Christian Revolution — Winkie Pratney

Christian Revolution and the Christian’s Relationship to Government

I'm going to talk a little bit tonight about the Christian's relationship to government and to politics and to revolution and also to war. So that's what we're going to deal with tonight, since we have to deal with it sometime, no better time than the present.

Christian Revolution and Social Reform

I want to talk about Christian revolution, give you some guidelines on the peculiar revolutions that are taking place in society, what God has to say about them. I have never been in a genuine revolution, I've been in some miniature little revolutions which you could call gang fights, gang wars.

When I was a little kid, there's something about being a skinny kid that everybody always picks on you when you're a skinny kid. And I've always been skinny, it's not my fault. When I was little, I got myself a gang, I needed a gang because there's something about a skinny kid that makes all the big kids pick on you.

When I went to primary school, there was all these kids that came from the children's home and there's something about kids that come from children's homes that make them very large and gigantic. Kind of the food they feed them, they have three eyes, one in the middle of their forehead.

And I was, there's something weird about a little kid, they always pick on them. And I had this big guy, his name was Ross Wibley, and you can just tell with a name like Ross Wibley, that he's the kind of guy that will beat up on you, as soon as look at you.

So I got some friends of mine and we put a gang together, basically for protection. I remember going to see a movie called The Desert Song, so I got myself a little mask, cloak. When we fought at school, we were in a wild time, I used to fight with a bolt on the end of a piece of rope, a big old bolt.

When I went in to fight, I swung it, like a helicopter. And clear a path for the rest of the gang. And then, that was the way we fought. I've always been, ever since a little kid, people picked on me.

I remember this one guy chased me, where he was running after me, and I'd seen in some movies some guy, you know, he jumped on a, he jumped on one of these, grabbed a rope and he swung, kicked his way right through a whole bunch of guys.

Some guys chasing after me, this guy running after me, you know, and this guy came up in front of me and I, there was a tree right in front of me, and back into my mind came this thing of a kick, you know.

So I jump up on the tree and I swing and I kick. Kicked him right in the mouth, you know. He chased me all over the school, man, I was only little. And I had a suitcase, looked like this, and a little lunchbox.

Now here's your lunchbox. I had that full of lunch. And I go flying out of the classroom and this big old kid comes chasing after me, and there's a teacher inside the classroom, you know, and just a little hallway.

I grab my lunchbox and I beat him over the head with the lunchbox as he came in. Thing busted right in my hand. And the teacher came out, because he was screaming and yelling, and I was beating away with the handle of this lunchbox.

The teacher came out and the teacher says, What are you doing? And I said, He broke my lunchbox. The teacher took him away and caned him, you know. Because we have such violent young people in New Zealand, we have capital punishment there.

You have to bend over and get caned. Like this. So I, after I arrived at high school, had the enviable reputation of being the guy who got the second greatest number of canings in the history of the school.

I don't know how it happened, it just turned out like that. And the very first day, here I come, I've graduated from primary school, my lunchbox days are behind me. I've come to be a serious scholar, you know, for freshman in high school.

I come in and the very first day we get a whole day off. And they have a game called King of Semi. Now it's just a very simple game. Bunch of people line up in one end, one kid stands in the middle. You run through, from this side to the other end, and this kid tries to grab you.

He can grab you, pick you up. Then he, the kid he grabs, he joins him, see. Then everybody runs back again, and they try and grab somebody else until finally, there's a big old mob of people. It's not very much fun for the first time, but you wait till you get on in this game somewhat, you know.

And there's 90 people here and 3 here. That's really when it gets fun. Well, being a skinny kid, I learned one thing. How to run. Very fast, very rapidly. I had to stay alive. And you'll never guess, which one of the 3, who was one of the 3 people was the 90 people in the middle.

And there was this one guy, he was the guy who got the most canes in the school. His name was Boggs. You can tell with a name like Boggs, that he really beats up on people. And Boggs was in the middle of this thing, and he tried to grab me.

Reached out his hand and I stopped like that, and he went. I kept on running. And the embarrassing thing was, when I got to the safe place here, he didn't stop running. And neither did I. So my very first day, I was running all over the school and he was asking me, there's something about a skinny kid that makes people pick on them all the time.

