Follow Reform Reproduce Reconstruct
Transcript:
Jeremy Walker (00:00):
Okay, welcome back to another episode of Reform, Reproduce, and Reconstruct. We’ll be talking about, as Christians, what we should believe and teach the family and how we are to influence the world around us. I am your host, Jeremy Walker, and on this episode we’re going to be discussing what the Bible says about our responsibility to promote health and the responsibility of the family to provide support and stability for members, and lastly to understand the difference between obeying civil government and reforming civil government. If you’d like to listen to this episode and more, you can find this on our website at CR101radio.com. Follow us on Facebook. You can find us on Facebook.com/reform-reproduce-reconstruct and for Twitter fans, Twitter.com/reformreproduce, and lastly Instagram at Instagram.com/CR101radio.
Jeremy Walker (01:22):
Now to get us started for our first section here, I want to discuss what does the Bible say about our responsibility to promote health? And right now it’s a big topic about promoting health and what that means to promote health because we have right here now in the United States and all around the world, it’s now March 2020 and we’re discussing the Corona virus. Corona virus is everywhere right now, and so the concept of health and promotion of health and protection of health is pretty much everywhere at the moment.
Jeremy Walker (02:00):
So what does the Bible say about health? Because it’s probably not something that you’re thinking about or what you would think about. But biblically speaking God has a lot to say abut health. Imagine that. So the first thing we’re going to think about and talk about is about theology, reformation, what we should believe, and the things that we should be teaching about. So considering the topic of health and promotion of health, what we’re going to be discussing is a passage in Proverbs, Proverbs 3, it’s actually a very famous passage in Proverbs. Proverbs 3:1-10. Quote, “My son, forget not my law, but let thine heart keep mine commandments. For length of days and long life and peace shall it add unto thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck and write them upon the table of thine heart. So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thine bones. Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the firstfruits of all thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”
Jeremy Walker (03:41):
Now this is important because this passage goes through a number of topics, starting with length of days, long life, and this has to do with promotion of health. It also has to do with making or having favor with God and with man. And one of the biggest problems of mortality is whenever one person hates another one, it potentially harms them or kills them. So having favor with other people is a very good thing, promotion of health. Now it also goes into the health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones, and everybody knows that if you’ve been paying attention of late years, people have bone marrow transplants. They have found out that inside your bone marrow, inside your blood, if you get a sickness here, you are going to die. So whenever the Bible uses a reference like this, it’s talking about the thing that brings out the absolute health in a person, their life’s blood as it were.
Jeremy Walker (04:47):
This foundation here is to keep the commandments. So God’s tying in here the law, keeping the commandments, and he says it’s going to lead to length of days and a long life, and also on top of that, peace. All these things promote health. But people don’t typically associate morality with health, and that’s kind of the problem that we want to discuss about today is the connection between morality and health, because those two are connected, even though people don’t typically think about it, even though they don’t want to make the connection between the two, they want to think it’s like chemicals and vitamins and antibiotics and vaccinations. These things are what’s going to promote health. Viruses are something that’s going to damage our health. There’s other things as well, but especially right now we’re talking about viruses because of the whole Corona virus here that’s happening at the moment. It’s kind of a national and worldwide phenomenon that they’re all worried about and talking about health and safety and all the rest. But nobody is talking about morality’s link to health and safety. All they’re talking about is the brass tax, physical world of washing your hands and coughing and separating yourself. Which all has, of course, biblical backgrounds for people that need to separate themselves so that they don’t contaminate other people and things like that. Quarantine is a very biblical subject.
Jeremy Walker (06:23):
But that’s not the point. The point is that health and safety goes beyond the physical. And if you’re a Christian, this isn’t a complicated process because the Bible connects the two, the physical and the morality, the moral aspect of it. Where in the physical world, if you’re an evolutionist, you don’t make this connection. There is no connection here because there is no spiritual, there is no moral part of it. There’s only a physical side of it, a chemical component of it.
Jeremy Walker (06:50):
So in the world of viruses and what we’re talking about here, what we should believe, I recently saw a Tinder, Tinder is apparently an app that is famous on iOS devices and otherwise, for people to “hook up.” Basically people to fornicate with strangers. And they had put out a news article and this article talks about what they had done. It was on their app. They were warning people who were utilizing their app to hook up with complete strangers to fornicate and have sexual interaction with complete strangers, these people were being warned not to contract the Corona virus and to use hand sanitizer and to wash their hands and not touch their face. But these are people who are about to engage in purposeful fornication and sexual interaction with complete strangers who they don’t know. And according to the CBC, there are thousands and thousands and thousands upon thousands of sexually transmitted diseases that are brand new to the United States every single year. Once again the moral component meets the physical component.
