The Liberty Book E-Book

John Bona

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 407

Beschreibung

News reports bring to our ears daily stories of further intrusion in our lives and increased regulations too many to number. America is losing its heritage of God-given freedoms, which were originally derived from biblical teaching. We sense that our well-sung liberties are being lost to a point of no return.   The Liberty Book examines the Christian roots of liberty, idolatry, taxation, foundations for freedom, the right to bear arms, the great freedom documents in history, pro-life and liberty, land rights, social involvement, and more.   With God's help freedom can be revived. We must all work to pull America back from the cliffs-edge fall into tyranny. Our nation is again in search of genuine liberty under God. Discover what Bible-based liberty looks like and how it can be won for you and your children.

Leseprobe

ENDORSEMENTS

Those playing football with our freedoms will never slow down unless we the people begin to understand the principles expounded in the Bible and The Liberty Book. The Liberty Book enlightened my mind and stirred my soul with its powerful vision.

–JIM KELLY, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback

John and Don have a true passion for the story of liberty and won’t stop until the whole world hears how to win it, defend it, and maintain it. I’m very glad they’ve given us this helpful book!

–KIRK CAMERON, actor and cofounder of the Firefly Foundation

More than once lately, I’ve delivered a speech called “Losing Liberty,” alarmed at the many ways our liberty has been compromised in recent years. The Liberty Book addresses not just the loss of our freedoms, but also gives biblical answers for our nation’s return to liberty. Get this book. Like me, you will hardly be able to put it down.

–PAT BOONE, composer, actor, and author

The Liberty Book imparts a vital understanding regarding God’s path to true liberty. With its constant references and biblical citations, the book is refreshing, setting it among the voices rising above the political agendas offered by too many in the world today.

–ALVEDA KING, evangelist, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.

From where I sit, I see the loss of liberty and its effects on the family every day. The Liberty Book re-engages us all in a conversation about the need to return to liberty—biblically based liberty. We must return to the spiritual roots that made our nation great. The only solutions to our spiritual malaise and shrinking liberty are found in the Holy Bible. If we wish to see a return of liberty for our families, we need only turn back to the Word of God. The Liberty Book engages our minds and spirits with Scripture and sheds light on how true liberty can be regained. This is a must-read for every family.

–TONY PERKINS, President, Family Research Council

As I read The Liberty Book, my heart was filled with hope for our nation’s future. It provides biblical solutions to the astounding loss of liberty we face in America. This book will help us make our way back to being the land of the free. The Liberty Book beautifully lays out what God’s Word teaches about human liberty and how we can make a return to our initial freedoms. This is an irreplaceable resource for every family and every person who truly cares about liberty.

–TWILA PARIS, contemporary Christian music singer and songwriter, pianist, and author

With meticulous research and compelling evidence, The Liberty Book illuminates Christian principles of liberty. Those who study it carefully and follow its principles will be equipped and will win more battles in the ongoing fight for liberty. It is my hope that this publication will awaken a desire for all nations to be blessed with freedom, security, and happiness.

–MAT STAVER, Esq., Founder and Chairman, Liberty Counsel

BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC

Racine, Wisconsin, USA

www.broadstreetpublishing.com

The Liberty Book: How Freedom Can & Will Be Won

Copyright © 2016 John Bona and Don Schanzenbach

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5289-4 (softcover)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5290-0 (e-book)

Research for this book was conducted by Jennifer Featherstone and Ericka Schanzenbach.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture verses marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Any emphases added to Scripture quotations are those of the authors.

Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

Cover design by Chris Garborg at www.garborgdesign.com

Interior design and typesetting by Katherine Lloyd at www.theDESKonline.com

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

Foreword

by William J. Federer

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Where Liberty Begins

Chapter 2

When Liberty Is Lost: Taxation

Chapter 3

Building Liberty: The Puritans in America

Chapter 4

Securing Liberty: The Duty to Bear Arms

Chapter 5

Securing Liberty: Civil Disobedience and Righteous Resistance

Chapter 6

Financial Liberty: Money in a Free Society

Chapter 7

Restoring Liberty: Liberty Man Oliver Cromwell

Chapter 8

Taking Dominion: Liberty and Land

Chapter 9

Guarding Liberty: Protecting Life

Chapter 10

Blueprint for Liberty: Learning from the Freest Nation in History

Chapter 11

The Story of Liberty: Its Path and Promise

Appendix A

Must We Always Obey the Government?A Commentary on Romans 13:1–7

Appendix B

When the Love of Money Makes Us Socialists

Notes

About the Authors

About the Cover Art

The National Monument to the Forefathers

FOREWORD

by William J. Federer

The Liberty Book is a much-needed look into the true biblical foundations for liberty. It explores the principles needed for any nation to become free and prosperous. The Liberty Book rediscovers the underlying ideas that inspired liberty so uniquely within Christian nations. John Bona and Don Schanzenbach understand that there is no liberty without the application of biblical law and teaching brought to bear on society. It is rock-bottom building on these biblical precepts that draws nations out of bondage into full-orbed freedom. Nations that are suffocating in the mire of humanist laws and socialist tyranny can recover by turning to the God of the Bible and implementing His perfect law of liberty.

Our nation’s liberty is rare. Five or six thousand years of written records reveal that the most common form of government in world history is monarchy. Beginning with the fall in the garden, selfishness infected human nature. Cain killed Abel, followed by kings attacking kings. From Nimrod and the Tower of Babel through centuries of pharaohs, emperors, caesars, czars, sultans, khans, and communist dictators, power inevitably concentrated into the hands of one person—a king. And all a king is, in a sense, is a glorified gang leader.

Instead of seeking a king, however, some of our founders ultimately looked back to ancient Israel and its law, which contained wisdom every nation could wisely employ. It took nine states to ratify the United States Constitution. After eight had, New Hampshire was in line to be the ninth. It stalled at its ratifying convention until Harvard President Samuel Langdon gave an address on June 5, 1788, titled “The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States.” After this address, New Hampshire’s delegates voted to ratify the US Constitution.

Claude Fleury wrote: “The Israelites were perfectly free. They enjoyed the liberty cherished by Greece and Rome. Such was the purpose of God.”1 Furthermore, E. C. Wines wrote: “Another of those great ideas, which constituted the basis of the Hebrew state, was liberty. … The Hebrew people enjoyed as great a degree of personal liberty as can ever be combined with an efficient and stable government.”2

Ancient Israel’s unique system was dependent upon the Levites and priests teaching the law. When they neglected teaching God’s law, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes”3, immorality and domestic chaos resulted, and the people begged for a king to restore order. The prophet Samuel cried, and the Lord told him, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.”4 Israel got King Saul, who shortly thereafter killed most of the priests. Saul wanted the king to be the final word on all things, while the priests represented God’s word and God’s law.

Harvard President Samuel Langdon stated in his address “Government Corrupted by Vice,” dated May 31, 1775: “The only form of government which had a proper claim to a divine establishment, was so far from including the idea of a king, that it was a high crime for Israel to ask to be in this respect like other nations; and when they were thus gratified, it was rather as a just punishment.” This is a warning to every nation that if the consciousness of God is removed and people yield to their unrestrained selfish passions and lusts, there will be domestic chaos, mob violence, smashing of windows, and looting. In this crisis, people will beg for a strong leader to restore order, likely one who will send militarized police down the street, going house to house collecting guns. Yes, order will be restored, but when the dust settles, the country will have given up ruling itself and will be ruled by a king. Could this nation be just one national crisis away from being fundamentally transformed from a republic into a dictatorship?

For our republic to last, we must learn from ancient Israel and return to the God of the Bible. I wholeheartedly encourage you to read The Liberty Book: How Freedom Can & Will Be Won, by John Bona and Don Schanzenbach. You will be challenged and inspired to make this country great again!

–William J. Federer

Author of twenty books, including America’s God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations

PREFACE

A great battle is raging in the world today. All seems serene while looking out our front windows, but that apparent peace is deceptive. The enemies of liberty are tirelessly working to overthrow long-standing laws that are protecting our freedoms. Many assume their freedom is a privilege, not a right, and have never considered the question in these terms before. Most people believe liberty is a gift from the civil government and may be rightly controlled by that authority, and many civil government officials are happy to agree with this, treating citizens’ liberty as fungible.

Liberty is often traded for imaginary security. Most elected representatives are slow to help us against accumulating abuses or actively opposing reform. They essentially agree that liberty comes from government and may be eliminated by their own authority. The very people appointed to protect our freedom violate our trust and the covenant that binds us. When those who hold office no longer serve but oppress, they contend against Scripture and our founding documents.

Americans face an unprecedented attack on our hard-won liberties. We see it in the news every week: federal, state, and city laws continuously contradict and erode our First Amendment right to free speech. Licensing, permitting, or banning of firearms has become so common that we hardly remember or even consider the God-given liberties guaranteed in our founding documents (in particular, the Second Amendment). Laws against searches of vehicles at random police stops, taxation abuses, and more convince us that liberty is becoming utterly lost in our nation.

