Happy Thanksgiving! and Respect for Government

One of the marks of a false prophet is that they aren’t afraid to speak evil of dignities. Given the number of Christian TV and radio personalities that I hear saying bad things about governmental leaders, it seems to me that we have many false prophets in Christianity.

I think that the reason false prophets are so quick to speak ill of our leaders is because Satan and the evil spirits that are influencing these guys love to see people reject governmental authority and do their own thing. That’s practically the definition of sin. But we look at the Bible and we find that the archangel Michael wouldn’t say something bad about Satan, rather leaving that to the Lord. We find that David would not kill Saul, the Lord’s anointed, even when he had the chance. The Bible is very clear that we are to show respect to our governmental leaders, even when we don’t agree with them.

That isn’t to say that we can’t speak against the things they do. John the Baptist spoke against Herod’s adultery. But we need to be careful that we don’t follow the example of the false prophets and rail against our leaders. I won’t say that anyone who speaks ill of the President or our other leaders is a servant of Satan. I won’t even say that is true of all the preachers who speak against our leaders on TV, but it’s easy for those of us who aren’t to get drawn in by those who do. Because we hear someone else who claims to be a Christian speaking ill of our leaders, we find it easy to do the same thing. That’s not okay. I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone, but just because other people do it doesn’t mean that we have a right to be disrespectful to our God given leaders (all of them are God given). We still have a responsibility to attempt persuade them to do what is right, but we should work with them, not speak evil of them.