Jeremy Walker (08:01):
And so the problem is that people want to separate these two, that somehow you can separate the moral from the physical. And as Christians we’re saying you cannot fornicate and get away with it. The reason why is it’s God’s world. God says this is “thou shalt not commit adultery,” and if you do so there are consequences. Now these people, they don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in consequences, therefore whenever there are sexually transmitted diseases and consequences, they see them as just a physical reaction, something to be overcome. If we just get the right type of vaccines, we can continue to fornicate without any repercussions. We can continue to do exactly what we want with no problems whatsoever.
Jeremy Walker (08:41):
See, here in Proverbs God’s telling us not to forget the law, but to make sure we’re keeping the commandments, because this is what’s going to give us long life and peace and length of days. It’s going to give us health to our navel, marrow, to our bones, to always think upon God, not to lean upon our own understanding, but upon his. This is in direct conflict to what the evolutionists and the non-Christians would say. In fact, most people in the church. Because they lean on their own understanding. They can think of what’s causing these diseases, what’s causing these viruses to attack us. Well, it’s sexually transmitted diseases, so we just have to somehow create something to avoid it, and if we can just avoid the circumstance, avoid the penalty, we don’t have to follow the law. But God’s saying just follow the law and you won’t have to worry about the consequences. If you want to have sexual interaction, it’s not a big deal. You can do it all the time. You just have to do so within the guidelines of what I’ve said, which is find a husband, find a wife, there you go.
Jeremy Walker (09:46):
Today people are really concerned about contagion. They’re really concerned about viruses and health and safety. They wouldn’t be teaching us the keeping of the commandments, because the keeping of the commandments is what gives length of days to people and long life, and also peace on top of it. Why is it that we have so many gang related violence? Probably because they can’t have peace with their fellow man. Why can’t they have peace with their fellow man? Because at all points in time they see everyone as a rival. They don’t treat their neighbor as themselves. Everyone is someone to usurp, everyone is somebody to always one up, everyone is somebody who’s some kind of a rival you have to beat, you have to show you’re better than them, which causes constant conflict, which causes you to of course have no peace with people, which can of course lead to death, and very often does, especially for young people who end up in these type of situations. You break the commandments, it’s going to lead to your death in one shape, form, or fashion or another.
Jeremy Walker (10:45):
See, if we’re really concerned about stuff and list whole things about what we’re supposed to believe, what we’re supposed to think, what we’re supposed to teach, if you’re really concerned about health and safety, yes, viruses are real. Yes, the Corona virus is a real thing, and yes, we should follow protocols about safety and hand-washing, all the basic things, and even quarantine if you need to to promote your health and safety. But if we’re really concerned about health and safety, we wouldn’t be talking about only the physical but the spiritual root of all the things that happen. Because as you break the commandments, you’re introducing more and more problems into your life and to the life of others. Instead of lengthening your days, you’re going to shorten your days. Instead of having a long life, you’re going to have a short life. Instead of having peace with your fellow man, you’re going to have nothing but contempt and war and tumult with your fellow man. You’re not going to find favor and good understanding in the face of God and with other men if you break the commandments instead.
Jeremy Walker (11:51):
So health and safety goes way and beyond the simple concept of washing hands, and it goes into not only understanding the commandments, but the teaching and the keeping of them. And the problem is that how can you keep and teach the commandments if you don’t believe they’re currently relevant? And that’s one of the major aspects of the church today. They’ve done away with the commandments. They don’t teach them. They certainly don’t keep them. And they wonder why Paul said, “Many of you sleep,” because in the New Testament churches they had problems. They were breaking the commandments and bad things were happening. They couldn’t figure out why were bad things happening to them? Well, they were happening because they weren’t keeping the commandments. They weren’t having peace. They weren’t having length of days because of what was happening, because they lacked the moral component that was necessary to have the blessings of God.
