The Church of Judas (2)

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Oct 22, 2013 ... But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, .... failed to heed the words of her king and Lord, proved a key factor.
The Church of Judas By Andrew McColl, 24/9/2013 Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?” Now he said this, not because he was concerned for the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it (Jn.12:1-6). For hundreds of years now, the Church has increasingly tolerated really woolly thinking. In few areas has this been more evident, than in what we have accepted in relation to education, health and welfare. When we in the Church rolled over in the nineteenth century, and slowly but steadily accepted the legitimacy of tax-payers’ money being used for these purposes, it exposed us and society to a whole raft of drama. All this came about because of faulty theology that ignored or minimised God’s law; frankly we disobeyed scripture. It’s easy to say, “This has to stop now,” but there’s a problem. We have a hideous habit, and we’re addicted. The Church has gotten used to having both hands in the Cookiejar of government money, and woe to anyone who says, “That’s enough!” After all, why should schools have to go to reluctant or struggling parents to get money for their children’s education, when you can go the government of the day, and get one big, fat cheque? We’ve taken the path of least resistance, and believe me, The path of least resistance makes men and rivers crooked. No one likes change, but change we must. We either continue this addictive, corrupt process, or we make a clean break in obedience to scripture. In the early years of the 20th century, the Fabian Society of England came out strongly in favour of state aid to independent Christian schools. When a board member resigned in protest, George Bernard Shaw rebuked him strongly. Nothing, Shaw held, would more quickly destroy these schools than state aid; their freedom and independence would soon be compromised, and, before long, their faith. Events soon proved Shaw to be right.1 God gives the State certain responsibilities in scripture, and Education, Health and Welfare are not amongst them.

1

Rousas Rushdoony, “Roots of Reconstruction,” 1991, p.446.

Oh, but Andrew, the government helps people so much in these areas. Do you mean this should all change? Yes, because these are individual, family and Church tasks. Now in Australia, our new government tells us we’re $250 billion in the red, and the debt’s still increasing. Funny that. Where did all that money go? On schemes with no scriptural warrant. And where was the Church? Conspicuously silent and paid off, receiving some of it for “Christian” schools, school Chaplains, and other things. We’ve become the Church of Judas, for whom money was more important than morality. He claimed it was for helping the poor, but... You didn’t know Judas was alive and well? I worked for an outfit called Australian Christian Academy from 1998-2005, assisting families to home school their children. Around 2001, we had perhaps 10-15 families start with us, who were from a large Christian school from the western suburbs of Sydney. That seemed good, but those families hadn’t reckoned on one problem. According to them, their former Principal was highly unimpressed. “We’ve lost all those schoolfees, and the Departmental cheques!” He immediately reported them by name to the Education Department, who then began to harass and threaten them for their “unauthorised” educational choice. Most of them succumbed and returned to the school. After all, why bother with the gentle art of persuasion in a free-market, when you can set the dogs on parents till they see things your way? We can find all kinds of dignified, religious excuses for putting up our hand for government monies, and we do. “We pay our taxes like anyone else, and we’re entitled to our share of revenues. Besides, some of it’s for Chaplains in the State schools. They do a great job, helping children with their problems.” But in saying such things, we accept the foundations of the humanists. Furthermore, “ministering to the needs of people,” must never take the place of obeying God. Jesus was a command oriented, not a need oriented man. There is no more scriptural warrant for State funded schools, than there is for State brothels. Should we send State funded Chaplains into brothels, too? That would be consistent! I can hear someone say, “Andrew, that’s a terrible thing to say.” But that’s how far we’ve fallen in our compromise, our folly and our desire to please the world and gain access to that easy government money. The Bible warns us, “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pieced themselves with many griefs” (I Tim.6:10). The arms of the State octopus are reaching right into the Church for our children, and we willingly hand them over. How brave.

