Forcing Morality on the Secular Society

In spite of the Scriptures that exhort us to bear witness by letting the light of good works shine, we intend to heap confusion on confusion. We are going to go forth in our self-will (not with the Lord you may be sure) and force the secular community to stop the aborting of infants, to stop the sexual perversions, to cease permitting gang membership, and to put an end to drugs.

We are going to use force-guns, if necessary-and compel the unsaved population to do what we think is proper.

To employ force to compel sinners to behave according to the Christian standards is to seek to bring in the Kingdom before the Lord returns. The Kingdom of God indeed will be installed by dreadful authority and power when the Lord Jesus appears. His enemies will be consumed by the fire of His holy Presence. But our task before the Lord returns is not to begin to employ force but to bear witness of God's righteousness, of the covenant of water baptism available to every individual who hopes to avoid God's wrath, and of the soon coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth.

The result of the Christian militancy will be a terrible backlash. The unsaved community, which includes the majority of people, will rise up in fury and the persecution of the Christians will be severe and widespread. Why? Because the Lord is not with us.

From the beginning of the Church Age various institutions, particularly the Catholic Church, have attempted to force their will on the unsaved community. The Lord alone knows how many good people were imprisoned, tortured and killed because they refused to conform to the ecclesiastical notions. Only a few hundred years ago some of the Catholic monasteries were sending out "soldiers" to force the populace to be "Christians."

Have we learned nothing?

The humanistic people today outnumber us. They are not going to bow down to our attempts to force our values on them-especially when the Christian churches themselves are filled with every sin of the flesh as well as self-will and self-love.

The present government of the United States is an abomination to multitudes of politically conservative people. We yet may have an armed uprising by conservatives. The Christians are not to participate in an armed uprising. We may think that we have made a temporary gain by such action but the end shall be bitter.

Evil cannot be overcome by evil, only by good. We are called to deliver and heal those for whom Christ died, not to kill them. It is only when our government commands us to sin that we are to resist the government, and then not by killing our opponents but by doing what good we can and by holding fast our testimony during imprisonment, torture, and death.

How many believers of today are true Christians? How many churchgoers have turned aside from their own life and are carrying their cross of self-denial behind the Lord?

And these fleshly, self-willed believers intend to force the unbelievers to live a moral life? The Scriptures command God's people, not the unsaved community, to repent and turn from their wicked ways! What are we thinking of?

The Lord Jesus taught us that if His Kingdom were of this world His servants would fight but that His Kingdom is not of this world. We are told that we are not fighting against flesh and blood but against fallen lords in the heavenlies. We are informed that the weapons of our warfare are not of flesh and blood but mighty through the Holy Spirit to the pulling down of strongholds.

The Lord is not commanding the unsaved people to repent. He is commanding His own people to repent, for the Christian churches are filled with people who are sinning, who are leading spiritually lukewarm, worldly lives. They do not know the Lord's will. They do not understand the new covenant. They believe in a silly "rapture" that will deliver them from suffering (as though suffering were not one of the characteristics of the Christian discipleship throughout the centuries). They have heaped to themselves teachers to tickle their ears. They have not presented their bodies a living sacrifice. They are in love with themselves.

Now they are disobeying the Lord by running ahead of Him, attempting to set up the Kingdom of God by human means. Surely, God has sent a powerful delusion upon us because we do not love the truth. Truly, great suffering is ahead for the Lord's people.