Assessing Biblically the 'Beastly' Governing Authorities Today in the Covid Conspiracy

I recently sought to initiate some kind of “sidewalk protest” among others who are like-minded and passionate in exposing by truthful witness the lies and deception of the covid conspiracy. (Eph 6:12) By more prayerful reflection I realized I was defunct of the definite leadership of the Holy Spirit in this. In sensing this, I concluded I would “eat whatever crow” I needed in order to withdraw my initiative for any kind and degree of action in my own stead when it was devoid of the will and direction of the Lord. Such efforts will not succeed or victory be realized over the works of the flesh, the world, or Satan (John 15:5 - I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.)

As a way of strengthening my own preparation of heart and mind should the Lord so lead in the future, I spent some time cogitating on something I had worked on earlier this year. The following is a condensed summary of my cogitations. I offer them in hopes of spurring others to give attention at this time to what will become, if not already now, the call to respond to the current manifestation of the “beastly” nature of the American governmental authorities which increasingly appears to be in lockstep with the Chinese Communist Party’s goals in spite of what propaganda is issued from Washington, DC. Like so many witnesses who stood firm in past tumultuous periods when beastly civil, social, and coercive power with ‘governmental’ authority moved against God’s plan for political and social order, we desire to be faithful to the Biblical witness against such evil.

Following are 3 sections: a short reference to some Biblical examples of faithful God-fearers and their resistance, protest, and dissent as a witness to God’s Kingdom against the pretense and idolatry of corrupted governing authorities; a short section on Romans 13 and the Biblical instruction for faithful obedience and submission by Christ-followers to secular governmental authorities when such authorities behave according to the Biblical mandate for them; and a brief section on the historical prominence of two 20th Century mighty men of faith who gave a memorable Biblical witness to the difficult challenges of their times…. indeed, times not that long ago.

Some Biblical Examples of a Faithful Witness to God’s Sovereignty and His Mandate to Corrupted Governing Authorities -

·       Lot – Genesis 19: Lot refused to submit to the widespread, socially-approved mandate of the governing authority’s immoral trespass and degradation against the bodies and spirits of two visitors; Lot drew a line of resistance between a godless, immoral sovereignty shared socially among the residents of ancient Sodom and the sovereign control of one’s own body and soul given by God in creation and redemption.

·       Moses – Book of Exodus: Moses resisted Pharoah - the supreme sovereign leader of state and civil authority in ancient Egypt, because Pharoah mandated the brutal, socially- separating, and dehumanizing oppression, including death, for those who refused to conform their lives to his unjust and unfree political demands.

·       Esther – Book of Esther: Esther opposed, took action, exposed, and thwarted the deceptive mandate of the wicked, high governing official Haman, who held ‘civil and state’ authority, to murder a specially-identified people.

·       Obadiah – 1 Kings, Chapter 18: Obadiah resisted Jezebel and Ahab who comprised the sovereign ruling leadership over God’s favored nation, Israel, and as king and queen had mandated that their subjects comply with their lawless and idolatrous policies; their mandate was an affront to God and His standard for just political rule and for the righteous ordering of social life by acknowledgment through worship of the Only True God, and the corresponding beneficial outcomes as a result for the people’s well-being.

·       Daniel – Book of Daniel: Daniel resisted the ‘state’ rule of the king under the penalty of death for Daniel’s refusal to comply with the ruling authority’s mandate to stop worshipping the True God; worshipping the True God meant the acknowledgment by the governing authority that God had given individual religious liberty for all who, by their seeking to worship God in spirit and truth, sought in accord with the Biblical truth later written by Paul to the church in Rome in Romans 12:1-2, to conform their lives with the Biblical testimony of an individual’s right of control over one’s body and mind which God has given to each and every person created with His image.

·       Rahab – Joshua 2 & 3: Rahab’s lowly social and moral position of prostitution was ultimately of little consequence when by faith she resisted and refused to comply with the mandate of the king of Jericho by hiding two Hebrew spies on their reconnaissance mission: a mission to uphold God’s plan for His people and all God-fearers in that land, as directed by Joshua in obedience to the command of God.  

·       Paul – throughout the New Testament: Paul repeatedly resisted and disobeyed civil, political, and religious governing authorities by his many escapes from coercive confinement in prison and arrest, and by other efforts to avoid punitive action by the mandates of ‘national’, regional, and local governing authorities.

·       Stephen – Acts 6 & 7: Stephen, as a faithful witness, publicly challenged the governing authorities in his faithful “letting goods and kindred go, and this life also” by openly recounting the long history of the nation’s failure of leadership by intentional idolatrous and evil mandates that led the people to turn away from God and His requirements for a true national and international just and moral political leadership - a leadership that would have brought benefits of blessings by their acknowledgment of God’s gracious and good acts, and that in Stephen’s contemporary time was a further turning away from God and His good and gracious provisions.

·       Peter and John – Acts 5: Both apostles were in agreement to disobey the mandates of the governing authorities’ that they not speak the truth but to conform their speech and their lives to that of the governing authorities in their ‘arrangement’ with the ‘globalist’ plan of Empire to maintain their privileged positions in the tyrannical social, religious, and political order; they could not keep silent about the power of the Gospel to bring freedom of conscience and true freedom in Christ by living not by lies but by the truth in “obeying God rather than men.”

What about Romans 13:1-7? And the two mandates of the Kingdom of God: one for Christian citizenship in the world and one for governing authorities’ and their behavior in their God-ordained role.