Whatever happened to the Church of moral confrontation? Would the prophets of the Bible like Elijah and John the Baptist, feel at home in the Church of our day? Christian children belong to God, and are entrusted by Him to parents. But State and Education Departments are essentially pagan institutions dedicated to removing the knowledge of God from the community. They have done that well, and we in the Church have been endorsing these institutions for 150 years in Australia. Why? The Bible repeatedly teaches us that God is a jealous God. It says, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Conclusion: Judas formed an unholy alliance with evil people. His covetousness initially got him into trouble with theft, then it got worse. He approached them for money to betray Jesus, and they agreed. He came to a sticky end: “Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out” (1:18). Have we done any better? Are we going to continue to emulate Judas in his evil and folly? Could you stand “The Church of Judas” sign outside your fellowship? It’s high time for the Church to step back from our co-habitation with the world, in faithfulness to God. This begins with financial independence, and guarding fiercely the education of our children, as stewards under God. That way, we begin the process of re-establishing the authority of Christian families, and the Church in the community. True leadership is firstly moral. No guts, no glory.

The Church of Judas (2) By Andrew McColl, 1/10/2013 “Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the Lord, “Who execute a plan, but not Mine, and make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin: Who proceed down to Egypt without consulting Me, to take refuge in the safety of Pharoah and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore the safety of Pharoah will be your shame and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt, your humiliation” (Isa.30:1-3). I grew up on a farm in NSW, and we had kelpie dogs for working with sheep and cattle. They were for work, not pleasure. Not long before his sudden death at 52, my father acquired a Labrador retriever pup, he called Fred. Fred was no working dog. He was merely a pet, largely for Dad’s amusement. Unlike the other dogs who slept outside in the shed all year round, Fred came inside and slept in front of the winter fire, where Dad would pat and play with him; I can’t remember him even doing much retrieving. This is what’s happened to the Church. Rather than it being a confident, authoritative, independent institution under God, governments now that are more interested in power than ethics have figured out how to keep it house-trained, compliant and silenced. How do they do that? Liberal amounts of cash, distributed judiciously. The compromised church is a silent Church, and a silenced Church fails to be an ambassador for Christ; it’s ripe for judgment. The Old Testament has multiple warnings about God’s people engaging in entangling alliances with evil people. A representative one is Exodus 34:12-16: Watch yourself that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a snare in your midst. But rather, you are to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim- for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God- otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice, and you might take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters might play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods. There are many more: Ex.20:1-3; Num.33:50-56; Deut.7:1-6; 12:1-3, 29-32; 20:16-18; Joshua 23:6-7; 11-13; Judges 2:1-4; Ps.106:34-36. What did Hitler say about the German Protestants? You can do anything you want with them. They will submit...they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.2

2

Quoted in William Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” 1968, p.329.

That is why the German church was so badly trodden underfoot in the 1930’s; it wasn’t merely the evil of the Nazis. It was a church almost totally financially dependent on government. The institution that was busy gassing Jews was paying the Church. And the Church covered its eyes, and took the money. A compromised church that had failed to heed the words of her king and Lord, proved a key factor for an era of awful destruction, when Jews, Germany, Europe and the world suffered immensely. God had said through Isaiah, If only you had paid attention to My commandments! Then your well-being would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea (Isa.48:18). The Lord never wanted His people to be dependent on government, let alone silenced. When an angel brought about a release for the apostles of the early Church from prison, he commanded them to “Go, stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this life” (Acts 5:20). Jesus warned us, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Mat.6:24). North has pointed out, God and mammon are mutually exclusive, Jesus warned. Neither god tolerates the claims of the other. Each comes before man with a claim: "Worship only me, and I will reward you." The God of the Bible makes His claim exclusive. Mammon excludes only God, because God excludes mammon. God and mammon do not tolerate each other's claims. God's exclusivism is intolerable for mammon. Mammon's polytheism is intolerable to God. Mammon may publicly invite men to worship both him and God, but the invitation is spurious. Mammon treats God as if God were one among many. God rejects all such challenges to His exclusive authority. So, men face a decision. In which god will they put their trust? Which will they serve faithfully in their quest for rewards? Which god's name will be on their tongues and in their hearts? They cannot serve both.3 You wouldn’t have thought we would have failed on such a simple issue as breaking the First Commandment, but we have. And when Christian institutions get a taste of liberal amounts of tax-payers’ money, one thing now dominates their thinking. Keep that tap turned on! Let’s be frank. The offer of monies by governments to institutions is usually an attempt to secure allegiance, and it works. And if there are institutions that complain, governments can say, “Listen here. We’re paying your wages. Stop complaining or we’ll cut you off.”

