The Doctrine of Lesser Magistrate with Matt Trewhella

The Need for Election Integrity and Christian Civic Action

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We've got a lot to get to, not a lot of time to get there, so I'm gonna talk fast. Number one, we have Matt Truwella on the program today.

He is a pastor in Wisconsin. Great book he wrote years ago called Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, and I invited him on to talk about it with us because I read it seven or eight years ago. It was a great book.

You need it on your bookshelf. It's a missing piece. It's what most American Christians don't understand, but they did during the colonial era, and we've lost it. We need to get it back, especially if we have a Biden-Harris administration, but even if we don't, this is something that you need to know about for a few reasons.

One of them is I don't see a lot of Christians encouraging young people towards getting involved in politics, and that's a tragedy. Christians should be the ones that are involved in those kinds of things, but we've ceded that.

Often, we've ceded that, and I think if you understand the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, you realize, wow, there's actually a lot we can do. There's stands we can make for the Lord at lower levels to prevent great evil from happening to the citizens that we so care about, so you're gonna wanna listen to that interview and get the book.

Before we get there, a few things. If you've been following me on social media, which many of you do not, which is fine. You're working. You're listening to this on the go. I get it. I've been posting a lot.

I probably have like 100 screenshots on my phone from the last few days of just things I've seen, things that have been censored, which the censorship is through the roof right now, things that have been suppressed, things that have been shocking as far as proof of voter fraud, primary sources coming out, saying this is what happened, this is what I saw, this is a photograph I have, this is a recording I have.

Just the statistical anomalies alone should be enough for the media to be investigating the voter fraud that has happened in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and some of the other swing states, but they're not.

And they're marching in lockstep. They're calling anyone who even questions it, a kook, a conspiracy theorist, et cetera. And this is very interesting to me that all of a sudden, alternative media is very important.

And in getting off some of these social media platforms or staying on, but at least having, this is what I'm doing, having other accounts on places like MeWe, Parler, Gab, you need to look into that. You need to look into practical stuff here.

I'm gonna be repeating this on the podcast, but you need to look into encrypted communication, I think, moving forward, just because the capability of some of these government agencies, especially if you have a Biden-Harris administration to spy on you is disconcerting.

Make sure you have something like Signal, the Signal app, which you can download to your phone. It also is on your computer. You can have conversations that are protected. These are things that probably everyone should have had or should have been doing before this election, but it's coming to the point, I think, now that the election happened and people are seeing the potential, which I'm not gonna go over all of what could happen.

There's various scenarios of what could happen. They're all of a sudden getting off the traditional social media platforms and getting on alternatives. This is kind of like the push people needed to start doing that.

I mean, people are, I was at a shop the other day that sells firearms, et cetera, and I mean, people are just coming in. People are, you know, now is the time. I mean, 2020 has been the year. With COVID, the riots, now this.

People are trying to make sure that they can get ammunition and a firearm for the purpose of protection, et cetera. It's just kind of like this is the push people needed. So if this was the push you needed to make sure you have extra food, extra, well, all the things that we should just as responsible people have, then so be it.

Go and make sure that you're prepared for those kinds of things. A few, let's see, what else? I was gonna go over, actually I did a Twitter thread last night on some of this, just in preparing what to do, what we can do other than just vote and pray.

Those were some of them. It's not coming up right now, though, so I'm gonna have to probably skip out on that. Few things that I wanted to announce real quick. The election integrity. If you wanna donate to a cause to help, whether you're a Trump fan or not, if you're concerned about all the things that are coming out, then you can go to a link I have in the info section, winred .com, and there is a link there you can click on, you copy and paste, where you can go and you can donate to an election integrity fund.

This stuff isn't cheap, all these lawsuits, I mean, sifting through all the prank calls and everything on the fraud hotline for the Trump campaign. You're gonna wanna donate to this. If you want to go to a Stop the Steal rally, I think just about every state has one at their capital.

The big one, I think, is probably in D .C., but this weekend, this Saturday, this has been banned from traditional social media. Twitter, I think, was the first one to ban it. I'm not sure if it's on, I think it's on, yeah, it is on, it was banned on Facebook.

I correct myself. Facebook banned Stop the Steal group, but I'm not sure if Twitter did, but you can go to stopthesteal .us and you can find the location nearest you if you want to go and show some support for election integrity, because that's what this is about.

There's questions, at the very least, there are questions that need to be answered, and those who would say we don't need to answer these questions are the ones that we should be concerned about right now.

