abstract: As we depart from spiritual self government led by the Spirit of God, we also depart from political self government. We end up depending on a huge civil government to rule each individual.

Skip Navigation

by Larry Pratt

The men and women who founded America wished to see the kingdom of God expanded to the new world. They did not come to America to improve their economic well being. If prosperity had been their goal, they knew they could have stayed in Holland and achieved that.

The Pilgrims, and the Puritans who came after them, were particularly concerned about serving God. And it was this foundation in their beliefs and actions that made this country free.

The early civil code was explicitly based on the criminal code of the Old Testament. One book (170 years old) in the author's possession compiled these laws for the New England colonies. The laws frequently were published with footnotes to the Old Testament where a particular act was declared to be criminal.

The Pilgrims and Puritans enjoyed 50 years of peace with the Indians. This was the result of evangelization rather than exploitation. Civil and personal obedience to God was blessed with peace, prosperity, and freedom.

Spiritual Blindness and Rebellion

Today, we cannot say that most Americans share this desire to serve God. The country is drifting sideways into tyranny. This should not surprise us, based on what Scripture tells us. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that:

But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:15-17).

If we see freedom slipping away from us in the face of growing tyranny, it is because the Spirit of the Lord is no longer here. Other societies have experienced spiritual drifting and have suffered the dire consequences. Consider the church of Laodecia. They grew lukewarm about the things of the Lord, and His Spirit left that church. The church disappeared along with the city.

The prophet Zephaniah described the spirit of the people of Israel as stagnant. They had become a "rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me" (Zeph. 1:12; 2:15).

If America comes to the point where she says: "I am," then America will suffer the same fate as did Israel when she forget the Rock on which she had also been founded.

There are basically only two worldviews, two ways of understanding America's crisis. One is through God's eyes, through the Scriptures. This way of seeing is enabled by the working of God's Spirit in our lives. The other way of understanding is through our own eyes, trusting in our own spirit and in rebellion against God.

The alternative to a biblical worldview in political terms is described as socialism, but socialism is driven by humanism. Humanism is based on the exaltation of man as his own god. Zephaniah wrote that the humanists of Israel described themselves with the divine word--"I am." Modern day humanists do the same. The humanist sees himself as god and believes that the government is his spirit. "My spirit will accomplish all things," is their belief in practice.

Just as God controls all things, so the devil seeks to control all things. Were the humanists to succeed in imposing their view of government on us, we would know the curse of God was upon us in the form of a totalitarian government.

The good news is that finite sinners cannot fill God's shoes. That does not keep the Congress and other legislative bodies from trying, and they do work very hard to accomplish it. The Congress is constantly discovering just how big are the shoes of the God they seek to fill.

Evolution has provided the modern rationale for defying God's norms as well as our Constitution. Judge Stephen Reinhardt sits on the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. He is infamous for a number of decisions. Among them was one ordering the removal of "under God" from the pledge of allegiance and another for finding that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals.

The following is a quote from the Judge that explains how evolution is used to defy his oath of office to uphold the Constitution:

How can you tell a judge is a liberal? It's not that hard. Liberal judges believe in a generous or expansive interpretation of the Bill of Rights. We believe that the meaning of the Constitution was not frozen in 1789. That, as society develops and evolves, its understanding of constitutional principles also grows. We believe that the Founding Fathers used broad general principles to describe our rights because they were determined not to erect, enact a narrow, rigid code that would bind and limit all future generations.

Just as it is a lie that evolution has been proven scientifically, so it is a lie to say that the Founders had no intention of erecting or enacting "a narrow, rigid code that would bind and limit all future generations." Consider Jefferson's statement that: "In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Let me offer one more example of how evolution has allowed politicians to puff themselves up by quoting from Al Gore's statement during the 2000 Democratic primary that the Constitution is a "living and breathing document, that...was intended by our Founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people."

Proper Role of Government

As Christians, we should know that the civil government is to be quite limited. Happily many of those limits were built into our Constitution. True, the Framers could have done better, and the way we know that is by comparing the Constitution to the Bible.

Paul gives us a very concise disquisition on the role and size of government in his letter to the Romans. He begins it in Romans 12:19 with this instruction: "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Paul proceeds to explain how vengeance is to be carried out for Him--through the civil government. In Romans 13:3-4 Paul writes:

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he 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.

