Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

“Those who do not learn the lessons of history will be condemned to re-live them.”

Stealth and a hundred years of patience.  That’s what it took Gramsci Marxists to remove Australia’s true history from the curriculum. They did it because Marx said:

“Keep people from their history, and they are easily controlled.”

Dark deeds of a few bad forebears now masquerade as history, loading our kids with guilt to make them easy to control.  They need an antidote. So, here is some history of good forebears who sacrificed to leave us a priceless heritage. The value of that heritage can be gauged by the millions of migrants each year who forsake everything – their homeland, their loved ones, many even risk their lives – to live in Australia.

Having had the chance to ask hundreds of them why they took such risks, it is clear they were seeking one or more of three things – prosperity, freedom, or justice.

How do you think our forebears built those three blessings?  If your kids asked, could you tell them, or a new migrant?  What about the opposite?  Could you explain why two-thirds of the world’s precious people suffer under dictators, disease, or poverty?  This article will equip you with answers.  We all need to be ready to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21), including Marxist evil.  We are also called to “destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

Although most migrants put prosperity at the top of their reasons for coming here, historically, it came last.  Prosperity was impossible until individuals were free enough to create a wide range of inventions, products, and services they could trade on flourishing free markets.  That kind of widespread freedom was not possible until justice was fair and impartial enough to stop powerful people crushing everyone else’s freedom.  As we will see from history, we progressed from impartial justice, to freedom, to prosperity.

None of it happened by luck.  Our forebears’ Christian worldview sustained their readiness to sacrifice comfort, careers, and even their lives, to defeat the tyranny that arises when people love money, riches, or power more than God.  For centuries countless millions were killed, or injured, and families devastated by wars.  The Tolpuddle martyrs, were cruelly punished for joining the first labour unions.  Others, like William Tyndale, were burned at the stake.  In Tyndale’s case, it was for translating the Bible into English.

Burning at the stake is out of fashion.  Instead, fake news burns popular policies so that big money, big government, and big religion can keep Christians and their pesky Bible out of government.  They know what they won’t let our kids learn – that our Bible-based justice has always limited harmful use of power, and they’re terrified of it.

Robbed of that history, we are easy prey for people who seek the same tyrannical powers that our forebears stripped away from kings, priests, and bankers.  So, let’s look at the parts of our heritage that are priceless, and the key history that produced our heritage.

The Importance of the Constitution

A generation ago, Australians understood that people with power will always think they know how to run your life better than you do.  That is why our forebears framed our constitution as rules for the “game” of government, rules that limit the power of the game’s “players”, such as kings, judges, politicians, and public servants.

These rules guard our freedom.  So, lawful change can only be made by referendum when a majority of voters in a majority of States vote “yes”, which is hard to achieve.  Radical and Marxist “players” in our “game” of government hate the rules being hard to change.  So, unelected radical judges use novel “interpretations” to tamper with our constitution.  We banned players in a game of cricket who tampered with the ball.  How much more should we sack unelected judges who tamper with the rules of our constitution.

Most voters don’t know our rules, so it’s easy to take advantage of them.  In the “Voice” referendum, for example, politicians threatened to break convention by not publishing the arguments against the changes they wanted.  Such trickery is why we should be extremely careful about making changes to the constitution.  As Sir Winston Churchill said:

“a thousand years scarce serve to form a state, an hour may lay it in the dust.”

The Value of the Individual

Our government exists to protect and serve us, not lord it over us.  We don’t exist to serve the government.  It was designed that way by forebears who believed every individual is of the utmost value because each is made in the image of God.  Our constitution and entire system reflect those beliefs.  For example, the birth of every single person is carefully recorded so that if one goes missing before their death is recorded, the police will spend years if necessary, looking for them.  In most countries, rulers couldn’t care less.

Another practical effect of the beliefs of our forebears is that a person is assumed innocent until a jury of twelve equals agrees unanimously that they have been proven guilty under strict rules of evidence.  Two witnesses heard separately are required to establish every fact under the watchful eye of a highly skilled, independent, and impartial judge.  These major protections of our freedoms are undermined daily by politicians who pass laws based on alarmingly different beliefs about our value as individuals.

The beliefs of judges, politicians, and public servants have a huge bearing on our future freedom or lack of it.  For example, Marxists believe that life is the result of a biochemical accident.  So, they regard individuals as insignificant little fragments of that accident, which is why Marxist dictators murdered 127 million of their citizens in the 20^th century.

Extreme cruelty, gross injustice, and disregard for the life of individuals characterise regimes that believe life is an accident.  Examples include Hitler’s National Socialism, Stalin’s Soviet Socialism, and their nauseatingly numerous socialist offspring.  Many socialists mistakenly believe that science can show that life evolved by accident.