Jeremy Walker (12:44):
So if we’re going to properly know what is true and what to teach, we’re to start here. We have to not forget the law. We have to know it, which means you have to study it. You have to then let your heart keep the commandments. You can’t let your heart keep it if you don’t even know what it is. So we’re supposed to be knowing it and teaching it, studying it for ourselves, and if you do that, not only will you be able to of course follow the basic, normal, physical laws about contagion and hand washing and infections and things like this, but understand that the root of all these things typically comes from a moral component, and your safety and your health lies much more on your morality than it does on your sanitization. And your lack of morality will typically lead to a major problem with your interactions with other people and of course will affect your sanitization because people who are fornicating and breaking God’s sexual laws are in no way sanitary or safe in a physical sense. And if they followed God’s laws, all of the things and all the diseases that fall upon them would not fall upon them.
Jeremy Walker (13:54):
So let’s go ahead and jump to the next aspect of this, and I want to touch on a few things that I want to promote here on Reform, Reproduce, and Reconstruct. The other things we also partner with is Rushdoony Radio. If you’re not familiar with R.J. Rushdoony, I’d like to definitely encourage you to become familiar with his lectures, his sermons, and audiobooks, which we also help produce. Not CR101radio.com, but Rushdoonyradio.org. So Rushdoonyradio.org, where you can find his lectures, sermons, and audiobooks from of course there, and I encourage you highly. For the last 20 years he’s been very edifying to me, to help me understand Christianity and how it works in the real world. We also have our 24 hour, seven day a week radio station called CR101 Radio at CR101radio.com of course. And we are streaming live our internet radio station, which has of course lectures, sermons, and all kind of other things. We have a website. You can download the app for iOS and for Android devices. You can find that on our website of course at CR101radio.com.
Jeremy Walker (15:04):
And besides just this podcast, which we do for reforming, reproducing, and reconstructing, about faith, family, and of course society, we have one specifically dedicated to preschool or education called Preschool Pioneers, and that’s mainly focusing on why Christians should become teachers, promotion of that, and of course to support and to equip them to do those jobs. You can find out more about that podcast at CR101radio.com/preschoolpioneers.
Jeremy Walker (15:35):
Let’s go ahead and move on to our second section here, and this one I like to focus on the family itself and the family’s responsibility to provide support and stability to its members because whenever we’re discussing the tumult of a unstable society, Corona virus, a lot of craziness going on right now. There’s a couple things I’d like to touch on. First we’re going to 1 Timothy 5:8. It says, “But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, is denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” Now, if you don’t know what that means, an infidel is the worst possible person apart from Christianity that there could be. The antithesis of Christian is an infidel. But this is saying if you don’t provide for your own, especially those of your own house, you’re worse than that kind of person. You’re actually in a worse state, because even non-Christians provide for their own. It’s just a standard thing that God has built into mankind. They don’t all do that, but the vast majority do.
Jeremy Walker (16:37):
But here it seems very important to provide for those needs. Now, what are those needs? A couple of the things are support, structures, husbands supporting wives, wives supporting husbands. Now as the family we have to reconstruct that and what that means. It means if you’re a husband, as in what we have in the New Testament, husbands should treat their wives as themselves. It means you are trying every time, every possible moment that you get, to care for and take care of your wife at all points of time. And don’t usurp her, you don’t try to be mean to her, you certainly don’t abuse her, but treat her like you would yourself. And interesting aspect of that is that God says that a man loves himself, and so if you just love your wife as you love yourself, you’re doing just fine.
Jeremy Walker (17:25):
The wife, of course, is supposed to listen to her husband. The children are supposed to listen to their parents. And working together, the family unit itself can become very strong. But to provide for those people, it means that a husband can’t be a lazy louse. He’s got to work. Sadly, people get stuck into the rut that family means, especially Christian communities, the wife stays at home with the kiddos and provides the education aspects or does the homeschooling thing, and then the husband goes off to work. Well, the problem with that is there’s nothing wrong with that aspect of it, but it’s not necessarily the biblical formula for what the family is, because the wife is taken out of the aspect of income, taken out of the aspect of any monetary stuff. And you can go back into Proverbs 31, which many people like to quote, and it shows that the wife is a competent manager. She’s handling money, she’s handling the household, which is of course is also like a farm, she’s also a businesswoman because she is of course selling things. She’s equipping so that her family is well clothed. This woman is an intelligent person. She can handle business. She is not just a stay at home mom, as they like to call them. Stay at home moms, where they just sit at home and they bake cookies with the kiddos and do art projects with the kids while daddy’s off working.
