Commentary: THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNIVERSE

[Marnie]

A friend e-mailed this link to me; I thought it was interesting, so here you go.

Some excerpts:

You have heard it preached from the pulpits of the churches all across America: "Christians must obey Civil Government; that is what the Bible teaches." [Were the Jews taught this lie in the 1930's Germany?] This is a false teaching filled with error.

God's command was very clear. He gave man complete dominion over the earth environment (Geneses 9:1-3) but kept dominion of man for Himself. (Genesis 9:4-7) The statue of the death penalty was given in Genesis 9:4-7. The purpose of the death penalty was to preserve life. (Genesis 9:

But doesn't the Bible teach that we must always obey government, even a Godless, corrupt government? No, a thousand times no. (Acts 5:29-32) [The true and loving God would never ask his people to obey evil, never, this is a lie perpetrated by blind leaders of the blind preachers.]

The officer of the state is ordained of God to minister that, which is good. Therefore, the town

[Matthitjah]

Grace to you,

Eph

[Matthitjah]

Grace to you,

An example;

Ac

[50_Cent's_dog]

We must obey the law if it doesn't go against the laws of God. For example: If a sign says no fishing. If we decide to fish anyway, we have chosen to sin. If a sign says No Tresspassing and we trespass we have sinned.

If a law says turn in every illegal alien. Then we must ask God for wisdom to do what is right. What if the law of the land says you need a micro chip in your hand and forehead to buy or sell?

The laws of God and the law of the land may be two different things. Wisdom is needed to do what is right in the eyes of God.

[amdntstr]

We must obey the law if it doesn't go against the laws of God. For example: If a sign says no fishing. If we decide to fish anyway, we have chosen to sin. If a sign says No Tresspassing and we trespass we have sinned.

If a law says turn in every illegal alien. Then we must ask God for wisdom to do what is right. What if the law of the land says you need a micro chip in your hand and forehead to buy or sell?

The laws of God and the law of the land may be two different things. Wisdom is needed to do what is right in the eyes of God.

Agreed!!

I will personally turn in illegal aliens. Only because it is right. There are ways to come into this country and there are way to not come into this country. My ancestors had to go through the system, I do know know why it would be right for anyone to disobey the law when there are alternatives. The easy way is not always the right way.

[vitality22004]

Jesus said, Render unto Caesar what is due unto Caesar, and My kingdom is not of this world. We are citizens of His kingdom, sojourners on earth, so the laws of the kingdom apply to us.

God Bless

[buckthesystem]

The fallacy that Christians should always obey the "law of the land" even in the face of obvious immorality and plain wrong is very dangerous indeed.

I haven't seen it quoted in this thread but I have often heard Romans 13 wrongly used as an excuse to excuse any kind of government atrocity of abuse. I believe that Romans 13 is generally misunderstood and that the wider context of the New Testament shows the correct meaning.

Romans 13 starts off with "Let every soul be subject to the 'higher powers'...." In this (and in fact any) case "higher powers" means God and his ministers and ordinances, not worldly rulers. God does not ordain worldly rulers.

Does anyone think that God ordained Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin, Benito Musselini, Pol Pot, or any one of the hundreds of nasty, murderous "world leaders"?

We have to be very careful in differentiating between the "law of God" and the "law of man". There are laws against murder and stealing, but these are not laws of man, but laws of God as they are also in the ten commandments. It is incredibly arrogant of man to claim "you must not steal because "I" say so. This really has nothing to do with man/politicians/lawmakers, we do not need them to tell us that it is wrong to kill as God has already told us that.

I think we have to start thinking for ourselves and stop obsequiously obeying "law enforcement personnel" and politicians. About 20% of the laws in existance exist for reasons of logic and reason and are totally consistent with God's law, whereas the other 80% exist entirely to line the pockets of greedy politicians and bureaucrats or satisfy their insatiable desire to weild power over the population.

50cent dog, you mentioned the example: "if a sign says 'no fishing' if we decide to fish anyway we have chosen to sin". Really I'm not trying to pick holes in your comments, just get people thinking. We should look at the reason why it is demanded that there be "no fishing", we might just find that the only "reason" is that some greedy politician wants to impose control and the bureaucracy that was created around the idea that people should obey signs written by bureaucrats wants to become even more bloated with the money they can extort in "fines" for fishermen.

Christians often get around this by saying that we should obey the laws of man as long as they do not conflict with the laws of God. But often they do anyway. Most governments are evil, their main concern is to perpetuate fat, bloated hoards of bureaucrats who do nothing uselful but are entirely self serving and grow like a virus.

I see that paying taxes is one of the things being advocated as "a law to obey". So why should you pay taxes towards the cost of women having abortions or Terry Schiavo being starved to death? Surely if you help pay for it, you must be condoning it.

Another passage that is often quoted is "render unto Ceasar what is Caesar's ....." Well, doesn't everything belong to God anyway? One theory is that this was said by Jesus as a sort of a way of saying what he meant (i.e. "it is God's anyway") but avoiding confrontation as well, as at the time it was said, to advocate not paying taxes would have been a death sentence.

