By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“Earthly civilizations come and go, but the Kingdom of God is eternal. The Word of the Lord is a civilization blueprint that transcends time, space, place, and ethnicity. For the children of God, we walk in the civilizations of both the fallen (the state) and the righteous (the Kingdom of God). One civilization is here, in full, the other is coming, though in shadow it’s already here.
“We are stewards and sojourners of the temporal civilizations, but Kings and Queens in the civilization to come, the civilization that is already among us in our hearts, the Kingdom of God.” – Paul Gordon Collier
As our civilizations collapse around us, those without roots outside of those civilizations will experience a collapse within themselves as well. Those with roots outside of those collapsing civilizations will be best equipped to be stewards of what might replace them.
As Christians, we are called to be good stewards of whatever state we find ourselves in. We have as our examples Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Esther, Mordecai, Daniel, and Joseph (and others as well).
All of these men and women of faith found themselves subject to a state that, in some way, wanted their people killed. These states were enemies of God’s children. Yet not a one of these people called on others to raise up arms to vanquish the state that wanted to destroy them and their people.
Jeremiah explicitly is given a prophecy commanding the Israelites to submit to the invaders and live well under their rule. The Israelites refuse to enter God’s rest. Instead, they drag Jeremiah to Egypt, blaming their “unrighteousness” towards the Queen of Heaven for their woes rather than their unrighteousness towards God.
They will die in Egypt, and the 10 tribes of Israel will be scattered. To this day, they have not been identified, which has led to more than 2500 years of exile from consequence of men entering their own understanding rather than God’s rest.
Ezekiel prophesized God’s Word, but never incited others to rise up and throw off the yolk they were under. He preached the words God gave him, even when God called him not to mourn for his own wife when she died, because he was to physically prophecy the indifference God held for his unrighteous bride.
Ezekiel entered God’s rest, and his words today continue to lift the body of Christ towards heaven.
Mordecai not only served his nation faithfully, without violating God’s laws, but he saved the King from an assassination plot. He saved the instrument of his peoples’ destruction from destruction.
The book of Esther never mentions God, but all who know His Word can see God moving through all Mordecai did. We can see how God confounds earthly authority, leading it to fulfill His will, no matter how obstinate that authority might be.
Mordecai entered God’s rest and God raised him up to become the second most powerful man in that same state.
Daniel’s righteousness and God-given wisdom elevated him to the second highest position in the land, yet when conspirators tricked the King into condemning him, by appealing to the King’s vanity, Daniel did not rebel or call others to do so. Instead, he put his trust in the Lord, not knowing beforehand if God would save him from the lions.
Daniel became the second most powerful man in the state before he was thrown into the Lion’s Den. Afterwards, his position was so cemented that he retained it even after that state, Babylon, fell to another state, the Persians. These same Persians would give Israel the resources needed to rebuild their temple.
Daniel entered God’s rest and became the wisdom of two states, though he never imposed his faith on either pagan state through that position, always staying within the boundaries of the state he served (so long as those boundaries did not defy God’s law).
Esther is assured by Mordecai that even if she chooses to remain a coward and not confront the King about the planned genocide of her people, another way will be provided. Mordecai knew scripture, it would seem, for he knew God would not allow his testimony, the miracle of Israel, to be blotted out by Satan’s men.
Esther entered the Rest of the Lord, risking death, knowing full well God’s will would prevail with or without her. She risked execution by the King by entering his court without his permission.
Joseph entered Egypt as a slave, then became a prisoner, going from a low position to the lowest position in the state. He stood in the prisoner’s pit symbolically the way the unrighteous after death will stand in the pit. He made no effort to escape as a slave or a prisoner. In both instances, he served his master. Potipher’s household was blessed by Joseph’s works, as was Pharoah’s prison.
Rather than rebel, Jospeh worked to bless the state he served, even while being first a slave, then a prisoner. His righteous wisdom prepared the way for his elevation from pit man to the right hand of the Pharoah. He went from slavery and imprisonment in the state to becoming the second most powerful man in the state.
It is clear to me that God ordains the state. It is not intended to be unrighteous, but where unrighteous hearts rule, no state can be righteous.
The state throughout history has been either an instrument of God’s mercy or an instrument of God’s righteousness. The magistrate is the plumbline of the people of the state.
Where righteousness prevails, so too will righteous governance. Where unrighteousness prevails, so too will unrighteous governance. The state cannot save you, for only God saves, but the state can be an instrument of wrath or mercy, depending on the consensual righteousness of the people.
No matter the model of the state, the righteousness of that state will emerge from the heart of the people, not the heart of any system (though systems can support or undermine righteous and unrighteous acts).
The power of the state is existentially rooted in its capacity to kill and harm human beings, and also its capacity to destroy resources.
There is no exception. This includes America.
The institutions of the state must facilitate all products, services, and disciplines necessary for optimal human harming and resource destroying capacity.
The state must always be an instrument of death and destruction to extend and preserve its sovereign power.
