When to Revolt Against a Government

You only revolt when the government is bad. That's kind of obvious. One characteristic of a bad government is a questionable legitimacy of authority.  This could be from the government being foreign, like Great Britain attempting to impose more rule on colonies in America which had already been governing themselves for a long time.  Maybe a Midianite attempting to rule over ancient Israel. Or perhaps someone ruling who doesn’t have a birth certificate and has not proven he’s legally qualified to hold an office. 

Another trait of bad government is an abuse of power. Doing things the state is not legally or morally allowed to do, such as Pharaoh commanding children to be thrown in the river or King George and parliament demanding American colonies to pay illegal taxes or quartering British soldiers in people's homes during times of peace and then overruling the local government authorities when they try to prosecute those soldiers for stealing people’s food or forcing their daughters. 

But we don't only need a bad government to revolt against, we also need a good alternative government to take over.  This would be like Moses being ready to lead the people of Israel or the colonies colonial governments and their forming of a national government.  When we look at Rehoboam and Jeroboam, the ten tribes each had their own tribal government and they were united under Jeroboam so they had an alternative government to take over when they rebelled against Rehoboam’s rule.  Some people thought that Americans would not be able to form an alternative government to rule without Great Britain but history has shown us that they did a very good job.

But beyond the existing government being worth revolting against and the means whereby a successful revolt may be waged being present, we also need the support of the church. This is necessary because sometimes we have a bad government as punishment for wrong we are doing.  In those cases we need to remain in that situation for a time but there are other times when people are turning to God and it is His will for them to overturn a tyrant.  If we are turning to God and being supported by men of God, we could replace a bad situation with a worse one.  God told Moses that he had heard the cries of his people and was going to deliver them. Throughout the book of Judges, God allowed evil governments because of the peoples sin, but then when they turned and cried to Him, He blessed rebellion against the governments which He had allowed to take them over.  At the time of the American revolution, we had preachers and sermons that were proclaiming the legitimate problem we had with England and the validity of our revolution against them.

I do not think it is the right time for another revolution here yet, but in some places on earth it may be.  At the time of our war for independence, revolution was the right course for America.  If any people will humbly turn from sin to God and cry to Him they will eventually get good government in one way or another.