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Freedom and Kingdom Government

Happy Fourth of July!

This is the day Americans celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, a document which essentially created a new form of government that was based on Protestant studies into true biblical government. The earlier Catholic model, based largely on the Justinian Code as adopted in 534 A.D., had created feudalism, where landowners (“lords”) and kings ruled over slaves and serfs. True freedom had been limited to the few.

Once Protestants secured a foothold in Europe and the Scriptures became an open book (Revelation 10:1, 2), they searched its pages for a better model of freedom under the laws of God, rather than under the laws of men. Two centuries of study, along with some practice in such places as Geneva, finally resulted in the American Experiment beginning in 1776.

Their views were yet imperfect, partly because the only example they could find was that of ancient Israel, and even then, the Israelites failed to achieve true freedom. If they had followed the law of God as given by Moses, they might have been successful, but the book of Judges shows that most of the people disagreed with or misunderstood much of the law. Why? Because the law was not yet written on their hearts. Why again? Because the Holy Spirit was not yet given to them in sufficient quantity to turn those laws into revelation truth.

The Holy Spirit Factor

Protestants probably had more of the Holy Spirit than did the ancient Israelites, simply because they lived in a Pentecostal Age. Yet the Holy Spirit had been largely lost for more than a thousand years. Only in the 1700’s had the Holy Spirit begun to stir once again in the first Great Awakening. In the 1800’s the second Great Awakening stirred up the Holy Spirit in a greater way, and finally at the dawn of the year 1900 the Pentecostal movement as such broke to the surface and became fully visible.

Even then, Pentecost itself was a leavened feast (Leviticus 23:17), so it would require more to really establish the true government of God in the earth. Nonetheless, we see a progression in history as the plan of God unfolds. We are now in a post-Pentecostal age, the start of the Age of the feast of Tabernacles, where God has nearly finished raising up and polishing overcomers to rule under Christ’s authority for the seventh “day” of history’s first great Week.

The Purpose of Government

In 1776, even with their limited understanding of the law and the word of God in general, they managed to establish the most important principle of Kingdom government. The Declaration of Independence set forth the radical idea that….

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”

This declared that all rights come from God, not from men nor even from governments. It declared that the purpose of government was “to secure these Rights,” not to create them. In other words, the purpose of government was to ensure that the Rights of equal men that were granted by the Creator Himself would not be violated. If violated, the government would use the judicial system to restore those rights and to give compensation to the victims of injustice.

The problem was not in the words themselves but in the interpretation of those words. The same was true with the law of God. The problem was not the law itself but the traditions of men who interpreted the law in ways that fed the flesh. So the rabbinic tradition gave liberty to the Jews but withheld it from non-Jews. And in America the same liberty was withheld from Native Americans and black slaves. Over time, the idea that “all men are created equal” assumed the Catholic definition that “men” are “white men” only.

Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, in fact, at first included an entire section castigating black slavery, but this was removed in order that the representatives of some southern colonies would sign their names to it. To achieve unity among the 13 colonies, slavery was not condemned, and later it was institutionalized in the Constitution for the same reason.

Hence, seeds of corruption and misunderstanding of the divine law were sown into the great American Experiment, which would later bring a harvest of destruction. As America expanded, the same definition of “men” was used in various treaties with the Native Americans, and this gave legal justification to violate those treaties at will. After all, the treaties were made between “men,” a term that did not apply legally to the Native Americans.

As time passed, men continued to find ways to interpret the laws of God in ways that gave them an advantage over others. That is the deceptive basis of the traditions of men, and this has given rise to the idea of a “chosen people” based on flesh rather than upon one’s relationship with God.

As I see it, the gradual reinstatement of the Holy Spirit, culminating with the outbreak of Pentecost on New Year’s Eve of the year 1900, was God’s way of combating these traditions of men. At the original Pentecost at Mount Horeb, God spoke the Ten Commandments. The same purpose of Pentecost was seen in 1900. Unfortunately, in both cases, the results were the same, as men rejected the word. (Note Exodus 20:18-21.)

The Purpose and Failure of Pentecost

Pentecost was given to the church in the early 1900’s in order to reveal the mind of God in His laws. If the people had had ears to hear, they would have repented for their narrow applications of freedom and liberty. But their focus was upon the gifts of the Spirit, rather than upon the use of those gifts to proclaim liberty throughout the land.

The new Pentecostals then denominationalized their churches from 1909-1912, recreating the “Saul” problem that is the leaven in Pentecost. Men preferred to be ruled by men, rather than by God (1 Samuel 8:7). They continued to reject the law but became legalistic in regard to their own traditions. They established rules of righteousness outside of the law, forbidding things like lipstick, jewelry, smoking, drinking, and by demanding certain dress codes. In doing so, they became like the Pharisees, whom Jesus condemned in Matthew 23:23, 24,

²³ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. ²⁴ You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

Jesus was not condemning people for tithing from their bushes of mint. Neither did He condemn those who might wear a face mask so as not to eat an unclean gnat by mistake. Neither would He condemn those who might restrict the use of lipstick and jewelry. But what about the “weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness”? Why had they not extended justice and mercy to all people, regardless of ethnicity?

