We started last week by laying out the first two of the four foundations of our argument: self-government and family government. We will continue this week with church government. Next week, we will conclude with the proper role of civil government.
Church government is quite simply the ability of a collective group of individuals to worship God according the dictates of their own conscience in a corporate setting. As we laid out last week, our framers believed that it was impossible to acquire and maintain the qualities that make one a good citizen and patriot without following the laws of nature and nature’s God as laid out in the Holy Scriptures. Church government, then, was designed to be the first corrective measure outside of the family unit and is therefore essential to maintaining a civil society.
By this inspired view of society, it was the church’s responsibility to hold up that standard of good citizenship and patriotism that our framers held as the foundation to a healthy Republic. If a husband cheats on his wife, it was the church’s responsibility to hold him accountable and rebuke him. If a man stole from his neighbor, it was the church’s responsibility to rebuke him and demand he make restitution. If a child rebelled, it was the church’s responsibility to assist the parents in rebuke that child and remind them of the blessings that came with obedience. In all areas of life, it was the church that was to intervene when issues fell out of the scope or capability for self-government and family government to handle.
It was also the church’s responsibility to remind the elected officials that they first answer to God, then to the people who elected them to govern, not the other way around. After all, the whole notion of elected leaders was first found in the pages of Scripture. In the Old Testament, as God was giving Moses the form of government whereby Ancient Israel was to be governed, He gave them a Constitutional Republic. The Constitution was the Torah, which was comprised of 613 laws governing everything from hygiene, to criminal behavior, to civil affairs such as business and marriage. The people were governed by, “leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, and officers, tribe by tribe.” Deuteronomy 1:15 (CJB). All of them were chosen by the people, and answered to the tribal leaders, who then answered to Moses, who ultimately answered to God.
Sounds a lot like our federal, state, county, and city governments, doesn’t it? Ancient Israel operated under the first Constitutional Republic in human history, ours is the second. If our form of government was first instituted in the Holy Scriptures, then the church has a responsibility to engage in civil affairs and hold our elected officials accountable. There was a time when the church did that. The vast majority of them no longer do.
The Great Deception
The Marxist and collectivist intellectuals have long understood the Church was one of their primary impediment to taking over America. They understood that a populace rooted in biblical morality would not readily accept anti-biblical laws and policies. So, they knew that as long as the church remained involved in politics, America could not fall to socialism. So, they began placing infiltrators in the mainline denominations and seminaries who began teaching, among other things, that the church had no place in politics. This was an outrageous lie, but many churches unfortunately bought it.
Now we are seeing the consequence of that deception. All across the country, mayors and governors alike have banned churches from holding services either in part, or in whole. They’ve claimed they have a “compelling governmental interest” in restricting or outright banning corporate worship. As I write this, John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles stands under imminent threat of arrest for holding a church service in defiance of court orders. That’s right, in America, where we are guaranteed the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience, a pastor is under threat of arrest for having church services because we’ve allowed America’s enemies to infiltrate our institutions and use them against us.
The line in the sand is drawn…
Friends, enough is enough. It doesn’t matter if you currently attend church, consider yourself religious, go every once in a while, or if you haven’t darkened the door of a church in your entire life. This matters to ALL of us. If we stand by and let them take away one right that is guaranteed to be protected under the First Amendment, then nothing will stop them from thinking they can take away the rest. There’s a reason why our framers started the Bill of Rights with freedom of religion. They knew if that freedom was lost, all the rest would soon follow.