The Constitutions Part IX
Part I: The people were “not a party” to the Constitution.
Part II: There are two forms of government - free and not free.
Part III: The people opposed the Constitution for good cause.
Part IV: Consolidation of power by men is a rejection of God.
Part V: To retain rights you must accept responsibility.
Part VI: Applications, oaths and affirmations lead to bondage.
Part VII: Man gave his birth right for a bowl of benefits.
Part VIII: Man created corporation by vesting part of his own life into a creature of his own making which now devours him daily as a vast corporate mechanical monster.
Allegiance and Faith
“Man’s primary allegiance is to his vision of truth,
And he is under obligation to affirm it.”1
The concept of allegiance is defined in Black’s as, “The obligation of fidelity and obedience which the individual owes to the government under which he lives, or to his sovereign in return for the protection he receives. It may be an absolute and permanent obligation, or it may be a qualified and temporary one.”2
This of course only refers to a citizen that is a member as opposed to one that is a mere inhabitant. 3 As an example a “Natural Allegiance,” as stated in English law, “is due from all men born within the king’s dominions, immediately upon their birth, which is intrinsic and perpetual, which cannot be divested by any act of their own.”
This Natural Allegiance of course refers to a time when the free dominion of the land was no longer held by the people individually. They had lost that position of “freemen” upon the land created by God and had become subjects under oaths of fealty or acts and applications under the dominion of kings. Such allegiance is a form of worship and a rejection of God but once owed it may not be disregarded by a whim.
In principle, the Declaration of Independence and the so called “American Revolution” could not divest that obligation on its own. It was the freemen, domiciled upon their own land, that had already removed themselves from that particular binding dominion and obligation to the king after many years of self reliance, and with the manumitting charters of Charles I and II.
The Charters did not set men free. Freedom does not come so easy. They allowed men the opportunity to seek, struggle and strive to eventually be born on their own land, within their own free dominion in the new world of the Americas.
As we saw in Part V “The civil law reduces the unwilling freedman to his original slavery; but the laws of the Angloes judge once manumitted as ever after free.”4
This Maxim of English law was either forgotten or ignored by George III, although proclaimed by many men of England like William Pitt and Parliament itself. And it was the usurpation, by George, of the rights of the freeman living in the American republics which gave lawfulness to the Declaration of Independence. In actuality it was the King who did the revolting not Americans.
“I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor.” -- King George III of England
The only real freemen in America were those who made the effort to establish the ownership of land as an estate, a free dominion as a free individual. Hamilton did not include the non-landed populace called “our rabble, or all unqualified persons”.
He did not intend that they even should “have the right of voting, or not be taxed; but that the freeholders and electors, whose right accrues to them from the common law, or from charter, shall not be deprived of that right.”5
Very few Americans today can claim accrued rights of the Common law because they have not accepted the responsibilities of that law for themselves much less for their neighbor. Most Americans do not even educate their own children.
The principle upon which Natural Allegiance stands, although presented under other names, is the basis of the obedience owed a Father by his Children, Parens Patriae,6 the State as Father.
State of Fidelity
The original powers of State governments, as individual Republics of America before and after the adoption of The Constitution of the United States,7 rested not in the hands of the State governments but in the hands and hearts of the individual freeman living on his own land, an estate in fee simple as an allodium.
The state governments had no real sovereign authority to make the United States a sovereign nation with dominion over the general inhabitants of America any more than George III. The States knowing they had only a “titular” authority, adopted the Constitution, creating the United States in the name of “We the People”. The individual people would need to take some overt action or contiguous acquiescence to express consent to such incorporation and subjugation because “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”8
Even Alexander Hamilton wrote against the Bill of Rights:
“Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations....”
“But a minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interests of a nation, than a constitution which has regulation of every species of personal and private concerns.”