Jeremy Walker (18:45):
Half the time, of course, the dads are lazy. They barely work eight hours a day. If they work eight hours a day, they’re lucky. And then of course they’re wondering why their family lives in poverty and they claim that living in poverty is a good thing. Now, caring for the needs of your family doesn’t mean just meeting the necessities, but meeting the necessities and going above it. If you’re going to be a good husband and a good provider, you’re going to make sure your family doesn’t have just enough to get by. And sadly in the Christian community in general, the idea that almost poverty is a blessing, poverty is a good thing. So if they don’t provide for their family, they’re not really considering it to be a problem, that they don’t go out to work a little extra harder, take on an extra job, take a couple extra hours, work an extra day. A lot of people only work five days a week and not six days, and so they rest on the seventh day. But if you’re not making enough money in five days to support your family and to get a little bit above the needs of your family to provide savings for your family, you need to work harder. You need to do a better job. Otherwise you’re not supporting your family as you need to.
Jeremy Walker (19:54):
The wife, of course, can’t just sit back and say, “Well, my husband, it’s his job. I’m not supposed to do anything like that. I’m supposed to sit back home and take care of the kiddos.” Well, no, the Bible never says that. The help meet is somebody who works together, and as they work together they produce a household that also includes the money and the income that goes with it. So I highly promote. My wife and I, we own a business together, we run a Christian preschool here in southwest Florida. We work together, side by side. And our home doesn’t have one income; it has two incomes. On top of that, not only is that happening, but our children are cared for, the education is covered. We’re the ones handling their care, their security, their education, their everything. So a husband and wife team is the absolute best product you can have. It’s also the most biblical product you can have. Now, other formulas do work, but as we’re talking about here, the most important aspect is the support and care of the family.
Jeremy Walker (20:49):
Now, I’m going to tie all this in here as we go because parents not only require the monetary stuff, but also require the teaching the commandments to their kids. We just covered that in the first section here, but so many people don’t teach the commandments. I mean, at best, and the saddest part is I saw that somebody was teaching the commandments by holding up their fingers and little weird sign language things with it. They never got past the “thou shalt not have any other gods before me,” or “honor father and mother,” but they never explained what those things mean. They never got into the application of it. So they never actually taught their kids how to obey the commandments at all. A lot of people actually believe that the ten commandments don’t apply, at least not the case laws and all the things in between, and so they just have the ten commandments or they just have the fruits of the Spirit, leaving the kids not to know anything that they’re supposed to do pretty much whatsoever. They’re not providing the spiritual foundation they’re supposed to need. It’s not just the physical brass tax, I have to have money to pay for my food, I have to have money to pay for my clothes, I have to provide money to pay for my medical care. But I also have to provide the spiritual and moral foundation for my kids and teach them the correct thing.
Jeremy Walker (21:59):
Some people also think that having long Bible studies or singing hymns or having different types of things is really important, but the Bible describes it in the Bible as how you’re supposed to teach things as a daily thing. As life progresses. As life progresses, we explain how things operate, what to do, what not to do, things are moral, when things are not moral, how things are breaking commandments, how things are keeping the commandments. How breaking the commandments brings death, how keeping the commandments brings life, as we just kind of went over already.
Jeremy Walker (22:30):
So you have to provide more than just your basic needs. You have to also provide that basic theological stability for them as well. And I think that another aspect of this, speaking about the Corona virus as we’re talking about here and the discomfort or the anxiety that people can have during these types of things, especially children who kind of feed off of it, especially adults who are kind of uncomfortable and they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re freaking out. But comfort can never be underrated, and I think also in general, based on that theological background, understanding that life comes from God and that this life is not the only thing that there is. This goes beyond just being scared of a virus or being scared of some kind of a weird problem that’s going on in your lives or a sickness that strikes somebody. I’ve known people who have lost children and things like that, and I think it’s very important to have a theological basis and background that yes, health and safety comes from God. Yes, parents are responsible to provide for the health and safety of their children, but they can’t do everything. Some things are out of their hands and some things you have to put in the hands of God, and that’s where faith comes in.