They get their ideas from lavishly funded TV spectaculars that portray evolution of life as “scientific”, but it is not.  It cannot be subjected to the scientific method as its assumed processes are not observable.  Darwin insisted his theory could not explain the origin of life but claimed it did explain the lesser problem of how species could have become increasingly complex.  Since Darwin’s time, however, the expected mass of transitions to more and more complex species has been absent from the fossil record.  More importantly, Dr Michael Behe recently discovered organelles driving the flagellum of a bacterium that meet Darwin’s own criteria for falsifying his theory.  Mainstream media has hardly mentioned this.

Fake news also disparages those who accept the scientific evidence for intelligent design of life.  Yet they include science luminary Sir Fred Hoyle and Dr Paul Davies who discovered the fine tuning of the universe, renowned microbiologist Dr Dean Kenyon who renounced his celebrated evolutionary work “Biochemical Predestination” to accept intelligent design, Dr Michael Behe who wrote the landmark work “Darwin’s Black Box”, notorious Oxford Professor Anthony Flew who renounced atheism in his book “There is a God”, the brilliant Oxford mathematician Professor John Lennox, mathematician Dr William Dembski who authored “The Design Inference”, and information scientists Dr Lee Spetner and Dr Michael Hasofar who were the first to publish quantified evidence against evolution of species in the world’s leading peer-reviewed “Journal of Theoretical Biology”.

The latest origins science is explored in some detail in my paper “How Recent Science Rebuts Marxist Materialism”, available for $10 from info@rev321.com

The Common Law, the world’s first and best foundation for freedom

The foundation of individual freedom in Australia is the common law.  This is not the statute law made by Parliament, but the much greater quantity and quality of law made by judges whose decisions down through the centuries have become legal precedents.

Lord Denning, perhaps the greatest jurist of the 20^th century, wrote an excellent non-technical book on the common law titled The Changing Law.  He shows that our common law was largely based on the Bible as judges over many generations sought to provide the real justice contained in the command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States inherited English common law from Great Britain.  It has a well-deserved reputation for fair and impartial justice, which is the indispensable foundation of a free society.  Without justice that is fair and impartial, freedom allows the powerful to use their freedom to crush the freedom of all who are less powerful.  Not until a community has built justice and freedom is it able to build the flourishing prosperity available only through the biblical system of private enterprise.

Are you surprised that much of the law that governs Australia is deeply rooted in Christianity?  If you are surprised, it is because, like most Australians, you have been taught to believe the lie that government can be “secular“, which means separate from religion.  The truth is that there is no such thing as a “secular” nation and there never can be.  Secular government is an academic fantasy because:

• all nations must have laws;
• all laws attempt to define right and wrong (morality); and
• all morality is a matter of belief (i.e. religion).

All law is enacted morality.  A nation cannot be “secular“, because its laws must be based on someone’s beliefs about morality.  Perhaps the most fundamental and crucial question facing every nation is this.  On whose morality shall we base our laws?

Until recently, our judges based their common law decisions on Christ’s love-based morality – love your neighbour as you love yourself.  Freedom flourished because people loved their neighbour by respecting their freedom.  Prosperity followed because most people in the economy loved their neighbours by offering products that gave good value for money.  Nowadays, judges and politicians change the moral basis of our laws without our consent, and often without our knowledge.  They clearly don’t love us, and we are their neighbours!

These unloving “change agents” base our laws on beliefs that caused all the bloodshed of the French revolution and later Marxist dictatorships.  They are adherents of secular humanism, a trendy little non-theistic religious cult of the inner suburban latte-set.  The cult’s Manifesto says it is centred “solely on human interests and values”, with morality based on “the temporal well-being of man” with no need to refer to a god if there is one.

Perhaps you find it hard to believe that some judges, politicians, academics, and others would deliberately work against the widely held beliefs of our community.  Sadly, the clearest evidence is available.  Professor Manning Clark was quoted as saying of his friend the late Justice Lionel Murphy:

“it had been one of Murphy’s aims to dismantle the Judeo-Christian ethic of Australian society.”
(page 8, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 October 1986).

Murphy’s protege, Senator Gareth Evans, a former president of the Humanist Society and a key advocate of the infamous Bill of Rights, was himself once quoted as saying:

“children want a right to sexual freedom and education and protection from the influence of Christianity.”
(page 11, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 1976).

Some of the objectives of secular humanism are to establish:

• a new world order (one world government)
• a new economic system (to be run by international bankers)
• a new race of people (by means of genetic engineering) and
• a new world religion

Humanism’s aim of one world government is clear from its Manifesto, which states:

“We deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds.  We’ve reached a turning point in history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate.  Thus we look toward the development of a system of world law and order based upon trans-national federal government.”

