American Heritage Series – What Makes Us A Christian Nation – What makes us a Christian Nation? Christianity changes the way we organize governments. What is the Christian form of government? What is the Good Samaritan law? Tune in to learn the answers to these questions and more today!

Air Date: 11/11/2022

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.

 

Rick:

You found your way to the intersection of faith and politics, WallBuilders Live with David Barton and Rick Green, also found online at wallbuilderslive.com and wallBuilders.com. And also on Facebook, you can follow us there as well and comment on the shows as you get a chance to listen to them. Here we go, “The Building on the American Heritage Series with David Barton”.

Alright, David, this is the American Heritage Series, so let’s just cut right to the chase. One of the most important questions about America’s heritage, are we or are we not a Christian nation?

David:

That’s one of the things debated today the problem we have is we no longer use the definition we historically had. Historically, the definition as given by Supreme Court justices is that America is a Christian nation because Christianity has so largely shaped and molded it.

Now, take that definition, we’ve forgotten that definition and we don’t know it. But yet we had 300 court cases that say America is a Christian nation. We have president after president say America is a Christian nation. We have hundreds of acts of Congresses, state and federal say we’re a Christian nation. But in the last few years, on New York Times bestseller list, you have Hitchens and you have Sam Harris and these guys oh no, America is not a Christian nation. You get President Obama shortly after his election goes over to Turkey and says, no, no, America is not a Christian nation. And then he six weeks later in Egypt he says but we are one of the largest Muslim nations in the world. Then Karl Rove comes out after Obama says oh, no, we’re not a Christian nation.

So we’ve got all this clamour saying, we’re not a Christian nation. And the problem is we’ve let them define in something that never was, the…

Rick:

How did they define it, again, the ones that said we are a Christian nation?

David:

They said America is a Christian nation because Christianity has so largely shaped and moulded it.

Rick:

So it’s influenced who we are?

David:

If you go back to the US Supreme Court case that was done in 1892, the Supreme Court in that decision, 16 pages long, half the decision was just showing the precedence because the question was, you can’t import foreign labour into America to work in America. And so the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City brought in a pastor from Scotland, and the US prosecutor there in New York, US Attorney said, you violated immigration law, you’re in trouble. And so he went after the Church for having brought in a pastor from Scotland to pastor the church. Well, the first thing the court did was said, no, wait a minute, you don’t judge laws by the letter of the law, you judge them by the spirit of law.

And they went back and looked at the law and the law was very clearly based at targeting the Chinese immigration problem is there were Chinese were being brought by the railroads as slave labour. It was a new type of slavery. After Black slavery, you had Chinese slavery and the railroads were building all the railroads with with Chinese slave labour, essentially. And so Congress passed that anti-immigration law to stop the Chinese slavery trade.

Rick:

It wasn’t to keep you from bringing in a pastor from another country?

David:

No, the court said it’s real clear. They weren’t trying to stop pastors. They’re trying to stop the Chinese slave problem. And they said, by the way, even if the law had been targeted at churches, it’s an unconstitutional law because this is a Christian nation. And so the court went through and gave 87 historical examples proving that America was a Christian nation. And they said, there’s no way you can pass a law in this country that will keep a church from bringing in the pastor of their choice, even from overseas. Now, what definition did they use? That was such an important question that the justice on the court who wrote that, and by the way, it was unanimous decision in the US Supreme Court…

Rick:

Well, I was about to ask you, is this an obscure court of one judge way off some in the country or is this the Supreme…?

David:

Is the Supreme Court of the United States…

Rick:

This is Supreme Court decision saying for a…

David:

In a unanimous decision without any dissent by any justice on the court, they said, of course, America is a Christian nation. And so when people said what do you mean, this justice wrote a book, the Justice who wrote the opinion wrote a book on it said America is justly called a Christian nation because Christianity has so largely shaped and moulded it. Now there’s the definition of a Christian nation. He said, we’re a Christian nation, but we don’t require everybody to be Christians. He said, we got a lot of atheist amendments.

Rick:

So it’s not a theocracy, it’s not a situation where you have to be a Christian, it’s saying it’s a nation influenced by Christianity, can be influenced by Christianity?

