Some Answers to Pertinent Questions from a Friend

The other day, a friend of mine emailed me some very important questions that have also been on my mind during the covid fauxpocalypse. These questions have also, I think, been on the minds of many other Christians, so I decided to answer them here to the best of my ability. Hopefully, you will find my answers helpful, if only in giving you more to think about in these trying times.

The email reads as follows:

“I have often been reminded when reading Scripture, just during the 'reading for the day,' that the Lord visited Israel with various judgments for various sins. It seems to me that whenever God is judging Israel in the OT they were to repent and submit to the punishment rather than rise up to fight the oppression.
I really don't know if I've got this twisted and would appreciate anything you have written on this. Whilst the Apostles could have rejected Nero, it would seem they did not. But on the other hand, we have passages in the Psalms which do teach about praying for curses on enemies.
[…]
I know that as a nation, Australia has been murdering babies by the hundreds of thousands every year for over 40 years with almost non-existent opposition to the wickedness. Shall not God destroy a nation for such sin? And if I sense judgment in the current Government oppression, am I to resist that, or see it as the hand of God in righteous condemnation and submit as per Jeremiah below?
‘How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour's wife. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?’ [Jer 5:7-9]”

My friend's email has several questions that we can draw out, so I first want to make them explicit, and then answer them accordingly.

Questions

1. Will God judge a nation for its pattern of grievous sin?
2. If God is judging the nation in which a Christian lives, specifically by giving that nation wicked and oppressive rulers, should Christians submit to the judgment (which in this case entails submitting to wicked rulers)?
3. If God is judging the nation, would it be right for Christians to oppose the government (seeing as it is being used by God to judge the nation)?
4. Given the pattern of Israel having to submit to God's judgment, shouldn't Christians also submit to God's judgment?
5. How do we reconcile the passages of Scripture which, on the one hand, call for us to submit to God's judgment on a nation and, yet on the other hand, show us examples of godly men praying that God would destroy his and, consequently, their enemies?
6. What about the apostles and the Roman government?

Answers

1. Scripture is very clear that the Lord will, and does, judge nations for their sins. There is a distinction to be drawn between historical (pre-eschatological) and eschatological judgment, of course, and so I think we would do well to consider what we ought to do if the judgment is not eschatological, as I’m using the term, but historical.

If the judgment is eschatological, then we know the outcome is fixed. Our actions will not lead to some other consequence than which God has declared (viz. Christ will return in power and glory and judge the nations once and for all1). However if the necessary eschatological conditions laid out by Scripture have not been met, then what we see happening is not the eschatological judgment but an historical judgment. Since we don't know the day or the hour of our Lord's return,2 then is it our duty to continue following him faithfully until he returns.

Consider the situation we find in Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians. After reminding the Thessalonians of how Christ will return to judge humanity,3 Paul goes on to say:

Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.4

It is God's will that his people continue to walk by faith in obedience to him until Christ returns. To that end, the apostle goes on to explain what must come first before Christ returns, and warns the Thessalonians about those who, in contradiction to Paul's delineation of events, claim that Christ has already returned.5

He follows this by telling them –

But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.6

Note the command for the Thessalonians to “stand fast.” Now, note Paul’s benediction – “…may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father…comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.” The Thessalonians, and all Christians, are to stand fast in the faith and continue in good works, in the assurance that God will comfort us and establish us as we do so, until Christ returns for his bride.

After this, the apostle Paul closes his epistle with several exhortations to the same effect, stating explicitly in 2nd Thess 3:6-13 –

But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.
For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.

But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good.

After explaining the day of the Lord and what must precede the Lord's return, Paul says that the Thessalonians must continue to walk by faith in obedience to Christ. He further reveals what this looks like – withdrawing from brethren walking in open disobedience, working with one’s own hands, not being lazy, and living a quiet life/not being a busybody.