Their fervour for a new world religion has been expressed this way:

“The battle for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytisers of a new faith.  The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new; between the rotting corpse of Christianity on the one hand, and the new faith of humanism on the other.” (Humanist Magazine, January/February 1983)

They intend to legislate control of Christian churches.  The Humanist Manifesto states:

“Humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfilment of human life.  The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control and direction of all such associations and institutions with a view to enhancement of human life is the purpose and programme of humanism.  Certain religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, their ecclesiastical methods and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows in order to function effectively in the modern world.”

These statements are a bold attack on the Christian foundations of our freedom.  It’s time for Australians to wake up.  We have been steadily losing freedoms since politicians began using the idea of secular government to gradually replace Christ’s love-based moral foundation for our laws.  As already shown, the claim that government is secular is a lie, because government can’t avoid basing laws on someone’s beliefs about right and wrong.  As the great 20^th-century jurist Lord Denning wrote:

“Without religion there can be no morality, without morality there can be no law.”

It’s time to establish a Voters Veto in our constitution.  A petition by a certain number of voters should be able to initiate a referendum to disallow legislation, judicial decisions, and so-called UN treaties.  That way, ordinary voters could reverse attempts to subvert our laws with the non-theistic humanist morality that underpinned all the bloodshed of the French revolution and later Marxist dictatorships.

Our Constitutional Monarchy

Our hereditary Monarchy guards our freedom, not so much by the constitutional powers it exercises, but by the power it denies to others.

Fake news, for example, can manipulate a president they get into power but they can’t exercise that kind of influence over the choice of our monarch.  No one can.  Monarchs are born into the job.  God chooses them.  The hereditary principle prevents fake news from choosing and then manipulating the person who:

• leads one-third of the world’s people
• is the world’s best-known leader because he stays in office for a lifetime
• becomes superbly well-informed by a lifetime of contact with other world leaders

We are blessed that only God can choose our Monarch, see Romans 13:1-7.  People grasping for money, riches, and power are denied access to our top job.  Monarchs are born into wealth, so have no need to grasp for it and are trained from birth to follow Christ’s example of leadership by servanthood.  All this safeguards our freedom.

Republics choose their leaders and determine all their laws in the false belief that “the will of the people” determines what is best.  But powerful minorities have always manipulated the “will of the people”.  So, giving supreme authority to “the will of the people” or any group of mortals is perilous.  Only Christ can be trusted to use supreme authority beneficently.

Those who manipulate the “will of the people” in a republic want a payoff.  They pressure the president to accumulate and use power to quell opponents and advantage friends.

Our Monarchical system has moved in exactly the opposite direction.  Over many centuries, the personal power of kings was appropriately regulated and distributed.  Apart from the extremely rare exercise of Reserve Powers, Monarchs are expected to practice the kingly virtues of servanthood and exemplary conduct modelled by Christ.

As English common law was being based on Jesus’ Golden Rule, both Monarchy and people were progressively brought under the authority and blessing of God’s Word.  It has taken nearly 2,000 years of sacrifice to develop this uniquely Christian approach to government, yet many “Laodicean” churches (Revelation 3:14-22) today seem oblivious to its benefits for the spreading of the gospel, see 1 Timothy 2:1-4 NKJV.

In a republic, there is no legal authority higher than the self-centred “will of the people”.  Those at the top of a republic manipulate the “will of the people”, driving it toward dictatorship.  Those at the bottom of a republic know the “will of the people” is being manipulated, and become frustrated and rebellious, driving it toward revolution.

Corruption and violence are thus inevitable in a republic.  History bears testimony to this.

Some Americans are well aware of the inbuilt weakness of the republican system.  Weldon M Hardenbrook, US author of the book “Missing from Action” (published by Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville) dropped a bombshell when he said: “there is a fly in the ointment of the American Revolution”.  In a section headed “the Price of Revolution”, he went on to say:

“The Revolution was born out of an admirable desire to shrug off unjust British rule. But as often happens, the baby was thrown out with the bath water.  In this case, the baby was the essential paternal pulse of colonial life.  Instead of correctly identifying and trying to escape from oppressive patriarchism, Americans began to look upon all civil patriarchy as inherently evil, and they became intent on not being ruled by anyone. … Dr Price gleefully described America as ‘a rising empire extended over an immense continent, without bishops, without nobles and without kings.’

“That may all sound quite liberating, but it was an idea unprecedented in the history of humanity.  There have always been bishops and kings and accountability.  The development (and growing acceptance) of the idea that patriarchy is evil must have had a jarring effect on people with a Christian heritage.  Up to that time, Christians had been taught to ‘honour the king’ because earthly kings represented the ‘King of Kings,’ and godly bishops imaged ‘the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls.’  How in heaven’s name could this new anti-authoritarian attitude be reconciled with such biblical injunctions.”

A destructive spirit of rebellion gave birth to American “independence”.  It has plagued the great US nation ever since.  The same spirit is invoked today by those who manipulate the “will of the people” in Australia.  They urge us to become “independent” of the King and Great Britain, presumably to make us dependent upon them.  The last thing we need is to give more power to politicians, fake news, bankers, and the like, by becoming a republic.