So, I'm acquainted quite early with violence, and can understand some of the feelings of other skinny kids in society, and the feelings they have. Now when we look in the Bible about Christian revolution, we are not talking about a political thing.

Christian revolution is never political. Do not misunderstand me. Politics is a very corrupt field. But I believe it's time we got some Christians in politics, real Christians. And I'm not against Christians infiltrating secular society and changing it around.

I believe if we could have some real men of God in there, placing them in key places, we'd see some tremendous things. But it's really hard to get there, and to pray your way through all kinds of demonic forces to get into politics.

When you get there, you have to pray to remain a Christian, you know. So anyway, that's the thing. It may interest you to know just how much reform has taken place, social reforms, by Christians who took intelligently and carefully the political platforms, and went in there and did something.

William Booth of the Salvation Army, in the days when William Booth was preaching, they were having little girls, sometimes seven, eight, or nine years old. They were drugging them, knocking them out, and shipping them out in coffins into white slavery in overseas markets, when William Booth came on.

And they really had a bad white slavery, prostitution thing. They would invite in girls from the country into the chief centre parts of London. They'd make advertisements in the newspaper. We have plenty of openings for girls to be maids and various things in well-to-do houses.

You know, sell everything you have and come out and we'll set you up, you know. So they would, all right. The girls would come in expecting to get placed in some job, and they'd say, I'm sorry, all the jobs are closed.

And here's a girl, she's sold everything she's had. She's arrived here with a little bag, ready to be a maid. And they would trick her into prostitution, and then just keep her going on this prostitution trade.

Really bad news. And in William Booth's day, the age of consent was sixteen. Politics were trying to lower it to thirteen. And William Booth went in and pushed it up. Politically. There was a guy by the name of Keir Hardie.

Radiant Christian, saved under D .L. Moody's ministry. Hardie went in there and completely revamped the entire Labour laws and began a brand new party, the Labour Party. That is Christian political action.

He went in there, fought it. I'm thinking of Lord Shaftesbury. They used to have a little kid, six or seven years old, his chimney sweep. And this is the way they'd clean the chimney. They'd send the kid up the chimney.

And that little kid would have to climb up there with his brush, sit up inside this hot chimney and sweep out all the stuff. And many of them would die. They'd be choked to death inside these flumes. And then they had little kids working in mines and stuff.

And Shaftesbury went in there and he fought those things and put in child labour laws so that it was possible for a little kid like that to be put to work. Now those are political actions taken place by Christians.

Who got in there and learned how to use the gospel as a platform of social protest. And understand this, the Christian is the only person who can really do a powerful protest because he has an absolute to work from.

Now, the rest of the society around us, how do they get their laws without God? Have you ever thought about that? Where do you get your law from if you reject God? Where do you get your basis of right and wrong?

Well, here's one way. You could call it the dictatorship of the 51 percent. We call it sociological law. And basically it goes like this. To find out what is really right, you take a census of the country.

And you ask a person, what is your feelings on this particular issue? Do you think it ought to be done? Do you think this ought to be legalized? And then I write down whatever you say. If you say yes, or I'm unsure, or I'd like to know more about it, or you say no.

And then I write that down. When I finish, I add up the opinions of the country. I find out what the country believes. And then I pass a law. And whatever the country feels as a majority is right, then I do that.

That's sociological law. That means if I can get 51 percent of the country to agree that something is right, we'll pass a law and make it like that. Now you think about that for a little while and you find a very scary thing.

51 percent of the people believe it is right to kill everybody with long hair and a beard. That'll happen. If 51 percent of the country believes they should kill everybody with no hair, that'll happen.

If 51 percent of the country believes that the legalization of drugs is a good thing, then it will happen. That's sociological law. And the only thing is, you have to get the, it's just basically the opinions of people that is the basis of law.

If whatever people think is best, then that's what you make best. And you enforce it by law. You pass a law and say, this is what everybody wants, and boom, you do that. Now where does the Christian come from?

The marvelous thing the Christian has is that he has the authority of a prophet. And this is in the Old Testament. He had a base for social protest. He came in and he said, listen, this is wrong. And the person said, who said it?

And he said, God said it was. And the guy says, well how does God know? He says, he just happens to be in that business. Do you see the power of the Christian? He doesn't stand on any particular, he doesn't say, listen, I am left or I am right.

