Biblical Citizenship In Modern America, Week 4-Part 3 – A 30,000′ View: What are the core principles that produced the greatest Land of liberty? What is Congress supposed to be doing? What are the the specific powers the Founders intended the government to be limited to? What was the “general welfare” in the minds of the Founders? What should we know about the Articles and Amendments of the Constitution? Click the link to hear the conclusion of Week Four from Biblical Citizenship in Modern America!

Air Date: 07/14/2021

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to WallBuilders Live, we are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. No time to spare, we are going to jump right back in where we left off with yesterday’s program bringing you Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. If you missed yesterday and the day before, then go to our website today at wallbuilderslive.com and grab them there. Let’s dive in right now.

David:

The first principle of American government is you have to have something higher than government and it was God. And because God’s higher than government, he gives us a certain set of rights to government, you cannot touch those rights. Now we have limited government. 

And by the way, government, you exist primarily to protect the rights that God told all of it. So we have a right to free speech, we have a right to self-defense, we have a right to sanctity of our home, we have a right to justice, we have a right to trial by jury. Government, you have to protect those rights. All the things that they listed out is right.

Rick:

Wait, if you take the first principle out, all of that falls apart, you take God out… So these are the seeds of liberty? This is what produced this most incredible nation in the history of the world. So if we go back to the seeds, we can bear that same fruit that we’ve had.

David:

Once you understand this, now we can talk about the Constitution, because now you’ll understand the Constitution.

Rick:

Alright, well, we’re going to step back and get a 30,000 feet view of the Constitution in our next section, kind of a broad overview of the entire Constitution when we return here on Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green.

CONSTITUTION ALIVE!

Well, welcome back to Constitution Alive, we’re finally ready to dive into the actual constitution. First, we’re going to step back and look at it from what I call a 30,000 feet view. I don’t know about you guys, but I have a hard time just opening page. One, as a kid, I always went to the back of the book to see what was happening at the end. So I like to look at the whole thing, I want to look at the cover, I want to see the big picture first, and then I’m ready to dive into those specific areas. 

So for the next few minutes, we’re going to literally fly through the entire Constitution and get a big picture of those seven articles and those 27 amendments. So we kind of know where the pieces are and then we’ll zero in most of our time will be on Article 1, Section 8 because we’re going to talk about the enumerated powers of Congress, what Congress can actually do or what Congress is supposed to be doing.

So first, we’re going to step back though and look at the whole thing. And of course, can’t look at the whole thing without starting with that preamble. So I’m going to ask my daughter, Cameron to come forward and join us. 

She’s been wanting to get across that rail into this sacred room. You all welcome, Cameron. Cameron Green’s going to come join us. Come on, baby. Right there, alright. Share those first words that Gouverneur Morris wrote for us.

Cameron:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Rick:

Great job, baby, way to go. Alright. Good job. Okay. If I was a smarter man, I’d have her teach the rest of the class, would be a lot better off. So well, there you have the preamble. Morris wrote this one entirely himself. 

The Preamble

Now the preamble, of course, doesn’t have the force of law. So I kind of think of it in terms of like a business letter where you got your RE colon, this is what the letter is about, and then you get into the meat of the letter. That’s the way I think of the preamble. It sort of sets the stage for us of here’s what the Constitution is going to be all about.

I do want to point out those, and that’s why I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it. But I do want to point out two very quick things out of the preamble. First of all, is the first place we see this phrase, “general welfare”. So we see promote the general welfare in the preamble. We’re going to talk more about that when we get to Article 1, Section 8.

But if you go back and you look at the Articles of Confederation, it helps us to understand general welfare in the Constitution itself. And the first thing I’ll show you right here before we get into Article 1, Section 8 is the Webster’s Dictionary of general welfare, 1828 is the closest Webster’s to the time. 

And here’s what it said, “It’s exemption from any unusual evil or calamity, the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government.” And then there’s three really important words, what are they? Applied to the states.

So, general welfare is not individual welfare. It’s not the right of Congress to take something from you to give to someone else for their individual welfare. General welfare was for the states, it was for the system itself to keep freedom for all of the states and for the system in general, not for individual welfare. We’ll come back to that one a little later. I just wanted to point it out in the preamble.