Over and over, they repeat their mindless mantra: “A republic in Australia is inevitable”.  Fabians who believe in “the inevitability of gradualism” hope that mantra will wear us down because they know there are no convincing reasons to become a republic.  Australians are mostly monarchists and likely to remain so.

Some years ago, an Australian Prime Minister, indulged his pride by contending: “I am the head of government, she (a crass reference to Her Majesty the Queen) is the head of state.”  His assertion was false and entirely without foundation.  Section 61 of our Constitution says: “The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and exercisable by the Governor General”.  Vested means “held completely, permanently, and inalienably” and “executive power” is government power.  So, the Monarch is head of state and government.

Prime Ministers lead an administration.  Strutting around calling it “my government” is pompous, power-hungry, propaganda.  Our founders did not find it necessary to even mention the existence of a Prime Minister or a Cabinet in our very successful Constitution

In legal textbooks, the Monarch is called the fountainhead of our government authority.  So, everyone in positions under the Crown draws their authority from the Monarch.  However, Monarchs can’t take the throne until they yield that governing authority to Christ at a Christian Coronation Service and promise to reign in accordance with the bible.  Therefore, to be legitimate, every exercise of authority by judges, politicians, and public servants, must at least be consistent with the Christian Bible.

All that is needed to give practical effect to the supreme authority of Christ and His Word in Australia is for judges, politicians, public servants, and military officers to be faithful to their promise of allegiance.  It obliges them to carry out their official duties in a manner that helps the King fulfil his coronation promises.

Too many judges, politicians, and public servants treat their promise of allegiance as a meaningless formality.  In performing their official duties, they impose their own religious and other beliefs on the rest of us.  It was never meant to be that way.  Their promise of allegiance was meant to assure the community that they would not use their position to change the Christian foundations on which our justice, freedom, and prosperity depend.

If Christians and church leaders want to see the Kingdom of God advancing once again in common-law countries and grinding Babylon to powder, we should speak out boldly on the following two subjects.

• Jesus is the only person who can be trusted with supreme authority, whether over self, family, church, business, or nation.  Our forebears insisted that Monarchs yield the supreme authority of the realm to Christ.  That is why both believers and non-believers in the realm enjoy the fruit of Christ’s Kingdom, including unsurpassed justice, freedom, and prosperity that attracts migrants of every race and creed.¹
• Our public officials must, therefore, stay loyal to the King, to us, and to future generations, by performing all their public duties in ways that help fulfil the King’s coronation promises.  They must never use their positions under the Crown to impose their own personal beliefs on the rest of us.

Distribution of Power

One of the most effective protections of our individual freedom is distribution of power.  For example, as Commander in Chief of our Defence Force, the King has power to order our soldiers to make war on the moon.  Should he wish to succeed however, he would need to pay and equip the soldiers from public funds, which can only be authorised by Parliament.

Power-hungry politicians want us to believe that Parliament’s decisive power over funds is the only real power.  They deride the King’s powers as “purely ceremonial” but consider the practical consequences of giving Prime Ministers command of the Defence Force.  An unscrupulous Prime Minister could use soldiers to quell political opponents.  He would have both the numbers in Parliament to authorise the public funds needed, and the authority to give orders to the troops.

That is why we have always insisted that politicians have no authority to give orders to defence or other armed services such as police.  That is how it should stay.  Politicians who pretend that the King’s powers are purely ceremonial are shifty because the King’s authority to give orders to armed forces would be dangerous in the hands of politicians.  The Reserve Powers also have been left in the hands of the Monarch for centuries, only because we don’t trust anyone else to exercise such dangerous powers impartially.  Our Monarchy is very definitely not purely ceremonial.  It safeguards our freedom.

Distribution of power provides checks and balances that prevent the need to trust any mortal person or group with absolute power.  Scripture and history teach us that we should yield to only one supreme authority, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  Far from being a religious dogma, this is an intensely practical statement of principle that has proven over many centuries to be one of the keys to our priceless heritage of freedom.

The Parliament

Parliament in Australia consists of the King and both Houses of the Parliament, which is one further form of distributed power.  The original idea was that the Monarch provided leadership based on counsel and advice given by the Houses of Parliament.  It was another principle taken from the perfect pattern given in the Bible:

“Where there is no leadership, the people fall, but in an abundance of counsellors there is safety.” (Proverbs 11:14)

Over the centuries, senior members from the Houses of Parliament became the Monarch’s closest counsellors (advisers) known as Ministers, which means Servants.  Backbench members of the Houses of Parliament had to re-present (i.e. present again) the multitude of counsels from their electorates.  This is why MPs are known as re-presentatives.

