[Alberta's Child]

Christians in a representative democracy are duty-bound to promote civil rulers and civil legislation based on or conforming to God's Law-Word.

Here's a question for you: At what point are Christians in any kind of governing system duty-bound to overthrow their government to promote a civil order based on our conforming to God's Law-Word?

[RobRoy]

Here's a question for you: At what point are Christians in any kind of governing system duty-bound to overthrow their government to promote a civil order based on our conforming to God's Law-Word?

The answer to your question may be found here in the Declaration of Independence:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security..."

Is it time yet? Apparently Timothy McVeigh thought so a few years ago...

[PresbyRev]

That's a good question and one which the fathers of our nation answered in 1775 (as one example).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's complicity in the attempt to assassinate Hitler might be another example.

My quick and dirty answer would be that once a ruler or government has ceased fulfilling the requirements of a civil magistrate in Romans 13 then, de facto, the ruler or government becomes illegitimate and in fact not a civil magistrate at all. If the functions aren't fulfilled and are in fact violated (the innocent are punished, the evil and wicked are rewarded), then we can deduce that the people, citizens or subjects, are bound to replace the tyrannical civil authority with godly or just civil authority.

[Taliesan]

At what point are Christians in any kind of governing system duty-bound to overthrow their government to promote a civil order

None.