I have listened to minister after minister publicly rebuke Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore saying, as a Christian, he should have obeyed federal judge Myron Thompson's unlawful order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building. Those ministers need to reread Daniel chapter six.
Daniel was a government official in the court of King Darius. In fact, Daniel was the second-in-command answering only to the king. Yet, when Darius issued his command that everyone in the kingdom not pray to God for thirty days, Daniel openly and defiantly disobeyed.
I've heard ministers say Judge Moore was wrong not to take down the monument and wait for his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to be decided. However, if this logic would have prevailed in the mind and heart of Daniel, the great story of Daniel in the lion's den would not appear in Scripture. After all, Darius' order against prayer was only for thirty days. Using the logic of today's ministers, Daniel should have merely suspended his prayers for thirty days, and everything would have been all right.
Instead, Daniel immediately went home, threw open his windows, and prayed to God as he always had done. He would not postpone his convictions for even thirty days!
Like Judge Roy Moore, Daniel believed that there is a higher authority than the king. Furthermore, he believed that human governments do not have the right to interfere with religious conscience, in or out of the public square.
Also take into account that Daniel lived under a monarchy. Darius' word was the law of the land. However, Americans do not live (yet) under a monarchy. A federal judge is not king; his word is not automatically law. Under our constitutional republic, whenever a federal judge, or any other government official, rules outside his constitutional authority, his ruling must be considered unlawful and irrelevant.
When Daniel disobeyed the law of King Darius, he had only the law of moral conscience behind him. Judge Moore has, not only the law of moral conscience, but the supreme law of the land (the U.S. Constitution) behind him!
Of all people, Christian ministers should flock to Judge Moore's assistance! That they aren't proves they are either ignorant of the lawlessness of this federal judge's actions, or they do not have the courage of their convictions.
One thing is sure: those ministers who condemn Judge Roy Moore's actions should tear the story of Daniel out of their Bibles, and never teach it again. If Daniel was right, Roy Moore is right!
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