One World Government? Yes, for Heaven's Sake!

      Before some readers (if there are any) call the authorities to have Bill Wagoner arrested for treason, he needs to say that the topic above as stated depends on the science of semantics. The English language being what it is, you can use scores of words that are spelled the same and sound the same but have vastly different basic meanings. Such is the case here. In fact, in this case, it’s not just one word, but three: “one world government.” 

     In almost any day and age conspiracy theories abound. They can be intriguing, if not far-fetched, especially when they have to do with our national leaders. These days some United States citizens, including some well-meaning Christians, believe that President Barak Obama is working secretly with the United Nations to establish a one-world government, in which our   U.S. Constitution will no longer be valid, our independence as a nation will no longer be honored, our American individual .liberties will no longer be daily privileges, and our dollars and cents currency will be thrown in the trash. This is not a political blog, so I won’t make any comments---except to say that’s nutty.

     But let’s return to the topic, which is not nutty. Should there be a one-world government? Yes, of course. In fact, for Christians everywhere, there is a one world government already in place which we should acknowledge as having the highest and greatest personal and national authority. It is the realm of God’s rule. It is the Kingdom of God.

     There are more implications to this issue than this one blog can chase down. So I invite your comments, and I might make a few more later myself. But for starters: asserting the above and living it out can be two different things, because it is often easier to say than obey. For example, there isn’t a nation on the face of the earth whose Christian citizens have not struggled with whether to obey the laws of their land, or the laws of God as they understand them. Of course some Christians have casually solved this problem by simply asserting that the laws of their land and the laws of God are one and the same. But many a martyr’s blood has been spilled because they have refused to acknowledge that often dubious fact.

     But there is another important issue posed by the kingdom of God being the one realm of God’s rule for all of God’s people on earth, and it is this: how do all of God’s people within this one realm handle their diversity? The short answer is, of course: sometimes not very well. But we can still appreciate and accept the diversity in understanding and living out the rules of God’s realm between the Quakers of Indiana, and, for example, the newest Christians in the deepest interior of Papua New Guinea. And yet we are all part of one family of God. On the other hand, some North American Christians might reply, “We just have to give those primitive Christians in New Guinea more time, and then they can be like us.” That can be scary. And so is diversity, to a lot of us. What should it look like among the one people of God? Care to pursue that with me?

     In Christ, the people of God all hail one King. In Christ, the people of God should be members first of his one kingdom whoever we are and wherever we live, studying and living by his Word and empowered by his Spirit. That’s a start in what it means to build and be a part of God’s one world government---for heaven’s sake.