Op-Ed: When Caesar No Longer Gets the Coin

Ever stared at your paycheck stub, watching chunks vanish into taxes that fuel wars you never signed up for? Wondered if those government jobs pretending to serve the community—teacher, clerk, cop, judge, soldier, etc.—are not actually part of the problem, feeding the evil machine, chaining people even more to a system that feels rotten at its core? And what choice really do we get when we vote, all candidates homegrown from the same “infested garden”? Ever had the feeling of being betrayed, trapped, tricked, imprisoned in a “Truman Show” where you are not even the main character, reduced to routine and comfort or threatened otherwise with joblessness, homelessness, and a hopeless life?

Democracy. The ultimate just and fair system of the free. Really?

A freedom that is walled by risk of stigmatization and marginalization, sanctions, and isolation. A freedom to vote boxed into the choice of the lesser of the two evils.

Was it always that way? Is that the product of our modern “evolved” world crowned with secularism and individualism, or is it actually a pattern original to this world, this matrix?

When most people are asked, the general opinion is that at the end of the day we can't do much; there will always be powerful evil people who will rule us, and our duty is just to be good guys in our daily life, help one another, hoping we do enough good deeds so we don't need to come back and can definitely go to a higher realm. Nothing new under the sun, basically. It’s not today we will change anything...

But is that really what God wants from us, quiet sheep submitted to evil leaders, walking happily resigned to the slaughterhouse, asking for the bad guys to be forgiven because they do not know what they do? Is that what God intended for humanity when He created us? And how did we arrive at such a point where people are so confused about their purpose down here? How did this idea to surrender and obey a system that is not from God come into being?

The Good Father

Could you sincerely think of a God creating us and then walking away, leaving us as prey to ignorance and evil? No way. There must be an answer to all of that misery and confusion.

Everything starts probably with how we imagine God to be. As the definition of faith is “expecting good,” and some narrations also state that God is the way we think about Him, let’s not consider God as some prosecutor or far-off judge, but as the best Father that anyone can ever think of: a loving, caring Father who rolls up His sleeves for the well-being of His children and sustains their every single need. In His Books, He commands every parent on earth: feed your kids right, clothe them warmly, teach them wisdom, mold them into good souls bursting with decency and strength. How would He dare demand then what He won't deliver Himself?

Of course not.

So how to explain the state of the world today if God is a Good Father? Is this unjust and evil world we live in really operating as He intended?

Wait a minute… doesn't a father also ask for obedience and discipline? A good dad sets bedtimes, encourages a healthy lifestyle, puts restrictions, defines school time and free time, and teaches morals and manners that stick, rules that build unbreakable lives. Doesn't he?

Wouldn’t God do it too? And even better? Of course He would.

Then what if the reason for this mess on earth is not the Father's shortcoming but the children's arrogance, disobedience, and rebellion?

God's Fierce Love: Prophets Sent as Rulers, Not as Postmen

God is indeed good, God is indeed just, and He guides and takes care of His people. How does He do it? He does it by sending Messengers, guides that represent Him and do His Will. Isn't that what religious books are filled with: stories of Prophets and Messengers warning and guiding their people, people being blessed or cursed depending on their deeds, obedience, and submission, tasting the consequences of what they put forth with their hands?

Indeed, the Guide, the man of God, always invites to the supremacy of God. He represents God’s Will, and according to it he sets warnings, rules, laws, dos and don'ts. Chaos and injustice only appear the moment believers rebel and disobey the guide, reject him, and, as often happened in the past, try to kill him. Most often too, usurpers take over the religion and use it to enslave and put the masses to sleep, so much so that the religion becomes part of the chaos, a major source of injustice, evil, and suffering.

God has a system, and His true religion calls toward the supremacy of God: a system ruled by God through His representative. In His system, love, peace, and justice rule supreme. But the true religion of God isn't some Sunday sermon—it’s not a concept, a philosophy, or a theory. And that’s why so few follow it. No middle ground, no halfway, not a religion as a part-time job or a hobby, a jacket we put on and off. God, in His true forgotten religion that the Prophets and the Messengers came with, demands in return the whole of you, the whole of your life. The rules of the game are straightforward: listen and trust in the wisdom of God and know peace, harmony, and prosperity; but listen and trust in the passions and desires of your ego and know suffering, chaos, and injustice.

God’s plan for humanity has always been paradise on earth. And this does not come into existence with laziness, selfishness, and insubordination, and even less with obedience to people who are not appointed by God. We humans, as the angels above predicted a long time ago, spilled blood and brought corruption in the land, and couldn't submit to and obey God and His Messengers for more than a generation or two at a time before falling into Satan's traps and seductions for this world time and time again.

The people obey the Prophet: people are happy. God is happy and gives more blessing. People disobey the Prophet; the Prophet warns; the people don't listen; God retracts His blessings: the people suffer, often for a long time, until they remember that all their misery has only one source: rejecting God’s will, rejecting the guidance of the one sent by Him. People repent, call upon the Prophet; the Prophet guides and leads again until the next rebellion that will lead to misery, famine, war, or slavery again.

Nowadays, many people would argue that we have passed the era of Prophets and that no such things will repeat. Nobody sees the state of the world and the condition of humanity as the direct consequence of our relationship with God as a species. People are in total denial. “This is not our scenario anymore,” they would say. “Injustice and wars and suffering can be fixed with more democracy, more ecological NGOs, and charities. One day maybe…

Religion? No, religion has nothing to give anymore. We live in a globalized world where consciousness has to rise from inside. We live in a liberalized world where individuality must be at the front; we must experience, we must awaken individually, evolve by trial and error. We can't obey one man sent by God anymore. This was for the dark days, some ancient era like the Middle Ages! This is backwards!”

