Liberating Planet Earth

The God of Liberation 31
systems of the world, in preparation for the triumph of the gospel.
But this does not mean that Christians are to aid such revolutionary
groups, or praise them, or do anything but challenge them.
When Christians join hands with the Communists to criticize
an existing civil government, they are in the process of jumping
out of the fkying pan into the fire. The tottering power-seeking
despots of this world are usually content to let Christians go about
their business, just so long as the rulers get their extorted wealth
for a while longer. They are not systematic murderers. They are
not God-hating atheists intent on stamping out the church. They
are just criminals who for a time are in power. They are God’s
minimal judgments over a rebellious people.
Bring in the Communists, and you get scientific tyranny, selfconscious
persecution of the righteous. The Communists are to
the dictators what Solomon’s son Rehoboam was to Solomon, and
what Jeroboam was to Rehoboam. Rehoboam’s foolish young
counselors advised him as follows:
Then the young men who had grown up with him spoke to Km,
saying, “Thus you should speak to the people who have spoken to
you, saying, Tour father made our yoke heavy, but you make it
lighter on us’-thus you shall say to them: ‘My little finger shall be
tlicker than my father’s waist! And now, whereas my father laid a
heavy yoke on you, I w-ill add to your yoke; my father chastised you
with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!’” (1 Kings 12:10-11).
There was then a revolt against Rehoboam by Jeroboarn, who
led the ten tribes into a separate nation. But what was the price of
this tax rebellion? Idolatry. He made them worship golden calves
in order to establish the foundation of a new political kingdom
(1 Kings 12:25-33). The Israelites of the Northern Kingdom went
out of the frying pan (Rehoboam’s high taxes) into the fire (idol
worship, and eventually captivity to the Assyrians).
The Russian Ex#xm”ence
In Czarist Russia, just before the revolution, about 20 to 25
million people, or one-third of the white Russian population,