Biblical Resistance Today
With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity. Romans 12:1-2 (JB Phillips trans.)
As this present season of darkness becomes more morally and spiritually dark and Biblical Christians awake to the nation’s (and the world’s) descent in this historical moment, Biblical Christians will ponder resistance to the governing authorities as the necessary means to declare her/his loyalty to Christ Jesus due to the direct assaults by the governing authorities. As Jesus made clear during his earthly ministry, just as the unrepentant, unredeemed world hated him so will they hate Biblical Christians for their other-worldly devotion to the supernatural God of Jacob and Jesus, his Anointed Son.
How may resistance to lawless and unrighteous governing authorities find any sanction in the Bible? After all, doesn’t Romans 13:1ff clearly state that Biblical Christians are to subject themselves to the governing authorities without any apparent qualifications as to the nature and conduct of the governing authorities? And didn’t Paul write these verses under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when the Mediterranean world was under the brutal domination of the Roman Empire and its governing authorities?
Scholars who defend the Biblical worldview take different views on these verses from the Book of Romans. Some find in the verses no qualifications of the governing authorities for the Biblical Christian’s subjection, regardless of the governing authorities’ moral and ethical conduct – lawful in respect to God’s law or not; moral or corrupt according to God’s standard of righteousness; representative or dictatorial according to God’s standard of sovereign rule. Others, with whom I agree, find such qualifications clearly stated. Here’re the verses:
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake.
Romans 13:1-5
Paul plainly writes that the referenced authorities are appointed by God and such they conduct themselves in accordance with God’s sovereign rule - that is, their recognition of good and evil on earth aligns with Heaven’s standards in that the rulers, for example, do not call the evil good, or the good evil. They give praise to those subjects who do good, or in modern day parlance, they don’t sic the IRS on a citizen for having effective outspoken political views in opposition to the authorities’ partisan political ideology. And as a minister under God’s appointment the ruler dispenses the rightful judgment and penalty for evil based on God’s standard, not humankinds. If Paul had intended to include more open-ended qualifications so that even governing authorities whose conduct was judged as opposing God’s law, or as denying that the topic of God and His existence mattered in any meaningful way in the affairs between their authority and the common people, would his text not have been more transparent in stating such qualifications?
So, Romans 13:1-5 does not give carte blanche to any governing authority regardless of its responsible conduct to whom we must give our obeisance and our subjection. On the other hand, neither does the Bible give warrant to any form of resistance action. God’s law gives explicit standards for how a New Testament Christian conducts her- or himself in regard to social institutions. As we consider some Biblical examples of resistance below, perhaps we shall see acts of resistance which the Word of God does endorse.
Consider the text and context of these Biblical examples of resistance. Are there others?
· Lot’s example – Lot’s refusal to bend to the social pressures and the cultural mores over which the governing authorities ruled is an example of faithful resistance to… the society’s sheeple acceptance of lockdowns, masks, and the ransacking of our political, economic, and legal system for the powerful moves in the false flag Covid Conspiracy underway by the ‘global Deep State’ … uh, I mean, faithful resistance to “the world’s” standards and its disdain of God’s Biblical standard. (Genesis 19).
· Moses’ example – Moses continuously resisted Pharaoh, the supreme head of state and civil authority of the Egyptian nation who authorized … the Democrat Party’s/Deep State’s shifting of American institutions to totalitarian rule to completely control and enslave human beings via genetic engineering of body and mind to be connected to artificial intelligence while preparing the globe for the Great Reset and the Great Depopulation… uh, I mean, who authorized Egyptian oppression of the Hebrews as a slave people. (Exodus 1-15).
· Esther’s example - Esther’s response to Mordecai’s influence to resist the high ruling official… Biden, armed with executive and legislative power by an illegitimate stolen election in service to the Deep State’s globalist plans to depopulate (here and here) the earth and rescue the failing global capitalist system in the current competition between 2 global financial centers of political-economies by instituting a digital, non-centralized global currency …uh, I mean, the high ruling official Haman, who in service to the Persian King Ahasuerus planned to leverage his governmental “state” authority for the implementation of the murderous program to extinguish, known also as depopulation of the Hebrews. (Book of Esther).
