Vol. XII • 1990 http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v12n3p23.htm
Creation, Lawlessness and World Government
Ellen Myers
Creation, Lawlessness and World Government
Ellen Myers
A missionary friend writes us from Brazil: In a 1988 international Study, Sao Paulo was cited as having the most violent traffic in the world, Crime (especially armed robbery) is almost anarchical--as most of our friends have experienced at least once. In the midst of all this, evangelicalism, spiritism and materialism continue to grow in the vacuum formed by a dying Catholicism. On a far deeper level--one touching honesty, discipline. family and chastity--the difference between North America's heritage from the pilgrims, and South America's heritage from the conquistadores is evident on every side." At the same time a Swiss friend grieves because Switzerland now has the highest AIDS rate and the highest suicide rate in Europe, divorce and crime abound, the law is not enforced, and the Swiss State and evangelical church remain silent. Meanwhile in the United States yet another shocking expose about widespread corruption among New York policemen becomes a best seller1. An increasing number of bizarre murders and mutilation of animals witnesses to the new wave of traditional and especially "non-traditional" satanism which contributes to the lawless terror in the United States and around the world today.2
The well-informed Christian Anti-Communism Crusade Newsletter reports on the growing anarchy in Peru, hit by a 2500 to 3000 percent annual inflation rate and the terrorism of a communist guerrilla group calling itself the "Shining Path" (Sendera Luminoso). Ill-paid soldiers of the regular army pretend to lose their weapons while really selling them to the rebels. International terrorism is an ever-present threat, as is the international drug traffic. In the United States no one is safe in the public schools in the inner cites where discipline has often totally broken dawn,
Worst, this shattering social disintegration everywhere and in all areas of life has existed and escalated for many years. We are living in an age of unprecedented world-wide lawlessness where the silent majority" of reasonably law-abiding people is crying out for "peace and safety" (I Thessalonians 5:3),
As always, man looking to himself as his own helper, provider. lord and master appeals to his own reason, ingenuity and power for a way out. He calls upon human government to suppress anarchy by stricter laws and law enforcement. Now in a way this reliance upon government is in conformity with the biblical Christian view, God appointed government authorities for the purpose of punishing evildoers, even to the extent of taking their lives, for the ruler `does not bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:1-8). God's people are to pray far all who are in authority so that they may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence ([Timothy 2'.~-2) Most unbelievers would agree that government exists to keep citizens safe from perpetrators of crimes against the person. Hence Bible-believing Christians need not altogether condemn unbelievers demanding more government action in the present crisis of lawlessness. nor con Christians advocate anarchism (abolition of all government) God ordained government precisely to put down and restrain anarchy; the very term `anarchy" is a synonym for "lawlessness."
On the other hand, Christians must oppose to the death any and all attempts of government to exercise authority contrary to God's law. For example, Christians cannot permit government/state to hinder or forbid them to bring up their children in the Christian faith ("in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Ephesians 6:4). Christians must be alert to and protest efforts by government/state agencies, legislatures, public school administrators etc. to discriminate against the free exercise of their faith. An example of such lawless action by the government itself is the state's demands that anti-Christian books be part of the library of a Christian school. Another example is the state's demand that Christian schools and their teachers be licensed by the government/state in a way involving mandatory implicit or explicit acceptance of its "pluralistic." that is, anti-biblical world view. Yet another example is the state or government's decree that creation cannot be taught in natural science courses in a private Christian school or college (at this writing. Christian Heritage College in California is under such illicit pressure), or that public school-type `sex education" or "values clarification" must be taught in Christian schools. Christian individuals and churches must be free to engage in relief and charity work combined with biblical discipling. They must be free to spread the Gospel, for relief of the poor and evangelizing the lost are the Church's biblical duties under God.
"Lawlessness hence biblically means disobedience to God's law by government/state as well as by the people, and includes acts legally sanctioned by government and state though forbidden in Scripture. Examples are divorce for any cause by mutual consent, now "legal everywhere though divorce is biblically permissible only for adultery (Matthew 5.'31-32) and though God hates it (Malachi 2:16). Abortion. also "legal" around the world although proscribed by Scripture, has become a new holocaust which now "legally" kills 55 million pre-born, God-created children every year. The murder of handicapped newborn babies and other helpless aged and infirm victims by forced dehydration and starvation (often a prolonged agony) is now semi-"legal" and approved by some courts (at least in the United States and Holland). though Jesus Christ tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and though we are commanded not to do murder (Exodus 2():13). The continuing imprisonment, exile. and confinement in psychiatric hospitals of dissidents, especially Christian believers, is fully sanctioned by Communist governments though altogether lawless in God's sight Persecution and even murder of Christians in Muslim countries is done today with the Muslim governments' full approval or at least connivance. Other examples of government/state perpetrated lawlessness are legion. In short, the laws of human governments are often `lawless when measured by the biblical standard of what is just and right The Christian, therefore, must often. especially in our generation, "obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29), either by not doing what he `legally' might, or by refusing to obey biblically lawless human government/state rather than God. A beautiful example of such godly refusal is Corrie Ten Boom and her family's sheltering of Jews in Holland under the Nazis in World War II.
