The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2020 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

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

Chapter 80

From King George to the King of Glory

The King of glory was Israel’s king.

Ps 24
7) Lift up your heads, you gates! Be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in.
8) Who is the King of glory? Yahweh strong and mighty, Yahweh mighty in battle.
9) Lift up your heads, you gates; yes, lift them up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in.
10) Who is this King of glory? Yahweh of Armies is the King of glory! Selah.

All other nations had kings, pharaohs, emperors, sheiks, chiefs, or whatever the locals called the biggest head-knocker. But when Israel first lived in the Holy Land, Yahweh God was their king. How glorious, to have the King of Glory as your King!

In the fledgling United States of America, by design of the Founding Fathers, there was no king.

Or was there?

After Martin Luther unintentionally sparked the Protestant Reformation, Britain wasn’t really very Protestant. Henry VIII began his own church, the Church of England, so they were considered Protestant, but they kept most of the Roman Church practices. The big difference was that Henry replaced the Pope.

King James came along almost a century after Henry, but he took just as seriously his position as head of the Church. He even authorized his own BIble, the King James Authorized Version. God wrote it, the king approved it, so what more could you want?

But the Pilgrims didn’t want it. They used the Geneva Version, very similar to the KJV since both copied Tyndale, but with marginal notes critical of ecclesiastical authorities, such as King James. And that’s why the Pilgrims left England, first to go to the Netherlands, then in 1620, to travel to the New World.

Their plan called for them to sail to Virginia. The Jamestown colony had been established in 1607, close to the James River, by profit seeking adventurers who were loyal to King James and his church, as shown by the place names. The Pilgrims’ purpose in going to the New World was to avoid King James’ Church, so whether by human or divine design, they wound up in what became Massachusetts, far away from King James’ town or King James’ river.

The Pilgrims did not travel to what became America to establish religious freedom. They made the treacherous ocean voyage to establish Christian freedom, by escaping King James’ church. Once established, the Pilgrims did not try to give the Indians ecumenicalism, or the old Roman practice of accepting all religions. Instead the Pilgrims gave the Indians Christ. They labored to convert the Indian tribes from their primitive pagan religions to Christ.

From those beginnings at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock came the United States of America, a nation of Christians who were of different sects, but who were personally dedicated. Unlike England, there was no national church. And when a later king of England, King George III, strongly asserted his royal rule over the American colonies, this was their reaction in 1776.

The King is a tyrant, because he keeps standing armies in the colonies during a time of peace, makes the military power superior to the civil government, and forces the colonists to support the military presence through increased taxes.
Declaration of Independence

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention was having trouble agreeing on a Constitution for the new United States. Ben Franklin said this to the Christian men of varying denominations, reminding them how, before their Declaration of Independence, they had prayed together every day.

“In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.
Redlandsdailyfacts.com, 2019/07/04, Professing Faith: The religious foundations that bolstered the Declaration of Independence

And they did pray, and they did agree on a Constitution.

King George, the tyrant who triggered the revolution against Britain, had a clever plan.

1) Keep armies in the colonies to control the colonists.
2) Tell the colonists that the troops are there for their own protection.
3) Make the colonists pay to support the soldiers who were controlling them.

His plan backfired, and led the colonies to reject him as king and as head of the Church. The United States government was established with no human king and no national church. The American government was divided into three branches, the presidency, the Congress, and the courts. It is said that James Madison took that principle from Isaiah 33:22, For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us, KJV.

When the government was split into three parts that limited the power of each branch. All of this was carefully planned to prevent any person or group from centralizing power. The Founders knew that history shows that powerful people are usually corrupted by their power, because of this —

Rom 7
18) For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For desire is present with me, but I don’t find it doing that which is good.
19) For the good which I desire, I don’t do; but the evil which I don’t desire, that I practice.
20) But if what I don’t desire, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me.
21) I find then the law, that, to me, while I desire to do good, evil is present.

Based on that Bible truth, the truth of evil human nature, the United States was designed to prevent would-be kings of any kind from accumulating power.