And then the last thing in the preamble I’d point out is the blessings of liberty. For those that say it’s a godless Constitution, I’m just wondering where those blessings are supposed to flow from. I like blessings of liberty being in there. Okay, let’s take a look at the Constitution at a glance. 

The Seven Articles

And in your study guide, you’ve got a one pager there of the whole Constitution on one page, and I do that so that I can see that at a glance and quickly figure out okay, where was that issue of Granger, where was that particular issue, and I can go find it very quickly. But let’s take a look at the whole thing.

First, we got seven articles. Okay, Article 1 is the legislative branch. So there’s where we learn about Congress. Article 2 is the presidency. So that’s our executive branch. We’ll spend a little more time on that later. Article 3 is the judicial branch, we’re going to spend a lot of time on the Judiciary. That’s as become a very, probably the most dangerous branch in terms of taking the Constitution and turn it into something it was never intended to be. 

Article 4 is about interstate relations. We’re not going to come back to that much except to point out that they’re in Article 4, Section 4 is where we’re guaranteed to be a republic, not a democracy. Article 5 is the amendment process, we will spend a little bit of time on that. Article 6 is where you get the Supremacy Clause. They validated the debts from the Confederacy, no religious test, sorts of things like that. And then Article 7 is ratification. We won’t spend any time on that in our class. So that’s the seven articles.

Now let’s just run through real quick, get a big picture of the 27 amendments. So 27 times, we’ve amended what these guys in this room initially did. So they put the Constitution in place, the states ratify, it becomes the law of the land 27 times we’ve made changes, tweaks, if you will, sometimes big changes to that original Constitution. 

And I’m going to give these to you, not necessarily in numerical order, but I call it buckets. I put them in buckets of what they do. So it’s not what number they are, but what part of the Constitution do they amend. Of course, the Bill of Rights, that’s our first 10 amendments, we’re going to come back to that later and spend more specific time on it. But that’s our first bucket. Let’s just set those aside for right now, we’ll come back.

The second bucket are the amendments that affect the presidency. So I mentioned earlier there’s five amendments affecting the presidency. Now the 12th was simply correcting some what really was potentially a real problem in the Electoral College in choosing the president. Think about it this way. 

The Amendments

Back in their day, if you had someone who got the most votes became president in the Electoral College most votes, and their arch rival becomes vice president, so that’s their second command, back in the day of duels and assassinations, not a good idea, I don’t think so. That didn’t work out so well. Fortunately, they didn’t actually assassinate anybody.

But when Jefferson and Adams, when Adams was President, Jefferson, his arch rival became vice president, I think everybody went ding, ding, ding, this is a problem. So 12th Amendment changes that, now we get president and vice president coming from the same team, and you make sure your second command is of the same philosophy that you are when you’re running and going to back up what you’re doing. So that’s the 12th Amendment.

20th Amendment had to do with dates, and it essentially was trying to stop a lame duck Congress. Now back then, it was enough to stop the lame duck Congress today. Of course, with our travel being so much easier, two months is plenty of time for these guys to wreak a lot of havoc and cause a lot of problems. If one party gets voted out in November, they’ve got two months where they can pass all kinds of stuff before the new Congress comes in January. 

So that might actually be a good place for us to have a new amendment that would tighten up those dates so you didn’t have as much of an opportunity for lame duck Congress. But 20th Amendment effects when the President and Congress come in into power and are sworn in.

22nd Amendment, easiest way to remember the 22nd Amendment, for me, I just think two-two, two terms, alright. 22nd Amendment is when we limited the president to two terms. And think about why we did that. Remember what Rhett was saying earlier how the only just powers of government come from the consent of the governed. 

So when we create a government, when we create a document in a way for that government to work, we the people are not giving power, we’re loaning power to that government. And if we see something that needs to be tweaked or changed, the beauty of freedom is that we that people can take some of that power back.

The 22nd and 23rd Amendments

So we created a branch of government known as the executive, our president, and we didn’t put a limit on how long someone can be president. Everybody followed Washington’s example, up until FDR then you get that fourth term, and everybody goes, yeah, this is kind of too long. In fact, we kind of started saying, you know, actually, what’s happening is this person is staying in this branch, is staying in power for so long, they’re able to accumulate more and more power.

And, they’re getting too powerful. We don’t like the idea of a king mentality of somebody being there as long as they ever want to be. And so we the people reigned in that branch, if you will, and we limited the presidency to two terms.