The yardstick for the government is what is "good." The Bible permits us to define good only in biblical terms. When governments begin to call what is good evil and what is evil good, they lose their legitimacy. The American colonists understood that King George and the British Parliament had become illegitimate, and therefore in conscience they had to obey God rather than man.

The Bible makes it clear what sins have civil penalties and which ones do not. The government is limited to enforcing the civil penalties laid out in Scripture. To add to or take away from this mandate is to slide into illegitimacy. Capital punishment (the wielding of the sword to use Paul's terms) is the ultimate sanction for enforcing criminal penalties.

We increasingly are viewing government's role as that of telling us what we must do and what is good for us rather than what would criminally injure another. This emphasis is crowding out the biblical understanding of government's role as that of tracking down bad guys and administering justice.

A concomitant of government's growing role is the notion that the people are subjects, not citizens. Not only are we subjects, but we are suspect subjects in need of constant monitoring and direction. Subjects need to be transparent to the government which wants to know all about our guns, our money, our children, our health--everything. They want to know everything about us, but what do we know about them? If we are going to have a transparent group of people in the country, it should be the bureaucrats. The appropriate slogan is "Register bureaucrats, not guns."

Effects of Illegitimate Government

The exit of Christians from the public arena has allowed humanists to increasingly dominate our public life. Here are some areas of concern.

Effects on the Environment

We are told to have dominion over the earth. Yet our government is full of those committed to the proposition that earth should have dominion over man. Some environmentalist leaders explicitly reject the dominion mandate of Genesis 1. They want to return to an improvable notion of what America was like before Columbus.

We know what kind of stewardship these extremists offer. It was not private timberlands that were burning during the summer of 2002. Those were forests unconstitutionally owned by the federal government. Almost from the beginning of the Republic, the feds have unconstitutionally owned land beyond the little permitted by the Constitution. But we drifted, not ran, to the presently gargantuan holdings in the grasp of the Washington bureaucrats. We have been assured that this government expansion has been for our good--especially for our children.

Effects on Education

Another area under assault from unbiblical government is that of education. Government schooling is based on the lie that Jesus Christ is not king--even though that was the rallying cry of those who fought the War of Independence. Teachers are not allowed to teach that, Christ "is before all things, and by him all things consist." (Col. 1:17) Teachers should be teaching about Jesus in every course. They are allowed to teach Him in none. The exception might be a class in street talk.

Alan Quist in his book, FedEd, has shown how the Department of Education has become a gun issue (among many others). H.R. 6 was passed under Clinton. The law specifically gave a no-bid contract to the Center on Civic Education to revamp from the top down America's civic education curricula. Textbooks are now being rewritten to conform to those guidelines.

Forget God. The new books ignore even natural rights and the right to keep and bear arms, to name two significant omissions. But there are plenty of references to multiculturalism (definition: all cultures are swell except Christian culture) and to the environment.

The national tests that all students--those in government schools as well as private and home schools--will have to take are being revised to fit the new curriculum guidelines.

We will soon have people voting who have no clue of the basis of liberty on which this country was built. When the Clintons, Gores, and other socialists grab for some more of our liberties, they will be met with applause, not tar and feathers.

This is such a massive assault from the educrats that they have become a gun issue. The Department of Education and its budget has become a gun vote.

When government gets involved where it should not it makes a mess. We have glanced at the environment and at education. Now, let's look at self defense.

Effects on Crime

God has given the defense of life first to individuals. It is an individual responsibility. It is part of the stewardship required by the dominion mandate. Murdered and kidnapped people do not have dominion over the earth.

The righteous are not to give way to the wicked, Proverbs 25:26 tells us: it is like a murky spring or a polluted well. It stinks. It is wrong. God does not want the evil to be taking from the righteous. It is the same as taking from God.

Christ, in His last sermon given in the Upper Room given just hours before his crucifixion, exhorted his disciples to, if need be, sell their cloak and get a sword. From the context it is clear He meant, and the disciples so understood, a metallic sword. Christ knew that he did not need to carry a weapon, but He knew that after He was gone, His disciples would. He was leaving them in an evil world so that they could be salt. There are people who hate salt; thus the disciples needed the wherewithal to deal with that.

We have some laboratory experiments to help us evaluate the results of the government disarming the people in the name of keeping the peace. We have Washington, D.C. in the U.S., and abroad we have Great Britain and Jamaica. In all three jurisdictions, gun bans have been accompanied by laws against self defense.

