The Doctrine of Lesser Magistrate with Matt Trewhella

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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.

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Number one, we have Matt Truwella on the program today. He is a pastor in Wisconsin.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, you realize, wow, there's actually a lot we can do. There's stands we can make for the

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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And they're marching in lockstep. They're calling anyone who even questions it a kook, conspiracy theorist, et cetera.

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And this is very interesting to me that all of a sudden, alternative media is very important.

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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.

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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,

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I think, moving forward, just because the capability of some of these government agencies, especially if you have a

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Biden -Harris administration to spy on you is disconcerting. Make sure you have something like Signal, the

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Signal app, which you can download to your phone. It also is on your computer. You can have conversations that are protected.

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Just these are things that probably everyone should have had or should have been doing before this election.

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But it's coming to the point, I think, now that the election happened and people are seeing the potential, which

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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.

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This is kind of like the push people needed to start doing that. I mean, people are, you know, I was at a shop the other day that sells firearms, et cetera.

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And I mean, people are just coming in. People are, you know, now is the time. I mean, 2020 has been the year.

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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.

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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.

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Go and make sure that you're prepared for those kinds of things. A few, let's see, what else?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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This stuff isn't cheap, all these lawsuits, I mean, sifting through all the prank calls and everything on the fraud hotline for the

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Trump campaign, you're gonna wanna donate to this. If you want to go to a

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Stop the Steal rally, I think just about every state has one at their capital. The big one,

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I think, is probably in D .C., but this weekend, this Saturday, this has been banned from traditional social media.

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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.

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Facebook banned Stop the Steal group, but I'm not sure if Twitter did, but you can go to stopthesteal .us

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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.

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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.

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One of the questions that comes out a lot is where's the proof of fraud, right? And I mean,

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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 and most likely lead to there being proof.

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Go to everylegalvote .com slash PhD. Everylegalvote .com slash PhD, link is in the info section.

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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,

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MaidenGate, it was a girl who found out her mother's maiden name was used to vote, and her mother didn't know it.

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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.

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You can go to your state website, or where you used to live, and find out, hey, did someone vote under my maiden name?

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Hey, did my grandfather, who has been dead for three years, did someone vote under his name?

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That kind of thing. If you want to, I'm putting this email here,

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I think you can go to a hotline. I think Trump campaign has a hotline for this. I'm putting this other email, it's

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StopTheStealAtProtonMail .com. You can see that in the info section, if you have evidence of this, if you've been the victim of voter fraud yourself.

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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

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United States if we let this pass. This isn't even about Trump, this is about election integrity. It's about, we worship a

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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 basically their vote doesn't count because we're gonna make it not count by introducing fake ballots and these kinds of things.

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This is important. The Lord hates lying, the Lord hates stealing. These are basic Ten Commandments type stuff, and it's time that we are for justice at this point.

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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

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website, then I would ask you to consider doing it. Those are just some practical things that I wanted to share with you.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Go to places like Newsmax, to Breitbart. There's a number of alternatives out there.

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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.

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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.

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Be ready for whatever comes. Like I was saying, download the Signal app, get on alternative social media,

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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.

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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.

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I think it's just as responsible Christians, we are told that we should be providing for our families.

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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.

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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.

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There's a lot of kooky stuff out there, and I've seen some of that, and you need to be careful of that.

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But that's my advice really quickly on how to be careful about that. And then of course, if you can get to a

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Stop the Steal rally this weekend, I would recommend it. You're not doing it for Trump, you're doing it for a

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God that we worship who hates lying, who hates stealing, who does not believe and hates unjust weights and measures.

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So all that being said, that's the practical stuff, and that's what you're gonna get from me, guys.

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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,

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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

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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.

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And so one of the things, we had Rod Martin on a few days ago on where the election stands.

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We're having Matt Truella on now. He's gonna tell us a little bit about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.

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We are pleased right now to be joined by Pastor Matt Truella. He is the author of the

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Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate and pastors a church out in, you're in Wisconsin, I believe, right?

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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,

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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

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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.

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So I'm hoping we can talk about this. We're in interesting times. And so first question to you,

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Pastor Truella, is, it's a hard one. How you doing today? The election and everything.

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I'm doing good. Yeah, family's doing good. We're all doing good here in Wisconsin, so.

