THE PILGRIMS
It is axiomatic that the truth comes first and then the reaction against the truth that produces the lie. As the Apostle declares (2 Thess. 2:10-11), the cause of the lie is the rejection of the truth. Thus it is, for instance, in cosmology (Romans 1:18-20), where men deny the clear testimony of God's creation because they "hold the truth in unrighteousness". Evolution stems from neither ignorance nor science, but from a deliberate rejection of truth, from a philosophical grasping at straws aimed at denying the claims of the Creator. And thus it is in the realm of taxation. The Biblical faith of the Pilgrims at Plymouth colony produced a just and Biblical tax. As William Bradford declared in Of Plymouth Plantation, "Towards the maintenance of government and public officers of the said colony, every male above the age of sixteen years shall pay a bushel of Indian wheat, or the worth of it, into the common store." (p. 1331. Later after the apostasy had set in and the lie that Jesus is not the Christ had replaced the truth, the truth of taxation went with it. Rushdoony informs us, "In the United States, the property tax developed in New England". (Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 98)

PROPERTY TAX
One of the logical conclusions of the doctrine of special divine creation that the evolutionist seeks to avoid in his deliberate suppression of the truth, is that claim of Jehovah so strikingly declared in scripture, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." (Psalm 24:1). If the earth is the Lord's by right of creation, then the Lord possesses the land, gives it to whom he will and reserves to himself the sole right and prerogative of taxing it. Any Biblical form of property tax would have to be due to the Lord as his portion of the increase of his creation. It would be tribute paid to the Creator offered up by faithful stewards in recognition that the land they possess is his and they hold it by his grace. Only when men have swallowed the lie of evolution can they accept the lie that the land belongs to the civil government, to the state. Nowhere in scripture is civil government, ordained and established by God as earthly arbiter of justice, given the land as its possession. To pay property taxes to Caesar is to give recognition to the state's usurpation of God's creation and the prerogative of taxing that creation.

In his covenant promises God, who owns the land, gave the promise of the land to Abraham. By God's power and might the children of Israel were led out of bondage and established in the land that the Lord their God had given them. As long as they were faithful to their Covenant God the children of Israel were secure in the possession of the land and the bounty of its increase. When they were unfaithful, God in his judgments sent them oppression, till their enemies spoiled them of all the fruit of the land or they were uprooted and sent into captivity and the land was theirs no longer. The land is the Lord's and he gives to whom he will, and when they crucified Messiah his arm was not shortened that he could not drive them out in destruction as he had driven out the Canaanites before the destroying sword of Joshua centuries before, when the iniquity of the Amorites was full.

The Puritan colonists of New England, too, saw themselves as God's chosen, his covenant children, established m the land that their God had given them. They did not hesitate to think of their colonial history m terms of their conquest of Canaan. As long as the children of Israel acknowledged the land as Jehovah's they were secure in their possession and enjoyment of it. And so it was in Puritan New England. But when their descendents forgot to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Christ they too, lost the land, as the land became the state's. Now the government taxed them for the use of its land while it dangled the sword of eminent domain over their heads to remind them whose the land really was.

LAND AND LIBERTY
"It is a principle of political philosophy, first announced by Harrington, and much insisted upon by Lowman and the elder Adams, that property in the soil is the natural foundation of power, and consequently of authority…Hence, the natural foundation of every government may be said to be laid in the distribution of its territories. And here three cases are supposable, viz. the ownership of the soil by one, the few, or the many. First, if the prince owns the lands, he will be absolute, for all who cultivate the soil, holding it of him, and at his pleasure, must be subject to his will, that they will be in the condition of slaves, rather than of freemen. Secondly, if the landed property of a country be shared among a few men, the rest holding as vassals under them, the real power of government will be in the hands of an aristocracy, or nobility, whatever authority may be lodged in one or more persons, for the sake of greater unity in counsel and action. But, thirdly, if the lands be divided among all those who compose the society, the true power and authority of government will reside in all the members of that society; and the society itself will constitute a real democracy, whatever form of union may be adopted for the better direction of the whole, as a political body. Under such a constitution, the citizens themselves will have control of the state. They will not need to have this power conferred upon them by express grant. It will fall into their hands by the natural force of circumstances, by the inevitable necessity of the case. There is no truth in political science more easy to comprehend, more open to the view of all, or more certainly known in universal experience, than that the men who own the territories of a state will exercise a predominating influence over the public affairs of such state. This is agreeable to the constitution of human nature, and is confirmed by the concurrent testimony of all history." (Wines: Laws of The Ancient Hebrews, pp. 400-401)

