1.) Sovereignty is totalistic
Absolute sovereignty extends to complete rule. An absolute sovereign means that said sovereign has absolute and total government. God, being absolute sovereign rules so minutely that not even a sparrow can fall without His consent (Mt. 10:29-31). Amos teaches that God’s sovereignty is so totalistic that even if calamity comes to the city that God has done it (Amos 3:6). Isaiah teaches that God creates disaster (Is. 45:7). In Job, Satan must receive approval from God before Satan can touch God’s servant. Acts 17:29 teaches that “we live and move and have our being in God and His government.
We see the State seeking to pick up the prerogatives of Sovereignty when it seeks to create a environment where God’s revealed sovereignty is put into abeyance in favor of the States. The State longs to create a social order where we live and move and have our being in the State.
2.) Sovereignty is characterized by total planning
In the Scripture total planning is called predestination. Isaiah 14:24 teaches, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand…” Elsewhere in Isaiah 46:10 we find, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.'” And again, Psalm 33:9, “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. 10The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.…
When God’s Sovereignty is denied, predestination does not go away. Some other agency enters in in order to provide total planning. The more godless a people become the more they will turn to some other agency to provide total planning. Typically that is the State and Obamacare is a perfect example of the State seeking to do total planning. This is a example of humanistic predestination and another demonstration of the State’s attempt to seize God’s sovereignty.
3.) Sovereignty is characterized by Omniscience
Of course total planning can not happen without Omniscience. The idea that one can predestine the beginning from the end without knowing the beginning from the end is just absurd. The Scriptures teach that God is Omniscient.
Psalm 139:4
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
Proverbs 5:21
For your ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all your paths.
Proverbs 15:3
The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.
Jeremiah 16:17
My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.
Hebrews 4:13
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Of course this overturns all other teaching that suggests that God does not know the future, or that God and man are co-operating in order to create a uncertain future.
When we deny omniscience to God omniscience does not go away, but instead it seeks to find itself seized by whatever immanent god seeks to be god. We are hearing of this all the time today. We are seeing reports about NSA — a Government agency — seeking to collect all kinds of information and data on Americans.
A Congresswoman (Maxine Waters) recently noted that,
“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.
“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that…. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”
Rushdoony noted here,
“When the State claims sovereignty, the logic of its position requires that a like total knowledge be acquired concerning all men and things, and the result is the inquisitive and prying state which aims at knowing all in order to govern all.”
4.) Sovereignty is characterized by claims of ownership
Deuteronomy 10:14
To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.
Job 41:11
Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
Psalm 24:1
The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
Psalm 50:12
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Psalm 89:11
The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.
If we belong to God that means we do not believe to ourselves or the State. However, the State does claim the citizenry as property. We are assets to be used and resources to be exploited.
Jonathan R. T. Hughes in his book, “The Government Habit,” offers this,
“It would surprise most American landowners today, as it often does those who cannot meet their property taxes, to learn that the state owns the land outright. Owners in fee simple have possession only of right in real estate: this phenomenon is part of what historians call the English Heritage.”
But it gets worse than that.
Prior to 1913, most Americans owned clear, allodial title to property, free and clear of any liens or mortgages until the Federal Reserve Act (1913) “hypothecated” all property within the federal United States to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, -in which the Trustees (stockholders) held legal title. The U.S. citizen (tenant, franchisee) was registered as a “beneficiary” of the trust via his/her birth certificate. In 1933, the federal United States hypothecated (pledge (money) by law to a specific purpose) all of the present and future properties, assets and labor of their “subjects,” the 14th Amendment U.S. citizen, to the Federal Reserve System.
In return, the Federal Reserve System agreed to extend the federal United States corporation all the credit “money substitute” it needed. Like any other debtor, the federal United States government had to assign collateral and security to their creditors as a condition of the loan. Since the federal United States didn’t have any assets, they
assigned the private property of their “economic slaves”, the U.S. citizens as collateral against the unpayable federal debt. They also pledged the unincorporated federal territories, national parks forests, birth certificates, and nonprofit organizations, as collateral against the federal debt. All has already been transferred as payment to the international bankers.
So, the idea of ownership inherent in Sovereignty, doesn’t go away when one denies it to the God of the Bible. Instead the idea of ownership is transferred to an immanent god.
5.) Sovereignty is characterized Law
In any social order Law is always reflective of the Law giver. God takes to Himself the authority to establish the boundaries of man’s rule. This includes, of course the issue of taxation (Ex. 30:11-16), (I Sam. 8:7-8). With God as law giver the tax is a tithe. When the State seeks to be sovereign it seeks a far higher percentage rate.
When it comes to the broader idea of the Law, we see that what the State invokes is called Positive Law
“There is no logic to the law in the “traditional” sense: it does not reflect in any meaningful way a constant standard of right or set of moral absolutes. Rather, the “path” of the law is historical in nature, weaving and winding through changing cultural norms and varying political circumstances. Thus judges (and now executives) who alter the law by fiat only hurry along the next stage of progress.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
When you rid yourself of God’s transcendent law you don’t rid yourself of Law. Instead what you get is legal Positivism. The key to legal positivism is in understanding the way positivists answer the fundamental question of jurisprudence: “What is law?” The word “positivism” itself derives from the Latin root positus, which means to posit, postulate, or firmly affix the existence of something. Legal positivism attempts to define law by firmly affixing its meaning to written decisions made by governmental bodies that are endowed with the legal power to regulate particular areas of society and human conduct. If a principle, rule, regulation, decision, judgment, or other law is recognized by a duly authorized governmental body or official, then it will qualify as law, according to legal positivists. Conversely, if a behavioral norm is enunciated by anyone or anything other than a duly authorized governmental body or official, the norm will not qualify as law in the minds of legal positivists, no matter how many people are in the habit of following the norm or how many people take action to legitimize it.