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That's good. I think a lot of people, and people are all over the map right now. And I know you're someone that seems like you have a calm disposition about you.

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You understand God's in control. But we do have responsibility as well as Christians. What is the

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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

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God -given right and duty not to obey the superior authority. And if necessary, to actively resist that authority.

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There's a quote that I use from Emperor Trajan that kind of sums up the doctrine in a nutshell.

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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.

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But if I give unrighteous commands, use it against me. And that is the doctrine in a nutshell.

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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.

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The foremost treatise ever written on this doctrine was by John Knox in his

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Appellation to the Nobles of Scotland. They were the lesser magistrates of that day.

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And Knox cited over 70 passages of scripture in order to show that this doctrine is sound in the word of God.

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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.

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Maybe I went to Iwana. I never heard of this doctrine. Where was that found?

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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?

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In church history, the doctrine wasn't formalized as a doctrine until 1550 in Magdeburg, Germany.

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In 1546, after Luther died, Emperor Charles V decided he wanted to re -Romanize all of the

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Protestant lands, bring them back under Roman Catholic practice, belief, and rule.

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And unfortunately, Melanchthon, who was the heir apparent to Luther, went along with this decree by the emperor.

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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.

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Magdeburg, Germany was a huge city in Germany, 30 ,000 plus people, had the thickest walls of any city in all of Germany.

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And what's important to note is that their magistrates had sat under the preaching of Nicholas von

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Amsdorff since 1524. So it's 1546 now, and 1524,

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Magdeburg was actually the first city in all of the Holy Roman Empire to embrace the

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Reformation. And Luther thought so highly of Nicholas von Amsdorff that he put him in the pulpit there in Magdeburg, Germany.

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And it's important to note also that Nicholas von Amsdorff was with Martin Luther when he went to the

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Diet of Worms, where he was tried and found guilty of being a notorious heretic. He was with him there.

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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

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Wise that when Luther returns, arrest him and send him to me so we can put him to death.

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And of course, Frederick the Wise feigned Luther's abduction in Eisenach, hid him in the

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Wartburg Castle there, and Luther spent the next year, people didn't know if he was alive or dead, but he translated the

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New Testament into German, giving the German peoples their first unified language ever, because they had literally hundreds of dialects.

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So here we see the providence of God, amen? And the affairs of men. So here's

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Nicholas von Amsdorff. He sees the inner position of a lesser magistrate. Frederick the

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Wise, there's the emperor here. There's seven electors directly under his authority. Frederick the

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Wise is one of them. And instead of obeying the emperor with his evil edict, he interposes and protects

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Luther from being killed. So von Amsdorff had seen the inner position of the lesser magistrate.

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Here it is, 1546. That city stands in inner position against what

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Emperor Charles V, who's still alive, is trying to do to re -Romanize all of the

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Protestant lands. They were the only city who stood against it. In 1550, they issued what we now call the

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Magdeburg Confession. And that was the first time, getting your question, Eric, that was the first time this doctrine was formalized by Christian men.

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They showed from scripture and history that their magistrates were right not to obey the emperor.

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Nicholas von Amsdorff was the first signer. Eight other clergymen in the city also signed on to that thing.

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Five months later, Emperor Charles V marched on Magdeburg. There was a 13 -month siege.

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Over 4 ,000 of Charles's men were killed. 468 Magdeburgers were killed.

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But in the end, Charles capitulated to the Magdeburgers, and they won.

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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

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Reformation would have just been a blip on the radar screen of human history. That's how important their inner position was.

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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

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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

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United States to oppose what was oppressive and, frankly, illegitimate from England.

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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

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I mentioned earlier, writing his appellation in 1558. But Calvin's heir apparent,

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Theodor Beza, wrote On the Right of Magistrates. And what you have to understand, when he first wrote that, where he talks about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate in his work

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On the Right of Magistrates, you have to understand that he first published that anonymously.

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And he thought so highly of the Magdeburgers that he said that this was published by the ministers of Magdeburg, Germany.

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Two years later, when it wasn't, you know, he could get killed, politically, for Theodor Beza's assumed authorship for On the

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Right of Magistrates, because he had written it. Christopher Goodman, another, he was in England, protege of John Knox's Mornay over in France.