One of the questions that comes out a lot is where's the proof of fraud, right? And I mean, I've been posting stuff left and right to show you, hey, there's proof out there. One of the things, though, and this is the thing that I think has been the best website, because it kind of lays out all the different kinds of proof, all the different kinds of, not even just the proof that we can verify, but also the questions that we can't verify, but if we answer the question, it will potentially, most likely, lead to there being proof.

Go to everylegalvote .com slash PhD. Everylegalvote .com slash PhD, link is in the info section. And, last but not least, we're getting to the interview, but I gotta announce this stuff, last but not least, if you have been the victim of fraud, this was trending on Twitter a couple days ago, MaidenGate, it was a girl who found out her mother's maiden name was used to vote, and her mother didn't know it, they looked it up, you can go to, every state has a place you can go to look up to see your voter status, whether you're an active voter, or if you submitted, let's say, a absentee ballot, many states have that information available.

You can go to your state website, or where you used to live, and find out, hey, did someone vote under my maiden name? Hey, did my grandfather, who has been dead for three years, did someone vote under his name?

That kind of thing. If you want to, I'm putting this email here, I think you can go to a hotline, I think Trump campaign has a hotline for this, but I'm putting this other email, it's StopTheStealAtProtonMail .com, and you can see that in the info section, if you have evidence of this, if you've been the victim of voter fraud yourself.

This is important, guys, this isn't something to just take lightly, this is potentially something that could change elections from here on out, in the United States, if we let this pass. And this isn't even about Trump, this is about election integrity, it's about, you know, we worship a God who loves equal weights and measures, not someone who is manipulating by putting their thumb on the scale and disenfranchising votes, telling people that, you know, basically, their vote doesn't count because we're gonna make it not count by introducing fake ballots and these kinds of things.

This is important, the Lord hates lying, the Lord hates stealing. These are, I mean, basic Ten Commandments type stuff, and it's time that we are for justice at this point. So if you can go to a rally, if you can check to see if fraud has happened to you or someone you love, if you can give to that electionintegritywinred .com website, then I would ask you to consider doing it.

Those are just some practical things that I wanted to share with you. I mean, I know there's some Christians saying, well, all we can do is pray, all we can do is vote. Well, yes, we need to pray. We definitely need to pray for our country, for our churches, but we also have, there's a lot of other things that we can do as well, including, and I just found on Twitter, my list that I made last night of just a few things.

You can also be listening to alternative media right now to stay informed. I mean, I think the goal of most media right now seems to be in the mainstream to just discourage you if you ever thought that there was fraud, you're just a kook.

Go to places like Newsmax, to Breitbart. There's a number of alternatives out there. It seems right now like it's almost like Trump's Twitter account, which is also being somewhat, let's just say censored, versus all the mainstream media.

And it's amazing to me that he's able to hold on the way he is. But there's other websites and places you can go to watch news. Be ready for whatever comes. Like I was saying, download the Signal app, get on alternative social media, Parler, MeWe, et cetera, Gab.

It's always wise, like I said, to have extra food and a means of defense in case of emergency. We don't, I'm not saying there's gonna be, I'm not trying to freak you out, but the possibilities of scenarios like that unfolding do exist.

Even if it's a 1 possibility, I think it's just as responsible Christians, we are told that we should be providing for our families. And if we don't, we're worse than an unbeliever. That's what scripture says.

Combat the media narrative by using your social media to post reliable primary and secondary source information. And like I said, you can go to Breitbart, you can go to Newsmax, a lot of the things that the president is putting out there and people that work in his administration like Rudy Giuliani, you can go to their social media feeds, see kind of the sources that they're citing to try to be on the safe side.

There's a lot of kooky stuff out there. And I've seen some of that and you need to be careful of that. But that's my advice really quickly on how to be careful about that. And then of course, if you can get to a Stop the Steal rally this weekend, I would recommend it.

You're not doing it for Trump, you're doing it for a God that we worship who hates lying, who hates stealing, who does not believe and hates unjust weights and measures. So all that being said, that's the practical stuff and that's what you're gonna get from me guys.

I realize we gotta get practical. I know there's a lot of other things people want me to talk about right now and I got a back burner, I got a list of things but we're in times right now where look, there's some real practical questions and I know because I get the emails, there are unfortunately a lot of Christians out there who are not getting answers from their pastors on the questions that will be coming up and are coming up and how to navigate this as a Christian.