He went on to say that the Bill of Rights were “unnecessary” and even “dangerous” because:
“They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” 9
The once colonial - and now state - administrative government and other equitable and economic interests wanted a Constitution. The State or status of the sovereign people was independent of the administrating government in the republics.10
In those days of individual sovereignty, each household was a state “independent of their form of government”. They learned to come together in groups called hundreds. But their loving alliances often failed and faltered from neglect under the burden and temptations of affluence and abundance.
Men forget that their neighbor’s rights are as important as their own and instead of loving their neighbor as themselves they begun to covet their neighbor’s goods in social democracies and are more content to live by the sweat of others than by that of their own brow, which is a sorry state of affairs.
Today rights are debated in the solemn halls of Washington to determine the rights of individuals and the people cry usurpation. But is it usurpation on their part or neglect on the part of the people. They are no longer individuals but individual persons and the layers of that membership are many.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”11
Over the years the relationship of a free people and a subject government has been turned upside down. That the people complain about assumed usurpation of the Bill of Rights seem a moot point under the rampant neglect of the ninth and tenth amendments of that same document. Their cries seem hypocritical considering the the pervasive sloth of the last century allowing government to meddle in every aspect of people’s lives, the extreme disregard of the law against coveting by rampant socialism, the consistent rejecting of God by the election of strings of men calling themselves benefactors, and having strange gods and benefactors before Him.
If the people will not maintain the responsibility of the state by faith, hope and charity that responsibility will be seized by another who will soon turn their rights into privileges. The kingdom John the Baptist preached operated by charity12 not by force.13 Without true commitment to the simple charity and love of neighbor preached by Jesus, Moses and Abraham no society will remain free.
Status of a Republic and Democracy
Today, the government is referenced as the United States Federal Democracy even though at the beginnings of government in the Americas the word Republic was the title most sought and most used. Is there a difference?
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”14
“Republic. A commonwealth; that form of government in which the administration of affairs is open to all the citizens. In another sense, it signifies the state, independently of its government.”15
We see here that there may be more than one sense to the word republic. First, the ‘administration of affairs’ is open to citizens and it can be referred to as a commonwealth, which denotes the general welfare of the people or the public. In the other sense, a republic ‘signifies the state independent of its government’.
What does that mean? The state should be independent from the government. The word state has almost twenty different definitions. A state is a status or an estate or a condition of life, which, in the case of a republic can be independent of its government.
In another place we find the word republic defined, “A state or nation in which the supreme power rests in all the citizens… A state or nation with a president as its titular head; distinguished from monarchy.”
In this definition we see again that the supreme power is in the hands of the citizen who is entitled to vote to choose the titular16 ministers of government not a leader who can rule over his neighbor and himself. The government leaders were not like elected kings and law makers who exercise authority, can take everything from the first fruits to your sons and daughters.
A leader of a true republic does not rule the people nor do the people rule over each other as in a democracy where the majority rule over the minority. In a republic people are free to rule themselves, “free from things public”. In a republic of noble and virtuous souls there are few affairs of the people that are not taken care of by the people for the people.
The United States Federal government was to guarantee to every State, status or condition of life a Republican form of government, a government where men are free from things public. Why then does the government of the corporate States and the United States seem to have such a supreme authority over almost every aspect of its citizenry and their lives? Whose fault is this, who is to blame? Is it the usurpation of government or the ignorant, greedy and covetous and slothful applications of men?
“When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.” Proverbs 23:1-3
What is the true nature of the kingdom of God at hand? What should be the true nature of a pure Republic? Plato’s Republic was very much contrary to those early Republics where kings and central governments were ousted or rejected or exited.
Today, there are many nations calling themselves republics but they are very different from each other and many are also different than they were in their beginnings.
Some may assume that the United States of America and the original Republic are one and the same thing but you have to look no farther than April 3, 1918, when the new American Creed was read in Congress beginning with the words, “I believe in the United States of America as a government… whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed: a democracy in a republic.” In other words the U.S. Federal democracy is a corporate political society that exists within the Original Republic, a Republic that predates the United States’ Constitution.
