“Common Men Create a Republic”

"Think About It"

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The old freighter had just dropped anchor.  She bobbed up and down in the November waves just inside Cape Cod.  She was many miles off her course to the north.  This potentially spelled trouble for the Pilgrims on board this ship, called the Mayflower.  They had a few people among their number who were not covenant members of their church.  Some of these people were rebels who didn’t want to submit to the authority of God, much less the authority of man.  And with no government authority here in this place, they were threatening to live anyway they wanted, once they were on shore.

The Pilgrims knew they could not live without civil government because government was designed by God to control that rebellious nature in man; indeed, that was the only purpose for civil government to exist!  Thus, though they were common people, and had no lawyers among them, they gathered all the men together and wrote a document establishing their own civil government.  They created a republic:  That is, a government where law is the highest authority.  That law was based in the moral law of the Bible and had to be approved by those who would live under it.  They were able to form their own civil government because their Pastor, John Robinson, had taught them from the Bible how to do it.  The Bible had many references to civil government; both the structure it was to take, and the Spirit in which it was to operate.  It came to be called the Mayflower Compact, and read in part, as follows:

“In the name of God, Amen.  We whose names are underwritten…having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith…a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these present solemnly & mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of the ends aforesaid…to enact, constitute, and frame such just & equal laws…as shall be thought most [necessary]…for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

“In witness whereof we have… subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11. of November… [The Year of our Lord] 1620.”

In our day, when we think you have to have a degree to be able to make a peanut butter sandwich, how could they have possibly written their own government—and then administered it!  They did it because they got their wisdom from the Bible.  The Bible teaches everything we need to know about government.  Consider how the Bible tells us the purpose of government.  It says in Romans 13,

“Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.  For there is no power but of God…For he [a government servant] is the minister of God to thee for good.  But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

(Romans 13:1, 4)

It says in 1st Timothy 1:9,

“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners.”

Because the Pilgrims understood well that the purpose of civil government was to control those who would not control themselves, they were able to write a government that would last for decades—in just a few paragraphs!  This government would become the model for the government of the nation which would be the freest and most prosperous in world history—the United States of America.  And common men, educated in Biblical principles of government, wrote that foundational document.

What wisdom guides your life: God’s, which is revealed in the Bible; or satan’s, which, comes through the secular media and secular education system?

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.