Re-presenting of the views of electors, not just party dogmas, is a safeguard.  It makes Ministers publicly accountable if they ignore wise counsel when advising the Monarch.  The need for that safeguard is obvious when you understand that neither the Houses of Parliament nor Ministers can make law.  Only the signature of the King or his Governor General makes law, so their advice needs to be the best possible.  The constitution permits the King to withhold his signature, but in today’s large, complex, industrialised society, such great power is under all normal circumstances exercised on advice.

We need to remember that God knows the secrets of the Cabinet room and all the secret thoughts of Cabinet Ministers, including those whose pride spoils their ability to hear God.  God can bypass such a Minister and impart wise counsel to a lowly elector who can pass it to a representative, who re-presents it to Ministers, until potentially it reaches the King.  If Minsters ignore wise counsel, effective journalists will expose them, and heads will roll.  God’s fingerprints are all over this most gracious and inclusive of government systems.

The problem today is not that Monarchs exercise their authority arbitrarily, but that Ministers, mere Servants, try to do so, deluded by their belief that the King must do whatever they advise.  Ministers with tame supporters in Parliament frequently hijack the King’s authority for their own narrow interests and abuse it, exactly like tyrannical kings.

Centuries ago, the Houses of Parliament brought kings to account who wanted unfettered and arbitrary powers.  Since then, some politicians have come to believe that Parliament has unfettered power.  They claim that the Monarch must accept the advice of Ministers who command a majority in the Lower House, even if that advice is:

• against the Monarch’s Coronation promises; or
• against a majority in the upper House; or
• clearly against the will of a majority of electors.

This view differs little from the so-called “divine right of kings”.  It is just as dangerous and dictatorial.  Justice and individual freedom are jeopardised today, not by the old “divine right of kings”, but by a new claim to a “divine right of politicians”.

Great parliamentarians in the past had the courage and commitment to principle needed to shackle the ambitions of power-drunk kings.  Today, the major crisis that faces Australia is whether there are any, let alone enough, parliamentarians of sufficient calibre to tame the insane ambition of Ministers and their powerful public service advisers and media backers.

Wisely, our system was designed to keep absolute power out of the hands of mortal people and assemblies.  Even the title “Minister” (Servant) and Prime Minister (Chief Servant) convey the spirit that was always intended to be at the heart of our system.

The key moments of history that produced our PRICELESS heritage

Second Century

The first stirrings of our approach to justice and individual freedom came at Winchester in 156AD when King Lucius established Christianity as the national religion.  England did not suddenly become a nation of Christians, but it did become a Christian nation because its leaders believed that Christ would manifest the fruit of His Kingdom through every person, family, church, business, and nation that makes Him their supreme authority.

Sixth Century

King Ethelbert of Kent, after becoming a Christian, was probably the first absolute ruler ever to introduce laws designed to limit his own powers of government.  This was a rudimentary form of Christian constitution.  Thus, the cradle of constitutionalism was a Christian king’s compassion for those he governed.

Ninth Century

King Alfred the Great declared the law of England to be the law of God as expressed in the Bible and decreed both King and courts of law subject to it and unable to change it.

Perceiving the need for living laws that would grow to cover new circumstances, King Alfred revived the common law, which was judge-made, law.  Courts had to get their jurisprudence from the Bible, and their decisions became precedents to be followed in later cases unless overruled by the king’s statute law.  Alfred set up a council that was the forerunner of Parliament to examine new common law precedents and advise Him to use statute law to overrule any precedents that were contrary to Scripture.

Around the ninth or tenth century, a version of the Coronation service emerged that has been used with few changes ever since.  While that service cannot guarantee good personal character, the promises made by each new Monarch reflect our essentially Christian requirement for leadership by servanthood.

In one of the most important moments of the Coronation service the Monarch, before receiving the Sceptre that is the symbol of kingly authority, must first accept the Orb, a golden sphere surmounted by a cross, symbolising Christ’s sovereignty over the whole earth.  The Orb is given to the Monarch with the words: “take this to remind you that the whole world is subject to the power and empire of Christ our redeemer”.

Only after thus acknowledging the supreme authority of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt 28:18), may an heir to the throne be given the sceptre and be crowned as our Monarch.

Eleventh Century

Some aspects of our British constitutional system were modified by the French Norman conquerors who did not understand its biblical foundations.  For example, King William II, known as Rufus the Red, refused to recognise constitutional limitations on his power.

Every now and then, a Prime Minister qualifies as a modern-day Rufus the Red.

Twelfth Century

Even the Norman conquerors were changed rapidly by the eternal biblical principles on which our system is based.  Henry I, successor and brother of Rufus the Red, agreed to limitations on his power in a document which became known as Henry’s Coronation Charter.  Subsequently, Henry himself became known as “the lion of justice”.

Later in the twelfth century, a Plantagenet king, Henry II, re-introduced a system of Royal courts to administer the common law and to ensure that it was effective and indeed common to all England.  He also fostered trial by jury as an instrument of true justice and fairness.