I don't believe in total anarchy as I believe we need some semblence of order in the world but when Jesus appears in the other seat and says to me "wear your seatbelt and slow your speed down, you are breaking my law" I will do up my seatbelt and slow down, but until then I will continue to "buckthesystem" (this is, of course, when I am on a rural road miles away from any cyclists, pedestrians or children).

We "break the law" every day. It is almost impossible for us not to as a lot of the laws OF MAN are created entirely to tempt us to break them and as a result provide money for governments. Why do we accept that it is a sin to kill and yet we must obey a government who orders us to kill (or at least be complicit in a killing by not objecting to it)? And we accept that it a sin to steal, yet we condone government doing it all the time?

Sure Jews in Europe during the 1930s might have bought into the lie that they had to obey civil government and they were "sinning" if they did not, and they paid the price for that and had trust in civil government but it was very much to their detriment. We should learn from that.

If we break the laws of God we will be held accountable for it before God. Governments break the laws of God all the time and the leaders and lawmakers (and hopefully those who actually carry out the "orders" of governments) will also be held accountable and judged before God. Yet funnily enough those who kill or steal on behalf of government are never held accountable in this life as well. They simply chant "I am just doing my job". Well, is God going to be impressed by that statement and just say "oh well, if it was your job, then it must be OK". Reading about the Nuremberg trials of 1946 brings to mind that the excuse was often "I was just obeying orders" or "I was just doing my job". The judge at the time was not impressed by this and I don't think God will be either. Will God accept "we were just obeying civil government" as our excuse when we are asked why we helped pay for millions of abortions to occur, for Terry Schiavo to be killed, for six million Jews to be massacred, for people to be killed at Ruby Ridge or the atrocities that occurred at Mt Carmel or for millions of other people to die at the hands of civil governments? What are we going to say to God when he asks us why we were silent and watched political correctness take hold of the education system and "strangle the life out of" our children? Are we going to tell him that we had to obey civil government?

This is what I mean by "dangerous".

Of course this is just my opinion and I certainly don't expect everybody to agree, but it is food for thought.

[Matthitjah]

Grace to you,

50cent dog, you mentioned the example: "if a sign says 'no fishing' if we decide to fish anyway we have chosen to sin". Really I'm not trying to pick holes in your comments, just get people thinking. We should look at the reason why it is demanded that there be "no fishing", we might just find that the only "reason" is that some greedy politician wants to impose control and the bureaucracy that was created around the idea that people should obey signs written by bureaucrats wants to become even more bloated with the money they can extort in "fines" for fishermen.

Then again it may actually be that there is something in the water that is dangerous to you and someone is just looking out for society in general.

From the article;

Romans 13:6-7 "For this cause pay ye tribute also: For they are God

[OpenSky]

Thank you for the words and the link.

This have told me a lot.

[buckthesystem]

Quote: "50cent dog, you mentioned the example: "if a sign says 'no fishing' if we decide to fish anyway we have chosen to sin". Really I'm not trying to pick holes in your comments, just get people thinking. We should look at the reason why it is demanded that there be "no fishing", we might just find that the only "reason" is that some greedy politician wants to impose control and the bureaucracy that was created around the idea that people should obey signs written by bureaucrats wants to become even more bloated with the money they can extort in "fines" for fishermen".

Then Mathitjah said: "Then again it may actually be that there is something in the water that is dangerous to you and someone is just looking out for society in general".

Well, the answer to this is obvious. Are we all some sort of mentally retarded children who have to be protected from ourselves and who might irresponsibly fish in poisonous waters and need to be told by bureaucrats "don't do that" but protected also from knowing why - if that is indeed the reason we should not fish there?

We should question everything and not take anything at face value as there is often a sinister motive behind "it is the law, you have to do it". We owe it to ourselves and everyone else to ask why, all the time.

And further, "render therefore to all, their dues: Tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom is due, fear......., honour .......etc." I looked into the "meaning of the original words of the time" and I believe that "tribute" refers to "voluntary tithes to our ministers who attend to our salvation" NOT taxes paid to greedy government officials. And "custom" refers to other tithes to other ministries when we travel. And as for "fear" and "honour", do we really owe government officials and politicians "fear" and "honour"?

We have to be real and look at what civil government is. It is a series of politicians who are head of layers of bureaucratic "officials" down to petty "officials", who carry out the often evil policies of the politicians. Logically would God ordain that?

Are we to obey civil government when they tell us we must all take "the mark of the beast"? Right up to, and including, the point where they say we must "dob in our neighbour" because they might be a Jew or a Gypsy or a Christian and therefore are a "danger to society" - in the words of the civil government?

The true sin, surely, is putting the law of man before the law of God.

Even further, I believe that all Christians have a responsibility - an OBLIGATION if you like - to "buck the system" and QUESTION EVERYTHING (i.e. is the demand by civil government for some moral reason, or not?) No civil government "official" should have automatic obedience and respect. These things must be reserved for God alone.