THE HEBREW REPUBLIC
Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. Thus when the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt, he led them out of bondage and into the liberty of the promised land. At Mount Sinai God made his covenant with them, established them as a special nation and gave them their constitution. But if, as we have just seen, liberty is inseparably associated with the ownership and distribution of the land, then we might expect the divinely given constitution to reflect this foundation of liberty. And indeed it does. In Egypt they had been slaves. In Egypt all the land had been owned by Pharaoh, and the priestly caste and even the native Egyptians were themselves in bondage to Pharaoh. If the distribution of land in Canaan was not to be different then they would only have exchanged masters, but God intended to give them liberty.

Let us see how the land was distributed under the Hebrew Republic. First of all it was divided into twelve portions and assigned by lot to the twelve tribes of Israel. Then within each tribal portion the land was again similarly divided amongst the families or clans that made up each tribe. It was then divided once more so that each adult male had his own portion of land. Each man was a freeholder and possessed that badge of liberty, his own unalienable land. And it was unalienable. Divine wisdom did not stop with such beneficial distribution of the soil, but foreseeing with omniscience all the natural greed, depravity and propensity for tyranny of the human heart, God made the distribution of the land, the foundation of each man's liberty, perpetual as long as the Hebrew Republic stood. The Hebrew freeholder could not lose his liberty or his inheritance, as his constitutional right to both was unalienable. Every seventh year, the sabbatical year (Deut. 15), all debts were cancelled and all bond servants were set at liberty. And every fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee (Lev. 25), all the land that had been sold returned to the original owner or his heirs. The distribution of the land was permanent and enforced by a perpetual succession within the family, establishing liberty by ensuring that none ever became a landless pauper and none were ever to become landed aristocrats with vast holdings. The authoritative basis for this perpetual distribution is found in God's statement, "The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is mine". Thus the basis for this perpetual liberty was the recognition that the "earth is the Lord's".

LAND AND SUFFRAGE
The franchise, the right to vote, the right to determine directly or indirectly the officeholders of one's government, is another basic element of liberty. The freeholder of the Hebrew Republic had it, as there were many elective features in the Hebrew Constitution and, as we shall see, he had it because it naturally stems from holding property. Suffrage historically has, in free societies at least, been tied to property requirements, and so it should be. When it is not so, the have-nots will use their vote to legally plunder the haves. If those who do not pay taxes can vote to levy taxes on those who do, then no property is safe. NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION also meant NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION! As Karl Marx observed, "man proclaims politically that private property is abolished as soon as he abolishes the property qualification for the vote…Is not private property as an idea abolished when the non-owner becomes legislator for the owner? The property qualification for the vote is the ultimate political form of the recognition of private property." (Karl Marx, A World Without Jews, quoted from Rushdoony, This Independent Republic, pp. 61-62) The liberal cry for universal suffrage is the same as the Marxist cry for the abolition of private property. In the early American Republic, as in the Hebrew Republic, liberty sprang from property, and the wide extent of the franchise to adult males was the result of the wide distribution of the land.

INHERITANCE
The design of the Hebrew constitution was to perpetuate liberty as long as the Republic should stand. Thus the distribution of the soil was maintained from generation to generation. But this could only be accomplished by an unrestricted right of inheritance. If property is unalienable it must include the right to bequeath it entire to whom one will. Without this right no property would be safe for more than one generation. If the state can infringe on the right of inheritance, then property is no longer unalienable, but is held by permission of the state. If the state can usurp property at the death of the owner, then no property is safe and the state can confiscate whatever portion of the nation's wealth it chooses every generation.

