At bottom, the covid tyranny we have all experienced is spiritual in nature. That is to say, it’s a case of spiritual warfare.
This may sound strange to some. After all, the Covid tyranny isn’t obviously related to matters of Christian doctrine, at least what is commonly thought of as Christian doctrine. When people speak of spiritual warfare, a common assumption is that it perhaps involves a point of Christian doctrine. Something along the lines of what occurred at the time of the Reformation with the battle over justification or the authority of the Scriptures. Certainly, that was spiritual warfare. But I would submit to you that the current battle between those who believe in political and economic liberty and the supporters of political and economic tyranny is just as much an example of spiritual warfare as what took place at the time of the Reformation.
Some may object to this characterization, saying that the fight over justification and the authority of the Scriptures is clearly a fight over Christian doctrine, but the battle over economic and political liberty has nothing to do with Biblical doctrine. This is a mistake. And it is a mistake brought on by the failure to recognize that Christianity – by Christianity I mean the plan statements and logical implications of the 66 books of the Bible – has a systematic monopoly on truth. All truth. And by all truth is meant, not just the truth of things we may think of as traditionally Christian – doctrines such as the atonement, or justification, or sanctification, or the study of the end times – but also political and economic truth.
In his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins made explicit that the political and economic freedoms we in the West have enjoyed for most of the past 500 years flow from the theology of the Reformation. Robbins referred to this system of liberty as constitutional capitalism. He wrote,
Constitutional capitalism is a social consequence of the theology of the Reformers. How the theology of the Reformers achieved this is a story that secular historians have only begun to appreciate, 500 years after the fact. Out of the religious liberty that is implicit in the idea of the Reformation – the end of an ecclesiastical monopoly enforced, as all genuine monopolies must be, by a system of command, coercion, and control; the liberty not to belong to or attend the Roman Church-State; the liberty not to contribute to its maintenance; the liberty not to believe whatever the Roman Church-State required – flow all the liberties with which this nation, and to a lesser extent Europe, Canada, and the Pacific Rim, have been blessed: constitutional government, civil rights (by which I mean the freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights), and economic liberties. Religious liberty is the mother of all liberties; it is deliberately listed first in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights; and historically it is the fountainhead from which all other liberties have flowed…
Constitutional capitalism – laissez faire capitalism – in which government has only two functions, the punishment of evildoers and the praise of the good, as Paul wrote in Romans 13, is the economic and political consequent and counterpart of Christian theology; it is the practice of which Christian theology is the theory (14, 23-24).
If it is true that, “Out of the religious liberty that is implicit in the idea of the Reformation flow all the liberties with which [America and other nations] have been blessed,” and it is, then that means economic and political liberty are points of Christian doctrine as much as the explicit theological statements of Scripture are. Further, this implies that Christians have an obligation to defend those liberties as much as they have an obligation to defend other points of Christian doctrine. Put differently, standing against tyranny and for political and economic liberty is spiritual warfare as much as is speaking out against heresy in defense of doctrinal truth.
The old adage is true, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
Today, you and I are surrounded by remarkable and tyrannical evil in the form of the pandemic hoax and all the intrusions on liberty that it has occasioned. The tyranny cascades from high places as if a flood pouring over a great waterfall. Whether it’s in the form of lockdowns, Covid quarantine camps, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, forced business closures, or forced mask wearing and social distancing, never in my experience has such destruction of basic liberty been wrought for such a slender reason or to such devastating effect.
For two years we have been lectured to “trust the science” while watching as those who dissent from the ever-changing party line are denounced as “science deniers,” fired from their jobs, and deplatformed from social media.
On more than one occasion, the tyrannical Roman Catholic Joe Biden has lectured unvaccinated Americans by blaming the rising cases of Covid on their refusal to submit to clearly deadly experimental mRNA vaccines. “Pandemic of the unvaccinated” is the way he puts it, even though the science he and others in power claim to love clearly shows that the higher the vaccination rate of a population, the higher the incidence of Covid.
Amazing how the truth is always 180 degrees opposite of what the powers that be say.
It’s almost as if they are deliberately lying to us.
It’s almost as if their father is the devil.
And how does the Christian deal with the “wiles of the devil”?
Paul tells us. “[B]e strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.”
Note well that Paul does not say, “suck it up buttercup and just deal with it.” That would be to fight in our own strength.
Paul also does not tell us to “go down to Egypt” in search of Pharaoh’s help. That is to say, we are not to engage in ecumenical alliances with unbelievers. That was the besetting sin of Old Testament Israel, which carries over into our day in the form of grand ecumenical alliances such as Evangelicals & Catholics together.
By way of example, just recently I read a post by someone proposing an alliance between Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodoxists to defend free speech on the internet. This person apparently does not realize that neither the Catholic Church nor the Orthodox church believes the propositions necessary to defend free speech. Rather, due to their denial of God’s sovereignty, they both have a long history of quashing unapproved ideas, by violence if needed.
Neither Judaism nor Islam support free speech but instead vigorously attack it. No coherent defense of free speech can be expected from them.
Secularists offer no help in the fight either.
And just as Christians cannot defend free speech by fighting with one hand tied behind their back as if they were unbelievers, neither can they expect to successfully resist other tyrannical Covid related encroachments on liberty by fighting as unbelievers.
For Christians to fight the good fight of faith in resisting tyranny, they must fight as Christians. This is what Paul means when he tells the Ephesians, “[B]e strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.” And the beginning of this good fight is understanding that our liberties are not rooted in secular philosophy or in religion broadly considered, but from God and set forth in his Word
Earlier in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul exhorted them to, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.”
The works of the Covid tyrants are unfruitful works of darkness, and Christians, therefore, have an obligation to expose them. Not in their own strength, not by making ecumenical alliances with unbelievers, but by standing strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, that is, by rebuking, reproving, and correcting Covid tyrants from the very Word of God.

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