Fit To Be King

This morning I was reading Deuteronomy 17 and by the time I finished the chapter I realized Paul’s words to Timothy in 3: 10-17 had come true for me again. Paul explains to Timothy how Scripture is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. After multiple seminary degrees and six years in the pastorate, I still fall far short of the glory of God and stand corrected again by the Word of God. 

I have avoided voting for many years now because of 1 Sam 8 where Israel demands a king because Samuel’s sons are corrupt and Israel is weak, disorganized, and unified in their disbelief and non-reliance upon God. God tells Samuel not to be disheartened because it is not Samuel Israel is rejecting, but God himself.

To make it more clear, the conditions within Israel were a direct reflection of their lack of faith in God. This can be read much more explicitly in Deuteronomy 28 where Moses outlines the blessings and the curses for obedience and disobedience. I wish this chapter was stuck to every refrigerator in the world.

Israel demanded a king in 1 Sam 8 that would be like the surrounding kings; a king who would raise armies, provide central and consolidated leadership, and judge Israel. God’s response to this is to describe the kind of king they wanted.

This kind of king would take their sons for his army and put them to work for him. They would not be free.

The harvest? It is for the king.

The ore and wood gathered every year? Those would be for the king and his instruments of war.

Private property? That would become the king’s property, which he will give to his favored men.

The king would take his own tax, which would be separate from the Lord’s tithe, as the men, women, and servants become laborers and servants of the king and his ruling class.

The description of the king Israel demanded is terrible. Reading these words drove me from voting years ago because the words of God, for the unfit king, describe every ruler in the world today.

Why would any Christian throw their support behind men and women who clamor to do all the things God says kings should not do?

The rulers of today clamor to build armies and send them abroad. They claim the first fruits of everyone’s labor and have laid claim to all possessions, making the residents of each nation-state serfs who work for the political class on large plantations.

The modern king’s demand far more than 10%. The modern kings demand 50% and more for their coffers when you add up the mass of taxes being levied and it continues to be increased every year.

This is why I stopped voting. There were no viable Godly kings I could support. This is still the case, so I will continue not voting, however, this does not mean we should not have a king, which brings us back to Deuteronomy 17: 14-20. Here we find the qualifications of a Godly king with authority to lead.

In a literal and spiritual sense, this King is Jesus. Jesus is the only man fit to be king over all men and He sits on His throne right now and leads for all who believe in Him.

But, is there a “normal” kind of person fit to be king? How would we pick them if there was?

This is a decision that takes extreme caution and awareness, it cannot be decided based on who can generate the most financial support, win pseudo-debates, or make the grandest promises to the widest swath of people. 

The Godly king of Deuteronomy 17 is chosen by God. So we must spend time in prayer seeking God’s will to identify this man.

1. Israel had to select an Israelite for king; they could not select a foreigner to rule them.

2. This king could not multiply his forces, his wealth, or take multiple wives for himself.

3. This king must be a one-woman man without desires for empire, concubines, or wealth gathering.

4. There is one other necessary component for this king. When he takes the throne he must handwrite the Pentateuch and spend time every day committed to its study and the application of God’s law.

This is the kind of man I could support.

Frankly, I do not think it is possible in the modern welfare/warfare State to select a Godly king. I think good leader selection is impossible in the modern nation-state.

Our cultures are no longer uniform. We have become a hodgepodge of people with different thoughts and different beliefs and different desires. How can disorganized people seek the will of God when they do not have the same beliefs and cannot even communicate these beliefs due to political and religious hatreds? It simply cannot happen.

In the current circumstances, only the worst selections can rise to the top and this has been proven with every election cycle. Only the worst win.

The options for leadership today are shrewd, empire-seeking, and wealth-gathering people who cannot be trusted. They lie with every breath, seek empire and power, and want to use their power to stand on the necks of their enemies while enriching their friends.

The politician is not a Godly king and they are unfit to rule. Christians should not support them because we should know better! The single issue we have for unity in elections is Scripture and God’s description of what it takes to be King. There is only one man fit for this crown. I vote for Jesus and will accept no other.