For over a decade now, under civil forfeiture laws, government agents permanently seize supposedly suspicious private property and then rarely go to trial. Authorities assume the guilt of the accused without trial and punish the criminal citizen without the burden of proof. Applying biblical principles in the public square would cure this sinister ill. Because we have abandoned God’s law as a system of moral right, we now suffer the great indignities of a sin-fed, humanist system of injustice. Returning to a biblical morality constitutes the only true means to restore liberty in our land.

Many Christians in our day exude a sense of hopelessness, persuading themselves that everything must get worse until the Antichrist appears and defeats the final remnant of the church. Perhaps you have succumbed to this pessimism yourself. But, as Christians, we need not be so downhearted. When we view history through a biblical lens, we look forward with more hopeful eyes. We confidently insist that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters fill the sea.1 And Jesus said that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, for the conquering church takes the attack to hell, not the other way around.2

We are reminded that someday we will not need to say to our neighbor, “Know the Lord,” for every person will know Him.3 We take great confidence that the government rests on Jesus’ shoulders,4 which means that God assures our ultimate victory in Christ.5 According to the clear promise of Scripture, we believe in a victorious church in the last days, expecting unbounded progress of the kingdom and its advancement. History is moving toward greater freedom, not toward tyranny and defeat.

THE FREEST NATION ON EARTH

Born in the early 1950s, we both grew up in a different era. The American work ethic brought prosperity to those who were willing to work, and their productivity supported an even stronger economy. It is no coincidence that the greatest amount of economic prosperity in history has existed where Christianity has had the most prominent influence. Biblical ethics produce individual character toward what we know as self-government.

Once a nearly unquestioned acceptance, Americans have perceived themselves as the freest nation on earth. Not only that, but we have viewed ourselves as the protectors of liberty across the world. No other modern nation has left its people as unfettered as America. We were the country that fought a great war between the states, which freed the Southern slaves. Twice we rescued Europe from the ruin of world wars. The power of the United States’ military predominantly beat back the Communists in Korea. It was our unmatched might that executed the only real-world check on communist Soviet expansionism. And we stood stalwart against the Russians in a decades-long Cold War, risking what politicians called mutually assured destruction.

At home, the requirement to read the accused the Miranda warning marked us as a nation that extended its concern over unjust incarceration to an unheard-of precedent. However, we may view that particular practice, the Miranda prescription derived from our conviction that, at least at some level, we must protect the liberty of everyone, even a manifestly criminal class. In 1966, the same year Miranda debuted, Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act, which marks a turn in American self-perception.

Both laws, while protecting individual liberties, were reactions to an unsettling conviction that our vaunted freedoms were quickly evaporating. Our trust in the central government to defend Americans from enslaving forces began to shrink. The emergence of the “Me Generation” illustrated on nightly television a wholesale collapse of trust in the American system. Widespread riots in the streets marked our transition from John Winthrop’s city on the hill to the city dominated from the Hill in Washington, DC.

A CITY ON THE HILL

When Puritan John Winthrop preached about the city on a hill to the future Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1630, he connected that thought to the “Articles of our Covenant.” He noticeably referred to the common consent in early America that our civil government was covenanted with God and each other for blessing or cursing. Blessing and liberty, and cursing and slavery, are the rewards of God that are bestowed on nations, which comes primarily from Deuteronomy 28. The Liberty Bell enshrines the expectation of liberty by Americans with a quote from Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Cast in 1752, the Liberty Bell captured the still living idea that liberty echoes in history only as a blessing that comes from God. It was not engraved with a quote from a founding father; it was lettered with a phrase from Leviticus, marking the bell as a Christian symbol. Expressing the heart of a nation, the Liberty Bell yet lingers as an immutable witness to our former philosophical estate.

The God-fearing philosophical estate that began in ancient Israel acquired its evangelical zeal at the ascension of Christ. Having been told to disciple the nations, it took the early church about four hundred years to push the outward power of the Roman Empire from its throne of tyranny. Overcoming the ancient dominion and beginning to raise the foundations of Christendom in its place required four centuries, and for institutional liberty to become established required another twelve hundred years.