David:

Let’s take the autocracy because the autocracy has existed all over Europe. Guess what, when preachers came to America and brought the Word of God with them, Christian preachers came to America, you have, for example, you got all these these Christians that came on the Mayflower. They busted theocracy wide open. They didn’t even get off the ship till they wrote a document. The Mayflower Compact says, we’re not doing the king thing. We’re choosing our leaders and we’re having elections every single year. We’ll have a high turnover of leaders. We, the people, choose our leaders.

And you get Reverend Roger Williams who founds Rhode Island in 1636 and the Reverend Roger Williams says, we’re not doing this king thing, we’re choosing our own leaders. That’s not the theocracy when you get to choose your own leaders. Four preachers in Connecticut wrote the first constitution in Connecticut in 1638 and they said, not only were we choosing our own leaders, we’re also having a Bill of Rights to limit government so the government can invade your personal rights. That busted theocracy, all the heck.

So you look at all these religious guys who came in, Reverend William Penn, when he did the constitution, did the form of government for Pennsylvania and in 1681-1682 and he also did Jersey, also did Delaware, three colonies, same thing, we’re going to have elections. So the first thing is Christianity gives you a republican form of government where you choose your own leaders.

See, you go back to Europe, they’re still all with parliamentary systems and monarchies and they don’t have republican forms of government. We have a unique system that came from the Bible. That’s one proof we’re a Christian nation is the Bible, Christianity changed the way we run government. We now have Bills of Rights. We have written constitutions because that’s the way the Word of God is. God gave a written law to his people on the mountain, gave it to Moses and take this down to the people. Written law, that’s the way God did it. Theocracy does not have a written law.

Rick:

So that’s why it’s also this matters, I mean, somebody that’s why does it matter if you’re Christian nation, now you just gave me good reasons.

David:

This matters. Well, let me give you some other examples. Because it matters so much that President Teddy Roosevelt said that Christianity is so entwined with our civic and our social life, that we wouldn’t even recognise the country if we took it out. So if we’re not a Christian nation, then get rid of republican form of government. But you know what else? We wouldn’t be a benevolent nation. We help countries all over the world when disaster hits. Now, why do we do that? Strange thing. All 50 of our states have a little thing called the Good Samaritan Law. Good Samaritan! Oh, that’s a Christian teaching, isn’t it? Is Jesus who taught the Good Samaritan teaching. And so we enshrined that in law.

We take the golden rule. That’s part of what we teach in law is you want to treat others… Well, that’s all Christian stuff. What kind of a nation would we be if we didn’t teach in the civic arena the golden rule and the Good Samaritan, we wouldn’t be the same nation at all.

Rick:

I can’t help but think when these nations that have tragedies call upon the US, sometimes they don’t even have to call upon us, we’re there. But if we weren’t a Christian nation, we wouldn’t be there, we wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice for others.

David:

Indonesia is Muslim nation, Indonesia, largest Muslim nation in the world got whacked by tsunami, other Muslim nations didn’t come helping them. It was Christian nation. It was America, especially the stepped in first thing on the scene. In Japan where there’s an earthquake, in Mexico where there’s an earthquake, in Russia back in the Cold War days, whether it’s fires in Mexico, wherever it is, we’re the first ones to… That’s our benevolence. We have instilled that Christian value throughout our society, even non-Christians practice the Good Samaritan and the golden rule.

Rick:

And then we turn around and treat other nations and people within our own nation with that Christian, but whether or not they’re Christians, it doesn’t matter.

David:

And whether or not we’re Christians, even even people of benevolent and give to charitable things, even if they’re not Christian. Now, try finding that in a secular nation. Try find that in the Muslim nation or in the Hindus, it doesn’t happen.

Rick:

So this is an important question to answer?

David:

It is. Now say another one that goes with it is when you look at history, our free market system came out of the Bible; the original people who implemented it way back in the 1620s, they pointed to two verses right off the bat, 1 Timothy 5:8 and 2 Thessalonians 3:10. On top of that, subsequent folks who developed the free enterprise system said, well, the basis of this is found in Luke 19, in Matthew 20, Matthew 25. That’s why…

Rick:

See, you just blew a lot of paradigms right there because money and economics from the Bible, really, we always separate those two, we think there’s nothing in the Bible about that.