So I am dedicated guys, I'm dedicated to helping you as best I can, I'm not perfect but I want you to understand some things that I think will help you navigate this, whatever happens. And so one of the things we had Rod Martin on a few days ago on where the election stands, we're having Matt Truella on now, he's gonna tell us a little bit about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.

The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate

We are pleased right now to be joined by Pastor Matt Truella. He is the author of the doctrine of the lesser magistrate and pastors a church out in, you're in Wisconsin, I believe, right? That's correct.

All right, so. Milwaukee area. Oh, okay, so you would know about some of the unrest that's been happening in the last few months, I would imagine. Yes, yeah. Maybe we can talk about that. But the real purpose of having you on is for my audience and others who are watching this to understand something I think we've lost and you call it the doctrine of the lesser magistrate but I've heard it called by other names or at least generally talked about as kind of this resistance to authority that is tyrannical or illegitimate, that kind of thing.

So I'm hoping we can talk about this. We're in interesting times and so first question to you, Pastor Truella, it's a hard one. How are you doing today? The election and everything.

I'm doing good. Yeah, family's doing good. We're all doing good here in Wisconsin, so. That's good, I think a lot of people,.

People are all over the map right now and I know you're someone that seems like you have a calm disposition about you, you understand God's in control but we do have responsibility as well as Christians.

What is the doctrine of the lesser magistrate?

The doctrine is simply that when the higher ranking civil authority makes unjust or immoral law, policy or court opinion, the lower or lesser ranking civil authority has both the God-given right and duty not to obey the superior authority and if necessary, to actively resist that authority.

There's a quote that I use from Emperor Trajan that kind of sums up the doctrine in a nutshell. He was giving a sword to one of his subordinates and upon giving him the sword, he said, use this sword against my enemies if I give righteous commands but if I give unrighteous commands, use it against me and that is the doctrine in a nutshell.

When the superior authority does wrong, does evil, the lesser magistrate, the lesser civil authority, their duty is to interpose and check the evil that the superior authority is trying to do. The foremost treatise ever written on this doctrine was by John Knox in his Appellation to the Nobles of Scotland.

They were the lesser magistrates of that day and Knox cited over 70 passages of scripture in order to show that this doctrine is sound in the word of God.

So here's an obvious question because I think immediately when people hear this, they're saying, wait a minute, I went to Sunday school, maybe I went to Iwana, I never heard of this doctrine. Where was that found?

I know you just cited John Knox. If we had to trace the origins of this kind of thinking, obviously we would go back to scripture but where in church history can we see this popping up?

In church history, the doctrine wasn't formalized as a doctrine until 1550 in Magdeburg, Germany. In 1546 after Luther died, Emperor Charles V decided he wanted to re-Romanize all of the Protestant lands, bring them back under Roman Catholic practice, belief and rule and unfortunately Melanchthon who was the heir apparent to Luther went along with this decree by the emperor and so did many of the other Protestants but there was one city that actually stood in defiance of it, in interposition against the emperor and that was the city of Magdeburg, Germany.

Magdeburg, Germany was a huge city in Germany, 30 ,000 plus people, had the thickest walls of any city in all of Germany and what's important to note is that their magistrates had sat under the preaching of Nicholas von Amstorff since 1524.

So it's 1546 now and 1524 Magdeburg was actually the first city in all of the Holy Roman Empire to embrace the reformation. Wow. And Luther thought so highly of Nicholas von Amstorff that he put him in the pulpit there in Magdeburg, Germany and it's important to note also that Nicholas von Amstorff was with Martin Luther when he went to the Diet of Worms where he was tried and found guilty of being a notorious heretic.

He was with him there, they were on their way back to Wittenberg because Luther still had two weeks of safe conduct from the emperor. The emperor had already sent a decree to Frederick the Wise that when Luther returns, arrest him and send him to me so we can put him to death.

And of course, Frederick the Wise feigned Luther's abduction in Eisenach, hid him in the Wartburg Castle there and Luther spent the next year, people didn't know if he was alive or dead but he translated the New Testament into German, giving the German peoples their first unified language ever because they had literally hundreds of dialects.

So here we see the providence of God, amen? And the affairs of men. So here's Nicholas von Amstorff, he sees the inner position of a lesser magistrate. Frederick the Wise, there's the emperor here, there's seven electors directly under his authority.

Frederick the Wise is one of them. And instead of obeying the emperor with his evil edict, he interposes and protects Luther from being killed. So von Amstorff had seen the inner position of the lesser magistrate.

