With the Big Apple’s election of hard-core anti-capitalist Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor, the Church must finally decide: Will it rise to defend biblical liberty — or allow the rest of America to inherit a future of “compassionate” slavery.
New York City just elected a socialist as its next mayor. Zohran Mamdani trounced fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, by promising $9 billion in “free” programs: universal childcare, city-run grocery stores, and fare-free buses.
It sounds compassionate. The Bible calls it slavery.
As Mayor-elect Mamdani prepares to govern America’s largest city with a budget bigger than entire states, the Church faces an urgent question: Will we recognize the spirit of Pharaoh when it wears the mask of progress? This isn’t just New York’s future. It’s a preview of what’s coming to your city next.
The applause erupted inside the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre as Zohran Mamdani took the stage to celebrate his victory. Cameras flashed. Supporters waved banners. They believed they had just elected compassion.
In truth, they had crowned control.
They call it progress, but it’s the oldest lie in politics: Trade your freedom for our care and we’ll decide what you deserve. Mamdani’s campaign sounded like a sermon on kindness — city-run grocery stores, rent-controlled housing, free childcare, fare-free buses. But behind every “free” promise stands someone forced to pay. And behind every vote for dependency hides the slow erosion of freedom.
Socialism always presents itself as compassion. But socialism isn’t charity — it’s coercion. Scripture commands voluntary generosity within the Church (Acts 2:44–45), not state-imposed redistribution. When government becomes god, freedom dies and dependence becomes the new devotion.
The Math Behind the Mirage
New York’s FY 2025 budget sits at $112.4 billion. That’s larger than the entire statewide budgets of Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Iowa combined.
Mamdani’s socialist platform would add an estimated $9 billion annually in new programs:
- Universal childcare: $6 billion
- Fare-free transit: $788 million
- City-run grocery stores: $60 million
Even with optimistic tax projections, the plan relies on siphoning federal taxpayer dollars to prop up city services that compete with private enterprise and expand government reach into every corner of daily life. The plan to pay for it calls for raising $10 billion annually through corporate tax increases and income taxes on millionaires.
Meanwhile, approximately 1.8 million New Yorkers already depend on SNAP benefits. These new entitlements won’t solve poverty; they’ll institutionalize it. Bureaucrats don’t expand budgets to increase efficiency. They expand budgets to expand dependence. And every dollar spent buys another captive constituency.
This is socialism’s core strategy: create clients, not citizens.
When Israel Demanded a King
The prophet Isaiah once confronted God’s people with these words: “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:10).
He wasn’t literally calling Jerusalem by those names. He was warning that their corruption had reached the level of cities that God had destroyed.
America stands at that same crossroads today. Like ancient Israel, we look around at the nations and demand what they have. We want security without sacrifice, provision without dependence on God.
The Bible warns about this trade. When Israel demanded a king to rule them like the nations around them, the prophet Samuel told them the truth about consolidated power (1 Samuel 8:11-17):
“He will take your sons… your daughters… your fields… your vineyards… and you shall be his slaves.”
Samuel wasn’t describing ancient tyranny. He was predicting every socialist regime in history. He was warning about New York City in 2025.
The pattern is always the same: Promise care. Demand obedience. Expand control. Harvest dependency.
Israel wanted security. They got servitude. They wanted a king like the nations. They lost the King who had delivered them from Egypt’s bondage.
New York wants care and compassion. They’ll get captivity.
History Repeats Itself (And Judgment Follows)
New York isn’t the first to flirt with utopian economics. Every generation that forgets God’s law repeats the same rebellion:
- Detroit promised cradle-to-grave benefits and delivered a cratered tax base.
- Venezuela promised equality and delivered hunger.
- The Soviet Union promised a workers’ paradise and delivered the Gulag.
Every socialist experiment ends the same way: When government feeds people, it no longer empowers the people to feed themselves.
Government-run grocery stores sound benevolent until you realize what they produce: stagnation, inefficiency, and the quiet death of responsibility. Chicago explored municipal stores but ultimately abandoned the plan. Erie, Kansas, operated a city-run grocery that lost $132,000 in 2022, and the manager’s “goal” was to lose only $100,000 the following year. A municipal grocery opened Baldwin, Florida, in 2019 and closed in 2024 after failing to break even.
When the state replaces markets with ministries, freedom gives way to rationing. When politicians play God, disaster follows.
Socialism promises equality but delivers envy. It replaces stewardship with entitlement, turning work from blessing into burden. It takes what God designed as voluntary charity flowing from transformed hearts and perverts it into mandatory redistribution enforced by the sword.
It isn’t justice — it’s disguised theft baptized in the language of compassion.
The Dragon Awakens: Power Through Panic
But Mamdani’s platform doesn’t stop at economic control. Like every socialist scheme, it requires the breakdown of order to justify the expansion of power.
We’ve seen this script before. Police retreat. Crime surges. Fear spreads. And when citizens become desperate for protection, government gains power.
That’s the socialist cycle: Create the crisis, then sell yourself as the solution. They break what works, then promise to fix it by expanding the same bureaucracies that caused the problem. They manufacture chaos and monetize the fear it produces.