---

About the Author

Ian Minielly is a full-time vocational pastor. He considers himself an “oddball” in ministry for his peaceful understanding of the Kingdom of God and how limited of a role Christians should have with the State.

Regarding how he came to this stance, he says:

God spared me and showed great mercy in opening my eyes to love, and against war and the State. To see the great work God did in me, previously I spent more than seven years as an intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, focused on Counter-Proliferation of WMD material and systems.

Prior to that, I spent more than nine years in the infantry and Special Forces (I was a Green Beret). Once I became a believer, I found the biblical expectations of God were in opposition to my profession in the military and my nationalism. God slowly peeled this understanding back and I left the army and nationalism.

Ian has published three books, Emily's Tears, Revoked Consent, and The Genetic God, which are available on Amazon.

He also has a YouTube channel if you would like to see him in action!

More from Ian:

Podcasts:

The United States of East Germany

How is the United States like East Germany?

We have to go back to about 1984 to the time I first learned there was an East Germany and a West Germany. This was also the year Epix released the video game “1984” for the Commodore 64, which my best friend had a copy of. The game was epic to my eleven-year-old self.  You could compete across a number of Summer Olympic events as different countries, and this is when I noticed there were two Germanys (and probably two Koreas, but I do not recall noticing them).

I later learned East Germany was “Communist”! Back in the 1980s, there was nothing worse than being a Communist...or so I thought at the time. What were some of the things that made Communists so bad? East Germany kept its people in and kept others out with a concrete wall lined with concertinaed wire, much like that found on our Southern border with Mexico. I also learned they had “secret police” and a nation of informants who would “swat” their neighbor’s in a heartbeat, especially in exchange for freedom from a charge levied against themselves. I learned they tapped all the forms of communication people used and they watched their citizens 24 hours a day/365 days a year, lest anyone exhibit anti-German rhetoric or beliefs, like our NSA and Facebook Machine overlords are doing. Does this sound familiar to what our FBI, ATF, and local police forces do? 

While I cannot say for certain, I believe this is when I began to loathe communism and its concepts. I can say for certain that the more I learned about what is necessary to maintain a government in any form, the less I wanted to experience any form of government control. Unfortunately, my disdain, and probably yours as well, for the government's increasing control over our lives has not stopped every single facet of East German rule from being implemented in the United States during our lifetime. Every single one of them! Go ahead, look at the prior paragraph again, because each of those East German programs is in full effect in the United States and to an even greater degree because of our accessibility to more effective and advanced technology. 

To make us good little East Germans, and prevent us from being Bad Romans, the United States implemented a vast empire of schools to indoctrinate its residents and misinform our understanding of history. Freedom, to any real extent, is not allowed in the United States, instead only compliance with the State is authorized. Take for example the fact that most of our possessions must be licensed, taxed, registered, and paid for through fees. If you have to ask for permission to have it and pay a fee - it is not free.

To achieve these results, vast sums of money are spent to seize and control the minds of almost all residents. The combined expenditures for this empire fall around $720 billion/year, which works out to around $15,000 per student. With the exception of those who can afford private education or to do homeschooling, the majority of Americans spent 12 years inside the halls of those indoctrination camps, complete with a daily pledge of allegiance. This is how the United States makes sure Americans learn exactly what the State needs them to be in order to keep the empire going. Certainly, there must be a bulwark in the Church against this kind of thinking, right?

I wish the goals of the church were different than those of the State (as they should be). Unfortunately, I know most of my fellow “saints” like to pretend the United States is a Christian nation; one founded on Christian values, and with a Christian manifest destiny. I know my fellow saints have drunk the sugary drinks and swallowed the lies necessary to believe this. Look at the church on any holiday and you can see right through the reverence on display. Look at the dais, look at the flags on display, and you will understand who many churches have chosen to place first.

Fallen Heroes

Let us be serious about this for a moment. It makes Americans feel good to think about apple pie, pacifying the land, and spreading from “sea to shining sea” on-premises of Christian values. I mean, who does not like hotdogs, baseball, fireworks, and “freedom”? We mistakenly allow ourselves to believe this has all been done in the name of God, crafted under the guise of Jesus, to obfuscate the actions that have enabled the United States to exist through violence and terror. 

