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by Raymond Joseph

A condensed version of this article appears as the introduction to the National Reform Association's recent reprint of Messiah the Prince. In the book, Symington presents the doctrine of the mediatorial reign of Christ and provides a classic Reformed perspective on the subject of the relationship between church and state. It is hoped that this article will not only introduce Symington's invaluable work, but will also motivate the reader to obtain a copy of Messiah the Prince (for ordering information, see the inside of the back cover).

William Symington, Covenanter pastor of a Reformed Presbyterian congregation in the town of Stranraer, eighty miles south of Glasgow on the southwest coast of Scotland, was born in Paisley on June 2, 1795. Near the end of his Stranraer pastorate, after recovering from nearly a year of ill health, he finished the manuscript for Messiah the Prince, as he says in his diary for November 14, 1838: "This day finished MS. of Messiah the Prince, and on Monday (12) corrected first proof sheet."

Dr. Symington's outstanding work has proved to be an enduring theological classic, one of the clearest expositions of the Scriptures in support of the proposition that Jesus Christ was appointed by the Father as King over all men and nations (Psalm 2). The reprint of this classic is to be heartily welcomed with a renewed enthusiasm for the biblical doctrine of the "Crown Rights of King Jesus." He is "Lord of all" (Acts 10:36), including civil government.

In 1864, not long after Symington wrote Messiah the Prince, that awesomely bloody distress in America known as the "War Between the States" (or, "Civil War," or "Great Bloody Holocaust") led the Covenanters to found the "National Reform Association." Later, in 1884, it was the NRA which issued the first reprint of Messiah the Prince [Philadelphia, The Christian Statesman Publishing Company, 1884]. 106 years later, Still Waters Revival Books reprinted it in 1990, and now the NRA has reprinted it for a second time, 115 years after its first reprint.

Now, 161 years later, we come to 1999, when we are witnessing a time of perhaps greater church apostasy, ignorance, and failure to teach the whole counsel of God, especially as regards Christian civil government, since the period prior to the Reformation of the 16th century. May the reprint of Symington's Messiah the Prince be so blessed in the providence of Almighty God as to serve His purposes: to awaken the slumbering churches to rethink their governmental duties, which the apostolic church recognized as their duty--a duty, the implementation of which, today's church is in total confusion; to prompt more prayer and labor for a change from today's abject and servile acceptance by the churches of humanistic civil governments; to reassume their God-given responsibility to build Christian civil governments; to begin refusing to accept the "status quo" of the seemingly never-ending proliferation of humanistic and illegitimate governmental bureaucracies with their endless regulations. This is a crucial dimension of the Whole Gospel, one which is missing from the thinking of today's church.

The Failure of Today's Church

The soon-to-be-21^st century church is suffering from a kind of prefrontal lobotomy of her spiritual brain. Her evangelism stands in stark contrast to the evangelism of the early church. The early church preached Christ's Kingship over the Roman Empire; today's church would rather (by default), preach Thomas Jefferson's bastardized, illicit, unauthorized, and improper doctrine of the "separation of church and state"--bastardized because it is unbiblical and apostate. Today's church doesn't know the difference between legitimate and illegitimate doctrines of the "separation of church and state." She stumbles along, oblivious to the biblical teaching that the Father has established His Son, the ruling Kingly Messiah, as King over the civil governments of nations (Psalm 2), rejecting Christian civil government, opting rather for Jefferson's secular version.

While not wishing to be overly critical, we must face reality. We live in a time of church failure in which no one group is looking good when measured by their degree of comprehension of Christ's command, by their resulting obedience, or lack of it, to the Whole Gospel of our Lord Jesus' Great Commission. Jesus said: "Make all nations my disciples," but today's church has responded: "Yes, Lord, but we have a better idea. We will revise your command, reducing it to the level of just making individual disciples, and ignoring the rest of it. We will conduct our personal evangelism, while avoiding the awkward context of bringing the whole nation to acknowledge you. You see, we have learned something you overlooked, Lord: we have learned to worship democracy, and the sovereignty of the 51%, and so we will wait for a majority vote before we will obey the whole of your command. We will wait for that magic majority before we will talk to anyone, much less new converts, about their obligation to bring their whole nation under God's law, and build a Christian civil government."