This is important because it shows us that as we await Christ’s return we ought to be loving our neighbors as ourselves. Loving our neighbor as ourselves necessarily implies promoting the well being, and preserving the life, of our neighbor. This ties in to the second answer to the second and third questions raised by my friend’s email.

2 & 3. Seeing as we know we are to love our neighbor while our nation is under historical judgment, and seeing as we are to love him by promoting his well being and preserving his life, it follows that we cannot simply submit to the evil actions of our rulers. So how are we to understand our duty in this situation?

Firstly, note that if the governing authorities are acting contrary to their intended purpose given by God then it follows that they are disobeying God and, thereby, nullifying any claim they have to authority over us in the matter under consideration (e.g. mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, stay at home orders for the healthy, and so on).

Secondly, what is more, if those actions lead to the destruction of my neighbors, for whom I am accountable, then it is my right and my duty to protect my neighbor from those actions in any way that I possibly can. Allowing my government to kill my neighbor because we are both guilty of sin before God, but not for some publicly and evidentially demonstrable crime which God’s law defines, is akin to allowing a stranger to kill my neighbor because we are both guilty of sin before God. Simply put – It is not justifiable.

I can promote the well being of my neighbor, as well as preserve his life, by informing him of what is actually taking place in the world via the government’s oppressive policies, laws, mandates, etc. I can do the same by modeling obedience to God, in contradiction to obedience to men, via acts of civil disobedience. This does not require one to rise up and overthrow the oppressor. It requires something much more difficult to obtain – persistent, resilient, and indefatigable faith in the face of persistent, resilient, and seemingly indefatigable evil. But if we ask him, God will grant us faith to persevere.7

If historical judgment is occurring, given what the apostle Paul says in 2nd Thessalonians it is right and good for me to oppose the rogue government’s actions against myself and my neighbor. The reason for this is that it is my duty to promote my neighbor’s well being and preserve his life against all who would seek to illegitimately destroy him. If the government is subjecting myself and my neighbor to harm and possible death for doing what is lawful before God and men (e.g. refusing to wear a mask while sitting in a public place, refusing to be vaccinated in order to continue working, breaking lockdown restrictions, and so on), then my government has abdicated its proper role, gone rogue, and is now functioning as a body of murderers.

If I don’t oppose what they are doing, then I am complicit in their evil.

4. Yes, there are OT passages in which God tells Israel to submit to their punishment and not rise up in opposition to their oppressors. However, Israel’s situation was unique. As we read in Deuteronomy 4:1-8 –

“Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe, that you may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you. You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor; for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you.
Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’

For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?”

Israel’s life and prosperity as a nation was, like the life and prosperity of Adam and Eve, contingent upon her obedience to the stipulations of the covenant God made with her. This is not true of any other nation in the world, as the passage from Deuteronomy teaches us clearly. Yes, God would destroy nations whose sins would eventually be “complete”8, but that does not imply that these nations were in a covenant relationship with God. It was Israel alone who stood in this relationship to Jehovah.

Additionally, under the Mosaic covenant Israel's disbelief was manifested not merely in their rebellion against the explicitly stated laws of God, but also in their inability to accept the fact that they were breakers of the covenant who were being stripped of their covenantal blessings. Rather than accept that their existence and prosperity was dependent on their obedience to the covenant, they continued in obstinate and unrepentant sin. Rather than admit they were idolaters engaging in all kinds of wickedness that resulted in God removing their covenantal blessings, they hid their idolatry (as we see in Ezekiel), engaged in witchcraft and soothsaying (as we see in Isaiah), persecuted and refused to listen to the prophets (as we see in Jeremiah), and still thought of themselves as being in good standing with God. Being urged to submit to their judgment was a final call, it seems, for them to correct course by repenting and believing God's Words in Deuteronomy 28.

But they did not.

