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Amen! This is a must read my friends. Al is right on target concerning today's mainstream "Christianity."MG
Rebellion and World Government
Should We Resist?
By Al Cronkrite
The Covenant News ~ March 27, 2008
Rebellion against God is at the root of the war against absolutes and it is a total war which not only fights absolutes but contends with reason as well.
Christianity, the worship of King Jesus as Lord and Savior, contains many reasonable tenets that can be successfully argued as belonging in the social order. An enduring unchangeable legal code is a necessary element. Since contention over the origin of such a code is predicable, the code God gave to Moses is a logical choice. Our Founders understood this and made at least a partial attempt to honor God’s Laws in spite of ample evidence of extensive personal deism.
God’s Law provides the death penalty when the death penalty is just and restitution when restitution is just. Biblical restitution provides justice to the wronged party by compounding the restitution which also increases the punishment adding a crime deterrent. Rebellious pagans would rather tax society with unreasonable procedures than succumb to the pristine Law of God. Over and over again we burden innocent tax payers with the expense of punishing wealthy criminals by sentencing them to jail when a financial settlement would be more just and more sensible. Jails are a form of torture. They leave the injury to the wronged party intact at the expense of the innocent taxpayer. It is impossible by any method of sound reasoning to defend the injustice and expense of our current legal system. Rebellion sustains it.
Citizens whose excuse for participating in immoral and criminal activities is the security of their employment are exercising a form of rebellion. As totalitarianism progresses refusal to obey orders to participate in criminal activities will cost the righteous person his job and endanger him and his family.
Politicians are industrious pragmatists who with blinders securely fastened wade relentlessly through the rising waters of evil showing no sign of noticing. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is put aside and the idols of acceptance and personal advancement are put in His place. Though reason has been enthroned on the altar, worship contains the same flaws as Christianity; it is unreasonable and chaotic bearing no resemblance to the focus of the faith.
In Chronicles Magazine Paul Craig Roberts wrote a review of Pat Buchanan’s new book “Day Of Reckoning”. He mentions the dismal economic statistics Buchanan is fond of quoting and the wholesale sell out of trillions of dollars of United States assets to foreigners as well as the stupendous accumulation of debt. Roberts takes Buchanan to task for pulling his punches by not writing about “the destruction of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and American liberty at the hands of the Bush regime”. Writing about the conspiratorial nature of the problem would jeopardize his role as spokesman on television and to Buchanan being a spokesman on television is an idol.
The worship of idols is not considered prevalent in United States but it is much more common than most of us understand. I have a friend who has become active in a national organization that recommends exiting the government school system. Association with Evangelicals and others that seek mainstream approval has changed his political views. Another friend who was a patriot became active in Republican politics and is now a moderate Conservative and a supporter of the two-party-system. Members of churches are always willing to overlook evil motives and outright sin in order to maintain the integrity of their church. Confronting evil on the job puts the job in jeopardy. Employment usually overrules righteous behavior. Seeking church growth overrides confrontational preaching. The entire system of higher education in the United States was sacrificed to the idols of growth and enlightenment. Lucky dip preaching caters to the audience and sacrifices the Gospel. Expository preaching has become an excuse for not confronting controversial issues in the culture.
Group members tend to ignore or minimize faults in order to support and defend the group. Becoming critical of the group or its membership puts the truth-teller at risk from the group leaders other members and from his own attitude.
When the righteousness God demands is sacrificed the reason becomes an idol and idol worship is rebellion against the God of the Bible.
The Apostle Paul enjoins us to come out from among them.
Truth-telling is a lonely business. Weighing integrity must be done from the outside. Even the great prophet Elijah engaged in lonely self-pity until God took him in Hand.
Dutch college professor Jacob Arminius rebelled against the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination and struck at the root of Christianity. When the sovereignty of God is transferred to human hands the relationship is sullied and the door is flung open to false doctrines of evil human minds. Dispensationalism has illegitimately pushed Christians farther away from the throne of God by inserting exiled Jews. It is an outgrowth of the Arminian rebellion.
