Let us continue our search for a divine origin of the state by asking: Could government have been instituted at some time soon after the Creation and the subsequent “Fall” of Adam and Eve?
Actually, the state was indeed first instituted around that time… However, that first government was not created by God at all but, according to Genesis 10:8-10, by a tyrant called Nimrod, who:
“began to be a mighty one in the earth. … the beginning of his kingdom was Babel”
According to Genesis 11, the idea of his followers was to directly challenge God by first instituting a monumental, massive public works project as the focus for a “glorious” centralised society. The “Tower of Babel” was a vain attempt to reach heaven:
“And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top [is] in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
Nimrod was therefore the first to introduce central planning and to block freedom of movement, expansion and settlement through independent homesteading and private land ownership. In doing so, he set the pattern for governments to follow by deifying themselves and claiming omnipotence over the affairs and labour of others through centralized power.
Josephus, the Jewish/Christian/Roman historian also added some detail. By drawing from ancient tradition and history, he wrote that Nimrod,
“gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power.”
According to Josephus, memory of the Flood that had destroyed the inhabited world was also relatively fresh and so Nimrod in building the tower, reportedly promised “national security” from any similar catastrophe.
Uniting around peaceful co-operation is a wonderful ideal, but under the spectre of violent tyranny the best that can be hoped for is decentralisation and subdivision or, in other words: somewhere else to run. So thankfully, God divided humankind by family and language – and note with special thankfulness that the solution was not an alternative “good” global government.
The evil origins of that first government at least should now be clear. So the next question to ask is:
Once the families of the earth had been divided at Babel and had spread out, were more limited, regional governments then endorsed by God?
Kings of the Earth
Many regional kingdoms have been created ever since the first at the Tower of Babel – but always by men, never by God. That fact was made clear in the Gospels:
“Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for [this] has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”
Long after Babel, Satan was still able to offer Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, because they were all under his power. That point was not refuted by Jesus… for the temptation to be real, it must have been a fact. It should therefore be clear to any Christian that, at least up to that point, all government on earth was intrinsically evil – and had come about by following Nimrod’s example.
The inextricable link between Satan and government is also graphically portrayed in the book of Ezekiel, Chapter 28:
Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD:
“Because your heart is lifted up, and you say, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods…’ yet you are a man, and not a god, though you set your heart as the heart of a god…”
Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord GOD:
“You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering… You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you… You have become a horror, and shall be no more forever.”
Note how the earthly ruler of Tyre is initially referred to as merely the “prince” (Hebrew – “nagiyd”) and called “a man“; whereas the absolute “king” (Hebrew – “melech”) is revealed to be a former angel who fell. Who else could that be, but Satan?
Reign of Death
Such demonic systems have occurred because, along with human dominion on earth, the principle of inheritance or “seed producing after its kind” had also been established at creation: Since people were the heirs of Adam and Eve’s wrong choice, the results had been passed on to a now fallen world in which the dominion and free will of humankind was used against it by Satan.
Being free to do the right thing, means also being free to do the wrong thing, with all its consequences. Therefore, many things began to happen that were not God’s will. Romans chapter 5, verse 14 confirms this:
“Death reigned from Adam to Moses…”
Things got so bad at one stage soon after Adam, that the world of mankind had to be flooded. In Genesis 6:6 the Bible actually records that God,
“repented that he had made man” and “was grieved in His heart“.
That is not a mistranslation. Yet, along with many other scriptures, this clashes directly with those who teach that God centrally plans, pre-programs, or else (in a lighter form) knows in advance every free will decision of man.
But, if the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then it is explicitly stated that God actually changed his mind when he saw what people would do with the independent sovereign dominion he had bestowed. No doubt the possibility or even inevitability of it had not evaded God, who had in fact made provision for it from the foundation of the world. But this was clearly a very worst case scenario.
Faith and Hope
Yet, even in that kind of world there were still individuals who would turn to God for help:
One such outstanding man of this time was Abraham the Patriarch – and the world has never been the same since.