That was us. We did that with the 22nd Amendment. So we said, here’s the Constitution, we love it, great things in it, but there’s one area that needs to be tweaked. We, the people tweaked it. We took back some of that power and limited the president to two terms: might be a good idea to consider that for the other branches, I’m just saying, alright. So that’s the 22nd Amendment. Alright.

So then you get the 23rd Amendment also affects the president. So we’re still in our bucket of amendments affecting the President. 23rd Amendment was where we added the Electoral College for District of Columbia. So District of Columbia has, according to the Constitution, a very special place in our land. It was not intended to be a state. They did not want it to be within a state.

So if you had the seat of the federal government in Texas, for instance, or in your home state, then you would either have favors for that particular state or you could potentially have problems where there was too much conflict and you know, what, didn’t want that. So what the Founding Fathers did was a set aside DC, no more than 10 square miles. They said that’s going to be the seat of federal government, not a state, not within a state. Well, now that it’s become such a populous area, and there’s so many people there, the American people said, you know, those people should have a voice in the presidency, they should have a voice in at least one branch of our three branches of government. So we’re going to let them have Electoral College votes.

DC Statehood

So we the people again amended the Constitution. It wasn’t something Congress did on their own. We the people said we want them to have Electoral College vote. So now that people in the District of Columbia get to vote for president, and they get three Electoral College votes, no problem, that’s the 23rd amendment.

Now statehood for DC is a totally different issue. Because if you give DC statehood, now you’ve actually got a constitutional problem. If you give them statehood without amending the Constitution, then the Constitution says that DC will be governed by Congress.

But now you make a mistake who’s going to govern them, Congress, or does the state governor? You got to rule… Now if we the people amend the Constitution to make DC a state, hey, if I lose that battle, I lose, that’s fine. I won’t be for it, because I like the idea of it being a special place that is not a state. But if I lose that battle, fine, if it’s done constitutionally.

You know, the Congress is the one that decides whether or not to add a state. So they could do it. It wouldn’t be a violation of the Constitution for them to get DC statehood, but it creates that problem in the Constitution. But DC statehood is a different issue. The 23rd Amendment simply dealt with giving DC residents the right to vote for president.

And then the 25th Amendment is, of course, when the President is incapacitated. That’s one of the ones we’ll come back to. A lot of these amendments I’m going to fly through in our kind of 30,000 feet flyover, we’re not going to come back to. Here’s one we’re not going to come back to. It’s another bucket of amendments. 

It’s the bucket of judicial amendments, and there’s only one. It’s the 11th Amendment. And it dealt with a very specific kind of suit when a citizen outside of a state was suing that state.

And so initially, they’d given original jurisdiction to the federal courts. It happened very quickly after the Constitution was adopted. It was actually Georgia got sued by noncitizen, and the states all said, whoa, we don’t like this idea the feds have an original jurisdiction. So it 11th Amendment was adopted another boring issue, we’re not going to come back to. Okay.

Amendments Affecting Congress

Three amendments in our next bucket, this is the congressional amendments. So we have three amendments actually affecting Congress, 17th, 20th, we already talked about it affected Congress and the President, so it’s in both those buckets. So 17th to 27th. 17th is, in my humble opinion, the second worst amendment to the Constitution. And the reason I say that is because what it did was it changed the way we choose our senators. 

What these guys put in place, they said, you know, this is going to be a very special form of a republic. Our system of federalism is going to be different than what anybody else had, because what we want is at the federal level, we want representation for the people, and that’s our House of Representatives, every two years they run. We want representation for the states, that’s our Senate, and those senators will be chosen by the state legislatures.

And so you can imagine if the state legislature is choosing the US senators, then the Senate is going to be the place that keeps the federal government from encroaching on the states, because those US senators answer to the state legislators. As a former legislator, I can tell you, if the feds are considering a bill that’s going to take away some of my turf, some of my power as a state legislator, or my state able to run something the way it wants to run it.

And, the feds are considering that, I’m going to be on the phone with that US senator and if that US senator’s elected by this handful of legislators, that US Senator is going to respond, and that US Senator is going to stop the feds from encroaching upon the state.

