Law was given to reveal who God is and how men who are with Him must be and then to reveal our complete inability to actually be with Him. It revealed that if men would know God, God must condescend and become a man who will live in full obedience to Himself and die for the atonement of our sins and rise again to reconcile us to Him. Law is not merely a punishment, not merely boundaries, but a statement by God of His own nature and way.

This is reflected in God's method of revealing His law. He premised every bit of it on this : "I Am." He hung the whole of it on our love of Him. Only in that context were the rest of the commandments given. So, the law is His nature laid before men before it is anything.

If we are going to find rights, we have to look to Him. The questions are what are rights and when and where do we have rights from God? As Americans, our idea of rights arises from the Enlightenment and the gnostic notion of Reason personified as God. It is not the God of the Bible. When Thomas Paine released Rights of Man in 1791, the American church was its most ardent buyer. Paine was an antichrist and atheist. Paine argued, and early America built on this foundation, that rights are inherent in "Nature", an entity itself. Whether those rights have been misused or abused or removed unjustly is beside the point. The only issue of importance is whether they come from God the Father. They don't.

Why don't they? Rights are simply exercises of authority. Authority is only real if given from God. Any rebellion brings judgment, not extended authority, as shown in the earlier post. As we live in rebellion -- overtly or latently -- against God, our exercises of authority are not approved by God. They are performed as insults to Him, no matter what our motives may feel like.

We are so thoroughly convinced that we have rights that we invent humanistic standards of what pleases God about our exercise of those rights. I mean no insult, brother Ron, but do you see that when we say "what we do with those rights as far as yielding them to God is another matter" is simply another way of saying "we must yield to God what He never gave us"? If we have what He never gave, is it to our credit that we yield it? Does He want it? And if He didn't give it, is it a "good and perfect thing"? Is it not rather a personal desire born in our own lust?

And, yes Adams acknowledged many noble sounding ideas. But, how does that bootstrap backwards to pull from God "rights" that He never gave? If the constitution was made for moral and religious people, is it not the best one can hope for that moral and religious people will have a certain amount of order about them when they are judged by the Savior for the abyss? That seems like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to me. I think that is what the American Evangelical church is doing with great fanfare but not redemption. The constitution can, by Adams' own admission, only "contend with" bridled "human passions"; it can never mortify the flesh and bring life. It is only the gospel of the kingdom of Christ thst can bring that effect. And, it is not a government of rights as we think of them.

Democracy cannot work. :) i know the premise. We have it drilled and grilled into us as Evangelicals. But the rule of men--which IS what democracy means -- can never begin to approach theocracy. Democracy is an evil to be vanquished by Jesus. Our enemy may oppress, but we have become our enemy. Not through irresponsibility with rights, but by rejecting God at all and asserting rights in the first place. God cannot rule a democracy. He will not have it. It win't have Him. Romans 8:7.

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Tim

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Ron Halverson

Last question first: Yes. :)
Abandon the acquisition of power, property and politics in every form. Cling to the Word of God, the Spirit of God and the church of God. That is the lesson in a nutshell.

God's intention in world government is exactly what is happening. We rejected Him and He is steering the whole thing into a brick wall of His judgment and He will vanquish every bit of it. His future intention is the New Jerusalem. His current government on Earth is manifest solely in the church.

Adams was not wrong to this extent: the constitution works. It just works in opposition to Christ.

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Tim

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Ron Halverson

I agree that there is a corrupting influence which permeates many of the churches in America. I agree this is the work of Satan. Yet the Scriptures do teach that God is actively working out His ways in the affairs of men. The Scriptures do teach that there is a law that all men recognize, whether one calls it "Natural law" or the "Law of Moses."

In the book of Daniel we are given this truth...

Dan 2:20
Daniel answered and said:

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
For wisdom and might are His.

Dan 2:21
And He changes the times and the seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding

And...

Dan 2:37
“You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory;

Dan 2:38
“and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold.

After Nebuchadnezzar, there would be a continuation of earthly forms of government. All that followed would be less pure.

