THE SOVEREIGN : IS GOD STILL ON THE THRONE?

By: Al Cronkrite

“It is one thing to be free under God in a universe rich with meaning, another to be free in a vast and empty prison cell of meaninglessness.” Quote from “Sovereignty”, R. J. Rushdoony

Those of us who understand the treasonous sell out of our nation being ushered in by the political cadre elected by our more stubborn and less informed citizens are working to preserve our national sovereignty and the integrity of the nation in which we live. However, many of us do not entirely understand the nature of sovereignty and the implications involved in supporting it at a national level.

It is often said that we need not worry since God is still on His throne.

When we maintain that we worship a sovereign God we mean that He has ultimate control over everything that happens in His creation. There is a mystery here that is best acknowledged at the beginning. If God has ultimate power, one would wonder why things are in such a mess in our earthly house. We must acknowledge that His ways are not our ways. He is God and we are His creation made in His image. It pleases Him when we honor Him as our Creator and sovereign Lord and voluntarily obey His Commandments. He intervenes and creates obedience where He wills, but He also chooses not to intervene and allows His created beings to behave as they choose. In the Eighth chapter of First Samuel the elders of Israel came to God’s prophet, Samuel, requesting that he overlay his judgeship and prophetic authority with a king similar to those in other nations. God said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them."

From one who promoted God’s Law, Rushdoony’s book Sovereignty contains a chapter with the curious title “What is Law?” Recalling a legal reverse created in a short span of years he writes that in 1928 it was illegal to possess a bottle of whiskey but legal to have a bar of gold but just a few years hence it was illegal to possess a bar of gold but legal to possess a bottle of whiskey. I have often referred to the anarchy of human opinion. In this instance Rushdoony points to the ease with which totalitarian states can control the conduct of their citizens by controlling the law.

A sovereign is the holder of supreme power. That power allows the control of law. Human law regardless of its source is capricious and when the state becomes sovereign those that control the state control the law. Rushdoony writes, “As sovereign, it has a lawmaking power independent of the people, and it progressively asserts this power. The drift then into a totalitarian order can only be arrested and reversed by a return to the sovereignty of God. No laws passed to arrest that drift can succeed. No sovereign can be bound by the laws of a subject. Men cannot bind God by their laws and wills, and, when the state is accepted by men as sovereign, it is free from all human restraint. Only a return to the one true God and Sovereign can reverse man’s condition of bondage.” (Emphasis mine)

In United States sovereignty is vested in an anonymous cabal (The Hidden Hand) that controls the government that controls the nation. The electorate votes for candidates selected by the Hidden Hand and the election is controlled by the media that is controlled by the same Hidden Hand. Acceptable candidates are given favorable publicity and unacceptable candidates are ignored, derided, marginalized, and mocked. In our urban society where money is the sustenance of life and luxury, control of money is a source of great power. Power over the currency creates an opportunity to usurp sovereignty and create law that requires obedience.

We have arrived at this unfortunate situation because United States citizens failed in their responsibility to proscribe the powers of government and forsook God’s Law by allowing it to be replaced with human law.

Amy Chua in her book Day of Empire makes the case for tolerance as a requirement for growing and maintaining empires. Of the single digit number of entities that history might qualify as empires Chua describes the Roman Empire as one of the most tolerant and successful at incorporating captured nations. However, according to Chua’s description there were very few Romans who enjoyed much freedom. Chua writes that “even when citizenship was extended to nearly every freeborn male in the empire, only a tiny fraction of the population qualified as citizens. Slaves were far more numerous, often condemned to labor in the fields to feed the great Roman cities….The avenues to slavery were many. Among those who found themselves being auctioned off were prisoners of war, wives, and children of prisoners of war, victims of pirates and kidnappers, children of slaves, children whose parents had sold them into slavery, men seized for debt by tax collectors, and even free adults who put themselves up for sale.” Chua goes on to list some of the ways slaves were used. In addition to working in the fields they performed sexual services, worked in homes, were killed as gladiators, were shredded by wild beasts, tied to stakes and cut open as specimens for doctors. Men and women were beaten, skewered, flogged, and gutted. Children were hung by their feet and torn apart by hyenas.

