A Biblical Way To Influence Politics

I have not posted anything on Pastor Brandenburg’s blog for quite a long time since he invited me to do so, for a number of reasons, which I may elaborate at some time in the future, although I will not do so at this time. (These reasons may, so you know, lead to it being some time before I reply to a comment if you post one—feel free to comment, but if a response is long in coming or nonextant, don’t feel disappointed). As blog readers residing in the USA surely know, we have an election coming up soon, and, as Paul used his rights as a Roman citizen, so should the Lord’s people use the liberties and rights the Lord God has given them in His providence as American citizens to seek that righteousness may be exalted in their nation.

Scripture passages on separation (Romans 16:17-18; 2 Cor 6:14-7:1; 2 Thess 3:6, 14, etc.) indicate that believers should not join with compromised religious and political protest movements, such as the “Moral Majority” (which America does not have—we have an immoral majority), the “Christian Coalition,” and the like. Disobeying God to join hands with Romanists, Mormons, or other false religions to oppose abortion will neither give the Lord glory nor help our nation in the long term. But what can be done? At least one clearly justified action that true churches and saints can take is to boldly preach the gospel and preach against the sins of our nation at the same time. Such practice is warranted throughout the Bible, from Isaiah and Jeremiah’s denunciations of the sins of Israel to John the Baptist’s preaching about Herod’s sin. Therefore, based on such Scriptural warrant, I commend to readers of this blog and their churches the following tract, which can be formatted to fit a normal 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, which preaches the gospel and also preaches against the sins relevent to the upcoming election, and, at the end, includes the names of appropriate candidates that will be on the ballot and their political positions. In my case, the names at the end are relevant to Wisconsin. Pastors and other believers should feel free to use the text here, change the candidates at the end to fit those of their own area or make whatever other reasonable changes they feel are appropriate, and pass out many of them. Everyone can also feel free to forward the content of the tract by e-mail to others. In this manner, without in the least violating the Divine mandate about separation, the saints can both fulfill the Great Commission and influence the public arena for righteousness. The three areas addressed in the tract are economics, the relation of the government to sodomy, and the legal murder of the preborn.

-Thomas Ross

The Role of Government—Has God Spoken?

The Bible teaches that we should honor God in all areas of our life—including how we employ our legal privileges as citizens (cf. Ac 22:25-29). We must, therefore, consider what God has to say as we vote and engage in other duties of citizens. The Bible is sufficient for all areas of life, including politics (2 Timothy 3:16-17). What has God revealed about government? Two contemporary disputes, concerning economics and social issues, will be briefly examined.

In economics, God teaches that taxation on income should be below a flat 10% rate—any higher rate is a curse and a form of slavery (1 Sam 8:6-8, 15, 17-18). “Redistributing” wealth—the government taking from one person by force through taxation to give to someone else it believes is more worthy—is ungodly (1 Sam 8:14-15). Governments that redistribute wealth are stealing (Ex 20:15), just like a robber who “redistributes” what a person owns. Such practices are considered in Scripture to be pagan (1 Sam 8:19-20), tyrannical (1 Sam 8:17-18), and oppressive (1 Sam 12:3). Devaluing currency—as the government does by inflation—is also stealing (Isa 1:22, 25). National debt is a curse (Deut 28:12, 44). Bribery—including bribing certain classes of people to vote a certain way by promises of government handouts—is a sin and “perverted judgment” (1 Sam 8:3), for the government is to be impartial and neither favor the rich or poor (Deut 16:19; Ex 23:3; Prov 22:16). God commands individual believers and churches to generously and selflessly help the needy and poor (2 Thess 3:10; Gal 6:10; Lu 6:35), and not to do so is sinful, but for the government to employ force to extract money from people to give to either the rich or poor is the sin of stealing, not charity or generosity. The Bible teaches an economic system that values private property (Ex 20:15), freedom (Mt 20:15), and free exchange, rather than socialism, fascism, or communism.[1]

Scripture likewise teaches the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman (Mr 10:6-9), and that, so far from putting its blessing upon the sexual perversion of homosexuality, the practice of such evil (and other sexual sins such as adultery, Lev 20:10) should be forbidden and punished by the State (Lev 20:13; 1 Ki 22:46), although the individual Christian must love all people as himself, including those involved in sexual sin, act kindly, and do good to them (Mt 22:39; 1 Cor 6:9-11).

