L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 320, May 22, 2005
"The British are Coming!"

When it is Time to Hang the Christians...
by Doug Newman
dougnewman@juno.com

Special to TLE

Lenin once remarked that, "When it is time to hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope." Westerners, he maintained, were so naïve about his intentions that they would provide him the means to destroy them.

Some latter day Lenin, scheming to usher in a one-world government, must, at this point, be thinking that, "When it is time to hang the Christians, they will sell us the rope." Too many American Christians in the year 2005 say nothing and do nothing while their government rages out of control domestically and surrenders our sovereignty to the New World Order.

They sin by silence. When totalitarianism comes to America, Christians will be far more to blame than the ACLU. Although I wish this thought were my own, I read it recently in a wonderful essay by J. Burke.

Does your pastor ever even talk about government anymore? Other than asking us to "pray for our troops and our president" and reminding us to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" when was the last time your pastor said anything about government? I would wager that it has been a while.

The word "king", as well as variations on it such as "kings" and "kingdom", appears almost 2000 times in the Bible. Indeed, one can pull a political theme off almost any page of the Bible. But for some reason, we are not supposed to discuss politics in church.

This is a lie. A damnable, diabolical lie.

Throughout the Bible, God's people are at loggerheads with the secular authorities. Civil disobedience is a recurring theme. Jesus went to the cross for claiming to be God, and therefore a counterforce to Caesar. (I'll bet this was not part of the Easter sermon at your church.)

In 2005, our pastors applaud "our free democracy"—an oxymoron if there ever was one—and tell us that Christians must be good citizens and do what we are told. They heap endless praise on our socialist, tyrannical president because he talks about Jesus every now and then and has gone thus far without a sex scandal.

Don't these pastors know that democracy prompted Pilate to crucify Jesus and release Barabbas? Think about it: Pilate caved in to the will of the mob. Caving in to popular passions is not a new practice for public officials.

These pastors need to know that democracy always degenerates into despotism. In "our free democracy" we have the world's highest incarceration rate, nine of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto are the law of the land and 10-year-old boys are led off in handcuffs for bringing water to a dying woman.

• Does your pastor ever condemn the incineration of 80-plus people at Waco in 1993?
  
• Does your pastor ever talk about the abortion holocaust anymore?
  
• When an innocent woman named Terri Schiavo was condemned by a Florida judge to death by starvation, did your pastor say anything?
  
• When a group of Christians in Philadelphia were arrested and threatened with 47 years in prison for peacefully reading from the Bible at a gay pride march, did your pastor say anything?
  
• When Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office for defying a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama court house, did your pastor say a word?
  
• Did your pastor ever express outrage at the 2001 IRS seizure of a church in Indianapolis for refusing to withhold taxes from employees' wages?
  
• What has your pastor said about the current seizure of a church in Salem, New Jersey? The county sheriff has seized the church because it refuses to incorporate, i.e. swear allegiance to another God other than the God of the Bible.
  
• And what has your pastor said about the new national ID card which became law a few days ago? 666, anyone?

I could—like a gangsta rapper—go on-on-on-on and on-on-on-on about the silence of American pastors in the face of intrusions on our freedom.

The biblical church is the bride of Christ. Too many pastors nowadays are whores for their 501(c)(3) status. According to Pastor Greg Dixon, whose Indianapolis church was the one subject to the 2001 raid, churches surrender numerous liberties in exchange for this status. Among other things, a church cannot:

• Use non-IRS-approved fundraising methods.
  
• Preach against the US tax system or the methods of the IRS.
  
• Endorse political candidates.
  
• Support legislation declaring that children belong to parents, not the state.
  
• Actively participate in opposing the government school system.
  
• Advocate support of the US Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land.
  
• Publicly declare that the church is to obey God, not government.

What part of "no other gods before Me" and "graven images" don't they understand?

Jesus proclaimed that He had built His Church upon a rock and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. While the gates of Hell will not prevail against the True Church, numerous judges, attorneys, tax collectors and school boards have prevailed against the contemporary American church. They have done this because, in their ignorance and silence, American Christians have let them.

And the "faith-based" federal money is only trickling at this point! Just wait until it becomes a deluge. Pastors will be falling all over themselves in order to sponge out of the federal trough.

We think it quaint when members of certain sects seek exemption from certain programs "for religious reasons." The Amish exemption from Social Security comes to mind. When will Christians demand en masse to be exempt from the modern superstate? It will not be a minute too soon.

In its first few centuries, Christianity was an outlaw religion. Much of the New Testament was written in prison or exile. Churches met in homes and caves, in defiance of worldly governments. They answered to a Higher Authority. This notion that Christians should always obey their governments is pure hogwash.

This situation holds true today in numerous countries. We are headed that way in this country, aided and abetted by those pulpiteers who refuse to say a word against an out of control government.

Richard Wurmbrand was a pastor in Romania in the late 1940s, when the Communists came to power. Like the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s, the Ceausescu regime sought to co-opt the Romanian churches. In 1948, they held a church congress in Bucharest, which was attended by 4000 pastors. One by one, these pastors stood up and proclaimed allegiance to the new regime.

Wurmbrand's wife, Sabina, instructed him not to go along with the other pastors, for to do so would be "spitting in the face of Christ." Wurmbrand replied that she would lose her husband were he to speak against the new regime. Sabina replied, "I will not have a coward for a husband." Wurmbrand proceeded to proclaim publicly that Christianity and Communism could not co-exist.

The Wurmbrands' reward was 17 years of imprisonment and excruciating torture at the hands of the Communists. In 1965 a Norwegian organization came to the rescue and arranged their release. In 1967 the Wurmbrands founded Voice of the Martyrs, one of the leading organizations aiding persecuted Christians around the world.

No American Christian has to suffer for his faith in this way. Yet such a nightmare awaits us if more of us do not disabuse ourselves of our endless faith in mega-government.