In Washington, D.C. it is nearly impossible to own a firearm--unless you work for the government. Their personnel are always exempted from the laws that burden the rest of us. It is illegal to use a firearm in self defense in Washington; indeed, it is illegal to use most anything that might be even somewhat effective in self defense. As a result, Washington D.C. has, year after year, about the highest murder rate of any jurisdiction in our country.

England has ended up with almost an identical set of laws. The country's leaders have taken what was once a peaceful land and turned it into nearly the most violent country in the world according to a UN study published in 2002. Nearly all guns were confiscated in England in 1997. Now England has an even higher violent crime rate than two other countries with nearly as draconian anti-gun laws: Russia and Brazil. The Mayor of London has said that he is safer in New York City than he is in London.

In Jamaica, a country with a longer experience with gun control and a complete gun and bullet ban, gangs with guns rule the night. Tour boats are dropping Jamaica as a stop--too dangerous. Besides, if one of your passengers got caught with a mere bullet in his pocket (not even in a gun where it might do him some good), he could get a year in jail.

Gun control works, but not the way many people think. It is not crime it controls. We now have enough evidence to conclude that gun control is a total failure and should be abolished. It only works for criminals and tyrants.

Self Government

As we depart from spiritual self government led by the Spirit of God, we also depart from political self government. We end up depending on a huge civil government to rule each individual.

How can we argue against government usurpation of our liberties if we have turned over our most fundamental right--self protection--to the government? Giving away the right to life to the government is to give away the ball game.

The war against our guns is but a proxy battle for all the rest of our freedoms that are under attack. The English have given up nearly all their rights. Another way of saying that is that England is very near being a thoroughly socialist country. They are sliding into the same pit into which most of Europe has already fallen. May England's experience be one we learn from; may we turn from the path at the edge of the same pit.

When the anti-self defense policies of the politicians fail, they do not admit to failure. After all, gods do not make mistakes. If there is a problem, it's because we haven't let god be god enough. Answer? More power. And blame failures on someone else.

U.S. politicians shift blame to third parties for what the criminals do. Criminals are not responsible. Sue the manufacturers of guns, not criminals.

In England, criminals are not responsible either. And if a victim shoots a criminal, the victim goes to jail. For example, a couple was recently attacked in their home by knife-wielding invaders. The husband wrested the knife from the hand of the thug who had a knife on his wife's throat. The husband killed the attacker, chased away the other and ended up in jail. Disproportionate use of force, you know.

Before we think the British are the only crazy people, let's examine ourselves. We no longer think of a police officer as a peace officer. Peace officers are described in Romans 13. They come to restore the peace broken by the one who has already done evil. Increasingly, we think of police officers as law enforcement officers. Law enforcement is for the purpose of making sure subjects comply with what the EPA tells us to do, or what the Department of Education tells us to do--or what the many unconstitutional bureaucracies we have multiplied in Washington and in other government centers tell us to do.

Consolidation of Police Powers

When America was attacked 50 years ago, we not only suffered from the devastation of Pearl Harbor. We also were afflicted by the shelling of California refineries by Japanese submarines, by attempts to burn costal forests with unmanned floating fuel bombs and by provocateurs slipped into Long Island by German submarines. The response was not from governors who called Washington for "Help!" Rather, the governors mobilized their state militias and patrolled their coasts on land and in the air with armed men.

Today, no governor has done that. There would be no state guards that could be mobilized anyway. The concept of a true, people's militia has just about been completely forgotten. The Homeland Security Act has only accelerated the trend toward handing over domestic self defense to the government--and worse still, to the federal government.

We, the People need to be telling our servants in Washington that they have no constitutional police authority except for postal fraud, counterfeiting, treason, and piracy. This was the view of James Madison, an expert witness generally regarded as the father of the Constitution. The rest of the country's policing should be conducted at the local level where the Founders intended.

All the centralized, bureaucratized, professionalized police power concentrated at the federal level certainly failed to stop September 11. When the massive invasions of our Fourth and Fifth Amendment liberties in the USA Patriot Act was being debated, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked a crucial question: Which of these powers in the bill would have helped prevent September 11? Attorney General John Ashcroft replied that none would have helped.

So, why were these sweeping powers being rammed through the Congress? Historically, as well as with the USA Patriot Act, crisis is the soil in which massive growth of government power flourishes. To change the metaphor, the USA Patriot Act was a bit like political leftovers. The Clinton administration had failed to get all that it wanted after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The leftovers were put away by Clintonista lawyers at the Justice Department and not taken out again by those same lawyers until September of 2001. Most of the leftovers were gobbled up in a political orgy called the USA Patriot Act.