He stands in the middle and he shoots at both sides. He comes up to this group of people and they say, who are you for? These are what we are standing for. We want to see justice, we want to see law and order.

And the Christian says, right on, I want to see that too. And they say, oh wonderful, you are in the Ku Klux Klan with us. The Christian says, no. He says, well don't you believe in what we are? He says, yes, but the trouble with you is, boom, boom, boom, boom, bigotry, prejudice.

And the guy says, you must be a communist. And then the new left hears about this, they say, right on brother, you are with us, you know. And the Christian says, he says, I suppose you are also interested in the cause of the oppressed and you don't like superstition being used to control people and he uses classic Marxist terms.

And the Christian listens, he says, yeah that's true. The leftist says, oh great, you know. And then he says, the trouble however with you is, and chops the leftist up, see. And the guy says, who's side are you on?

He says, I'm on God's side. Now there's the power of the Christian. He has a totally different platform of protest. He doesn't have to listen to so-and-so's opinion or so-and-so's opinion. He can come to God and get what God says and do what God says.

And preach what God says. And so he comes in as an alien to a culture. And of course this does have its disadvantages, being neither on this side or that side. You ever heard about the guy in the Civil War, he didn't want to get messed up with things.

And he was scared if he put a uniform on, that he'd get shot by one side. So what he did is he put the jacket of one side on and he put the trousers on of the other side. You know what happened? Both sides shot at him.

Now if you're going to be a Christian, you're going to be sticking up for what is right. You'll find a weird thing. Everybody hates you. That's why we've said it's never popular to be a Christian. That's why we're having camp and I start off by saying, prepare to be unpopular.

Because that's exactly what will happen. You come in for Jesus Christ, you're not going to stick up for a blind, foolish, baseless patriotism. Or a blind, foolish, baseless destruction. You're going to stand for Jesus Christ and what he says is right.

And you have some absolutes to work on. What does society do without absolutes? Well actually, they don't even have a right to protest. Have you ever thought about this? Some kids are marching and they say, listen man, our important thing we're trying to get across is that every man ought to be free.

Be free. Nobody has a right to tell anybody what to do. That's why we're marching. Have you ever thought about that for a little while? See? I am here to demand the right that everybody ought to be allowed to do whatever they want.

And I demand the same thing, isn't it? It just bothers me sometimes. I wonder why some people really do march for things. I don't always think their reasons are as altruistic and as virtuous as we may be led to believe.

I've talked to a lot of kids and I say, what do you really want? Well, we want social justice. What they really want is to throw a rock at a window someplace. Because their mother beat them up when they were little kids or something, you know.

A lot of times that happens. The Christian, when he protests, intelligently protests. And I often find complete hypocrisy in some protest movements. I find a kid who is really against the destruction of the ecology of our society.

He says, I'm really against polishing up this air, man. And what you really want to do is join our ecology society. I'm going to start a little revolution in planes and in buses. People pull out cigarettes and start puffing them into the air.

I'm going to get out a can of Lysol or something similar. And every time a person takes a puff, I'm going to take a spray backwards. And when they say, what are you doing? I'll say, what are you doing?

This interferes with my rights. It interferes with my rights. And I'll say, you put yours out and I'll put mine out. The power of a Christian then, in his basis of revolution, is the same power the prophet had.

The prophet had a different kind of basis of standard. It was not invested simply in the fact that there was an authority there. We'll see in a second what the Bible has to say about what God has given to authority.

But you see, the man in authority was not a man who was above correction. We see in the Bible a man called David that God set up to be king. And David was a good man and a good king. He obeyed God. He did what God told him to do.

But one day David blew it. He got him sitting around, lazing around, instead of doing his job. Got out his binoculars or whatever they had in those days. And he got messed up with Bathsheba. Finally got her pregnant.

Had to send back, tried to call back her husband, Uriah the Hittite, from the field. So that the people would think that the baby that she was going to have from David was Uriah's baby. This guy was so faithful to David, he didn't want to go home, spend time with his wife.

He said, no I'm going to stick with you. So finally David arranges things so that this guy will be murdered. So nobody would ever be able to say, well Uriah, you know, Uriah wasn't home. And then he does this.

David the king. Now see how he's in power, he's in authority, he has everything. David pulls all the strings in the kingdom. Nobody can speak to him and say, oh David, you know, I suggest you do this.