The idol of success has become so important in our Christian Churches that correction is impossible. Once a formula for attracting people and money has been established church leaders worship that idol with unchanging intensity.
Most of our Christian institutions are hopelessly pragmatic forgetting that in God’s Kingdom the means must always justify the end. God demands obedience and seeks control of all outcomes.
Tyranny is a product of rebellion against God. Man was not created to govern himself and, as outlandish as that statement might seem to the intellectual humanists of our day, it is about to become glaringly apparent in the United States. Before the construction of our Constitution most, if not all, of the individual states codified a Christian litmus test for every political candidate. Unfortunately, our Constitution dispensed with that requirement instead mandating freedom of religion. This seemingly magnanimous gesture set the stage for the secular tyranny we must now endure. Reverend R. J. Rushdoony wrote “there can be no tolerance for the law-system of another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance...” Christians in the United States are beginning to feel that “new intolerance” in a big way.
Now, gentle reader, you may be wondering about the righteousness of rebellion against an evil government. Christians who are willing to cavort with the Devil are of little use in defending against evil. However, supporting righteousness in an evil state is dangerous. Public reference to God’s admonition against homosexuality is now a criminal offense in Canada and soon will be in the United States.
God does not forbid armed resistance and is willing to fight on the side of His righteous people. His power in defense of His people cannot be resisted and if He joins the battle victory is assured. However, there are times when because of rebellion God’s people are destined to be defeated.
During the reign of Zedekiah, son of the righteous king Josiah, Jeremiah, God’s true prophet, condemned the false prophets who stirred up resistance to the coming Babylonia captivity saying, “Bring your necks under the yoke of the King of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live!”. Jeremiah 27:12
Christians have sinned against the One True God. Their sins have been numerous and persistent. There have been grievous sins of omission and commission over two centuries.
We have supported and participated in a secular government since the crafting of the Constitution. We have ignored God’s governmental structure preferring to attempt to control one that is evil and humanistic. We have rebelliously pursued hundreds of false doctrines separating and confusing God’s Church. Rather than serving God in humility we and our leaders have attempted to make God our servant. We have boldly worshiped the idols of popularity and success while ignoring the truth of the Gospel. We have failed to confront the sin in government and in the culture preferring to provide entertainment and blessing. When the war against The One True God began we were so occupied with our sinful ways, so afraid of controversy and confrontation that we did not notice; we failed to find Biblical weapons and allowed the enemy to win battle after battle by default; as the decline advanced, we refused to hear rebuke and continued in our sinful ways.
Now we are on the brink of destruction with poverty and international tyranny staring us in the face. So far we have not only failed to bring the peaceful but powerful weapons of the Gospel to play but have allowed our tax dollars to support the evils of abortion, homosexuality, and aggressive warfare.
Should we resist? Is it time to take up arms? Will God reverse the decline when the sins that brought it about are still rampant?
Jeremiah was the true prophet in ancient Israel and it was God’s will that the Judeans surrender to their captors.
There is Biblical evidence to support resistance and there is Biblical evidence to succumb to the punishing hand of God.
One conclusion is certain: Christians, both leaders and followers, need to repent from their arrogant and stubborn sins, hear the Word of God, contend for and support God’s legal authority and conduct their affairs in accordance with it. We are expected to be salt and light in the darkness of a sinful and rebellious world and especially so since it is our own sins of omission have allowed this dire situation to come about.
God’s Law and the Christian ethic have become anathema to our civilization because the Christian Church has failed in its duty to teach their efficacy from every pulpit. Freedom to the elites of our generation has come to mean license and the loving restraints of God’s Law seem onerous.
Rebellion has infected the church and society causing reason itself to lose its traction.
Al Cronkrite is a free-lance writer from Florida.
Published originally at EtherZone.com
He can be reached at fmsinfla@hotmail.com
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