The End Time Church: from the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright ©2016 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 8

“The King Saw His Coup Coming”

Amazingly, the King of Israel, Yahweh Almighty God himself, said that someday Israel would want another king instead of him.

Yes — God predicted that Israel would want to have a coup where they kicked out their Creator. God saw something in people that he knew would make them want to get rid of Him.

Actually, there was a time even farther back in time when someone else tried to dethrone the King.

Isaiah 14:12-14
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, “I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! I will sit on the mountain of assembly, in the far north! I will ascend above the heights of the clouds! I will make myself like the Most High!”

That didn’t work.

Luk 10:18
He [Christ] said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven.

God predicted that his chosen people, like Satan, would try to remove him as their direct ruler.

Deu 17:14
When you are come to the land which Yahweh your God gives you, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and shall say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me;

God prophesied that Israel would want to copy the governments of “all the nations.”

Think about that — “all the nations.”

All nations on earth had one type of government. Israel had another type of government. This verse, Deuteronomy 17:14, by itself shows that God purposely meant for his people not to have a government like all the other peoples.

All other people followed a government of men. God’s people followed only him. God did not give them another king between him and them. With him, they did not need another king. God knew what he was doing when he set Israel up in the Holy Land. All this was part of a well designed plan. His people were not to be like other nations at all, in the way they lived or in the government they followed.

However, God also knew that people would not like that type of government, where they were directly under him, with maximum freedom and responsibility before their Creator.

Remember that people in all parts of the world had oppressive governments. Israel was the only people who did not. In all those kingdoms, or shiekdoms, or tribal councils, or politburos, the people served the government. The government never served the people.

And it was always thought that was the right way!

Government über alles!

Germans fought to the end in Berlin for Hitler when they had no chance of winning because they thought that was the honorable thing to do. They were not dedicated to the principle of individually doing what was right. They were dedicated to the principle that the state was right, regardless, and that the individual was to sacrifice himself for the state.

So they did!

At Napoleon’s last battle at Waterloo in 1815, some of the French army was surrounded by the Prussian army under Blücher. Those French soldiers faced certain death, so Blücher called a truce and offered them an honorable surrender. The doomed French soldiers refused and went ahead and fought a hopeless battle to the death because they were serving the emperor and the state, which was one and the same, just a little, paunchy, balding guy.

The state or the government — any government — is not just an abstract entity. It’s always just other people. Those people are elitist rulers who live on the backs of the population, like Hitler and his cronies, who sacrificed Germany for their own vain ambitions; or Napoleon, who led thousands of his fellow Frenchmen to their deaths, while they thought he was the grandest François ever; or Stalin or Chairman Mao, who preached dedication to the Communist government because they were the government.

People are taught to obey the government because the government is right. Not because the government is doing right, but because the government itself is right.

That puts the government in place of God!

Only God sets right and wrong. He did that with his Ten Commandments.

Romans 3:20, King James
…for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

1 John 3:4
…sin is the transgression of the law.

When people — remember that all human governments are people — say that what they do is right regardless of what they do, they are a law unto themselves. They are acting as God, setting right and wrong.

All governments — that is, the people who run all human governments — are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. No government, whether political or religious, stands in the place of God, because no people are like God. They’re all just people!

Governments preach that people exist for the government, instead of the government existing for the people, because those in government want to be served. Government should serve the people. Human governments, though, of all types, always turn that around and say the people should serve the government.

Which is to say, people should serve those people who run the government.

Human governments always become oppressive, with people serving the government instead of government serving the people. Yet the people always want to return to that type of government!

And God knew, way ahead of time, that there would come a time when Israel would want to have the type of oppressive government that all other nations had.

Oppressive —

Remember how Egypt oppressed Israel? They turned them into slaves.

Exodus 1:8-14
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and escape out of the land.”

Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They were grieved because of the children of Israel.

The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve, and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve.

And you will recall that when Moses told Pharaoh to let Israel go, then the Egyptians really got tough on them, making them collect their own straw for the bricks but still make the same number of bricks.

Oppressive!

Yet once Israel escaped the slavery of Egypt, the hardheaded Hebrews kept complaining about how good they had it back in Egypt!

Exodus 16:1-3
They took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.

The whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness; and the children of Israel said to them, “We wish that we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots, when we ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Numbers 11:4-6
The mixed multitude that was among them lusted exceedingly: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, “Who will give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now we have lost our appetite. There is nothing at all except this manna to look at.”

Numbers 14:1-4
All the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. All the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “We wish that we had died in the land of Egypt, or that we had died in this wilderness! Why does Yahweh bring us to this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will be captured or killed! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return into Egypt?”

They said one to another, “Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.”

Numbers 20:1-5
The children of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month. The people stayed in Kadesh. Miriam died there, and was buried there.

There was no water for the congregation; and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron.

