by Ben Kinchlow

      The subject was "God, Man, and the American Political Experiment". This revolutionary concept is actually based on the principle in Genesis that man is "made in His image and likeness". Apart from that concept, the whole idea of the form of government we embrace, a democratic Republic, comes apart at the seams. The second President of the United States, John Adams, pointed out the basic flaw in our constitutional form of government. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The whole spiritual and civil form of government envisioned by God and embodied in America by the Founding Fathers is predicated upon the truth that man is a self-governing sovereign. God had this in mind when He created man, and the end result is spelled out in the book of Revelation, where we find man set up to "...reign forever and ever".

      On the next edition of the broadcast we continued with the concept of self-government. Understand that government was not one of man's original life duties. A maximum tax of 10% (the tithe) was paid to God in recognition of His sovereign governing of man. This was not a dictatorship, as evidenced in God's relationship to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Had this been a dictatorship, the Cheribums which "he placed at the east of the garden of Eden... and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Gen. 3:24)... would have been placed there prior to the original command.

      Inherent in God's command regarding the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" is the concept that man should be self-governing. He is to make decisions, sovereign decisions, based on his moral understanding of God's law. This truth is as much a part of the concept of America now as it was in the days of our Founding Fathers and can be traced back through God's dealing with man to the Garden. Governments, as pointed out in the Declaration Of Independence, were instituted to secure and defend the rights given to us by the Creator, God the Father. A cursory examination of other forms of government, including monarchies, oligarchies, dictatorships, and even pure democracies dramatically illustrate the failure of these types of governments to secure the rights and property of its subjects. It is only a government such as ours, a Republic, that takes into consideration God's design of man and incorporates that into an exercise of our free will to ensure that the government is, as Lincoln said, "of the people, for the people, by the people."

      God's version of government and His confidence in man is expressed in His option to "choose....", either the forms of government as before the flood, of the Egyptians, of the Nations round about them, or even a king of their own choosing. Each form of government was a rejection of God as their ruler, and the subjugation of themselves to other than God as their Sovereign. Man is designed by God to be a self governing sovereign, responsible only to himself and God. Any government he chooses should, in order to fulfill God's plan, be a government that takes that truth into consideration. This is the genius and the strength of our American Republic.

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