At church on Sunday, I was having a conversation with a young man who was complaining about the Godless legislation that has been coming out of our State legislature regarding “gender reassignment treatments”. After him stating that he thought it demonic that they would even consider something like that without the consent of the parents he said, “This State is going to Hell and there’s nothing we can do about it”. I replied,” that’s what happens when we elect godless people to the legislature, mostly out of ignorance. That the vast majority of voters, even Christian voters don’t even know anything about the people they vote for, they just vote for the party they are registered with”. He replied, “Yeah, you’re probably right, that’s why I don’t vote, politics is dirty besides, my vote wouldn’t make a difference anyway, not in this state.” I replied, YOU DON’T VOTE?, that in the last cycle, our minority leader in the House won by only a handful of votes, thank God everybody doesn’t think like that”. I went on to tell him that I had heard that in 2022, something like 60% of Christians didn’t vote and that was why our government has become so godless. The only way we would ever get a more godly government is if Christians get out and vote, and vote in godly people.” He shrugged his shoulders told me that Romans 13 said we just have to be subject to the Government, and walked away.

It’s funny, or actually rather sad that so often we don’t say what we should say in a conversation like that one. Here we were in a Bible believing church, and my reply was, while accurate, ineffective and more importantly not based in scripture. So I got to thinking about all of the stories in the Bible about men of God and their involvement in politics and decided to reread Romans 13 to see what I missed. 

When I got home I did just that. What I found shocked me. The heading was “Be in subjection to Government, verse one said “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” On the surface it seemed he was right. Then I realized, that we live in America, not 1st century Rome.  Caesar is not the ruling authority in America. I remembered some important history. 

On June 2nd 1776 the Second Continental Congress   sent out a notice to the 13 colonies to form a new government “under the authority of the people”, and they did just that. On June 15th 1776 Delaware declared independence from the British Crown and Pennsylvania. The first thing they did, by the “authority of the people”, as a free and independent state, was to write a “Declaration of Rights” acknowledging God as the source of those rights, then they wrote a constitution that set up the structure and authorities that they, the people, delegated to their new governments to secure those rights. 

Then 11 years later the representatives of the people of the States, came together and wrote a constitution creating a union of those states called The Unite States, setting up the structure and delegating some of the authorities that they themselves had been delegated by the people to that new federal government. They even started that document with the words “We the People”. The diagram of the American governmental authority is simply this;

• God created man
• Man created society (The People)
• The People created the State governments
• The States created the Federal government

With each step down that ladder of creation authority diminishes! 

So, the authorities, described in Romans 13:1 are the people and the constitutions of the States and the United States, not the President, Governors, Legislatures or Courts. In fact they are all established and given their authority by the people, through the several constitutions that they swear an Oath before God to uphold and defend. We know that, because obviously the creation can never be the authority over its creator. He government 

So, since we are the creators of our governments, just as we are the creators of our children, it is our duty to also control our governments through informed voting, just as it is our duty to control our children by education and discipline. 

If Christians don’t vote, we won’t be governed by public servants, we will be ruled by the godless!

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Larry Mayo - President of the Institute On The Constitution

Larry D. Mayo- of Lewes, Delaware, musician, recording artist, public speaker, radio personality, amateur historian, and certified Institute on the Constitution senior instructor and president.

After nearly a decade of studying our founding documents and the men who wrote them, he realized just how little most of us have been taught about them, and has made it his passion to change that. As a certified instructor for the Institute on the Constitution he has spent the past seven years presenting our U.S. Constitution course. Having grown up at what is now the Delaware Seashore State Park and holding a deep love for Delaware he embarked on the task of developing our course “A Complete Study of The Delaware State Constitution” as a major part of his passion to restore our state government to its proper constitutional role.

As Thomas Jefferson said “ Anyone who desires to remain ignorant and free, desires what never was and never will be.”

Contact Larry for more information about the U.S. & Delaware Constitution Course and Institute on the Constitution at 302-745-2478 or larry@theamericanview.com.