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Freedom Exists When Man's Laws Conform to God's
Laws
Freedom
has nothing to do with democracy. Majority rule simply
reflects the reality that the limits of government power are
set by what most citizens will put up with. We could have
freedom even under a king with absolute power if he followed
God's rules perfectly. We will have freedom when Jesus comes
as King and reigns on earth - no democracy
required.
What We Call "Rights" are Created by God's Moral
Rules
There
is no right to life without a rule that says don't murder,
the 6th Commandment. There is no right to property without
rules that say don't steal and don't covet, the 8th and 10th
Commandments, respectively. Since property is essential to
life, he who would take my property would take my life.
Voluntary trade in a free market is absolutely essential to
maximize what man produces, but markets are not possible
without rules that say don't steal and don't lie, the 8th
and 9th Commandments.
Markets
are costly, however, and some production is more cheaply
carried out by removing the need to contract through
markets. The institution God established to take
transactions out of the market is the family. Thus families
are also essential to maximize man's productivity. But
families cannot be maintained where parents and children do
not recognize their mutual responsibilities to one another
and where sex is viewed as recreation, the subjects of the
5th and 7th Commandments.
Rights
do come from God - but they exist only so long as the
prohibitions of His moral rules are observed. Where God has
not made a rule to protect it, there is no right. No "right
to choose" to murder the child God gave you, no "right to
sexual orientation" so you can commit adultery with another
human being or beast. No "right to health care," - that's
just another good sold in a market and you are not allowed
to steal it through government.
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Proof: Historical Origins of Freedom
Freedom
gradually evolved as the ideas of the Bible made their way
into European political and economic thought from the 13th
to the 18th Century. This process reached its zenith with
the American founding. Next to the Bible itself, the ideas
that most profoundly shaped our founding, according to the
Library of Congress, came from John Locke's Two Treatises of
Government and from Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on
the Laws of England. Much of the Declaration's first two
paragraphs - the key ideas - are taken almost verbatim from
Blackstone. In describing where freedom comes from, both
Locke and Blackstone said that to be valid, man's laws must
conform to God's laws:
Here's
Locke:
"Thus
the Law of Nature stands as an Eternal Rule to all Men,
Legislators as well as others. The Rules that they make
for other Mens' Actions, must, as well as their own and
other Mens' Actions, be conformable to the Law of Nature,
i.e.. to the Will of God, of which that is a
Declaration, and the fundamental Law of Nature being the
preservation of Mankind, no Humane Sanction can be good,
or valid against it."
Here's
Blackstone:
"Man,
considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to
the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent
being....And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon
his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should,
in all points, conform to his Maker's will....This
will of his Maker is called the law of
nature....These are the eternal immutable laws of
good and evil, to which the Creator himself, in all his
dispensations, conforms; and which he has enabled
human reason to discover, so far as they are necessary
for the conduct of human actions....This law of nature,
being coeval [existing at the same time - ed.]
with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course
superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over
all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no
human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and
such of them as are valid derive all their force and all
their authority, mediately or immediately, from this
original....This has given manifold occasion for the
benign interposition of divine Providence, which, in
compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the
blindness of human reason, hath been pleased, at sundry
times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce its
laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The
doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine
law, and they are to be found only in the holy
scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found
upon comparison to be really a part of the original law
of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to
man's felicity."
Blackstone's
Commentaries were published in 4 volumes while Thomas
Jefferson was a law student. Jefferson studied it intently,
since it was practically the
only law book in the
colonies.
Since Blackstone set out the ideas that formed the basis of
English law and liberty, Jefferson drew from Blackstone
directly. His strongest argument was that Britain had
violated it's own principles. To read the section from which
Jefferson took the ideas of the Declaration,
click
here.
Proof that Freedom is Dead
To
see that Freedom is dead in America, we need only compare
our nation's laws to the last 6 of the Ten Commandments.
Consider:
- Honor
your father and mother - we now shift the care of our
parents onto others through Social Security and teach
children to ridicule their parents' values.