17th Amendment, 1913 changes that. And no longer are those senators chosen by the legislature, they’re elected by the people at large, direct election of senators. What happened was after that, you can look at the hockey stick growth of the federal government, not just in terms of size, but in terms of jurisdiction, because now you got the US senators coming home and saying, oh, I’m going to take care of you, I’m going to bring your individual welfare from the federal level, and there’s nobody to stop them. 

The Senate

There’s no longer that buffer of the state saying no, through the US Senate. So now the House and the Senate are essentially doing the same thing. So it’s been a very bad thing in terms of jurisdictional government and moving so much of our stuff to Washington, DC.

In some ways I blame the folks in 1913 for adopting the amendment, but it was already slowly happening, several of the states had already chosen through their state legislatures to no longer choose their US senators to the legislature, they were putting it on the ballot, and then they were choosing, but they were just rubber stamping what happened at the ballot box. So it was sort of happening over time, but in 1913, that’s when that amendment was adopted.

Rick:

Alright, hang on, folks. quick break, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

CONSTITUTION ALIVE!

Have you ever wanted to learn more about the United States Constitution, but just felt like man, the classes are boring, or it’s just that old language from 200 years ago, or I don’t know where to start? People want to know, but it gets frustrating because you don’t know where to look for truth about the constitution either.

Well, we’ve got a special program for you available now called Constitution Alive! With David Barton and Rick Green. And it’s actually a teaching done on the Constitution at Independence Hall in the very room where the constitution was framed. We take you both to Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty and Independence Hall and to the WallBuilders’ library, where David Barton brings the history to life to teach the original intent of our Founding Fathers.

We call it the Quickstart Guide to the Constitution, because in just a few hours through these videos, you will learn the citizen’s guide to America’s constitution, you’ll learn what you need to do to help save our constitutional republic. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, and it’s going to inspire you to do your part to preserve freedom for future generations. It’s called Constitution Alive! With David Barton and Rick Green. You can find out more information on our website now at wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us, now for the conclusion of week four in Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

Civil Rights Amendments

Now, our next bucket are the civil rights amendments and amendments that end slavery, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Well, we could spend all night just on these 3, 13th end slavery; 14th Amendment was specifically put in because if you think about it, you had a lot of states in the south that even though slavery had ended, they were not protecting the rights of former slaves. They weren’t letting them vote, I mean, you name it, whatever the issue was, they weren’t given equal protection, if you will.

So the 14th Amendment was designed to say, hey, we’re going to make sure that the rights that one citizen has in a state are protected and guaranteed to every other citizen in the state. Now here’s the deal with the 14th, folks. 

We could spend, oh, I don’t know, a year on the 14th Amendment. It’s a major area of jurisprudence. In legal communities, there’s a split over what the 14th Amendment actually does. And this is the furthest in the weeds I’m going to go, so stay with me for just like the next three minutes.

There’s a debate over whether the 14th Amendment incorporates, or if you will, applies the Constitution to the states. Just know that 14th Amendment jurisprudence is a whole subject in and of itself. And what we see today is that the 14th Amendment is used to protect us from our state and local governments or anybody else, with regard to all those constitutional amendment. It does a lot more, but that’s all we’re going to cover in our Quickstart Guide.

Okay. 15th Amendment was specific to voting. Now, I know, you know, 14th should have already guaranteed that but you still had all these white only primaries, all these problems in the south that were keeping blacks from being able to vote. 

And so the 15th Amendment was to specifically say you have a constitutional right to vote, and it cannot be infringed based on the color of your skin. So that was a very important amendment to get passed.

Elections Amendments

And that actually opens us to our next bucket. There’s four amendments that specifically are a bucket of amendments that deal with voting. So I’m going to ask my baby girl Cameron to come back up and she’s going to explain these four amendments on voting. You all welcome, Cameron, she’s going to come back. All here, Sweetie.

Cameron:

There are four amendments that protect her right to vote. The 15th Amendments guarantees that we can vote no matter what the color of our skin. The 26th Amendments says you must be at least 18 years old to vote, so that means I still got six more years to go. 

And then at 24th protects the right to vote, whether we’re rich or poor. And last is my personal favorite. The 19th Amendment make sure that we ladies have the same rights as the guys when choosing our leaders. Our right to vote is protected throughout the Constitution. So don’t waste it. Every chance you get to vote. Let your voice be heard and values counted.