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All these men were massively impacted by the Magdeburg Confession, and they furthered the doctrine of the lesser magistrate in their writings.

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And you can trace their writings and the Magdeburg Confession all the way up to America's Declaration of Independence.

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And the founders understood this doctrine of interposition. They understood and knew about the

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Magdeburg Confession and what had happened because of the writings of the reformers subsequent to that.

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

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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

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Old Testament, one example from the New Testament? I know you give a number in your book, but of where these men, like the

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Magdeburgers, if I'm saying their name right, I'm not German, where they looked in scripture to kind of justify this thinking?

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Absolutely, yeah, well, they talk about Jeremiah. Knox talked 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.

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They also had the reverse, where the king actually stepped in on behalf of Jeremiah. Later, I think it was

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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.

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Of course, you have the example of Daniel and people understand,

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Daniel did what he did because he was a follower of our Lord, but they often forget that he was also a lesser magistrate.

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He was number three in all of the empire, number two in all of the empire there in Babylon.

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So by his obeying God, rather than man, it benefited all of the people within the realm.

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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.

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We have many examples of that. The midwife, the Hebrew midwives, for example, they were told to kill the little

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Hebrew male babies and they interposed. They didn't obey the civil authority. Rather, they let the children live.

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And so interposition is seen again and again in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

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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.

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Their duty is to interpose on behalf of the person who's being treated unjustly.

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So they use the authority of their office in order to interpose against the superior civil authority that's using their office wrongly.

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So how did we lose all this? America has been, we pillared this whole matter of interposition into our founding institutions.

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Our founders were Christian men, or at least influenced by Christian thought.

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So their view of man was a biblical view of man that he's wicked and in need of a savior.

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So they didn't want authority to reside in one man like a monarch, that's why they threw

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George off, nor did they want it to reside in a small number of men like an oligarchy, like what we've made the

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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.

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This allows cohesion within the country so that you can correct the wrongs that are being done without bloody revolution.

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So anyways, that was what was established in America. It worked fine, so pretty good, you know, over the years.

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Anything, I always say anything man's involved in is never perfect, you know? And so, but you know, you had this understanding, but it was changed early on in America, where all of it, in fact,

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Thomas Jefferson spent the last 20 years of his life at war with the federal judiciary, because through their court opinions, they wrote powers for themselves and for the federal government that weren't granted to them in the

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Constitution. And so men will forbear, and so we should, but it always reaches a point where you can't forbear any longer.

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So the Supreme Court has been accruing powers for all these centuries. It's crazy.

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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.

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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

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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.

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They should have interposed. Our founders expected the states to check the federal government when they went outside their constitutional restraints.

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In fact, it didn't take long for them to do it. 11 years after the Inca Dry Day, the federal government had put into place the

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Alien and Sedition Act. Two states interposed against them, Virginia and Kentucky.

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And James Madison wrote the resolution from Virginia decrying what the federal government had done.

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And you have to recall, he is the architect of the US Constitution. So when

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I say our founders expected and understood that the state should interpose against the evil done by the federal government, even

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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.

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And of course, the Alien and Sedition Acts were checked about a year and a half after that. That's fascinating.

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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

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Christians, but many Christians, where they don't, it just seems like, you know, 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.

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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.

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You know, we need to submit to government because we're commanded to in scripture. What, let's start with the

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Romans 13, if you don't mind, what do you say to someone when they bring up Romans 13 as a reason to,

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I guess, deny the doctrine of the lesser magistrate? Yeah, well, just this past Sunday, I addressed that because since this whole election thing,

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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.

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These are churchmen congratulating wicked people, evil magistrates, asking for God's blessing upon them so that somehow we'll be blessed also.

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That's crazy. Even Pastor Jeffress down in Texas, he said this, he said that, he quoted

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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

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God. Well, the Magdeburgers totally disagreed with that. They called the idea of unlimited obedience to the civil government an invention of the devil.

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And it is. Romans 13 in no way teaches that we are always to obey the civil authorities.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Good hermeneutic is based on scripture interprets scripture. Scripture with the big

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S interprets scripture with a small S. In other words, when you're looking at a particular scripture scripture with a small

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S, you have to look at it in the whole of God's word, scripture with the big S. So scripture with a big

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S, the whole of God's word interprets scripture with the small S, a particular verse.

