Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 21
December 18, 1969
NUMBER 33, PAGE 6-7a

Authority And Accountability

Vaughn D. Shofner

Any normal adult is an accountable being. This is due to the fact that human beings are intelligent, can understand intelligible information, reach sensible conclusions and exercise their wills accordingly. This places man on a higher plane of life than that occupied by the lower animals who act by instinct, spontaneous urgings, and do not possess the intelligence needed to control their powers in a civil manner.

Since humanity possesses intelligence and is therefore accountable, it must be answerable to something. Man is accountable to an orderly way of life which will protect and sustain his own welfare and be friendly toward the welfare of his fellowman. This demands the establishment of a universal standard with laws and rules that are absolute, and within their bounds man can control his behavior and refrain from violating the rights of others.

The Bible supplies the necessary laws to guide man through life in a way that produces a peaceful coexistence with his fellowman. To teach that God's authority is a relative force, that his laws of a spiritual nature are accomodative to the peculiar circumstances and whims of the world, is to teach that God is not the God of order, that his ways are not dependable at all times, and that the Creator of accountable beings is therefore not accountable to the intelligence which he supplied them.

The dependable order of God's physical universe completely destroys this absurd liberalism. The regularity of the seasons, the orbital forces and the predictable planetary movements acquaint man with a dependable order by which he can plan a peaceful existence in the midst of powers and forces which dwarf man's greatest achievement. Truly, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

The liberal factions of religion which today parade their free morals and relative rules before a swaggering society, as though they are at liberty to make all popular whims a part of God's 20th century plan, are the direct result of disrespect for authority. They have sown the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind of immorality and religious chaos.

I am persuaded that the religious liberalism which controls most professed Bible believers today is the greatest contributing factor of the civil anarchy which is vandalizing, looting and destroying with fire bombs the property of others. To liberalize and pervert the spiritual laws of God opens the floodgates of lawlessness in the other departments of human action.

If Biblical authority can be made to favor the flood of today's modern, worldly whims, how can religionists who thus use it expect the degenerates of the world to show respect for the civil laws? If immorality and hypocritical dishonesty find acceptance in the religious realm, why wouldn't the lustful indulgences of untrained worldlings become rampant and public throughout the earth? If human institutions can take precedence over and replace the institutions of God's arrangement, then why wouldn't there necessarily be a rebellion by wanton worldlings against "the establishment" and its cultural institutions which under civil order produced the greatest freedom and prosperity on earth? If religious nonconformity is favorable to God's legality, then what's wrong with the unwashed, unshaved, unshorn social rebel who destroys the conformity of sanity with alcohol, LSD and "pot"?

God's orderly arrangements in the spiritual and material realms necessarily complement each other, and when God is dethroned as is now being done by liberal religion, the disorderly insanity of helpless man destroys the harmony of both realms. Please know, ye religious rebels, that your rebellion against God's arrangement has directly produced the civil rebellion against "the establishment" and the resultant chaos. Please know, ye worldly wise, "God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness" and the immutable laws of the most High are to rule his accountable creatures, and when puny mortals attempt to dethrone him and change his orderly arrangement, anarchic chaos is the inevitable result.

— 5701 C Street, Little Rock, Arkansas