3

Gary North, “Priorities and Dominion,” 1999, Chapter 14, “Rival Masters, Rival Kingdoms.”

The promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ is freedom (Jn.8:31-32). The Church has always faced this stark choice: obedience to Jesus Christ resulting in freedom, or unholy subjection to an individual or institution such as government, resulting in bondage and grief. Conclusion: An unholy subjection to governments and men on the part of His people is anathema to God, because He always wanted us to be “the head and not the tail” (Deut.28:13); to dominate, not be dominated. And He Who is both the sovereign Lord, and the provider for His people makes all His promises to His people contingent on their obedience. Why do we have to wait to get permission from government before we obey God, especially with the education of our children? Government money to churches and schools is implicitly a bribe, leading to subjection, weakness, compliance and terrible compromise. When will we learn this? In this context, let me close with this most apt limerick: There was a young lady from Niger Who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride with the lady inside, And the smile on the face of the tiger.

The Church of Judas (3) By Andrew McColl, 8/10/2013 Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” So they cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar” (Jn.19:14-15). The chief priests had succeeded. When approached by Judas, they agreed to give him money to betray Jesus (Luke 22:1-6). Now that this had been successful, there was the matter of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. Despite Pilate’s repeated appeals to them to let Him go, they knew they had Jesus where they wanted Him; on trial for subversion. What was the background to this? Purchasing the leadership of their enemies or of potential threats was the Roman way. Timothy H. Parsons in his book, The Rule of Empires, describes the Romans as “deft practitioners of soft power.” Rome preferred to rule the conquered and the potentially hostile through “semiautonomous client kings which the Senate euphemistically termed ‘friends of the Roman people.’ Romans helped cooperative monarchs remain in power with direct payments of coins and material goods.4 In recognising the significance of Israel’s religion to the nation, the Romans had acted very shrewdly. They permitted a continuation of the high-priest’s very lucrative monopoly on the sale of sacrificial animals, along with the money-changing in the temple, on the condition that he be replaced every year. That way, they maintained a control of the nation’s religious leaders; the two groups in an unholy coalition, needed and used each other to maintain their political and religious power bases.5 Political leaders want the support of local social institutions, and that’s not wrong. But when they start dishing out cash to the Church, it’s time we saw this for what it is; a means of subversion of the Church for political ends. It’s been happening since Roman times. The Bible never legitimises the Church receiving money from government, be it for education, or some other purpose. Education is clearly a parental responsibility in scripture; it is never a role for government to assume. Money from government has to come through taxation, and the scripture makes it clear (see I Sam.8) that when taxation rises to 10% and beyond, a nation has walked away from God, and is under His judgment. What does this mean for us today? When the Church receives taxpayers’ money, it shows it has no interest in the maintenance of God’s law; it’s become opportunistic. The fact that the money may be for some supposedly worthy or 4 5

Paul Craig Roberts, “Will Iran be Attacked?” Lew Rockwell’s website, 10/2/2012 Rousas Rushdoony, “The Gospel of John,” 2000, p.153, 154.

legitimate cause (such as charitable operations in the community or for running a school) is irrelevant. When the Church needs money, it should be addressing the issue with its members through tithes and offerings. Furthermore, monies for Christian schools should be raised directly from parents, and if they cannot afford those fees they should consider alternate forms of education for their children, such as homeschooling. It is a serious violation of the differentiation between Church and State for the Church to accept tax monies, as it means now that the State has become our provider, not God. And the long term outcome for this can only be ugly. Why? Because He that takes the king’s shilling, does the king’s bidding. The Christian person is accountable firstly to God Himself, and the Word of God is his final authority. As Rushdoony noted In the history of Israel, the Temple had to be cleansed by priests, prophets and kings on many occasions before Christ brought desolation to it. The church also needs constant cleansing. It is a sign of serious danger when the church sees no need of cleansing and sees as enemies all who proclaim the need for continuing cleansing and purification.6 We shouldn’t be surprised that Israel’s religious leaders, having been propped up by Rome’s money, could acknowledge to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar.” The writing had been on the wall now, for a long time. So what if this powerful preacher and miracle-worker Who had been active for over three years in their midst, should claim to be the Son of God? In practical terms, this was irrelevant to them. Jesus’ ministry challenged their credibility as religious leaders. What was relevant was the continuation of Rome’s support and cash supply. Nothing else mattered. The chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation (Jn.11:47-48). How could this level of decline take place? It’s easy. Like Judas, they were covetous (Luke 16:14). At the end of the day their continued access to Rome’s money and support trumped everything, so they were now willing to murder the Son of God (Luke 22:2), the ultimate level of rebellion against God. When individuals or groups become covetous, it shows one very important thing: they have walked away from God’s commands; the Tenth Commandment says You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbour (Ex.20:17). 6

