Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah (“Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day”), is being celebrated by Jews all over the world as Yom HaShoah. In the U.S. we call it Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day.
Israel is commemorating the millions of Jewish people who perished in the Holocaust carried out by statist ideologues who worshipped the German state and Adolph Hitler in place of God. Inaugurated by David Ben-Gurion and Israel’s President in 1953, Yom HaShoah was to be celebrated on the 14th of Nisan, the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising (April 19, 1943).
An armed Jewish rebellion started in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. It was the largest single revolt by the Jews during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Jews died of starvation and sickness and many Warsaw ghetto residents went to the Treblinka death camp.
The insurgents had little ammunition; more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, and some were captured from the Germans. Some weapons were handmade by the resistance; sometimes such weapons worked, other times they jammed repeatedly.
The Polish Resistance and the communist People’s Guard attacked the German’s and smuggled weapons, ammunition, supplies, and instructions into the Ghetto. The Polish resistance could not provide many weapons. Nevertheless, the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) received arms, including several automatic weapons, from the mainstream Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK).
The Polish Resistance encouraged and assisted the Jews in the ghetto but the armed Jewish resistance was an awakening that fulfilled God’s mandate in the Book of Judges that the generations of Israel coming after Joshua should know warfare!
These are the nations the LORD left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience): the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites living in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo Hamath. They were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the LORD’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses.
Judges 3
Today, in the United States, the technology and the ideological underpinnings of Hitler’s statism are on the move again. The racist doctrines of the National Socialist Worker’s Party- foolish religious claims of Aryan-Teutonic racial supremacy- are what we think of first in connection with Germany’s government during the time of the Holocaust. Although we do not see those racial teachings in today’s U.S. government, the seed is present here, in Europe and across the globe. For example, many in our government declare that unborn children do not have rights; i.e., that they are not human beings!
The belief that only certain people should be permitted the means of armed self-defense is another doctrine that is being propagated at the highest levels of government. The underlying premise of such a belief was historically based on a belief on the part of Southern Democrats that Blacks were inherently inferior and violent; such an ideology persists even up through modern times. More importantly, perhaps, there is a more supposedly modern perception that only professionals with specialized training can safeguard life and liberty.
Our nation’s Founders, on the other hand, saw that all the people, as a militia at large, are the best safeguard against statist tyranny in all of its many disguises. Christian thinkers like John Calvin and Francis Schaeffer wrote about the subject of civil disobedience practiced by Christians. In A Christian Manifesto, Francis Schaeffer reviewed the orthodox Christian view regarding civil disobedience. He stated that Christians must obey God rather than human governments when forced to choose between fundamental Christian principles and the dictates of the state:
Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
See Acts 4:19.
God’s laws are ultimately supreme over manmade constitutional or statutory laws. Allegiance to God’s law requires that we refuse to bow down when human governmental authorities demand that we commit acts that are against God’s Word; i.e., “there is not only the right, but the duty, to disobey the state.” Note well that the U.S. Constitution recognizes that certain unalienable rights (like self-defense) are not conferred by society but are divinely endowed by virtue of the fact that all human beings are made in the image of our Creator. Y-W-H God is a supreme being who loves justice and also loves each of us at a personal level!
He also breathed some of his sovereignty into you and I when He made us in His image. Thus, tyrants hate the Bible and need to reinterpret the Constitution. Every one of us that adheres to the truth is an enemy of the secular Utopian state envisioned by progressives that seek to improve society by eliminating unwanted members of society. The unborn child is an easy target with which to begin the process of elimination. This is because unborn children are the most helpless human beings; very few interest groups will speak out on behalf of the unborn.
Government must never be substituted for the living God. Most Christians in Germany failed to perform acts of civil disobedience. But Schaeffer also pointed out that none of us has the right to decide on our own when a government is so unjust that armed resistance is justified. We should not philosophize about which conditions would need to exist in order to justify armed rebellion against government. This is because discussing such matters creates a certain political environment that exacerbates and leads to violence. Christians are commanded to obey government and live at peace with every man!
The Bible teaches us to pray for leaders in government and does not suggest that Christians should resist tyranny by revolting against authority. Thus Shaeffer did not advocate for abolishing government to form some ideal government envisioned by the nation’s Founders. Knowledge of Scripture and history teaches a thinking person that we cannot seek some abstract ideal while we live in a fallen world. Schaeffer recognized that if each man and woman does what is right in our eyes, chaos will ensue.