Furthermore, the protection of innocent life and the execution of capital punishment upon murderers is one of the foundational roles of the State (Gen 9:6; Rom 13). God established in Israel that the murder of the preborn was a capital offense, equal to other murder (Num 35:31); if a man hurt a pregnant woman with child, so that she gave birth prematurely and the child died, God said to give “life for life” (Ex 21:22-25). He employs the same word for the “babe . . . in [the womb]” (Lu 1:41, 44) and the “babe” outside of his mother, in a crib and desiring his mother’s milk (Lu 2:12, 16, 1 Pet 2:2, cf. Lu 18:15, Ac 7:19, 2 Tim 3:15). God has a purpose for and knows children before their birth (Jer 1:5, Ps 139:13-16). He clearly declares the child in the womb a person who requires legal protection (cf. Gen 1:26-27, 9:5-6). Conception wonderfully produces a new individual who possesses the image of God as much as he will nine months or nine years later. Abortion, therefore, is murder, murder of an exceedingly unnatural kind, where a mother initiates the death of her child. Since imposed by judicial tyranny on our nation in the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, abortion has drowned this land in the blood of over 45,000,000 children, a slaughter of more helpless boys and girls than the populations of the states of Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama combined. God will punish our nation for engaging in this unspeakable evil, just as He did Israel for shedding “innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters” (Ps 106:38). The Lord has sworn that “murderers . . . shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Rev 21:8). You are a murderer, or have assisted in the commission of murder, if you have had an abortion, assisted in an abortion, employed or sold devices that almost always induce early abortion by preventing implantation rather than conception, such as the IUD, or that sometimes act in this manner, such as both the standard birth control “contraceptive” pill and the “morning after” pill, counseled someone to have an abortion or not warned someone you knew who planned to have one, voted to support abortion (the party platform of the Democrats, and the position of some Republicans), directly owned companies that support abortion through possessing their stock or indirectly possessed such stock through mutual funds, or are merely intellectually pro-life but do nothing to stop the bloodshed. When God judged the nation of Judah for her sins, He “set a [protective] mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof,” and spared them only; those with a merely mental opposition He utterly destroyed with the rest (Eze 9:5-6). You do nothing to save “those that are ready to be slain . . . He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it?” (Prov 24:11-12). This very day thousands of children have been ripped limb from limb, suctioned out from their mother’s womb, and thrown in the garbage. An ocean of blood from millions of murdered innocents cries out to God for vengeance—if you are a killer, or a supporter of this massacre, or idly do nothing to stop it, “how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Mt 23:33).

The infinitely holy God not only condemns stealing by individuals and governments, sexual sin, and abortion, but all other sin: “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men . . .” (Rom 1:18). Even if you do all you legally can to resist the slaughter of the preborn and support godly government, Jesus Christ said that unjust anger in the heart makes you a murderer (Mt 5:21-22). He also rightly demands of you that you “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind... [and] thy neighbour as thyself” (Mt 22:37, 39). He says “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Mt 5:48). God’s Law contains many hundreds of commands like these, which you break continually, but it declares that “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal 3:10). Your sins are innumerable, and the least of them merits eternal punishment (Jam 2:10), for the “wages of [every and all] sin is death” (Romans 6:23), which includes “the lake of fire . . . the second death” (Rev 20:14). Furthermore, your “heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9), so your nature itself is totally depraved, a consequence of your sin in Adam, by whose original “disobedience many were made sinners” (Rom 5:19). Since “they that are in the flesh [those not born again] cannot please God” (Rom 8:8, Jn 3:3-7), nothing you have ever done, are doing, or will do, can please God in any way unless you are “born, not of blood [physical descent], nor of the will of the flesh [by your efforts], nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:13). Until then in you “is nothing pure... even [your] mind and conscience is defiled” and you are “abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate” (Tit 1:15-16). You are “as an unclean thing, and all [your] righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Is 64:6), and your “damnation is just” (Romans 3:8). You “shall be tormented with fire and brimstone . . . and the smoke of [your] torment [will ascend] up for ever and ever: and [you will] have no rest day nor night. . .” (Rev 14:10-11).