From that inception, we have abandoned both the theological foundations and the understanding of the heart that birthed our people in moral liberty in only ten generations. We have allowed our elected officials to deny and overthrow the ancient covenant of the people and God, thus inheriting a dethroned liberty. Yet we see a grand reawakening. In a world less hostile than that of the apostles and yet still in desperate need of reconstruction, ours is the time and we are the people to rebuild. Our labors are not in vain. The coming rebirth of Christendom’s liberties will decidedly and certainly arrive. This we seek in unflinching expectation.

FORWARDING THE ETERNAL CAUSE OF LIBERTY

We purpose in this book not only to inform but to encourage. We have chosen a variety of topics surrounding the issues of liberty. Some are short teachings that make explicit the nature of the battle, while others are stories told to inspire courage and wisdom to live as if victory is already ours. Our approach here seeks to examine Christian liberty as a faceted gem, and each direction of inquiry discovers beauties previously unrealized.

The ideas found in these pages are old. We have merely assembled, applied, and pressed forward the history of the eternal cause of Christian liberty. Jesus announced, “He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord,”6 as His first public message in Nazareth. This encapsulated the work the Savior came to do—He arrived intending to set at liberty the captives. We, the human race, were enslaved to sin and hell, but Jesus came to free us from the infernal chains of eternal damnation first and foremost. But Jesus also came to free us from the moral, cultural, mental, emotional, and legal fetters riveting generations in hopeless servitude.

The gospel of Christ has, over the centuries, built a civilization that has freed more people in more ways than anything that came before it. It is superior to any philosophy that may yet arise because biblical civilization is based on everlasting truth. No other philosophy or system may rightfully make that claim. Christianity will always lead captives toward greater freedom—whether that is political, philosophical, or religious freedom—than any other view of civilization. In His transcendent and holy wisdom, only God through His provision of biblical faith saves or defeats the enemies of liberty, and only He truly sets the enslaved free.

INTRODUCTION

If you are reading this book, then you are demonstrating that you care about liberty. It could be that you served in the military, or for other personal reasons you have been thinking about liberty as of late; or maybe you have just grown increasingly concerned about the government’s chipping away of our personal freedoms. While there are many books cataloging government abuses, most of them do not dig to the root of the problem. By that we mean there are not many discussing the biblical, spiritual, and moral foundations for liberty—what they are and how to return to them. This book takes us on a different path to discover the true nature of some of our most sacred ideas.

There are endless opinions about the importance of liberty today; there are plenty of discussions about fearing the loss of our freedoms. We know a guy who has a room filled with rifles—you know, just in case. Others are setting up their hideaway in a foreign nation as insurance against a tyrannical government that is growing too aggressive. This book, however, is not advocating that. It is not a call to arms; rather, it is a call to begin thinking and acting in the ways God has instructed with respect to our freedoms. This is a distinctively Christian look at what liberty is and how we can pursue it.

We are asserting that liberty is only derived from God at its foundation, and that it is only through Christ that true liberty is increasingly achievable—it doesn’t come from the government, nor in the final end, can it be taken away by the government. It is the Christian religion that brings liberty to the world, thus demonstrating what biblically based liberty looks like. Our purpose is to assist the restoration of liberty to our once free nation.

DEFINING GOD-GIVEN LIBERTY

What do we mean when we use the term liberty? There is plenty of talk about how we can be free, or how we might regain our freedom given our current governance today. We have engaged with the libertarian crowd on this core question, but libertarians cannot answer it biblically, nor do they try. Furthermore, what is sad is that most Christians cannot give an answer that is rooted in biblical thought; many have never even considered the question before. Many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, desire liberty, but few can tell us what it actually is.

Christian writers have weighed in on the topic of liberty for centuries. One such writer says, “Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts—the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.”1 And Martin Luther, the famous Reformer, said, “One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ.”2 Even though quotations like these abound, there is almost nobody who is telling us what Christian liberty is, at least not precisely.

We are offering our definition of liberty here, which we are confident is biblically sound. We define biblical liberty as the freedom to obey God in everything, with no coercion into disobedience for any reason whatsoever. Not only that, but true freedom allows us to do all the good we can under God’s law. One of the main ideas when discussing liberty from a biblical perspective is whether or not anyone is trying to keep us from obeying the laws of God. Is the government asking us to do something that is contrary to the morals and standards God has given us in His Word? If so, then our God-given liberty is being compromised.

For example, the reigning civil authorities sought to prevent Peter and John from preaching the gospel, thereby attempting to restrict their freedom in Christ. The authorities said, “But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”3 Then they called in Peter and John and commanded them not to teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”4 They were not going to be kept from obedience to God by any rules set up by the civil authorities. No civil government could rightly keep them from doing the things God had commanded them to do. They were truly at liberty.

