Discipling the State

JUST as the State as conceived by classical antiquity, epitomised in the Roman State and achieving its most potent manifestation in the cult of the Roman emperors, was the biblical Antichrist of the first century, so too the modern godless and God-denying State—this secular deity, the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth—is the modern Antichrist, and it can only be defeated by the Christian Church, and only then because the Church has divine help. Only the Church can contain, tame and discipline—i.e. disciple—the State into its true vocation under God: to do justice, to execute judgement as God’s servant upon those who do evil. When the Church abandons this duty to discipline the State, which is a vital aspect of her calling to disciple the nations, she unleashes a devil into the world, who goes forth to devour mankind by pouring out all the terrors of hell upon society. If the history of the twentieth century has taught us anything it is this. More people were brutalised, persecuted, tortured and murdered by the secular State in the twentieth century in the pursuit of its secular ideals and Utopias than by all other religious persecutions in history put together. And the secular humanist inquisitions and witch-hunts of the twentieth century have continued into the twenty-first century. There will be no abatement in this reign of terror until the Church takes her Great Commission seriously once more and fulfils her calling to disciple the nations to Christ.

But there is a word of warning regarding this that the Church must hear, because the Church is not only the only organisation that can with God’s help discipline the State—she too is an institution, a world-wide power, that can be contained, tamed, conquered by her enemies, and even discipled into the role of Antichrist; and it is this terrible lesson that we must learn from the history of the Roman Catholic Church, which inherited from the ancient Roman State, and eventually manifested in her own organisation, the spirit of Antichrist. It has often been observed that when Rome conquered Greece by means of military force, Greece conquered Rome culturally. Similarly, when the Church conquered the Roman Empire, the spirit of Antichrist, which had so animated the Roman State, entered into the life of the Church, eventually to manifest itself in the papacy of mediaeval times.

The Church must prepare herself for the battle against Antichrist that lies ahead, but she must also prepare herself against the infiltration of the spirit of Antichrist into her own institutions and organisation. Unfortunately, because of the compromise of the contemporary Church with the antichristian State, she begins at a very low base; she begins as a defeated nation occupied by her enemies. Nevertheless, with divine help, she can overcome her enemies, both within her own organisations and in the world. In pursuing the Great Commission, however, the Church must fulfil her duty to bring the State under the discipline of Jesus Christ, in other words to disciple the State into its true calling to serve God by doing justice according to God’s law. The Church can only do this, however, when she herself learns to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, not the State. Only when she understands what this means herself and is prepared to embrace it and manifest it in her own life and institutions will she be able to teach the nations to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and thus fulfil her Great Commission.

But how does the Church disciple the nations? By living as the true community of faith, the true society, the true political organism—the Kingdom of God. Only when what the Church confesses with her mouth—the Lordship of Jesus Christ—becomes embodied in the living society of the Church, manifest in history as the true political organism, the true society, the Kingdom of God, will the nations be discipled to Christ.