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Recently there’s been a lot of talk about government and the money it takes to operate it.  And all this has produced is just more debt, more tax, and more destruction of our nation—while the government gets larger and larger.  And if we don’t quickly return to the founding principle of America we will shortly live under a dictator.

Our Founders taught a principle to their children which summed up all the Biblical teaching about government.  It was this:

“The more internal self-government you have the less external civil government you need.  But the less internal self-government you have the more external civil government you need.”

America was built on this principle.  The Pilgrims learned to walk in the internal self-government which the Holy Spirit produces when a life is surrendered to Christ.  This started when they received Christ as their Lord and Deliverer and, thus, were born again.  But the earliest among them had learned something about this internal self-government that would profoundly affect the birthing and the growth of America.  In the mid-1500’s they had gone to Geneva, Switzerland to learn from a scholar by the name of John Calvin.  Calvin taught a simple principle which would change the course of the Western world.  He called it “renovation”.  The word renovation means to make new.  This is what Christ does when He enters a life that has just surrendered to Him as Master.  He changes that life by flowing with His life from that person’s spirit, into his soul, and out through the actions of his body.  That is what the Bible means when it says,

“Be ye [being] filled with the Spirit.”

(Ephesians 5:18)

When the Holy Spirit flows through a life, He is in control of that life.  The word govern means to “control”.  Thus, the Holy Spirit is governing that life.  This is what the word morality means and it is the concept from which our Founders got the phrase “internal self-government”.

It was John Calvin who taught the relationship between this internal self-government by the Holy Spirit and external civil government.  He taught that believers must allow this internal self-government by the Holy Spirit to grow to the institutions of education, economy, and civil government.  If they did, the education system would teach the next generation how to know Christ and let the Holy Spirit live through them.  This would keep external civil government small because men wouldn’t need government to tell them how to do education; the Bible would be doing that.  They wouldn’t need for government to tell them how to do business, for the Bible would be doing that.  They wouldn’t need much civil government because there would not be much crime.  The Bible says,

“Love works no ill to his neighbor.”

(Romans 13:10)

All this adds up to less civil government.  That means less tax: fewer people work for government so there are fewer salaries to pay.  Thus, there’s no need to borrow money to meet the needs of government; a small tax base takes care of it.  It means government doesn’t tell you how to run your family, your church, or your business.  All this spells MORE LIBERTY!!

As one of our early statesmen, Robert Winthrop, said,

“Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled…either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man…”

(Winthrop, Robert Charles. May 28, 1849, in an address, entitled “Either by the Bible or the Bayonet”, at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Bible Society in Boston. Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1852), p. 172. Verna M. Hall, The Christian History of the American Revolution (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976), p. 20.)

Will it be God or government?  Those are your only choices.

Think About It.  Because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—
and for your children!  And you won’t like what that brings to you.  I’m Don Pinson, this has been Think About It.