The Homeland Security Department will be less efficient fighting crime than were the smaller but still quite inefficient burgeoning police bureaucracies in Washington. It is the wrong venue anyway. It is an insult to the local police to say that they cannot handle what was a local crime committed in several localities on September 11. Indeed, had local police been given the information possessed by the FBI, the INS and the CIA at that time, they might well have disrupted those crimes before they were committed.

Do we really think that a bigger police agency will be better? More federal government control of more land has only resulted in more mismanagement. More federal government control of education has only resulted in students who are more ignorant and more immoral.

Look at the Keystone Cop routine that we saw during the search for the Beltway Sniper. They were looking for everyone but the right guy. They "knew" that the killer had to live in the Maryland area, be a loser white guy, and be driving a white van truck. He turned out to be a Black Muslim of no fixed address driving a dark sedan. Clues that indeed pointed to the two who were apprehended were rejected. Time was lost and people died, but the incompetent profiling lived on.

We want to give these failures more power? Such blindness comes from having turned our backs on God. As with the people of Israel, we are getting rulers like other people have.

Rebels Make Bad Choices

Consider, by the way, that during the time of the Judges, the Jews had a militia and no army. Their apostasy would result in periodic oppression from other nations. As soon as they had kings they had an army, and the warnings by the prophet Samuel of the oppression to come indeed came to pass. Under their kings, their oppression came from their own rulers. It is a lot easier to throw off a foreigner wearing a red coat, for example, than one of us who is dressed and speaks just as we do. The Jews eventually sank under the increasingly sinful leadership of their kings.

The answer for us is the same as it was for Old Testament Israel. Turn away from our rebellion and seek God again. God told Solomon during the installation of the temple in Jerusalem words that apply equally to us today:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land (2 Chron. 7:14).

One of the critical concepts in this passage is "my people." America is not going to turn around because Al Gore was not elected president, although that was a good outcome. This country will turn around when those of us in the church take seriously what it means to be Christians. To do so means we will be accused of being radical Christians. You know, like Jesus, Paul and others of that day.

The church did not spread throughout a wannabe totalitarian Roman empire because it was comprised of wusses. They were willing to risk their lives. Many of them did lose their lives. They got up every day with the notion that their job was to push back the gates of hell for the glory of God. Matthew 16:18 records Christ telling the disciples that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against [the church]." If the gates do not prevail, it is because the church is attacking them--not retreating from them.

We glorify God by spiritually being on the attack. We have not been on the attack very often, and the paganization of America shows it. And by the way, as much as I like my guns--and I'm not planning to let anybody have them--I want to emphasize that I am talking about a spiritual war.

King Jehoshaphat restored Israel to a considerable amount of greatness. He cleaned up the land. There was a lot of immorality that he swept away. But the cleansing was done by fiat, not because the hearts of the people changed. And sadly, Jehoshaphat was double minded.

He cleaned up Israel under him, but he allowed his son Jehoram to marry a daughter of one of the most wicked couples to ever live (before Bill and Hillary)--Ahab and Jezebel. What did Jehoram do when Jehoshaphat died? He killed all his brothers and led the country straight to hell. It only took about eight years to undo all the work of his father.

Where Jehoshaphat failed so miserably was to obey the requirement to equip the church (beginning with our own families) to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:12-13).

The Way Back

Whether Americans like it or not, we are a nation that was established in covenant with God. God does not want us playing church. He is not pleased by the sacrifices of a rebellious or lukewarm heart. He wants obedience.

If we see America drifting toward Sodom and Gomorrah in pursuit of modern-day Ahabs and Jezebels, it is because we have not obeyed the requirement to disciple our own generation, and the next.

America will turn back to righteousness when the pulpits preach the colonial ministers' cry that "We have no king but King Jesus." When that is being preached, Christians will engage in the spiritual battles of everyday life with the same cry: "We have no king but King Jesus."

Properly understood, this is the Great Commission that Christ gave to His disciples shortly before He ascended to heaven:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matt. 28:19-20).

Napoleon did not understand spiritual things, but he had a principle that Christians should apply in the spiritual warfare we are to be involved in: "Attack! Attack! Always attack!"

This article is based on an election day sermon delivered to Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL on November 2, 2002 by Larry Pratt. Pratt is a member of the National Reform Association Board of Directors and is the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (+1 888 886 GUNS, or www.gunowners.org).

back to top