King Josiah
And The Case Of The Missing Bible

Ever hear of King Josiah of the ancient nation of Judah? Not many have, but he provides one of the most marvelous examples of national restoration the world has ever seen. When King Josiah came to power the nation of Judah was in total disrepair.

The Bible Lost In Israel

At this point in history Judah was at a lower level of depravity than the pagan nations that God had driven out before her (se 2 Kings 21:9-11). The nation had fallen so low that the Old Testament Law had been totally lost to the national consciousness. Even the high priest had forgotten that a written revelation from God even existed.

But King Josiah had a heart for God so great that the Scripture says of him: “there was no king before him, who turned to the Lord...neither after him arose there any like him” (2 Kings 23:25, RSV). His greatness exceeded even that of King David and Solomon because of his zeal to apply the law of God to the nation. King Josiah led a true spiritual and cultural reformation, not simply a revival limited to the internal spiritual life of the individual.

The Bible Lost In America

Modern America is in much the same condition as Judah before the ascent of King Josiah to the throne. The Bible remains the world’s number one best seller, gracing the coffee tables of many of America’s living rooms. However, it is in many respects a lost book. We are clearly a society that has lost its biblical moorings. The blood of millions of aborted babies testifies against us.

In the first place, most non-believers rarely open their Bibles. Sadly, this is true of many Christians as well. In the second place, many of those Christians who do read their Bibles have been taught to read them from a very personal and privatized perspective.

The hundreds of commands addressed specifically to civil rulers are either ignored as inapplicable for our day or spiritualized to the personal context. Any hint of Old Testament Law is considered to be anathema; never mind that nobody knows what the Old Testament Law really says.

This tendency to privatize the faith is reinforced by the emphasis on most contemporary Christian literature. A 1993 study of evangelical publishing houses found that 87.8 percent of the titles dealt with the “self” in one way or another. That included 31 percent inspirational or motivational, and another 15 percent dealing with the same themes from a new age perspective.

This overwhelmingly personal emphasis has created an ingrown Christianity. Until very recently, Christianity has by-and-large buried its head in the sand to the death throes of contemporary American culture.

For example, God’s directive for Moses to create a bottom-up appeals court system (see Ex. 18) might be applied by a modern Christian as a call to delegate authority on the job. While this is certainly a legitimate application, it ignores the primary application to the structure of civil government.

Only Three Options

Such directives for rulers are sprinkled throughout the Bible. If we thereby dismiss these kinds of civil applications, the question arises, “By what standard are civil rulers to govern in today’s world?” Is the government to be left to its own devices, or is it to rule under God as a Theocracy?

Most believers would agree that our personal lives, our churches, even our business are to be governed by the Word of God. Why then do we assume that government alone is outside the purview of Scripture? Governments are faced with essentially three choices in the source of authority by which they will rule.

The first is the will of the people. The concept of democracy, in which the will of the majority is supreme, is an unbiblical (and unconstitutional) concept. Even the collective wisdom of man is insufficient to determine good and evil. Given the franchise (vote), the majority will usually abuse it for personal aggrandizement by trampling on the rights of the minority.

The second option is the wisdom of the ruler. Kings and rulers are no better when left to themselves. They likewise tend to abuse their power for the sake of personal gain. The classic biblical example is David, a man who claimed to be wiser than all his teachers because of his love for God’s statutes. But even David when left to himself by God, acted as though he were a tyrant in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite.

The third and only legitimate standard by which civil government in every age may rule is the Word of God. God holds civil authorities and citizens alike accountable to Old Testament Law as well as the New Testament.

Return from King Josiah to America Betrayed