Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/485

138* kingdom is at the end of men's sins But if his kingdom is defiled, evils immediately spread and multiply. This immediately evokes the necessity of temporal kingdoms to punish excessive. sins by the arm of their authority And they punish with revenge and without charity The end of Christ's kingdom is salvation, the beginning of earthly rule is perdition. This is what happened to the rebellious Jews who in their pride chose to obey a man king and how terribly they had to suffer! It is to their punishment that God says:

Because of their sins he made their lande a waste and a horror and made them prisoners of the King of Babylon for seventy years. (:The earthly rulers and the state authorities are the punishment of God for disobeying His laws. Good kings may improve the subjects' physical well-being and the Christians can grow in their faith; if the kings are bad, the Christians must suffer their iniquities for the sake of salvation. But in either case, neither the good nor the bad rulers can really help the people who are bad. Only they can  Hos. 13: 9–11,

Jer. 25:11.