2 Samuel 23:3-4 (NIV) 3 The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: "When one rules over men in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, 4 he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings the grass from the earth."
Psalm 2:10 (NIV) Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth.
Gladstone was surely right when he pointed out that the Roman Empire could give equal tolerance to all religions just because it could be quite adamant about something much more important than religion, something required to keep society from disintegrating, namely, the veneration of the emperor. On that there could be no compromise... No state can be completely secular in the sense that those who exercise power have no beliefs about what is true and no commitments to what they believe to be right. It is the duty of the church to ask what those beliefs and commitments are and to expose them to the light of the gospel. There is no genuinely missionary encounter of the gospel with our culture unless this happens.
—Lesslie Newbigin in Foolishness to the Greeks.