Rick:

Good job, baby. Alright. Can’t imagine why the 19th is her favorite one. You know, we always call that women’s suffrage, I mean, let you in on a little secret. The men were not letting the women vote and so the women were making the men suffer. I promise you. Okay, that’s the real reason it’s called suffrage. Anyway, so that fortunately, we got it right. 

Actually, I find it interesting, those amendments are a good example of how this American system of government has allowed for us to become a more perfect union. When we got something wrong, America tends to figure out a way to get it right. I mean, think about it, even when it comes to the right of women to vote.

Well, the men were the ones that had to vote on that Amendment, so the majority ended up giving the minority the opportunity to participate. Same thing with ending slavery and civil rights, it’s the majority that has after often a long battle comes around and says, you know what, let’s get this thing right and make sure that everybody gets to enjoy the same freedoms. 

So I think that’s a unique experience in America. You don’t usually see that in other countries. If a majority has power, they continue to oppress, and they don’t share that power and those freedoms with the other.

The 16th Amendment

So there’s your bucket of amendments that have to do with voting. Just a few more here. We’ve got everybody’s favorite amendment to the Constitution, the 16th Amendment. No laughter No Amen. No, yes. No, he, ha. 

Nothing, right. Nobody likes the 16th Amendment, the income tax. Two things on this, we’re not going to spend any time debating whether or not it was properly ratified. I hear all these arguments when people say wasn’t ratified right because the camo was in the wrong place. It’s a red herring. You got to pick your battles. You got to fight the battles you can win. That’s not one we’re going to be able to win.

I don’t like income tax. I’ll just be honest with you. I’m a fair tax guy. I think the only fair tax is when you’re spending your money, you pay a sales tax. 

I don’t like getting punished for making money and I don’t like getting punished for investing in my home. So as my property value increases, I get punished for that. I think those are bad taxes. Fair taxes is a sales tax.

But it is the law of the land. And as long as it’s the law of the land, I got to obey the law while I fight to change the law. I’d love to them in the Constitution, get rid of the income tax. But trust me on this. Don’t join these groups to say you don’t have to pay your income tax, is optional, all those kind of, trust me on it. 

It is much easier to fight city hall from outside the prison walls. And if you doubt me on that one, I’ll get you Wesley Snipes’ phone numbers. You can call Wesley and ask him how he enjoyed those days in jail for not paying his income tax. Pay your income tax. And then let’s work to change it.

And the 16th actually didn’t give the federal government the right to tax income. What it did was it changed it from having to be apportioned evenly among the state, it made it easier is what happened, and it made it so easy. In fact, you might recall people saying, well, originally they were going to cap it at 1%, or 2%, or 3%. 

They talk they’ll never get that. I won’t know, obviously, it’s a lot higher than that. I wish they had put some sort of cap on it. But it is what it is. You remember earlier when I said the 17th Amendment was the second worst Amendment to the Constitution? Can anybody guess what I think the worst to happen to the Constitution? Yeah, 16th Amendment.

Prohibition

So imagine this. It was done in 1913, as well. What were those people in 1913 smoking? Man, I mean, they really messed up our Constitution, but it is what it is. Maybe over time, we can get a change and get rid of the income tax and go to sales tax, I think it would work a lot better, and I certainly think it would be much more fair.

Last two, I used to just run right through these run over them and not even talk about them, 18th and 21st. To drink or not to drink? The 18th Amendment, of course, prohibition 21st repealing that, I used to fly through it. And then the guy that we’re working on tonight, my caller, he gives me a stop. I was flying through it on radio program with him. I was interviewing him on WallBuilders Live and I flew through the 18th and the 21st. He says Rick, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop. You’re missing a great lesson here. I said, what, they cancel each other out? I just blew by.

And he said no, no, look. He said, why did the 18th Amendment have to be adopted? We had a national epidemic. Everybody said, you know, alcohol has become a real problem, the people said, it’s something we haven’t been able to deal with in the States, we want the federal government involved to help us with this problem. 

Why didn’t the feds just do it? Why did you need an amendment to the Constitution for the feds to go help with this problem? Because they didn’t have the power to do it. 

Because we understood and this is what Mike was trying to get me to see, we understood that the only time you could add a power to the federal government and let them do something new is if we the people amended the Constitution.