Our Lord cannot be pleased.

The Triumph of Christ

But for those who believe in the sovereign ability of Christ to empower His Whole Gospel in the hands of His Bride for whom He gave His life blood on the Cross, the day will come sooner than we think, when the "Crown Rights of King Jesus" will rightfully regain the contrite and thoughtful attention of, first, the churches, and secondly, the civil governments of all the nations of the earth. Scripture says that the day is coming when the nations will come to the church in a learning mode, taking notes on the law of God preached from its pulpits, and returning to their statehouses to enact legislation in keeping with that law (Isa. 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-5).

Symington's thesis in Messiah the Prince inevitably leads to an unavoidable conclusion: that Jesus Christ is the God-appointed Prince over all nations. All civil governments should--and will, someday--be "Christian." Furthermore, it is an absolute condition necessary for worldwide evangelization, that we learn to send forth missionaries who will teach their converts to build Christian civil governments in their respective nations; who will see this goal realized before Jesus returns bodily to end the history of this world as we have known it, and usher in the eternal age (1 Cor. 15:24-28), who will understand that Jesus will not return until this goal is realized (Phil. 2:9-10).

The Church Must Awake

Now, how can this possibly happen? How can the American church finally come to the realization that it is to be engaged in reading the Bible in one hand, the United States Constitution in the other, and drawing the right conclusions? Is it possible? Will we see it? Will our children see it? Our grandchildren?

It will begin happening when the church finally awakens to the yawning chasm of its failure to read and understand and obey what Jesus and Peter plainly said, that Jesus Christ is King over Caesar; that He is King over Washington, and every other world capital, and He is to be recognized as such.

The church must begin to relearn its history. For the past 311 years, ever since the Revolution Settlement of 1688 (actually 339 years, since the Stuart King Charles II repudiated the Solemn League and Covenant in 1660), the church has been sliding backwards, guilty of accepting in principle and approving in practice the whole lock, stock, and barrel of our present secularized civil government. When it comes to Christian civil government today's church is brain dead. She is suffering from a spiritual prefrontal lobotomy. When she finally regains her brain (our Sovereign God will see to that), and awakens to her failure, then it will be impossible for her to avoid the inevitable conclusion that the United States Constitution has failed for over 200 years to recognize the King of kings, King Jesus, the law of God, and that she has been complicit in this failure.

Today there is a fascinating debate between those who, on the one hand, believe that the church of Jesus is to witness primarily to individuals, and thus change society by personal evangelism (a blind commitment to worship that magical 51% majority), and those who believe that Jesus commanded His church to baptize and disciple whole nations--and we don't need a "majority" to do it. The former believe we must convert that magical 51% majority first, and then we can begin worrying about Christianizing our secular civil government later (if ever). For 311 years now, the former have been winning the debate, resulting in the Good Ship Church heading for the sand bar of the worship of "democracy" and the 51% vote.

This near-worship of the 51% majority as being necessary for the building of a Christian civil government in any nation is a massively deceptive assumption, teaching us that we must be committed to "democracy" above all other things, large and small. The 51% majority has become the church's ultimate authority; her real god ("the majority always rules"). Having drifted in this direction for 311 years (or 339 depending on where you begin counting the historic change in Christian thinking), it has finally eventuated in her being stuck fast in the sand bar of secular humanism. It will take all of the most powerful tugboats available to pull her loose; for every indication, even to the casual observer, is that she is not only stuck there, but is happy and complacent to remain so, content to be engaged in just "winning souls to Jesus" and avoiding her complete responsibility. A more helpless and hopeless situation is hard to imagine.

On the other hand, there are those who are convinced that it is the church's mission to witness to the nations; that individuals are really to be won to Christ in the context of a covenantal and corporate witness to the nations; that the churches are to be confessionally committed to obeying the command of King Jesus to baptize the nations, as He said: "All authority has been given to me in heaven and in earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations ('make all nations my disciples') baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:18-20). This clear statement of our Lord includes authority over civil government--Christian civil government.

