1. That all men are created equal;

2. That men are endowed by their Creator with "unalienable" rights;

3. That these rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

4. That governments exist to secure these rights;

5. That governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;

6. That when governments become destructive of these ends, they become illegitimate and may be altered or abolished;

7. That men have the right and duty to institute new governments designed to effect their safety and happiness.

Many Americans can easily remember the "created equal" part of the Declaration. Few, however, can relate the part about abolishing tyrannical government. As John Whitehead notes in his book, The American Dream, p. 24:

Few will dispute the fact that Americans generally have lost the awareness that their republic began with a ‘revolution’. Not long ago a group of students in Indianapolis showed copies of the Declaration of Independence to several hundred people and asked them to sign it. Most refused, stating that it sounded rather ‘dangerous’. In July 1975, the People’s Bicentennial Commission handed out copies of the Declaration of Independence in downtown Denver without identifying it. Only one in five persons even recognized it, and one man said:

‘There is so much of this revolutionary stuff going on now. I can’t stand it.’

We have become a nation of Tories. Where are the Patriots?

The theory that the just powers of a civil government flow from the consent of the governed - in essence, voluntary government - is the conclusion of almost two millennia of Christian history. Not all branches of Christianity accept that proposition. In fact, it is original to only one branch: the Celtic branch which received its most illustrious spokesman in John Wycliffe. Wycliffe stripped the idea of Divine sanctity from all human institutions. The Anglo-American Protestantism which grew-out from his theology taught the world that God has chosen a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people", and that the Holy Bible is the only absolute source of authority on Earth (see Christian Druids & Cultural Alchemy).

As I have said elsewhere, this was not a call to anarchism, but self-government under the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Anyone who does not govern himself according to the restraint of God’s Word is not entitled to the right of self-determination.

My purpose here is not to deny that our society needs magistrates - specialists to enforce the Law of God in society. Nor do I deny that they have been endowed with real power or that we should submit to them. If they enforce the Law of God, we should support them. If they do not, we should pray for them to be converted (1 Timothy 2:2-3). My purpose is to make clear the following points:

First, their powers are justly derived from the people they govern. Government is the consequence of a covenanting between the people and the leaders they choose. The word "vote" comes from the Latin votum which means "vow". When you vote on Election Day, you are covenanting with the rest of the American people to submit to the rulers the majority of us choose. When the elected leader takes his oath of office, he enters into a covenant with all the people to exercise his delegated duties.

Second, when a magistrate exceeds or abuses his delegated powers, or is in some way derelict, the people must replace him, or reassume his duties to themselves. This was clearly taught in the writings of the Founding Fathers.

Third, magistrates have appellate jurisdiction not original jurisdiction. The extended family group, represented in America by the township or plantation, has original jurisdiction and eminent domain.

Fourth, in a Biblical society, the civil powers will be exercised by a professional class in the city, whereas in the country, the extended family group, or clan, will exercise them.

And finally, when there is a breakdown in civil government, as there obviously is today, the restoring of the foundations requires Christian men who are willing to re-assume those duties, which are of a civil nature, in relation to their families and estates. If enough Christian men cannot be found willing and able to assume these patriarchal functions, then the renaissance of a Christian civilization is impossible.

In a democratic society where the righteous are outnumbered by the unrighteous, it is not enough for Christian men to run for political office. Either they will be voted out of office as soon as they attempt to enforce God’s Law, or they will be forced to compromise their positions to the point of becoming ineffective. The renaissance of Christian civilization must be a bottom-up process. It must begin in our homes. And then those homes must multiply themselves, either through evangelism or procreation.

The need for the auxiliary institutions of society (church, state, school, etc.) decreases as the primary institutions (homes) grow stronger, larger, and more self-sufficient. The closer we get to the consummation of the Millennial Reign of Christ, the more familistic it becomes, until the auxiliary institutions fall off like vestigial organs. The state is reduced to the role of the night-watchman. Consider the following:

And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, (no one left to teach, JWS) Know the LORD:

for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: (no one left to evangelize) for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (no one left to punish).

- Jeremiah 31:34

In the Millennial kingdom, which is co-extensive with Christian civilization, there is no need for church, state, or school as institutions; for their functions will be competently performed by parents and their assistants in their homes. A sure sign of the decline of Christian civilization in a society is the proliferation of public institutions with their rules and rulers to prop it up.

