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Conclusion to the Bible Doctrine of Government

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Man, from the fall, has had to contend with the world, the flesh, and the devil. God’s Word always gave man the guidelines he needs to defeat those enemies, but man has never, except for a remnant, followed God’s Word.

God created the individual, both male and female and put them in an earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden. He gave them one rule only. Each person was responsible to God to obey that rule, to direct and control, to govern according to that one rule. The only government was self-government–self-direction and self-control.

Since that time, Satan has waged a relentless war against God and mankind. Nations–and most individuals, families, and churches–follow his principles. The warfare waged by Satan will continue until the beginning of Christ’s millennial reign over the earth. After the thousand years, Satan will be released. He will deceive the nations and lead men in one more rebellion against God. Fire will come down from heaven and devour them and God will cast Satan into the lake of fire to “be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 10:9-10).

Satan convinced the woman, Eve, to disobey God. Her husband, Adam, joined her in that disobedience. Because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, God gave them a conscience, a knowledge of good and evil. God made a covenant with Adam and judged the man, the woman, and the serpent, the devil. To the devil, God said, in judgment: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).

God also added another layer of control, family government. The man was told to rule over the woman, the one deceived and “in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:14). Every individual family member and family was to govern under God, according to his rules.

Man failed miserably. The whole earth was soon corrupted and violent. God’s only option was to judge mankind. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8). God killed all mankind, except for Noah and his family, by causing the great flood.

Satan continued his warfare against God through the individual and the family. He wars by introducing principles which appeal to the heart, mind, and flesh of mankind. He inspires men and women to communicate and apply his principles of force, greed, selfishness, hedonism, and rebellion against God.

Individual and family government were not sufficient to control mankind. Relatively soon after the fall, “GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). The whole earth was corrupt and filled with violence (Genesis 6:11). “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8). God sent a great flood to kill all mankind except Noah and his family.

At the flood, God made a covenant with Noah and added an additional control over mankind—human government (Genesis 8:21-9:6). He gave man the responsibility of ruling over men for God and under God. The God-given jurisdiction of human government is temporal and earthly—to provide an immediate and direct control over those who do evil and to praise those who do good (Romans 13:3-4; 1 Peter 3:14). He also directed the formation of nations (Genesis 10).

Men followed Nimrod in direct rebellion against God’s directions. Instead of forming the nations, mankind came together and began to build a great tower.

The Lord said, “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). God “did there confound the language of the earth” and scattered “them abroad upon the face of the earth.”

Satan continued his warfare on all fronts: the individual, the family, and human government (nations). His principles prevailed, except against a remnant. God always has a remnant who honor him.

In the midst of almost universal idolatry, God soon called out Abraham to be the father of the nation Israel. God ordained the nation Israel for specific purposes. God made an everlasting covenant with Abraham, to be interrupted by God’s discipline because of Israel’s disobedience and rebellions against God. God made additional conditional and unconditional covenants with Israel. Gentile nations (all nations except Israel) continued under the covenants God made with Adam and Noah.

The Old Testament goes into much detail concerning the history and relationship (past, present, and future) of Israel and of the Gentile nations. The believer can know where we are at in human history by looking at the Word of God concerning the nation Israel and her treatment by Gentile nations.

Since individual, family, and human government were proven insufficient to keep mankind under God, God, as we learn in the New Testament, ordained church government. Church government was for direction and control of eternal, heavenly, spiritual matters. For reasons which will be clear to the born-again saint who knows, understands, and believers God’s Word, God desires churches to remain totally separate from civil government. This does not mean separation of God and state, but it does mean separation of church and state. The Word of God and history prove the consequences of union of church and state—corruption of the nation (the civil government), corruption of the church, and corruption of the people.

The principles of Satan control many individuals, families, and churches, and is the driving force behind the nations. Satan, “[T]he god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

God’s judges individuals, families, nations, and churches depending upon their obedience to His Word. The answer starts with the individual. Every person is a sinner whose fate is to be separate from God in the lake of fire. However, God provided a solution for the individual—turning to God and putting one’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to save him. When one does that, he is a new creature whose first responsibility after being saved is to join a local Bible believing church which applies God’s principles in organization and conduct, a rarity in today’s America.

The local church is to disciple saved individuals. Those individuals are to conduct themselves according to God’s commandments and principles and influence families, churches, and nations according to God’s Word. The Bible, history, and reality make clear that men, except for a remnant, always fail in their God-given responsibilities.

Ultimately, God will take things into His own hands. He will, by force, take over and do what man cannot do. He will crush the nations when they come against Israel and establish his thousand-year reign over the earth.

At the beginning of His reign, God will “cast [Satan] into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season” (Revelation 20:3).

After God frees him at the end of the thousand year reign, Satan shall deceive the nations and gather them to do battle with the saints of God, fire will come down from heaven and devour them, and the devil will be “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:7-10). Then will come God’s great white throne judgment:

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).