Likewise, when the friends of Daniel were told that they must worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden idol, they replied that their God would deliver them, “but even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”5 When these righteous men were commanded to disobey God, they simply refused. And God protected them from the king’s punishment. But even if He had not protected them from the wrath of the king, Daniel’s friends would have obeyed God anyhow. It was more important for them to be faithful to God than to an earthly government.

These are two small examples for how Christian people ought to think and act concerning liberty. We are to do the right things regardless of what governments or outside pressures try to impose upon us. We are free because the Lord has made us free indeed. And it is for that freedom we should all seek. Paul reminds us, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”6

CHAPTER 1

Where Liberty Begins

Rising from a quiet glade in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the National Monument to the Forefathers stands with its central figure, Faith, directing the visitor’s eye to the heavens. Underneath repose Morality, Law, and Education. Additionally, resides Liberty, who has been dubbed the Liberty Man.1 This man, as we shall see, is the protagonist in a story dating back thousands of years.

The idea of the liberty man derives from the first English usage and describes a seaman who had gone ashore. After months of being ruled by the strictest laws of the ship, he at last leaves behind that virtual enslavement and succeeds to a broader freedom. His has a liberty less profound than that represented by our Liberty Man carved in stone, but we gain a glimpse of this larger reality from the seaman’s image.

Our liberty man is found in the earliest records from God and people. The slave, being dragged and crushed first by his own nature and then by the actions of others, finds himself ever working to rise but forever falling. The liberty man, however, though under siege from the same forces, manages to find the victory of freedom that his soul craves. This is the battle of the centuries: Will we be slaves or will we be free people? What is it that unchains slaves? What is it that makes free people free? What was it that began emancipating the West while surrounding cultures remained enthralled to their slave mentalities?

The liberty man has been represented by numerous men and women over the centuries. He is any person who chooses to resist the powers of slavery. Oftentimes, the liberty man works against oppression by seeking justice in the courts, on the battlefield, or relief from unjust taxation. He may use financial means to raise up the widow or the orphan, giving hope and a chance for a more prosperous life. These kinds of works have been commanded by Christ and are the backbone of Christendom. Liberty men protecting and saving their neighbors are doing the work that pushes back slavery in tangible ways. If nothing tangible is done, then the whole Christian enterprise is reduced to vain philosophy, allowing humanity to remain in chains.

LIBERTY IS A WORTHY GOAL

The assurance that liberty is a worthy goal comes not from an emotion within but from revelation without. It comes from the very Word of God, who speaks eternally through His perfect law of liberty. His Word naturally leads to liberty, even though people often disagree with it, which is the difference between the humanist philosopher and the Christian philosopher. The humanist philosopher offers no compelling moral basis for liberty. He may desire liberty for all, but he might just as well desire slavery because his opinions are not based on anything other than his own emotions. However, the Christian speaks and acts out of the supernatural Word of God in order to defend liberty. He is motivated by God’s Word to believe that freedom is both desirable and possible for all.

Jesus is not simply a liberty man; He is the Liberty Man. We who follow His example are but shadows of the one who preached liberty as no one else did. Jesus not only preached liberty, but He has the authority to direct history toward its final victory, which means that liberty is an assured outcome. There are no slaves in the celestial city. The favorable year of the Lord will have its fulfillment beginning here and continuing there. He will set the downtrodden free and release the captives. This we know with certainty.

The battle for freedom can be found in the earliest histories. We could recount the curse in the garden of Eden with God promising that Adam would work the ground only by the sweat of his brow, or tell of Moses defeating Egypt when the Lord parted the Red Sea and drowned Pharaoh’s army. God transcribed His law on tablets of stone and gave them to a free people. Joshua defeated Jericho and went throughout the land of Canaan, slaughtering his enemies, leading God’s people into the Promised Land. The iniquity of the Amorites had been filled up and the Lord had determined their destruction.2 Liberty was for His covenant people in this confiscated real estate.

A LANDMARK FOR FREEDOM

Nehemiah and Ezra, returning with their brethren from the seventy-year Babylonian captivity, rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, and then constructed the city walls while outnumbered by fiercely evil contenders for the land of God’s own making. There is not a stronger drama found in any other writing, more compelling for anyone who would trace the history of liberty. Their labors produced the Jewish temple, which was a landmark for freedom, and prepared the way for the true Man of Liberty, Jesus Christ.

