[Portions of this article are taken from “The Curse of Church and State, Part 4: The First Duty of Citizens”, published October 3, 2025 at wingsofliberty.net. These portions are used with permission from the original author, who reviewed the final draft of this article.]
A false dichotomy is a logical fallacy that presents two options, and two options only, as an assessment of a situation, or as the solution to some particular dilemma. You’ve heard something like this before - “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” The Jews used one on Pilate, essentially saying that he could either do what they asked him to do with Christ, or be disloyal to Caesar. Pilate fell for it. We could cite many such situations, but you get the point. A false dichotomy is used to frame a question as a binary choice, with the intent of leading to the particular outcome desired by the one who proposes it. But life is not typically binary. Most of the time there are other options available to consider. False dichotomies are intentional limitations of freedom of choice. Satan delights in them, and he has a big one going right now. In this article we will expose it.
At present, our nation is being torn apart by social and political strife. There are two essential forces at work, which we will characterize as Egypt and Babylon. Is either side safe? Read on and decide for yourself.
Egypt
The philosophy of Egypt can be summarized by the words of Pharaoh in Exodus 5:2 - “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go?” This is the spirit of atheism. When we speak of atheism we mean the denial of the existence or relevance of the God of the Bible. Atheism moved into the political arena as the undergirding ideology of many on the political left during the disastrous experiment called the French Revolution. Revelation 11:8 describes this movement as having the characteristics of “Sodom and Egypt.”
Many fail to discern the tyrannical nature of this ideology. We wonder how this could be. Here are just a few things that we came up with when considering the left’s tyrannical exploits.
Compulsion to use biologically discordant gender pronouns is a threat to liberty. Covid censorship was a threat to liberty. Coerced silence while the world plays make-believe about men becoming women and having babies is a threat to liberty. Government removal of parental rights is a threat to liberty. Suing bakeries to punish them for refusing to make wedding cakes for gay weddings is a threat to liberty. And yes, killing millions of babies in utero is absolutely a threat to liberty. Not only is it uncivil and immoral, it is national suicide to willfully destroy the next generation of human beings. The abortion genocide is further correlated with the imposition of mass, illegal immigration. Replacing native born citizens with people from other countries who you think will be easier to control is most certainly a threat to liberty.
How is it that so many are unable or unwilling to acknowledge these things for what they are? Adventist brothers and sisters - we beg you - wake up! Egypt is not a refuge for God’s people. Those who maintain that we can get cozy with the political left as a way to stave off the excesses of the right are dangerously deceived.
But in taking this stance, which we do unapologetically, we will be even handed in pointing out the dangers of Babylon, which are equal in magnitude to those posed by Egypt.
Babylon
Babylon is well known in Scripture for combining religion and politics. This unholy mingling began with the building of the ill-fated Tower of Babel, which was both a monument to the political power of the city-state and an expression of apostate religious belief. This same two pronged ideology was at work in the Babylonian Empire that Daniel knew. The image that Nebuchadnezzar set up was of the same character as that of the ancient Tower. It was a declaration of imperial power, and it was an object of apostate religious devotion. These same principles are personalized in Daniel 6, following the transition to Medo-Persian rule. No image is present in this chapter. Rather, it is King Darius himself that is, by irrevocable law, set forth as worthy of both political allegiance and apostate religious worship. This union of political power and apostate religion carried right down through successive empires to the Roman Empire.
Many of the emperors were also worshiped as gods. Early Christians were tortured and killed for refusing to worship the state in the person of the caesars. In the fourth century, Constantine changed gears, combining the political power of the empire with apostate, corrupted Christianity in order to make Rome great again. The effort ultimately failed. The empire fell, but the hellish unity of religion and government continued in the Roman papacy, bringing about the horrors of the Dark Ages.
But we hasten to point out that this principle is far from dead. It is still the undergirding ideology of the Church of Rome, and also of many on the political right, especially of those who call themselves “Christian Nationalists.”
You might ask – but why shouldn’t the Christian Right take control of civil power and counteract the abuses of the Left? Why not give them their own medicine?
We could respond, and do respond, “because it is unconstitutional.” And it is. But the answer is bigger than that.
Many modern Christian thought leaders believe in the establishment of a Christian Republic in America as a cure for society’s ills. But is it? What do they propose? Liberty? Far from it.
