It is the God-given right of all men and women everywhere to live in the liberty of true biblical government, according to the moral law of God, and to be free from the tyranny of men who seek to perfect the sin of their father Adam and establish their own law contrary to God's. To the attainment of such ends, it is every man's right and duty to be rid of such tyrants and to bring into existence a civil government that will establish and preserve God's law.
To this end, we publish this manifesto to make our views and intentions known. We pledge our lives, liberty and property to the establishment of God's true Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven and invite all people everywhere to join us.
God's law, as laid out in the scripture of both the Old and New Testaments, is His perfect definition of sin, His definition of right and wrong. None can determine what is right and wrong apart from God's law. It is the very standard of what is good and what is evil. Christ Himself was counted worthy to stand before God because He was without sin. "Without sin" means that He did not break God's law.
God was, is, and always shall be the one who determines what is right and wrong. As Creator and King of the universe, He has that right. In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam only a few rules concerning the use of His property. Adam and Eve, however, defied God and did what He forbade, thereby asserting the right to determine good and evil for themselves.
The entire history of mankind ever since has been one of man defying God, and God reconciling some back to Himself. Man has steadfastly sought to define right and wrong for himself, and force others to accept his definitions of right and wrong instead of God's. In so doing, man has steadfastly sought to take God's throne by taking His kingly, lawmaking prerogative. So pervasive is this desire that man's history--from start to finish--cannot be understood apart from it.
While God has given man the physical, mental and spiritual capacity to act contrary to His law and His word, He has never blessed, condoned, or encouraged such actions. Quite to the contrary, He has called such defiance sin and promised punishment for it, allowing man to reap the deadly consequences of his disobedience in time and eternity.
God has never rescinded His absolute prerogative to determine right and wrong. He has never given way to man's desire to determine what is good and evil for himself, and He has never given man license to act according to his own determinations. [1]
Man's determinations of what is good and evil always involve changing God's law. Men annul the law and declare their evil acts to be good. Likewise, they outlaw things which Scripture does not condemn and call them evil, pretending thereby to be holier and more knowledgeable than God.
Yet God strictly forbids adding to or taking away from His law. This injunction can be found again and again throughout scriptures. [2] As such, men and nations have no excuse for reasoning away the simple statement of scripture: You shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. (Deuteronomy 4:2)
Neither did Jesus Christ abolish God's law. Rather, He declared that He had come to fulfill it (both by obeying the law, and by acting as a sacrifice for sin). He made it plain that not one jot or tittle would pass from God's law. [3] Likewise, New Testament writers after the crucifixion declare that there is "one lawgiver". (James 4:12)
Therefore, it is not given to man to change God's law or to make a law of his own.
The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments make God's law fully known to man. In particular, the law does not evolve, develop or change with time. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He changes not.
The idea that as man progresses, law must progress with him is ungodly and anti-biblical.
For example, when man invents automobiles, it is not a justification to expand government with traffic regulations, insurance companies, licenses and hordes of police. Biblical laws of restitution for a neighbor's property or person are sufficient whether automobiles have been invented or not.
Likewise, the fact that biblical law does not change should inhibit certain kinds of false progress from taking place. For example, fiat money is impossible under a biblical government because the Bible has no restrictions on counterfeiting. As such, any private individual can print money just as well as the government, thereby immediately unmasking fiat money for the fraud it is, and preventing the state from controlling the economy.
God's law is a tutor, the object of which is to teach righteousness, and lead men to Christ. The ultimate object of the law is not just to externally restrain evil, but also to teach the righteous self-government, so that the law may be written on their hearts, that they might do naturally what is right by their own will.
As such, not all biblical law is civil law. In other words, not all biblical law is administered and enforced by a state or human government.Quite to the contrary, the great majority of God's laws are not enforced by men at all. God has not delegated this authority to man or man's government.
The laws which God has delegated authority to man to enforce clearly state the penalty for violating them in the Bible. For example, the law specifies that a thief should make restitution, or that a murderer should be put to death. Such laws are meant to be enforced by men. They demand action from men. As such, these laws are the civil law of a godly society.
However, many laws specify no penalty. For example, the law against a man wearing a woman's clothes, and vice versa, carries no penalty. [4] Those that do so are declared to be an abomination, but the government has no business jailing or otherwise punishing such transgressors. (That does not mean a storekeeper cannot refuse to sell something to a cross-dressing man, etc., or even kick him out of his store. That is not against the law either.)