The United States was not a continuation of the Government of the people, but a departure by certain select people and institutions. Some may ask why the United States needed a Creed, but the fact is that all governments are systems of faith. Fidelity is from the word “fides”, meaning “confidence, faith, trust”.
The creation of the United States could not subject an entire nation of free people to the will of that corporate body to make law by the signatures of a few men, by the adoption of representative forms of government that were not given such power to begin with. Nor could it gain such power by the vote of the people.
What You Bind on Earth
How does a government get its power and authority?
“Good government is no substitute for self-government.” Gandhi, Mahatma
Some take the belief too far that the “The State ... is a social institution forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group ... [for] no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.”17
But no such government would bind man because “Those captured by pirates and robbers remain free.”18 For the simple reason that “Things captured by pirates and robbers do not change ownership.”19 Governments obtain power and men become bound to obey those institutions on earth, for numerous reasons, which are almost all based in consent in one form or another.
It would be binding for those who “take any oath of allegiance to the Government thereof”.20 It would be binding for those who sign a social compact. It would also be binding if people apply and receive benefits because “He who receives the benefit should also bear the disadvantage.”21 The binding is even more complete if the people take the benefit at the expense of others, including your children’s future.
People may desire to claim usurpation or fraud, or failure of full disclosure but these self serving mantras will likely fall on deaf ears with volumes of public records to the contrary. This binding is based on constructive social contracts, well publicized and no one who takes a benefit can deny the reciprocating obligations.
The “social contract, agreement, or covenant by which men are said to have abandoned the ‘state of nature’ to form the society in which they now live.... Assumes that men at first lived in a state of anarchy where there was no society, no government, and no organized coercion of the individual by the group… by the social contract men had surrendered their natural liberties in order to enjoy the order and safety of the organized state.” 22 This is done at the cost of liberty.
The Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven was the right to be ruled by God. It was not a new government but the original state of nature with no civil or social contract.
Moses had created a nation of people to bring them back to the dominion of God. The people were bound together with a common faith in a supreme being and creator of the world, a common law and a literature that attempted to explain the precepts of that law and its common faith and religion.
Their religion included a means of freewill sacrifice that sustained the needs of their society through that common faith, in the hope and by the charity of the people. They elected titular leaders to minister that government of God without relinquishing any rights granted by God. This peculiar government of the people, served God by the people’s love for one another and no other social contract. The ministers were separate from the people who maintained their status as free souls under God. The people were the state and the Levites, without authority, held all things in common so that the people might be free.
As a people they continuously turned back to those elements and rudiments of the world that had brought them into bondage. The voice of the people elected a king to rule over them, forming a social contract that abandoned the precepts of their faith. He was soon able to take by force their sacrifices, take the first fruits of their labor, the best of their fields, their sons and daughters, make his instruments of war, and bring them back into the bondage of the world.
When the Pharisees elected to invite Rome to secure their government they continued that journey away from God toward Babylon. Upon “... the death of Caesar the Jews of Rome gathered for many nights, waking strange feelings of awe in the city, as they chanted in mournful melodies their Psalms around the pyre on which the body of their benefactor had been burnt, and raised their pathetic dirges.”23
Jesus came preaching a kingdom, appointed it and told his titular ministers and ambassadors to not be like the governments of the world that called themselves benefactors but exercised authority one over the other. They were to be that one form of government that led the people back to God.
