The Bible is clear: God’s image-bearers can only attain lasting freedom when they are in bondage to Jesus Christ and His commandments which are not burdensome. We are bondservants by nature as creatures. The only question is: To whom will we be in bondage? To be outside of Christ is to be in slavery. The world today is outside of Christ, and never has slavery been more widespread or more specific.
When the true God is rejected as the ruler of men and nations, men seek out other gods. Self, family, church, and civil governments are corrupted. Civil government ends up with an inordinate amount of power and authority. The people cannot govern themselves, in fact, do not want to govern themselves, and they turn all government over to the State. The State becomes their counterfeit messiah. A brief look at a slice of Israel’s history will make this clear.
Once the people rejected God from ruling over them, they immediately “did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals” (Judges 2:11). What is the recurring theme in the book of Judges? “Every man did what was right in his own eyes” (17:6; cf. Deut. 12:8). Self‑government under God was abandoned. The men are weak in battle and will only go to war if Deborah, a woman, leads them: “Then Barak said to [Deborah], ‘If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go’” (Judges 4:8).
The economic order was disturbed. Gideon had to hide his produce “in a wine press in order to save it from the Midianites” (6:11). God commanded His people to be “fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). The people of God are to have dominion. Instead, we find Israel hiding from the Midianites in “the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds” (Judges 6:2). You can’t have dominion when you’re hiding.
Worldview 101: A Biblical View of the World
Worldview 101 is an in-depth course designed to help Christians do this very thing. Utilizing audio, video, and printed material, Worldview 101 will equip the student with the tools necessary to ‘think God's thoughts’ about the world and the created order. It will reveal and re-direct the humanistic thought patterns that exist in each of us. The Enlightenment promised freedom, but brought slavery to man's ideas instead. Worldview 101 points the way forward to true freedom of thought in Christ.
Buy NowFamilies were corrupt. Gideon is said to have had “many wives” (Judges 8:30). Gideon’s descendants were murdered by Abimelech: “He went to his father’s house in Ophrah and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, seventy men, on one stone” (Judges 9:5). Gideon’s family was beset by idolatry. This idolatry “became a snare to Gideon and his household” (8:26). “All of Israel played the harlot to” the idol set up by Gideon (8:27).
Worship was corrupted through this pagan link to God. It didn’t take long before the people had returned to worshipping idols with reckless abandon: “Then it came about, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the sons of Israel again played the harlot with the Baals and made Baal‑berith their god” (8:33). Worship in Israel became a mixture of pagan Baalism mixed with biblical covenantalism (berith). Much of what passes for Christianity is Baal-berithism. Consider that according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center “The 117th United States Congress is made up of 88% Christians.” Such a claim requires a radical redefinition of what a Christian is since faithfulness requires obedience to God’s laws. “Then the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD handed them over to Midian for seven years…. ‘I am the LORD your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live. But you have not obeyed Me’” (Judges 6:1–2, 10).
Time, further sin, and oppression did not change these conditions. The nation steadily declined. Once the dominos of self‑government and family government toppled over, the church, represented by the priesthood, was easy prey: “Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they did not know the LORD and the custom of the priests with the people” (1 Sam. 2:12–13). This was a continuation of the priesthood’s corruption that festered during the period of the Judges where “Micah had a shrine and … made an ephod and household idols and consecrated one of his sons [a non‑Levite], that he might become a priest” (Judges 17:5). When Micah did find a Levite, he paid him to stay in his house thinking God would “prosper” him (17:5). True worship turned to a belief in incantational magic. Just say some spiritual things over our efforts.
When the people recognized Israel’s corruption, especially the corruption of Eli’s sons, the people turned to Eli for relief. Eli in turn confronted his sons, but to no avail: “No, my sons; for the report is not good which I hear the LORD’s people circulating” (1 Sam. 2:24). But, instead of returning to godly self‑government, family government, and church government, the people cried out for a king like all the other nations (1 Sam. 8:5). They saw the answer to their problems as solely political. Of course, this was not new. It had occurred in Gideon’s day (Judges 8).
There is no political solution; there is only a political element. Politics cannot be ignored, especially in a time when it has become draconian and enabled by compliant media. The attractiveness of Donald Trump was he was not Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or the Establishment made up of Democrats and Republicans.
President Trump gave us a chance to make fundamental changes, and this bothered elements in both parties and those who benefit from governmental largess. War profiteering is one of the biggest nuts to crack in Washington. Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex” has become more of a campaign promise than a threat. Trump’s peace initiatives and call to bring the troops home had to be thwarted.
Trump was in no way a perfect President, but the alternatives would have and will now be disastrous. The following is from Ned Ryun from the American Greatness website:
Part of the justification for the latest abuse of the impeachment process was the talk of Trump being like Osama bin Laden and that his supporters are “domestic terrorists.” This should have made it very clear that the Democrats’ idea of unity is submission and conformity to their radical ideas, not compromise or a return to sanity and reason. They want nothing to do with unity, and you’d better get that memo straight in your head: there will be no dissent.
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But a word to the America First base: it’s one thing to air your grievances. That time has passed. You had better get to work. A party is what people say it is and the people who say what it is run and win primaries, show up at conventions, and run for precinct chair. Stop bemoaning how the GOP has abused and abandoned you. Stop talking and get to work. No more rallies. No more moaning and groaning. Time to fight.
There’s a lot of anti-Trump nonsense out there being framed as a way to save the conservative movement, to separate Trump’s supporters from Trump, much of it coming from supposed conservatives. Trumpism has never really been about Trump; it’s always been about the weakness of the opposition party—the Republicans. They made promises and rarely kept them. Trump made promises and kept more than he didn’t. Much of his inability to implement needed changes was the lack of support from his own party.
Restoring the Foundation of Civilization
There are many Christians who will not participate in civilization-building efforts that include economics, journalism, politics, education, and science because they believe (or have been taught to believe) these areas of thought are outside the realm of what constitutes a Christian worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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