The church desperately needs to resume preaching the Whole Gospel of Jesus as preached by the apostles, meaning that today's truncated version of the Gospel must be abandoned, or at least drastically modified to bring it into obedience to the Lord. The church must learn to present the gospel as the early church did: challenging Caesar's absolute rule (Acts 17:9). Christian civil government is not an option-- a mere matter of personal or church doctrinal preference--but an essential teaching of the New Covenant message that Jesus is Lord of all. The early church won. The pagan Roman Empire became the "Holy Roman Empire," certainly not paradise on earth, and not utopia, but a vast improvement on the pagan version.

When Peter preached to the Sanhedrin, "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12), he was directly contradicting the words of Augustus Caesar, who had claimed in 17 B.C., that, "Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name under heaven given to men in which they can be saved" (Quoted by R. J. Rushdoony from Ethelbert Stauffer's Christ and the Caesars [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955, pp. 81-89] in his Foundations of Social Order [Vallecito: Ross House Books, p.64]). Peter went head to head with Caesar! Would that today's church would do likewise--confronting the head of the Roman Empire with the radical doctrine that Caesar is accountable to a Higher Authority, namely, Jesus Christ! Later in the 17^th century, the Stuart kings would fight that doctrine with a passion in their vicious hatred for the Covenanters in Scotland.

Theonomy and Reconstruction

For Reformed Presbyterian Covenanters living in 16^th century Scotland 200 years before Symington, and for a long time thereafter, it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to find it necessary to enter into an apologetic for the proposition that the societies of men should be built upon the laws of God--like finding it essential to spend time proving that the world is round and not flat. Their reply to the question, "Do you believe that the church is to be active in building Christian societies?" would unhesitatingly be an enthusiastic, "Of course!"

The keen student of theology might well ask: "Is there any significant difference in either principle or practice between what has been termed as 'theonomy' and 'reconstruction' by some, and the historic Covenanter Testimony expounded by Symington?" The answer? Not really. The redoubted Covenanter Blue Banner, "For Christ's Crown and Covenant," has the law of God for society at its core, despite the insistence of detractors. Unquestionably, some profess to discover significant disparities between them. But, on careful examination, perceived differences between the foundational "theonomic" teachings and the prevailing Covenanter testimony, "For Christ's Crown and Covenant," have proven to be more matters of semantics than substance. The similarity of the basic assumptions underlying both of these prevalent manifestations is quite conventional: it is the law of God as found in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Both accept the necessity of building the societies of men on the laws of God. They are branches from the same root.

Now, except for Jesus' statement, "All authority has been given unto me in heaven and in earth," all this could be very discouraging. Is there any hope? Are there any encouraging signs, that the Lord of Glory has not cast off His wandering church? Well, yes. In the matchless providence of Almighty God, there is a "new" (but really quite old) Christian ideology arising in our generation which is not only basically friendly to the emphasis of Messiah the Prince, but proclaims it from the housetops!

Identified as "theonomy" or "reconstruction," it teaches us that the nations of this world are to be building their societies upon the laws of God as found in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. "Reconstruction" is a modern resurrection of a very old teaching, one which was assumed by the apostles and by our forefathers for 1600 years thereafter (up until the Revolution Settlement of 1688) as being obvious to every disciple of King Jesus, viz., that societies should be Christianized; that civil government should be Christian; that the law of God would of course be the foundation for all legislation.

During Symington's time, and before it was identified in this manner, disciples of this way of looking at the world (which is in striking contrast to the myopic vision of today's church) registered among its adherents the members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland, joined by its American cousin, the RPCNA (see above), popularly known as the "Covenanter Church." In other words, the early Covenanters assumed that the societies of men were to be built upon the laws of God in Scripture (my definition of "theonomy"). They didn't write as much about it as we would like perhaps, because, well, why reinvent the wheel? The assumption that the law of God was to be the foundation of society underlay the thinking of the Puritan authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith as well, an assumption which has all but disappeared from today's Christian thinking. (Look at the number of "Reformed" churches today which apparently have no regard for Christian civil government!) But regardless of what anyone says or thinks, the teaching of what is today known as "theonomy" or "reconstruction," and that of Messiah the Prince go together like a hand in a glove.

