The above quote is attributed to the brilliant mind of Benjamin Franklin, and was used as a rallying cry for the American revolution, who believed that King George III was by his actions behaving like a tyrant, of which, the colonists had themselves no legitimate recourse to correct what they believed to be injustices, wrongs, and a lack of a voice, in responding to the governance so being imposed upon them, which encouraged those colonists to band together to revolt against the tyranny that oppressed them from freedom, and the right of self-determination.
The reason why rebellion to a tyrant can be considered to be an act of obedience to God, is that those that fail to exercise their given authority with justice, fairness, and an equal application of natural law, are on the pathway to becoming a tyrant, in which, whenever their arbitrary rulings and decisions become the law of the land, then the people will suffer under that law, when they are obedient to it, having essentially forsaken the higher moral authority of God, for a tyrant; which is why, those that rebel against tyrants are considered to be in obedience to God, because anyone in authority who is acting like a tyrant, or is a tyrant, deserves neither respect or obedience, because their actions are not in compliance with moral law.
All those that believe that our highest calling is to obey the law, even unjust laws, are the very same that are not thinking beings, because the law is not necessarily going to be always right, and a very strong case can be and should be made, that humankind’s law as exercised presently, contains obvious flaws in many a case, that represent laws that are not in accordance with natural law, in addition to those good laws which though good are unequally applied -- for whatever is good for the goose, must be, in order to be fair, be good for the gander.
Those who then resist unfair laws do so, not because they believe they won’t be punished, for in many instances, they are punished, and sometimes punished severely, but rather they make it their point, that they will answer only to that immaculate law which is beyond the errors and prejudices of the day. Indeed, while there are a multitude of ways to change a law or try to change such, one of those ways is civil disobedience to a law that is unjust.
So too, those that would govern us, when we find that they are out of order, should be seen as being illegitimate, and while not everybody is going to stand up to a given injustice, the minimum that people should do, is to acknowledge that tyranny has no good place in any free society, and should be rooted out, because the natural state of humankind is to be free, for we were born free, and thereby each of is innately entitled to freedom, liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, as we best see it, which means that the principle of good governance is to defend and to protect our natural rights, rather than to lord it over us unjustly.