This will never change. This is the nature of the state. Without this power, the state disintegrates, often to give birth to semi-states before the next state claims sovereign power over the land.
The state is a vehicle of power for those who wish to assure success. The closer you get to the zenith of power, the more certain this principle becomes. The further you get from the zenith of power, the more the exceptions you will find.
The fear of losing fairly is the birth of the state. The fear of suffering and death is the power of the state. Your fear of suffering and death makes you a slave to the one who fears fairly losing to you.
The fear of losing fairly is the motivation for power that becomes the leadership in the state. The fear of suffering and death is the power that sustains the power of those who fear losing; these are the leaders of the state.
The fear of suffering and death is the fruit of the soul that does not put its faith in God’s rest.
Today, we Americans live in a land that is openly hostile not only to God’s laws, but to Him directly. We celebrate a woman’s “right” to choose. We chastise a whole race for the sins of their fathers, calling for the persecution of that “guilty” race.
We condemn heteronormativity, the way God intended us to be, and elevate homonormativity, the path that leads to the extermination of the human race.
Whole schools of thought in America regularly preach the message that God is a white supremacist demon that deserves to be driven from the public square.
Within the state’s mechanisms of power, we as Christians should call for righteous governance. Within the state’s mechanisms of power, we as Christians should call for traitors to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, which includes executions.
Within the state’s mechanism of power, we as Christians should call on the state to end unrighteous laws and follow only righteous ones. Esther and Mordecai used the full powers of the state to bring execution to those who would execute the Jews, for instance. But they did not seek to use those powers to overthrow the state itself.
Yet, when it is clear the power within the state to reform it to righteousness does not exist, we are yet called to continue to be good citizens of that state up to the point of defying God’s laws. Jeremiah did not try to use state power to reform the state, short of witnessing God’s word to the leaders, for he knew that power was gone, by God’s will, as a righteous punishment on the land.
Today, I believe we Christians in America still have state power we can both appeal to and bear to recalibrate our state towards the righteousness of God. But the season might soon come when we Christians might realize any state power to restore righteousness is already gone (as it was for Jeremiah).
Outside of hearing from the Lord directly, we can look at Judah in the time of Jeremiah for a plumbline of what a state under the unbreakable wrath of God looks like. While Ninevah was once given the opportunity to repent by Jonah, it was not given that opportunity under Nahum.
I will leave it for you, the reader, to assess whether we appear to be Judah under Zedekiah or under Rehoboam. Under Zedekiah, the die was cast. The option was only to submit to the righteous judgment on the land, the Babylonians, or be even more scattered than the Israelites already were. They chose the latter. Under Rehoboam, there was yet hope for Judah, who fell to the latter unrighteous reign of Solomon and the continued beginning unrighteous reign of Rehoboam.
Either way, whether we have hope as a nation through repentance or not, unless we have received a divine word from God, we should operate as if repentance can lead us back to righteousness, but not with a hope to save the state; we do so rather in the commitment, through love, to walk daily in service to the Lord, through His spirit, His Will, not our own.
America may survive or die. Tyrants may rise or fall, but the Word of the Lord endures forever, and contains the truth of the home we are traveling towards, the new heaven and the new earth, where all authority on heaven and earth will lovingly bend its knee in service to the one true sovereign, the Spirit of Lord, the God of Jacob, the arm that saves.
In these times, I encourage my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to not give up working towards correcting the state’s unrighteousness through the state’s lawful means of doing so, but also not to put your hope in the outcome of America. For hope in America is not hope in the Rest of the Lord.
We who are in Christ are peacemakers expecting suffering and death, while welcoming the opportunity to testify to God’s glory to others by cheerfully embracing such faits. But we are not called to pursue suffering, only to know it is a necessary part of living Christ amongst his enemies, your enemies, the very people God calls us to love and serve, in righteousness, in a righteous love that rejoices in truth, not in enabling sin to please man and be accepted by him.
Civilizations come and go, but not so the Kingdom of God. No righteous person will end their days in suffering, for their days end eternally in the new heaven and new earth, and no unrighteous person will avoid true suffering by sacrificing righteousness to avoid pain and death.
As our civilizations continue to collapse, I hope you find comfort in the eternal civilization that cannot be broken or changed, the Kingdom of God, and through entering the rest of His Kingdom, you will be a better agent for righteous change in your unrighteous state.
Those who enter the rest of the Lord suffer no spiritual pain. Those who enter into their own understanding, their own way, have no rest today, nor will they have rest tomorrow. Esther entered God’s rest rather than her own clear understanding that to enter the Kings’ throne room is death. She did so with no prophetic promise, only faith, not in the outcome, but in the practice of acting righteously, even in the face of threat of suffering or death from the state.
Let us pray the Lord delivers to us a civic authority bold enough to vanquish the traitors in our land and restore righteousness but let us not put our heavenly hope in such things. We are stewards, not owners of the state God has put us in. Fear God, not men, and it will always go right with you, even amid great suffering and death.
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