Last week we looked at three lies Satan has used, very effectively over the last 150 years, to sidetrack, neutralize, and
even destroy one of the three weapons God has given us by which we are to rule over the earth—the Civil Government. Those three Satanic lies are Marxism, Evolution and Escapist Theology.
We can add Islam to that list as well. Islam is an even more ancient lie, and is violently at odds with these other three, but the old adage, “the enemies of my enemy are my friends!” is very true in this case! The average, uninformed Christian has been shamed into buying Satan’s “islamophobic” hoax (“Islam is just another neutral, harmless religion”) and would be shocked to learn the facts about Islam and its history. We desperately need MORE islamophobia in America, not less! If you think that is extreme, check out this excellent website that, factually, “pulls back the curtain”: https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ I recommend it very highly.
However, this posting is to investigate what the Bible presents as God’s model for us to follow with our Civil Government. I believe these ideas (consciously or unconsciously) shaped the thinking of our Founding Fathers as they composed our Constitution. Even though they were not all personal, confessed Christian believers (although a majority were) they were all products of colonial America’s de facto Christian culture.
Due to an inability to land in Virginia, in November,1620, as their English colonial charter signified, the Plymouth colonists landed instead in what is now Massachusetts, with no official governing authority over them there.
So, they found it necessary to devise their own self-governing authority structure under which they would live, called today the “Mayflower Compact.” In this 150 word agreement, the 41 men who signed it agreed to submit to one another and to “such just and equal Laws …and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.“
This venture into self-government was certainly not a given in 1620. If the idea was not totally unknown (i.e., the 1215 Magna Carta), it was certainly extremely rare, as the implications of the Reformation and its “spiritual self-governance” were slowly working their way through humanity. They continue to do so today, if we have eyes to see it.
God is at work, gradually equipping us to rule with the civil government as one of the weapons He left for us to use. He also left us a template to follow to do so His way—the Hebrew Republic. It was initiated by Moses after the Exodus from Egypt (after he received the Law on Mt. Sinai about 1450 B.C.).
400 years later, the Israelites deliberately rebelled against God’s rule over them by rejecting the Hebrew Republic—His vehicle by which He exercised that rule! The very interesting story of this rebellion is told in 1 Samuel 8. This chapter relates the beginning of the end of the Republic, as the Israelites demanded a human, physical king to rule over them, like “all the other nations.” God told them they were rejecting His rule through the Republic, but they were adamant.
So, in God’s inscrutable way, He let them have their wish and gave them Saul as their king, but also told them exactly what it would cost them. They blindly were not deterred!
This portion of the Bible—the 400 years from Exodus to 1 Samuel 8—tells the story of the development of the ideas that undergird a Biblical Constitution, as related in the Bible.
In the classic book, The Roots of the American Republic, written by the 19th century Biblical scholar E.C. Wines in 1853, these principles from the Bible were mined, studied and related in detail. The similarity with our Constitution is striking, and I will discuss them in some detail next week. The book by Wines is available at https://plymrock.org/bookstore/ .