Such details are not oversights on God's part. They are part of His total and wise plan to draw men to Himself while restraining evil. An important part of that restraint is a curb upon the state, for the specific purpose of restraining the original sin. Governments which over step their bounds can be a greater evil than an individually indulged sin because they inevitably re-define right and wrong and lead all men away from God.
God's prohibition against changing His law includes changing the punishments for offenses. The state which sends men to jail for theft instead of enforcing restitution is usurping God's law just as much as the state which legalizes various forms of theft. By changing the punishments prescribed in scripture, the state is substituting human ideas about justice and righteousness for true godly justice. For example, the state which punishes theft with jail time first allows the theft to stand, since the victim is not compensated for the loss. Next, it teaches the thief that he has no responsibility to the victim. Finally, such a state forces the victim to support the thief through taxes, while it keeps the thief in the chains of an unlawful slavery.
Any law that adds to or takes away from the eternal law of God is explicitly contrary to the law of God as detailed in the Scriptures. Any law that prescribes a punishment other than what the law of God prescribes is likewise explicitly contrary to the law of God. Such laws teach men evil, and are therefore themselves evil. They are acts of defiance and rebellion in the spirit of Psalm 2:2. In any such conflict, God's law, the higher law, prevails, and the baser law isnull and void.
God is no respecter of persons. As such, no man can clothe himself or any other man with authority whereby he may lay aside his own or another's pesonal accountability to God's law. All will be judged by their obedience to God and His Word without respect to who they may have set themselves up to be in this world. This includes every king, every president, every legislator, every judge, every policeman, every member of every army, and every bureaucrat.
The state, being the most powerful human institution, is often the focal point of mankind's defiance of God. [5] The institution of the state, even if formed with good intentions, naturally and normally deteriorates into total rebellion against God. Central to this rebellion is a redefinition of good and evil through the laws of that state.
It is through law that the state indoctrinates its citizens
in unrighteousness because every body of law is a tutor. The people
of any nation normally equate right or good with that which is
legal, and wrong or evil with that which is illegal. They will
furthermore vigorously defend the institutions by which their
laws are made. Thus, the laws of any state stand in defiance to
God exactly to the degree that they do not coincide with God's
law. Furthermore, the mechanism by which law is created
in the state defies God regardless of whether the actual laws
are contrary to God's law, or not, because such mechanisms amount
to a claim to the right to make law.
God's prohibition against determining good and evil for oneself did not end when Adam and Eve defied Him. It did not end with the coming of Christ. It did not end when the writing of the Bible was completed. It is an eternal prohibition that applies to all men and nations from the beginning to the end.
The state which does not heed God's definition of good and evil defies God and teaches all its citizens to do likewise. Such teaching may be very innocuous and subtle to begin with, but, like leaven, it will soon leaven the whole of life. It will lead people to abandon sound doctrine for the lies of men, and entice them away from a pure faith and true righteousness. It will cause them to waste their lives defending ungodliness and defiant human ideals.
Such has been the case time and again throughout history. Ancient kings--whose word was law--made gods of themselves and caused themselves to be worshipped instead of the true God. Others, like Nebuchadnezzar, created their own gods and caused them to be worshipped on pain of death. The rulers of the late Roman Empire threw christians to the lions and burned them alive in the name of the law, which commanded Caesar's worship. Then popes and kings claimed to rule in the name of Christ, but they perverted the truth in order to claim the power to make law, inventing doctrines like the divine right of kings, and promoting heresies that bolstered their defiance of God. The torturing and imprisonment just continued under the presumption of divine blessing.
The constitutions of modern republics are covenants among men to stand together in rebellion against God, denying His law, substituting in its place man-made law. The framers of such constitutions have often refused to acknowledge God in so much as the mere mention of His name, and they universally refuse to recognize His authority to determine good and evil. Rather, they have created purely human means for establishing the laws of nations, without any absolute reference to what is right, true or good. The guiding principle behind such constitutions is that "the voice of the people is the voice of God/the Lawgiver".
Typically, such constitutions place no limits on what kinds of laws can be made, given that the will of the people demands it. While certain ideals enshrined in such constitutions might require constitutional amendments in order to change them, the constitutions generally contain provisions for amendment and even suspension.