Furthermore, Messiah the Prince adequately establishes the basis for a national covenanting position. It lays the groundwork for the premise that there should be no antagonism be-tween the theologies of what is today known as "theonomy" or "reconstruction" and that of national covenanting, in the Covenanter Church or any other church. Consequently, "status quo amillennialism" is inevitably destined to be rapidly replaced by "Kingdom Victory" and eschatological optimism as the preferred eschatology of choice. "The kingdoms of this earth have become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever" (Rev. 11:15).

The biblical theme of Messiah the Prince is needed today as never before. It is our prayer that this theological classic will help to awaken and arm the church of Christ for the crucial challenges that await her in the 21^st Century.

May she learn to be faithful to her King, Who is "Lord of all."

Persecution of the Church

King James I was in violent opposition to the Geneva Bible, whose famous "marginal notes" put the blow torch to James' favorite doctrine, "the divine right of kings." So he secured the services of the biblical scholars to bring forth a new translation--without the hated "marginal notes." (We know that today as The King James Version of 1611.)

However, in the sovereign disposition of all events by our Lord the Westminster Confession of Faith was written in the midst of the English Civil War, and England actually enjoyed peace under Cromwell, the "Lord Protector," until the advent of James' grandson, Charles II. (James' son, Charles I, was actually beheaded for his opposition to Christian civil government!)

But, back in old pagan Rome, do we not now understand why the Christians were thrown to the lions in the Coliseum? Is it any wonder that Nero lit his garden parties with the gruesome lighting of the tar-soaked bodies of living Christians spiked on poles serving as evening garden torches? Such is the hatred of the pagans for the rule of King Jesus over civil government! For the next 250 years, the Caesars sporadically initiated vicious persecutions of the Christians in their midst, interspersed with cooling off periods, until the conversion of Emperor Constantine c.300 A.D. It was on Constantine's watch that we had the Edict of Milan of 312 A.D., which brought religious liberty and freedom to the Christians to worship without fear of the dread and dead hand of civil government interfering with the worship of Jehovah (free at last!).

The civil government of Rome had opposed the doctrine of Christ's Kingship over their presumed sovereignty over the turf of civil government, a hatred which was duplicated in spades 1600 years later by King Charles II, when he not only repudiated the Solemn League and Covenant, but determinedly tortured and slaughtered the Scottish Covenanters. After he died, his brother James II took up the sword, until 18,000 men, women, and children had been tortured and slaughtered without mercy. It was only then that Parliament had had enough, deposed James, and invited William of Orange to come to the rescue. The result was the Revolution Settlement of 1688, which stopped the slaughter and gave the Presbyterians liberty to choose their own pastors (good), but also, along with that relief, jettisoned the national covenants (bad). Civil government has been trending downward toward total secularization ever since. It has taken 311 years, but here we are!

Christian civilization is a hardy plant: difficult to stamp out; obstinately persisting in the thinking of once Christian nations. But today we in the United States, following the lead of our Founding Fathers--(some of whom were Christians who naively embraced the Trojan Horse doctrine of "natural law," thinking that this would retain a Christian character, and therefore have wider appeal--[how wrong they were! see The Christian Statesman, January -February, 1999 issue on the topic]) have almost succeeded in totally eliminating religion from public discourse, thanks to the church's failure to believe it, to teach it, and insist before the civil government that the authority of the "king" must be based upon the law of God. What is needed today is a world wide witness to the Whole Gospel of King Jesus. What is needed is a full commitment to study the doctrines elucidated by William Symington in this landmark book, Messiah the Prince. But today, what do we see? "Don't put your laws on my body"--that reckless cry of the feminist--has been the "in your face" consequence of the church's abdication of her responsibility to teach the whole counsel of God.

The Situation Today

So what of today? We see the effects of a profound evangelical malaise, with more professing "born again" Christians than ever, existing side by side with a frightening and unprecedented rise of societally destructive perversions of all kinds--all the old disgustingly familiar brands, with new ones seemingly being invented daily. We have just heard two well known Christian conservative leaders publicly announce that they were giving up on politics; warning the church that the "political solution" is the wrong way to go; that we should just go back to saving souls.

Something is wrong with today's church. What is it? And what can the church do about the unprecedented flood of iniquity inundating our society? How can we again build the societies of men on the laws of God?

