THEOCRACY is the highest, the most perfect form of government known to man; for it is government by the direction or administration of God himself. Had man never fallen, there never would have been any other kind of government; and in the earth redeemed from the curse, God will be "all in all;" for "the tabernacle of God" shall be "with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God." This can mean nothing less than the perfection of divine government.
Primarily, theocracy means government of a State by the immediate direction or administration of God, as in Eden before the fall; it is also applied to the exercise of political authority by priests representing the Deity. It is not enough to constitute a true theocracy that rulers profess to represent God; it must be even so, as it was in the case of Samuel. But in its highest and truest sense a theocracy has never existed in this world since the fall. And only for brief periods has political authority been exercised by men truly representing God. It is declared that "Moses was faithful in all His house." The Lord was also with Joshua even as he was with Moses; but after the death of Joshua the intervals were indeed brief in which the children of Israel walked in the counsel of the Most High; and with the crowning of Saul the theocracy proper ended, for while the Lord designated Saul to be king, he declared to Samuel, "They have rejected me, that I should not reign over them."
It follows from what has already been said that two things are absolutely necessary to the existence of a true theocracy: (1) God himself must be the governor; and (2) the subjects of the government must consent to be governed by God, or by those directly chosen and directed by him. God himself having made man a free moral agent,—a being endowed with power of choice,—recognizes the great truth that in all things civil, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Creator himself exercised civil power only so long as it was the choice of the people that he should exercise it. When God became the recognized governor of the children of Israel, it was by their unanimous consent: "And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." And when God abdicated the throne and gave the government into the hands of Saul, it was likewise in deference to the practically unanimous demand of the governed, i. e., of the people.
But though the children of Israel rejected God as their ruler, "and would none of his counsel," his merciful providence was still over them. They were to be preserved a separate people for a special object, and even their rebellion could not defeat the purpose of God concerning them. The divine mould was still upon their laws, and a divine providence still protected them from utter extinction as a nation.
God's promise to David was "that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne" , and it was necessary that the nation should continue until the Promised One should be revealed. Nevertheless, when the people rebelled against God, he permitted them to reap the fruit of their doings. When they repented and sought him, he delivered them, and they were still called by his name. But while he permitted them to retain in a measure their religio-civil laws, and to administer them by a semi-ecclesiastical court, he never restored the theocracy which they had rejected. And with the overthrow of Zedekiah the descendants of Abraham ceased to be a nation and became merely a dependency of another power. "Ichabod" had long been written on the Jewish escutcheons, but they did not fully realize the fact, and most persistently did they from time to time endeavor to restore the ancient polity and rehabilitate themselves with divine power. But it was not to be. They preserved their ecclesiastical organization, but their political power was limited by the will of a foreign ruler. The word of the Lord was:
"And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, Thus saith the Lord God: Remove the diadem, and take off the crown; this shall not be the same; exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him."
The divine fiat had gone forth canceling forever any special right of any man or of any set of men to rule in civil things in God's name. It is true that the Jewish rulers never ceased to claim divine right to rule, and that in fact they represented Deity. Down until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Sanhedrim clung to the delusion that they were God's representatives in both civil and religious affairs, but the Lord did not so recognize them; and our Saviour utterly repudiated their claim of the whole people to civil authority by refusing to accept a throne at their hands, declaring that his kingdom was not of this world—that is, it was not of a temporal nature, neither was his authority to be conferred by the powers of this world, but by his Father only. And again did the Saviour humble the pride of the Jews and rebuke their assumption by reminding them, in the incident of the tribute money , that Cæsar was their ruler, and that they themselves recognized his authority by using coins bearing his image and superscription. The apostle Paul likewise disdained the civil authority of the Jews when he appealed unto Cæsar. And even the Jews themselves in their mad frenzy declared, "We have no king but Cæsar." And in this they spoke truly, for God had declared that civil power should no more be exercised in his name, till He should come whose right it is—come, not to die for sinners, but as "King of kings and Lord of lords."
