Life, Liberty, and the Soveriegnty of God

'We the people of Montana, grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of

our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains, and desiring to improve the quality of

life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future

generations do ordain and establish this constitution.'

In the past decade or so; we have seen the apparent decline of the greatness of our nation, as more and more laws are passed, to varying degrees of lawlessness, whether blatant or subtle. Many of these laws are so insidious as to be hidden  ( buried ) in other seemingly harmless and even almost helpful legislation, but for those who have seen through this facade; these regulations have been revealed for what they truly are; one more step on the downhill slide into a Godless and socialistic society! Well, on second thought; maybe 'godless' isn't quite the word we should use here, because there is a multiplicity of gods that our society in general, and our civil governments in particular, are guilty of exalting!

 The sacred volume of Scripture has much to say on the topic of 'Life, Liberty and the Sovereignty of God', and this is the foundation, needless to say, for which our founding fathers, those 'forgotten heroes' of our nation's gloried and storied history, unselfishly gave up their lives, liberty and property, and upon which their actions were based.

True freedom is that found in God alone! As our Creator; He has endowed each of His creatures with certain inalienable rights, among which are the pursuit of happiness, including the right to life, liberty and property. When we misuse, abuse, or just totally ignore ( neglect ) these God-given rights, we, to one extent or another, are stripped of these rights, whether lawfully or unlawfully. I say 'lawfully or unlawfully', because, as in the case of criminal misuse or abuse, these rights are regulated, or else, because of national judgment or just discipline, these rights are removed out of hand. This is not to say that, even when we are being judged as a nation, for whatever cause, we should not resist the tyrannical 'power' that seeks to strip us of these rights, for we should resist tyranny in all shapes and forms,  to the death if necessary, wherever it rears its ugly head! We must, however, realize that, in His total and complete Sovereignty, our Creator 'has a Purpose for every petty dictator' that man, in his vanity, deems to set up! God told that pettiest of dictators, the Pharaoh of Egypt ( Exodus 9:16 ), 'indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth', and revealed in Psalm 2, verse 6, 'Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion'! Whether we want to admit or not, whether we acknowledge it or not; our Creator has His purpose for all His creation, and His will is done; always!

'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. '

Our liberties, insofar as our own do not encroach upon those of another, are inherent; that is to say, they have been given us by our Creator, and are ours by very virtue of our being. When our liberties are threatened, or altogether taken away, whether it be 'piece-meal' or all at once, 'in one fell swoop', so to speak; it is our right, our duty, to fight for those liberties, as it is not our liberties alone that stand in jeopardy, but those of generations to come: this is why our fore-fathers fought so long and so hard, and often to the death, for our freedom. I say 'our freedom', for it was this they realized; they fought and died for our freedom!

As we have, in many ways, far removed from the ideals of these 'forgotten heroes'; we have lost many, if not most, of the freedoms for which they fought! Many of these freedoms have all but vanished with a graduality which is purposefully deceptive in its insidiousness, but almost as often they have been stripped in blatant disregard of the Pillars upon which this country was founded, that of Scripture itself, and of our fore-fathers stalwart adherence to those biblical principles ( as they understood them ).

Our Creator, He who covenanted with His creation, and upholds it by its every breath, has entrusted weak, susceptible and fallible human beings with their own government, and the government of the rest of His creation, both the human and animal, as well as natural, or material creation. We read in Genesis 1:26, after God had finished the act of creating man in His Image, 'let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' Man, whether he admits it or not, whether he follows his lofty calling or not, has been given the dominion, and when he freely gives that right, or blessing up to someone or something else; he is telling his Creator, in other words, just what Adam & Eve told Him on that fateful day in the Garden, and which their descendants, the children of Israel under the first ( typical ) covenant continually asserted: 'we know better!'

Our God-given liberties, which have seemingly been transferred out of our possession over the past several hundred years ( in this country ), have likely all but disappeared for several reasons. One is that men have told their Creator, 'we know better than You' ( and this may be the most important, as well ): secondly, our liberties have been encroached upon in this manner because God's people have allowed it to happen.