David:

That’s why Benjamin Franklin, least religious Founding Fathers said the free market is the means under God of establishing the freedom of our country and tied, handed down complete to posterity. And Ben Franklin says, hey, this is the means that God has given. Now why would he say that? Because we knew our history. We knew that if it hadn’t been for Christian leaders and… You know, Adam Smith did the Wealth of Nations, he’s the guy that people point to for the free market system. The book he did just before the Wealth of Nations was on Christian morality, how you have to have Christian morality. Now, having said that, let’s talk about the economic system.

Well, if you take that first book away, you get Bernie Madoff, all these guys that are crooks, you have to have the Christian basis for it. You know, if I go get my car change at a workplace, I don’t pull out under the plug and sit to actually put new oil in there. I expect that they put it all in because that’s part of the Christian ethic that you have to have, even if you’re not a Christian you still have that Christian ethic, of integrity of doing the right thing. And that’s based on Christian teachings and morality.

Rick:

Even that concept of the contracting with that person to change, that’s whole idea of covenants again, right from the Bible are Christian ethics.

David:

And, you know, if we’re not a Christian nation, we wouldn’t have an education system to speak up. The first public school law ever passed in America was called the Old Deluder Satan Law 1647 is passed so that people be able to read so they could read the scripture so they keep their government under control. A Christian nation, you get a good education system; under a Christian nation, you get a good form of government, you get a good economic system, you get benevolence throughout it. There’s so many things we can point to. And that’s what historians and courts and everybody else…. Of course, we’re a Christian nation. Christianity is what shaped and moulded this nation. And by the way, that’s why it’s not discriminatory.

That’s why if you look at religious Jews, they say we love living in a Christian nation because we get to have prosperity and practice our faith. A Christian nation is not coercive. We didn’t put you to death for what you believed. Now, the reason was there’s 30 verses in the New Testament that say to protect the rights of conscience. You have it in 1 Corinthians 8, where we’re told, if you offend the conscience of a weaker brother, you’ve sinned against Christ. So as soon as these groups got here, they put in their laws that you cannot offend the rights of conscience, even if I disagree with you.

So to this day, we believe in a strong military. But you know, what we tell the Quakers hey, if you don’t believe in military services, alright, we won’t force you to serve, it’s against your religious conscience.

Rick:

Well, then that goes right to the heart of the question. If we’re a Christian nation, that doesn’t mean we’re gonna force you to believe in Christian value.

David:

See, we’ve got all these laws on dress codes and business. And yet if you’re Jewish or Muslim, and by your faith, you believe you should have a beard, it doesn’t matter if your business says you got to be clean shaven, you can keep that beard because that’s religious right. We require 12 years of education. But if you’re Amish, you say wait a minute, our faith requires only eight years of it, that’s fine, you have eight years because of your conscience. You find that in any other nation in the world, and that’s why other religions love coming here.

Rick:

So remind me again, the word it’s not, we are not going to say…

David:

It is not a theocracy. It is not coercive. It offers all sorts of free market choices in religion and conscience and in economics. It does provide stability because you have a common value system. So what we do is we provide a stable nation where the people can come and prosper, they can prosper in their faith. That’s what a Christian nation is, it protects that right of conscience.

Rick:

And David, we’ve got some viewers from across the nation who have sent in questions for us, let’s find out what they’re asking about the importance of our heritage.

David:

Sounds good.

Guest 1:

Why should I as a Christian being involved in government when my main focus under the great commission is to share the gospel?

Rick:

Well, good question. As a Christian, I’m supposed to be focused on sharing the gospel, why should I be focused at all on government?

David:

This is really a false view of scripture that’s occurred in the last 40-50 years and it’s, well you can either do government or you can either share the gospel. And a lot of people take that back to Matthew 22:21, where Jesus says, you render to Caesar what Caesar’s, you render to God what’s God’s. Therefore, are you going to do the Caesar thing or are you going to do the God thing? Now we treat that verse like the conjunction Jesus used was the word ‘or’, like…

Rick:

So you got to choose between two?

David:

Render to Caesar what Caesar’s, you render to God what’s God’s. That’s not what Jesus said. He said, you render to Caesar what’s Caesar’s and you rendered God what’s God’s going. That’s right. It’s not an either or kind of a thing. We’re supposed to have a civil duty and we’re supposed to have a spiritual duty.