Unfortunately, my fellow saints are just as guilty of thinking the United States eradicated slavery, saved the world from Nazi Germany, the Emperor’s Japan, and communist Russia all without realizing every sin of our “enemies” is on full display and practice here. I know my fellow saints like to think they defeated slavery, the ”Savage Indian”, and the USSR through peace, trade, the Church (not to mention our large nuclear arsenal), but it just is not true. It has been violence, coercion, and endless threats of more violence disguised as diplomacy that got us here. We must ask, would this be sanctioned by God? Not in the least bit - if He were ever consulted.

Saints should not be so foolish. The United States committed genocide on the original inhabitants of North America. European settlers did not discover anything; they invaded a foreign territory and used every means possible to take it from its rightful inhabitants, which was then justified through biblical interpretive malfeasance. An outright war against the “Indian” was always on the table when they could not be suckered. The shooting and killing of Indian tribes pushed them further and further West until there was nowhere left to push them. The United States wanted those lands for white settlers who could use the land “properly” and be taxed for it—end of the story. The few survivors of this state-sanctioned genocide on Native Americans were housed on reservations in desolate areas the government did not see itself needing, as far away from “civilized” folks as possible.

The atrocities against the original residents of North America began in full force in the early 1600s and did not end until the early 1900s. Yes, only 100 years ago! And, it only gets worse from there. Borrowing from Wikipedia we read this:

During the early 19th century, the federal government was under pressure by settlers in many regions to expel Indians from their areas. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 offered Indians the choices of assimilating and giving up tribal membership, relocation to an Indian reservation with an exchange or payment for lands, or moving west.

This was a policy of genocide for an entire people group. We wanted to end their way of life and eradicate them from history. This, arguably, is worse than East Germany (but, shhh, don’t dare mention that in schools)!

Do you know who was president during most of the Indian genocide? The same men that are now revered as heroes of the State even have their faces carved into mountains on sacred lands(looking at you Mt. Rushmore). So, let us just look at a handful of these heroes who have schools and streets named after them in every town and county across North America:

1. Thomas Jefferson

   • Tommy boy led a multi-pronged policy against the “savages” of North America. He wanted to move them West because he wanted their land for settlers, but he wanted them to remain peaceful and not allied with the British. For the Native people who survived relocation, Jefferson wanted them to be civilized and incorporated into the European model of a citizen through assimilation. Jefferson was so successful in turning the Native Americans into the dead, the absent, or the near-white, that a number of tribes built “regular” towns and even began owning slaves like their white schooler’s taught them. Those who would not bend the knee to Jefferson would die in the War of 1812. American politicians and their supporters have always been comprised of violent men carrying a giant boom stick. 

2. Abraham Lincoln 

   • “Honest” Abe was a great murderer loved and known by almost all. Lincoln cashed in on the killing of Indians and taking of their lands, in fact this how he accumulated political connections. As a member of the Illinois House, Lincoln took up arms against Indians in the Blackhawk Wars,  though history says he never killed anyone during the brief conflict, it was his new resume bullet, Captain in the militia, fighting to protect the lands of Illinois from the Indian owners, that propelled him forward to the presidency. Once president, Lincoln would prosecute a genocide against the South and the Indians out west. Yet he is held up as a hero today.

I will not continue describing the rampant abuses perpetrated against the native inhabitants of North America, but every single president during that period is guilty of their deaths. In their time, each of these men claimed Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Jesus would never sanction their actions, but this has not stopped the Department of Education from claiming otherwise. The schoolers’ couch expansionist imperialism in the most colorful manner. It is always the other guy and his nation that are compromised by hateful warmongers. The US is always on the right side of history and there to help the oppressed; it says so in the schoolers’ history books!

After this brief history lesson, how does this make the United States a modern East Germany? Our universities are beginning to make Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for attendance, and, while only a few have done this so far, it is likely to spread, much like a virus, to all of them. This is a totalitarian requirement pushed by the schoolers’ of the State to not allow their professors, or students, back on to campus without proof of vaccination. We have already seen members of the State promoting injections to attend concerts and sporting events—the natural expressions of East German totalitarianism, right here in the good ol’ USofA.