Other nations had temples to be sure, but the Israeli house of worship marked the Israelites as the unique people of God. The temple was built according to the Lord’s own design and by methods He demanded.3 It was the representative monument to the God of Moses, the God who delivered His Law that was summarized on stone. It was in that house that the ark of the covenant resided, wherein were enshrined the two tablets. It was a testimony to the continuing holiness and presence of God among His people. Set at the center of a free nation, there was a reminder that freedom comes from obedience to God and His law. His blessings become manna to His children, who alone among the peoples of the earth can know true freedom.

The Jewish temple was destroyed twice during its history. The first temple was reduced to rubble before the birth of Christ. Babylonian conquerors in 586 BC, weary of Jewish resistance, leveled Jerusalem and the temple, thereby communicating (or so they thought) that Babylon’s god was now the god of the nations and that the God of Israel was impotent to save. The formerly free people of Jerusalem became subservient to Babylon. Many survivors were led away in chains, never to see their beloved city again.

The temple was rebuilt, however, beginning in 516 BC, by a remnant whom the Lord had set free. Ezra and Nehemiah, men of liberty, took great risk to rebuild that which had been torn down in a previous generation. Nehemiah marked the return to faith when he “prayed to the God of heaven”4 and then told the king that he wanted to go and rebuild Jerusalem. Having secured with his request the right to return with former captives to their ancient land, Nehemiah obtained written permission from the king to begin rebuilding the city walls of Jerusalem. Under Ezra the temple was rebuilt and under Nehemiah the walls of Jerusalem were erected from the ancient rubble. The house of God was restored, and Israelite slaves regained their liberty.

LIBERTY COMES BY OBEDIENCE

Leaving the leeks and onions of Egypt5 for the manna in the wilderness marked the Israelites as a unique nation. No other people carried with them the magnificent history of the God who cleaved seas, defeated armies, sprang water from the rocks, or caused the earth to swallow people in their rebellion.6 Rahab, who was a harlot, testified to the Israeli spies, who were scoping out the Promised Land before the Jewish invasion, that the Canaanites’ “hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you.”7 She spoke of the fear that the inhabitants of Jericho experienced upon seeing the Israeli army camped just across the Jordan River.

The Jewish people carried with them a unique story of God’s providential favor and of His chastisement. They had been the recipients of God’s law that was bestowed in lightening, thunder, and awe at Mount Sinai. It was to this nation that the prophets had been sent, revealing the mind of the Lord for His covenant children. Jeremiah had predicted with perfect accuracy the seventy years of exile in Babylon,8 and the prophet Daniel had prayed for God to honor His Word and let His people return to the land.9 From the giving of the law at Mount Sinai to the destruction of the second temple, 1,456 years had elapsed during which the Lord had been working with Israel, teaching them that only in obedience can they know true liberty.

Israeli law and courts were revealed by God Himself as the ideal system for justice in this fallen world. Of these laws the surrounding nations were expected to say, “ ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law …?”10 The nation’s laws were not just for Israel alone, but for all the nations of the earth. Israelites knew that their God had invested them with wise laws that would be the envy of the nations.

THE MAN OF LIBERTY

All of this had framed Israel’s national identity. They celebrated three holy feasts each year, where each person was required by law to travel to Jerusalem. Families came and laughed, drank and feasted before the Lord. These practices made them a nation like no other; these customs made the events of the early first century so poignant.

It was into this nation that Jesus of Nazareth was born. He arrived, announced by angels, and everything about His birth was miraculous. A star stood over the place of His birth for perhaps two years, as men from the East came to offer gifts. At that time, King Herod determined to have Him killed; there could be no competition for the throne. Intrigue followed Jesus from the time of His birth.

It was this Man who, while announcing the beginning of His public ministry, shattered the dictates of decorum. He stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and read from the scroll of Isaiah. At that moment history itself was about to be sheared as if by an outsized sword. Transformation had begun. In the story of the liberty man and the slave, nothing will ever return to its former estate. The Old Testament finds fulfillment in the New; old things have passed away.

In the Gospel of Luke, we are told that the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Jesus:

And He opened the book, and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set free those who are downtrodden,

To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”11

Jesus closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and then sat down. A mere two sentences read from the ancient prophet sufficed to announce a fresh beginning for all humanity. The entire event transpired in maybe two or three minutes. There was no prestigious audience; no governing officials near to hear His reading. He was in a small town far from the centers of temporal power, a peculiar place to give notice that an earthquake was about to remake the earth. Yet, in only forty years, the ancient Jewish order would be fulfilled in ways not yet understood.