The ancient Hebrew freeholder was a jealous guardian of his inheritance. This was the foundation of Naboth's resistance to Ahab's greed as he declared, "The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee." (I Kings 21:3) Naboth knew his birthright and, unlike Esau, he was unwilling to sell it. It was the family inheritance and not his to sell and rob his descendents. From father to son it was the foundation of the family's liberty and prosperity. The tribes of Israel were also equally jealous of their inheritance. Thus it was declared by special divine legislation (Numbers 36) that if there were no male heirs daughters might inherit, but they must marry within the tribe to ensure that no portion of that tribe's inheritance ever left that tribe. If she married out of her tribe she forfeited her inheritance. Thus the inheritance of each tribe was divinely secured and made as inviolable as the inheritance of every freeholder. Thus it guaranteed that no tribe could gain the ascendancy and rule over the other tribes, any more than any individual could become a vast landlord reducing his neighbors to serfs. The key to this perpetuation of liberty lay in the RIGHT OF INHERITANCE.

THE MARXIST MANIFESTO
"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." If Marxism is the theology of Anti-Christ then it must reverse the above, it must seek to make the earth (landed property) and its inhabitants the property of the anti-Christ totalitarian state. Hence Marx calls for the abolition of private property and the abolition of the family. But Marx saw, as Naboth did, that the foundation of the family lies in its property. Thus Marx goes on to declare, "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: the abolition of private property." To accomplish this Marx outlined a ten point program. The very first point was THE ABOLITION OF PROPERTY IN LAND. The third was ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHT OF INHERITANCE

LAND AND REVOLUTION
If the nature of any society and the foundation of its tyrannies or liberties lies in the distribution of the land, then any real change in the nature of that society requires a REVOLUTION. Elections, assassinations, coups d'etat may come and go, leaving society changed but little. Only a thorough REVOLUTION that wipes out all currencies, debts, deeds, titles and thus radically redistributes the soil is far-reaching enough in its effects to really change society. Thus the Marxists are committed to world revolution. It may be violent REVOLUTION or it may be a legal REVOLUTION, but it will have to be total REVOLUTION.

AGRARIAN REFORM
Such a REVOLUTION took place in Egypt as a result of the seven years famine recorded in Genesis 41. During the seven years plenty Pharaoh stored up wheat for the predicted famine. During the seven years famine the people had to sell their land to Pharaoh to survive starvation. The small independent farmer was wiped out and a total redistribution, a centralization of the land into the hands of Pharaoh, was accomplished. It was a watershed in Egyptian history, and marked both a peak of power and the beginning of the decline and a plunge into severe oppression. (See Enc. Brittanica, IX Edition, 1878, p. 736)

Marxists have often sought to disguise their REVOLUTIONS under the cover of mere AGRARIAN REFORM. Agrarian reform however, a redistribution of the land, is the most thorough form of revolution. Thus Mao-Tse-Tung was able to popularize his revolution in both China and amongst American liberals as a program of agrarian reform to give the land to the peasants. It was agrarian reform and it was revolution and it did redistribute the land till it was all owned by the Marxist totalitarian state. Similarly, the real revolution in Russia did not take place in 1917 when a cadre of Jewish Bolsheviks, mostly from New York City, under Lenin and Trotsky seized a few public buildings in the capitol of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg. For the rest of this vast empire revolution did not come till after the civil war was over and the Bolshevik state commenced to reorganize society according to the dictates of their prophet Karl Marx. For the Ukraine, the agrarian revolution did not come till the 1930's, when the Ukraine was collectivized. The millions of small independent farmers who resisted collectivization were wiped out in a planned famine, the Marxist state's best answer as how to most efficiently dispose of them. Stalin later confessed this crime to an approving Churchill.

