Smyrna times., 1890-09-10
Government.
What is Government.

W hoO 10 0ONCA
Answer: The power that controls.
1t may be money, it may be mind it
may be the multitudes or it may be the
few it may be the holy hearts and
clean hands or the wicked hearts and
bloody hands; good principles or bad
motives. And because in this boosted
Christian land we may have good
form of government, the best civil laws
of any nation on earth, yet this don't
signify that this is Christian govern
ment, ordained of God. Because 666
different wicked human religions claim
to be based on the word of God does
not make them right, or any less ahom-
Unable in the sight of God. If wicked
men in church or state wrest the law
and make it the tool for selfish gains
does the law, though it may be right,
/ govern or does not the wicked who
wrest that law do the governing?
The laws of this land, many of them,
are wrested and applied in the interest
of the few at the expense of many, and
Gods ordained government is manipu-
lated without respect of persons. In
Gods government the poor have equal
chance with the rich. Not so with
the American government; here the
big fish are swallowing up the little
ones. A few hundred millionaires con-
troll millions of the poor.
Fraud is found in every branch of
this boosted government. Money, not
honestly, controls our public credit. If
you have money, you can get credit at
home and abroad. But the honest
poor man often goes without it as we'll
in courts of sO-called justice, as in the
business circle. Can we expect unjust
men to render justice is man who
is murderer in Gods sight himself, a
proper character to render judgement
on another criminal?
Who is it to-day in the halls of con-
gress that has his whole heart set on
God and his righteousness? Who is it
that, unrestrained by fear of the money
power, dare thunder forth the anathe-
mas of Gods eternal truth against a
proud, naughty, pleasure-seeking aris-
tOcracy, who seek to exalt themselves
instead of God, at the risk of their own
eternal welfare and the sacrifice of the
flesh and blood of the toiling millions,
whose necks are under the yoke and
will stay there while the wicked men
bear rule? Oh, reader, do not for a
moment think that a government is
ordained of God where the blind lead
the blind, and the rich rule the poor,
and the masses vote out Jesus and
vote in Barrabas 1t is our sacred
duty to foster and obey all holy gov
eminent, whether religious or politi-
cal and as Christians submit to the
worst of ill-treatment from the hands of
wicked rulers rather than resort to the
carnal sword, for the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal but mighty
through God to to the pulling down of
the strOngholds. But we learn by this
truth that, though we are not to use
hostility and fight with carnal weap-
Ons, that we nevertheless have God
given right to raise our cry against
wicked rulers and expose them by ad-
vOcating righteousness and drawing
the lines between the true and the
false. And any feature in any govern
ment that is not for God should be
marked as of the devil, and the people
warned of the danger and exhorted to
do the right. No man can say that all
governments are ordained of God in an
unqualified sense and tell the truth.
If they were all his ordained then
would he be the founder of all TYRANNY
in church and state. No, no; when
the government totally rests upon his
shoulders there will be a universal
reign of peace and prosperity.