Requirement for Consent

And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king's words that he had spoken to me. So they said, "Let us rise up and build." Then they set their hands to this good work.

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But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?"

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So I answered them, and said to them, " The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants

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will arise and build [the wall of separation between church and state] ..."

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[ Neh. 3:17-18 , Bible, NKJV]

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The “wall” of separation between “church”, which was the Jews, and “state”, which was the surrounding unbelievers and 8 governments, they were talking about above was not only a physical wall, but also a legal one as well! The Jews wanted to 9 be “separate”, and therefore “sovereign” over themselves, their families, and their government and not be subject to the 10 surrounding heathens and nonbelievers around them. They selected Heaven as their "domicile" and God's laws as the basis 11 for their self-government , which was a theocracy, and therefore became "strangers" on the earth who were hated by their 12 neighbors. The Lord, in wanting us to be sanctified and “separate” as His “bride”, is really insisting that we also be a 13 “foreign er ” or “stranger” with respect to our unbelieving neighbors and the people within the heathen state that has 14 territorial jurisdiction where we physically live: 15

"Come out from among them [the unbelievers and government idolaters ] And be separate [“sovereign” and “foreign”], says the Lord.

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Do not touch what is unclean [corrupted],

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And I will receive you. I will be a Father to you,

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And you shall be my sons and daughters,

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Says the Lord Almighty."

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[ 2 Corinthians 6:17-18 , Bible, NKJV]

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When we follow the above admonition of our Lord to become “sanctified” and therefore “separate”, then we will inevitably 24 be persecuted, just as Jesus warned, when He said: 25

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you . Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hated My father also . If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father . But this happened that the word might

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be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’”

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[John 15:18-25, Bible]

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The persecution will come precisely and mainly because we are sovereign and therefore refuse to be governed by any 36 authority except God and His sovereign Law. Now do you understand why Christians, more than perhaps any other faith, 37 have been persecuted and tortured by governments throughout history? The main reason for their relentless persecution is 38 that they are a threat to government power because they demand autonomy and self-government and do not yield their 39 sovereignty to any hostile (“foreign”) power or law other than God and His Holy law. This is the reason, for instance, why 40 the Roman Emperor Nero burned Christians and their houses when he set fire to Rome and why he made them part of the 41 barbaric gladiator spectacle: He positively hated anyone whose personal sovereignty would make his authority and power 42 basically irrelevant and moot and subservient to a sovereign God. He didn’t like being answerable to anyone, and 43 especially not to an omnipotent and omnipresent God. He viewed God as a competitor for the affections and the worship of 44 the people. This is the very reason why we have "separation of church and state" today as part of our legal system: to 45 prevent this kind of tyranny from repeating itself. This same gladiator spectacle is also with us today in a slightly different 46 form. It's called an "income tax trial" in the federal church called "district court". Below are just a few examples of the 47 persecution suffered by Jews and Christians throughout history, drawn from the Bible and other sources, mainly because 48 they attempted to fulfill God’s holy calling to be sanctified, separate, sovereign, a “foreign er ”, and a “stranger” with respect 49 to the laws, taxes, and citizenship of surrounding heathen people and governments: 50 1. The last several years of the Apostle John’s life were spent in exile on the Greek island of Patmos, where he was sent 51 by the Roman government because he was a threat to the power and influence of Roman civil authorities. During his 52 stay there, he wrote the book of Revelation, which was a cryptic, but direct assault upon government authority. 53 2. Every time Israel was judged in the Book of Judges, they came under “tribute” (taxation and therefore slavery) to a 54

Requirement for Consent

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Copyright Sovereignty Education and Defense Ministry, http://sedm.org Form 05.003, Rev. 7-23-2013

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