Apparently the answer is: "Not much." In spite of ten years of a flurry of "Christian conservative" political activity, plus rising anti-abortion protests, when compared to the early Covenanters who were Symington's immediate ancestors--(separated by 200 years--there is that hardy Christian civilization again!)--and in whose footprints he strode, today's evangelical church seems wimpish and nearly impotent, with less power than ever to shape society along the lines of the laws of God. She seems to be reduced to merely threshing about, hopelessly bemoaning the rise of abortion, the sludge of pornography, the rise of the "gay" movement, the election and re-election of a Chief Executive who comes from an "Arkansas Mafia" using his talents on loan from God to ingratiate himself with a languid and indifferent public, all the while perverting the sacrosanct Oval Office with the services of a tort, selling our vital national technological secrets to our enemies, and irresponsibly beginning a war in the Balkans.

Behold the wondrous and nefarious influence of our "We the People" Constitution, which, along with its many excellencies as a "procedural document" (as R. J. Rushdoony correctly observed), nevertheless disallows any moral standards for holding public office--(see Article VI, par. 3b "...but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.") Today, our "We the People" constitution has been interpreted by the secularists in our midst, with the acquiescence of the slumbering church, as meaning "no moral test" shall ever be required. Furthermore, even a cursory examination of Madison and Hamilton's renowned and revered Federalist Papers, will reveal that they refused to reference the Bible or the laws of God in Scripture, but yet have numerous references to the pagan Greeks and Romans.

It should be obvious to all who pass by where Madison and Hamilton were looking for their authority! This is consistent with the overall tone of their appeal to "natural law" which everyone--Christian and non-Christian alike--was supposed to obey by virtue of the fact that they were walking on two legs on the face of this earth. "Natural law" was sufficient authority--sufficient legitimacy--for them to organize a civil government, and, as it turned out, was sufficient for the church as well which naively lent its approval. "Natural law" would get everyone's approval, and the law of God in Scripture would not, especially from leading intellectuals like the two Thomases: Paine and Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, who, it was thought, would never approve of a constitution which acknowledged the Kingship of the King of kings and His law as the foundation for the nations. Does the coin of complicity in their sellout to secularism serve as further justification for their wimpishness in failing to insist that Christ should be honored as King of this new nation? The churches had a convenient fig leaf: just point to Jefferson's rewrite of the Gospels, in which he, in his superior wisdom, left out all of Jesus' miracles, and presented a gutted "gospel," the good works of all of us ("natural law"?) being sufficient for any man's "salvation." The churches were cowed before Jefferson's towering intellect. Surely it would be better to accept half a loaf, and go for "We the People" as the ultimate source of law. Little did they know what lay ahead as the nation would steadily secularize, with Christian society being in gradual retreat during the next 200 years! Today it is in panic retreat before the monstrous colossus of a secularizing society.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church

Well, all churches, that is, except for one church: the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, which still maintains in her Testimony the necessity for nations to covenant with King Jesus. The American Covenanters protested what they perceived as a rejection of King Jesus from the American civil government. It was they, the RPCNA, who founded the National Reform Association in 1864, to rally Christians from other denominations around the cause of Christian civil government--and, by the way, with a surprising amount of success, at least for a while.

Reformed Presbyterian Covenanters living in 16^th century Scotland 200 years before Symington, and for a long time thereafter, were firmly committed to the proposition that the societies of men should be built upon the laws of God. They were convinced that the church is to be active in building Christian societies, calling upon each nation to submit to the lordship of Christ in all spheres, including that of civil government.

However, being the only church believing this heavy theological freight has proven to be an enormous and awesome task for a small denomination like the American Covenanters (the RPCNA). The North American branch of the Covenanter Church has been zealous in testifying for Christian civil government.

(The confessional national covenanting statement in the Declaration and Testimony of the RPCNA [paralleling the 1648 Westminster Confession of Faith] can be accessed from the Southfield, Michigan congregation's web page.)