The book that Christ closed that day was more than just a parchment; it signaled the shutting of an era that had begun with Adam. The book of providential action would be opened to a new location, and it was being done before the faces of a small group of unknown people. The fame of the audience would effect nothing for or against the advancing kingdom of God that Jesus represented. He was not seeking anyone’s permission; rather, He was proclaiming an assured reality—the favorable year of the Lord.

The final fulfillment of the Old Testament order was yet four decades in the future. Jerusalem with all of its historical and cultural significance would soon be razed. With it would depart Ezra’s temple and the central geography that supported Jewish culture. Gone would be the lofty walls, the graves, and the palace sites of their kings. The familiar gates, the markets, and the pageantry would all disappear in the coming overthrow. A culture that was built upon the prophets, kings, and feasts, a culture built upon wars won and lost, and built upon the laws of God would be crushed under the trampling armies of Vespasian and his son Titus. The temple that Rome had remodeled at great expense would be burned and pulled apart, stone by stone, at the hands of Roman soldiers.

The contrast between the Old Testament order and the newly rising Christian order that Jesus announced is significant: God Himself juxtaposed the two kingdoms. The Old Testament order was historic but on the cusp of being fulfilled, while the Christian order was stretching at new beginnings and carried a sense of prophetic mission that would not be stopped. A clash of civilizations was at hand. The children of Abraham, though all respecting His ancient Word, could not agree to a common future.

Jesus said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”12 He was announcing Himself as the one who would set at liberty the captives, preach the gospel to the poor, give recovery of sight to the blind, set free the downtrodden, and proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Jesus initiated the blessings that would continue to the end of the age.

When Jesus said that the Scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing, His listeners were “speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips.”13 Jesus’ hearers had no understanding that their ailing culture would be targeted for destruction due to its intransigence over His words and works. His hearers mistook the beauty of His speech as approval for their beliefs. They thought He was speaking well of them, but He was not—He was speaking well of Himself and of His kingdom.

Jesus’ meaning quickly became evident. He said to them: “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your home town as well.’ ”14 He then continued:

“Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his home town. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”15

It was at these words that the crowd—the same crowd who had thought His words gracious just moments before—was filled with rage and tried to throw Jesus over a cliff. His teaching was so unpalatable that they would attempt murder to shut Him up. Jesus’ indication that God would bless the Gentile Syrian or the Sidonian widow over those of His covenant people was simply unthinkable. It was blasphemy to even suggest it. This was a demonstration of the collapsing world of tyranny in conflict with the broadening culture of the liberty man.

The arrival of the liberty man’s coming civilization could hardly have been made clearer. Jesus understood this, predicting that not one stone of the temple would be left upon another,16 and that those who stood with Him would see its destruction.17 What had been the civilization of the covenant people had degraded into the civilization of the antichrist, a culture in opposition to what was godly and right. A rebuilding and restoration of God’s beloved covenant people was about to begin.

SLAVES NO LONGER

In AD 67, the Roman general Vespasian arrived in the Holy Land. The Jewish population in high rebellion had virtually assured the coming of the Roman legions. First, the Roman armies laid waste to the outlying cities. When attempts to subdue the Jewish rebellion failed, the Romans surrounded Jerusalem in early AD 70, when a battle of the centuries ensued as the nearly invincible Roman army began its fight against the almost invincible city.

Roman armies were rarely defeated in the field. They were masters in the art of warfare with their troops being highly trained and thoroughly disciplined. They had the best weapons, including huge steel-clad battering rams and catapults that could throw six-hundred-pound stones. They had tactics for nearly every contingency, finances to pay the troops, and a long history of success in their terrible work. Against them stood a city that was well-known to be nearly unconquerable.

Jerusalem was built high on a mountain, making access to it difficult. It had been reinforced with a series of three heavy stone walls, the innermost being profoundly thick and seemingly impenetrable. Inside the city, about 1.1 million people had gathered, their numbers swelled by pilgrims arriving for the yearly Feast of Unleavened Bread.18 Large amounts of food and supplies had been brought in to support the resistance, and the spirit of the population was to fight to the last. The defenders should have had the advantage.

The proportions of the battle, however, are filled with a potency discovered beyond the strength of arms or in the mastery of tactics. A cosmic conflict behind the scenes was at work. It is ironic that the multitude gathered inside the Jerusalem walls imagined themselves as the defiant free. The high walls represented freedom. They would not submit to even the most formidable enemy; they would defy Caesar himself from behind their mighty walls. They would not be tax slaves to the Romans any longer.