However, it is not just public institutions or policies that amplify our descent into totalitarianism. How many of our churches spent Sunday, July 4th this year honoring the flag for the Fourth of July and singing nationalistic hymns at the same time? This is a common practice across churches in the United States, on any state-sanctioned holiday, many of our churches practice State worship over the King of all kings. 

Our American Saints have embraced a polluted form of Ameranity. They combine their love of the State with their love of Jesus, failing to see that this is foreign to the Jesus of the Bible they aim to worship. This entanglement with the way of the State and the way of Christ only supports and ushers in an East German-style totalitarianism. Americanity fully supported slavery and the Wars against Native Americans. Americanity supported the genocide in the Philippines and against the Vietnamese. Americanity inserted itself into European wars when it did not have to. Americanity supports everything the State wants, no matter what the Bible says or Jesus would do. The United States is anything but a Christian nation. The United States is everything Jesus rejected on the cross and everything East Germany stood for.

Being a faithful Christian (a Bad Roman) is only going to become more difficult as the United States moves forward, but it has always been harder to live as a citizen of heaven. The mistake is when we believe we are able to remain faithful citizens to a finite man-made State while also living out the Gospel. So I ask you this, are you ready to be a bad East Germans? Will you join me and follow no king, but Christ?

---

About the Author

Ian Minielly is a full-time vocational pastor. He considers himself an “oddball” in ministry for his peaceful understanding of the Kingdom of God and how limited of a role Christians should have with the State.

Regarding how he came to this stance, he says:

God spared me and showed great mercy in opening my eyes to love, and against war and the State. To see the great work God did in me, previously I spent more than seven years as an intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, focused on Counter-Proliferation of WMD material and systems.

Prior to that, I spent more than nine years in the infantry and Special Forces (I was a Green Beret). Once I became a believer, I found the biblical expectations of God were in opposition to my profession in the military and my nationalism. God slowly peeled this understanding back and I left the army and nationalism.

Ian has published three books, Emily's Tears, Revoked Consent, and The Genetic God, which are available on Amazon.

He also has a YouTube channel if you would like to see him in action!

MORE FROM IAN:

Jesus Is the Epitome Of Everything a “Bad Roman” Wants to Be

During Jesus’ lifetime, the Jews of the Intertestamental period existed under the occupation of Rome in their ancestral home of Judea. The two things they had going for them were the geographic promises of God in Gen 12:7, that they would possess the land of Canaan and the identity that came with the promise of Gen 12: 2-3 as the means of God’s blessing to the world. These promises became barriers to their recognition of Jesus as the promised blessing.

In the midst of this turmoil between their understanding of the promise, and Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise, Jesus began his public ministry. Jesus would buck repeatedly at the methods of thought, belief, and behavior he found entrenched in the minds of the religious leadership in Jerusalem and the Temple. Jesus’s presence and instruction were turning the Jewish world on its head; undermining systems that had developed through hardship and rational thinking, in favor of the freedom God wanted his children to experience in Christ.     

The Five Controversies

The Apostle Mark describes Jesus’s time in Capernaum by shining a light on five controversies Jesus evoked.

1. Mark 2:1-12

   Jesus forgives a paralyzed man’s sins and then, to prove He had the authority and power to forgive sin, he heals the paralyzed man and tells him to get up, grab his bed, and go home. The Scribes who witnessed Jesus' actions thought to themselves, “only God can forgive sins, ” and they were right, but they were unaware and ignorant of who Jesus was. The Scribes, who knew the Scriptures front to back, had become so concerned with conformity and tradition, instead of compassion and love, that they missed the Messiah sitting right in front of them.                      

