “Lord, Lord” with their lips but who pledge allegiance to the kingdoms of man and chase after their rulers to be their providers and protectors.
As much as weeping over the political bondage that has come upon us for our own iniquities may be a part of a truly repentant spirit, weeping alone without any recognition of the sins of statism that have led a people into captivity is no proof of true repentance. It is always possible for men to lament their current political circumstances and even vaguely identify the widespread political evils around them without seeing the connection between sin and bondage, which indeed is much of what we see on the present-day American scene, where some people are beginning to see this system of government is evil but nevertheless cannot see that they did it to themselves, which leaves them reformist-minded rather than repentant of these ways altogether. To truly repent is not merely to feel sorrowful for some vaguely-defined sins. It is to acknowledge the specific sins of forsaking the Lord our God to instead be ruled by the false gods of human governments, and to subsequently turn back from these sins. To truly repent is to stop trusting in human rulers as your gods and saviors and realize that they exist as a judgment against you for these very sins, which should then lead you to realize that you’re in great need of turning back to the Lord our God who saves His people from Egyptians when they repent of their Egyptian ways, place their faith in the Lord alone again, and cry out to Him to be with them and restore them as the days of old.
Though the statists of the world believe they can continue to do evil and still have the Kingdom of God magically come up them, despite not having turned their hearts away from the world and back to the Lord, scripture has it that true repentance will be necessary for men to arrive at this narrow path of salvation under God’s sole and exclusive rule. Men will have to undergo a change of heart and renewal of their minds away from the statist ideology and practices of the world if they are ever to begin approaching a society of liberty under God. As the Lord himself says, “Truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3).
It was always the great lament of God, as spoken through His prophets, that the people of the world have always refused to repent of the sins which led to their bondage even under the harsh judgment of the political evils that He has used to try and rebuke men for their wicked ways and show them exactly what comes upon an idolatrous and covetous people like them who trust in human rulers to be their saviors. Even God has watched in astonishment at mankind’s willingness to continue in their statist political rebellion against Him even while coming under the judgment of the Babylonian boot and their persistent refusal to repent of these ways. The bird’s-eye view of God has been one of pure amazement at man’s insatiable appetite for beatings and their enduring ability to refuse repentance even when the manifest evils around them should have led them to see it.
“Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit; they refuse to return. I have listened and heard; they do not speak what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, asking, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone has pursued his own course like a horse charging into battle” (Jeremiah 8:5-6).
Despite all the judgment that God has brought against men, which has always come primarily in the form of simply allowing them to reap the statist evils they have sown, the idolaters of our world have always refused to turn back from their wicked ways.
“O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent” (Jeremiah 5:3).
The whole story of the prophets is essentially one of God calling upon people to repent of their idolatrous ways, warning them of the results that would follow from their refusal to heed this instruction, and yet finding that men almost always remain in their hardheaded ways anyway.
“‘Some of you I overthrew as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze, yet you did not return to Me,’ declares the LORD” (Amos 4:11).
If all the statists throughout history have refused to be rebuked even by God himself who brought judgment down on these people in the harsh form of having to live under an Egyptian police state society, then in some sense we are often too hopeful to think that they will ever listen to us and hear our words. Statists are the people of the world who God speaks of when He says that a people have “refused my call… neglected all my counsel, and wanted none of my correction” (Proverbs 1:24-25). We call them to repent because it is our Christian duty. But we leave the results to God for the transformation of their spirit away from the statist ways of the world. For statism is, in the main, a spirit and sin problem. Though we must call statists to repentance, it will take God working on their hearts to lead them to hear our words. Their ears are currently so stopped-up to any word of rebuke because they are people who have turned away from God’s ways and been given over to a reprobate mind to be unable to see, hear, or think. Hence why they never listen to us and would not be able to discover these truths even if you bashed them over the head with a Bible or cut off their eyelids and made them read the words of the Lord involuntarily. They can’t understand the ways of the Lord because they do not have the spirit of God in them. What we are up against today is not a biblical literacy problem per se, but an inability even hear and understand the words of the Lord that stem from having an unrepentant mind and unregenerate heart that is soft enough to even absorb these lessons.
Leading men to repentance today
Since statism is a sin problem which—for this reason—has left most of the people of our world, with professing Christians being chief among them, living in the dark to this reality, we see just how far away we are from any true repentance in our people. The so-called Christians in America have not even seen that they are living in the bondage of Egypt, much less that their own sins have led to it, and still much less that they must turn from these ways and repent if they ever hope to get out of this slavery and be delivered by the Lord from their Babylonian shackles which they have though to be their “freedom.” They do not believe they need to repent because they do not believe that statism is sin and have fooled themselves into believing that their vain professions of faith consisted of true repentance.
Given the depths of darkness that men have gone down today to avoid coming to the light, repenting for their old wicked ways, and turning back from the old and fallacious ideas that they have harbored their whole lives, we see just how much it is going to take before we ever arrive at a real movement of true Christians who begin seeking the Kingdom of God. It is really going to take a paradigm shift for people to come to the truth and find their way out of a political bondage that arose as a result of the sins of the people who partook in the evils of these systems and advocated the statist ideology that props them up. For, as it stands, the masses cannot even recognize that they are captives in Egypt, much less that they brought it upon themselves. They think they’re living in a “free country” under the blessings of God who has rewarded their obedience, rather than precisely the curses that come upon the disobedient ways that they still practice. Both the ungodly masses, as well as the professing Christians whose political ideas are virtually indistinguishable from theirs, will need to arrive at a point of humility and repentance where they question everything they thought they knew, prepare themselves to dispense with these worldly and evil ways of thinking, and decide it’s time to embrace another Way that they have not yet known. Because anyone who still thinks that human governments are necessary to their security, justice, law, order, protection, or welfare, which is currently the thinking of most everyone who calls themselves a Christian, is an unrepentant person whose heart is far from the Lord.
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