- Don't
murder - unless your killing your child, that's okay.
Soon killing the old and the sick - euthanasia - will be
legal too.
- Don't
commit adultery - but "everybody does it," even the
President, and it's easier to get divorced than
married.
- Don't
steal - unless you're elected, then you can use the
tax laws to redistribute property as you please. Notice
the shoplifting detectors in every store and library
now?
- Don't
lie - but the President does, and if you do, you can
always hire a lawyer to say it's okay. NATO lies, Janet
Reno lies, all of liberalism is a lie.
- Don't
covet - unless you receive welfare, medicare, social
security, unemployment insurance, belong to a union -
including the AMA or the Bar - or have your farm prices,
milk prices, sugar prices, water prices, house rent, etc.
subsidized by your neighbor's sweat through the tax code.
Then it must be okay, the law allows it.
These
are just a few examples of how our law departs from God's
law. It's hard to turn a page in the Bible without finding
another rule that we have thrown in the trash.
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If
you have only read excerpts from Locke or haven't
read him at all, you are part of the problem.
Click
here.
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The Real Proof: Christians and Jews Don't Have a
Clue
The
real proof that freedom is dead is that Jews and Christians
are either ignorant or actually working for the other side.
Are you a Christian or a Jew? Have you read Locke? Have you
studied Aquinas, Hooker, Rutherford, or even read America's
Founders for yourself? Rev. Jesse Jackson tells us Jesus
would have wanted Roman soldiers to steal from others so He
could get a government handout, but my Bible says something
different. See Lu.3:14. Hillary Clinton learned to be a
communist from a Methodist magazine. See David Brock,
The
Seduction of Hillary Rodham.
So What?
America
is now well down a path other nations in history have
followed as they, too, let freedom die. Consider Germany,
and look at the parallels in America:
- 1870s
- Bismark introduces Welfare State
- 1910s
- German autocrat Kaiser Willhelm starts war
over Serbia
- 1920s
- most debauched decade in history, S&M,
homosexuality, drugs rampant
- 1930s
- economic depression, social programs collapse,
trade restricted
- 1940s
- Hitler comes to power, abortion, euthanasia,
enforced by state, religious persecution, German
state destroyed.
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- 1960s
- LBJ introduces Welfare State
- 1999
- US autocrat William Clinton starts war over
Serbia
- 2000
- start of most debauched decade in US history.
Do
you see where we're headed?
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The Process of Failure Can be Seen in Scripture
None
of this is to suggest a mythical or conspiracy type of
connection between Germany and the US. But the process that
a nation goes through as it falls away from God's ideas can
be clearly seen in Scripture:
- Joshua
and the taking of the Promised Land - Joshua's
generation vowed to follow the Lord and they did. They
remained faithful through many years of warfare to defeat
the principal kings of Canaan. After the war, they were
so zealous for the Lord, they were ready to fight with
the tribes who settled beyond Jordan when they thought
those tribes were turning away from the God's system. See
Joshua 22.
- Book
of Judges and cycles of disobedience - The book of
Judges records how the generations that followed the one
which took the Promised Land did not know God and failed
to remain faithful to his command to completely drive out
unbelievers. As a consequence, false gods became a snare
to Israel. Israelite society ended up in a libertarian
anarchy, with each man doing what was right in his own
eyes. This is the situation of the United States
today.
- Samuel
and the rise of kings - Once the Jews completely
rejected God's authority as the law giver, they demanded
kings to rule over them. God told them that giving
arbitrary authority to one man as ruler would result in
tyranny. See. 1Sam 8. But because the people had rejected
God's laws as the basis of their law and government, they
were not able to avoid living under autocrats and
despots, and what began as twelve tribes dwindled to a
remnant that was ultimately scattered after Christ's
crucifixion.
Notice
that even after the people rejected God's rules, God still
gave them prophets. Likewise, Germany had its Bonhoeffer and
America today has Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, David Barton,
and others. But once the people reject God's rules as the
basis of their government, the pattern is set.
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