"Ten millions," he (Stalin) said, holding up his hands. "It was fearful. Four years it lasted."…"These," (I said) "were what you called Kulaks?" "Yes," he said, but he did not repeat the word…"Oh well…the great bulk were very unpopular and were wiped out by their laborers."…I record as they came back to me these memories, and the strong impression I sustained at the moment of millions of men and women being blotted out or displaced forever. A generation would no doubt come to whom their miseries will be unknown, but it would be sure of having more to eat AND BLESS STALIN'S NAME." (Emphasis added: Churchill: The Hinge of Fate, quoted from Sturdza: The Suicide of Europe, p. 277)

A generation did come up, but they have had to be fed on American wheat. The Ukraine, once the breadbasket of Europe under the Czars, cannot now sustain itself. When the state owns all the land the people are reduced not only to political servitude but to starvation as well. When the people own the land they have prosperity as well as liberty. The Biblical land "flowing with milk and honey" was a land in which every man had his inheritance in the soil.

PROPERTY TAXES
For the ancient Hebrews, set free and established in the promised land, to have submitted to a property tax would have been equivalent to going back to Egypt, to returning to bondage. The basis of the property tax, whether the politicians will admit it or not, is the totalitarian concept that the state owns all the land. The tax is the rent that the nominal owner pays to the government for the privilege of using its land. The title deed becomes merely a lease, for obviously he who can demand payment for the use of the land is the real owner. In fact, what would the government do with the land if it could not lease it back to the people on its own terms? As Josephus tells us (Antiquities of the Jews, Book II, Chap. VII), Pharaoh, having gained possession of all the land during the seven years famine, allowed the farmers to return to some of the land on the basis of a heavy tax for its use. And obviously, if they could not pay, the land would revert to Pharaoh. And so it is today. The State has effectively communized the land by the imposition of a property tax. If you do not or cannot pay this tax you will be evicted from the land by the state, its owner, whose rent you did not pay. The state, the true owner under this system, sets the rent, the property tax rate, and can easily evict the supposed owners by resorting to confiscatory levels of taxation. This was heavily practiced during the reconstruction aftermath of the Civil War in the South where, "Tax sales were so frequent that on auction days, the red flag of the sheriff's auctioneer hung from a majority of the houses in town. . .Whole towns went up for sale…The scene was that of the widow, the orphan and the war wounded being driven to the wall by a war more terrible than the first. The propertied classes were slowly being impoverished and reduced to the status of beggars. From 1867 through 1871, houses declined 80 per cent in value. One distinguished New Orleans citizen wrote m the New York World on July 8, 1873, 'We are ruined here,' and 'to hold this property is to be taxed to death by…Communists.' " (Steffgen, The Bondage of the Free, pp. 119-120) It has been estimated that the average property in the South changed hands five times during this period. Then as now the ownership of the soil increasingly meant little more than the right to pay taxes on that which was claimed and controlled by the state.

Marx did not postulate a property tax. He postulated the abolition of private ownership of land. The property tax, as well as the inheritance tax which is another form of property tax, is merely the way of accomplishing this objective. When revolutionary agrarian reform completes the job and the land is seized and collectivized as it is in the U.S.S.R., then there will no longer be a need for the deceptive fraud of the property tax. Till then the property tax is being used to finance that tenth point of Marxism, "Free education for all children in public schools." (See issue 2-2)

CONTROL
True ownership includes control. To the ancient Hebrew and the American minuteman their home was their castle, and they held it by unalienable right. If a property tax communizes the soil, we would expect the state to assert its claim to ownership in the area of control. AND IT DOES!!! Building codes and zoning regulations that would be insufferable to free men and would have caused a revolution in ancient Israel or colonial America are meekly submitted to by those who have accepted the property tax. Zoning and rezoning can also play havoc with distribution of the land, and it has not been uncommon for governments to confiscate whole areas of land by, say, rezoning farm land to commercial and thus imposing confiscatory levels of property tax. The exercise of EMINENT DOMAIN is another clear assertion that "the earth is the state's" to dispose of as it sees fit.

