I Am A Freeman
OR The Martyr Division
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a group of people who liked to call themselves freemen. They lived in an out of the way place, far from the center of political power. Their goal was not so much to seize political power, but only to be left alone, to be free to spread a radical message. Their message affirmed a freedom that was at once old and new. The freedom had been promised in ancient documents. These documents had once been the rule of the land, but no more. Conquest had changed all that. An imperial power was now in force. Those who were called to be the guardians of that freedom had been quelled by these powerful outsiders. Most acquiesced. Some even joined the new power brokers in their attacks on the freemen.

Though the freemen just wanted to be left alone, the ruling authorities had a problem with them. The ruling authorities only wanted a little respect, or so they said. They wanted their power to be recognized, and honored by all. The freemen, however, refused to recognize the authority which the authorities claimed to have. They denied that they had any such power. Real power, they affirmed, inhered elsewhere, in one sense, within themselves. And therein began the persecution.

The rulers had soldiers even in this out of the way place. Their power was such that with the stroke of a pen soldiers could be dispatched with force. The freemen, of course, were suspicious of such power. They had witnessed, and heard of what it had done. These same authorities had, in the not so distant past, demonstrated their willingness to kill without mercy others who asserted any other authority. Word spread rapidly through the community of this barbarism. Many, in fact, came to join the free men merely through the telling of those sad stories of what many considered martyrdom.

The rulers considered the freemen to be an embarrassment. Though the freemen desired to be left alone, they were not averse to spreading the word of the corruption of the rulers. Their message, in fact, emphasized the bankruptcy of the rulers. They said that they had accumulated debts which they could not possibly pay. These debts were astronomical in size, such that it would take an eternity to repay. That, of course, is not a message any ruler enjoys having broadcast, even to the comparatively small numbers that the freemen were reaching at that time. The freemen spread the word with the confidence that eventually great numbers would come to recognize this huge debt.

Compiling the problem was the assertion by the freemen that while they too had debts, they had the means to pay. They asserted even that their debts were paid. They even used this strange purchasing power to go beyond relieving their debts and bought mansions. The authorities refused to recognize this means of payment. They denied its reality. And so the hostilities heated up.

One freeman was brought before a high ranking official for the very crime of spreading this message. Rather than throwing himself on the mercy of the court, this outlaw swore to the ruler that a bounty was on his head, that he would die for his crimes.

All this was too much for the rulers to take. Their patience ran out and they began to hunt down the freemen. They started a propaganda campaign. Soon all those who were not freemen, from heads of state down to the most lowly citizen, began to hate the freemen, and the hunt began. The freemen were wont to hold their meetings in homes. Those homes were invaded by soldiers, the freemen dragged off to their deaths. As the freemen became more sophisticated they learned to meet in secret. Still the rulers hunted them down. The battles became a matter of public spectacle. Many recanted. But more still died. As the blood flowed, staining the hands of the rulers, they found to their frustration that the message of the freemen found more and more believers. Soon freemen were found even in the halls of power. The killings kept coming, and the freemen died like free men, unafraid, honored chosen for such a death.

They died without fear for they believed the promise of the leader, the Great Martyr who had promised, "If you abide in My word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31)

The freemen in Montana were not free men. Had their debts been covered by the blood of Christ, if He had prepared mansions for them, they would obey the injunction of Christ's apostle Paul, and be subject to the governing authorities. They do, however, remind us that ours, like that of Rome, is a state run amok. They remind us that the true power struggle is not between different states, but between the King, and pretenders to His throne. Finally, they remind us of the price we must always pay for freedom, eternal vigilance.