Here it is 1546, that city stands in inner position against what Emperor Charles V is still alive is trying to do to re-Romanize all of the Protestant lands. They were the only city who stood against it in 1550, they issued what we now call the Magdeburg Confession.

And that was the first time, getting your question here, that was the first time this doctrine was formalized by Christian men. They showed from scripture and history that their magistrates were right not to obey the emperor.

Nicholas von Amstorff was the first signer, eight other clergymen in the city also signed on to that thing. Five months later, Emperor Charles V marched on Magdeburg. There was a 13 month siege, over 4 ,000 of Charles's men were killed, 468 Magdeburgers were killed.

But in the end, Charles capitulated to the Magdeburgers and they won. And you have to understand if it had not been for the inner position of these magistrates and these clergymen, there in the city of Magdeburg, Germany, the entire Reformation would have just been a blip on the radar screen of human history.

That's how important their inner position was. And that's how this doctrine first came about, formalized by Christian men.

Wow. So this is the same kind of thinking, correct me if I'm wrong, that caused people in England during our war for independence to call it the Presbyterian Revolt. And I know we know of the pastors at that time being called the Black Robe Regiment who were very instrumental in helping the lesser magistrates of the United States to oppose what was oppressive and frankly illegitimate from England.

Am I tracking right on that?

You are totally tracking right. After the Magdeburgers wrote their confession, it was actually picked up by other of the reformers, foremost by John Knox, who I had mentioned earlier, writing his appellation in 1558.

Calvin's heir apparent, Theodor Beza, wrote On the Right of Magistrates. And well, you have to understand when he first wrote that, where he talks about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate in his work On the Right of Magistrates, you have to understand that he first published that anonymously.

And he thought so highly of the Magdeburgers that he said that this was published by the ministers of Magdeburg, Germany. Two years later when it wasn't, he could get killed politically for Theodor Beza assumed authorship for On the Right of Magistrates because he had written it.

Christopher Goodman, another, he was in England, protege of John Knox's Mornay over in France. All these men were massively impacted by the Magdeburg Confession and they furthered the doctrine of the lesser magistrate in their writings.

And you can trace their writings and the Magdeburg Confession all the way up to America's Declaration of Independence. And the founders understood this doctrine of interposition. They understood and knew about the Magdeburg Confession and what had happened because of the writings of the reformers subsequent to that.

So no, you're right on track. This was at a huge impact on the furtherance of freedom and the pillared institutions that we developed within our law and government here in Western civilization.

Scripture, Interposition, and the Limits of Romans 13

Wow, I wanna ask you kind of like how did we lose this doctrine? But first, would you mind maybe just giving one example from the Old Testament, one example from the New Testament? I know you give a number in your book, but of where these men like the Magdeburgers, if I'm saying their name right, I'm not German, where they looked in scripture to kind of justify this thinking.

Absolutely. Yeah, well, they talk about Jeremiah. Knox talks about Jeremiah, the Magdeburgers talked about Jeremiah, how he was gonna be mistreated by the king and the nobles, the princes stepped in on his behalf.

They also had the reverse where the king actually stepped in on behalf of Jeremiah. Later, I think it was Jeremiah 38, where the king stepped in and interposed on behalf of against the princes because of a lowest of the low lesser magistrate, a prison guard of sorts, who reported what was happening to the king.

Of course, you have the example of Daniel and people understand Daniel did what he did because he was a follower of our Lord, but they often forget that he was also a lesser magistrate. He was number three in all of the empire, or number two in all the empire there in Babylon.

So by his obeying God, rather than man, it benefited all of the people within the realm. And so these are examples from the Old Testament. There's many, it's founded in the doctrine of interposition. Interposition is where you stand in the gap between the oppressor and his intended victim.

We have many examples of that. The midwife, the Hebrew midwives, for example, they were told to kill the little Hebrew male babies and they interposed. They didn't obey the civil authority, rather they let the children live.

And so interposition is seen again and again in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the Book of Acts, you see interposition for the apostles on a number of occasions by Roman magistrates. And it's important for people to understand this is the duty of the lesser magistrate when the superior authority does wrong.

Their duty is to interpose on behalf of the person who's being treated unjustly. So they use the authority of their office in order to interpose against the superior civil authority that's using their office wrongly.

So how did we lose all this? America has been, we pillared this whole matter of interposition into our founding institutions. Our founders were Christian men, or at least influenced by Christian thought.

So their view of man was a biblical view of man that he's wicked and in need of a savior. So they didn't want authority to reside in one man like a monarch, that's why they threw George off, nor did they want it to reside in a small number of men like an oligarchy, like what we've made the Supreme Court into in our day.

