This is a well-known YouTube commenter, John Plain. If David lived in Nazi Germany during Hitler's rule, would he pay his taxes and obey the government, his government? Okay, well, let me ask you the question. If Paul had lived under the government of Nero, would he have paid his taxes and obeyed Nero? Well, the answer is yes, because when he wrote Romans 13, that's who the emperor was, was Nero.
As wicked a man as you can find, the very first Roman emperor to persecute Christians and oh just murdered so many innocent people that even the pagan Romans, he was the epitome of evil even to them. I think God planned it that way, that Paul would write those words in Romans 13 about obeying the government when you had the most wicked ruler in world history, probably up to that time, sitting there on the Emperor's throne.
No one could ever say later," Well, yeah, because they had a godly emperor or an emperor who had a good will towards his subjects." No, you had a monster there sitting on the emperor's chair. So if we're supposed to respect him and obey his laws, then yeah, that would apply to Hitler as well. Now, of course, there's always the principle we obey God as ruler rather than men.
So it doesn't matter if it's a benevolent ruler, a ruler who calls himself a Christian, if they pass a law or try to push a law that would require us to violate God's laws, then we obey God as ruler rather than men. That's always been a principle that Christians have followed. The early Christians certainly did. You know They were the most loyal subjects as far as they're not going to, as they told the emperor. You know None of us are ever going to try to overthrow the emperor.
There's no treason going to be ever traced to us. We pay our taxes better than you know your own subjects, your own non-Christian subjects do. But we're not going to worship the emperor. We're not going to call him divine. We're not going to worship idols. And it doesn't matter what he threatens us with, we're not going to do those things because they violate the laws of Christ.
But other than that, they obeyed the law of the land, even when the ruler was persecuting Christians in horrible ways, worse than Hitler ever did to Christians. Yeah If they obeyed, then we would have no reason even if we have a ruler like Hitler. Of course, we wouldn't do wicked things that he would want us to do.
And so If you were a Christian living under Nazi rule, sooner or later, you were almost certain we're going to end up in a concentration camp or prison or something like that, because it would have been hard, particularly for a man, to obey all the laws because, for example, a Christian wouldn't be going to war. So, yeah, you would end up in the concentration camp.
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