This perspective may seem somewhat controversial. Was Apostolic authority from AD30 to AD70 an era of Apostolic authority that meant that Governing authority was actually Apostolic not Civil? hence it is controversial. For example, the apostles obeyed God not the Sanhedrin or Rome because of a specific Pentecostal anointing for that era.

This would mean that Romans 13 was about Apostolic authority. However, this opens up issues of theocracy, dominion theology, Kingdom Now. In reality, we live in the tension between the 'Already' and the 'Not Yet' of the Kingdom of God. It is already here but not in its fulness and won't be until Jesus returns.

So we need to always be working out how to engage with the culture in this tension between the already and the not yet of the Kingdom.

Abraham Kuypers notion of 'Sphere Sovereignty' is helpful here. Based on Genesis 1 and the law of 'after their kind' God put various creational spheres into creation to harness evil in a fallen world, like Male & Female as the Image of God, the family, education, business, the arts, in short the whole realm of human affairs is characeterised by creational structure and therefore will be oriented in a particular direction. The State is just one of those creational spheres but it cannot and must not overreach into other creational spheres in a dictortorial way because it will then damage the other spheres. Submisson to the State is based on an understanding of its creational structure and function to harness evil.

Moreover, the family came before the State in Genesis and is the basic building block of human civilisation. If the State changes God's creational structures by not acknowledging His creation, then there is basis for civil disobedience. The State therefore becomes a form of evil rather than harnessing evil.

The Pentecostal/Apostolic view is therefore if it can even be legitimised is for a specific period only.

Israel failed to be a light to the Gentiles and broke their Covenant with God, therefore they were sent into Captivity- In Jeremiah 24 we see the difference between the 'good figs' and the 'bad figs' and they were so bad they could not be retrieved.

The good figs were the remnant who submitted to God's judgement and believed the prophet Jeremiah. The wooden yoke captivity meant they were still in the land but under occupation. The iron yoke of captivity and judgment from Deuteronomy 28v48 God said that if Israel broke Covenent with Him, He would put an iron yoke neck until He destroyed them.

Under Roman occupation Israel rejected the Messiah and were even instrumental in His crucifixion. At the Trial of the Lord Jesus Christ, Israel cried out 'We have no king but Caesar' (John 19v15 cf 1 Samuel 8v7).

The Roman empire was the 4th Beast of Daniel 2v40-43 and was therefore the Beast of Revelation 13v1 (the political Beast out of the sea) By crying out 'We have no king but Caesar' Israel bowed down to the Beast and 40 years later God put on them the iron yoke and destroyed their Temple, Jerusalem and drove them out of the land as He said He would in the Mosaic covenant.
As Jesus said in Matthew 21v43 that the Kingdom of God was taken away from Israel and given to a nation that would bear its fruits. As 1 Peter 2v9 shows, it was the ekklesia both Jew and Gentile in Christ the True Vine, that was the holy nation that bore the fruit.

However, in the last 2 years since March 2020 in light of the Deafening Silence of the Western Church (Traditional Institutional Church) and its compliance with a Secular Humanist Pagan State that has become insidiously Totalitarian. Does this mean that the Western Church by closing its doors and complying with all the rules of Statism has also unwittingly cried out 'We have no king but the State'.

Has it therefore also misunderstood that the State is ordained by God to be a terror to evil but in its massive overreach of its creational jurisdiction has its become a form of evil.
The wider implications are about God's creational structures like family, Government, education, business and the whole realm of human affairs that have sphere sovereignty that the State cannot and must not dictate to.


At the time of Christ, Israel was under Roman occupation.

Jesus told the nation of Israel that the Kingdom of God would be taken away from them in Matthew 21v43 and given to a nation that would bear the fruit of the Kingdom.
In this rather 'Out of the box' discussion, we look at the idea of the Restainer in 2 Thessalonians 2v5-8 in relation to the 'man of lawlessness'. Why did the Apostle Paul not tell us who the restrainer was? Did he hide the identity of the restrainer as the Roman empire because he would have been prosecuted for sedition/insurrection because he said that the 'restrainer' would be taken out of the way?