Jeremy Walker (23:43):
Talking to lots of people as I do, I find that most people lack faith of any sort, so if they find anybody who’s not scared and has a little bit of comfort behind them, like in this Corona virus thing, I work with lots of people and they’re all crazy and freaking out and uneasy and unsettled. My wife and I, we’re perfectly settled. We’re perfectly fine. We’re perfectly comfortable, and that brings a lot of comfort to other people around us. And I think that also with children, not only is it that aspect of it, but knowing that God has a plan, and within that plan also comes things which we may not like or the things we may not be able to explain properly. A good explanation of that is just because you’re Christian, just because you keep the commandments does not mean you won’t get sick. It does not mean you won’t have a tragedy strike your family or take the life of a loved one. And I went through the book of Job with my kids awhile back and he lost ten kids, all of his wealth, and even his health, and there wasn’t an explanation besides the fact that it was God’s will, who obviously at the end of Job did not even explain why he did what he did.
Jeremy Walker (24:54):
But the trust is there. I think that you have to lay that foundational trust that theologically, we have to trust God. He knows what he’s doing. We handle our responsibilities, God handles his, and in the middle we can have confidence in him. We can relax, we can have comfort. We don’t have to freak out every time there’s a problem in the world. But we do have to meet our responsibilities, and our responsibilities are primarily to teach our kids to provide for those people, not to be lazy. To take care of wife, to take care of husband, to properly take care of children, and children to take care of their parents as they become old and aged.
Jeremy Walker (25:35):
All these things kind of run together, but the families have a responsibility to provide support and stability for all the members of their family, and that comes into the financial side of it, the emotional side of it, definitely the spiritual and the theological side of which is the root of all of it. And as they do their jobs properly, as God promises that he will bless you for that, and them. But on the other side, if he doesn’t, tragedy strikes, you still have the faith that God has a plan and that he’s working out for your favor in some fashion, even though you couldn’t possibly explain to somebody who lost a child or a loved one how you know it’s working out for the best, how Job’s ten children being killed in a whirlwind was good for him. But it was in some fashion that we don’t fully comprehend. But that is what faith is all about.
Jeremy Walker (26:30):
So I’m going to wrap up that section there for today and move on to a few more things that I want to point out before we get to our last section. We do give away books and we have a book giveaway we do twice a month, and we like to do it once in the middle of the month and once at the end of the month, and you can find that at CR101radio.com. Click at the top. There is a book giveaway button at the top. Click on that and you can enter to win there. The books are all free, and what we’ve been doing is putting collections of books together. The month previous before we had all of R.J. Rushdoony’s books that weren’t in season. There were several volumes and we gave all those away for free to one person who had entered to win, amongst all the ones it had. And of course right now we have a book giveaway going on as well, and I encourage you to always check in to that at CR101radio.com and book giveaway. We do that twice a month, and so you can get free stuff just by clicking on it and entering to win.
Jeremy Walker (27:31):
Also you can join our mailing program. We use Mail Chimp, which is a program which just allows us to send bimonthly updates to people who sign up, and that gives out all the podcasts that come up, the new stuff from Rushdoony Radio, any new books that come available that are available for … you can enter to win them, things like that. And anything else that comes up in between. So I encourage you to check in to that as well, also on CR101radio.com.
Jeremy Walker (28:00):
So moving into our last section here, understand the difference between obeying civil government and reforming civil government. This is a really big topic for people because they have a major problem with civil government and they tie in the concept of theonomy, they tie in the concepts of Christian construction, and when it comes to the civil government people are really messed up and they have a lot of different views. I’m going to start with reading one passage, which is the most famous I think, and boy oh boy is it sadly misunderstood. But Romans 13:1-10, and quote, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever shall resist the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and they that resist shall have to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same. For is the minister of God to thee for good, but if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain, but is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Jeremy Walker (29:26):
“Wherefore you must needs be subject not only for wrath, but also for conscience’s sake. For this cause pay ye tribute also, for they are God’s ministers attending continually unto this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom fear, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe no man anything but to love one another. He that loveth one another has fulfilled the law. For this thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to its neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Jeremy Walker (30:20):
Now, putting all these together, if you notice here, it ties in civil government, it ties in their obedience to them, it ties into God’s overpowering government of them and authority, and of course the end of it talks about how the tying in of the love, our neighbor is the fulfilling of the law itself. So this goes back to the beginning. If you don’t know how to love people, it’s because you don’t know the law. How do you define love at all? If you’re going to love people, if you’re going to teach your children to love people, if you’re going to love your wife, going to love your husband, your neighbor, your coworker, your boss, your society, whatever it might be, you have to know the law because love is the fulfilling of the law. It means you are keeping the law towards other people. I would love to say this till I was blue in the face, but it’s ridiculous that some people cannot figure this out, and it’s quite annoying really because it’s such a simple concept. Love equals obeying God’s commandments towards other people. That’s just it. There’s no magic to it.