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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.

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I had mentioned the Hebrew midwives earlier and I had mentioned Daniel earlier. Hebrew midwives were told to kill these little babies.

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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

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God forbids or forbids that which God commands, we have a duty to obey

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God rather than man. We have a duty to obey God rather than the state. And one of the things

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I always point out regarding Romans 13, and I actually have an appendix on Romans 13 in my books.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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Or when it comes to church government with a pastor, Hebrews 13 simply says, obey those who have the rule over you.

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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.

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So if a congregant found out the pastor was taking money out of the offering plate and he told the pastor,

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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.

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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.

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The Magdeburgers addressed 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.

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And when it comes to Romans 13, there actually are limitation clauses. There actually are conditional clauses.

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The civil magistrate is to reward those who do good and punish those who do evil. But when they pervert their

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God -given role and begin to reward those who do evil and punish those who do good, then we have the duty to obey

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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Christians, what they're seeing is they take that initial statement about authority as meaning whoever the president is or the

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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.

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So he put them there. Well, I don't see that in Romans 13. Do you see that? No, I don't see that either.

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In fact, when you look at 1 Peter 2, it's the institutions, not the particular civil authority themselves because men are failable.

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They're wicked. They can do evil even in their office in a civil institution.

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Civil government institution. So it's important. Here's one of the things that the churchmen will often bring up, right?

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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...

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The important thing here is that you have to understand grammatically,

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Paul was not speaking descriptively in Romans 13. He was writing prescriptively.

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If he had been writing descriptively, he would have mentioned Nero. He would have mentioned the Roman government.

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He was not writing descriptively. He was writing prescriptively, which means he was saying this is the purpose and function of civil government.

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This is how it's supposed to be. That was his intent when he was writing in Romans 13.

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Not to tell everybody, hey, just do whatever the civil government says you should do. We know he wasn't saying that.

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Look at the whole of God's word. We know he wasn't saying obey Nero because Nero wasn't even mentioned.

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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

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Corinthians 11, Paul who penned Romans 13 writes about in 2

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It's not just when we're told we can't preach the gospel. Whatever the state commands that which

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God forbids or forbids that which God commands. Now this gets us into the jurisdictional question, which

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I wanna ask you about. And welcome a civics lesson if you'd like to give that to us.

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Because the other thing that I think is missing, just my judgment is oftentimes

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Christians just don't understand how our American constitutional law works. They don't understand federalism, et cetera.

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Could you explain to us just a little bit about how the American system, if you wanna call it that, works.

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You mentioned checks and balances earlier, but we have states, we have localities, we have the federal government.

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Right now there's a contested presidential election and there's jurisdictional questions there. Who gets to call an election?

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Could you just talk to us a little bit about that? Sure, well, our founders established a constitution for the federal government, which was intended to mean that anything that was given to them is clearly spelled, anything given to them for authority is clearly spelled out in the

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US Constitution. So the states came together and they ceded some of their authority to this, what they called a national government, what we need to call today a federal government.

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They ceded some authority and Madison said, remember he's the architect of the

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US Constitution. He said, the things granted to the national government are few and defined.

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What remains with the states are plethora and many. So they ceded these very fine things because they realized it would work better under a central authority than a local authority called a state by each of them.

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That quickly all changed. And of course, there were plenty of founders who were, including Patrick Henry, who were very concerned about this national government from the get -go and wrote great lengths against what they were assembling there.

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But it didn't take long for the federal government in order to begin to assume powers for itself, not granted to it in the

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Constitution. In fact, this power that has been taken from the states and given to the federal government has been done through the federal judiciary.

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In fact, just six years after the ink had dried on the Constitution, we have our first case where the federal judiciary, the

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Supreme Court, assumed powers for itself and the federal government not granted to them in the

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Constitution. The states responded by passing the 11th

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Amendment. Go and look up the 11th Amendment. That was passed because of a

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Supreme Court opinion. And over the next 20 years, the Supreme Court continued to do this in the cases they heard, writing powers to themselves.

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That's why Thomas Jefferson and others of the founders were at war with them for the last 20 years of their life.