Lincoln said this was a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and others had made similar statements before him. But such a government means that people have to be able to govern themselves. Again, we return to the question —

How do you control the people?

By the might of a Romish army or by God leading people?

America was the most individually Christian nation ever to exist. France and Spain had the Roman Church, England had the king’s Church of England, Russia had the Orthodox Church, but people born or coerced into churches usually lack individual faith in God. Americans were not forced into any church, but they had a historically amazing belief in God and the Bible. There was no national American church, but Americans were in a lot of churches. Baptists, Episcopalians spreading from Anglican Jamestown, Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania, and in Providence, Rhode Island, a Seventh Day Baptist church was perhaps the largest single church congregation in the coloniesat that time.

When the pioneers went west, one of the first things they did was build a church building. The church building did not give them food to eat or shelter in winter, but they always took the time to build church buildings. Tocqueville said the American pioneer “penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers.”

All 50 states acknowledged God in their constitutions. They did not acknowledge any one church, but they did uniformly acknowledge the God of the Bible. The first colleges in America, such as Harvard and Yale, were founded to train Christian ministers. American pre-Revolution literature included Christian works by ministers.

In the 1730’s and 40’s, the young nation even had a national Christian revival, the Great Awakening. Ministers had the renown of modern music stars and a national hit was Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s hard to imagine an America where young people got together to discuss the latest hit sermon!

Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted above, was a young Frenchman who visited young America in 1831. He came from a land of kings like –

-the extravagant Louis XIV with his Versailles palace;
-Louis VI who was beheaded in the savage French Revolution;
-emperor Napoleon, who actually wanted to be emperor of the whole world;
-and the Bourbon kings who came after Napoleon.

After all that instability, there was another revolution in 1830!

With that French history behind him, this is what Alexis observed in the new American republic, which had avoided the French debacles.

First of all, he observed that liberty must be accompanied by personal morality. An immoral people cannot govern themselves, else they would not be immoral.

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”

Consequently, liberty is endangered by the loss of morals.

“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”

Most of all, Tocqueville observed that America was moral because of its individual Christian beliefs.

“Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America… In the United States… Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.”

“Religion in America . . . Must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions for that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it . . . I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the human heart? – But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”

“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

America did not have a King George. It could have, with the first president George Washington. But after being elected to two terms, he declined a third, when he would certainly have been elected. George did not want America to have a king, or a perpetually ruling president. But America did not have a king George, nor any other human king or emperor or dictator. That fact alone emblazes America on the first page of history.

Rush Limbaugh, July 31, 2009 radio show transcript:

The history of the world is tyranny. Human beings are viciously mean to each other. The history of humanity is tyranny, torture, dungeons, dictatorship, fear. The exception has been the United States of America. That’s the whole thing behind American exceptionalism. The exception to human nature and world human history is the United States of America. The people that want to control others so that they have more power, the people that want to limit liberty around the world, they’re all over the place. They’ve always been all over the place. They surround us. That’s why we’re despised and feared. We represent the only opposition to them, and they’re everywhere. They’re in the Middle East. They’re in Europe. They’re in Asia. They’re in South America, Central America. They’re all over. We are surrounded. And now we have a president [Obama] who’s sympathetic to those people and is engaging in policies that will replicate the same kind of loss of freedom and liberty that has been the traditional lot in life for the average human being since the beginning of time.

Laura Ingalls wrote the famous Little House books, along with her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, one of three founding mothers of libertarianism in America. They were descended from one of those early Mayflower Pilgrims and the Ingalls were part of the Congregational Church in America. The widespread Congregational Church did not believe in a super-ruler over multiple congregations. They believed that each local congregation should rule itself. Laura lived the last six decades of her life in Missouri, where there was no Congregational Church. She attended but never joined one of the other local churches, which had hierarchical rulers over local congregations.

In other words, the Ingalls believed in a church government that was similar to the American government, by limiting human power. They did not accept popes, arch-bishops or ecclesiastical big-wigs. They did not accept religious kings.

