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To: combat_boots; Dr. Eckleburg
Any strategy of resistance to tyranny will have to deal with the fact that tyranny is a curse of God. It must recognize that to rail against God's righteous judgments is merely to perpetuate and aggravate them. It must start with a humble submission to His will, a reverential fear of His judgments, and a full recognition of the righteousness of His moral government.

Although we may marvel at the iniquities that men commit, at the fury of the "Commune" or the depravity of "Bolshevism," although the utter evil of God's instruments may astound us until with Habakkuk we are compelled to cry out to the Just and Holy God, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" (Hab. 1:13); yet we must always remember that He styles Nebuchadnezzar his servant and terms Assyria the rod of His anger. It is still with Him that we have to do.

Ultimately, the only solution there can be to the problem of tyranny is to solve the problem of how we can turn God's curse into blessing; how we can transmute His anger into favor. The question becomes one of how can we appease His anger and stay His wrath.

What can shield a man, or a people, or a nation from the curse of God? Ever since the fall by the sin of one man, death and curse have been universal. All have sinned and come short, there is none that doeth good, no not one, and so by both original and actual sin all men and all societies bring judgment and wrath down upon themselves. One of the forms of this wrath is that God sends tyrants as He so clearly warned in I Samuel 8. Men need a covering, an atonement, to shield them from the wrath of God. They need a Daysman, a Mediator, to intercede on their behalf with an offended and omnipotent Deity. In short, men need the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. They need to be Justified before God. And the Biblical, the Protestant, the Reformed answer to this need is that men need to be justified by faith in Christ Jesus. But faith is inexorably linked in the divine economy with repentance and the latter is again just as inescapably linked with reformation. The same golden chain that links election to effectual calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification also links faith with good works, and the new nature with the fruits of repentance. If we would have a covering from the wrath of God and from His curse including the curse of tyrannical government, the road leads inexorably to justification by faith, repentance, and reformation. And we come to the very same conclusion whether we examine the issue in its negative or in its positive aspects. Whether we are seeking to avoid God's righteous curse or whether we are seeking to bring down His blessing, including the blessings of peace, liberty, and just government, either way the answer is reformation. For if I Samuel 8 teaches that the fruit of apostasy is tyranny and unjust, coercive government, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28:1-14 assert that God's blessing will attend a faithful, covenant keeping people. In the Abrahamic Covenant, the covenantal blessing that God will be a God and a Father to us and our seed after us is linked with the covenantal command to "walk before me and be thou perfect."

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excerpted from the essay
"THE FUNDAMENTAL BIBLICAL TACTIC FOR RESISTING TYRANNY"
by Louis DeBoer

2 posted on 07/06/2010 1:24:36 PM PDT by Alex Murphy (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2503089/posts?page=9#9)
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To: Alex Murphy
the Biblical, the Protestant, the Reformed answer to this need is that men need to be justified by faith in Christ Jesus.

AMEN!

3 posted on 07/06/2010 4:09:14 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: Alex Murphy

I don’t understand how this is God’s ‘righteous judgment’. The left isn’t going to suffer at all from this. They will find other ways to steal and destroy. The ones who will suffer most from America’s departure from God are future generations, the little children. They always suffer the most.


4 posted on 10/21/2010 2:40:23 PM PDT by Soothesayer (“None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license...")
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