The determination of the old covenant defenders to stand behind their walls in a futile effort to preserve freedom serves as an illustration of the meaning of true liberty and dreadful slavery. When Jesus stood up and announced that the captives were to be set free, He did not refer to their surviving behind stone walls. The beginning of all liberty is to be freed from the power of sin in our individual lives.

Scripture teaches that people without forgiveness in Christ are eternally enslaved. They cannot conquer sin or its effects without the power of the risen Christ working within them. It was Jesus, the Savior from sin, who had been rejected and crucified. So when over a million of God’s original covenant people tried to find freedom behind those walls, they were undertaking a project that could not, by its nature, bring true freedom. With or without the Roman army, they were defeated by tyranny. No human effort can make anyone free—only Christ can do that.

The covenant people adhered to the false assumption that it was God’s will for them to continue temple worship—the offering of animal sacrifices that had gone on for over a thousand years. In Israel’s mind, freedom was largely defined as being able to continue that sacrificial system that was in fact instituted by God. Hence, the temple had to be defended at all costs. But the apostle Paul tells us that we (the new covenant people) are the temple of the Holy Spirit,19 and Christ is the sacrificial Lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world.20

The defense of that beautiful temple was a useless and doomed endeavor, though many would die in the process. Ancient lore says that the gold plate of its walls melted in the heat of the fires, running down into the cracks between the paving stones, and that Roman soldiers in search of that gold used iron bars to pry up the stones, forever destroying that source of national pride. God was moving ahead with His work in an outwardly different way. Jesus Christ was building a stronger civilization using the temple of the Holy Spirit, His people, for whom He had become the final sacrifice.

The Lord was building a new temple and broadening the boundaries of His plan and purpose. We see in Jesus’ words in Luke 4, particularly in the story of Naaman and the widow of Zarephath, that the gospel of the kingdom would advance into the Gentile world, pressing out into larger territories. The nation of free people whom God was creating was not confined within Jerusalem.

As the Romans surrounded Jerusalem, they scooped up thousands of hapless citizens. The first-century historian Josephus pegs the total captured at ninety-seven thousand.21 Many were taken late in the siege as they fled the starving city, and most of these were sent as slaves to the mines of Egypt.22 The Lord had instructed that the people of Israel, if they broke covenant with Him, would be returned as slaves to the land from which He had freed them. In Deuteronomy 28:68, God warned them: “The Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, ‘You will never see it again!’ And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.” The very people who thought they would resist slavery became slaves themselves. In their tortured national agony, the survivors were brought in chains to the nation they had left under such miraculous conditions.23

When Jesus announced that the captives would be set at liberty, He was describing a new life. New Testament writers tell us that “the veil is taken away” and that “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty”24—from circumcision,25 from bondage to fear,26 and from fear of death.27 These are the characteristics of those who know true liberty. They fulfill the law of Christ and experience the fruit of liberty.

As the old covenant people crowded into their doomed city, they rejected all of the benefits of free people. They had turned away the one who offered true freedom and in turn received God’s horrible but just sentence—they and their land were destroyed. Josephus tells us that every tree within miles of Jerusalem was felled for use in the siege.28 The Romans plundered everything, an unmistakable rejection by the God of their nation. The Lord had promised Israel that He would protect their land from invaders when they gathered together for feasts.29 When they gathered together for this feast, however, the hand of God’s protection was removed.

As Jerusalem’s end approached, it was not a city at peace. Early in the city’s investment the defenders were already divided into an unholy trinity of warring thugs. Due to internal warfare, most of the city’s food supply was burned. People were starving to death. Bodies, heaped up in the streets, were stacked in rotting piles. Many were heaved over the parapet to relieve the stench. Roving gangs kicked in doors and tortured their fellow Israelites for food. Outside the walls thousands of Roman soldiers labored in the heat to construct massive earthen ramps to access the ramparts. Battering rams were dragged into place. The measured pounding against the weakening walls never slackened. Day and night the steady rhythm heralded the coming end of their lives and the very culture they had sought in vain to defend.

Trapped behind that rock enclosure were beloved covenant people who had rejected their Messiah. History records not a single Christian remaining in the city at its fall, except perhaps for three men who stayed as witnesses. Jesus had warned His followers to flee the city when they saw the coming of the encircling army. This they did, recognizing the import of His prophetic words.30