"All Human Life is Sacred"

God is the one who mandated the death penalty.

Prior to the flood there was no God given authority for human government. God had not given any man the right to punish another for evil, nor the right to make any laws.

After the flood, when God made his covenant with Noah, he specifically granted the authority to punish the wicked and essentially then to create laws.

If you go back to the very ancient world you will find that all of the earliest "law codes" were lists of punishments. They were literally compiled lists of "For this action, this is the just punishment."
This type of law began with God's covenant with Noah when he told Noah, if a person does this, then they shall be punished thus.. specifically relating to the death penalty he says that if a person murders another person, the murderer shall be put to death.

This, interestingly is one of the things often over looked about the uniqueness of the ten commandments in the ancient world. The ten commandments were essentially the first moral law. They were the first lists of "you shall not do this, you shall do this". Rather than just assigning proper punishments to evil actions, it was the first law that commanded moral action.

The point for this conversation though is that the authority by which man makes laws, comes from God. God himself has given authority to human governments to make laws and to enforce the laws.

The reason for this is to restrain wickedness and protect the righteous. Prior to the flood when there were no authorities, no laws, it was utter chaos, the strong oppressed the weak, the wicked triumphed over the righteous and man became virtually totally evil. So evil in fact that God had to kill almost the entire human race in order to save one man and his family, who were literally the only righteous people left.

I'm not saying you have to support the death penalty. However, the death penalty is based on authority that God explicitly stated in scripture that he gave to human governors.

Then 'Elohim sanctifies abortion as well. I personally believe the New Testament has a different approach.

As a first take, we might say that the good achieved by health care is the number of lives saved. But that is too crude. The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities. We can accommodate that difference by calculating the number of life-years saved, rather than simply the number of lives saved. If a teenager can be expected to live another 70 years, saving her life counts as a gain of 70 life-years, whereas if a person of 85 can be expected to live another 5 years, then saving the 85-year-old will count as a gain of only 5 life-years. That suggests that saving one teenager is equivalent to saving 14 85-year-olds. These are, of course, generic teenagers and generic 85-year-olds. It’s easy to say, “What if the teenager is a violent criminal and the 85-year-old is still working productively?” But just as emergency rooms should leave criminal justice to the courts and treat assailants and victims alike, so decisions about the allocation of health care resources should be kept separate from judgments about the moral character or social value of individuals.

Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? We can elicit people’s values on that too. One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar.

Then 'Elohim sanctifies abortion as well. I personally believe the New Testament has a different approach.

Not remotely. That isn't how authority works.

To give you a concrete example.

The police are given certain authorities by the government. They are given the authority to arrest criminals, to make traffic stops, to issue citations, and to issue orders to people in the line of fulfilling their other duties.

However, in all those cases police officers are given authority to do those things in specific given circumstances.

For example, a police officer has authority to search your car under specific circumstances, if they have probable cause to believe that you are breaking the law. If they can see an illegal weapon or drugs, or if the car is stolen etc.

They can not, however, simply pull you over and search your car because they feel like it, or because they don't like you, or because they have a hunch that you might be breaking the law.

The same action in one circumstance is justified and within their authority, in another circumstance is not and is in fact a violation of your rights.

Thus the fact that authority is given in one circumstance DOES NOT mean that it is given in every circumstance.

In the bible, actually in the New Testament, Paul says that God specifically gave the power of the sword (ie the power to kill) to government in order to punish the wicked and to be a blessing to the righteous.

Thus the government's authority in this case extends ONLY to punishing evil doers and law breakers. They have no authority at all to use that power against law abiding people, and certainly not against the unborn.

This is why it is possible for governments to be tyrranical and to be justly opposed. If a government is using its power outside or against what God has given them authority to do, the government is wrong and should be opposed.

Those who think they possess their goods (Eigentum) want the government to protect them. They think it necessary to use force to keep peace, to protect their own possessions and the possessions of others. In fact, all use of force comes from the possession of property. From the holding of property comes all government and force in the world. But the communities of Christ (die Gemeinen Christi) are not based on the holding of property, but on Christ. They are subject to Christ before all else.

Therefore, those who are spiritual concern themselves with keeping spiritual peace, and those who are of the flesh concern themselves with holding onto their possessions in a fleshly peace. . . .

God only permits, he does not promote the use of worldly force. The use of force does not come from that which is good, but from that which is evil, and God only tolerates it out of necessity. God knows that if he would take the use of ungodly force out of the world, society would become totally chaotic. So, for the good of his children who must also live in the world, he lets it go.

For the sake of peace among the rebellious children of Israel, God gave the sword to Moses, to enforce his laws. Joshua, David and others were given the sword for the same reason -- to keep an outward, temporary peace among unconverted men. But Christ and his followers have another calling. Christ does not bring the peace of Moses, nor an outward peace of the flesh. Rather, he calls his followers to have peace one with another and says: "I give you peace. I leave it with you, not as the world gives" (John 14). . . .

To God, all earthly kingdoms and estates are nothing but pens full of pigs -- pigs that root up and destroy his vineyard (Psalm 80). And all those who rule over, protect and manage these pig pens are nothing but swineherds, because outside of Christ there is no faith, neither among Jews, Gentiles or professing Christians (John 15, 2 John 1, 3 John 1).