Thirteenth Century

Until the thirteenth century strong kings had generally used their power wisely and made England stronger.  But with the advent of England’s most unpopular king, John, people realised that kings were now too strong.  So, on the meadow at Runnymede in 1215AD, King John, who had considered himself above the law, was brought to account by Archbishop Stephen Langton and a group of Barons, and he signed the Magna Carta.

Based on Henry’s Coronation Charter, Magna Carta (the Great Charter) established very little that was new.  Its importance was that it documented the ancient principle that the king is subject to the law.

It is interesting to consider whether modern Ministers of the Crown, like kings of old, have become altogether too powerful and whether today’s Christians, like those of old, have enough faith in God and His Word to restrain and reform them.

Fourteenth Century

England’s unique freedom rested on the faith of the few who could read the Bible in Latin.  John Wycliffe changed that by making a version for the common people in English.

Wycliffe translated the Bible into English, had hundreds of handwritten copies made, and sent them out with men who distributed them while preaching the gospel to the poor.  The effect was immediate and widespread.  Many people experienced for themselves the meaning of Jesus’ statement in John 8:32, which says:

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Large numbers of people joined Wycliffe in denouncing worldly, corrupt, and repressive church officials.  This is how the Reformation began.

Wycliffe’s impact went well beyond England reaching as far as Bohemia, which is now part of today’s Czech Republic.  There his writings influenced John Huss, Dean of Philosophy and Rector at the University of Prague.  Huss’ faith and preaching established what became the Moravian church, one of the most dynamic missionary churches ever known.

For believing that the Bible is the supreme authority for Christians, and for denouncing the practice of the Papacy to teach contrary to it, Huss was burned at the stake in 1415AD.  Nevertheless, by the 1500s most inhabitants of Bohemia were members of Hussite churches and Bohemia had achieved widespread political freedom.

In an age of powerful kings, the Bohemians set up a constitutional government, with the king’s power carefully defined and limited and considerable power in the hands of a representative assembly.  They demonstrated, as nations did after them, that only the Gospel of the Kingdom can ignite within individuals the inner freedom, and compassionate sense of justice, that produce genuine political freedom.

Sixteenth Century

The effects of Wycliffe and Huss reverberated around Europe until they culminated in the sixteenth-century reformation in Europe begun by Martin Luther, who wrote:

“If John Huss was a heretic, then there is not a single Christian under the sun.”

Unfortunately for its people, Europe experienced constant armed opposition to the Bible-based faith that produces real freedom.  Even today in most European countries you are assumed to be guilty until you prove yourself innocent.  Europe was thus held back from the political freedom that developed in the more remote island of Britain, that was protected by twenty-two miles of sea known as the English Channel.

But Britain was protected by much more than geography.  When Britain’s navy inflicted damage on the numerically superior Spanish Armada, the Spanish fled into the teeth of a gale.  It was such a powerful storm that most of Spain’s ships were wrecked all along the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. King Phillip II of Spain complained:

“I sent my ships to fight against men, not against the winds and waves of God.”

To commemorate the British victory, Queen Elizabeth I had a medal struck that also acknowledged the hand of God by proclaiming:

“God blew, and they were scattered”.

Both victor and vanquished admitted that God was protecting the island nation that had, as a nation, yielded its government to Christ and His Word.

(In the twentieth century we have seen similar deliverance granted to Great Britain by the grace of God.  Three outstanding examples are the Angels of Mons in World War I, the miracle of the Dunkirk evacuation, and winning the Battle of Britain in World War II.)

As the Reformation progressed, armed opponents killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed Bible-believers in Europe, such as the Huguenots in France.  Nevertheless, the writings of Luther, Calvin, and other great European reformers helped speed the pace at which political freedom developed in Britain.  And that pace became intense.

England’s Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, insisted that neither King nor Parliament was supreme and if either enacted legislation contrary to the revealed laws of God, such legislation was wrong, and God’s law should prevail.  James the first sacked Lord Coke for his courageous faith but his wisdom still lives on today in our common law of contract.

Seventeenth Century

James I was the first of the Stuart dynasty, all of whom believed in the so-called “divine right of kings”.  Because the Bible states that God appoints the king, the Stuarts wrongly assumed that they had absolute authority.

Chief Justice Coke earned the wrath of the king by bringing this wrong assumption into public focus.  He had put his finger on the one question which, more than any other, affects individual freedom, namely: who has supreme authority in the nation.  If the answer is a mortal man, or any group of men, history shows that tyranny will eventually develop; but if the answer is that the nation yields supreme authority only to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word, then the dignity and freedom of each individual will be upheld.

Insistence on the “divine right of kings” eventually brought about the demise of the Stuarts.  Charles I, son of James I, lost his head for it and provoked the English civil war.  Later, in the so-called Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution of 1688, James II lost his Crown for his unilateral attempt to reimpose Roman Catholicism on England – a move that caused Parliament in 1689 to pass the English Bill of Rights, declare the throne vacant, and offer it to William and Mary of Orange.