To evidence the predominant force of this doctrine in the RPCNA, this small denomination founded the Christian Amendment Movement during a period of time of eclipse and lost direction in the NRA (the NRA has now recovered her original vision). The synod supported two ministers who were sent to Washington D.C. as lobbyists for the Christian Amendment to the Constitution. (Revs. G.M. "Mac" Robb, and Samuel E. Boyle, both witty and beloved ministers. At this writing, "Sam" Boyle is in his 90s, living in Kansas City.) But the secularization of America was too far advanced for this noble effort to succeed; it was a discouraging time for both the men and the synod, which dropped the effort after nine years of trying. That pioneering effort was disbanded less than forty years ago!

Nevertheless, the brunt of the witness "For Christ's Crown and Covenant"--meaning the testimony for Christ's Crown Rights over the Federal Constitution of the United States of America--has been borne by the RPCNA for well over two hundred years. The Covenanter Church in America has consistently maintained in her testimony that "We the People" in the preamble of that Constitution is actually a hunting license for humanism, rather than merely a mild and relatively innocuous description identifying who the ultimate lawgivers are in our nation. The Federal Constitution is crystal clear: it is not God; it is not Christ; it is not the law of God, nor is it the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, but rather "We the People" who are the ultimate source of law in this nation.

Against all odds, the American Covenanter Church (RPCNA) has continued to press the question: Who actually formed the fledgling United States government when it solidified our freedom from the political dominance of England by writing the Constitution of 1787? Was it, "We, the People under God"? "We, the People under Christ"? Or just, "We, the People"? The American cousins of William Symington's Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland said in a clear and unmistakable confessional testimony backed up by the practice of "political dissent" enforced by the threat of ecclesiastical excommunication for those refusing to protest our Christless constitution: "The Preamble is clear; it says: 'We, the People.' Period. And that is humanistic!"

Finally, after approximately 180 years of practicing the application of "political dissent," the RPCNA in 1980 modified her stand to require her members to vote, "only for those candidates who declare their adherence to Christian principles of civil government," in other words, their dedication to and understanding of the theonomic cause of building the societies of men on the laws of God!

Thus, for two centuries the RPCNA has assumed the posture of protest: protesting ["pro"--for; "test"--a testimony: "for a testimony"] that "Messiah the Prince" has been spurned by the framers of our nation's constitution. It has been a lonely road, in the midst of the rest of the churches who have failed (refused?) to recognize that King Jesus is King of civil governments; that they should join together in working for the fundamental change in our nation, that of establishing Christian civil government; who said that "natural law" was a sufficient foundation for our civil government, and that Christian civil government would be too narrow and bigoted. So said the churches.

Meanwhile, in spite of her fighting the battle, the lonely witness of the RPCNA Covenanters: from their initial protest in 17^th century Scotland; to their founding of the National Reform Association in 1864; to the present confessional testimony for national covenanting; after nearly 200 years, they have apparently all but lost the valiant fight for the acknowledgment of the Crown Rights of King Jesus. The war is apparently over and done. Secular humanism is the only ideology left standing victorious in the field, having conquered all, the only bruised pugilist left as the churches long ago abandoned the field of battle and fled.

The cultural war for the soul of America has been won, has it not? The enemy has conquered us. Public schools hand out condoms, encouraging sexual perversions; a paganized entertainment industry demonizes, perverts, and "spins" true Christianity until it is unrecognizable, but yet accepted by the public as "entertainment"; and our "We the People" public have elected and reelected a president who is "serviced" by a tart in the Oval Office, while on the phone ordering bombing as "Commander in Chief" of the armed forces.

Yes, carrying the heavy freight of a lonesome soldier fighting the battles "For Christ's Crown and Covenant" has proven costly and difficult for a small denomination known as "The Covenanter Church."

However, no group of Christians, be they a church or individuals, can ride a theological fence forever, especially when that fence is the dividing line between secular civil government and Christian civil government. It all comes down to this confidence: that the civil governments of this earth will one day enter into their own national covenants with "King Jesus." (We believe that the Solemn League and Covenant is an excellent example for the nations to follow in drawing up their own national covenants, which we believe someday will happen worldwide.) Almighty God, in His eminent grace and abundant mercy, is in the process of judging, pruning and reviving, and educating His church, including the "Covenanter Church," the church of William Symington and of Messiah the Prince.