Just as their are forms of government there are forms of citizenship. Whether a citizen is still a natural inhabitant or has obtained membership in a political society, he has certain rights, although, those rights may differ. The natural inhabitant may be a member of a society or civitas24,but he remains an individual with civil rights within that general body. Those “Civil rights are such as belong to every citizen of the state or country, or, in a wider sense to all its inhabitants, and are not connected with the organization or the administration of government. They include the rights of property, marriage, protection by laws, freedom of contract, trial by jury, etc.”25 An individual, who becomes a member or person in a political society, also has civil rights, but the origin of those rights, being political, are rights “pertaining or relating to the policy or administration of government”.26 So, “as otherwise defined, civil rights are rights appertaining to a person in virtue of his citizenship in a state or community. Rights capable of being enforced or redressed in civil action. Also a term applied to certain rights secured to citizens of the United States by the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution, and by various acts of Congress made in pursuance thereof.”27
The essential difference would seem to be that the former “are not connected with the organization or the administration of government”, while the latter are “subject”.
“It is quite clear then that there is a citizenship of the United States and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the Individual.” 28 “The rights of a citizen under one (state or United States citizenship) may be quite different from those which he has under the other…”29
If the benefit of the latter citizenship includes the duty of subjection, then the assent must require a voluntary consent, or else such citizenship would be nothing more than involuntary servitude. There are countless ways of demonstrating the consummation of a voluntary consent.
“The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”30
Free republics were “composed of large numbers of freemen and the law which they administered, was that which had been handed down by oral tradition from generation to generation.”31 The virtue of the people was the original “fountainhead of justice” which provided their own common welfare, ministers and tribunals to which every freeman could appeal for aid, mercy and justice.
To seek the kingdom of God you need to turn around and go another way. This is an individual journey but a kingdom is not a man. Men still need to come together as a community or society, two or more gathered together. What will bind them as a society cannot be a social compact that diminishes their natural right to choose. Their conversation in that society is not without reservation for they remain free. Their contributions and communion with that society must be freely given and without reservation.
A free individual in the state of nature is not a kingdom except to himself. To be a citizen of the Kingdom of God he needs a body or civitas to form the asylum state.32 The asylum state is a city of refuge from local and foreign abuses of justice. To form a civitas or body politic some men must give up their liberty so that others may be free.
By this act of sacrifice an entrance to the Kingdom of God at hand, the right to be ruled by God may be maintained. This is what Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were doing with their called out ministers, their living stones who belonged to God and were bond servants of Christ, living in the world but not of it, to set the captive free and return everyman to his family and to his possessions.
The Invidious Assembly
“If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great Security”33
In a free society the entire social welfare provided by the government is the result of freewill contribution called charity. It will only be provided amongst a people who love one another as much as they love themselves. Societies that force the contributions of the people, by their nature covet their neighbor’s goods. Lacking virtue and knowledge they are soon caught in a net of their own making.
The institutions they create will eventually take on the nature of a beast and like the monster of Dr. Frankenstein they will become the victim of their own creation. No reigning by oath or affirmation will chain the monsters, or alter their destiny.
When people talk about law and the constitution they often forget to examine things in the context of history. In 1776 many families in America had been here for centuries, struggling, sacrificing to establish a free republic with Cromwell seeking its protection in the 1600’s.
A republic is not dependent upon who its leaders are but upon the willingness by the people, as a society, to accept their personal and natural obligations to and for one another freely without hesitation or selfishness solely on the basis of virtue.
In early America, the success and prosperity of the people was due in part to “The churches in New England” which “were so many nurseries of freemen, training them in the principles of self-government and accustoming them to the feeling of independence. In these petty organizations were developed, in practice, the principles of individual and national freedom. Each church was a republic in embryo. The fiction became a fact, the abstraction a reality...”34
The modern Churches have simply become nurseries which have turned the people into children of the State. The people apply to benefactors who exercise authority one over the other contrary to the teachings of Christ. These, often incorporated, entities of the state provide little more than token charity amongst their congregations. The practices and doctrines, rituals and ceremonies, of those state instituted religious organizations today are much different than the early Church. Instead of freeing the people they placate the people, making them comfortable in beggarly elements of bondage.35
Men are fond of proclaiming over 200 years of freedom in America, yet the people have not been free for a long time. They have been comfortable but most of that comfort and euphoria is based on debt and ignorance.