However, the severity our forefathers endured in order to enact the Declaration of Independence requires that force might be necessary to protect our families and neighbors against the intensity of violence that occured in societies like Germany under Hitler. The story of Esther is instructive because she stood for her people when an evil conspiracy took hold in Persia to destroy the people of Israel.
Those who hated the Jews were prepared to attack because of a decree that Ahaseurus had enacted when an advisor deceived him. The decree could not be revoked because of the ancient traditions of the Medes. Thus, in order to neutralize the effect of an illegal decreee issued under color of law, the emperor decreed a temporary edict that was like the Second Amendment. The new decree permitted Israelites and their neighbors to deploy armed force in order to defend against Israel’s enemies.
But any Scriptural analysis must focus first on the love of God which encompasses defense of others and Christians should contemplate armed force against government only under the most extreme circumstances!
Schaeffer, along with other traditional theologians going back to the earliest history of the Church, stated that Christians need to always seek a duly constituted magistrate and align ourselves with legitimate authority. This points us to those officials who are under proper authority; i.e., elected and appointed officials that are faithful to their oaths to uphold the United States Constitution and the constitutions of their respective states.
The first thing that genocidal tyrants of the right and left propose is restricting gun rights. Sheriffs in 15 states have recently vowed to defy new state and federal gun control laws. There are 380 (or more) sheriffs that have publicly committed to nullify un-Constitutional gun laws. Several state legislatures have also taken legislative steps toward making it a crime to assist federal agents to enforce illegal laws; i.e.,un-Constitutional statutes and executive orders.
The fact that the laws of our land remove local law enforcement and other local government agencies from centralized control is one of the strongest safeguards against the kind of tyranny that Germany and other modern nations experienced during the Twentieth Century, a century of collectivism and intense genocide over large areas of the planet.
There is now countering legislation proposed to remove any sheriff that does not further enforcement of the proposed new federal gun restrictions. The first effort emerged in Texas. Dallas Democratic Rep. Yvonne Davis proposed a law that would remove any sheriff or law enforcement officer who refuses to enforce state or federal laws. The law would remove any elected or appointed law enforcement officer for simply signing any document stating that they will not obey federal orders.
We need to support the growing number of sheriffs across the United States who have vowed to protect the right of citizens to keep and bear weapons for lawful defense of self and others.
Such civil disobedience is Scriptural and legal because the 10th Amendment states unequivocally that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Objections were advanced by some of the Founders that listing certain rights might result in a perception that rights not included in the Bill of Rights might be denied to the people. Thus, the Ninth Amendment retains all rights to the people as individuals:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Resolutions have been introduced in the legislatures of 27 states that would nullify federal authority over manufacture, commerce and possession of firearms within the state, provided that there is not interstate commerce involved. The legislation passed in Montana and Tennessee in 2009 and in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming the following year. in 2010, the South Carolina legislature was considering a new law that would ignore all gun registration laws within the state. Texas and West Virginia filed similar legislation for the 2011 legislative session.
Idaho, Wyoming and several other states are now also considering laws that constrain their officials to uphold their oath to the Constitution regarding the Second Amendment. The Biblical reference to magistrates is a legal term that refers to public officials, including elected and appointed officials. Many of the appointed officials in our land owe their appointments to the elite political-media complex.
The fact is that even the biggest urban counties, where the power of the elite is the most concentrated, encompass large numbers of voters that live in rural areas. These voters, like the elected Sheriffs, understand that everyone’s freedom is at stake if lawmakers enact proposed restrictions on our ability to defend our families.
Elected Sheriffs therefore have emerged as the strongest advocates for the Constitutional because they do not owe fealty to the financial and political interests that are selling our great nation to the highest bidders.
We should pray for all our officials and remember that there are certain interests attempting to divide the people from our law enforcement officials. The Book of Romans states that the magistrate bears the sword in order to suppress evildoers.
There will be difficult conflicts and controversies ahead for law enforcement and other public officials; every American needs to stand with these men and women. A shadow war- conducted under color of law– against decent public order is underway. No American should be deceived into taking matters into our own hands.
There were others, not just Jews, that died in the Holocaust. The Founders kept our government local and recognized that a well armed population is safer than the alternatives. Each of us is called to stand like Esther for our people in such a time as this.
The Law Office of Mark Knapp PLLC 