National judgment is not something that we can easily overlook, either!

With over 55 million children having been murdered in the past 35-40 years, the fact that we have lost so many of our covenant blessings, through the natural consequences of our actions, or else inaction, should really not be shocking in the least.

Deuteronomy 28 is most famous for its description of the blessings and cursings of the covenant. Some may protest at this point, saying something like, 'we are no longer under law, but under grace: we are in the new Covenant now, not that first covenant'! This is likely the greatest misunderstanding that the people of God treasure today! There is one Covenant; there has always been One Covenant, that Covenant being embodied in our Lord, Jesus the Christ, as prophesied in Isaiah 42:6 & 49:8!

But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, 

that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.

Deuteronomy 28:15

It is true that we, as the covenant people of God ( and this includes all who confess the Name ), have been 'conveyed........into the kingdom of the Son of His love', so that we are 'not under law but under grace', but even though we are allowed to pursue life, liberty and happiness through the good graces of our heavenly Father, He, through His most excellent Father-hood, has ensured that we reap what we have sown, so it is through our disobedience, whether out of ignorance or pure rebelliousness, that we have brought these curses upon ourselves!

If you look carefully at the wording of Deuteronomy 28:15 above; it is not saying that God would bless or curse, as has often been thought, depending on our obedience or disobedience, but simply, that these blessings or curses would come upon us ( happen ) as a result of either reaction. Just as these curses came upon the children of Israel, as we read in the pages of Scripture, so they now have happened to God's covenant people as a result of our disobedience. We may experience the blessings of the Covenant once again, only by repenting of our unfaithful disobedience, and returning to the faith of our fathers, 'lock, stock, and barrel', exercising the dominion, and thus, the liberty that we have been given!

'When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.'

There is much talk of revolution, whether armed rebellion or quiet, subversive sedition, in this country today, and it is all well and good to speak of returning this country to her roots as a foundling nation, as the 'forgotten heroes' mentioned above envisioned her. Some, even many, probably many more than we would think, are ready to take up arms and fight ( on our own soil ) for the freedoms that 'big government' has wrested from our cold dead fingers! This sounds like it could work, and talking to those that are 'rarin' to go'; you might begin to think that it would, but as they say, 'freedom ain't free': it would be a long, hard, bloody battle, and if 'freedom' won out, which is very possible, even against the seemingly greater odds; in another 100 years, maybe less, we would have it to do all over again!

'Why', you may ask, would we prophecy such an end? Well; simply put, when mere humans are in control, something is bound to go wrong! Throughout history, this has been proven over and over again. Humanly speaking, the saying is abundantly true and verifiable, 'power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Human beings have shown that they cannot be trusted with power, unless and insofar as they realize and acknowledge with their whole heart, mind and strength, where that power comes from. Until men realize the fact that God is the only incorruptible Power, and that it is in His strength alone that we rule; there will be no true and lasting freedom. We may enjoy a sort of temporal freedom for a time, but only until the next petty dictator comes along!

Reading through the book of Kings, and even earlier, in the book of Judges; it quickly becomes very clear that, even though God's people enjoyed freedom from slavery or persecution for a time, after God had raised up a deliverer for them, more often than not, they returned to their slavery under some kind of tyranny as soon as that deliver had died.

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, 

and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

II Chronicles 7:14

This verse has been quoted so often, by so many preachers of God's Holy Word, that many, I'm sure, have grown tired of hearing it, but hear and heed it we must! If we are ever to be the nation that our forefathers envisioned, and which we can become, by the grace of God, there must be a heartfelt and active repentance of the wickedness perpetrated in and upon this nation, by those who claim to know better, firstly, and secondly, by those who do not know better. There needs to be a national turning again, an active repentance, bowing our heads to the earth, and raising humble hands to our Heavenly Father, our Creator, and as children saying, 'abba Father! We need to humbly repent of our sins of omission as well as those of commission, whether committed in the folly of ignorance or the vanity of wicked rebellion, which is as the sin of witchcraft.

