The law is for everyone (on the civic use of God's law)

It is simply a fact. Believers in the God of the Bible - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - represent a religious minority in our country and in our world. Revivals - quiet or otherwise - at home and abroad do not alter that fact. There are no countries in the world which could be called Christian in the sense in which that may have been the case in the Middle Ages.

And yet I also believe that God's law is for everyone. By that I mean that as well as being for believers, God's law is also relevant and applicable to all people. In some cases that is obvious: there is clearly no one who is allowed to steal or murder or commit perjury. But it is also true that there is no one who is free to covet (desire) what is not theirs. Nor is there anyone who, morally, is free to refuse to recognise the One true God and give him the worship he alone deserves.

Now, I need to be clear what I mean and what I *don't* mean by the above paragraph. I *don't* mean that I believe in the idea of "Christian Emperor" or "godly prince". I am a Baptist, and I do not hold to the establishment principle: I don't believe that the Christian church should have a privileged relationship with the secular power. I believe in the separation of church and state.

And yet at the same time I believe that one of the ways that God rules the world and restrains evil is through non-Christian secular rulers who, in the words of Paul, "wield the sword" i.e. use the means of coercion to enforce law and order. Whether it is the police, the legal justice system, or potentially the armed forces of a given country, God rules the world through these means. They are ordained by God, and we have a duty to submit to them (with the obvious caveat that "we must God not men").

Another related dimension is that God's law restrains evil. God's commands, reflected in the consciences of each person, and the statute books of nations, are a means by which God restrains evil in the world.

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Bury, Greater Manchester - Timeline of churches

979? First Church on the site of the present Parish Church (the picture below is an artist's impression of Bury parish church in 1485). This was the only church in the town of Bury until 1719 (see below). 1585 Parish church (re)built in the gothic style . 1650 During the Commonwealth, Henry Pendlebury was ordained for Holcombe Chapelry. 1662 Having been ejected from the Church of England, Henry Pendlebury of Holcombe (1626-1695) held services at a Chapel on Bass Lane by Richard Kay, and others ejected from the C of E (replaced in 1712 by Dundee Chapel, Holcombe) 1669 The vicar of Bury parish reported to the Bishop of Chester that he heard several conventicles were "constantly kept at private houses of Independents, Presbyterians, Dippers and other such like jointly, of the bset rank of the yeomanry and other inferiors." 1689 ...

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Crumbs from the Table

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