All right. So next, I think this is a very interesting question. And actually, I've had this question asked to me in a different context. Let me go ahead and put it up here. And I'll go ahead and read it. On several occasions, the apostle Paul this is from Marvin Yoder. Thank you for sending this in. On several occasions, the apostle Paul used his Roman citizenship to receive special treatment. I suspect if he were a citizen of the US today, where we have the privilege to vote, that he would vote, your opinion.
I've heard this used in the context of taking someone to law or to court, that Paul used his rights. Therefore, you can use your rights to sue someone and get what's due you. Do either of you have any thoughts on this in context of voting or politics? Go ahead, David. Yeah, because I've heard that argument a lot, a good bit of my life. And I don't think it's an accurate analogy. What Paul did, Rome had some very specific laws. And it's where we get our Western system of justice.
But you know the right of a trial that you don't just get punished without a trial. And yeah, he just insisted that the law be followed. These officials were breaking the law. And yeah, that's very different. I mean, to jump from that of saying, hey, if I point out that you're breaking the law, that I'm entitled to a trial, well, then if you're going to do that, then you might as well elect the president. Well, I'm sorry. That's a big jump between the two.
You see no involvement with Paul on any kind of political issue. Even on that one, to me, is a good point that shows the opposite. Paul didn't hesitate to take advantage, OK, I'm a Roman. You can't flog me without, of course, he got flogged a lot without getting a trial. And he didn't make any big bones of it. He didn't go and sue those officials. He didn't try to get them removed from office. He did call it to their attention. But you know in the end, he got beheaded by Nero because he was a Roman citizen.
Peter got crucified because he wasn't a Roman citizen. But Paul didn't really I mean, he didn't get involved in that. It's like, okay, I've got some advantages as a Roman citizen. To the extent I can use that for the kingdom of God, great. But whether Jews are being treated fairly under the Roman system or not wasn't Peter's concern and it wasn't Paul's concern. They were both Jews.
Their whole concern of both of them was the Kingdom of God, getting out the message of the Kingdom of God, changing people's lives, pulling them out of this system into a different system. And so yeah, it's one thing to say, hey, I have a right to have a trial and not just be put in jail or be flogged without having a hearing. It's another thing to get involved in politics. They are two entirely different things. Amen. Amen.
Yeah, you also mentioned in your lesson coming to the fact that I think it was in your lesson, the fact that you read the Letter of Acts or any of the New Testament letters. And they are political in a sense, but not in the sense of," We need to go fix the Roman Empire," or," We need to exercise authority in that sense." They're very much about spending the time and the resources there in the kingdom of God, not replacing people in power, replacing, replacing offices of authority.
In fact, they seem to be the opposite of that. They say respect those people. And it wasn't like it was, it's not like the Roman Empire was doing all good at that point. All right, so we'll move on to the next question here. Dean, did you have any follow-up on that? I thought that was well said. Yeah, you know I will say that those, again, it helps.
Many times the things that I think confuse, both non-resistance and two kingdom talks in general, is actually oftentimes a progressive or a liberal representation of pacifism. And it smears these things because it doesn't portray a clear two kingdoms. One of the things that early church and biblical two kingdoms does is that they do clearly recognize a kingdom of this world has been given by God to govern this earth and govern the non-Christian components of this earth.
And that's a really, that kind of phases over a lot of these things. And so with pacifism, it messes that up. Perfect example, and one of John Howard Yoder books, who really kind of was one of the main people that kind of smeared this into pacifism. He looks at Justin Martyr, there's a quote from Justin Martyr where Justin says, and everything but this particular issue, I forgot what it was, we obey you or honor you, O Constantine, or not Constantine, O Caesar, whoever it was.
And Yoder called this Proto-Constantinianism. And so him seeing that just this submission and this respect of Caesar was Proto-Constantinianism because it showed this respect. Totally disagree. And he misses the Two Kingdom concept. And in this way too, we recognize an authority on this earth and we respect it, honor it, and pray for it. And I think pacifism also brings in confusion into topics like this also of that question. Yeah.
And if I can comment on something you said, Clark, it's not that the book of Acts is political. It's that there were a lot of political things happening in the background, and you'd never know it from reading the book of Acts. That's what it was, yeah. The Christians couldn't care less. They were concerned. Their only issue was, what does this have to do with the kingdom of God? And most of those things didn't have anything to do with it.
And so that was so much their focus that even though Paul cared so much for the Jews, he never talked about all of the political issues going on in Palestine because they were of no issue to him. He was interested in getting Jews into the kingdom of God and getting Romans into the kingdom of God and getting everyone into it because the kingdom of God is the answer to man's problems, not Judea or Rome or any of those other political entities. Yeah, that's what I was recalling. Yeah, it's amazing.
It's remarkable that in Romans 13, when Paul calls for a submission to the government and that he does not bear the sword in vain, as it says, that very sword cut his head off.
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