Examples of unrighteousness enacted into law abound among the modern republics. In various nations at various times, laws have been passed to permit and even encourage the murder of the unborn, the elderly, the infirm and the deformed. Laws have been passed whereby various peoples or religious groups have been exterminated. Then there are laws which bestow the state's blessing upon abominations like homosexuality, beastiality, pedophelia, and so forth. Other laws provide for progressive, confiscatory taxation, and the legalization of usury, whereby whole nations are reduced to slavery, generation after generation. When such means are not sufficient, the outright theft of property under he guise of law is often employed.
Such is the legacy of the modern democratic republic. This legacy is a natural outgrowth of the principles upon which such nations are founded. Nothing is too base or abominable for modern governments to frame as a law. Even the communists of the 20th century have realized that the quickest and surest way to throw down God and establish man's kingdom is a democratic republic, and have adopted that form, both calling themselves republics and using the principles of a democratic republic in their statecraft.
By establishing man's lawmaking authority, a nation declares that man is good in himself, and not a sinner. It declares that man can think clearly, and know right and wrong himself. Such premises are outright contradictions of Scripture. When established as foundations for a nation, they bring sin into the very lifeblood of that nation. As a result, envy, strife, murder, sexual immorality, idolatry and satanism become part of the laws and the life of a people.
All who sin are slaves to sin. Their sins grow without bounds and cannot be stopped by superficial reform. While national sins may start out innocuous in appearance, they will grow to enslave the people of a nation and bring about the eventual death of the nation and often many of its citizens.
Slavery results because, when men make laws, laws abound. Men who defy God and seek to make gods of themselves will always try to regulate everything--just like God--and put themselves in control of everything that is done under the sun. Each successive generation must add to what previous generations have built, adding more laws and more controls, and going a step further in defiance of what has been written. An abundance of laws leads to an abundance of police, all of whom must be supported with ever-increasing taxes.
Yet men, being sinners, are not made righteous by an abundance of laws. The result, rather, is merely an abundance of lawbreakers. Such lawlessness only justifies the state in adding more laws again, with harsher and harsher penalties.
Sooner or later, every nation that claims it is man's right to make his own laws will add law upon law, penalty upon penalty, until it becomes a slave state. Men become servants of the law and servants of government minions. Every activity--even private affairs, like marriage, child rearing and providing for one's family--are licensed and carefully regulated. Ultimately, the state in rebellion to God claims to totally own every man. Such a state will regulate what a man can ingest, what he can own, and what he can think. It will physically take his life and his children for its purposes, be that war, to cut welfare expenses, or to provide a scapegoat for some failed government program.
Under the tutelage of such a system, which wrongly justifies the authority of man to make law, men become powerless to even understand their slavery. They believe the lies that such systems propagate. In times past, they believed the king was the instrument of God. Today the voice of the people is the voice of God and the Constitution is holy writ. Even the best of men willingly submit to their bondage and defend ideas that turn their hearts away from God and lead them into sin. Rather than seeking truth in the Scriptures and reforming their lives to conform to God's standards, they seek to live by the words of men and defend the words of mere men. They worship their constitutions and fly the state flag in their churches, even when the state is in the process of enslaving them and making a mockery of their faith.
As sin grows strong, a nation will be dominated by envy, strife and the lust for power. Various factions will seek to gain control of the lawmaking apparatus to advance their own agendas, and ruthless men will come to power by manipulating the envious masses. They will engage in damnable repression and unprovoked wars. In the end, such a nation will be torn apart by strife and intrigue, or subdued by its enemies.
The defiant state drives men into hell by the millions by teaching men to defy the true God, reason out what is right and wrong, what is good and evil for themselves and make excuses for their disobedience to God. The state founded on the principle of determining good and evil for itself can only propagate that principle. It invites its citizens to make law by participating in the political process, e.g., by running for office, by voting, by commenting on current events, etc. It invites citizens to criticize the law in a free press. It declares all religions to be equal and free, and invites citizens to pick and choose what they want to believe, while teaching school children to be tolerant of every kind of belief. In so doing, the state teaches men to make gods of themselves, and to live out the original sin to the fullest. It establishes itself as the most high God when it must place limits on discordant religions by means of civil law. [6] The end result is whole nations of people who refuse to believe the Scriptures, and who care nothing for Truth, as well as churches which join in the national sin and weave myths to justify both the state and the people in their sins.