Ironically, while Parliament was resolving the momentous question of the “divine right of kings”, the seeds of a “divine right of politicians” were planted within Parliament itself.  On 4 January 1649, after the execution of Charles I, Parliament resolved that:

“… the people are, under God, the original of all just power … the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation.”

Was this yet another claim to absolute sovereignty by power-hungry men?  No, it was not, unless two little words are omitted from their claim.

All that was now needed for the emergence of tyranny by Parliament itself was to overlook the two words “under God”.  Such a tyranny could be disguised as “democratic” if:

• most people came to accept that a Parliament fairly elected has no limits on its powers, and if
• major political parties made agreements (“bipartisan” policies) that restrict the freedom of choice of voters.

Such a situation did not arise in the seventeenth century.  What did happen in the seventeenth century was that the value of constitutional law became widely accepted.

In 1644, Samuel Rutherford wrote a masterly exposition of the constitutional limitations on arbitrary government.  It was marred only by its title, “Lex Rex” (Law is Sovereign) – a title that suggests manmade law has an absolute authority that belongs only to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word.

Another very significant contribution to our freedom was the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.  Under that Act, no one can be held in prison without charges being laid and swiftly brought before a court.

Crucial though these legal developments were, no analysis of our heritage of freedom from the seventeenth century would be complete without mentioning the remarkable crop of Bible-believing geniuses who literally invented modern science.  There were Europeans whose discoveries had been stifled in their native lands, such as Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and Englishmen such as Boyle, Harvey, Hooke, Bacon, and Newton.  All of them recorded finding the God of the Bible so intelligent and ordered that they were inspired to search for His order in creation.  From their scientific foundation England’s 18th century industrial revolution spread around the world and gave rise to Western prosperity.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) arguably contributed more to science, and hence our present wellbeing, than any other man in history.  Newton was a convinced Christian.  His biblical view of the world and understanding of God as a creator of order and truth prepared him to perceive ideas as profoundly simple as cause and effect, and as abstruse and complex as the law of universal gravitation.  Newton was described by the French mathematician Lagrange as “the greatest genius that ever existed”.

Eighteenth Century

In chilling contrast to our British heritage of Bible-based freedom, the French, whose leaders rejected God in favour of Godless secular humanism, endured the bloody anguish, and pain of the French Revolution.  A sinister coalition of occultic priests and despotic financiers incited base instincts in the ordinary people who murdered a generation of France’s admittedly degenerate leadership.

Having been promised “liberty, equality, fraternity”, the French got Napoleon instead.  He slapped them into armies and marched them throughout Europe for more bloodletting.

It is a miracle that a similar revolution did not occur in Great Britain.  The same harsh social conditions that prevailed for the poor in France before their revolution also prevailed in England.  Whereas the French heeded the atheistic scholars of the so-called “enlightenment” and got bloodshed, the English heeded the Word of God through George Whitefield and John Wesley and enjoyed a season of national greatness and blessing such as the world had never seen before.

This disparity of outcomes in Great Britain and France provides a vivid contrast between the results of Bible-based faith and the results of secular humanism.  It is a contrast that provides cogent evidence for the truth of the Scripture that says:

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”  (Proverbs 14:34)

John Wesley (1703-1791) was inspired, courageous and dedicated.  Riots, death threats, bad weather, long absences from home, criticism and opposition from Church of England clerics who refused to believe the Bible – nothing stopped Wesley and his followers. God worked with them to help large numbers of English people experience Christ’s life within them and flowing out of them to renew and revitalise England.

English society was transformed rapidly as the reality of Jesus Christ alive within individual Christians touched the nation.  Prostitution vanished from the streets.  A Christian parliamentarian, William Wilberforce MP, after reading a pamphlet by Wesley against the degrading practice of slavery, was inspired by God to resist and eventually abolish slavery throughout most of the world.

Another Wesleyan Christian, Hannah Moore, started a small school on a Sunday to educate the children of the poor in reading writing and arithmetic.  Her compassionate Christian vision was taken up by Lord Robert Raikes of Gloucester who spent his very considerable fortune setting up hundreds of these “Sunday schools”.  They became so popular that the British government was cajoled into funding mass education.  For the first time in human history every child, not just the children of the privileged, were to receive education.  As with most other major reforms, mass education began in the compassionate sense of justice of a few on-fire Christians who were sarcastically called “the Clapham sect”.

Eventually, parallel developments deprived ordinary people of the freedom to explore the whole truth originally offered by education.  It happened because government entered the field of education, which is not part of God’s charter to government.

From the biblical perspective education is the responsibility of the church and the family – the church as God’s channel of truth and the family as God’s channel of provision.  So, government education can be provided only at the grave risk of government control of truth.

