APOSTASY; A KING; RUIN by C. P. Bollman

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 24, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 17.

APOSTASY; A KING; RUIN.

By C. P. Bollman

Every man is under moral obligation to govern himself by the divine law. Therefore before any man can invite any other government than that which God has given him, he must apostatize from loyalty to God and to His perfect law.

Israel did thus apostatize, not consciously perhaps, but really, nevertheless. The sinner never knows his true condition until it is revealed to him by the Spirit of God; and Israel did not know theirs. “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider.” Isa. 1:3. “Therefore My people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.” Isa. 5:13.

But tho far from God and obedience to His law, the people knew enough of their condition to realize that they needed help from some source. Having rejected God’s judgment, must they have a judge; having refused to follow the Lord, they must have a leader; losing faith in God as their protector, they must have some one to fight their battles for them. Therefore they ask

A King.

And God gave them Saul, a man of their own choice, one on whom was “all the desire of Israel.” Nor is this strange under the circumstances. Saul was in many respects an ideal man, and “every inch a king.” He was “a choice young man, and a goodly; and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he; from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.” 1 Sam. 9:2.

Nor was it alone in his splendid physique that Saul was fitted to be a leader of God’s chosen people; he was a humble man, little in his own eyes. 1 Sam. 15:17. And in addition to these natural endowments, God put His Spirit upon Saul and communicated to him His will thru the prophet Samuel. Surely no king ever came to the throne under more favorable conditions. Tho Israel had sinned in asking a king, tho they had rejected God, He had not rejected them. They were still His people, and His watch-care was still over them; His providence still preserved them. They had not yet filled up the cup of their iniquity.

When “a man governs himself,” Abraham Lincoln said, “that is self-government; but when he governs himself and another man, that is more than self-government—that is despotism.” Except within the narrow sphere of maintaining natural rights, no man can exercise any authority over his fellow-men without usurping a function that belongs to God alone. Therefore in accepting the kingship Saul assumed weighty responsibilities. His only safety was in keeping very close to the Lord, so that God might continue to be the real King and rule thru Saul as he had formerly ruled thru Samuel.

But, tho humble at the first, Saul soon forgot that God was the real King, and that he, the son of Kish, was only His instrument; and, like Nimrod, the first man who ever assumed the title of king, Saul soon came to regard himself as the real ruler. And right there it became a fact on Saul’s part that Israel had “a king over” them other than the Lord.

The people had rejected the Lord in demanding a king. Now their king also rejected God on his own behalf by disobeying the express command of the Lord: “For thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.” 1 Sam. 15:26.

From this time forward Saul’s was a downward course. His reign was that of an apostate and tyrannical king ruling over a backslidden and dependent people, and nothing could result but

Ruin.

This did not come all at once. God had promised Abraham that in him and his Seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed. Israel must be preserved a distinct people until the promise should be fulfilled, until Messiah should come.

Rejected of God and beset by his enemies, Saul finally died by his own hand, died “as a fool dieth.”

Then David came to the throne. He trusted God; and tho his reign was a stormy one, the nation prospered on the whole, and extended its boundaries.

Then came the reign of Solomon, during the first part of which Israel prospered wonderfully. But the virus of apostasy was in the national life, and Solomon fell; and with him the kingdom fell still lower than before. Israel was getting further and still further from God at

heart; and as a result of the people’s apostasy, their kings were gaining more and more power over them for evil. They had chosen a human king instead of God, and it was only natural that their kings should usurp more and more of the divine prerogatives, thus putting themselves more and more in the place of God.

Soon after Solomon’s death, ten of the tribes revolted against his son, Rehoboam, on account of his cruel usurpation. And so far were they from God that they readily adopted the idolatrous worship which, for political purposes, Jeroboam established and maintained for them at Bethel and Dan.

Jeroboam reasoned that if the people went to Jerusalem to worship, they would presently give their allegiance to the king that reigned in that city; therefore, he set up a rival worship. Not content with being a purely civil ruler, for the purpose of strengthening his political authority, he must exercise sovereignty in the sphere of religion also.

This idea of using religion to strengthen and support the state did not originate with Jeroboam, nor did it perish with him. It is as old as the political history of the race, and is as flourishing now as when the rulers of Babylon before the time of Nimrod took the title, not of king, but “viceroy of Ridu,” their god.

But for this idea of making religion minister to the stability of the State, it is doubtful if there ever could have been any such thing as union of Church and State. It is true that such union does not come primarily on the motion of civil rulers but rather in response to the demand of the leaders in religious thought; but almost invariably the plea that prevails with the civil authorities is that recognition and support of religion in some measure is essential to the stability of the civil régime. Even in our own land to-day it is said of the Sunday-sabbath that “it is the right of the State to protect by law such a fundamental support of government. This attack on the sabbath is treason against the very foundation of government. As such, let it be resisted by every American citizen. The American sabbath is essential to American liberty, to our Republic, and to God’s religion.”—The American Sabbath, Presbyterian Board of Publications.

And again Dr. Crafts, in his book, “The Sabbath for Man,” page 248, says: “It is the conviction of the majority that the nation can not be preserved without religion, nor religion without the sabbath, nor the sabbath without laws; therefore sabbath laws are enacted by the right of self-preservation, not in violation of liberty, but for its protection.”

But this prostitution of religion to political purposes can have no better results anywhere than it had in Israel, and that was ruin to both Church and State; for by it both were corrupted. The religion adopted in Israel was not the religion of God, but of the king. The government maintained by it was not self-government by consciences guided by the divine law, but the despotic rule of the king, “Jeroboam the son of Nebat,” who sinned, and “who made Israel to sin.”

And the same is true of every king that ruled in Israel; all were bad, and all usurped authority over the consciences of the people. The result was the utter ruin of Israel, until the ten tribes constituting a portion of the original kingdom were so torn and scattered that it is impossible even to trace their history, and they are spoken of to-day as “the ten lost tribes of the children of Israel.”

Judah had some good kings; but finally that part of the kingdom became so bad that to keep it from utter extinction God sent His people into captivity. In this way they were preserved a distinct people until the promised Messiah should come. But never after they demanded a king were they a self-governing people. Tho there came a time when “there was no king in Israel,” never again was it true of that people that “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Their bondage became more and more cruel and hopeless until their national life went out in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. C. P. BOLLMAN.