Whatever land Caesar needs, Caesar takes, and in this respect the government is under no delusion, even if the people are, and the bulldozer of Urban Renewal and other governmental projects has yet to concern itself with property lines. "And today, in the average American city there are about 50 agencies which have the power to confiscate land." (Rushdoony: The Politics of Guilt And Pity, pp. 326-327) The recent wave of environmental legislation and the drive for LAND USE legislation are but the consistent working out of the premise of the PROPERTY TAX ! !

THE SCRIPTURES
The classic Biblical example of property rights is the case of Naboth's vineyard. At Naboth's refusal to sell, Ahab, recognizing that Naboth's rights left him powerless, went home and wept. Ahab, wicked as he was, knew he had no right to tax the land away or confiscate it by eminent domain. The earth was the Lord's who had given it to Naboth as his inheritance, as both Naboth and Ahab well knew, a knowledge unknown today to either the anti-Christian state or an apostate people.

Isaiah declares of those who cast an envious eye at their neighbors inheritance, "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth." (Isaiah 5:8) Such tyranny also arose in Nehemiah's time as the people lamented, "We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth…We have borrowed money for the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards…we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants…neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards." Nehemiah's immediate response was a swift and righteous rebuke requiring that every man be restored his inheritance. (Nehemiah 5) Nehemiah had little sympathy for those who forgot that the earth is the Lord's.

THE JUDGMENT
Patrick Henry declared, 'LIBERTY OR DEATH" The scriptures say, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free", and conversely, "All they that hate me love death". The choice is and always has been that simple. Isaiah said, "therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge", and today men are in captivity because they forgot that "The earth is the Lord's". Men will either be ruled by God or a dictator. Rushdoony declares, "The state, in claiming eminent domain, is simply asserting sovereign power over all the property within the state…Sovereignty and eminent domain are inescapable concepts. Denied to God, they will accrue to men. Today Caesar is taking the sovereignty men will not give to God." (Politics of Guilt And Pity, pp. 326-328) The Scriptures put it even more clearly. When Israel, rejecting God's rule, sought for themselves an earthly king, they were sternly warned that the result would be that "he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants…And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king…and the Lord will not hear you in that day." (1 Samuel 8:14-18) Today too, men have by accepting the property tax denied that the earth is the Lord's. Today too, men have given to Caesar the sovereignty they have long denied to God. Today too, men are crying out under the oppression, BUT GOD WILL NOT HEAR THEM!

There is nothing so vain, futile and almost pathetic as today's conservatives who accept the property tax, eminent domain, zoning etc., thus denying the only God that can give them liberty, and then complain at the excesses of the result. And there is nothing as abject as those who accept the public school system their confiscatory property taxes finance, and only cavil at the waste in the budget. Where is the revolutionary blood of our ancestors that literally boiled till it broke Caesar's yoke and put the neck of the tyrant underfoot, while it bowed the knee only to God? Where is the faith of our forefathers who trusted only in their Father in Heaven to give them this day their daily bread, trusting and believing that the earth was the Lord's and the cattle on a thousand hills were His?

CONCLUSION
Our forefathers not only lived their faith, but they saw that totalitarian tyranny which is the logical endpoint of any unscriptural tax. On principle they pledged their all to resist a tax amounting to only pennies. And the principles for which they fought, with the aid and blessing of the Almighty, made them the most prosperous republic in the history of man. Conversely, today men have accepted almost any form of tax as long as they are prosperous enough to pay it without hardship, caring little to sacrifice for principle. And as a result they have brought on themselves a tyranny that is little more than the exact and deserving result of their folly and apostasy.

This issue has not been written to try to provoke a few Christians into rebelling against the payment of the property tax. But it has been written to call people to that faith which is the only foundation for resisting the property tax, to that knowledge which if believed must result in the ultimate overthrow of the property tax. Caesar has claimed the land, and is not likely to disgorge it unless compelled to by the same sacrifices that our forefathers paid in blood almost 200 years ago. Neither are we likely to taste of liberty before tasting of judgment from the chastising hand of an angry God, who sent his own people into captivity when they, too, forgot that THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S AND THE FULNESS THEREOF; THE WORLD, AND THEY THAT DWELL THEREIN.