At the date of the prophecy of Eze. 21:25-27, already quoted, the Jewish people were subject to Babylon. The first overturning left the kingdom subject to Medo-Persia; the second placed it under the dominion of Grecia, while the third and last gave it to Rome. "And it shall be no more until He come whose right it is." Who he was to whom the promise was made we learn from Luke 1:31-33:—
"And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."
CHRIST'S KINGDOM NOT TEMPORAL.
But it is plain that this promise does not refer to an earthly, temporal kingdom. To Pilate Jesus declared, "My kingdom is not of this world." "Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?" While to his disciples he said: "I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." And he did not leave them in doubt as to the enduring nature of that kingdom, or when they should enter upon it; he said: "In the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." When it is that Christ shall "sit in the throne of his glory" is told in another text. It is "when the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you692from the foundation of the world."
These texts make it positive that a theocracy can exist no more in this world until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with power and great glory, and that anything which professes to be a theocracy, or to partake of the nature of a theocracy, is simply a usurpation of the divine prerogatives and in defiance of the will of God as plainly expressed in his word.
A FALSE THEOCRACY.
But ambitious, self-seeking men remembered only that Christ had been set forth as a king. It is true that the disciples understood after the resurrection that the promise of a kingdom had reference not to this mortal state but to the everlasting immortal kingdom, and that they were content to bide their Lord’s time; but it was not so with the selfish, designing men who came into the church in later years. These reasoned that of right all power belonged to Christ. He was not personally present to claim it, but were they not his representatives? and could they not, yea, should they not, exercise not only ecclesiastical but civil power as well, in his name and for his glory and the upbuilding of his kingdom in the earth? To ask the question was in their minds to answer it as well—hence the theocratic theory which began in the third century to be quite general in the church, and hence also the grasping after civil power to replace the loss of spiritual power due to apostasy from the true faith, and to corrupting alliances with the rulers of the world.
The Saviour sent his disciples forth into a hostile world under the commission: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” The only guarantee of success given the apostles was the promise of the presence of their Lord by his Spirit; and by the power of that Spirit they went forth making converts not only without the aid of the civil power but in the face of the most bitter persecution.
But the power of the Spirit of God could be used only in harmony with the mind of God. The Lord Jesus Christ made no provision for self-seeking among his followers. On the contrary, when on one occasion certain of his disciples sought preferment for themselves, he said:—
“Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever shall be great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
And again we have these words of our Lord:—
“But be ye not called Rabbi: for one is your master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called master: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”
But these injunctions were not obeyed. Even in Paul’s day the “mystery of iniquity” was at work as the apostle declared in 2 Thess. 2:7. Unconsecrated men, like Simon the sorcerer, joined themselves to the church for self-aggrandizement; but the power of the Spirit of God was not for such as they. Power however they would have, and so they sought it by usurping authority over their fellows. The humble office of elder, bishop, or overseer—for the terms are in the Scriptures used interchangeably, and all mean the same thing—was magnified, or perverted, rather, so that ambitious men instead of being servants of the church became “lords over God’s heritage.”
But position was not power, and power they would have. And as it was to be had from the Lord only by those who would use it to his glory, these false shepherds sought it at the hands of civil rulers. At first they simply bartered ecclesiastical influence for political power; but subsequently they claimed that the power belonged to them of right. Of the progress that had been made in this direction in the fourth century, Neander says:—
There had in fact arisen in the church . . . a false theocratical theory, originating not in the essence of the gospel, but in the confusion of the religious constitutions of the Old and New Testaments, which . . . might easily result in the formation of a sacerdotal State, subordinating the secular to itself in a false and outward way.
The result was the full-grown Papacy with the bishop of Rome as “Vicar of Christ,” claiming power to depose kings and to set up kings; and following this in natural order, the history of the long and bloody persecution in which over fifty millions of people perished—sacrificed on the altar of popish ambition. Only evil came of an attempt to establish a theocracy then; only evil can come of such an attempt now.