So Pentecost failed to avert the new Babylonian captivity that was to come at the end of 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was passed. This Act put everyone into economic slavery. The church entered into its final “Laodicean” age of blindness and false prosperity (Revelation 3:17-19). We are only now coming out of that age. The time of the overcomers is dawning, where the laws of God will be understood and applied by the mind and intent of God, rather than by the mind of men seeking advantage over others.

Foundational Land Laws

When God delivered Israel from Egypt, He promised them a land inheritance in Canaan. No one was to be landless. When they finally arrived there, Joshua divided up the land among the tribes, and each tribe divided up its territory according to families. Each family divided up its portion of land among its individual households to put down roots. We were made of the dust of the ground, and the land laws of inheritance identify us with the soil itself.

Of course, there is a greater inheritance in God, seen also in the fact that the tribe of Levi had no land inheritance. God was their inheritance (Numbers 18:20). Their spiritual or heavenly inheritance revealed two kinds of inheritance, one earthy and the other heavenly. Adam’s Land inheritance was adamah, “earthy,” while those called to rule and reign with Christ are given a heavenly inheritance, but their authority will be in both realms—in heaven and in earth—even as Jesus Himself received such authority (Matthew 28:18).

Nations are earthly entities, and so, when speaking on that level, there is no real liberty apart from a connection to the land. But land ownership is conditional, because no man has the ability to create his own land. Therefore, God is the only true Landowner (Leviticus 25:23), and man is only a steward or trustee on God’s land. Therefore, he may be cut off from the land if he misuses it or subjects it to the laws of other gods.

America’s government did give land to many settlers, which was a partial fulfillment of the law of land inheritance. However, it failed to implement this law fully, and even then it taxed the land itself, rather than its production. The result was that some might lose their land through taxation, which was a violation of the divine law. Obviously, the early Americans did not yet have a full understanding of the law of God.

After the establishment of the American Constitution in 1789 came the French Revolution (1789-1794), which brought in secularism as a carnal reaction to papal religion. The Masonic minds behind this revolution desired to destroy religion altogether in order to replace it ultimately with their occult spirituality that had its roots in the Mystery Religion of ancient Egypt. Out of the French Revolution arose the Socialist movement, which reached its philosophical climax with Karl Marx in 1848.

The Marxist model of Socialism banned private ownership of property and made all men equally dependent upon the government. All men, that is, except those who ran the government itself! As George Orwell famously wrote in his Animal Farm, “All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”

The Socialist system rejected God’s right to own land and placed it in the hands of the men who governed. Hence, its ideal led to totalitarianism, where the people were equal slaves to the rich and powerful. Socialism was invented by the wealthy, who would tax the labor of those who were not fortunate to be among the elite rulers in government. That tax money would then be distributed equally among the people in the guise of preventing poverty. The result, as seen in the great Socialist Experiment in the Soviet Union, is that everyone was equally impoverished.

Socialism arose as a secular answer to Christian government. They exploited the failures of both popes and Protestants to make it appear that their system of theft was more just and equal. I find it aggravating that many of their charges were true and that they proposed solutions that only made the situation worse.

We have now reached an important climax in history. We are transitioning into another age, something that has happened only a few times in human history. We are moving from the Age of Pentecost to the Age of Tabernacles. At the same time, the long tribulation cycle of “seven times” (2,520 years) of beast rule has ended, and we are transitioning into the rule of Christ with the overcomers.

The great American Experiment has also ended in failure, due to its lack of full understanding of biblical law and its rejection of the Creator’s rights over that which He owns. The right to Life has been aborted. The right to Liberty has been redefined as a license to sin. The right to the pursuit of happiness (i.e., the right to work) has been replaced by licensing professions, a ploy that has turned this right into a privilege in order to allow the government to tax the labor that it has licensed.

The Declaration of Independence died a slow death by a thousand cuts over the years. It remains largely as a memorial to a past form of government that no longer exists. Yet on the Fourth of July we ought to pay tribute to the self-evident truths set down on paper, though opposed by ungodly men everywhere. At this end of the age, the Socialists in America are being exposed, and we can see from their speeches how much they hate the Declaration of Independence and the original form of Protestant government that inspired it.

The present battleground is coming fully into focus. Our task is to present the principles of liberty found in divine government, along with a better understanding of the divine law by which those liberties may be secured for all men. One cannot truly understand such things apart from a New Covenant worldview. In the past, few have really understood the basis of the New Covenant and its relation to the law itself. But we know that the truth will prevail in the end.