That they all fall under Psalm 2.
When a ruler acts within the boundaries of God’s permissible will, they are to be accorded respect and deference. When they presume to displace God, they are accorded the same status as any other idol. Dismissal, removal or destruction.
Three lies have been perpetrated in the past century or so to emasculate American Christianity. They have been promulgated by excerpting selected Biblical quotes and ignoring the whole counsel of God. They are lies rooted in the Progressive Era and the Social Gospel. The lies are very powerful within Protestant circles, but dominant or not, they remain lies.
1) We are not to condemn individuals or actions, as that would be to ‘judge’ others. Culturally, secular interests use this distortion to quell any objections to any perverse, base or predatory behavior or actors. That would be ‘judging’. This has been very effective, as most people avoid confrontation anyway. Accordingly this culture has by degrees been almost utterly debauched, and almost without contest.
2) It is Christian to ‘give’, indefinitely and without limit. Ignoring the whole counsel of God, people are admonished that they should share out their substance without regard as to whom it is going or why. Never mind the admonition that those who will not work should not eat, and that charity begins in the home. Christians and other people of faith are brow beaten into being passive when they are dispossessed of the fruits of their labor. Eventually dogs get the bread and the children get the crumbs.
3) Submit to secular authority - period. Wrong. Much of the Bible is expressly the call to resist corrupt cultures, corrupt demands, and the corrupt ‘kings’ who make those demands and promulgate those cultures. Insofar as is possible, we are to be peaceable. That is not an absolute injunction. The day comes when five kings are slain in one day; when pharaoh is ignored; when the people and rulers at the temple of Dagon are crushed in the temple’s rubble, when Ahab and Jezebel are denounced, and when Haman is hanged on his own gallows. The one note lie that obedience is due - period - is to render unto Caesar what is God’s.
No.
Not now, not ever.
These LIES are why we have fallen so low from what we were even in living memory, even in my own and probably your own living memory. We are timid, poor and servile because of these three perversions of what the Scriptures actually say.
Thus I said, and I say again:
I will give men like Obama or Romney the same sort of respect and service that the midwives gave pharaoh, Mordecai gave Haman, and the magi gave Herod.
When a ruler acts within the boundaries of God’s permissible will, they are to be accorded respect and deference.
Could you be so kind to show the opt-out language from any of those passages?
I assume you are aware that Paul, Peter and Jude wrote during the time Nero was in power. In fact, Paul was imprisoned by the government as he was commanding Christians to obey the government. Dittos with Peter. He was under persecution while also exhorting the Church to obey. They both knowingly and willingly were executed by the same government they exhorted the Church to fear and obey.
They have been promulgated by excerpting selected Biblical quotes and ignoring the whole counsel of God.
Fine, what do you make of your words in view of Nebuchadnezzar, who was no doubt the most powerful and tyrant ruler in world history. Here is what the prophet Jeremiah wrote:
Jeremiah 43:10-12 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: "Behold, I will send and bring Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will set his throne above these stones that I have hidden. And he will spread his royal pavilion over them. When he comes, he shall strike the land of Egypt and deliver to death those appointed for death, and to captivity those appointed for captivity, and to the sword those appointed for the sword.
Or this passage about the same violent man
Jer 25:8-9 "Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: '...I will send and take all the families of the north,' says the Lord, 'and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations.
So the Apostles, under an incredibly wicked and corrupt ruler told Christians to fear the government; we have a wicked and powerful ruler in Nebuchadnezzar who was called a "My Servant" by God; we have Isaiah 10:1-4 teaching that God will raise up wicked rulers to, in this case, be "the rod of My anger". We have Saul, Israel's first king, chosen by and empowered by God who really was a bad king and ended up consulting the underworld. Then we have you, who seems to be able to have special revelation that says that you can fear some and ridicule others.
Who do you think is the more wicked ruler - Paul's Nero, or our present Obama and possibly Romney?
Eccl 10:20 Do not curse the king, even in your thought; Do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; For a bird of the air may carry your voice, And a bird in flight may tell the matter.
Sound advice when living under persecuting rulers.
Excellent points, all of them, Ps 144.
I would add the arguments of the Declaration of Independence, a document that spoke to Christians, that also sought to demonstrate when it is just and right to overthrow one government in favor of another.
***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***
David appears to have gone out of his way NOT to fight against God’s annointed king, Saul. Yet, Jeroboam got a green light against Rehoboam when Rehoboam chose to enact terrific burdens on the people.