AUTHORITY AND JURISDICTION OF ECCLESIASTCIAL COURTS
Judge Navin-Chandra Naidu
Introduction
God’s Word says, in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, that we are prohibited from seeking relief as plaintiffs, or appearing in secular courts. A federal law, styled as Public Law 97-280, 96 Stat.1211 of 1982, declared the Bible as the Word of God. It ought to be clear that when Christians are ignorantly or deceptively made to appear in secular courts, they have violated and disobeyed God’s Law, and a federal law. What is the punishment for this? Exodus 1 (the whole Chapter).
Secular judges will nonchalantly, and wrongly, tell you that “Church and State are separated,” and that you are to make yourself available in court or face a bench warrant because they do not recognize ecclesiastical courts. Psalm 119:161. I believe you will have enough law argument material to have the matter adjourned and heard to an ecclesiastical court through a Special Appearance Motion. The bench warrant has no effect in a church sanctuary as long as you invoke the power and authority of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Deuteronomy 1:16-17.
We Christians constantly, and willingly, suffer at the hands of a corrupt, inefficient, God-despising secular court system. Many have lost homes to foreclosure proceedings without recourse to God’s Law and the jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical court. Ignorance and lack of knowledge are the prime suspects. Hosea 4:6-8:
Many have been forced to accept plea bargains, and agree to a less harsh sentence even if they are innocent. The truth has no place in a court of law. Only proof and evidence. Justice is thus perverted. Leviticus 19:15.
Some face the death penalty because a psychotic federal law – Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)– provides that “federal courts are unable to grant relief despite meritorious substantive claims, including . . . claims of racial bias in jury selection, ineffective assistance of counsel, and prosecutorial misconduct.” If, for example, the real killer publicly confessed and there was conclusive dna evidence, it wouldn’t matter. Once a federal appeal is denied, the death machinery must grind on. No matter what. Former President Jimmy Carter, the Governor of Georgia, William Sessions, director of the FBI under President Reagan, and even the Pope tried to save Troy Davis from being executed because there was overwhelming evidence that he was inncocent. AEDPA prevailed. Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection at 10.53 p.m. on a Wednesday in September 2011. Davis’s lawyer, Thomas Ruffin, declared Davis’s execution a “legalized lynching.” Davis never had the benefit or opportunity of an ecclesiastical court jurisdiction from the get go. His lawyers should have argued purely on jurisdictional grounds from the beginning without getting into the merits of the case. Davis was forced to come under a secular court’s jurisdiction. It does not mean that an ecclesiastical court would have been lenient. On the contrary, an ecclesiastical court has means to find the truth. 1 Kings 3:16 – 28; 1 Kings 8:31-32.
What will it take to have thousands, if not millions, of Christians stand up and claim the power, authority and jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical court complete with its own Council of Elders, police force, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, correctional facilities, ecclesiastical bar association, and banking institutions? The supreme law of the land – the U.S. Constitution – encourages Christians to do just that because Congress is prohibited from making any law that interferes with the free exercise of religion. The States cannot stop you either because the Fourteenth Amendment, as applicable to the States, protects your life, liberty and property through equal protection and due process. Article Vi, section 2 of the US Constitution requires State judges to be bound to the Constitution anything in the laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. Psalm 119:52
Billions of dollars enter the coffers of secular lawyers, attorneys and courts for the provision of “legal services.” These funds could easily be diverted to a Christian Cause offering legal services under God’s Law to thwart man’s defective and fallible laws. Luke 11:46, Luke 11:52.
The time is well nigh for those who profess belief and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ to make a concerted clarion call and commitment to refuse, and deny, the jurisdiction and authority of the secular courts, that is, municipal, state, or federal courts. Instead, believers of our Lord must obey God’s Word and seek the jurisdiction and authority of ecclesiastical courts. There is constitutional force to this proposition. Deuteronomy 4: 1- 2.
Secular courts are run by the “law of rules” instead of the rule of law. Just check out the Local Rules of Court, and see for yourself the nit-picking rules which when not followed, or obeyed, will result in sanctions. You may even lose your case because of a mere technicality. Leviticus 19: 35-36
Secular courts hate it when you quote the U.S. Constitution. They will hate you even more if you quote the Bible. The irritated judge will usually mouth off the incorrect and current fiction that “Church and State are separated” although that phrase “separation of Church and State”, or word “separated,” or “separation,” are never to be found, or implied, in our U.S. Constitution. Luke 12:11-12
Secular state judges are elected by their attorney friends who spent time, effort and money for the election campaigns. These attorney friends appear in court for their clients. When you believe that the judge will overlook his gratitude to his bar friends, and be impartial, you may be in for a rude shock. There is a hidden agenda and a hidden compromise that is at work which the hapless client(s) does not perceive or understand. Proverbs 17:8.
Federal judges are attorneys who once knew their state’s governor(s). The President appoints controversial attorneys during the Senate’s recess. The meaning of “recess” and “adjournment” are blurred like “interval” and “break.” Federal judges have life tenure (no mandatory retirement age) provided they exhibit “good behavior.” Proverbs 18:16.
