To Whom Shall We Bow?

September 4

“Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men,’” Acts 5:29.

Peter’s words to the High Priest followed a remarkable demonstration of the power of Christ through His disciples. It came after His resurrection and after He told them that the signs and miracles He had done would be replicated by them (see John 14:12).

In Acts 5:12-28 we see another early fulfillment of that promise:

“The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.

“As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.

“Then the High Priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out.

"‘Go, stand in the temple courts,’ he said, ;and tell the people all about this new life.’

“At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people.

When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles. But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, 'We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.'

“On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to.

“Then someone came and said, ‘Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.’

“At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them. The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the High Priest.

"‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,’ he said. ‘Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.’”

Peter’s response as stated above, may be required of us at some point in the not-too-distant future. It doesn’t take a Constitutional scholar to recognize that our rights are being abrogated by an over-reaching government. It doesn’t take an intense study of the nightly news to recognize that our country, once brave and free, our government, once “of the people, by the people, for the people,” is, to paraphrase Lincoln, “perishing from the earth.”

When the jack-booted thugs come for us because we are steadfast in our allegiance to a Heavenly Kingdom rather than to the inglorious potentates of earth, what shall we do? Shall we bow and scrape before them to preserve our lives?

What shall we do when required to support the inane banality of traitorous law-makers? Will we be like the crowd of people in the children’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who ooohed and aaahhed over the 'fine attire' of the emperor who was in fact naked?

Or shall we stand to boldly proclaim that our rights are being swept away and that the police forces whose job is to protect the citizenry have become a military force to subjugate us to tyranny!

Unless we stand in truth as Peter did, unless we are willing to lay down our “lives, our fortune and our sacred honor,” as our founding fathers did when this country was established, we shall be the last generation of free people to occupy this land; our progeny shall be enslaved by the wicked chains of godless oppressors.