Jeremy Walker (31:27):
Now, getting beyond that, let’s jump back to what we’re talking about here about understanding the difference between obeying civil government and reforming civil government. It’s very important that throughout the entire Bible, people like to pull out Scriptures and pull out verses and try to make it say all kinds of weird things. But the Bible is very clear from beginning to end that God is the sole governor of everything that happens in the entire world. It goes through every single book of the Bible. Now, people like to clamp onto Romans 13 because it talks about how you’re supposed to be subject to those powers, if you resist the powers, you’re resisting God. It’s all true. God uses every single government to do exactly what he wants.
Jeremy Walker (32:14):
Now, some people don’t understand what that means because they like to say it because they like to listen to the government of the United States or they’re in some other country and they want to promote you’re supposed to listen to the government. They said in this time, Paul was explaining this to people and they had Nero, the Roman governor who was burning people alive on stakes and putting them into circuses or with lions to be eaten alive. And here’s Paul saying to be subject to them, tribute to them and tribute to all the rest. It’s true. All single governments, every person, every king, every person that’s ever existed has done so by God’s permission. Now, if you stop and think about that for a second, that is a scary thought for most, but for me it’s got a very positive thought. It means that no good or horrible or tyrannical leader has ever done anything that God didn’t want to happen. Now, people find fault with God for that, but I go back to Job that says you have no idea what you’re talking about. You should really just put your hand in your mouth and just shut up, because you just don’t know what’s going on. But it is true, according to this and according to the entire Bible, that God is in control and does everything.
Jeremy Walker (33:30):
Now, the main focus of government is to be a terror to evildoers. That’s obviously apparent here. It says here there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. It couldn’t be any clearer, and the entire Bible is overly clear. It’s just not up to debate that every person holds power and position because God allows them to do so. He sets kings up, he puts them down. King Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon was a great example of that. Eventually King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4 comes to his senses and says there is no God but the God of heaven. He raises one up and puts one down. He does whatever he wants and nobody can say unto him, “What doest thou?” Now, all these things are true and it also says to resist the government is to resist God. That’s also true, which means we’re not revolutionaries. Christians are not people that are going to pick up their guns and go start killing people. Now, there are people who are out there who promote things like the Revolutionary War and all kinds of other stuff that goes on in between, and yes, there are people that do that. But it’s very clear that Christians, as an organization, as a group, as a church, as a community, we’re not people who pick up guns and start taking out government.
Jeremy Walker (34:46):
Now, there’s a difference between picking up guns and taking out governments and having rival governments attacking your government and utilizing self protection. There’s a giant difference between those two things, and it would take a long time to unpack that. It basically works like this. If you are in a government that is, let’s say you’re in the United States and then England decides that they want to invade and come after you, you have the right to self defense and you do have the right to fight. Now, it doesn’t mean you go to conquer England because you want their land. Completely different subject altogether. In the case of in Rome and all throughout the country, Christianity was going to be spread out through the world. It was not a concept of domination; it was a concept of dominion. Dominion and domination are two different things. People don’t understand the two things, which is why theonomy, theocracy, dominion, all these things have a bad rap, bad name, but people are just ignorant and don’t understand the difference. Domination means power from the top down. I’m going to gain power and I’m going to do what I want or I’ll kill you. Dominion is a person who’s under God, obeying the commandments under God to promote, to support, and to protect those that are underneath their power. It does not mean to go out and grab guns and kill people.
Jeremy Walker (36:01):
Now, the difference between obeying civil governments and reforming civil governments is very simple. We obey the governments that we’re in, so if somebody has taxes, we pay our taxes. If somebody is going to ask you to do something, you’re going to do it. There’s another illustration that says if someone tells you to go a mile, you go two. In other words, Christians are not revolutionaries. We’re not rebels. We’re not taking to the streets and burning stuff down. We’re going to be confident in that God has power and control over all things, including this weird, crazy governments, tyrannical regimes and everything in between. If anybody could be concerned that they didn’t think God was in control, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but they did their job and they raised an elevation and it still worked within them. You had also, like I said, original Christians in the Roman Empire. They did their job. They weren’t revolutionaries. They were reformers.