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The judiciary was to be the weakest branch of government. And they were flipping everything on their head and making themselves the most powerful of the three branches of the federal government.

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And so by the time you get to 1824, the Supreme Court passes another opinion, issues another opinion, which undoes the 11th

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Amendment. That's how arrogant they are. They've been doing this. So we're not up against some little pipsqueak tyrant here,

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John. We're not up, this is a tyrant that's been strengthening itself for over 200 years.

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So the states battled this out. I mean, you should read the history of it. There's a massive battle between state authority and federal authority.

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And you know, the historians will say, and the federal authorities won, and that type of thing. But our founders wanted the states to retain the authorities they have, as I mentioned earlier.

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I know I talk a lot. So - No, you're doing good. Okay, so the federal authorities, our founders wanted the states to retain their authority.

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Now, what the states have been reduced to is mere implementation centers of unjust and immoral federal law, policy, and court opinion.

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They've like rescinded all of their authority. They take money from the federal beast.

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And so, and the federal master's been wise that way. He's bought off the allegiance of the states through the federal purse.

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Yeah, that's - This is a terrible thing. Yeah, it's a sad story. It really is. I wanna get a little practical, if we may.

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So you're a Christian, you just wanna be left alone, do your job, raise your family, go to church, right? We don't have that luxury anymore, but that's the

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Pollyanna world that many Christians wanna live in. And they think that world still exists, let's say.

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But there's going to be questions, and there already are, but there's gonna be more questions coming up.

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You know, do we, let's make one really practical. Right now, we have a presidential election, which is not, it's not over.

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And I've talked about this on the podcast. We have one side declaring victory with the whole entire media, social media, et cetera, trumpeting that.

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What if we get into a position in which we have someone who is going to, and I don't know what this even looks like, but they are going to take that authority before it's called, or try to oust the person who's there now.

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Is there now a responsibility that Christians have that they must submit to someone who actually has not gone through the process?

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And there has not been an actual declaration, like an official one, that this person actually won the contest that they were supposed to win.

41:17

Yeah, well, that'll be a difficult thing to deal with. Things like this have happened in the past where there's, here in our own state, for example, we had a jurisdiction battle over the

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Federal Fugitive Slave Act. In 1854, they arrested a runaway slave, and 5 ,000 people gathered here in Milwaukee, down at the courthouse, outside the jail.

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Making a long story short, it's an awesome story. 30 men broke the jailhouse door down.

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The slave was brought out, put on the back of a flatbed wagon. He looked over the sea of faces, and he said two words, glory, hallelujah.

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And they took him to Waukesha, which is near here, and eventually made it back to Lake Michigan, and took him over to Canada, and he died of old age.

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Our federal government wanted to get some pound of flesh out of this, so they went after a newspaperman named

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Sherman Booth. And Sherman Booth had made up the flyers, and then rode his horse up and down the streets of Milwaukee like Paul Revere of old, yelling, a man's liberty is at stake.

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Rally at the courthouse at 2 p .m. And he even said later, how surprised he was that 5 ,000 people showed up.

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And so they decided to go after him, and this ended up being a battle of jurisdictions for five years.

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Our state Supreme Court, our legislature, defied the United States Supreme Court, and defied the entire federal government all the way up to the

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Civil War. Historians say it was a battle where it never was resolved.

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It was a battle of jurisdictions that never was resolved. So that's what happens when two sides are fighting over authority, okay?

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And that's important to understand. So people are gonna have to look at what has happened, who is espousing good rule, who's espousing lawlessness, who has acted lawless in the midst of all this, and then they're going to have to make their allegiance with that authority.

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So if there's a state and a president at odds with each other, Christian people have to determine who's right, the president or the states.

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If it's two presidents, like what you're talking about, vying for power, people are gonna have to decide who's right, who followed the process right.

43:46

And I agree with you, and I said this to the congregation on Sunday morning, this is not over. They wanna act like it's over because the network has called the election for Biden.

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Well, guess what? Networks don't cut to call the election for anyone. And just because a bunch of leftists came out in the street and danced about it, doesn't make it official.

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We have laws, believe it or not. We have a process that has to be followed.

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And that process is still working itself out at this point. And we have to see what is found as the processes.