The people quarreled with Moses, and spoke, saying, “We wish that we had died when our brothers died before Yahweh! Why have you brought Yahweh’s assembly into this wilderness, that we should die there, we and our animals? Why have you made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in to this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink.”

Over and over Israel wanted to go back to what Egypt was — the safety of enslavement.

No liberty and no responsibility.

God foresaw that free Israel, who wanted to go back to physical Egypt, would also want to return to the government of Egypt, ruled by a human king instead of God himself.

Even in the wilderness, Israel wanted to make themselves another king, as we just read.

“Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.”

In the same way, God saw that Israel would reject the maximum freedom and responsibility of standing only before God for the comfort, convenience and conspicuity of human government.

Comfort, convenience and conspicuity?

Contrast government schools with homeschooling.

Government schools are comfortable. The parent doesn’t have to do a thing, and his child will receive a “quality education.”

Government schools are convenient. They will pick your child up at your door, from preschool through young adulthood, keep him all day for almost all year, perhaps feed him breakfast and lunch and give him homework to keep him busy at home.

Government schools are conspicuous. Big expensive institutions sprawl and cluster in every town all across the land. To be part of that is to be conspicuously acceptable.

In return for that security, parents lose the liberty of where to teach the child, how to teach the child, what to teach the child, and ultimately often lose the child himself.

On the other hand. Homeschool parents have to do everything. They can never be comfortable. There is always more to do. Homeschooling is inconvenient. The parent has to pay for everything and has to make time, hours and days and weeks and months and years of time, for the child. Homeschooling is not conspicuous. Most of the time it is two parents at home with their children. Homeschool parents, though, take personal responsibility for their children, for teaching them, for protecting them, for loving them.

That is the difference between the safety of enslavement and the liberty of individual responsibility. And in education, almost every American chooses the safety of enslavement over the liberty of individual responsibility. That has inevitably led to America choosing the safety of enslavement in socialism in all other areas of life, not just education.

Again — Israel wanted the safety of enslavement. Can you see why? They did not want to do their own thinking and did not want to be individually responsible before God, just like modern government school parents. They wanted a government running their lives.

Reading from Deu 17:14 -17 again:
When you are come to the land which Yahweh your God gives you, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and shall say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me; you shall surely set him king over yourselves, whom Yahweh your God shall choose: one from among your brothers you shall set king over you; you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.

Notice that God would allow Israel the freedom to reject him! They had free choice as to their government. But once they had human kings, they were told to follow certain principles of governing.

Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses; because Yahweh has said to you, You shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

So this human, fleshly king was not to multiply to himself wives, horses, silver and gold, etc.

Hey — It’s almost as if God had some doubts about this human king thing!

Israel’s human king was not to be self-serving.

Good luck with that, Israel!

So God predicted that Israel, with the freedom to live directly under God, would someday want to live indirectly under God, and under another government besides just him.

He foretold that Israel would do much the same that Satan tried to do — dethrone God.

How did he know that?

Okay, he is God. Good point.

But he must have known something about people that would make all people, even the chosen people from Abraham, never want to follow God directly and always want to put somebody else between him and them.

What God knew is this.

Rom 8:7
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God…

John Gill’s Bible commentary explains this enmity against God.

This enmity is universal, it is in all men in unregeneracy, either direct or indirect, hidden or more open; it is undeserved; it is natural and deeply rooted in the mind, and irreconcilable without the power and grace of God. It shows itself in an estrangedness from God; in holding friendship with the world, in harbouring the professed enemies of God, in living under the government of sin and Satan; in hating what God loves, and in loving what God hates; in omitting what God commands, and committing what he forbids; it manifests itself in their language, and throughout the whole of their conversations.

Human nature hates God. Human nature distrusts God. Human nature wants to put itself first, and not put God first. And human nature does not want to admit any of that.

Therefore human nature naturally wants to reject God as personal ruler. And God simply saw that the natural aversion and distrust that people, even his chosen people, have toward him would cause them to do this —

Deu 17:14
When you are come to the land which Yahweh your God gives you, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and shall say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me;

Look at this. After the Flood, everybody knew that God had cursed and cleansed the earth. Everybody knew that God did not then set up human kings. Yet “all the other nations” wound up doing just that. None were content to follow God directly.

Then God picked the most obedient man on earth, Abraham, and from him made a nation, and Yahweh himself was their king. Yet those chosen people, too, like all the other nations, simply did not want to follow God alone.

Isn’t that amazing, astounding, and alarming?

There is something in me and you that does not want to stand directly before Him. This will naturally show itself in the way we treat other people, in the education we choose for our children, and in the political and ecclesiastical governments that we put in front of God.

Here is what God saw when he predicted Israel would want to dethrone him.

Your natural human nature naturally wants to reject God as the direct ruler of your life.