David is the boss. He does all this stuff. And he's got a problem. The thing that he does displeases the Lord. And only one person knows about it. Bathsheba knows about it. Uriah is dead. He died not even knowing why he was murdered.

What David did is he sent Uriah the Hittite out on the wall. He put him right in the front. And he told one of his generals. He said, listen, set him right out in the front. And when you come in to attack the city, pull back and leave him without cover.

And make sure that he gets killed. Now here's David, the king. He's done all this stuff, sung all these beautiful songs about God. And now sin is making David a murderer. Now nobody found that out. See, it was all covered and hidden.

And David thought, well, you know, it's all, it's all covered over. He goes back and he marries this beautiful girl, Bathsheba. And all the people say, isn't David a kind king? See, here is this poor, lonely girl.

She's got her husband's child here. She has to bring it up all on her own. And David is such a big-hearted king that he goes and marries this girl. So that the child will have a father. Actually brings him into the royal family.

What a marvelous king David is. Nobody knew. Except Bathsheba, and David, and God. And then, into this chain of authority, that is unable to be broken, God sends a prophet. And thank God for prophets.

God's going to send some more in the last days. A prophet is a weird character. He comes out of nowhere. Nobody knows what his pedigree is. He doesn't seem to be brought up in the right Bible colleges.

He just comes right out of the desert and he says, Thus saith the Lord. Boom! And he throws. But the prophet is kind of God's commando. He's a bomb thrower. He comes in and blows things up when they need to be blown up.

Only, the bombs he throws are words. And not, not the other kind. This guy's name was Nathan. And it just so happened that he was a friend of David. He was a close friend of David. David loved Nathan.

He respected him. And Nathan comes in to the king. Now notice his attitude. Nathan doesn't say, Alright David. I've been talking to God about you. And people think you're super cool. But actually I know different.

See he has respect for David's authority. He knows who he is. He doesn't come in saying, Here I am baby. You're about to get it. You know. He doesn't say that. He just tells David a story. He says, David I want to tell you a story.

David says, oh I like stories. You know. Tell me a story. And Nathan says, alright I'll tell you a story. Once there was a very rich man. This man had everything he wanted. Sheeps, flocks, everything in the world.

David says, yeah go on. He says this rich man one day had somebody to come for supper. And he said in the same city there lived a poor man. This poor man didn't have hardly anything. He only had one thing.

He had a little lamb. That he loved just like his own sister. Or his own child. He really loved this little lamb. He treasured it. He talked to it every day. He petted it. He really loved it and cared about it.

It was the only real thing he had that he loved. David sitting there with his tears coming down his eyes. Thinking what a lovely man was this little lamb. Because he'd been a shepherd once. See. And then he says this rich man had somebody to come for supper.

And you know what he did David? David says no. He says he went to see that poor man and he took his lamb. And he killed it. To give to this other man for supper. David said, he what? He said he killed it.

He said David what would you do to a man like that? What kind of punishment would you give a man like that? Boy all David's righteous indignation arises within his righteous soul. You know. I am the king he says.

Boy you just show me that guy and I'll give him this, that and the other. And he lifts a big line of things. Everything except dangling him by the ears and flaying him alive. You know. He works all these horrifying.

He ought to be this, this, that. Nathan just standing there looking at him. And when David's finished. Nathan walks up to him and he says David. You are the man. There they be as a prophet. A man who has the courage to put principles above personality.

And that is the power of Christian protest. We have a base of real values to really preach. And to say there are some real rights and some real wrongs. What makes a lonely desert rat coming from the wilderness by the name of Moses.

And stand there with a stick in his hand. And tell the king of the whole earth. Thus saith the Lord let my people go. I'll tell you. Because he knows who he represents. Who is Moses? A guy who blew it.

Graduated from the universities of Egypt and everything and blew it. Out in the desert 80 years he's a sheep herder. And then God speaks to him and says Moses you're ready now. We'd write him off, put him on an assembly retirement check or something.

God is about ready to use Moses. When everybody else has retired him. And here comes Moses. He's coming back. And he's not the same man. He went away. And an interesting thing. Told this to some of the kids.