The proposed response to the left’s censorship of speech is only another form of censorship - blasphemy laws enforced by the state. Prominent pastor Douglas Wilson and colleagues, for example, promote the Puritanism of the past and cite the union of church and state in most of the American colonies. They claim that the Puritans founded America, which is incorrect, but historical fact does not stop them from advocating a return to the type of governance model present prior July 4, 1776 — the true beginning of the American Experiment.
So what would America look like with a national blasphemy law? Such a law would have a dramatic impact on civil discourse across the nation. There would be civil punishment for speaking contrary to official government religious positions. The First Amendment was enacted to prevent exactly this type of religious oppression!
Of course, you may not like what some people say. You may passionately disagree with it. But in the Massachusetts colony, blasphemy was punished by piercing the offender’s tongue with a hot poker. It was also a capital crime, meaning one could be put to death for saying something that was deemed to be suitably blasphemous to warrant execution. In fact, a blasphemy law are still active statute in Massachusetts at this very hour, although it is not currently being enforced. Christian Nationalists fail to mention these details when advocating for blasphemy laws.
Sunday closing laws, known as “Blue Laws” are also on the agenda. These made an appearance in the Project 2025 document prepared by the Heritage Foundation as a roadmap for the Trump administration.
To be fair, Douglas Wilson has gone on record stating that he has no thought of persecuting Sabbath-keeping Christians for their belief and practice in conjunction with the enforcement of Sunday laws. He believes that harmonious coexistence is possible. We have no reason to doubt his sincerity but neither are we naive regarding the facts of history. It must never be forgotten that John Calvin had men murdered in Geneva for the supposed crime of heresy, the substance of which was nothing more than disagreeing with John Calvin. More recent history from our own nation shows us that violations of Sunday laws historically included whipping, jailing, chain gangs, stocks, and yes, even death. And in case you were wondering, all of those things, when they are imposed for simply disagreeing with religious bigots, are a threat to liberty.
Wilson and company intend to legislate compliance with the first table of the Ten Commandments. They want to demolish the separation of church and state in America, and even admit their intention to impose a religious test for public office, contrary to the Article VI of the Constitution, which clearly states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Regarding the relationship between church and state, there is no clearer statement of the true intention of the founders of this nation than this one.
In his youth, James Madison once stood outside a local prison and listened to an incarcerated minister preach through the bars of his cell window. The minister had been imprisoned for the so-called “crime” of “preaching the Gospel incorrectly”.
Because he had seen oppression from religious bigots firsthand, Madison had a lifelong animus to the union of church and state. So should we. So, in light of the current ideological tug of war, It would be well to soberly consider the following warning from his pen: “It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens...” – Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance
Have we taken Madison’s warning to heart? If we are honest, the answer is “no.” Collectively and individually, Americans (and western society in general) have woefully failed to take alarm when individual liberties were threatened. Jefferson was surely right when he said, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” To fail to be vigilant is to volunteer to be enslaved. And we ought not to be surprised that this is precisely what is happening.
But what liberties are we to guard? We do not have to guess. We are to jealously safeguard as our first duty those liberties enshrined in the Constitution. First and foremost, we are to safeguard the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, and the right to assemble.
But we have been asleep at the wheel for decades. We have ignored threats to liberty from both the left and the right. Is 38 trillion dollars of national debt a threat to liberty? What about currency debasement? Progressive taxation? Mass warrantless public surveillance? Digital money tied directly to the Federal Reserve so that authorities can shut your entire life off with the push of a button? Do we even need to ask these questions? You know the answer.
The real truth is that very many Seventh-day Adventists have been living under the delusion that we can ignore the systematic shredding of individual rights yet speak up with credibility when Sabbath observance is threatened. This is a lazy, ineffective strategy, and it reeks of cowardice. We ought to have taken Madison’s warning seriously. We ought to have spoken up decades ago with unsparing protest against the steady march toward totalitarianism. Christian Nationalism is not the first, nor the only threat to our liberty - not even close. Threats ABOUND from both the Left and the Right. Where have we been? Why are we hiding?
Madison would have a strong rebuke for us, were he alive. How well have we defended the individual liberties for which he and the others risked their fortunes and their lives? Have we done our “first duty as citizens?” We have not. May God help us to awaken to the call, is our prayer. We must sound the alarm against both Egypt and Babylon, rather than picking the side with which we feel most comfortable. We can be partial to neither. God’s Word must be the measure of every law and precept. Speaking up is not optional. Who will join the battle?
Will you?
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“Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).