The righteous [7] are citizens of God's kingdom. Christ said that to enter the kingdom of heaven, one must be born again. There are no naturalization laws for this kingdom: to be a citizen, one must be born as one.
The first duty of loyalty to any earthly authority is to obey their laws, and hold those laws sacrosanct. A citizen of England does not obey the laws of France, or vice versa. As long as England and France are friends, the Englishman may obey the laws of France while he is in France as a matter of courtesy, at the request of his own sovereign, but he is not obliged to obey them for France's sake. If England and France went to war, or if France was secretly plotting against England, the Englishman would act in his own country's interests, quite possibly violating the laws of France. To the extent that the laws of France coincided with the laws of England, obedience to England would also be obedience to France.
As a citizen of God's kingdom, the righteous man's duty of loyalty to God as his King is to obey God's law. That law is God's expression of how He would have man to live. Of course, as a sinner, man can keep God's law but imperfectly. Thus he must also seek grace and mercy through Jesus Christ, God's only son.
No law created by any earthly sovereign has any validity in and of itself in the sense that no man will ever be sent to hell for violating it. Yahweh will judge all men by His own law (including those who make and enforce man's laws) and deal with them accordingly.
The harlot church, which exists to establish the state and the kingdom of the prince of this world, teaches that an unreasoned, unqualified obedience to the state is commanded by Scripture. However, absolute obedience to any authority is an act of worship. It elevates that authority to the throne of God, conferring upon it the absolute right to determine good and evil.
The obedience commanded in Romans 13:1-6 is due only to those who are ministers of God to us for good, and to those who are not a terror to good works. The obedience commanded in 1 Peter 2:13,14 is due to those who are sent by God for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well. We must, however, understand "good" and "evil" here as defined by God through Scripture, not by man's twisted values. Scripture makes it clear that there is such a thing as a ruler not ordained of God in Hosea 8:4 and Psalm 94:20. Rulers who rebel against the truth of God's Word are not ministers of God, are not ordained of God, and are not "higher powers".
Therefore we are not subject to these imposters by God's command, and are not requred to obey those who are not His ministers. These "obedience scriptures" so droningly cited by the harlot simply do not apply in this case.
In particular, those who are (1) the ministers or employees of a state that claims to be secular, (2) of a state that refuses to bow down to the law of God, or (3) of a state that mocks God, expells His name and His scriptures from its institutions, or (4) encourages false religion are not, by their own adamant confession, ministers of God. How can they be His ministers when they assume authority by the power of godless documents? Or when they are paid by a state that expells every mention of God, the Bible, and Christ from its officialdom, and maintains a "freedom of religion" that puts down the truth so godlessness can rule unhindered? How can they be God's ministers when they say they are not, and refuse to submit themselves to Him as a minister with delegated power would?
The scriptures do not command submission or obedience to such as these - they do not command rebellion - but neither do they command obedience.
We may have to obey such men and their laws because they have policemen with guns pointed at our heads, but let it be understood that no service is renderd to God by such obedience, and let it be understood that we don't have to bless those policemen. The submission of righteous men to such imposter "authorities" is properly that of hostages caught up in a bank robbery submitting to the robbers.
While men are wise to be patient with and courteous to the rulers of this world who are ignorant of God's Word, they must also teach them the truth in no uncertain terms. Individuals must judge man's laws and unilaterally reject that which is contrary to God's law, or face the judgement of God for having rejected Him and engaged in the first sin of Adam and Eve. Laws which are contrary to God's law teach a false morality. As such, they are themselves insidiously immoral, and condemned as such by God in Deuteronomy 4:2 and like scriptures.
Likewise, the ministers of the state, be they policemen, soldiers, bureaucrats, workers, or judges will be judged for every act under the law of God, irrespective of the authority granted to them by men. A policeman who arrests someone who has committed no crime in God's eyes is guilty of kidnapping. A soldier who kills in an unprovoked war is guilty of murder. A judge who judges a man according to man's law instead of God's because he is paid by the state is guilty of unjust judgement and accepting bribes. The bureaucrat or worker who accepts a salary from the state is guilty of theft, inasmuch as he is being paid with stolen money, taxes being unlawful. It is the righteous man's duty to inform such men of their sin, and warn them of God's judgement to come.
