Christendom and the Nations

by James B Jordan

First, Solomon aggrandized the state by multiplying gold to himself: “Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 ...

Solomon had sought to increase strength and security by making false alliances with pagan nations. God made the punishment fit the crime: Solomon’s very actions would cause his empire to collapse and his nation to divide in two. God would put into effect the principle of the Tower of Babel.

God said, “You want to maintain a big, aggressive war machine? I’ll give you war!” So, “Yahweh raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite” (1 Kings 11:14). Then, “God raised up another adversary against him, Rezon the son of Eliadah” (1 Kings 11:23). Alliances with pagans make God angry. Alliances with pagans do not ensure peace; they ensure that God will bring war.

Massive centralized government makes God angry. Massive centralized government does not bring unity; it ensures that God will act to cause division. Remember the Tower of Babel.

Is it ever appropriate to enter into a treaty with a pagan nation? Yes, if such a treaty is to guarantee or establish a boundary. Such treaties are precisely for the purpose of separation, not union. An example is found in Gen. 31:43-55. Jacob formed a treaty with Laban, and these were the terms: “This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, to do harm” (Gen. 31:52, ESV). We see from this that such boundary agreements are entirely proper. This has relevance to such modern problems as freedom of the seas, as we see in Chapter 12.

The most dramatic fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis happens at the end, however, with the conversion of Pharaoh and Egypt. This conversion is recorded in Genesis 41, where Pharaoh submits himself to the Word of God and blesses Joseph by setting him over Egypt. After this, we see Pharaoh and his servants always rejoicing at the good things that happen to Joseph and his family (Gen. 45:16ff.; 47:5ff.). Indeed, in explicit fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise, we find that when Jacob was presented before Pharaoh, Pharaoh knelt to receive Jacob’s blessing (Gen. 47:7, 10).

The Bible tells us that the primary duty of the civil government is the maintenance of order by the use of the sword (Romans 13). Charity and relief are not the normal business of the state. Practically, this means that if a foreign nation wants to negotiate some kind of benefit from us, the military branch of our government should be consulted.

As we have seen, God clearly desires for there to be many nations on the earth, each glorifying Him in its own unique ways. On the other hand, there are times when a given nation becomes so corrupt that God eliminates it totally, as with the world before the Flood and the Canaanites. These two historical incidents are continual reminders to Christians that not every nation deserves to survive, and not every nation has been able to.

Toward the end of the 19th century and on into the 20th, German life was corrupted heavily by occultism. Spiritualist lodges were everywhere, and liberal theology (Baalism) was taught in schools and pulpits all over the land. The rise to power of National Socialism, with its philosophy of race, blood, power, and the will, was nothing more than an institutionalization of pure pagan occultism and Eastern mysticism.65 The Church was attacked and silenced, and a campaign of terror was mounted against neighboring nations. It was a time for Christian nations (or at least semi-Christian ones) to band together to remove the menace, and they did so.

Second, writes Chilton, “foreign aid helps those who are better off, rather than the poor.”69 After all, who receives the foreign aid? The ruling elite of the foreign country, and in most cases that means the strongman who got to the top by crushing everyone else will benefit from foreign aid.

“Third, foreign aid actually widens the gap between rich and poor nations,” Chilton writes, adding that “it inhibits those factors that would produce growth (e.g., by creating dependence rather than responsibility). More than this, it encourages explicit envy toward the rich, who are held to be responsible for the plight of those below them.”

The reality is that most of the countries of the world are ruled by strongmen who came to power by stomping on the faces of other people. International political relations are relations among such strongmen, and such strongmen tend to unite with each other against the people.

Truth and charity, propaganda and kindness, are the primary weapons in the Christian’s arsenal. They find their most important use in the missionary task of the Church, but they are of value in international relations as well.

The United Nations embodies the pagan, Babelic concept of political salvation and continues to inspire the hopes of secular humanists. Thus, whether the U.N. maintains its position in global politics or dwindles in importance, we should take some time to reflect on what it means for us.

Rushdoony states that the 19th century was an era of genuine internationalism. Summarizing his argument, he writes: True internationalism rests not on ideas of world unity through worldwide political coercion, but on a free order wherein men, ideas, and goods can move freely across borders in terms of the liberty of all.

Because the nineteenth century was more or less firmly committed to a hard money policy, to gold and silver, an internationalism of trade and travel prevailed. Transportation facilities were steadily extended throughout Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and trade penetrated the far corners of the world. Traders might have strongly nationalistic and racial ideas, but free trade and hard money were color blind and knew no frontiers. Men and goods travelled freely across boundaries to a degree unknown to the mid-twentieth century, and ideas followed them everywhere. The nineteenth century was also the great era of missionary expansion by evangelical Christianity, an internationalistic faith holding to the salvation of all manners, classes, and colors of men in the true Church of Jesus Christ, and congregations prayed for the conversion of the heathen and received with joy the missionary reports of the regeneration of previously depraved savages and idolators....[Congregations sang missionary hymns] in Sunday School or church as a missionary offering was received, and thousands upon thousands went out as missionaries in a day when being a missionary spelled sacrifice, hardship, sickness, and death, because they were moved by a Christian internationalism, by a desire to bring the unregenerate into salvation and into Christian civilization. Schools and hospitals were established by the missionaries, and outstanding converts were sent to the homeland to be trained in theolo...

Dawson notes that the League of Nations broke down because there was no undergirding belief sustaining it. No one wanted a Christian League. As a result, the European countries sought unity on another basis. One solution was to create unity by force based on the Aryan race, and the other was to create unity by forcing all the world into one controlled economy, called communism. Commenting on National Socialism, Dawson writes:

The United Nations was founded as an international secular church with salvation as its explicit goal. The Preamble to its Charter declares, “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generation from the scourge of war....” Rushdoony comments, “The U.N. is thus ‘determined to save’; it is thus possessed with all the sense of inevitability and missionary fervor that any religious groups possesses.”85

Rushdoony has described the salvation-goal of the U.N. as direct opposition to Christianity: “The U.N. holds as its basic premise a thesis which has a long history in both religion and in politics, the doctrine of salvation by law.”

The U.N. believes in salvation by law, but in no historic sense does it have law. The two central definitions of law are (1) the binding custom or practice of a community, or (2) the commandments or revelations of God.... Law, however, can also be the rule of conduct and action prescribed by a supreme governing authority and enforced thereby. Such law from early times has been called tyranny.90

Law cannot save men; only Jesus Christ can. Salvation by law means tyranny.

The United Nations does not really exist, any more than the “state” exists. The U.N. is an assembly of people, people committed to playing god.

flee to her for refuge. The principle of sanctuary is important for international relations for basically three reasons. First, it safeguards the inviolability of the Church and clarifies how the (international) Church acts to disciple the nations (Matthew 28:19). Second, in a Christian land, such as the United States once was, it guarantees the right of free immigration, as we see in Chapter 11. Third, it forms the foundation for such things as embassies and consulates.