For the last hundred years and more the people of America have become more and more dependent upon a system of debt created “legal tender” notes which have altered their relationship to what they own and how they own it, to their labor and whom they serve, to their neighbor now and in the future.
Few people understand what this means in law and society or why Israel, early Christians, and Americans avoided such dishonest currencies. They fail to understand for several reasons. At least one of those reasons is because they have availed themselves of free education which has been worth what they paid for it. And their personal comfort is more important than others.
Free education is socialism. It was not free but others were forced to pay for it. All social welfare or health care is covetous means and is received at the expense of others and the expense of their children.
The Alien State
States were once National states. They were republics which adopted the original constitution establishing the federal corporate United States of America.36 Just reading the elements of the constitution we can see that it is an indirect democracy, with constitutional guidelines, which is supposed to guarantee a republican form of government for the states, if the people were to “retain” their rights. They have not done so.
The constitution also guarantees our right to contract and the right to be held to contracts both written and constructive. It also guarantees our right to assemble. That assembly may be free or corporate and bound by contract, oath, or debt.
One of the first acts of the Congress created by the United States Constitution was to establish a federal court system in the architectonic Judiciary Act of 1789.
In Sec. 16., it states, “That suits in equity shall not be sustained in either of the courts of the United States, in any case where plain, adequate and complete remedy may be had at law.”
For the citizens of the United States today there is little remedy but in equity because the common law is not competent to give remedy when we establish equitable relationships.37
In Samuel 8:19 the “voice of the people” “rejected” God saying “Nay; but we will have a king over us”. It would be convenient for our pride and the comfort of our conscience to blame the assumed or supposed acts of tyranny by government and its bureaucracies totally on their usurpation of the law, but would that be true? Would that be honest? Would that be just? After all, if it is lawful to do with our own what we will, then is it not lawful for government to do with its own what it wills?
We know that “If we will not be ruled by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants”.38 In far less than two hundred years “We the People” have gone from a free republic to a social democracy, from a government of for and by the people to a government of the politicians, by the bureaucrats, and for the special interests.
As we have seen earlier in the Slaughter House Case the United States and State citizenship are “distinct from each other” and “depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the Individual” where the rights are “quite different”. 39
“Constantly bearing in mind that in entering into society individuals must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest…40
Almost all governments are corporations in one form or another.41 After the Civil War there was a decided change in the relationship of State and Federal government and subsequently in the natural citizens or inhabitants in the states and citizens of the Federal Government.
Citizenship is: “The status of being a citizen” and may include a, “Membership in a political society, implying a duty of allegiance on the part of the member and a duty of protection on the part of society.”42
“A citizen is a member of the nation. A citizen of the United States is a member of the large society which we call the United States of America.”
“In the United States citizenship is defined in the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution as: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside.’”43
When people speak of “State” are they referring to the corporate “State of ---“ existing under the Authority of the United States, or do they mean one of the National states44 which, in those early days, adopted the original constitution establishing the corporate United States of America.45
“The term ‘citizen’ is distinguishable from ‘resident’ or ‘inhabitant.’ One may be a citizen of a state without being an inhabitant, or an inhabitant without being a citizen.” “Word ‘resident’ has many meanings in law, largely determined by statutory context in which it is used.”46 “Residents, as distinguished from citizens, are aliens who are permitted to take up a permanent abode in the country. Being bound to the society by reason of their dwelling in it, they are subject to its laws so long as they remain there, and, being protected by it, they must defend it, although they do not enjoy all the rights of citizens. They have only certain privileges which the law, or custom, gives them.”47
If residents are “aliens who are permitted to take up a permanent abode in the country” and they are a resident of a State then their citizenship originates somewhere else other than the State in which they live. “A citizen of the United States is a citizen of the federal government ...”48 who resides in one of the States. “A person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other.”49
To be a citizen of the United states and a resident of a state should not be confused with a resident alien, “One, not yet a citizen of this country, who has come into the country from another with the intent to abandon his former citizenship and to reside here.”50
This may seem confusing but the complexity of the change, the relationships wrought from those changes explain a great deal of the confusion about what are rights and what are privileges. The interchangeability of many words and their casual misuse create a great deal of confusion rather quickly if terms are not properly defined in the sense and context of their use.