We are now paying the price for ignoring God’s Word.  Compulsory, government education has been hijacked to poison our children’s minds with the Godless secular humanism that underpins all bloody revolutions.  It is hard to escape to private school because the fees are in addition to the taxes you pay for government schools your kids don’t attend.

Nineteenth Century

Slow subversion of “education” was facilitated by yet another claim to supreme authority.  A nineteenth-century lawyer, A.V. Dicey, asserted that Parliament is “absolutely sovereign”.  Most modern party politicians are literally possessed by his doctrine.

Some imagine Parliament is so sovereign that if it passes a law for all blue-eyed babies to be killed at birth, that grossly evil law must be obeyed!  Such insane tyranny is inevitable when men grasp the supreme authority that is only safe in Christ’s hands.

As the industrial revolution progressed in the nineteenth century, the working conditions of ordinary people became dangerous and dehumanising.  Christian men met in secret on the moors of England to organise reform.  They emerged in public as labour unions carrying placards bearing the Scripture: “The labourer deserves his wages.”  (Luke 10:7)

These early unionists were cruelly punished.  The Tolpuddle Martyrs included juveniles who were all deported to Australia for example.  Although today’s unions today are in bondage to Marxism, the fire of their rich Christian heritage could be rekindled by Christian unionists.  High debt, interest rates, and excessive taxation are crushing unionists and small business alike.  Our fraudulent debt-based monetary system cries out for a compassionate biblical solution.  Christians who had a solution they could explain to unions could change the face of Australia very rapidly and release common law countries from debt slavery.

Twentieth Century

Professor Rummel documents 32 million killed in two world wars and an extra staggering 127 million murdered by their own Marxist governments in the 20^th century.  Marx’s “socialist dictatorships” use industrial-scale slaughter, whether Hitler’s National Socialism, Stalin’s Soviet Socialism, or one of their many demonic offspring.

“Democratic socialists”, people who believe that socialist policies will bring about justice, fail to grasp that socialist policies are usually based on two atheistic philosophies that, despite good intentions, must end in dictatorship.  Those two philosophies are the dialectic, and evolution, not as the origin of species, but as the origin of life itself.

As already discussed, believing life evolved means individuals are insignificant fragments of a population that happened by accident.  Likewise, faith in the survival of the fittest fosters acceptance of cruelty, mass brutality, and injustice.  Who could forget China’s Godless rulers ordering their own students to be gunned down on Tiananmen Square in 1989?

Hegel’s dialectic was a diabolical new concept of “truth”.  Instead of finding truth from thesis and antithesis (e.g. good and evil), Hegel said truth is found from thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (some blend of good and evil).  The result is relative truth, and relative morality where the end justifies the means — a formula for lies, brutality, and injustice.

Deng Xiaoping used the dialectic to let billionaires into the Chinese Communist Party and made Kissinger think China was capitalistic.  So, Nixon financed China’s industrialisation, but Marxism remained.  Today, an alliance between big money and Green Marxism is using climate alarmism based on flawed science to deindustrialise the West and give China time to arm itself to the teeth.  That alliance is a dagger at the heart of biblical government.

Big money threatened not to invest in Australia until we backed the Green Marxist net zero climate scam.  They enforce “diversity, equity, and inclusion” to foment division, and push multiculturalism to get everyone pretending that all cultures are equal.  Green Marxists are big money’s political shock troops to make us so poor that we will yearn to belong to the World Economic Forum’s “soft” version of Marx’s Godless worldwide socialist dictatorship.

Sinister money power, called Babylon in the Bible, has also funded politicians over the decades to deplete our Christian heritage by gradually yielding our political sovereignty to the UN and our economic sovereignty to international banks.

All this undermines the justice, freedom, and prosperity that attracts migrants from many different cultures.  We need to share these thoughts with new migrants so that they don’t fall into the trap of voting for Greens or socialists who despise the priceless heritage that benefits us all.  Better still, we should share God’s glorious alternative to big money’s counterfeit globalist-Marxist “kingdom”.

God’s Kingdom produces fruit that everyone wants – love-based justice, individual freedom, and flourishing prosperity through the Bible’s economic system of debt-free private enterprise.

The good news is that if a person in authority yields their governing authority to Christ, whether government of self, family, business, church, or nation, they learn to “reign in life as a king” through Him, see Romans 5:17 Amplified Version.  As they reign with Christ, the fruit of His Kingdom spreads throughout their realm of responsibility benefiting people of every race and religion and making them hungry for that same fruit in their own sphere of responsibility.

The verdict of history is that justice, freedom, and prosperity endure only where supreme authority is NOT yielded to a king, a president, a law, a parliament, the UN, or even “the will of the people”, but is yielded only to Christ, the King of Kings and Prince of Peace.

___

[1] Both the good seed and the weeds, see Matt 13:24-30 and 36-43.

___

Image courtesy of Adobe.