And so the 18th and the 21st actually stand as glaring examples, wonderful precedent, that if we want the federal government to do something new that’s not authorized, as we’ll see in Article 1 Section 8, then we the people have to add it to their powers. And he said, we did that with the 18 Amendment. We said, you know what we want you to help with this. And Congress knew as well, that’s the other part of that story.

Not only do we the people know that they’re not supposed to do that without our permission, but Congress knew they couldn’t do it, and so they adopted the amendment and sent it home to the states to be ratified. We ratified it. We said, we want you to do this. And then we said, this ain’t working out so well. And so we went back with the 21st Amendment.

Taking the Power Back

And if you think about it, we talked about earlier how we loan power to the government, we can take it back at any time. We loan the power of the federal government to ban alcohol. When we took that power back, we didn’t take all of it back, we left them the power to regulate it. So the language still gives them the ability to regulate it. 

They just couldn’t ban it anymore. But what a great reminder for us that the things that they do have to come from us first. We have to give them permission. But today what happens when the people say or Congress just decides they want to do something new? 

They just pass a law and do it. They don’t even look in Article 1 Section 8 and see if they actually have the power to do it. That’s what we have to change. That’s why we have to know what is it that they can do.

Guest:

I was speaking in Iowa, week before the session started in 2017, actually speaking on federalism, and I was sick, wanted to get home, the legislative session was about to start. I get to the airport in freezing rain. So we sit on the airport, grounds everything, we’re sitting on the plane, I’m thinking, man, I got to transfer through Minneapolis, I got to get home, the legislative session is going to start. Finally, we take off and we get there. And I’m trying to think you know, can I figure out a way to get to my gate and still make it, not be stuck in Minneapolis.

And just as we’re landing, I see this giant of a man, giant of a man, big bright red University of Utah football t-shirt on, and I said that guy’s going where I’m going. I’m going back to Salt Lake and I’m going to follow that guy. 

I get off the plane, I grabbed my roller bag, I had my shoulder bag. I’m just following that guy as fast as I can go. And he’s just party to crowd, just party in the sea, and off we go. I’m running to keep up with him.

When we get to the gate, just as the door’s about to close, and they sit us together on the exit row, so then we start the little introduction. And he tells me he is the linebacker coach for the University of Utah, but he had played at BYU. And if you know Utah football, that’s the holy war: BYU, Utah. 

He says what do you do? I said, well, you know, I’m mine, the state legislature. He said, well, what do you do? And I said, well, let me see if I can explain it this way. You know that holy war you just had a couple months ago, kind of a different game, right? 

A Field With No Lines

He says, yeah, it’s a different game. He says, the whole week is different, right, the practice is different, preparation is different, media is different, the speech that coach gives on Saturday morning is different. You come running out of the tunnel, and it’s different. Stadium is packed, and it’s just electric and different.

And imagine you get on a 50 yard line and you’re about ready to start that game and you’re ready to face off that opponent. And you buckle your chin strap and you look down and there are no lines on the field anywhere. He said oh yeah, that’d be a disaster. 

I said that’s what governments like today, they’re no lines on the field. We don’t know where to stand. We don’t know the line of scrimmage. We don’t know what a first down is anymore. We don’t know what out of bounds is. We don’t know what a touchdown is anymore. Our government was established with lions.

In fact, Rick, James Wilson, very prominent, right, James Wilson was a signer of the Declaration of the Constitution, original member of the Supreme Court. He said this Constitution deserves praise for the accuracy with which we drew the line between the powers of the state and national government.

BIBLICAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

Rick:

That’s a wrap on week four. We’ve already been diving into those principles. We’ve been getting the philosophy. We even got the 30,000 feet view of the entire Constitution. Next week, we’re going to go deeper into the enumerated powers, the proper jurisdictions of government. What is it that our government under our Constitution actually can do and how do we as citizens hold it accountable? That’ll be next week on Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. We’ll see you next week, guys.

Rick:

Well, friends, that was week four of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. You can get the full eight week course at our website right now, Wallbuilders.com you can get the DVDs and the workbooks, invite your friends over, do the class in your living room.

Or, you can dial in on Monday nights and join us for free with our national class, even though we’ve been going for a couple of weeks now, you’re welcome to join us on the third week, fourth week, whenever you want to dive in. That’s available at biblicalcitizens.com. Check out those websites today, we’ll have links at our regular radio site wallbuilderslive.com. God bless you and have a great day. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.