· Obadiah’s and Elijah’s example – Their faithful resistance led to the fateful confrontation as God’s representatives… to forthrightly speak the truth in the “public square” of one’s sphere of influence about the Covid Conspiracy and the faithless pursuit by the globe’s ‘filthy rich’ for a universal, technological utopia for all the many global human communities in spite of the unintended consequences from the governing authorities …uh, I mean, their faithful confrontation with Queen Jezebel, King Ahab, and the prophets of Baal who sought to lead God-worshipping Hebrews away from the true worship and divine protection of Yahweh to the nation’s institutionalized idolatry of false ‘no-gods.’
· Daniel’s example – Daniel refused the edict…to accept the politicization of “science” by Fauci and the rest of the “this, now that” group of public health officials at CDC and the NIH, plus the big ‘blue’ city mayors and big ‘blue’ state governors whose medical pontifications change with the political winds …uh, I mean, the edict of the Babylonian Empire’s King Nebuchadnezzar, the sole governing authority, to stop worshiping Yahweh even at the risk of… “social-execution” by government threats that it will strictly enforce the blocking of freedom-loving citizens’ legal rights for access to food, jobs, healthcare, normal citizenry entertainments and public enjoyments, and other stringent deprivations leading toward social and probable literal deaths by the state, … uh, I mean, at the risk of state-execution by immolation in the blazing furnace. (Joshua 2 & 6).
· Paul’s example – The Apostle Paul’s escapes from prison, acts in themselves of civil disobedience by divine and covert human means and his other acts of resistance to the governing authorities including his arrests by the Jewish leaders in close ties by their patronage with the Roman governing authorities; his apologetic testimonies before magistrates and royal officials; and his efforts to avoid punitive actions by regional and local governing authorities – each and all these were clear acts of resistance in a normal understanding of contemporary Jewish and Roman political authority. …If Paul lived today do you think he would quietly accept the troubling insouciance and censorship by the governing authorities and their false claims – historically unprecedented in America, and by their ignoring the alarms of practicing physicians and frontline medical practitioners for the social disruption, bodily and mental harm, and actual deaths to people, families and their vulnerable loved ones? Do you think he would not, by faith in the Lord’s true sovereign rule past and future, speak out publicly equipped with researched, peer-reviewed, truthful reports by medical researchers, immunologists, and practitioners with credentials to match those of any spouting the “official line.”
· Stephen’s example - Pointedly, the disciple Stephen demonstrated his obedient resistance to the Jewish leaders even in martyrdom by his faithful rebuke of Jewish leaders’ long history of refusal of God’s gracious and good acts by their decision time and again to ignore the rebukes and warnings of His appointed messengers and even to depopulate their nation of them by killing them. Stephen charged the Jewish governing authorities with acts of faithless hubris which had blinded them to the true redemption of God offered in the person of the God/Man, Jesus - the Promised Messiah. Stephen exposed the faithlessness and lawlessness of their governing authority not only for its faithless betrayal of God and His heart in the scriptural standards of His Word, but also for its lawless acts of murder (Book of Acts, chapters 6 & 7). …Have the governing authorities of the United States not also turned their own “deaf ears” and their own “blind eyes” to the nation’s rich Christian heritage of faithfulness and dependence on Almighty God in its times of turmoil and challenge?
· Peter and John examples - And the faithful resistance of the Apostles Peter and John in choosing to “obey God rather than men” as their response to the demands of the ruling Jewish leaders cannot be dismissed as anything less than an inspired resistance to the attempts by the Jewish governing authorities to require loyalty to their demands above loyalty to God in Christ Jesus (Acts 5). …Is it clear where your loyalties are today? Is there a line in the government’s “authoritative” demands beyond which in clear-headed and conscience-driven reflection you will not and cannot submit without violating your loyalty to the Lord of Glory who has given you the freedom, dignity, and eternal confidence in the truth…His truth as revealed in His Word? This is a question that we who discern the unlawful and ungodly demands of this present government must be prepared to answer. Will we exhibit and demonstrate Biblical faithfulness by resisting the ungodly, unrighteous, and over-reaching government of mere men and mere women?
Each of these examples are Biblical testimonies of God-fearing women and men who demonstrated acts of resistance against unrighteous governing authorities. Due to their faith in God’s Supreme Sovereignty over that of their governing authorities, they exemplified the faithfully discerned understanding that open resistance to the edicts, commands, and mandates of political governing authorities was called for, and at times unavoidably required, to clearly and unequivocally demonstrate their ultimate, loyal faithfulness to God in Jesus Christ rather than accept the preempting demands of secular governing authorities. Church history is full of such examples.