When Moses said who shall I say sent me. This God talking to. What do I, you know he's the king of the world. Who shall I say sent me God. You know what God said. He said you tell him I am. And the interesting word is he says I am that I am sent you.

But you could translate that. I will be what I will be. Or it is perfectly permissible to translate these two Hebrew expressions. Half and half. Like this. I will be what I am. You tell Pharaoh. I will be what I am sent you.

Now we just talked about God and what he's like. And there's old Pharaoh. You know. Sitting up there with a little bug on his throne. You know. And here comes in a desert rat from the wilderness. With white hair and a white beard.

And a big long stick in his hand. And Pharaoh says who sent you kid. Moses says I will be what I am sent me. And he says this to you Pharaoh. Let my people go. That is protest. See. And we can get passionate about protest and not do it mindlessly.

Kid is out there you know. Let's change the world. Let's make it unselfish. Let's really do something. Somewhere. Somehow. I see kids. I'm against selfishness. I see you're selfish. Well that's true. You know.

Talked to a young Marxist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He said I hate this system. I want to see it changed. He said I want to see the world changed. You know. I said that's true. I want to see that too.

And I said how can you change the world until you yourself are changed. Here you are. You're trying to make the world unselfish. Your own life is selfish as the devil. Look at Barabbas. He's against. He's a revolutionary in the Bible.

What is he against? Well he's against the Romans. Why is he against the Romans? Because the Romans have stolen from his people. They've invaded their rights. And they've even killed some of his people.

And Barabbas is against the Romans, man. Because of all the rotten things they've done. You know who Barabbas is? A thief. A violent revolutionary and a murderer. Isn't that weird? You can be very strongly against the things you're doing yourself.

Seems funny to me. Even the people that march against the war and quote the commandment thou shall not kill. Will kill unborn children by genetic damage with drugs. It seems very strange to me how people who march against thou shall not kill.

Should drink booze. And drop drugs. Kill more people. In one year in the United States and the whole Vietnam war put together. Very strange. Listen if you're going to protest. You better protest from a solid base.

And be able to say listen. This is what I have found and it's real. Now society you change. My friend Lauren Cunningham was in Latin America when the real revolution was going on. He said he'd come in there to preach and suddenly bang, boom.

Machine guns, bombs being thrown. People running up and down the streets. So being in the middle of a real revolution he asked one of the revolutionaries. He said what do you want here? The guy said we want freedom man, we want freedom.

He said oh that's interesting. He says how are you going to get it? Destroy this government, we're going to burn it to the ground, we want freedom. He said what kind of government are you going to put in its place?

He said we don't want any government, we want freedom. And that is mindless. Because every single revolution always introduces a new form of government. Now watch and we'll show you a very important thing.

The important thing is this. In the book of Romans, God tells us, Romans 13. God tells us that he gives a nation the form of government it deserves. Romans chapter 13 verses 1 to 7. I'm going to read from another translation here.

Follow along in the King James version. Romans chapter 13. And the Bible is filled with the way God governs and directs man. We've already talked about this a little bit today. Listen to this. Verse 13.

Everyone should obey the government that is over him, because there is no government except that which is put there by God. In William's translation it goes like this. Everybody must obey the civil authorities that are over him, for no authority exists except by God's permission.

The existing authorities have been established by him. And your King James says, let every soul be subject to the higher powers. And then scripture goes on and it tells us a great deal about resisting authority and tells us ultimately we're resisting God.

Biblical Authority, Family Discipline, and Obedience

Let me show you a little basis, first of all, of this rather strange scripture, which would be a very unpopular scripture today. Because most kids, the word authority is a dirty word. It is a swear word today.

If you really want to say a swear word to young people, say authority. It's become, you know, you just say authority. This kind of thing happens when you say authority. But I want you to see a little change here.

We talked this morning to the kids about every person is born with a love of conscious freedom. Everybody likes to be free. Everybody loves being free. It is good to be free. But that freedom must be regulated so other people's happiness are not harmed by the exercise of that freedom.

That's just simple intelligence. In other words, a little kid wants to have its own way, but it cannot always have its own way, because having its own way perennially will interfere with the happiness of its parents.

So you're supposed to discipline the little kid. Curb that love of conscious freedom. Guide him so he knows there are some basic limits of wisdom within which he can exercise his conscious freedom. I want you to imagine a train running along the tracks.