Jeremy Walker (36:58):
So the difference between reformation and revolution, the difference between obeying a government and reforming the government, means you will do what they say because God has put them in charge, and even though they might be corrupt, evil, and tyrannical, they’re still in charge. You don’t revolutionary grab guns and try to kill them. And the other side, you do try to reform them. You want to help them. If a Christian is going to help people on the individual level, they’re going to tell them what they’re doing that is wrong, how they’re breaking God’s commandments and how they’re going to be judged for it. All throughout scripture you have the entire Bible that’s testified that not only are individuals going to be judged, but so are nations and societies. You have the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, you have Jericho, you have Nineveh, you have Sodom and Gomorrah, you have city after city and nation after nation, society after society that was destroyed because it failed to obey God and rebelled against him. And it just means that if you want to help people, then you’re going to try to reform them. Be the salt and the light.
Jeremy Walker (38:01):
The conversation that God had with Abraham up on the mountain before Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham said, “What about a hundred people? What about 50? What about 25?” Down to ten people. If there are ten righteous people, God says, “I will not destroy the city for the sake of the ten.” In other words, you want to help people by trying to reform them. We’re not just going to sit back and say, “Well, you can just do whatever you want.” I actually had somebody tell me that, that governments can do whatever they want because God gave them permission. They have God’s authority. They can do whatever they want. That’s not true. It has never been true. They can attempt to do whatever they want, but they’re going to find themselves under judgment.
Jeremy Walker (38:42):
And so if they wanted to prosper as an individual, a family, a local community, or a nation is going to have to obey God’s commandments. It is the lifeblood to them. It is the health to their navel and marrow to their bones. It’s going to bring them long life and peace. A nation full of people who obey God’s commandments individually are going to have peace amongst themselves, longer lives. They’re also going to have, as a society, peace with other individuals, people that are going to do business with each other, trade with each other, be honest with each other, not try to invade each other and dominate each other. If individuals, families, communities, and nations would obey the commandments of God, they would prosper. It would be elevated and they would have more life.
Jeremy Walker (39:39):
Now, governments, of course, as we’re talking about here, are strictly under God’s authority. They have permission to do what God has, and the point is, as we’re finishing up here, you can’t hold one or the other, and that’s the problem people have. People are saying you have to obey everything the government says and you can’t go against them. The other side says, “Well, they’re against God, and therefore I have to rebel against them.” Look, it’s not one or the other. It’s both. You do have to obey them. Governments are in charge. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t try and reform them. It doesn’t mean you don’t point out the problems. We have abortion in America today. You just don’t pick up the gun and go start shooting doctors as has happened in American history. You do explain to them what their problems are, you do obviously not support such things, you try to reform it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s that, if it’s theft, if it’s taxation, if it’s education. It doesn’t matter what it is. All these things are trying to bring it back into conformance to God’s law and God’s commandments. And if we do that, not only will we obey our civil governments, but we’ll also be trying to reform our civil governments at the same time.
Jeremy Walker (40:50):
But our trust is not in government. Our trust is not in revolution. Our trust is in Christ who has all power and authority in heaven and on earth. And if we have true trust in that, that means we can have confidence that even as governments do things we shouldn’t, he’s still in control and our efforts are not in vain. You attempting to reform things through education or otherwise is not in vain. And God knows what’s going on. He gives each of us a job to handle, and your job just might be to be a person that obeys God’s commandments and influence the few people that you can. It might be that you have a family so you try to influence that family as you can. It might be the fact that you have the opportunity to influence other people, to education or otherwise, to do that as well.
Jeremy Walker (41:38):
So moving on, I’d like to go ahead and as we’re wrapping up here, I’d like to point you back again to one of our major sponsors, which is the GCS Apprenticeship Program, which of course is a three year program designed to train young men and women how to own and operate their very own Christian school. You can find out more about that at GCSapprenticeship.com, and of course there’s also materials on there if you cannot join the apprenticeship program or you don’t know somebody that could, but you want to run a school or you already run a school and would like to make it better or incorporate new things into it. There are materials available at GCSapprenticeship.com/materials, like preschool in a box, the college can begin it too curriculum operations manual reading programs, all kinds of things that are also available to you as well. But I would definitely like to thank everybody for joining me again for Reform, Reproduce and Reconstruct. This is Jeremy Walker signing off.