Scriptural examples are the God-fearing midwives who refused to have any part in the murder of Jewish baby boys under Pharaoh (Exodus 1), and Rahab who hid the Jewish spies because they were the people of the God of Israel (Joshua 2: Hebrews 11:31). Human government/the state is not absolute master but rather God's and His people's servant. Governments/states attempting to rule as absolute and unchallenged, disregarding or rejecting God, cannot remedy lawlessness in society but rather only aggravate it. Because men around the world today hove rejected God and His law, their demand far more, stronger, and eventually unified world government to stem the present tide of lawlessness can only result in institutionalized lawlessness all over the world. Even emigrating or escaping abroad, still away to freedom for some fortunate few in Nazi Germany or in communist countries today, would no longer be possible.
Today's proponents of one-world government are under the illusion that "peace and safety can be attained without the God the Bible, the Creator and His law for all that is. They assert that the world has always existed by itself, and has progressed by evolution either randomly or by purposive cosmic forces. They claim that man, the end product of this chaotic cosmic evolution, can determine his own conduct moment by moment as he sees fit Thus the very mode of existence of the world and of man is seen as lawless in principle. At most modern "scientific' man concedes that there ore observed regularities" (formerly called laws of nature). which man may interpret and utilize as best he can. As with evolution itself, so with man and his self-rule" catastrophic disasters must of necessity occur from time to time. Thus the "great social experiment" of Communism in Russia cost many millions of lives, untold misery, pain and despair and proved a complete economic failure. The first modern "experiment" in building a new society without God was the French Revolution of 1789. It too destroyed countless innocent lives by deliberate brutal terror, all in the name of utopian "liberty, equality and fraternity. Yet the evolutionist godless utopians are neither repentant over the blood they have shed, nor deterred from trying again and again to organize the world according to their own doctrinaire wishful thinking, lust for power, and hatred of all restraints. The present drive for a one-world state and a one-world religion including all faiths (except biblical Christianity) like its utopian predecessors speaks of the future in high-sounding utopian terms without concrete details and, of course, in complete disregard of the God of the Bible Who commanded all men, and His people "in particular, not to have other gods besides Him (Exodus 20:3; James 4:4). The real meat of their program is their fanatical, deluded refusal to submit to the fixed fundamental reality which actually exists due to God's sovereign creative decree in the beginning." They wart to be as gods themselves by creating their own "reality," no matter what the cost to mankind. In promising a man-made paradise they are ushering in a society as near to hell as possible to man, impelled by Satan, who hates God and man created in God's image and likeness, and who is a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies as Jesus Christ says (John 8:44). They might all join together in the song of the Nazis: We shall march on,/When everything breaks into shards,/For today we own Germany,/Tomorrow the whole world, "As George Orwell put it so prophetically in 1984, the true picture of mankind's future under a God-less, lawless one-world government/state is "a boot stomping on a human face--forever,"
The God-less utopians are on a collision course with reality, The world, which is the creation of God, can properly function only in accordance with the Creator's "operating manual," His law. If you would reap wheat, you do not sow tares; if you would reap figs, you do not plant thistles, If you would build a house, you must construct it upon a solid foundation. If you would live, you must have air to breathe and food to eat. With regard to government, economics, politics, ethics and morals it is just as true that, as Jesus Christ told the Tempter, "man does not live by bread alone but by every word of' God' (Matthew 4:4). The merely utilitarian morality without reference to God by which mar thinks he can build a great society has broken down precisely because it was built upon the sand of mere utility. The "useful" is not necessarily the good, and that which men desire is not necessarily desirable. The world is perishing today because most people, deceived by their deceiving leaders, refuse to seek the truly goad and the really desirable, God Himself alone (Luke 18:19). A unified world government/state, barn of the ambition of power-seeking elitist leaders (some with great charismatic appeal) and the clamor for "peace and safety' of the common people terrified by today's rampant lawlessness, is now in the making. It is man's most ambitious attempt in world history to be as God and master in a utopian `new age" or "new reality" of his own making. However, because there is only one reality, unalterably established by God's creation in the beginning, the leaders and the people will reap only their own misery and destruction. As Samuel the prophet told the faithless Israelites seeking a king instead of God: "Only fear the LORD, and serve Him in truth with all your head; tar consider what great things He has done tar you. But if you still do wickedly, you should be swept away, both you and your king" (I Samuel 12:24-25).
References
1. Mike McAlary. Buddy Boys, Charter Book Edition, February 1989.
2. Thomas W. Wedge with Robert L. Powers, The Satan Hunter, Daring Books, P.O. Box 2, GOSOSH, Canton, OH 44701. This is a thoroughly researched book intended for use by law enforcement agencies.
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