Every failing city tells the same story: law enforcement weakened, criminals emboldened, citizens begging for protection from the very state that abandoned them. When that desperation peaks, people accept almost any level of control in exchange for safety.
That’s when socialism completes its circle: power through panic, bondage through fear.
Why This Matters: The War Will Come to Every City
Hear me clearly: This isn’t just a New York story. It’s prophecy for your city too.
This is the face of the modern Democratic Party. Radical figures like U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will work to export this ideology to cities and states nationwide. While conservatives fight internal battles, the socialist left stacks victories — city by city, school board by school board, policy by policy.
The question isn’t whether socialism will come knocking on your door. The question is whether the Church will stand in the gap when it does.
If this trajectory continues, socialism won’t need revolution. It will arrive through the ballot box, carried by voters convinced that government compassion costs less than personal responsibility. But freedom never survives that illusion.
What begins in New York rarely stays in New York. Policies born in Manhattan become platforms in Washington. If the Church sleeps through this experiment, we’ll wake to find socialism isn’t spreading from campus, it’s governing from the halls of government.
And then it will be too late for anything but repentance and ruin.
The Church’s Hour: Rise or Fall
The Church must model a better economy, one built on work, stewardship, family, and voluntary generosity rooted in the Gospel. This is not optional. This is our calling.
Civil government has a biblical role: to punish evil and uphold justice (Romans 13:1–4). But it cannot love your neighbor, disciple your children, or replace the community God designed the Church to be.
God established distinct spheres of authority (family, Church, and state), each with its own jurisdiction under His law. This is the doctrine of sphere sovereignty. And it’s not some arcane theological concept — it’s the foundation of human freedom.
When one sphere encroaches on another, tyranny follows. When the state assumes the roles of family and Church, it doesn’t just fail at those tasks, it enslaves the people it claims to serve.
Freedom flourishes when charity is personal, when communities care for their own, and when dependence on God replaces dependence on government. The Gospel, not government, is the only power that frees men from envy and bondage. Until hearts are changed, no budget can fix what sin has broken.
The apostle Paul writes, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). This isn’t cruelty; it’s the kindness of God establishing dignity through labor. Socialism inverts this: It feeds the body while starving the soul of purpose.
But if the Church stays silent while the state preaches its false gospel of control through compassion, we surrender the culture by default. This is not the hour for soft sermons about personal piety while political wolves devour the sheep. This is not the hour for “staying in our lane” while the state claims jurisdiction over every lane.
This is the hour for prophetic boldness. This is the hour for dragon-slaying.
Christ is King: The Church’s Counteroffensive
Now hear this word of hope and let it be a battle cry: The gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church. The dragon may awaken, but the Lion of Judah never sleeps.
Socialism promises what only Christ can deliver. Security? He is our fortress. Provision? He is the bread of life. Community? He is building His Church. The state offers counterfeits; Christ offers truth. And no budget in Babylon can match the riches of the Kingdom.
This is what victory looks like on the ground.
The Church must preach the Gospel’s economic vision from the pulpit. Preach biblical truth about work, wealth, poverty, and the state. Preach the Eighth Commandment: Socialism is government-sanctioned theft. Preach sphere sovereignty: God gave the sword to magistrates, not the pulpit to politicians.
This isn’t theory. Faithful churches across America are already doing this. They’re creating job training programs; operating food pantries that dignify recipients with work opportunities; establishing classical Christian schools that cost less than public school taxes; and building communities so strong that members wouldn’t dream of running to the state first.
This is how we win. Not by matching the left’s tactics. Not by building a Christian version of the welfare state. But by being the Church that Christ called us to be: A city on a hill, a light in darkness, a people so marked by love and truth and genuine care for one another that the world looks and wonders.
And when they wonder, we point them to the King.
The Test Before Us
New York’s experiment is a test. The question isn’t whether socialism can work (history has already answered that with rivers of blood and mountains of corpses). The question is whether the Church will rise to defend biblical liberty before the next generation inherits soft slavery and calls it progress.
Will we be found faithful when our children ask what we did when freedom was on the ballot?
The dragon is awake. It promises bread while forging chains. It speaks of compassion while building cages. It offers security while demanding surrender.
But here is what the dragon doesn’t know: Christ already crushed its head at Calvary.
The same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in His Church. The same Spirit that transformed cowards into martyrs fills believers today. The same Gospel that turned the Roman Empire inside out can expose socialism’s lies and set captives free.
Will the Church slay the dragon? Yes. Because Christ already won the war. We’re simply mopping up the remaining battles. The question is whether we’ll fight with the courage that victory demands or cower as if defeat were possible.
It isn’t. Christ is King. Not mayor. Not president.
He is King. And His kingdom will have no end.
The hour is late. The stakes are eternal. And the watching world is waiting to see if the people of God remember that we serve the true King. He’s already on the throne, and no vote in New York can change that.
“Choose this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).
The choice is before us. The outcome is certain: Christ wins. The only question is whether we’ll be found fighting or hiding when He returns.
Let us be found faithful. Let us be found fierce. Let us be found standing in the gap when the history books are written and our grandchildren ask, “What did you do?”
Let us answer: “We served the King. And the gates of hell did not prevail.”
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