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Is there fraud that can be exposed in the public? Well, there are many Christians this weekend who are gonna be going to Stop the

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Steal rallies. You can go to stopthesteal .us. I think every capital city just about has one.

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And I'm hearing though from a lot of Christian leaders that Biden's already won. So this would actually be seen as something that,

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I don't know how to put it, but a rebellion of some kind, if you attend one of these rallies. But in actuality, whether you support

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Trump or not, I know a lot of the motives of people that are concerned is they want election integrity. They want their states to be able to go through the process.

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And this is actually something that I think a Christian should be about is making sure that there's accountability.

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The Lord hates unjust weights and measures. Lying, stealing, these are wrong things. And we need to make sure that these things are not happening or if they are, that we correct it.

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Sounds like you agree with that. So I'm preaching to the choir. I do agree with that. In fact, I'm preaching through, I'm an expositional preacher.

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I'm preaching through the 41st book of the Bible. I've been at the same church for pastor for 33 years. I'm preaching through judges right now.

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And so I happen to be in judges three, and it was just happened to be one of those passages where you could end up talking about this election thing and those types of matters.

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And in that sermon, I take the churchmen to task because what you just described, it is so awful how the churchmen are.

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And I'm telling you, I tell people this all the time, because of this form of Christianity we have, which is rooted and based in pietism, not piety,

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I'm talking about pietism, a movement from the 17th century. I said, because of that, it's a form of Christianity that's wrong biblically.

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And it's a form of Christianity that's incapable of reforming itself. God must judge it.

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And he is. And you look at scripture, he uses persecution and judgment to correct his people.

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He will always purify his bride. He will. And he often has to use persecution and judgment to do it.

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The ministers, you hit it exactly on the head. They are so indifferent to these types of matters.

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And all they preach is peace, peace, when there is no peace, that we should just obey, lay down.

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It is what it is. When anyone can see something's going on here, this hasn't been done right.

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Wisconsin is one of the states where we saw it wasn't done right. Trump had clearly won.

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And all of a sudden at 3 .30 in the morning, he jumps up with a massive amount of votes.

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And then they just keep counting, Biden does. Biden comes up with a massive amount of votes and they just keep counting into the next day.

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And then I have a friend who's a demographer. He took and showed the last 20 years of voting in Milwaukee County.

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And in Milwaukee County, suddenly they went like this, this time, which he said was a mathematical improbability.

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So here we have this huge problem that you can clearly see. I have relatives in Michigan.

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They had the same thing there. All of a sudden at 3 .30 in the morning, counting stopped. And when things popped up, all of a sudden there were 120 ,000 new votes for Biden and no new votes for Trump.

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How would that even be possible? So there's so much going on. I have friends in Pennsylvania.

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You can't believe the corruption that's been going on out there. And so they're getting this together, this process together, but the church can remain indifferent to it.

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So anyways, I'm on at sermonaudio .com. And if people wanna listen to my sermons, they just go to sermonaudio .com,

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click on speaker button, hit Matthew Chuella. I have a lot of sermons dealing with civil government matters and they might wanna listen to this one on Judges chapter 3 with a plan on getting posted this evening.

48:19

Well, I will put the link to that in the info section if someone wants to go check it out. And I'm also gonna put a link to your book.

48:25

Now, I think it's on Amazon. Is there anywhere else you wanna send people to get your book, The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate? Sure, the book has done really well.

48:32

It's sold over 40 ,000 copies now, which is amazing for a little self -published work. But they, yeah, thank you.

48:40

They can go to our website, defytyrants .com. Okay. defytyrants .com.

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We used to be called lessermagistrate .com, but nobody could ever remember that. Everyone always remembers defytyrants.

48:53

No one asks, how do you spell that? You know, or anything like that. So we have tons of resources there, many great stories.

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And, you know, this whole COVID thing gave so many opportunities to see the interposition of lesser magistrates.

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The scary thing is I saw the blithe obedience of the civil authorities doing everything the person above them said.

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But yet there were examples of interposition. And if I could just share one with you. Please. In Illinois, at the end of May, their governor, like our governor here in Wisconsin, acting like a tyrant.

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Our Republican legislature hasn't checked him. But anyways, down in Illinois, the governor at the end of May made his latest thing, that if any businessman opens their business prior to him saying they can open their business, they will now be charged with a misdemeanor crime.