This is your certain destiny unless Another satisfies the wrath of God for your sins. However, God the Son, who is equal to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, the three eternal Persons of the one and only true God (1 Jn 5:7, Jn 1:1-18), became a Man, Jesus Christ, who was virgin born and so without a sinful nature, lived a sinless life in full obedience to God’s Law, and then died a substitutionary death to pay for your sin: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). On the cross, God the Father “made [Jesus Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21). Three days later Christ rose again from the grave. The payment He made for your sin on the cross is perfectly sufficient to fully satisfy the wrath of God against you and to count you righteous in God’s sight. “Christ died for us . . . [and] being now justified [meaning “declared righteous”] by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom 5:8-9). You cannot be saved by your works, for “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified” (Rom 3:20), but Christ’s work on the cross perfectly and eternally saves men, for “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). If you will repent and believe on Jesus Christ you will be saved from sin and Hell. In repentance, brokenly accepting that you are as wicked and worthy of condemnation as the Bible declares, you must turn from your sins to unconditionally surrender to Christ as your Lord. The Bible commands, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted” (Ac 3:19), for “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Lu 13:3). The Lord Jesus Christ said, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mt 16:24). You must also believe on or trust in the Person and work of Christ alone to save you, based on the promises of Scripture. The Lord Jesus promises, “He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life” (Jn 6:47), but you do not believe or trust in Him for salvation if you think that your deeds, prayers, sincerity, or ceremonies such as baptism, or anything whatsoever you have done or been, or can do or will be, has a particle to do with the forgiveness of your sins. The Bible says “For by grace [undeserved favor] are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8-9). Remission of sins through the blood of Christ, and the receipt of His righteousness as a perfect standing before God, is for “him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly” (Rom 4:5); such only will “be found in Him, not having [their] own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Php 3:9). Once saved through repentant faith in Christ, you are always saved; no blood-washed person can ever be condemned, for his sins are forever paid for, and Christ promises His people “shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand” (Jn 10:28, cf. Rom 8:28-39). God also promises that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor 5:17), so He gives His own a new nature, life, and desires, so that they love and characteristically live for Him. You are a wicked sinner who will surely perish unless you find mercy in the great Substitute. Surrender to and trust in Jesus Christ immediately—flee the fearful wrath of God upon both this nation and you personally for abortion and your other sins!

Please note that God also requires every Christian to practice kindness, gentleness, and peaceableness toward all (Gal 5:22-23) and to speak with meekness and gentleness to those who disagree with or oppose them (2 Tim 2:24-25). The Lord Jesus commanded: “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Mt 5:44), and all discussion of Scriptural teaching, including Biblical teaching about the role of government, must be carried on in light of these commands.

For more information, or for a free home Bible study available in person or by mail that provides evidence that the Bible is God’s Word, and explains salvation and other essential truths, visit, call, or write to:

http://sites.google.com/site/faithalonesaves/salvation

The positions of the major candidates on issues discussed above:

Scott Walker believes in giving legal protection to preborn children, and Ron Johnson is professedly pro-life. Both candidates also believe that marriage between one man and one woman should be protected, and believe in a more limited government and greater individual and economic liberty than their major opponents, Tom Barrett and Russ Feingold. Feingold and Barrett do not believe that the preborn deserve legal protection, nor do they defend marriage. Feingold voted against economic and health care freedom and in favor of President Obama’s government run and rationed health care plan, as well as redistributionist government “stimulus.” (See http://www.wifamilycouncil.org for sources and further information. Information is simply given to clarify the position of candidates and should not be taken as an official endorsement.)

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PAGE GRAPHICALLY DEPICTS AN ABORTED CHILD. YOUNG CHILDREN SHOULD NOT LOOK WITHOUT THEIR PARENTS PERMISSION.

A ten-week old child murdered by abortion:

More pictoral proof that abortion is the murder of little boys and girls is available at http://abortionno.org.

---

[1] For more on the Bible and economics, visit http://sites.google.com/site/thross7.