This passage of Romans 13:1-7  has been used widely and oftentimes without attention to the important distinctions of conduct by the “governing authorities” – conduct which elicits obedience and submission to its secular authority by the Christ-followers. Those distinctives are clearly spelled out. Such Christian obedience and submission is conditioned upon governance that (a.) upholds the Biblical standard of organized opposition to citizen behavior which is evil and praises for citizen behavior which is good…where evil and good are defined by intentions and outcomes in accordance with God’s Biblical standards (v. 3). Also, Christian submission is based on governmental conduct that (b.) fulfills the God-ordained role for governance as God’s “minister”, that is, as the administration or bureaucracy that produces true secular “servanthood” – that is, service to the general population for enhancing the common good, dispensing restraint and restrictions for the common good, applying coercion within limits, instituting policies that deter criminal and evil behaviors, and that affirm right and proper jurisprudence in the punishment of criminals and those who practice evil (v. 4). Further, (c.) such governance elicits affirmation in the consciences of citizens who are law-abiding and who seek a just political and social order (v. 5). Such governance will reinforce citizens’ lawful paying of taxes, conforming to lawful and moral practices, and the proper reverence and respect for governing authorities (v. 6 & 7). Governing authorities that meet the conditions in these verses deserve to be obeyed. Those which do not meet these conditions for governing authorities may be judged as wayward and not fulfilling the God-ordained role and hence, they may be subject to nonviolent civil disobedience, resistance, and dissent that’s necessary to call such wayward governing authorities back to their ordained role. Just as there is a Biblical mandate for Christian citizenship, so also is there a Biblical mandate for secular governing authority.  

Karl Barth and the Barmen Declaration; Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Letter from a Birmingham Jail

One of the most influential 20th century theologians was the Swiss Christian, Karl Barth. Barth is credited as the author of the Barmen Declaration, the 1934 confession signed by certain German Christians in response to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. The Barmen Declaration clarified and defended the Church’s institutional role as non-antagonistic but separate from the German State. It declared that confessing Christians would remain “unified by the Word of God in faith through the Holy Spirit … that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death.” The Declaration clarified the God-ordained role of the Church in its rejection of false doctrines that the powerful Nazi party was pressuring German Christians to accept. Confessing German Christians declared their resistance by rejecting the Nazi social, cultural, and political pressures to accept “other events and powers, figures and truths” as substitutes for the authority of Biblical truth and a faith that depended only on Jesus Christ. These faithful Christ-followers resisted the Nazi State by rejecting the Nazis’ demands that Christians give unquestioned loyalty to the nation’s new leader, the Fuhrer. Had they been delinquent in witnessing publicly to truth and the Biblical mandate “to live not by lies”– they would have forsaken their primary devotion and loyalty to Biblical truth and the lordship of the Lord Jesus.

They also rejected the contemporary “changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions” that Hitler and his Nazi regime intended to establish throughout German society. They rejected the orders of rule which the Nazi leaders wanted to incorporate into Church affairs. They rejected the German State’s totalitarian order over human life that the Nazis pushed for and eventually achieved for a time. The Confessing German rejected the Nazis’ demands that the Church acquiescence to the Nazi State’s “characteristics, tasks, and dignity” and thus make itself an extension of the Nazi State. And finally, they rejected the human arrogance that it should comply with the mandate of the “desires, purposes, and plans” of the Nazis which would have placed “the Word and work of the Lord” in service to the authority of the State. In this tumultuous period of history, the Barmen Declaration helped to rally the faith in Biblical truth and the Lordship of Jesus. By it they preserved the integrity and witness of the Church as the earthly Body of Christ and helped German Christians resist the Nazis State’s attempts to undermine the Christians’ ideological, theological, and spiritual doctrines in its loyalties to the Kingdom of God. The Declaration was an explanation in the time of the Church’s resistance to the totalitarianism of German fascism, and the efforts at a totalitarian integration of most if not all German institutions.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the twentieth centuries most exemplary Christians in confronting with Biblical principles of resistance that which was clearly state-supported social and political injustice in a democratic republic. The continuation after WWII of the long social and political denial of African American civil and economic freedom based on race was the main immoral injustice which King addressed in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. King’s leadership in the 1950s and early 1960s civil rights movement had already become recognized as a strong public, Christian voice for change against the injustices of society’s instituted racism. As the confrontation between nonviolent marchers and the Birmingham, Alabama police force (along with state and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies) deepened in April 1963, King penned the letter while in jail as a response to a letter in the Birmingham News written by eight local prominent Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish white leaders. MLK’s Letter became a manifesto of the Christian basis for civil disobedience to unjust laws and practices.  

In the letter, King explained four steps in any nonviolent campaign of civil disobedient resistance. They included (1) confirmation of facts - collection of facts to determine the “live injustice;” (2) negotiation – seeking redress from the governing authorities due to claims of injustice; (3) self-purification – the training and readiness of individual resistors to receive the penalties of trespassing in nonviolent, public acts of civil disobedience; and (4) direct actions of resistance in nonviolent civil disobedience. The resistance of MLK can be characterized as (a.) open explanation of the governing authorities’ wrongs or evil; (b.) an intentionality by the protestors in what and why they were participating in civil disobedience; (c.) the action(s) planned and called for; and (d.) the understanding by the protestors that they were dependent by their willing sacrificial Christian faith to accept the criminal treatment they would receive in hopes of just outcomes. MLK’s prescribed plan for Christians in any confrontation with unjust requirements by governing authorities is helpful in considering the stakes and rules of engagement.

The faithful leadership of Barth and King is instructive and can help Christians today weigh the demands and deliberation needed in this present tumultuous time of the governing authorities’ present waywardness in the covid conspiracy.