Chapter 13 The Kingdom of Heaven

Part 1 The State of the Nation

Jesus preached a Kingdom and the Apostles worked daily in the temple, serving the people, so that they might be freemen under God.

Rome was a republic that changed over the years. There are many republics today and they have also changed. We imagine that modern systems are governments of the people, by the people, and for the people. At best, they are governments for and by the majority of the people who exercises authority over their neighbor.

Often, security is equated with freedom, license with liberty, and comfort with affluence. Vanity and avarice dims our understanding of the positive influence created by the exercise of the personal responsibility required to maintain freedom, not only for ourselves, but for others. Fear and pride darkens our minds to the light of liberty and the free exercise of virtue. People are angered, if not enraged, at the suggestion that their freedom is a lie, their affluence is a fraud, and their religious virtue is an apostasy.

Where do we find the plans for a government of liberty and freedom that is vested in the people? For centuries, people ruled themselves and brought peace and prosperity to their community and their nation, according to the virtue and courage sealed within their own hearts. With the aid of their chosen Tithingmen and Hundredsmen, they received and distributed charity, thwarted invasions, and kept order. There were no statutes, lawyers, or regulations, but every man knew the law common among freemen. Twelve freemen, their peers, decided fact and law for those who stood in open court, to prove “damage and harm”.

Almost a thousand years after the destruction of Jerusalem, William the Conqueror seized a portion of England by defeating his cousin and declared himself the “Fountainhead of Justice”. He had persecuted the people who rebelled against his oppressive rule in Normandy and began the same in England. He was crowned by the ministers of the authoritarian church and began demanding an Oath of Fealty and required the land from those he vanquished in battle be registered. Steadily, all land titles were registered in his “Doomsday Book”, under his Patrimonial power to tax. He established his own courts and police. Like the kings which Samuel warned men against, William, and others, rose up to make the ancient prophecies reality.

A once free people now only held land by a mere “legal title” with “no beneficial interest”. A tax or tribute on the land was now compelled by government. Eventually, there were no Freemen left in the land, and statutes supplanted the common law. There were only subjects of sovereigns. The battle was fierce. The cost in human life was high. The beast had risen from his pit to rule the world again and was crowned by his mistress.

The mistress of these national kings blessed their “exercising authority” in opposition to Christ’s command and, as foretold in 1 Samuel 8, the voice of the people rejected God.

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, Rev. 20:7

Three hundred years later men were still looking for an answer to this revived tyranny. Then, John Wycliffe introduced his translation of the Bible in 1382, with the words, “This Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.” An old idea arose in young minds. The recollections of freedom glimmered again in men’s hearts.

The prophets of the adversary could not let the captives go free. Wycliffe was promptly imprisoned by the government where he suddenly died under their care. His body was later dug up by the orthodox church and burned at the stake.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in [yourselves], neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Matthew 23:13

Another who brought this manual for good government to light, even at the request of the king, was Tyndale. He was eventually hunted down and burned at the stake. His books were bought up by the orthodox church and also burned. But too much had been revealed and, with printing presses and paper becoming more available, it was essential to do something to maintain order and control. It became necessary to teach the people a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.¹ Through deceptive teachings, covetous applications, and constructive contracts, the power of the Kingdom fell from the hands of the people into the grasp of men who exercised authority. Instead of returning every man unto his possessions and family, they returned them to the bondage of Egypt.

The prophets of the adversary began to preach and teach out of the Bible, but they gave an untrue rendering of what people were to read. These false teachers trained the people early in falsehoods so that they would not find their way. They taught the people an easy Gospel that was sweet in the mouth, but would sour in the belly; they taught that the kingdom would come through observation² and all anyone had to do was believe, winking at the requirement of repentance, and called it “penance”. The false teachers never told the people what it meant to believe. The people were not instructed that only those who do the will of the Father are His brethren.³ They were told that men are forgiven their sins, but were not reminded that they must also forgive to be forgiven.⁴ Religion was organized in their minds from the top down.

Christ preached a Kingdom and “All government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery!”⁵ It is men, not God, who make slaves of men. Rome preached a kingdom under the Fathers of Rome. Christ preached a kingdom where you are princes of your own house under the Father in Heaven. Roman law believes that consent makes the law and that agreements must be kept. God and Christ do not disagree.

We are bought with a price and what belongs to God cannot be taken away without our consent. The false prophets teach that you must consent to the gentiles who exercise authority while Christ and God tell us to consent not, swear not, agree not.

The modern Church tells you to tithe to their altars, but obtain your daily ministration from worldly altars of power. Prayer is no longer application at Nicolaitan altars of civil governments, but only words with bowed heads mumbled in ornate or costly cathedrals and churches. Worship is no longer homage, but has become singing. Lifting your hands to the Lord is not working for your needy neighbor, but waiving your hands in Church. Coveting your neighbor's goods is now okay, as long as it is done through the agency of government taxation; and being unequally yoked is okay, as long as it is by license and registration.

God did not take the Israelites out of Egypt only to have the Church deliver them back into bondage. If the Church was doing its job, the people would have no need to apply to authoritarian schemes of Corban and social security.

In obtaining the application or consent, the Benefactors of Rome establish a contractual relationship with the people, which imposes certain duties and obligation both upon the people and the government. God and Christ told us not to apply nor consent. Such relationships are created by constructions of law through application and acceptance.

“A contract is law between the parties having received their consent.”⁶

For thousands of years, governments have obtained authority and power by the consent and applications of the people. The rights, given us by God, cannot be taken away except by consent in word or in deed.⁷ These basic maxims of law were well understood when virtuous men and women crossed the sea in leaking ships to escape the taxing kings and ruling judges of Europe. They braved the wilderness in hopes that they might be free.

Remember, “The ordinary citizen, living on his farm, owned in fee simple, untroubled by any relics of feudalism, untaxed save by himself, saying his say to all the world in townmeetings.” For he, “had a new self-reliance. Wrestling with his soul and plough on week days, and the innumerable points of the minister’s sermon on Sundays and meeting days, he was coming to be a tough nut for any imperial system to crack.”⁸ Ethan Allen and others fought so that all men could have such tenure title as freemen upon their own land under the authority of God. They had won their freedom in this new land, even before the revolution, and only declared their independence from that despotic kingly authority of “unwarranted usurpation” and his “imposing taxes on us without our Consent:”⁹

The Pilgrims were called Separatists. They had studied with, what was called, the Ancient Church. They came to America to own the milk and the honey of the land with an allodial title that could not be taxed and taken by the would-be rulers of men.

Since those valiant days of rugged individualism, when early Americans took the time to study what freedom really meant, men have steadily moved again into bondage. Men and women, through ignorance, avarice, and arrogance, have applied to the authoritarian benefactor of the state to supply them with benefits. They did all of this, knowing that those gifts were supplied by compelled sacrifices taken from their neighbor. Now, their bondage is greater than that of Egypt and Rome, and their day of reckoning is not far hence.

Israel, while in Egypt, was united in slavery, but not in freedom. Until the people began to learn to live and move as one nation, in one accord, they were not ready for freedom. During the plagues and the oppression of the pharaoh, the people were strengthened by the counsel of Moses and the charity and virtue of which those hard times demanded.

Without the Pharaoh's consent, Israel could not go free. Once it was obtained, they left that very day. Like the day of Pentecost, it was only one day, but there were many days of preparation and repentance before and after their journey toward God’s Kingdom.