“Civil rights”, for example, “are such as belong to every citizen of the state or country, or, in a wider sense to all its inhabitants, and are not connected with the organization or the administration of government. They include the rights of property, marriage, protection by laws, freedom of contract, trial by jury, etc.”51
An individual, who becomes a member or person in a political society, also has civil rights, but the origin of those rights, being political, are rights “pertaining or relating to the policy or administration of government”.52
Both are civil rights but are absolutely different in nature and in their regulatory subjection. We see in the same definition of Civil Rights it is stated, “as otherwise defined, civil rights are rights appertaining to a person in virtue of his citizenship in a state or community. Rights capable of being enforced or redressed in civil action. Also a term applied to certain rights secured to citizens of the United States by the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution, and by various acts of Congress made in pursuance thereof.”53
While there at least three definitions of civil rights there is at least one essential difference between the first and the last. In the first those rights “are not connected with the organization or the administration of government”. This is easier to understand if we realize God endowed men with rights, not governments. So all civil rights originated in the individual man and are not lawfully subject to governments or our neighbors. The last definition of civil rights are rights secured to citizens by government. That would be rights endowed by government gods of other inhabitants. You obtained those rights and benefits by contracting as a member with the other inhabitants who are also contracted.54 This latter citizenship is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the institution of men.
Are we aliens in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Have we traded our birthright of liberty for a cauldron of benefits at the expense of our neighbor and been snared in a trap of our own making? Have we gone against the will of God and now suffer from a strong delusion?
“No one is obliged to accept a benefit against his consent. But if he does not dissent, he will be considered as assenting.”55
“It is immaterial whether a man gives his assent by words or by acts and deeds.”56
The Citizenship by “membership” also includes a “duty of allegiance on the part of the member.”57 Man’s primary allegiance was to his vision of truth until he binds himself to the obedience of another. Then he is under obligation to affirm this new contract, covenant, or constitution.
Our present state of bondage rests upon our own heads and 100 years of sloth and avarice. We have failed to affirm the freedom and liberty won by 200 years of self reliance and struggle by our forefathers before the revolution. The road back cannot begin on paper with declarations and proclamations but where it began with early Americans, in the hearts and minds that led us from God.
Pitfalls, Traps and Snares
We are warned of all the pitfalls, traps and snares where men are mired in bondage in the Bible and by the teachings of Jesus Christ. We are not always warned by those who profess to know Christ.
One thing common to Republics is the remaining power of the people to contract for, apply to, and receive gifts, gratuities, and benefits. Such contracts or applications steadily erode access to freedom common to a responsible, self-reliant and free people.
“The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute.” Proverbs 12:24
Anglican ordination in England required an oath of allegiance to the British crown which had ordered the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the “Test Act” again required all civil office holders to take oaths of supremacy and allegiance.
A 1393 “Statute of Praemunire” stipulated that “lands, tenements, goods, and chattels are to be forfeit to our lord the king” for showing disrespect and contempt for the crown by asserting superiority of any legal authority outside the kingdom. There was a great pressure to compel these oaths and there was a great movement to avoid them based on a Biblical faith in Christ the King and Lord of a kingdom which was at hand.
