Question for Christians?
Someone is telling me we should obey God rather than the government (acts 5:29) but doesn’t Romans 13 tell us we should obey the government?
Someone is telling me we should obey God rather than the government (acts 5:29) but doesn’t Romans 13 tell us we should obey the government?
Publius
We should cooperate with our governments until they become impossible to live with.
Anonymous
Only obey government that is stopping evildoers. When the government is evildoers, we don't obey that. I refuse to do what any government says if they are trying to hurt people.
Anonymous
Orthodoxy is the only true faith. Rapture = heresy; Fireball should be beheaded for spreading this heresy on Yahoo Answers (deceiving Christians into false hope). Dreams/thoughts are from 1)angels who always do good; 2)demons who never do good; or 3)you making shyt up in your head while you sleep trying to solve your problems; or from 4) your gov't using this supertechnology. Usually, dreams/thoughts are from demons. So, that explains a lot of people being in the wrong all the time. Rapture thing is from demons but you can't rule out the gov't using some super technology like Project Blue Beam to kind of introduce people to the evil flying antichrist who will ride on a donkey into the Third Temple. So, churches who closed for COVID (or had COVID measures like dipping spoon into some liquid like alcohol) are no longer Christ's but now are working for Satan promoting the new COVID religion. Last Patriarch is Patriarch Irenaios 1st. He blessed Catacomb movement. For liturgy what you need is antiminis (towel with remains of saints sewn into it); wax candles; one cup/one spoon; non-Kosher non-yeast non-barcoded non-qrcoded wine/bread. Kosher = sprinkled with blood. Yeast is grown on pig bacteria. QRcode = barcode = mark of the beast. Roman Catholics tried one cup and one spoon and got sick with Bubonic plague (no laughing matter). You must hide (within a small group of 10-15 people according to saints Gabriel Urgebadze and Seraphim of Sarov) in order to escape the unforgivable mark of the beast. No documents once you hid because documents are from Satan; burn all the documents that you can find. No electronics once you hid because antichrist's minions will track you using electronics that you got. Even old broken unplugged 1970 TV set will show the antichrist using Tesla's ether. In case you're in 'Murica and want to hide, then consider inland Alaska. Arctic Circle = Security Circle for WW3. If you manage to escape the unforgivable mark of the beast, then your direct ancestors will go to heaven (according to saint Vyacheslav Krasheninnikov). Thanks for reading this spiel. Forgive me.
Justin
This is a great question and the answer is equally interesting. The Bible says to 'obey every ordinance of man' but it does not say HOW we must obey.
For example, Jesus did not 'pay taxes' in the same way prescribed by common custom. He refused to pay them out of righteous commerce or money collected for the poor. We know this because two of Caesar's goons actually came out to determine why.
Jesus 'ended the offense,' (His words), in a very unusual way. He sent His disciples out on an inspired 'treasure hunt' to locate a lost coin, then used this coin to settle the tax debt, explaining to the disciples that 'the sons' (i.e. 'citizens'), are naturally exempt from paying taxes and that tributes should be paid by 'strangers,' (i.e. 'foreigners'), as they did when honoring king Solomon, for example, (Matthew 17:24-27).
Jesus effectively returned some of Caesar's own 'misappropriated' wealth back to him to settle the supposed claim of debt. So while He 'obeyed' Caesar, He didn't follow the expected course or custom and would not give any of 'GOD's possessions' to Caesar. He rendered unto Caesar only what was his.
Likewise, GOD gives us the liberty to 'reinterpret' HOW we obey any ordinance of men, including disobeying any law that directly contravenes the laws of Christ, since there is a superseding law that protects us called Christ's 'declaration of universal authority,' (Matthew 28:18-20).
We only assert this law when we can find no inspiration from Christ's Holy Spirit to obey the ordinances with a new 'reinterpretation' that allows us to maintain our moral and ethical codes, as Christ did with Caesar's taxation edicts.
Alex
God appointed government to keep law and order.
If you obey the government, you do the will of God.
If the government tells you to do something contrary to what God has dictated in Scripture, then you must obey God rather than the government.