Scriptural, Legal, and Legislative Authority for Ecclesiastical Courts
Does our U.S. Constitution recognize God? IT DOES !! Check out Article 1, section 7, clause 2, which towards the end of the sentence says that if the President does not return a Bill sent to him for approval and signature within 10 days, that Bill will become law. The 10 days mentioned does not include Sundays. Sunday is the Sabbath. So, the Constitution recognizes and regards the Sabbath, therefore, it recognizes GOD.
Article 1, section 8, clause 9, grants power to Congress to constitute inferior tribunals to the US Supreme Court. Some say this means Congress has the power to constitute ecclesiastical courts. But the Free Exercise Clause prohibits Congress from making any law that prohibits the free exercise of religion.
God’s Law says we are to resist and desist the secular. Read the whole chapter of Exodus, Chapter 1, and you will marvel at how Puah and Sipporah, the midwives charged with killing male children, obeyed God by disobeying Pharaoh.
God’s Law in James 4: 4 is clear about how much God despises friendship with the world. The same Order is issued in 1 John 2:15. How are we to accomplish this is found in Romans 12:2.
These references found in the Word of God, a federal law, ought to be mentioned to secular judges when they summon you as a named defendant. You may do so by a Special Appearance Motion without granting these secular courts your physical presence because you are for all intents and purposes “outside the jurisdiction” of these courts in the first place. See “Process” in Am Jur 2d.
The church-state separation fiction is unconstitutional although several Supreme Court judges have thought otherwise. These judges are required to interpret the supreme law of the land, that is, the Constitution.
When the First Amendment came into force in 1791, it was not until 1947 that the Supreme Court grappled and wrestled with the issue in Everson v. Board of Education. The high court ruled that the First Amendment had erected a “high and impregnable” wall between Church and State. A metaphor used by Thomas Jefferson in a private letter to the Anabaptist Church in 1803 became the law of the land although not be found or discerned in the U.S. Constitution.
The founders and framers never used the phrase “separation of church and state” in any of their debates, discussions or deliberations.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This compromise language was accepted by the House on September 24, 1789, and by the Senate the following day. The words “respecting” and “establishment” are key terms in the Establishment Clause which requires examination. The word “respecting’ is synonymous with “concerning, regarding, about, anent,” indicates that the First Amendment did not prohibit an establishment of religion; rather it prohibited Congress from making any law about, concerning, or regarding an establishment of religion. Since a national religious establishment did not exist at the time of the Amendment, it became unconstitutional to provide one after ratification.
Another point to be made is with the word “an” before “establishment.” By choosing “an” over “the” establishment, the founders and framers were showing that they wanted to prohibit only those official activities that tended to promote the interests of one or another particular sect. (See Michael J. Malbin, Religion and Politics, The Intentions of the Authors of the First Amendment (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978)). During those days, most schools were church-run sectarian schools.
Church and State, as institutions in any civilized society, must co-exist. One of the earliest acts f the First House of representatives was to elect a chaplain. Rev. William Linn was the first through a ballot passed on May 1, 1789.
Earlier, on June 28, 1787, Dr. Benjamin Franklin was reported by James Madison, the “notetaker,” to have said in an address to the Convention and its President George Washington: “I have lived Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; . . . I therefore beg leave to move – that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.” (Debates In the Federal Convention of 1787 As Recorded By James Madison,” Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1927), pp. 295-96.)).
Separation of Church and State ??? Presidential Proclamations regarding Thanksgiving, fasting and prayer are further proof and evidence that Church and State co-exist without the joust of separation.
The President appoints an ambassador to the Vatican till today.
In 1803, President Jefferson asked the Senate to ratify a treaty with the “friendly tribe of Kaskaskia Indians” in which one of the conditions was the use of federal money to support a Catholic priest in his priestly duties, and further to provide money to build a church. Two other similar treaties were signed with the Wyandots and the Cherokees. Most significantly, after the adoption of the Establishment of Religion Clause, the US government purchased 12,000 acres of land and placed it in a controlling trust for the services of a religious evangelical order to settle in western U.S. lands to aid the Christian Indians. In June 1, 1796, Congress passed “An Act regulating the grants of land appropriated for Military services and for the Society of the United Brethren, for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.” Public Statutes at Large, Vol.1, “Acts of the Fourth Congress,” Sess. 1, Chap.46, p. 491.
Jefferson must have been aware of Leviticus 25: 23-24: The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.” In land patent cases, and in foreclosure proceedings, the federal law that declared and recognized the Word of God is immeasurably powerful to win your day in secular court by Special Appearance Motion.
Interestingly, this newly created evangelical arm of the United Brethren was also incorporated by the States of New York New Jersey and Ohio.
Some day, we might just about have a US President who could be made to invoke Article II, section 3 of the US Constitution, to “recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” to recognize, acknowledge and accept the authority, power and jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts so that Article IV, section 1’s full faith and credit shall be given to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other State. After all, if the fools insist that Church and State are separate, then by extension a Church is a State – just like the Vatican.
Until then, trust in The Lord, and he will save you.