Hence Christ, alluding to Isaiah 5 where God talks about his vineyard that bore bad fruit, confronts the hypocritical leaders of his day who had still refused to accept that they had broken God's covenant, lost their covenant blessings, and incurred God's promised wrath. He tells them the parable of the wicked vine dressers in Matt 21:33-44, a short story which details the history of Israel's rebellion which would culminate in her crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, leading to her undergoing the wrath of God and being stripped of the kingdom. Christ then ends his speech by declaring –

“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.”9

The kind of judgment that Israel underwent seems to now be applied to churches. Unlike the Old Covenant, the granting of the blessings of the New Covenant are not contingent upon our obedience to the Law. However, churches that fail to deal with sin in their camp, and who yet believe themselves to be in good standing with the Lord, can be judged by God, cut off, and stripped of all blessings given to them. In Revelation 2 & 3, Christ makes this clear, declaring –

Ephesus – “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent…”10
Pergamos – “Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.”11
Thyatira – “…you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent.
Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds.”

Sardis – “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.”

Laodicea – “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.”14

5. My last answer contains some information on how we are to reconcile the seemingly contradictory situation we encounter in the OT where the saints understood they were under judgment and that, given Israel’s breaking of the covenant, they were to accept this punishment, and yet they prayed imprecatory prayers against their enemies. In a word, God’s judgment being executed through wicked rulers and nations on Israel did not exempt those nations from being under God’s Law as well. This means that while those instruments of judgment were materializing divine justice, as it were, they were still responsible for the way in which they so doing.

Consider the following from the book of Isaiah –

The Lord sent a word against Jacob,
And it has fallen on Israel.
All the people will know—
Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria—
Who say in pride and arrogance of heart:
“The bricks have fallen down,
But we will rebuild with hewn stones;
The sycamores are cut down,
But we will replace them with cedars.”

Therefore the Lord shall set up
The adversaries of Rezin against him,
And spur his enemies on,
The Syrians before and the Philistines behind;
And they shall devour Israel with an open mouth.15

Israel is under judgment, but instead of repenting chooses to continue in rebellion, refusing to recognize that their situation was directly due to their breaking of the covenant. So God tells them he is raising up foreign nations, ruthless foreign wicked rulers, to punish his people. Yet look at what he says in the very next chapter –

“Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hand is My indignation.
I will send him against an ungodly nation,
And against the people of My wrath
I will give him charge,
To seize the spoil, to take the prey,
And to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Yet he does not mean so,
Nor does his heart think so;
But it is in his heart to destroy,
And cut off not a few nations.
For he says,
‘Are not my princes altogether kings?
Is not Calno like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad?
Is not Samaria like Damascus?
As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols,
Whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
As I have done to Samaria and her idols,
Shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?’ ”
Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks.”16

God chose to use the wicked nations and rulers to execute justice against Israel, but he held them accountable for the wicked ways in which they performed this task. God judged their intentions. Not only this, but given that these men were not believers it seems reasonable to assume that they also inflicted more violence on Israel than was necessary for executing God’s judgment. In either case, they were to be held accountable by God.

So Israel could simultaneously understand that they were under God’s judgment, and yet pray that the very actions taken against them by God’s instruments of justice be visited upon those nations. Psalm 137 perfectly captures this dual reality. Another reality to consider is the fact that parents are given the responsibility of executing justice in the household, and yet we are warned against doing so in a manner that is sinful. If our children sin, it is right for us to punish them, and it is right for them to submit to the punishment they deserve. However, this doesn’t mean that all that we do in our punishment of our children is righteous. We can have anger and pride in our hearts, attitudes that are not only inherently evil but can also, and I would argue usually do, lead to punishments that don’t fit the transgression/s committed.