They understood that man was wicked and in need of a savior. So they wanted multiple levels of government, multiple branches on each level, so that if any one branch began to play the tyrant, all other branches would reject, would resist, and check that branch in their tyranny.

This allows cohesion within the country so that you can correct the wrongs that are being done without bloody revolution. So anyways, that was what was established in America. It worked fine, so pretty good over the years.

I always say anything man's involved in is never perfect. But you had this understanding, but it was changed early on in America where all of it, in fact, Thomas Jefferson spent the last 20 years of his life at war with the federal judiciary because through their court opinion, they wrote powers for themselves and for the federal government that weren't granted to them in the Constitution.

And so men will forbear, and so we should, but it always reaches a point where you can't forbear any longer. So the Supreme Court has been accruing powers for all these centuries. It's crazy. And so when the Supreme Court says something, everybody obeys.

And so because of that, we've lost the understanding of the doctrine of interposition. We've lost the understanding of the doctrine of the lesser magistrate because everybody thinks that every branch of government and all the people in the country must do whatever the Supreme Court says.

And that's absolutely not true. When they say you can murder the pre-born, state should have said, no, no babies are being murdered here. They should have interposed. Our founders expected the states to check the federal government when they went outside their constitutional restraints.

In fact, it didn't take long for them to do it. 11 years after the Inca dry date, the federal government had put into place the Alien and Sedition Act. Two states interposed against them, Virginia and Kentucky.

And James Madison wrote the resolution from Virginia decrying what the federal government had done. And you have to recall, he is the architect of the US Constitution. So when I say our founders expected and understood that the state should interpose against the evil done by the federal government, even Madison acknowledged that.

And the Kentucky resolution was written by Thomas Jefferson, where they also made it clear that they have gone outside their constitutional restraints and they must be checked. And of course, the Alien and Sedition Acts were checked about a year and a half after that.

That's fascinating. What I hear often from Christians is either what, this is my own judgment, but either a misunderstanding of civics oftentimes, and I'm not saying all Christians, but many Christians where they don't, it just seems like they don't understand maybe jurisdictions and what constitutional authority is, which we're kind of both talking about as if we understand what that is.

The other thing is, I hear oftentimes Romans 13 brought up in this, or any passage where there was some kind of a submission kind of being used as a blank check. We need to submit to government because we're commanded to in scripture.

Let's start with the Romans 13, if you don't mind. What do you say to someone when they bring up Romans 13 as a reason to, I guess, deny the doctrine of the lesser magistrate?

Yeah, well, just this past Sunday, I addressed that because since this whole election thing, I've already seen the churchmen running out saying, everyone must submit to Biden, everyone must submit to Harris, must honor these people, congratulating them.

These are churchmen congratulating wicked people, evil magistrates, asking for God's blessing upon them so that somehow we'll be blessed also. That's crazy. Even Pastor Jeffress down in Texas, he said this, he said that, he quoted Romans 13, and he said, since God establishes governments, we have a duty to obey government because then for when we're obeying government, we are obeying God.

Well, the Magdeburgers totally disagreed with that. They called the idea of unlimited obedience to the civil government an invention of the devil. And it is. Romans 13 in no way teaches that we are always to obey the civil authorities.

Rather, men impose that on the text. It's what we call eisegesis. It's where you read into the text something that isn't there. When you look at the passage and just look at it, you realize nowhere does it say we're to always obey the civil authorities.

In fact, there isn't one verse in the entire Bible that says we're always to obey the civil authorities. Secondly, this brings us to good hermeneutic. Good hermeneutic is based on scripture interprets scripture.

Scripture with the big S interprets scripture with a small s. In other words, when you're looking at a particular scripture, scripture with a small s, you have to look at it in the whole of God's word, scripture with a big S.

So scripture with a big S, the whole of God's word, interprets scripture with a small s, a particular verse. And when you look at the whole of God's word, you see so many places where the people of God disobeyed the civil authorities and God commends them for it.

I had mentioned the Hebrew midwives earlier and I had mentioned Daniel earlier. Hebrew midwives were told to kill these little babies. Daniel was told he couldn't pray. From those two passages of scripture, the standard for Christianity down through the ages has been when the state commands that which God forbids or forbids that which God commands, we have a duty to obey God rather than man.

We have a duty to obey God rather than the state. And one of the things I always point out regarding Romans 13, and I actually have an appendix on Romans 13 in my books, I knew it had to be addressed.