Admiration granted to empires is not because they provide freedom to their citizens. The Roman Empire is famous and was admired for its size and duration. It may have been tolerant by ancient standards but by any civilized criterion it was cruel and restrictive. Freedom in every empire, including the United States, is predicated on obedience to tyrannical laws passed by the sovereign state. Empires are about power, not freedom.

United States was founded as a Republic, so was Rome. United States was an aggressive entity, so was Rome. Citizens of the United States considered themselves superior to the citizens of other nations, so did the Romans. The similarity probably ends there and should be taken up as Professor Chua does with more “barbaric” conquerors like the Mongols.

Our forefathers conducted genocide on the original inhabitants of the land we now occupy. New territories and contiguous additions were taken by armed force. Our leaders schemed to involve us in two world wars. When peace lay calm over God’s creation they created enemies that developed strife. They used the conflicts they themselves created to exert ever increasing control over world affairs.

Now, with a United States Empire in place and control of the Middle East in progress we stand at the door to world government. Europe is already under the yoke and the framework has been constructed in the Americas. Planned illegal immigration is setting the stage for integrating Mexico and the United States without the need to create a legal structure. In this hemisphere, world government is a bonanza for every nation but one. The United States had nothing to gain and everything to lose. The loss of everything is in progress. The Hidden Hand will use and destroy any vehicle that can extend their quest for world hegemony and the United States fits into that scheme. It is being used to further the ultimate empire. Wealth is being transferred to Asia and the nation in which we live is being sold to foreign corporations that will use our citizens as slave labor.

Listen, dear reader, to what the Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Stand in the court of the Lord’s house and speak to all the cities of Judah, who have come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words I have commanded you to speak to them. Do not omit a word! Perhaps they will listen and everyone will turn from his evil way that I may repent of the calamity which I am planning to do to them because of the evil of their deeds….. If you will not listen to me, to walk in My law…then I will make this house like Shiloh and this city I will make a curse to all the nations of the earth…When Jeremiah finished speaking…the priests and the prophets seized him, saying, ‘You must die.’” Excerpted Chapter 26:2-8

The few who have had the temerity to warn the United States have been ignored. Solzhenitsyn warned us in a speech at Harvard. Mother Theresa warned us at a prayer breakfast in Washington. A few writers have consistently produced warnings. Congressman Ron Paul has provided a lonely honesty to the government in Washington. He is the representative who has been most obedient to his oath to obey the Constitution.

The Hidden Hand is a persistent evil but the deeper problem is the failure of our voting citizens to recognize what is happening and use their votes to bring change. Fifty percent or so of our people support the killing of babies in the womb and almost as many support the pre-emptive war that is tyrannizing and killing millions of innocent citizens in Iraq. Unlike many Christians in the United States who support the killing of Iraqi civilians, most Iraqi citizens had no rancor against United States and bear no culpability.

When the state, manipulated or not, is accepted as sovereign the people lose control and a progressive despotism ensues. Humans and human institutions are not capable of providing the consistent legal control provided by the unchanging Law of God. When sovereignty is vested in humans or human institutions the instability of human opinion creates a constant source of chaos that always tends toward dictatorial government.

Our nation was constructed to allow sovereignty to rest with the people. The Constitution was designed to restrict the size of the federal government and states rights were incorporated as an additional governor on federal power. The right to vote was restricted to those who had a vested interest in the nation. Senators were appointed by state governments. The system was designed to defuse power and prevent its concentration. It only worked for a short period of time.

Americans have the same mindset that caused Israel to reject Samuel and request a king. They have rejected God and His Law and selected instead human ordnances administered by a sovereign State. In so doing they have enthroned the creation rather than the Creator. God has allowed this to happen and the results are the same as He promised the profligate Israelis of old: conscription of young men and women into military service, wide spread employment in making ordnance, heavy taxation, and the theft of our belongings through inflation. Ironically, the reaction of our citizens to warnings is also the same as in ancient Israel. Our people refuse to listen to the voice of reproof and continue to grant their assent to an aggressive and tyrannical government.

The punishment for prolonged disobedience is often captivity.

United States of America is in desperate condition. God has allowed us to fall into the hand of powerful pagans because we have not been willing to obey Him and serve Him as our Sovereign ruler. He is still on the throne but like the people of Samuel’s era, we have rejected Him and chosen the State instead!

“Only a return to the one true God and Sovereign can reverse man’s condition of bondage.”