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Okay. Out of all the counties down in Illinois, one lone county,

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Madison County, way over on the western end of the state, gathered their county supervisors together and issued a resolution and a press release declaring that they would not obey the governor, that their businessmen are free to reopen their businesses now, and that they'll use all the power in their possession, all the authority they possess, to protect their businessmen from the governor and from the state of Illinois.

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That's the interposition of lesser magistrate. The very next day, the

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Illinois State Police issued a press release saying, we will not arrest anyone in the entire state who opens their business.

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We will not arrest them under the governor's decree of being charged with a misdemeanor.

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We won't do it. And the day after that, the governor rescinded his order.

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That's how the doctrine of the lesser magistrate is supposed to work. Wow. And you know, that's an inspiration.

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I did not know about that story. Christians are often told when they're young, if they show any kind of zeal for the

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Lord by pastors often, well, you should go into the ministry. That's how you serve the Lord. And that's the only way somehow,

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I guess you can serve the Lord. And I've seen this in many churches I've been part of. There's no one in the church who is involved in politics sometimes, or trying to be elected to public office.

51:15

But this is something, it sounds like Christians could and should be trying to get involved with. They can do good.

51:21

I mean, you could apply that situation, I suppose, to abortion if you wanted, and say, we're just not gonna do it here, right? Absolutely.

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In fact, I tell people that all the time. And people love the doctrine. We've seen people that reinvigorated to take action on behalf of the pre -born to see this murder stop.

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Because what they saw, John, is the whole thing of, you know, they would work with a political pro -life organization.

51:45

They'd pass a law and the federal courts would trample it. The Supreme Court would trample it. The Supreme Court has revisited abortion 38 times and has upheld it every time.

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And yet we keep doing the same thing over and over again. And what we're saying is, that isn't how a federalism works.

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A federalism works this way. The other branches of government check the branch who's acting lawlessly.

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They wanna decree murder. They've issued their opinion. We don't obey it in our jurisdiction. We don't acknowledge their opinion.

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We ignore their opinion. That's how it's supposed to be. And so, yes, this doctrine totally applies to the pre -born.

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The states or governors, governors have executive authority. The state legislature has legislative authority.

52:30

They should check the federal government and the federal judiciary, the

52:36

Supreme Court, and not allow this bloodshed to go on any longer. And you've seen how the Republicans have played

52:41

Christian people for nearly 50 years now under the guise of, well, you gotta vote for our presidential candidate because they appoint the

52:50

Supreme Court justices and you want Roe undone, right? Okay, so when Roe was established, six of the nine justices were

52:58

Republican appointed. And for the next 35 years after that, with many changes and replacements made by Republican presidents of justices, the

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Republicans always held the majority for the next 35 years, either seven to two or eight to one.

53:17

Wow. And yet the bloodshed still continues. So this is a huge problem. And that's why we must teach these things to people about true federalism, about the interposition of lesser magistrate in order to stop the tyranny of the superior authority.

53:35

Yeah, well, that is excellent, Pastor Matt Trilla. Thank you so much for lending us your time to explain this.

53:42

And if people wanna know more, they can go to defytyrants .com, which we'll put in the info section or sermon audio, and they can check out your sermons there.

53:50

Any final thoughts? Be in prayer, draw close to him.

53:57

Purity of life, it matters. We're going into huge evil here.

54:04

And we all know our nation deserves the righteous judgment of God. We are absolute rebellion regarding our laws and things.

54:12

Understand also much of the current state of our situation is because of the pulpits.

54:18

It's because of the form of Christianity we've had for decades and decades and decades now. And all the consequence of Christian people pulling out of civil government matters,

54:27

Christians pull out, wicked men filled the void. And now they've made their worldview, law, policy, and court opinion.

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And as you can see, it's a complete insane asylum to the point now where men don't know that they're men, women don't know that they're women, two men are marrying each other, two women are marrying each other.

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This is extremely important for people to understand that God's word speaks to all areas of life, including the area of civil government.

54:58

We have a duty to instruct the magistrates in what their duty is for the office

55:03

God has given them. So draw close to him. Sounds good. Hey, thank you so much for joining us.