I point out that when it comes to the three great governments, family government, church government, and civil government, when you look at the word of God, for example, when it comes to family government, it tells children, obey your parents.

There's no like limitation clauses or conditional, obey your parents. And yet no one takes that to mean that the authority of a parent is unlimited. Like if the father told his son to go down to the corner gas station and rob it, because if you get caught, you get a few months in juvie, but if I get caught, I'm going to prison for years.

No one would think the child was wrong for not obeying his father by not robbing the gas station. Or when it comes to church government with a pastor, Hebrews 13 simply says, obey those who have the rule over you no limitation clauses, no conditional clauses, just obey it.

No one takes that authority to be unlimited for the elders of the church or for a pastor within the church. So if a congregant found out the pastor was taking money out of the offering plate and he told the pastor, I know you're doing this.

And the pastor said, don't tell the elders. No one would fault the congregant for telling the elders. But for some reason, when it comes to civil authority, people think we must always obey them, no matter what they say, no matter what they do.

The Magdeburgers address this in their confession. Other men of God have addressed it over the years and they often use a family situation and apply it to civil government to show there's not unlimited authority here, nor should there be unlimited authority with the civil authorities.

And when it comes to Romans 13, there actually are limitation clauses. There actually are conditional clauses. The civil magistrate is to reward those who do good and punish those who do evil. But when they pervert their God-given role and begin to reward those who do evil and punish those who do good, then we have the duty to obey God rather than men.

Then the lesser magistrate has the duty to use the authority of his office to check the superior authority and the evil that he's trying to accomplish. So I hope that helped.

That's good. One of the things, I was actually reading Romans 13 the other day because of this, and it sort of stood out to me that there seems to be, number one, the context doesn't seem to be a big teaching on civics necessarily.

It's more of a personal instruction to Christians of how you're to behave in a state. And the office is what seems to be what God has put in place, this office of magistrate and then authority. And then the authorities are responsible to carry out the law of God in that capacity.

That's what I see when I look at Romans 13. But it seems like when I hear it put in my face a lot by other Christians, what they're seeing is they take that initial statement about authority as meaning whoever the president is or the Supreme Court justice, et cetera, and God has just put them there and then we'll go down this kind of rabbit trail of God's sovereign, so he put them there.

I don't see that in Romans 13. Do you see that?

No, I don't see that either. In fact, when you look at 1 Peter 2, it's the institutions, not the particular civil authority themselves because men are failable. They're wicked. They can do evil even in their office in a civil institution.

Civil government institution. So it's important. Here's one of the things that the churchmen will often bring up, right? They'll bring up, well, look, Paul was writing and they were under Nero. And so if they're under Nero and he's saying this, then we should, the important thing here is that you have to understand grammatically, Paul was not speaking descriptively in Romans 13.

He was writing prescriptively. If he had been writing descriptively, he would have mentioned Nero. He would have mentioned the Roman government. He was not writing descriptively. He was writing prescriptively, which means he was saying this is the purpose and function of civil government.

This is how it's supposed to be. That was his intent when he was writing in Romans 13. Not to tell everybody, hey, just do whatever the civil government says you should do. We know he wasn't saying that.

Look at the whole of God's word. We know he wasn't saying obey Nero because Nero wasn't even mentioned. The Roman government. And he didn't obey Nero. And he didn't obey Nero. Right. Thank you. And I always point out to people, 2 Corinthians 11, Paul who penned Romans 13 writes about in 2 Corinthians 11, how he knew the governor wanted to arrest him.

And rather than submit to the governor and allow himself to be arrested, he craftily fled down the side of a wall in a basket so that he could get away. So this whole idea that we're always to obey is not right.

And some will say, we should always obey unless they tell us we can't preach the gospel. But that isn't the standard. We see so many places where the people of God didn't obey and it had nothing to do with preaching the gospel.

It's not just when we're told we can't preach the gospel. It's whenever the state commands that which God forbids or forbids that which God commands.

Federalism, Jurisdiction, and the Limits of Government Power

Now this gets us into the jurisdictional question, which I wanna ask you about. And welcome a civics lesson if you'd like to give that to us. Because the other thing that I think is missing, just my judgment is oftentimes Christians just don't understand how our American constitutional law works.

They don't understand federalism, et cetera. Could you explain to us just a little bit about how the American system, if you wanna call it that, works? You mentioned checks and balances earlier, but we have states, we have localities, we have the federal government.