How do you view this truth in relation to your position paper?

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Jeff Marshalek

Hi, bro. Rookie --

A couple of things I see in your post and I hope it answers your question.

1. The idea of "natural law" has to be carefully described because the phrase itself comes not from Scripture but from the Enlightenment. The application of the phrase, however, is often used to describe what the Bible does teach -- that there is in creation sufficient revelation of who God is that we are without excuse if we reject Christ; that there is a law of sin and death which wars in our members against the law of the Spirit in those who are Christ's; that there is a revelation of God's character and nature and of human character and nature in the Law given to Moses and in the prophets and other OT writings; that there is the complete revelation of who God is in the person of Jesus Christ and His teaching of who God is and who we are and who we are to be if we are to know Him and be with Him. But, in truth, the Bible does not teach what is called "natural law" in the sense that the Framers/Founders used it.

We have to be careful to describe these two very different and opposing ideas that are labeled by the same name. You know, I live in Alabama. I'm a lawyer here. Our state Supreme Court Chief Justice once erected a monument in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building with the Ten Commandments on it. Big national news making uproar. I saw that monument. On it was a large carved square with these words engraved: "Laws of Nature and Nature's God -- Declaration of Independence". He explicitly identified the Ten Commandments on the monument as being the Enlightenment "laws of Nature" and "Nature's God" as the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Whether it is mere confusion, delusion or something more nefarious afoot I won't get into here. The point is this -- "Natural law" and "Nature's God" are antichrist philosophies of the Enlightenment, which are nothing more than Gnosticism at the bottom. Mingling the true God and His Word together with the Enlightenment philosophies of the Founders/Framers is deceit. That deceit has been part of a broader Satanic strategy in this country and has served to devastate the church.

2. God does, indeed, raise up kings and removes them. He is the only Potentate, 1 Tim. 6:15. He claims not just kingship over kings, but sole kingship. He has put down the mighty from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. Luke 1:52. He does assign thrones to men and men to thrones, but they subserve Him and His own purposes. In Isaiah 45, God calls Cyrus His "messiah". His anointed one. Was Cyrus godly? No. In Ezra, we see that God stirred up Cyrus to act as he did so that the word of the Lord to Jeremiah regarding the captivity of Judah might be fulfilled. In other words, God set up kings and removed them for His own purposes and not according to their own aspirations of godliness or ungodliness. This is no way validates or legitimates the rebellion of men against God, which is what civil government (and all human government, including corporations, businesses and other forms) constitutes.

Remember the evil leaven? It pervades even now. The leaven of the evil one works through the rebellion of men against God. That rebellion is expressed in civil government. We can identify that source of rebellion as salient -- it stands out -- to God since Paul used it in Romans 13 as the chief source of human evil to which Christians owe a duty of love to its perpetrators. Over this, God is supreme. The authority of God, Daniel said, was applied so as to give Nebuchadnezzar a "kingdom, power, strength and glory ... He has given them into your had and has made you ruler over them all". Again, for a purpose; God had judged His people and He would not only redeem Israel but He would subject the kingdoms of the earth -- the ones He gave power for His purposes -- to Himself. Through whom would He do this?

Daniel 2:44 "And in the days of these kings [the ones God would assign great powers to in the Earth and who would be removed for His purposes] the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed [the kingdom of Jesus]; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever."

It seems most useful to go farther back to 1 Samuel 8 and the entire events of that time to give a better view of "earthly forms of government" and the continuation of them from then vs. the continuation from Nebuchadnezzar. Because, really, Nebuchadnezzar and every other king or president or prince or prime minister or CEO has been the very thing that God told Samuel about the nature of human rule. Saul, David, Solomon and every king of Israel and every king of Judah were no exception, either. Yet, Jesus asserts a superior claim and the only valid claim to authority. To the extent earthly rulers exercise authority, they do so in rebellion to Him and they do so under His own design that one day, "every knee shall bow, of those in heaven and those on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." He will force the issue.

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Tim