6. Regarding the apostles, we need to contextualize their actions as well given that their situation differed from ours in some ways. Firstly, however, we need to remember that God created all of us to be upholders of his Law. Now seeing as God had already given Adam and Eve dominion over all of the creatures,17 and the serpent was included among those creatures,18 they inherently possessed authority over the serpent. Additionally, Adam was given the Law of God constitutive of the covenant of works,19 which shows us that he not only had authority over the animals as respects where they were to be placed and what function they would play in the subdued creation. Adam possessed physical authority over the serpent as well as moral authority over the serpent. Adam was, in other words, the lesser magistrate. Adam could have, and should have, exercised his authority over the serpent’s lying tongue, but he did not do this and so sinned. Not only this, but Adam, as the recipient of the commandment, had a responsibility to uphold justice when his wife had broken it, but he failed to do this as well.

With regard to the non-human creatures, Adam and Eve were the lesser magistrate given the role of upholding God’s justice in the world according to his law. With regard to one another, it is implied, Adam and Eve were also lesser magistrates. Adam was the head, but had he sinned it would be incumbent upon Eve to identify his sin and seek God’s justice for the transgression Adam committed. Though Adam had authority over Eve as the head, in other words, had he told her to sin she would not be in sin for refusing to follow his orders, for her primary duty was to glorify God by doing what he commands and refraining from what he forbids. Similarly, the same applies to Adam and Eve’s children. Had Adam told Cain and/or Abel to sin, it would have been right and necessary for them to refuse to comply with Adam’s sinful commands, seeing as their primary duty was to glorify God by doing what he commands and refraining from what he forbids.

Every man is, in other words, the lesser magistrate. It is incumbent upon every one of us to recognize that God is the supreme authority who has established lesser authorities – Civic authority, Church authority, Family authority. It is also incumbent upon every one of us to recognize that we can never fail to do what is right before God because we “lack the authority” to do what is right. That is simply not the case. If there existed a society in which no one in the chain of authorities established by God was doing what was right, it would still be incumbent upon the individual to do what is right, even if that entails refusing to comply with the authorities above, or even openly and physically opposing them. For if the magistrates above oneself are all acting outside of their jurisdictional boundaries in all that they do, then they are no longer acting as magistrates but as rebels, autonomous transgressors of God’s law, and no one is above God’s law.

This position as lesser magistrate over humans is made more clear in Genesis 9 where God tells Noah –

Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed;
For in the image of God
He made man.
And as for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Bring forth abundantly in the earth
And multiply in it.”20

What was implicitly laid out in Gen 1 & 2 regarding man’s inherent physical and moral authority over the animals, as well as man’s moral authority over transgressors of God’s law (in this case murderers), is here made exceedingly clear. Every individual is the lesser magistrate.

Thankfully, God has been merciful to us in every age and has not ever left us with a chain of authorities where every individual up and down the hierarchical order is failing to do his duty as one who rewards what is good and punishes what is evil. Even in the worst societies (e.g. Ancient Rome) there were men who understood when their superior magistrates were acting out of line and chose to oppose those magistrates, choosing instead to interpose on behalf of those who ranked beneath them (e.g. non-political citizenry). What we see in the New Testament, as well as in the early church, is a recognition from believers that there is God given order in society, and that there are means available to non-governmental/non-political citizenry to aid us in seeking justice against the higher magistrate (e.g. an emperor in Ancient Rome). Hence, Paul addresses the Jews as a member of the Jewish community, and addresses Romans on the basis of his own citizenship as a Roman.21 He recognizes the order in society and works within it to seek justice for wrongs done against him (e.g. false claims made about his intentions, his ministry, etc) and, in a word, freedom to do what God has called him to do – preach the Gospel and establish churches.

The post-New Testament church theologians worked in a very similar way. If you read the treatises of men like Justin Martyr,22 Athenagoras,23 Augustine,24 and Tertullian,25 you learn that they recognized an order in society, their position in society as a theologian/minister, and used the means available to them to address the greater magistrate (e.g. writing letters challenging the reasonableness, morality, and legality of the state’s persecution of Christians). The apostles and church fathers didn’t simply submit to persecution, but did so during and after attempts to reason with higher magistrates, appealing to them as authorities who had a role to fulfill as ministers of justice according to their own national laws and philosophy of jurisprudence, and more importantly under the universal Law of God recognized by pagans and Christians alike.

