A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

From Gary Kinghorn

Gold Panners,

In the spirit of Christmas, please read closely the following message from Gary Kinghorn. It is in this spirit, expressed so well by Gary, that we intend to follow in the making of our El Dorado State constitution which will be presented as the different Articles are drafted for inspection and your approvals.

Merry Christmas, Sharon

A Christmas Message on Freedom and Anarchy

by Gary Kinghorn
December 20, 2024

“The hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under tribute.” Proverbs 12:24

This week the Christian world again celebrates the birth of Jesus. As we join in celebration of peace and goodwill this holiday season, I believe we should remember the political messages that Jesus brought to the world and the impact that Christian principles have had on our nation and our lives. Surprisingly, I often think of Jesus as an anarchist. In political philosophy, “anarchy” strictly means an absence of government control. It aligns well with the perfect law of liberty and power being vested in the people. Is this really what Jesus was preaching, and have we forgotten what the true intent of the early Church was? Let’s take a look…

When Jesus was born, the world was not so different than the Western world today. Rome was the New World Order of that era. Julius Caesar had crossed the Rubicon decades earlier, and Augustus Caesar had been emperor/dictator for almost 25 years. Rome had become a failing welfare state whose legions relied on exacting tribute from citizens in exchange for benefits in the form of social services. Rome had gone from a free republic to an empire, while starting down a long path of debasing its currency, the known world’s reserve currency. A once independent and self-reliant society had become self-indulgent, apathetic, and subject to the will of the emperors, who called themselves “Fathers” as the benefactors of the people.

Rome did not conquer Israel but was invited to administer a dispute between two brothers over who should be king. Rome was the world police force of the day, and by appealing to Rome, Israel fell under the tribute of the Pax Romana excise tax and mutual obligations in exchange for Rome keeping the peace of a pending civil war.

Under Pharisee and Roman influence, Israel had become a vast welfare state with people looking to the government to take care of them, as in the days under Egyptian and Babylonian captivity. People were committing the sin of coveting thy neighbor’s goods, while electing benefactors to provide for their needs under the Roman system of Corban. Long gone was the system of government set up under Moses that depended entirely on free will offerings to support the needy, distributed by a system of charitable ministers that served the welfare needs of the society.

Jesus came along to lead his followers out of this ungodly Roman system, preaching an alternative form of government. He spoke of a jurisdiction outside of the Roman state, based on the perfect law of freedom, outside the tyranny of men who would rule over their brothers and neighbors. He unified the early Christian Church in a system of charity, hope and respect for the rights of each other, requiring that each person love thy neighbor as thy self in a system of mutual, not governmental support.

Jesus baptized people out of the welfare system established by the Romans and Pharisees and into the charitable system administered by the apostles. The Roman citizen ID stone that was part of their Corban was replaced with a white stone from the Jordan River laid upon the altar signifying the person’s baptism into the free Church society.

The ministers of the early church were to be servants of the people and administer the free will offerings of the community. They were required to take a vow of poverty to ensure they did not abuse their administrative privileges or siphon off the collective treasury. They took vows of celibacy to ensure they did not create heirs that could be entitled to the charitable contributions they ministered over.

Jesus was showing a way to unentangle people from the captivity of the social contracts they had made with the state of Rome and Judea, and the tribute and obligations they had become enslaved by. He proclaimed to call no man “Father”, as they called their Roman benefactors, but stated that “thou Father art in heaven”. The perfect law of freedom indicated that man’s unalienable rights stemmed from God and nature, and not the governments of men. This was a system of anarchy, by strict definition, without the complex system of tribute that led to the decadence and decline of society, and the corruptible force of the state to back it up.

The early Christian Church was not persecuted for their belief in a different God or a Kingdom in Heaven, but for their opting out of the mutual taxation system and seeking to live apart from the kings and overlords, the gods many, who demanded their tribute. The Church was free from the controls of the day and the tyrants throughout history. It’s no wonder Christianity spread throughout the known world like wildfire in the centuries after Christ.

Governments have no inalienable rights to rule over men. They obtain lawful authority through the consent of the governed. Understanding how that consent is obtained and granted is the key to understanding liberty and your own political status. Anarchy is merely that lack of imposed government, and the seeking of your own independent jurisdiction. According to an article by Brother Gregory Williams, the term “Republic” actually stems from the pre-Caesar words “Libera Res Publica” (Free from things Public, i.e. heavy government). Starting with Augustus, they dropped the “Free” part.

Having created his Kingdom and Church free from government control, Jesus took on the Pharisees. The Pharisees were essentially a political party at the time, one of the Jewish sects, who had passed an ordinance requiring the temple tax be paid or face the judgment of a civil magistrate of the Judean government. These taxes flowed into the government’s treasury within the temple whether it served the people or not. That central treasury that held the government funds was abused by a greedy population and a corrupt bureaucracy.

The situation is not that different today with our own bankers and money changers. The People are being fleeced for taxes that do not benefit them, but are sent to support foreign wars, fund criminal enterprises, and clamp down on our liberties. The theft of public funds is built around the state’s monopoly of power over the People whose thin grip on the second amendment may be the only thing standing between us and abject tyranny.

Back in Jesus's time, the greedy money changers required the temple tax to be paid in the Roman denarii and took their commissioned cut of the currency conversion in exchange for allowing the people to worship. A tax to have your prayers heard by God?!? When Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers, he was really threatening the powerful elite’s ungodly way of life. This final insult could no longer be tolerated.

When brought before Pilate, Jesus declared, “My Kingdom is not of this world”. The word “world” was written kosmos in the original Greek, which is defined as “orderly arrangement”, “order” or “government”. What Jesus was really saying was that his Kingdom on earth was not a part of the government of Rome, and explicitly not within their jurisdiction to rule over Him or his followers in the early Church.

Jesus was a King of Kings in this new form of earthly government based on faith, hope and charity. His Kings were the free men in the jurisdiction of the early Church, free of government control, contracts and obligations. Pilate agreed that he had no jurisdiction over Jesus’ Kingdom. Jesus had taken the Kingdom from those who would suppress and subject the People in sloth and servitude and entrusted it to His loyal followers who were leaders in a Kingdom that set men free in spirit and in truth.

That same system would be called upon by America’s Founding Fathers who modeled our freedoms and the design of a government on these early Christian principles. America was the first country since Jesus’ time to vest all the political power completely within the People, who only delegated certain enumerated powers to a government of their creation in a common law trust called the United States Constitution.

After Pilate refused to follow through with the prosecution, the Pharisees appealed to Rome to get rid of Jesus. Jesus, though, would not appeal to Rome for protection. Had He appealed to Rome, He would have compromised the sovereignty of His Kingdom by relying on Roman power and support. His Kingdom was sovereign to God alone.

Today, most of us find ourselves under slothful tribute to an empire and a system that is not for our benefit. We have coveted our neighbor’s goods in a vain pursuit of “free” health care, education, welfare, unemployment benefits, social security and government protection. We have traded our inalienable God-given rights through social contracts both implied and explicit. Our churches are not ordained by God but are 501(c)(3) corporations granted status by the state. As we head into this Christmas week, and into what is certainly going to be a volatile 2025, we are going to need to dig down deep and find that anarchist in all of us, with a little more loving thy neighbor as thy self to boot.

Happy Holidays!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dfV3IIVwGR_dOLJ38UKYRr7k2Vu8lpcDYONzjJ1UoWE/edit

Gary