2. Mark 2: 13-17

   Jesus upsets the religious leadership again by associating with sinners. The Scribes and the Pharisees question Jesus’ bona fides because no righteous man would associate with sinners for he himself would become soiled. In the established religious leadership minds, Jesus is demonstrating that he is not someone who can be followed. In response to these accusations, Jesus explains he has to be with them (the sinners) if He is going to restore them to fellowship with God. To avoid sinners is actually counter to God’s Law to love one’s neighbor as oneself and lead them to righteousness. The Pharisees and Scribes misunderstood the Law, which allowed them to use it as a weapon against people instead of a means to elevate and restore them to fellowship with God.

3. Mark 2: 18-22

   This time they recruit the disciples of John to join the Pharisees to show how the righteous and faithful of God fast twice weekly while Jesus and his disciples do not fast at all. The point they aimed to make was that Jesus does not follow orthodox faith practices and therefore He should not be followed at all. In the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus is a bad Jew who will lead others down a path to destruction. 

   Yet Jesus uses three examples to show them something new and better has arrived if they would just step back and see the reality before them in Mark 2: 19-22. Utilizing three examples Jesus explains that this new system cannot be joined with the old tradition because they are not compatible. The old must be replaced and release its control. Likewise, the new cannot be contained in the same vessels as the old because the new way would burst the old. In other words, people must be born again to fully understand the Law and the Kingdom of God. 

4. Mark 2 23-28

   To truly drive the point home, Mark describes how Jesus upset the Pharisees by not following their hypocritical understanding of the Sabbath in Mark 2 23-28. The Pharisees attempted to show Jesus as an unworthy leader because his followers were violating their rules on the Sabbath, but Jesus responds by showing the Sabbath is for man, not the other way around. Basic human needs must still be met on the Sabbath. However, the Pharisees were using the Sabbath as a hammer against their fellow man when God gave it as a blessing.

5. Mark 3: 1-6

   The fifth controversy, in Mark 3: 1-6, is similar to the fourth.  Jesus is inside a synagogue, surrounded by the enemy. Jesus asks the Pharisees if it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save a life or to kill?  The Pharisees did not respond, so Jesus healed a man right in front of them. Jesus did good on the Sabbath and they were not too friendly or happy about it.  The Pharisees proceeded to leave the synagogue,  seek out the Herodians, and plot ways to destroy Jesus. So, in response to the good  Jesus did on the Sabbath they were angry, but they had no problem doing evil on the Sabbath as they sought out people to kill him. In so doing the Pharisees showed the hypocrisy of their Sabbath observance for what it was.

Being “bad” to do good

By being a “bad Jew” Jesus was able, through his action and language, to reveal how limited the Pharisees’ and Scribes’ understanding of the Word of God was. Instead of bringing people closer to God they were driving people away and making it nearly impossible for people to build a relationship with God. This was the same age-old problem of the Abrahamic nation that resulted in their banishment to begin with.

In modern times, Christians are often being good citizens of a nation-state at the expense of being good Christians. Christians have created idols out of the State and all of its bodies, often placing the military, the flag, a political party, or the authority of Government above and before their Christian beliefs. In the United States, Christians have elevated these idols to the status of gods and place hedges around their faith in their Creator if it conflicts with any of their idols. This hypocrisy of faith often becomes a barrier to others believing in Jesus but also keeps Christians from actively living out what God has called us to be in this world.

It is time to be good Christians. If we will be faithful to the Kingdom of God, it will seldom equate to being a faithful patriot to a temporal nation-state.

---

About the Author

Ian Minielly is a full-time vocational pastor. He considers himself an “oddball” in ministry for his peaceful understanding of the Kingdom of God and how limited of a role Christians should have with the State.

Regarding how he came to this stance, he says, “God spared me and showed great mercy in opening my eyes to love, and against war and the State. To see the great work God did in me, previously I spent more than seven years as an intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, focused on Counter-Proliferation of WMD material and systems. Prior to that, I spent more than nine years in the infantry and Special Forces (I was a Green Beret). Once I became a believer, I found the biblical expectations of God were in opposition to my profession in the military and my nationalism. God slowly peeled this understanding back and I left the army and nationalism.”

Ian has published three books, Emily's Tears, Revoked Consent, and The Genetic God, which are available on Amazon.

He also has a YouTube channel if you would like to see him in action!