Rushdoony, p.26.

Conclusion: How does the Church get out of this hole we’ve dug ourselves into? There is only one wayrepentance. As Solzhenitsyn advised, Repentance is the first bit of firm ground underfoot, the only one from which we can go forward not to fresh hatreds but to concord. Repentance is the only starting point for spiritual growth. For each and every individual. And every trend of social thought.7

7

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “From Under the Rubble,” 1974, p.108-9.

The Church of Judas (4) By Andrew McColl, 15/10/2013 What Bible commentators have failed to understand is that the conflict between Moses and Pharoah was at heart a conflict between the two major religions in man’s history, dominion religion and power religion, with the third major religion-escapist religionrepresented by the Hebrew slaves. What they have also failed to point out is that there is an implicit alliance between the power religion and the escapist religion. This alliance still exists. 8 A surprising number of people live in some form of denial of the truth. This seems surprising, but is a fact of life. Considering accidents, people say, “It could never happen to me,” but actually, accidents can and do happen to anyone. Thirty years ago I had an aunt dying of cancer. She said to me, “I cannot believe that a loving God would send someone to hell.” She was in denial of the truth. Denying the truth meant that she didn’t have to face it. Not then, anyway. A major portion of the modern Church is in denial, in this way. It says, “You can receive government money for your Church, Christian School or charitable program, without it affecting your attitude. You’ll still be independent.” Denying facts doesn’t mean that they go away. You just ignore their presence-for a while. Men in their rebellion against God want to believe in a State that can heal them. They believe in salvation by law -- civil law. They prefer to live under the authority of a messianic State, meaning a healer State, rather than under freedom. They want to escape the burdens of personal and family responsibility in this world of cursed scarcity. They want to live as children live, as recipients of bounty without a price tag. They are willing to sacrifice their liberty and the liberty of others in order to attain this goal.9 Evil people who want to control the church for their own ends, and those in the Church who are in denial of the truth, logically form an implicit alliance. The first say, “We’ll give them money so that they become dependent on us. We’ll have them where we want them.” The second say, “Receiving the money really helps us, and of course we’re not compromised.” God wanted His people to be “the head and not the tail...” (Deut.28:13), but this is contingent on their obedience to Him. To be crawling under the taxpayers’ table begging for scraps, and thus dependent on government monies for subsistence is a sign of weakness, not strength. We say we want to serve God, but refuse His conditions. North again,

8 9

Gary North, “Moses and Pharoah,” 1986, back cover. Gary North, “Priorities and Dominion,” 1999, Ch.1.