The sin of child-murder ( abortion ), and that most ancient of sins ( which is related ), Molech-worship, the selfish offering ( sacrificing, really ) of our children on the altar of state-craft, should be foremost in our minds when thinking of the needed repentance. As we heard earlier, over 55 million children have been murdered in this country ( that we know of ) since the supreme court judged Roe vs. Wade, and opened the gateway for child-murder, otherwise known as abortion, to be legalized. This is not something that can, or should, be easily passed over, or forgotten. With all this innocent blood on our hands, not to mention all the meaningless massacres and needless wars that have been perpetrated by this once-great nation, it is shocking, really, that we have seen the blessings that we have in this country!

Some may say, and this has been tried for centuries and it has failed as miserably for centuries; 'we just need better legislation', or, 'more legislation, better laws', but as history has manifoldly attested to; this is not the answer. The Answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind; the Answer is the Solid Rock upon which this nation was founded, 'one nation under God'!

Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”

 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”

Psalm 2:1-6

For years, men have sought to exalt themselves, believing that their power lies in their own strength, and not willing to acknowledge that their Creator has granted them the very breath they breathe, have set themselves up, in many cases, as gods. We may look at the historical figure of Alexander the Great, of Macedonia, or Greece, as a glaring example of the Sovereignty of God. It is very clear, looking back through history, that God did use this meglo-maniac to accomplish His purposes, to advance civilization to hither parts, and to spread the knowledge of Himself throughout the known world of the time, but it is also very clear that Alexander built himself up to the point that, without his acknowledgement of where his power came from, there was no way but down. Shortly before his thirty-third birthday, Alexander died, having accomplished the domination of much of southern Asia, from the River ( Euphrates ) to the ends of the earth, as far as the Himalayan Mountains in northern India. Although he had enjoyed great success in his military campaigns, and built one of the greatest empires the world has ever known; even his kingdom was crushed under that Stone that Daniel ( 2:31-45 ) foresaw as crushing everything before it.

Today, we face another such empire, built by the vanity of man. This empire, which may be called 'The American Empire', is not simply the machinations of one man, as Alexander's, but is the brain-child of many wicked men, at varied points throughout history, of which the British Empire, and before that, the Roman and Ottoman, were simply forerunners, and is simply the latest iteration of the vanity of men who exalt themselves against God!

I daresay, and without prejudice, that some of our founding fathers may not have been unfriendly to this notion of empire-building, but for the most part, I believe we can say with certainty, it was the furthest from their minds at the founding of this nation, 'under God'. This nation was founded as such, and as such, was secured through the blood, sweat, and tears of these 'forgotten heroes'!

 And you, Ezra, according to your God-given wisdom, set magistrates and judges who may judge all the people who [ are in the region ] beyond the River, all such as know the laws of your God; and teach those who do not know [ them].

Ezra 7:25

Even heathen kings, such as Artaxerxes of Persia, under whom this command was given, recognized, through the Sovereignty of God, that His law was good, not only for His special covenant people, but for all His creation. Before Artaxerxes gave this command, probably one of the most widely known foreign kings in the biblical record, and famously, rather than infamously, was the king, namely Cyrus, that had given the original command to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. In Isaiah 44:28, God called this heathen king ‘My shepherd’. In Isaiah 45:1, we read ‘Thus says the Lord to His anointed, To Cyrus, whose right hand I have held’. We have already seen how God, through biblical history, has used even those who had not made a covenant with Him, saying of this Cyrus, ‘he shall perform all My pleasure’, and of the Pharaoh of Egypt, ‘for this [ purpose ] I have raised you up, that I may show My power [ in ] you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth’.

David king of Israel wrote, in his 24th Psalm, ‘The earth [ is ] the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein’. He, recognizing, affirming, and ascribing that, as Creator of all; all belongs to God and all rests in His mighty hands, laid down most clearly in Scripture the fact that God does reign over all, and that He does rule over the affairs of men, righteously judging and having mercy in that judgment. This most wise and merciful God, our Creator and Father, has bestowed upon men the governance, first of themselves, then their families, those who have entered into covenant with Him willingly, and of their own accord, and finally of what is known as the civil realm. It is most obligatory upon us, as those that He, through the will of the people, has set to govern, to represent those who have elected us to these several offices according to His law, first of all, then according to the will of the people as set down in our State Constitution.