As man's Creator, God's laws are binding upon all men everywhere. No man has the authority to set aside that law for himself or for others. No man has any excuse for failure to obey that law, excepting possibly ignorance. The Scriptures are full of examples of those whom God strongly supported for obeying His law instead of man's, as well as those who were punished and destroyed for breaking God's law while obeying man's law. Examples include the Hebrew midwives in Egypt, Gideon breaking down the statue of Baal, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, and Daniel in the lions' den. David maintained an alternate government within the kingdom of Saul for years. Peter, James and John told their rulers "We ought to obey God rather than men". [8] James was decapitated and Peter was crucified upside down by the state for crime against Caesar. Paul was given 39 stripes five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned, frequently in prison, and finally executed - all for crimes against the state. [9] These were not hypocrites and bad men. They were men who knew their God and understood their obligations to Him. They are the founding fathers of the true Way.
All obedience to man's laws rendered out of courtesy, or coincidentally as an attempt to obey God's law, does not create an obligation to worldly authorities. No act of obedience so rendered may become a binding obligation upon anyone who renders it.
In contrast, the man who accepts a benefit from the state that is dependent upon its laws, and contrary or irrelevant to the freedoms guaranteed by God's law, obligates himself, measure for measure, to the state because he is contracting and covenanting with the state.
When the state demands that the citizens of heaven within its borders obey laws, or sign agreements or contracts with the state subjecting themselves to the state before the state will allow them to exercise their God-given freedoms, it is an act of war.
For example, God nowhere restricts the freedom to travel, or delegates to the government the power to restrict freedom to travel in Scripture. Yet many states routinely restrict the freedom to travel by issuing driver's licenses, and demanding that anyone using the roadways carry one. Often a driver's license is issued only to those who sign an agreement to obey all of the laws of the state relating to the roads, past, present and future. Such an agreement abridges a natural freedom which God gave to man. Since the agreement is made mandatory by law, and enforced through violence and police power, it is an explicit act of war against God and His servants.
The citizen of heaven may rightfully condemn such man-made laws and refuse the associated covenants as forbidden oaths (Matthew 5:34). Hidden contracts or agreements implicit in various laws, such as those providing for issuance of birth or marriage certificates, are null and void, being based on deception.
Whereas the republics of this world have willfully and knowingly declared war on God and His Kingdom both in heaven and on earth,
1. By declaring all religions equal, and subordinating the true faith to the state, licensing churches and seeking to destroy the pastors and congregations who refuse to submit to their laws,
2. By denying God's law and establishing their own law in its place, and denying God's right to make law and establishing their own exclusive right in its place.
3. By teaching innocent children to obey state laws and ignore God's law, to worship the documents of the state and ignore the holy scripture,
4. By silencing the public witness of Christ, and by silencing those who would speak the truth about what is right and wrong,
5. By honoring and protecting those who practice abominations and are worthy of death,
6. By seeking to enslave people through a variety of entanglements to the state, ranging from licensing agreements to public benefits,
7. By the shedding of innocent blood,
8. By robbing men through taxation,
9. By stealing ownership of the earth from God by claiming absolute title over all properties in their territories,
10. And by subverting justice inthe courts by refusing to uphold God's law.
The Christian must act accordingly to defend the Kingdom of God,
1. By repenting of ignoring and denying God's law while at the same time obsequiously obeying mere men who are in rebellion to God,
2. By learning God's law and seeking to faithfully live by it,
3. By teaching their children and other men to do likewise, no longer allowing the ignorance of Scripture to remain a pretext for man's rebellion against God,
4. By denying the right of the state to legislate or frame any law that adds to or takes away from God's law or changes the punishments thereof, and declaring all assertions to the contrary to be an act of war against their King,
5. By refusing to participate in the lawmaking process,
6. By refusing to prosecute, condemn or initiate the prosecution of any man who has not committed a crime punishable under Biblical Law,
7. By refusing to punish or initiate the punishment of any man with a punishment other than that prescribed by the Bible,
8. By refusing the benefits and entanglements of the state, thereby cutting off its lawful claim to their lives, and their children's lives,
9. By defending themselves and their brethren who are molested by the state contrary to God's law,
10. By cutting off the means of support of the ungodly state,
11. By praying steadfastly for deliverance from the tyranny of the rebellious state, for its judgement at the hands of God, and for the establishment of righteous government,
12. And, given the absence of legitimate civil authority, by establishing righteous civil governments that both assume the responsibilities and operate within the confines of the authority delegated to them by the Word of God.