To the evil world belongs the evil sword. Evil rulers in the world must rule in their evil way to protect the evil of private property. In this way, a semblance of peace is maintained among the ungodly, for Christ can have nothing to do with Belial (2 Cor. 6). But the peace of Christ is something totally different. It has nothing to do with satisfying the flesh or hanging onto property. Rather it is that which allows us to live great joy and peace in the midst of our friends and enemies, no matter how things go. This is the peace of Christ of which he spoke: "I give you my peace, not as the world gives it."

No sword nor worldly force was used by the first Christians until the days of the emperor Constantine. Christians did not believe in using the sword and Christ had not given permission to anything more than the sword of the Word. Whoever went beyond that, in the days of the early church, was considered a heathen or an infidel. But the pope, as a servant of the church, married the church to the Leviathan of carnal power -- supposedly doing Christ a service. Then the Antichrist was born and the mystery of iniquity began to appear (2 Thess. 2), which had been hidden for a long time previously.

?Did Paul oppose Nero? I'd suggest that the Church is not the Gov't, and that God has empowered the worldly gov't with worldly means to contain an evil world. The Church is not the of the world, just in it...the Church, in its attempts to use worldly power and control (in its attempt to, as the term is used today "influence culture") has failed more than it has succeeded. People are changed through regeneration, not laws and power--I would think the lessons of history would have shown this. Had this truly been any sort of direction Christ or the Apostles had wanted the Church to go into (gaining power and control of worldly gov'ts) we'd surely have had more in the NT about it I would think...even Christ turned His back on the offer...

Mt 4:8 –Mt 4:10 NKJV
Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.
And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

As an anabaptist I'm going to have some wildly differing views on the gov't; here's a couple quotes from the 16th century radical reformers [a.k.a. heretics]







The Secret of the Strength, Chapter 18

Another way to look at things...indeed a view of pilgrims & strangers & ambassadors in this world we've been called to through the Kingdom of God...

Hi Jim

We have our disargeements now and then, but I like you, and respect your views, and I appreciate your input. I'm sure you are not surprised that I'm not a fan of the radical reformation .

Honestly the question of Christian response to tyranny is a tough one and my honest opinion is that it is essentially situational because it depends on God's will at the time. Some times God's will is that a government be deposed and he uses righteous people to do it. Other times his will is not that the government be deposed and the efforts of otherwise righteous people are vain.

That doesn't change whether a government is right or wrong and eventually God will hold them accountable and he will see justice done upon governments and nations as much as he will upon individual people.

What I do find curious is that some people will not oppose a 'worldly' government because they believe God has given them authority even when they use it wrongly... but they will reject Church government, often times over relatively small issues.

I do believe that the Kingdom of heaven is not of this world, YET, but I also believe that authority functions the same no matter where it is.

Yeah I know~I don't really wanna be; have spent years studying the apostolics, it's just that it always seems like I end back in anabaptist-land.

In Sunday School we're working through all the different Kings of Israel & Judah, and ya wonder, if Jews knew their kings were in the wrong, would they actually be in the right to go over to the enemies' sides to fight against them...and if one would want to try to draw a parallel to today (though it doesn't work since the USA isn't a theocracy) if ya knew the US was in the wrong would ya go fight with the "enemy" seeing that it was the "hand of God" working to punish the way the country was going? And if indeed one was fighting against those that were being used by God to punish, then are they in reality fighting against the will of God? Questions we anabaptist types wonder about

There we'll have to disagree again~~The two kingdoms don't work the same, and trying to make one operate like the other just frustrates the bystanders

what always seems to bring you back?

I don't necessarily say that the two kingdoms work the same, but authority works the same in both kingdoms.
A king and a school teacher don't work the same way, but the authority that each of them has works the same basic way.

The deeper I get into studying the apostolics the more overlaid it seems with a heaviness of religiosity~~I understand the idea of a "maturing" Church, that it isn't something that is supposed to stay "primitive"~~but it appears the simplicity of following Christ can become obscured with the religion--then comes the battles amongst the apostolics of "who is right" that is tiring. Where I'm at I don't say I hold all the truth and wisdom and understanding, but at this time I am very hesitant to enrolling into a system. The very nature of the anabaptists is one of a basic understanding of Scripture (which some will say is heresy) but the focus is on the "be" and "do" and less on the cerebral theology and expansive nature of institutional religion. I WANT to sign up to something that is "all figured out"~~I could be a very good traditional Roman Catholic or conservative Anglican or Antiochian Orthodox or maybe a LCMS/WELS~~I'm really looking for someone that has it solved and someone is definitely in charge with answers; it's my nature to want a very strong leadership, but somehow it just seems like something doesn't really fit. At the end of the day I don't want to be a "good" Catholic or Lutheran or Mennonite; I don't want to hear people say "He's a good Methodist", but rather "He follows Christ".

That could sound arrogant~implies it can't be done within the construct of a pre-established institutional organization, and that would be wrong...I've been very close to going into RCIA with the notion that whatever I don't agree with is just going to be put aside and put my faith and hope that the Church is right...but again just held back because something about it didn't seem to line up with the NT~~

The anabaptists look to the Sermon on the Mount as the core of New Testament teaching~~