It opened up the question of 'When did the Roman Empire actually finish? Constantinople the 2nd Rome fell in 1053 followed by the Ottoman empire. Then the Roman empire was moved to Moscow, and finally the Roman empire fell in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution and the Romanov family.
These are some 'out of the box' musings to consider the Byzantine empire in relation to Romans 13 and if Paul saw that the Roman empire as the restrainer of 2 Thessalonians 2v5-8 would convert to Christ. However, Western culture came out of the Western Roman empire (Rome) in the context of 'Christendom' and today the West has politically, morally and spiritually returned to the Greco-Roman pagan culture it came out of. What does submission look like to a pagan humanist Government then?

My friend Wayne Sturgeon and I discuss the 4 views of Romans 13 that he brings to the table to discuss on todays Life-Quest Podcast. There seem to be a common assumption that the passage in Romans 13v1-7 justifies 'unconditional submission' to human Government. We are challenging this assumption in this initial 4 part series on Romans 13 and the wider issues, historically, culturally and individually. This first view is from an Anabaptist perspective.

The Sacred-Secular Divide charascterises the Western Church and tragically has done for most of its history. While the Western Empire is collapsing from within just as the Roman empire did. The Platonic Sacred-Secular Divide within the Church has no genuine Biblical Worldview in which to substantially engage the disintegration of the culture. The polarised response of the Church to Retreat into a Ghetto behind the four walls of a building or to Assimilate and become like the very culture it is called to permeate and transform, simply ends up observing the collapse of the empire but passively not proactively. The Church surrendered the public arena of society to Humanism...this is also one of many reasons why the Church has been so Silent while the world has become Totalitarian....because it has no Biblical Worldview.

Empires come and go not matter how powerful and great they may be. The Writing on the Wall appeared to the son of Nebuchadnezzar in the presence of a thousand of his nobles. The message from Almighty God was 'You have been weighed in the balance and been found wanting, your kingdom is at an end and given over'. The Medes & Persians too over, then the Greek Empire took over the Medes. & Persians. The Roman Empire took over the Greek Empire and then fell. Sir John Glubb a Lietenant and General in the British army in WW1 studied the life cycle of empires and discovered that the average life span of empires in history is 250 years. They go through different 'Ages'. The last one is the 'Age of Decline and Collapse'. Rome fell because it imploded from within because it had no objective Truth and no unifying Worldview to hold it together in times of cultural and national crisis. The West some argue has been in an Age of Decline and is about to collapse. Does the Church recognise this and why has it not substantially spoken into this massive historical moment? Answer: Dualism.

This develops and continues the discussion and the points I made in Part 1 of Globalism and the Great Reset. Techoncracy and the meaning of the Great Reset using some quotes from Klaus Schwabs book 'Covid 19: The Great Reset' which reveals that the Globalist agenda is really to destroy the nation state.

Everything is related to a Worldview which is a Belief Foundation to interpret all reality. When a builder begins to construct a building, the first thing he does is to lay down a foundation. The Foundation will determine everything else about the building as it is being built. You cannot build one type of building on the foundation of another.
For example, if I wanted to a rectangular shaped building but the foundation was L shaped-what would happen when I started to build? Answer: It would collapse because part of the building would not have a foundation under it. So it would not be long before it would crumble and fall.
Globalism is a Worldview but is building a rectangular building on an L shaped foundation so to speak. The Great Reset is the objective of the World Economic Forum founded by Klaus Schwab. This Reset as his book 'Covid 19: The Great Reset' shows is a comprehensive Reset, it is an Economic, Societal, Geo-political, Environmental, Technological, Industrial and Individual Reset. Only the Biblical Worldview corresponds with all of Reality as it really is. Globalism comes under the Worldview of Naturalism: Physical matter is all there is. Globalism will inevitably crumble and fall because it is building on the wrong foundation.

The Consequences of the Worldviews of contemporary Western culture. If human beings have evolved from Nothing then why have millions been protesting for Freedom? Why is Freedom, Truth, Justice so crucial to human beings? Globalism, Secularism, Humanism, Relativism, Paganism and Totalitarianism all reject the personal infinite Creator God As the Russian writer Doestoevesky said 'Without God all things are permissable'. Hence a Global elite on its mission to change what it means to be human.

Which Worldviews have caused the comprehensive Disruption of the infrastructure of entire nations during the last two years since March 2020? Globalism, Relativism, Secularism, Humanism and Paganism are all major Worldviews of contemporary Western Culture that are all responsible for the systemic disruption of entire nations.