While Christians underwent persecution, therefore, they also recognized that what was happening to them was morally wrong. They suffered gladly for the name of Christ, but they didn’t fail to acknowledge that their persecutors were sinning greatly. In fact, they boldly acknowledged it. Why Christians did not engage in physical opposition to the powers that be is a question that needs to be answered by looking at their individual cases. The caricature of the early church as a pacifistic religion completely opposed to all forms of political involvement, however, is one that is in need of correction. The early post-NT church opposed the state’s wicked use of violence against innocent individuals, e.g. Christians who were not breaking the law, but did not oppose the state’s use of violence as a means of punishing the wicked, and also seemingly were not opposed to Christians being involved in the military.26 What this means is that there was a recognition of order God had given to society, a hierarchical order which could be, and ought to be, opposed when it ceases to perform its divinely ordained task (e.g. the punishment of evil and the rewarding of good).

Concluding Remarks

Our time is rife with political problems, problems that are directly affecting Christians throughout the world. In places like Canada and Australia, Christians are openly under direct attack from the government, being told they cannot engage in corporate worship, or that they can only engage in corporate worship in severely diminished numbers which amount to a fracturing of churches and spiritual harm done to those who don’t attend out of fear of the state’s retributive actions. In America, Christians are being told that religious exemptions from vaccine mandates are going to be closely scrutinized and likely rejected in some places,27 and have been told for going on two years now that engaging in corporate worship is a self health risk that amounts to a form of hating, and not loving, our neighbor.

While engaging in civil disobedience will not stop God’s decreed timeline from coming to fruition, it will demonstrate our commitment to the God who has ordained whatsoever comes to pass, including sin and the judgment of our nations. Submission to God first and foremost means that we acknowledge his law as supreme, and our commitment to his righteous ordinances as our highest and most socially beneficial duty. We ought to avoid violence, and plead with our accusers and enemies in every way that we can – appealing to the highest magistrates in our land, as well as every other magistrate beneath them, utilizing our civil and national privileges in order to peacefully maintain our right to worship God in the manner he has prescribed (inside and outside of the church). However, if the entire hierarchy of magistrates fall corrupt and fail to do their job of rewarding the good and punishing the evil, this merely means that we are to continue to uphold the righteousness of God by functioning as the lesser magistrate, which are all by nature.

As for the COVID related rules and regulations that are being used to destroy our economies, kill our weak, and destroy our lives, one question we might want to ask is:

Are these rules actually coming from our higher magistrates?

I have written on the illegality of these mandates, given the teaching of Scripture regarding the duties of the civil magistrate. However, assuming for the sake of argument that these mandates are not opposed to divine law, is it the case that they are actually coming from our duly elected officials? And if they are not, does this not clearly justify our non-compliance and rejection of those mandates?

I hope to answer these questions in my next post.

Until next time, remember that Christ is the King of all kings. We are duty bound to serve him, even if it costs us our lives.

Soli Deo Gloria.

1 cf. Matt 24:15-27 & 25:31-46; Rev 11:15-19.

2 cf. Matt 24:36.

3 2nd Thess 1:3-10.

4 2nd Thess 1:11-12.

5 2nd Thess 2:1-12.

6 2nd Thess 2:13-17.

7 If my neighbor gives himself over to the rogue governing authorities to be murdered (metaphorically or literally), despite having been reasoned with and warned, then I believe he is guilty of taking his own life.

8 cf. Gen 15:12-16.

9 Matt 21:43.

10 Rev 2:5.

11 Rev 2:16.

12 Rev 2:20-22.

13 Rev 3:1b-3.

14 Rev 3:15-19.

15 Isa 9:8-12a.

16 Isa 10:5-13.

17 cf. Gen 1:26.

18 cf. Gen 3:1a.

19 cf. Gen 2:15-17.