The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the blessed Trinity, is awakening His Body, purchased with the blood of the Son of God, to His "Great Commission" when our Lord instructed His followers to, "Make all nations my disciples" (Matt. 28:18-20). The church of Jesus Christ is to be about the task of building Christian civilizations, of rebuilding Christendom, this time along the lines of God's laws for the nations.

Undoubtedly Christ's Great Commission includes personal evangelism, but evangelism conducted in the context of a mighty effort to build the societies of men on the laws of God as found in the Scriptures, and the bringing civil governments to enter into their own national covenants, acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord.

The only alternative to "Messiah the Prince" is to allow humanistic and "revolutionary" governments to continue proliferating across the globe, marching down the road to their own obliteration at the hands of King Jesus, the White Horse Rider of Revelation 19, Who holds the rebellious nations in derision before His wrath falls upon them to their own destruction. (We have already seen something of this in the splintering of the Soviet Union into disparate political entities.)

Repentance and Revival

For the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, there remains the fundamental need of repentance for her past obloquy towards Christian civil government; an admission of her wrong- doing; an acknowledgment that she has failed when she has evangelized without teaching the new disciples Christ's command for corporate national cov-enanting. This failure goes back a long long way. We need a renewal of the faith of the Covenanters, who died, not only for their right to choose their own ministers, but for "the Crown Rights of King Jesus." That meant then, and it means now, Christian civil government. That is the inevitable conclusion of Messiah the Prince.

The biblical standard for "separation of church and state," which surely existed in the nation of Israel, but in a biblical context, has been bastardized by our political teachers, both Christian and non-Christian, and turned on its head. Today's use of the phrase, "the separation of church and state" is not to be found in the Constitution, as some mistakenly believe, but rather the idiom comes from an 1802 letter written to the Danbury Baptists by Thomas Jefferson.

Since then his perverted version of the separation of church and state has become politically correct "gospel," both within and without the churches--a secularized gospel which puts any nation on the road, first to God's derision, followed by His wrath, followed by His judgment. Two hundred years is a mere eye-blink in Almighty Gods sovereign plan for subduing the nations to the Kingship of His Son in this New Covenant Age. The Lord has already given us time and space for repentance, interspersed with His judgments (the Civil War; WWI; WWII; the Korean War; Vietnam; now Kosovo), but time is running out. To presume on His mercy can be deadly.

Today's appalling flood of man's-rights-centered "laws" are mostly composed of the deadly fruits of Enlightenment "French Revolution" thinking: they are choking apostate Western "Christian" civilization to death. We live in revolutionary times. Nationalistic revolutions are filling the vacuum left after the "Revolution Settlement" of 1688, which stopped "The Killing Times," the name given to the slaughter of 18,000 Covenanter men, women and children from 1660 under Charles II to 1685 under his brother James II. The killing was stopped, but the national covenants with King Jesus were rejected, and Christian civil government became merely a memory. We have gone steadily downhill from there, with our own United States "We the People" Constitution being one of the outstanding milestones on the road to secularism. Thank the Lord for the protest of the American Covenanter Church [the RPCNA], and the National Reform Association which, though not successful, nevertheless served to call attention to this gross rejection of the King of kings.

Fundamentally, we need a Godly Revolution, back to basic biblical morality. This "revolution" must begin in the churches, with repentance; a) for their acquiescence in this spurning the Crown Rights of King Jesus, and b) for following after, like wimps and lemmings, the suicidal Christianity-cleansed policy of Thomas Jefferson's secular "separation of church and state."

Isaiah prophesied: "The nation and kingdom that will not acknowledge Thee shall perish" (Isa. 60:12). The nation which refuses to be ruled by the Son will be held, first in derision, then in wrath, then in judgment. Jesus said, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28). Do not fear the vanquished Satan; rather, fear God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit!

The biblical theme of Messiah the Prince is needed today as never before. The current reprint of this theological classic could not have been more timely. The church of Christ faces crucial challenges as she looks forward to her tasks for the 21^st Century.

May she never again fail her King, Who is "Lord of all."

Raymond Joseph is senior pastor of Southfield Reformed Presbyterian Church, Southfield, Michigan. He is a member of the National Reform Association Board of Directors and a former editor of The Christian Statesman.

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