Posted on 03/15/2013 6:12:39 PM PDT by ReformationFan
Of course, for too long successive governments have enacted and tolerated laws that are evil (such as the legalizing of abortion). What’s new in our day is that laws are being proposed and enacted that attempt to force Christians to give up core Christian doctrines (e.g. Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation) and ethics (e.g. biblical definition of marriage). When the Government does this, it is crossing the line from being God’s servant to being God itself. When that happens, what should we do?
Although Christians ought to be the most loyal citizens in any nation, we are facing the increasing challenge of a government that instead of acting as God’s servant for good, is becoming God’s opponent for evil?
Of course, for too long successive governments have enacted and tolerated laws that are evil (such as the legalizing of abortion). What’s new in our day is that laws are being proposed and enacted that attempt to force Christians to give up core Christian doctrines (e.g. Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation) and ethics (e.g. biblical definition of marriage).
When the Government does this, it is crossing the line from being God’s servant to being God itself. When that happens, what should we do? Thankfully we have a biblical example of similar governmental usurpation of God’s place in Acts 4, when the Apostles were commanded to stop preaching Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation.
The apostle’s response was not a simple “No way!” Rather, it was a respectful and biblically reasoned “No!”
“Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).
(Excerpt) Read more at theaquilareport.com ...
I particularly like this quote: “Political leaders can pass as many laws as they like but they can’t change the truth of Scripture by legislation or by majority vote. They may decide that gravity doesn’t exist, vote against it, pass laws against it, and prosecute its supporters. But if any one of them chooses to jump out the window they’ll discover that no matter how public, vehement, and repeated their assertions, gravity is still very true.”
only loyal to godly, good government.
respect and loyalty are two different things.
And when a church supposes it is a God, autocratically declaring itself as the supreme and infallible authority, and requiring implicit assent to its decrees, then like government that presumes likewise, then both the bodies and the souls of good men are in danger.
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It is Forbidden:
Exodus 20:3
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Importantly, the is the “great sin” of mankind. Again and again in the Bible, the most guaranteed way to get the negative attention of God is for men to try and usurp God’s place.
For instance, Nimrod trying to build the Tower of Babel to heaven, so that he and his cronies can be “like God”.
Finally on the mountain, talking to Moses, God made the most concise and profound statement of being completely in charge: “I AM THAT I AM”. The philosophical implication of these words could fill volumes.
Perhaps the greatest Jewish philosophers/scholars of the 20th Century, Martin Buber, wrote a slim volume that is easy to read, but astoundingly hard to fully understand, called “I and Thou”. Each sentence in it are like Zen Buddhist koans, thought problems, the concepts in each taking hours or days to fully appreciate, one at a time.
In any event, by His statement on the mountain, God established supremacy. But that left mankind with a terrible paradox: if God rules everything, then how does mankind do anything?
This philosophical problem only began to be broken when Rene Descartes parodied God’s statement by saying “I think, therefore I am.” This laid the obviously flawed groundwork for people to be able to do anything.
Since then, philosophy has been inherently atheistic, endless efforts to show how mankind occupies the place of God in the universe. Socialism, for example, is committed to recreating the Bible, but with man occupying the place of God.
As with Nimrod, people like Al Gore imagine mankind able to change the climate of Earth. Because that is the sort of thing godlike entities are able to do. Mankind can destroy the Earth with nuclear weapons, so they say. Mankind *is* powerful, and (at least “we the elite”) are like gods.
“Cruisin’ for a bruisin’”, in Biblical terms. It is why socialists hate religion and love government. They want government to be God, and do all things for all people like they imagine a benevolent God would do.
Their delusion gets really weird in places. For example, the story of the Garden of Eden about drives them nuts. They imagine if they can just give up on the knowledge of good and evil, they can get back to Eden. Or, “the state of nature”, their version of Eden, as they imagine it.
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