To avoid such oaths of allegiance men fled with their families to the Americas in hope. To be freemen under God instead of subjects serving governments by the sweat of their brow and bowing down to law makers who exercise authority required change. To be a Christian required repentance and seeking a kingdom of God and His righteousness. To say we believe in Christ and not do what he said is to take His name in vain.58
Religions and the World
All governments have elements of religion in them including faith. “Religion” only appears five times in the Bible and is only used once in a good sense. Pure religion59 is the gathering together in the name of Christ for the purposes of caring for one another in by faith, hope and charity which is love “unspotted by the world”. Every time you read the word “world” in the Bible you need to know which Greek was used to produce that word because there were more than five in the New Testament alone.
The Greek word kosmos actually meant the state and is recently defined as “an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government.”60 The Greeks produced other forms, such as the Homeric kosmeo, used in reference to the act of “marshaling troops.”61 From the Greek and Roman point of view, the “... word kosmos ... meant originally the discipline of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state.”62
Today’s Churches practice and preach religion very much spotted by the world. They completely care for their needy by the benefaction of the world and not charity.
There are many ideas that have crept into the thinking of the modern Church that needs to be brought to light so that we may repent and seek the kingdom and the righteousness of God.
Christ appointed a government to His apostles63 but did not allow His government to exercise authority.64 You may call that government of God the Church, the ekklesia, the called out. They were to feed His sheep.65
The ministers of the Church are to be the ministers to the people for God to keep them free souls under God and not under the Pharaohs and Nimrods of the “world”
They do this by the charity of the people, for the people and by the people freely giving and receiving in God’s name. The ministers are separate from the world and are servants of the people. The ministers are separate from the people but work together as a body so that neither the ministers nor the people will be snared by the gods of the world.
What Church provides all the social welfare for the people by faith, hope and charity? What Church does not send the people to men called benefactors but who exercise authority? What Church is faithful to the word and ways of God?
How can so many people call themselves Christians today, read the Bible--- and take so much of it literally--, but cannot see that Christ was preaching a form of government which operated on faith, hope, charity, and the perfect law of liberty? Abraham left the men that devised civil government with codified laws and compulsory taxes in Ur and Haran. Moses brought the people out of a government of Egypt where the people had a tax liability equal to several months of labor each year, the gold and silver was in the treasuries of the government, the people only had a legal title to land and the banks charged interest on anything you borrowed. So was Christ doing something all that different by setting the captive free?
Moses gave the people a government where they only paid taxes to support the ministers “according to their service”. Charitable contributions were given as “freewill offerings” or self inflicted “sin offerings”; all the gold and silver was in the hands of the people and interest was almost completely forbidden. There was no king in Israel or need for one as long as the people remained faithful to God.
Jesus did much the same as Moses, Abraham and many other free governments. The first century Church was a well organized and self disciplined republican system of self governance. It was not like the kingdoms of the other nations where men ruled over other men.66
Christ preached a kingdom of service and charity sacrifice, not entitlements, benefits, and forced taxation. He told us to apply to His Father in Heaven. It is because men apply to Caesar and eat at his table that men owe Caesar what should be God’s alone.
You may have to pay Caesar what you owe him. You may have to be friends with the “unrighteous mammon.”67 But you should repent and begin to go the other way. If your Church will not conform to the message of Christ and perform the services of the first century Church stop tithing to it. Seek a faithful minister who will lead you to the kingdom and in the ways of righteousness.
The Church - as we have come to call it - had a particular structure and was composed of particular kind of men, ordained under particular conditions specified by Christ to do particular tasks for the people who sought the kingdom of God on earth.
“Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.” Ezekiel 37:4
“... and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation:” Daniel 4:34
Letters from the Earth
“But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people’s liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket.” Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings, Mark Twain
Contracts, Covenants, and Constitutions
The book Contract, Covenants, and Constitutions, reveals the contrasting nature of a free government and those established by contract. It brings the original Constitution of the United States into historical contexts and the change in the modern American government into a unique revealing perspective. It also takes a detailed look at the prohibition in the Bible concerning government by contract; the Biblically delegated elements for constitutions; and the debt and bondage that always results from the failure to adhere to Godly precepts.
Go to the Table of Contents
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