INTRO: Our study of God and government in the Old Testament, though but a brief overview, has been completed. What did we see? Government was one of the first divine institutions on earth. When mankind was few in number, we had the rule of the patriarchs, the fathers. When mankind increased, God raised up judges and we had what we would call a theocrasy, rule by God. Then the people became dissatisfied and requested a king, and we had the beginning of the monarchy. Some 400 years later, because of Israel's failure to rule in a godly way, God removed all secular leadership from them, and gave it into the hands of ungodly Gentiles. Could God have allowed it so because, as Jesus said, “...the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light”? However that may be, God permitted that all secular governing authority would be in the hands of the unsaved world for 600 years until the time of Christ, and far beyond that. |