As for the others who hold tight to what is left of religion, their minds are so deeply conditioned with dogmatic, deformed teachings that they follow the ideas of Paul and Omar and all their respective non-working religious scholars who walked in their footsteps: “Obey all governments: they are all from God. Read your holy book, fast, give alms, make pilgrimages, be good, pray, but do not rebel against the oppressive governments: it’s fitnah, it’s impermissible, it creates division.” Religion basically became some private affair that you practice in your room or in your club (mosques, churches, temples) but doesn't have anything to do with the society you live in. Its purpose? It helps you, in the best case, to suffer less here and claims to open for you the gates of the “hereafter,” but shows absolutely no care for your “here and now.”

Giving free space for Satan’s rule in here… and nobody seems to understand… or even be worried about it.

Scary and dark times indeed.

Glad Tidings

So no wonder that in that kind of context people are confused about the Will of God, about who to obey, who and what to work for, and how much God has a right over their life, and how much God would love to be present in their life.

We, the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, come to you with glad tidings. God loves you. God didn’t abandon you. God wants you, actually. And He never stopped calling for you. He never ceased to hope for you.

His rope has never been cut; He always left a thread, secret and hidden sometimes, other times more evident and apparent.

But today the time has come for Him to reclaim the ones who belong to Him and establish in the open, publicly for all to see, a sustainable, Divine Just State, unapologetically, without any compromises.

The power of change is in your hands. This is your invitation.

Will you honor it? Will you be amongst the ones who learn their lesson from the failed mission of Jesus the Messiah?

Jesus came with the glad tidings of a Kingdom to come. In his lifetime, because of the shortcomings of his followers and the lack of supporters, his mission—not because of him—had to be aborted, and the kingdom was not established.

What failed then is bound to succeed today. It’s the promise of God. Because in that time things were different. Even if Jesus had some outburst of divine anger and flipped some tables over and insulted publicly the hypocrites from the temple, it was generally a time where God was teaching in secret, and His Messenger was speaking in parables.

Do you remember what Jesus said when asked about taxes, God, and Caesar?

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” — Matthew 22:21

How do we understand this word of God today?

Can we really render unto Caesar anything when knowing everything belongs to God? Especially when the one sent by God is here, calling believers to build a new humanity, a new kingdom, a Divine Just State?

Today what should be the position of the true believers in front of such a dilemma?

How much should the people of God surrender to a system that enslaves them? How long are people going to allow schools to teach their kids their godless lessons? How long will fathers and mothers continue to accept sending their flesh and blood overseas to the murder machine, to be butchered on the front line for nothing but money and power? How long are people going to vote for people who are not appointed by God? And finally, how long should the chosen of God pay their taxes to tyrants and illegitimate governments?

It sounds like this same ancient trap the Pharisees sprung on Jesus, shoving that emperor-stamped coin under his nose, is still hypnotizing the masses: “Should we pay or not?”

The fact is: this question was never for Jesus. It was for you all along. And in it is your life today, your conscience, and your eternity hanging in the balance. The answer since the very beginning was extremely clear—the children of God don't come here to obey the darkness and give tribute to tyrants; Prophets don't come to be killed and crucified—they come to rule and represent God’s rule and guide sincere believers into paradise here on earth.

Don't romanticize the prophets as distant dreamers or frail postmen—they were rebels. Moses staring down Pharaoh's whip-masters, Hebrew backs breaking on stones fueled by stolen taxes. “Let my people go!” he thunders, and plagues roll in—not random fury, but targeted fire on every Egyptian who paid the god-king's toll, manned his armies, whispered silence. John the Baptist seals his fate scorning Herod's twisted bed: “It is not lawful.” Apostles spit in the Sanhedrin's face: “We must obey God rather than men.” Mohammed's band of poor slaves and outcasts toppling Mecca's arrogant elite who buried daughters alive. The blueprint screams across time: Prophets didn't negotiate corners or cut deals. They declared total innocence from the darkness—and pledged every breath to the light. God always backed the righteous, the truthful.

And who more righteous than the righteous servant, Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq, the father of the truthful?

Today through him the message of God became clearer than ever: public schools churning out godless minds? Walk away clean and homeschool them. Election day? Let them go to hell alone. Don’t share their sins by taking part in their actions. Voting has always been impermissible, and democracy is the supremacy of the people, a system antithetical to the supremacy of God. Laws against murder or theft? Follow them because God said so first, not because some bureaucrat signed the paper.

Taxes? Oppose them, at least with your heart and tongue. They threaten you then with prison? Let them steal your money, and make sure you leave this place as soon as you can to support in person the one sent by God. Stuck in your country? Ethiopia's king gave Muhammad's early believers shelter—praised for mercy, never obeyed as lord.

Until the rise takes place, the name of the game is resistance.

Be ready, O believers. And resist.

In the story of Moses, we are at the moment where Moses gathered the Israelites and is close to moving. The first plagues have started. The most lethal ones are to come. In the story of Mohammed, we are at the very end of the 13 years of persecution suffered in silence, just before the hijra to Medina.

The Kingdom of God is near. Really near. The only remnant of the true religion of God lives with us. Be ready, O believers. And resist.

We are the resistance, standing tall in this electric moment when God finally speaks plainly—no more parables, no more riddles—because His chosen one has gathered enough faithful fire to rise up and win back his throne. The man who leads this charge won't end nailed to a cross like Jesus. He'll plant the kingdom first, crush the tyrants, behead Satan, and establish peace and justice on the earth.

Caesar's coin? Keep it. We're here for the crown.