In the fledgling United States of America, by design of the Founding Fathers, there was no king.

Or was there?

In the book Little Town on the Prairie, Laura spoke of America’s King.

During a July 4^th celebration at the new little town of DeSmet, [South Dakota], they read the Declaration of Independence. Laura knew the Declaration by heart. Even so, Laura found the oral reading of the Declaration moving, and when the reading was finished, she recognized America’s King.

“No one cheered. It was more like a moment to say, “Amen.” But no one quite knew what to do. Then Pa began to sing. All at once everyone was singing:

“My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing. . . .

“Long may our land be bright
With Freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,

Great God, our King!”

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America’s king.

She thought: Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.

Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. “Our father’s God, author of liberty.” The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God’s law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.”

God is America’s King, she said.

America was the most individually Christian nation in history. People did not believe just whatever their church believed. They believed that God was their personal ruler, the Bible was His Word, and they had to live their lives with that in mind. A people who govern themselves must have the power to control themselves, and that power over human nature comes only from Yahweh God Almighty, as we individually seek it.

Admittedly, that America was a far cry from the Pentecost Christians in Acts. The Pilgrims did abhor the Roman holiday Christmas and worked on their first Christmas Day in the New World. Some early settlers even thought like Carlstadt and kept the seventh day Sabbath instead of the Roman Sunday. But most still followed many traditions of Constantine’s Church, and what were considered popish holidays gradually came to be considered Christian holidays in America.

Yet how merciful is God?

Ahab was the most evil king of the ten tribes of Israel, and they never had any good kings. Yet when Ahab showed a pinch of repentance after Elijah told him that he and his whole family would be wiped out, this is what Yahweh did.

1Kgs 21
25) But there was none like Ahab, who sold himself to do that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.
26) He did very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites did, whom Yahweh cast out before the children of Israel.
27) It happened, when Ahab heard those words, that he tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.
28) The word of Yahweh came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
29) “See how Ahab humbles himself before me? Because he humbles himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days; but in his son’s days will I bring the evil on his house.”

Again, Christian America fell far short of the first flock. That being said, they were still head and shoulders above every other nation in individual Christian responsibility. A merciful God saw their obedience, imperfect as it was, and still bestowed bountiful blessings on this people. And one of the greatest blessings this people had was the opportunity to be an unpersecuted Christian.

How rare in history that is!

With government of the people, for the people and by the people, the people largely governed themselves. Instead of being controlled by a Roman type government, they controlled the government; at least more than any other people did.

How do you control the people?

By the might of a Romish army or by God leading people?

The King of Glory was Israel’s King. No other nation had such an honor. But honorable mention goes to the United States of America, which for over three centuries acted as if God was their king. No other nation after Israel has done that.

Ps 107
31) Let them praise Yahweh for his loving kindness, for his wonderful works for the children of men!
32) Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, and praise him in the seat of the elders.
33) He turns rivers into a desert, water springs into a thirsty ground,
34) and a fruitful land into a salt waste, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it.
35) He turns a desert into a pool of water, and a dry land into water springs.
36) There he makes the hungry live, that they may prepare a city to live in,
37) sow fields, plant vineyards, and reap the fruits of increase.
38) He blesses them also, so that they are multiplied greatly. He doesn’t allow their livestock to decrease.
39) Again, they are diminished and bowed down through oppression, trouble, and sorrow.
40) He pours contempt on princes, and causes them to wander in a trackless waste.
41) Yet he lifts the needy out of their affliction, and increases their families like a flock.
42) The upright will see it, and be glad. All the wicked will shut their mouths.
43) Whoever is wise will pay attention to these things. They will consider the loving kindnesses of Yahweh.

That Psalm shows the principle of blessing and cursing. With Yahweh’s blessing, He turns a desert into a pool of water. With His cursing, He turns rivers into a desert.

America had enormous blessings of all kinds, as an individually Christian nation.

So what happens now?

“And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance,” Ben Franklin.