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. 

All things were created through Him and for Him.          

 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

Colossians 1:16 & 17

The sovereignty of God is incontestable! Any honest study of science, and of Nature itself, will prove the existence of a Creator, and though vain men have tried to deny this for years, they have found themselves stymied at one point; no matter how minute or microscopic ( atomic, even ) a 'particle' may be, there is no way, naturally speaking, that something could come from nothing; it had to start somewhere, with something! There is much talk in the news today about the 'Higgs boson', AKA the 'God particle', but the question here, as well, is 'where did that come from?' Everything, physically speaking, had a beginning, and everything, in the same sense, will have an end!

Much more may be said about the above truth, but now may not be the time to broach such a subject. What is before us, is that our God, and His son, Jesus the Christ, is, as the Creator of all things, absolutely sovereign over all things. It is from this Sovereignty that our own limited sovereignty, or liberty, emanates, and to which can be our only recourse in the face of tyrants who would wrest these inalienable liberties from our feeble grasp. We have not the strength, on our own, as much as we would like to believe it so, to stand up and, repulsing those oppressors and persecutors, to take back what is rightfully ours. Our 'founding fathers', to a greater extent, anyway, understood this, and when the time came to throw off the chains of oppression, and to stand and fight; they knew to raise their arms to 'Heaven' crying 'Abba, Father', for they knew well enough that their Creator is the only Provider, Sustainer and Protector!

We today, and in the days and years to come; have such an exalted and heady choice before us: 'Will we throw up our arms, like those of old, crying 'Abba, Father', relying wholly upon Him for the redemption of our liberties, and stand in His Strength to fight our battles, be they against principalities or powers, or will we bow the knee to the statist gods, those who do not acknowledge the Reign of Heaven, and continue to flounder in our pit of despair?

Through a recognition and realization of this sustaining fact, and through the active ascription of these foundational principles, we may yet again, begin to see the blessings of liberty for which our forefathers fought and died, and coming to fruition, may bless our children and grandchildren with the inherent freedoms which we all possess.

'Oaths do not in themselves produce a new and particular obligation, but are added as a sort of accessory bond to an obligation in itself valid. For always in swearing we suppose something, failing to perform which, we call down upon us the Divine punishment. And this would be foolish, if it were not unlawful to fail to perform the thing in question, in other words, if we were not already bound. Hence it follows that formal arts, to which attaches a defect nullifying the obligation, do not become obligatory by the addition of an oath. In the same way a previous valid agreement is not destroyed by a subsequent oath, nor is a right which another had thereby acquired now taken away from him. Therefore it is vain to swear that one will not pay one's debt to another. And an oath is not binding when it is established that the swearer supposed some fact which in reality was not such, and would not have sworn, if he had not so believed; especially if he was led into error by a trick on the part of him to whom he swore. Also the man who by an unjust fear makes me take an oath acquires in consequence of that oath no right legally to demand anything of me. Of no effect also is an oath concerning the performance of an unlawful act; or even that which concerns the omission of some good deed enjoined by laws divine or human. Finally, an oath does not change the nature and substance of a promise or contract to which it is added. Hence it is in vain that one swears to impossible things. And a conditional promise is not changed into an absolute or simple one by an oath. And acceptance is required just as truly in the case of a promise under oath.'-Samuel von Pufendorf-On the Duty of Those Who Take Oaths
The Duty of Man & Citizen According to the Natural Law

( A note to legislators, and those elected by 'we the people' to protect our God-given rights and to ensure the free reign of liberty; it is your duty before God, not only as oath-takers, to uphold your vows, but as sovereign citizens yourselves, to realize, recognize and uphold 'the Reign of Heaven', that is, God's sovereign rule, even in the affairs of mere mortals! )



Charles Haddon Shank