Satan's offer of all the kingdoms of this world was a last, desperate attempt to retain his power. This was his third appeal to a man who had previously refused to invoke magic to feed himself, and had also refused to invoke the Bible to gain risk-free living. What else was left? The lure of a universal kingdom: the desire to make a name for oneself. If this temptation failed, Satan would be out of relevant temptations. It failed. This temptation has been used again and again in history to lure men to destruction. In the twentieth century, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all sought to build permanent kingdoms, and all failed. The kingdoms of man all suffer the same fate: to be swallowed up by time.10 The devil’s lie and promise is always a throne without a cross. That’s what he offers people, after he offered it to Jesus (Mat.4:8-10). He failed with Jesus, but he is successful with a very large proportion of those that he tempts. Challenging the legitimacy of government payments to the Church doesn’t make you popular. You are quickly seen as a troublemaker, which of course you are. No one wants to admit to being a taker of bribes. No one wants to admit that their integrity has been compromised, for the sake of money. But this is in fact what’s happened. There’s more. Entrenched religious authorities that have their hand in the taxpayers’ till, will work together with evil, idolatrous governments to oppose this kind of change, just as they always have historically. John the Baptist was done away with by Herod, and Jesus by a group of religious leaders who manipulated a weak political leader. Our obedience in this regard will inevitably mean we are challenging the welfare/Saviour State. It’s about time. It will mean Christian institutions doing without fat government cheques, and having to be totally self-supported. It will mean rigorous budgeting, the end of many programs, along with the sacking of staff whose services can’t be afforded any more. It may well be the end for some Christian institutions. That’s life. We have to remove everything that offends Him. But it means much more than that. When the dominoes start going down, it will ultimately be the death-knell for godless, self-serving social institutions such as Departments of Education, which have no Biblical legitimacy, have cost the taxpayer billions annually but actually lowered educational standards, and which have robbed families of their Christian freedoms. It means embarking on a course of painful but necessary Church reform which will have major, long-term implications for the health of the Church and society, along with the furtherance of the gospel. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? And it will mean that the Church is now accepting the Lordship of Christ, proving more obedient to Him. But if we don’t accept His Lordship, how can we ever expect the world to?

10

North, “Priorities and Dominion,” Ch.3.

The Church of Judas (5) By Andrew McColl, 22/10/2013 When you sit down to dine with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a man of great appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for it is deceptive food (Prov.23:1-3). They say that old habits die hard, and we in Australia have had around 150 years to steadily develop the very bad habit of depending on government to do so many things for us. But the government man’s delicacies, the text above tells us, are “deceptive foods.” This is not merely indicating to us that government people are liars. This is often the case, but there is much more to the warning of this text. What we must note is that the ambitions of governments that ignore God are limitless. Psalm 2 tells us that when rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, they say, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” (Ps.2:3) In their lofty and evil ambitions, they refuse to be restrained by scripture. It is bad enough that this should happen, but what is worse, is that we in the Church have had a propensity to believe these kinds of rulers. Rulers say, “We will do these great things for you,” (perhaps in Education, Health or Welfare), and we in the Church (along with others) have said, “Wow! I’m impressed!” And in the process we affirm the truth of the scripture, “Those that forsake the law praise wicked...” (Prov.28:4). We haven’t taken notice of the verse that says, “He who turns his ear from listening to the law, even his prayer is an abomination” (Prov.28:9). The best thing we could say about our response is that it’s been irresponsible; we should have known better. The Bible tells us that “The naive believes everything, but the sensible man considers his steps” (Prov.14:15). It also says, “How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge?” (Prov.1:22) Because State and national governments (with tacit support from the Church), have claimed for themselves vast powers, this has contributed to a change in attitude inside the Church. What sort of change? We’re not discipling nations anymore; the nations are discipling us. Money talks. Money is a means persuading people. When government hands out its cash, people are influenced by this, and they expect to come back for more. And because the Church has abandoned the ethics derived from the law of God, society has too. The Bible is clear: When the central government collects as much in taxes as God demands in the form of a tithe – 10% – the nation has moved into tyranny. It has moved in the direction

of Egypt. The Israelites in Samuel's era, let it be noted, wanted this change in administration. They wanted a highly centralized State. They voted for it.11 Because the Church of our era is joined at the hip to the Saviour State, it has implicitly accepted the slavery of that very institution. For the Saviour State is a Slavery State, no different to Egypt under the Pharoahs, and who was it who suffered most then? God’s people. But the God Who said, “...Out of Egypt I called My son” (Hos.11:1), has called us firstly to obedience and faithfulness to Him. Yes, Egypt’s 30 pieces of silver are tempting; they always have been, but we don’t belong there. The Saviour State will only continue, while the Church tacitly endorses it. The sooner we lead the way by cutting our bonds to this blasphemous, God-hating, parasitic monstrosity, the better we and society will be. Are you ready? I close with a fitting chorus from The Animals (1965): We gotta get out a this place If it’s the last thing we ever do We gotta get out of this place Girl, there’s a better life for me and you.

11

Gary North, “Taxation under the Pharoahs, and Today,” 2008.