Written Lessons

Self-government

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A Publication of Simply Church Ministry

Previous Lesson:
Introduction to the Bible Doctrine of Government

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Family Government and Conscience

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Jerald Finney
Copyright © December 26, 2017

Self-government or individual government was the first government ordained by God and is simply control or direction over oneself.

On the sixth day, God created man in His own image, “male and female created he them.”[1]  After creating the man, God created woman out of one of Adam’s ribs to be an “help meet” for him.[2]  God brought the woman to Adam and marriage was instituted: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”[3]

After creating them, God blessed them and told them to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish” and subdue the earth. He gave them dominion over all living things. He put them in the garden of Eden to “dress it and keep it.” And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”[4]

Thus, God, , made a covenant with man and woman, the first of eight great covenants of Scripture which condition life and salvation, and about which all scripture crystallizes.[5] The covenant God made with them has seven elements. The man and woman in Eden were responsible:

  1. To replenish the earth with a new order—man;
  2. to subdue the earth to human uses;
  3. to have dominion over the animal creation;
  4. to eat herbs and fruits;
  5. to till and keep the garden;
  6. to abstain from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil;
  7. the penalty—death.”

God, in the Garden of Eden, gave man an opportunity to operate under self-government, under the constraint of only one simple rule. Man failed. Man was tempted by Satan to disobey the one small rule God had laid down, and mankind failed.[6]  Satan came to woman and misquoted the Word of God: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”[7]  Eve quoted the Word of God back to Satan, but added to it: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not  eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”[8] Satan then directly challenged the Word of God: “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”[9]

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”[10]

At that point, God judged the serpent (the devil), the woman, and the man. [11]

God gave another covenant, a covenant conditions the life of fallen man—conditions which must remain till … “the creation also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God” (Ro. 8.21). The elements of that covenant are:

  1. The serpent, Satan’s tool, is cursed (v.14), and becomes God’s illustration in nature of the effects of sin—from the most beautiful and subtle of creatures to a loathsome reptile.
  2. The first promise of a Redeemer (v.15). Here begins the “highway” that leads to Christ.
  3. The changed state of the woman (v16). In three particulars: (a) Multiplied conception; (b) motherhood linked with sorrow; (c) the headship of the man[12] (cf. Gen. 1.26, 27). The entrance of sin, which is disorder, makes necessary a headship, and it is vested in man (1 Tim. 2.11-14; Eph. 5.22-25; 1 Cor. 11.7-9).
  4. The earth cursed (v17) for man’s sake. It is better for fallen man to battle with a reluctant earth than to live without toil.
  5. The inevitable sorrow of life (v17).
  6. The light occupation of Eden (Gen. 2.15) changed to burdensome labor (vs. 18, 19).
  7. Physical death (v19; Rom. 5.12-21). See ‘Death (spiritual)’ (Gen. 2.17; Eph. 2.5, note).”

God continued to hold man individually responsible for his spiritual decisions. We see this first in the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.

Satan is still successfully deceiving man as to God’s authority and God’s government by manifold attacks on the inerrancy of the Word of God, by the same “Yea, hath God said” strategy he used in the Garden of Eden. This course will show how he has deceived untold millions of Christians with regard to the issue of separation of church and state by misquoting and misinterpreting the Bible.

Thus man makes a choice of his own free will as to how he will respond to God. The principle of freedom of conscience or free will is found throughout the Bible.[13]

Love requires a choice. Without free will, man has no choice and God would be, by force, taking some people to heaven and some to the lake of fire at His discretion. Admittedly, one can do no work to earn his way to heaven, but faith is not a work. “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”[14]

All other governments, except God’s supreme government, are made up of individuals. God desires the individual(s) who lead(s) a church government, a family government, or a civil government to confine that government to the principles laid down by God for the administration of itself. If a civil government will point individuals, families, businesses, and other institutions to God’s principles without infringing the God-ordained limitations to its authority and the freedom of conscience of individuals to choose God, god, gods, or no god at all, that civil government will guarantee liberty and will be operating in God’s will, as will be shown.

Go to a more in-depth version of “Self-Government” by clicking here.

Endnotes

 

[1] Ge. 1.27.

[2] Ge. 2.18, 21-22.

[3] Ge. 2.23.

[4] Ge. 1.28-29; 2.15-17.

[5] Id.

[6] Ge. 3.1-13.

[7] Ge. 3.1.

[8] Ge. 3.2-3.

[9] Ge. 3.4-5.

[10] Ge. 3.6-7.

[11] Ge. 3.14-19.

[12] Ge. 1.26, 27.

[13] See, e.g., Jn. 3.16, 18 (“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life…. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.); Re. 22.17 (“And the spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”).

[14] Romans 4.5.