Page 42 - The Christian Life and the Church Life_Government of God

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Message 3
Living under the Direct Rule of God

We just had a wonderful semi-annual training on the book of
Deuteronomy. I hope you were able to hear it. I was so impressed this time
as we went through the book on Deuteronomy. Its main thought is that God
would rule His people in a kind of theocracy. There are no theocracies on the
earth today. There are democracies, there are autocracies, but there are no
theocracies. Some religions talk about forming a kind of theocracy, which
has never happened. With Israel as a type of us, God intended that He would
rule His people in His own kingdom. After God created man, he should have
lived under God’s direct rule. This was God’s intention after He created man.

The way man could live under God’s direct rule was to take God in,
to eat God Himself as the tree of life and that would cause man to be ruled
inwardly by God. However, man did not do that but instead fell from God’s
rule. Eventually, we came under the rule of man, where we still are today. I
am not going to speak anything political, but I believe we can all agree that
the rule of man does not work. It does not matter whether we are talking
about the Philippines or the United States; the rule of man does not work
because man was never supposed to rule another man. This is the reason the
political situation is always chaos. In the United States today, politically, it is
utter chaos. Why is this? Because man cannot rule man. Whenever man tries
to rule man, there is this kind of chaos.
The subject of this training is the government of God. The government is
not the same thing as the kingdom. Like a country, a kingdom is a realm. For
instance, we have a country here called the Philippines which we can liken to
the kingdom. But within this kingdom there is a government. The government
has a location which is in Manila. In the United States, the location of the
government is in Washington D.C., which is on the East Coast. I live on the