The powers and functions of the state can be reduced to the right to use physical force. An officer of the law has the duty to enforce the laws of his government by the use of force, even deadly force. This force is not only to be executed in a restraining posture (the prevention of crime), but also in an avenging posture (the punishment of crime). He is the minister of God for this purpose (Romans 13).

An interesting point to make about the "higher powers" Paul refers to in Romans 13 is that he does not specify what form they take. He is not necessarily referring to Caesar’s government. We naturally assume that he is since he is writing to the Church in Rome. But if he were writing to, say, the Goths of northern Europe, they would not draw that conclusion, since they were an independent nation. Paul is referring to generic government in this text. It can refer to imperial government, to tribal government, or even constitutional government. In America, the federal Constitution is the "supreme law of the land" and every magistrate is bound thereby (Article VII). Americans have the right and duty to challenge unconstitutional government, even to the point of force of arms (see the Second Amendment). All of this talk from Christian leaders against various dissident groups in our nation (e.g. tax protestors, unions, militias, etc.) is more the sound of cowardly Tories than freedom-loving Patriots.

Restraining violence and punishing crime are two things God requires in His Word. The crux of this chapter turns on the question of who it is that God requires to administer them. The answer is found in passages like Genesis 9:5-6:

And surely your blood of you lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

There are two important aspects to this text. First, here for the first time, we have God’s permission for man to be the agent of Divine wrath upon the earth. Prior to this time, God reserved the administration of the death penalty to Himself, although the tyrants of the pre-Flood era had obviously and presumptuously arrogated that power to themselves.

Second, and more importantly to the question at hand, God does not single out any class of persons as more qualified than others to be those special agents of vengeance. "By man shall his blood be shed" extends the right and duty of capital punishment to all men. All men are the recipients of the civil mandate just as they are the cultural mandate. And in the absence of specialists to administer justice and the punishment of crime, all men are required to enforce God’s laws and sanctions.

Thus, men may delegate the power of the sword to specialists in violence (magistrates), but in no sense do they surrender their right and duty. It is not alienable, being received from the Creator. And American jurisprudence, until this century, has recognized that fact. The Bill of Rights and the concept of a citizen’s jury are institutions which evidence that social doctrine.

Who executes the penalties of God’s laws?

The answer is "everyone". Everyone who witnesses a crime is to seek to prevent it, and having failed to do so, to apprehend the criminal, to bear testimony against him, and to punish him.

All of this talk about killing people is not a pleasant subject. Neither is sin. Some things in life we do are not pleasant. Some things are horrifying. Perhaps if more of us had to participate in public executions, we would know how God feels when He must send people to hell. Perhaps, we would get more serious about evangelism to keep people from falling into the paths of death. God did not want to send any more people to hell, so He sent His Son to die on the Cross. If we had more public executions, perhaps more people would stop thinking of themselves and reach out to help their troubled neighbors.

If you want a good litmus test to tell whether you think like a Christian or like a humanist, try this one. Which bothers you the most: a) death, or b) sin? If you can stomach sin, but not the death penalty, then you think like a humanist. If sin is a greater evil to you than death, then you think like a Christian.

Does God require a family government to inflict the death penalty upon its own members? That is a tough question. And I am not prepared to answer it with any conclusiveness. I do not believe parents have the right to execute their wicked offspring, except in the posture of self-defense to protect the life of the family. However, there are several instances in the Bible when men were executed by their kinsmen. The case of Solomon’s slaying of his brother Adonijah comes immediately to mind.

Yet, Solomon was protecting the throne and was acting in his office as king and not as a brother. Consequently, I think the Trinitarian/Familist model has a bearing upon this issue. Delinquent children represent an internal breakdown of family government. In such case, like divorce, the family is not in a position morally to enforce God’s laws of vengeance. The nuclear family is the smallest social unit. It can only cleanse itself by the expulsion of the offender.

The power of the family in society is not coercion, but love. Just as it is an impossible scenario ontologically speaking for the Triune Godhead to be coerced into unity and harmony, so is it inconceivable for the family. The Trinity is an internal unity; so is the family. The family uses the rod, disinheritance, and expulsion to protect itself. When a child is expelled, he becomes an outlaw, and as I will explained later, may be killed by society.

Grown children and the failure of family government are in mind here. A man who will go through the trouble of being a priest, prophet and king to his household has the assurance from God’s Word that he will not be required to be the hangman also (Proverbs 22:6).

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