Now that train, let's imagine it has this desire for conscious freedom. It looks at its tracks and it says, I hate these tracks. I want to be free. So it jumps right off its tracks and it does its own thing.

Do you see that as long as a train runs within its prescribed guidelines, it can be free to go whatever speed it can possibly do. It can reverse, the guy can pull on the whistle, they can run up and down inside, they can yell, they can do anything they want within the guidelines of the train.

But if that train goes off its tracks, they'll yell all right and that's the fun. They have, if you like, a freedom within a form. And that's what God's base of freedom is. There is a form which regulates for us the happiness.

So we do not bust into somebody else's happiness, but we are free within those guidelines to create, to invent, to dream, to paint, to all these other creative things. Now, God teaches us to respond to his government or his rulership by a chain of authority which begins, it's supposed to begin, in the home.

We drew this thing in the home, we drew it like a little diamond here, and on top of the diamond, we draw a little chipping tool, and on top of the chipping tool, we draw a hammer, and then on top of the hammer, we draw a hand that holds onto that hammer, and you can see I'm a cool artist by the way I draw hands.

One day I'll learn how to draw a hand. This chipping tool represents the kid who's growing up in this house. The bottom part of the chipping tool represents his mother, and this thing, the top part of the chipping tool represents his dad.

The hammer represents the word of God. The one who's holding it, God himself. God has designed a family as a basic training institute in which we get all the hard knocks chipped out of us, and we learn to respond to corrections and guidelines.

Can you imagine little kids who doesn't want anybody to tell them what to do? And he cannot understand how grown-ups can have all the money they want to spend on ice cream and not eat ice cream every day.

He just cannot understand that. He says, if I had all the money in the world, I'd eat ice cream for breakfast, ice cream for lunch, ice cream for dinner, and ice cream for supper. This little kid says.

Let's say his dad gives him this choice. He says, alright, today you make the rules. The kid says, oh goody, today we're going to eat nothing but ice cream. The dad says, is that a rule? He says, yeah, that's the law.

Nothing else but ice cream. Dad says, alright, tomorrow we start with ice cream. Kid gets up in the morning, a big old plate of strawberry ice cream. No! Finishes the plate of ice cream. Give me some more!

Dad brings in some more strawberry ice cream. He goes off to school, he's all happy. He says, just what I had for breakfast. The guy says, weedy, snow, cornflakes, no, Captain Crunch, no. What did you have?

Ice cream! Your mother gave you ice cream? Oh, you've got a good mother. I wish I had a mother. Yeah, and we're going to eat ice cream all day. The kid says, wow, you know what a heavy mother you have.

Kid comes home. Ah, what's for lunch? Well, you made the rule. Today we eat ice cream. Oh, boy! Chocolate ice cream, chocolate ice cream. Puts the ice cream in there and puts half a packet of chocolate ice cream away.

For lunchtime. Comes back in the afternoon and he wants a snack after school. I'm here for a snack. Well, your ice cream's waiting for you. Kid looks at the plate and says, could I have a cookie too? No, ice cream today.

Remember you made the rule? Alright, yeah, that's the way to eat. Didn't eat so much this time. Supper. In comes a big plate of steaming ice cream. For dessert, what else but ice cream? Nighttime, that kid doesn't even want to look at ice cream.

But his mother brings him his final goodnight snack. Ice cream. At the end of that day, that kid is throwing up all over the place. See? Now, how come these horrible cruel parents didn't give him ice cream all the time?

Because they know some things he doesn't know. That's why. And whenever some people know more than you do, smarter or wiser, or gooder sometimes. Then, gooder. You've got to be able to be willing to bow that love of conscious freedom and to accept instruction from them.

That's the basis of government. Alright? Should begin in a home, in a family. It should cover all the way through to governing authority. And God says ultimately then, see the parents themselves are under a chain of authority.

That goes up into God allowing various rulers to take position. Now we want to look again at the Bible. I want you to write some scriptures down to see that the man or the kind of leadership that God sets up over a country is that which God sees the country really deserves most.

Please turn the tape over for side two of Winky's message.

New Testament Commands to Submit to Authorities

Romans 13, and again verse 7, says this. Give therefore to all that do. Pay tribute or taxes to those to whom taxes are due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. One teacher.