© 2023 Don Pinson | [Download]
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In my lifetime, there’s never been so much talk among the people of this region about the way government is taking away our liberties, especially the national government. People who really understand, and there aren’t many of them at this point, are deeply grieved and praying earnestly for God to intervene. Many more people are just very afraid of the national government being out of the control of the people. They feel it’s becoming a dictatorial government that is intruding into their lives more and more. They fear for what life in America will be like for their children and grandchildren. The latter group has few answers, but they have a whole lot of questions!

Are there answers? There most certainly are answers to what government should be like, and they are found where the answers to all questions are found: In the Bible!

God ordained the first—and most important—form of government when He told Adam he could eat of all the trees of the Garden of Eden except one. This was internal, self-government. Adam, by his internal will being filled with the will of God, was to choose to eat of the Tree of Life, but he was to choose not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This internal choosing is what we call self-government.

God’s intent was for Adam to “…have dominion…over all the earth…” (Genesis 1:26). If Adam had exercised internal, self-government, he would have been qualified to exercise external government over the creation. When he refused self-government by the power of God’s Spirit, he then lost much of his ability to rule over God’s creation in the earth.

God would later send Jesus to restore what we had lost in the Garden and would tell his followers to go tell the world what He had done. His message was the same to us as to Adam: “Let Christ enter you by repentance and faith in His work at the Cross, then you can become a vessel Christ can rule through in this world.” Men with Christ living in their soul would be men who would hear His voice, and think with him about life now and in eternity. Self-government could now be a reality because Christ could do it through us.

Now man could be qualified to rule over the earth. He also, if chosen by his fellowmen, could qualify to be a ruler over those men who chose him: In other words, a civil government servant. He could make and administer laws that agreed with the law of God. He could also judge between men as to which was obeying that law. So the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch of government, could be operated by men; because they would have the life of God flowing through them to enable them to rule. This form of government is what is known as a republic. It’s the form of government God gave to Moses to give to His people recorded in Deuteronomy 1:9-18.

But God’s people, by letting sin grow among them, would gradually give away their Biblical Republic and choose a king, one individual to rule over them. God told the prophet Samuel that they were rejecting the rule of God over them by wanting a man to be their king (1st Samuel 8:7). And He warned them that their king would make slaves of them and their children. They didn’t listen—and they became slaves.

Are you listening? Do you know the difference between a republic and a democracy? If you don’t, you’re already a slave! Thomas Jefferson said,

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.”

(Jefferson, Thomas. Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, The Providential Perspective (Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, Charlottesville, VA 22906, January 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 3.)

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.