Conspiracy: A Biblical View, by Gary North - EntreWave

THE CONSPIRACY'S THEOLOGYLimited PowerWestern Civilization adopted biblical ethics as its moral foundation.The Bible teaches the sovereignty of God, not the sovereignty of man.What this means is that all creaturely power is inescapably limited.Man is a creature; he cannot possess ultimate power, and it is a sign ofmen's evil intentions if they pursue power as such — power divorcedfrom ethics. All political power should therefore be limited by statutelaw and also by tradition, because man is a sinful creature. It means,in short, that man is not God. Power is delegated to specific men byGod through other men, and all legitimate delegated power istherefore limited power.The Old Testament required that the people of Israel be assembledonce every seven years to hear the reading of God's law. Everyonewas required to come: residents, children, women, priests, and rulers(Deuteronomy 31:9-13). No one was exempt. All were presumed to beable to understand the law. Everyone would know when theprovisions of God's law were being violated. Thus, men hadreasonable expectations about law enforcement. They could predictboth the State and each other's actions far better, for all of them knewthe public, revealed law.Absolute authority ruled from the top: God. Limited authority wasdelegated from God to rulers, but only by means of revealed and fixedlaw. 3 The rulers could not legitimately change the law, and abottom-up system of monitoring the rulers was established by thepublic reading of the law.The U.S. Constitution, as a written document which binds the Stateitself, is an indirect product of this biblical approach. So is thecommon law jury system. A dozen of our peers are presumed to bebetter than robed judges at deciding both the facts and the law of thecase. In any given .judicial dispute, the decision of the jury is final.There is no double jeopardy: once declared innocent, the personcannot be retried for the same crime. The.jury system is the last majorbulwark against judicial tyranny.Authority vs. Powerhttp://freebooks.commentary.net/freebooks/docs/html/gnco/html/3.htm (3 of 11) [5/26/2000 1:48:06 PM]