Thursday, October 25, 2012

John Owen on God's Relation to Rulers and Kingdoms

"If once it comes to that, that you shall say you have nothing to do with religion as rulers of the nation, God will quickly manifest that he hath nothing to do with you as rulers of the nation....The rejection of the gospel by any people or nation to whom it is tendered, is always attended with the certain and inevitable destruction of that people or nation; which, sooner or later, shall, without any help or deliverance, be brought upon them by the revenging hand of Christ...Hence, when Christ is tendered in the gospel, the judges and rulers of the nations are exhorted to obedience to him, upon pain of being destroyed upon the refusal thereof, Ps. ii. 12. And we have the experience of all ages, ever since the day that the gospel began to be propagated in the world. The quarrel of it was revenged on the Jews by the Romans, — upon the Romans by the Goths, Vandals, and innumerable barbarous nations; and the vengeance due to the anti-Christian world is at hand, even at the door. The Lord will certainly make good his promise to the utmost, that the kingdom and nations which will not serve the church, even that kingdom and those nations shall utterly perish, Isa. lx. 12."

-John Owen 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Psalm 94:20-21, 23
"Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, Have fellowship with You? They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood... [verse 23] He has brought on then their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; the LORD our God shall cut them off."