And there’s another aspect that goes with that as well is the Great Commission didn’t say go evangelise the world. Jesus say you go teach them everything I have taught you. The Great Commission is about discipleship. Now, if we just take that, if we take what Jesus said, Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission, you go teach them everything I’ve taught you, and Matthew 19, Jesus had an entire teaching on no fault divorce, and on marriage. In Matthew 20, Jesus has an entire teaching on the minimum wage on the viability of the contract between employers and employees.

Rick:

Now, wait a minute. Are you getting into politics now? That’s what we’re told, those are political issues.

David:

Exactly. In Matthew 25, Jesus has an entire teaching of the capital gains tax, and on business practices. Now, what makes us think that preaching the gospel is just about salvation? Jesus said, everything I taught, you go teach it.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out, wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

David:

If I’m going to do what Jesus said, it’s not a matter of, oh, I’ve got to preach the gospel or I got to get involved in government. Hey, both of them are there. We have great examples in the New Testament as well. The apostle Paul, great evangelist, did all the missionary journeys he did. And yet, you remember the time they were just about to beat him and he looked over his back at the century and he said, are you sure you can beat a Roman citizen? The centurion says, oh my gosh, you’re Roman citizen? I paid a lot for my citizenship. Paul said not me, I’m native born citizen. And he go, everybody back away, don’t touch the guy, he’s Roman citizen.

Now, how come Paul the Apostle didn’t start quoting scripture right then and sharing the gospel? How come he invoked the constitution of Rome and use constitutional bases in he what did? Paul did on other occasions as well. When he was with Felix and Agrippa and Festus, he invoked the Roman constitution. There’s times when he did the civil aspect. There’s times when he did the spiritual aspect. As an apostle, he was well versed in his country and in his God.

Rick:

So it’s not just that the pastor does both, that everything from the scripture, we’re going to teach everything from the scripture applied to the culture, but then me when I’m sitting in the pew, I need to listen to that and then go out and live it so I don’t stay away from politics and only share the gospel?

David:

And there’s another fallacy with this thing of sharing the gospel, you know, just go evangelise the world. It is the scripture that gives us the right to share the gospel. There’s no question about that. Okay. So why don’t you should take your God given right to share the gospel and go to Saudi Arabia and climb on the street corner and see what happens?

Rick:

Very different.

David:

Very different. As a matter of fact, a guy did that not long ago, he was instantly put in jail because it violates the blasphemy laws of their, if you do anything other than Islam, it’s a violation of law. We’ve already had recently in Pakistan people put in death for sharing Christ. We had, in Afghanistan, people jailed for sharing. All over the world, this happens. Well, they’re just exercising their God-given right. Yeah, but the difference is, it’s not a politically protected right.

See, if you don’t want to have to live like they do in China, with an underground church, you better keep control of your government so that you do not get punished for doing what God tells you you can do. And the only way you do that is you have to get government that’s friendly, you have to get government leaders that are friendly toward these expressions of faith.

You and I’ve talked to a pastor recently from Wichita, Kansas, who was thrown in jail for giving out the gospel of God of John, I mean, here in America. We’ve got the elderly gentleman down in Georgia who was thrown in jail for two days because he had the audacity to share his faith with someone in a city park. We have the two Gideons down in Florida who spent two days in jail because they had the audacity to stand on a public sidewalk and give someone a New Testament…

Rick:

In America, this is in America?

David:

In Americans. We’ve got the youth pastor that spent two days in jail, he was walking through a mall with two other people, a guard heard him use the word God with the other people, tackled him, handcuffed him, hauled him off the mall. You can’t use the word God in mall. This is America we’re talking about. The only way that happens is if we don’t get involved in putting the right people in government, otherwise, we’re not only having to fight Satan for what we do, we’ve given the government over so that he can use that to persecute us for sharing our own faith.

Rick:

In America, aren’t we Cease Caesar’s, Jesus didn’t say stay away from government, he said, you go do your part, whatever your role is. And here in America, our role is very different than what it was in

that era.

David:

God has given us a self-governing nation. We believe out of 1Timothy, we believe out of 1 Peter, we believe out of Romans that God ordains government, because God is the One who said that, goes all the way back to Genesis. So if God’s ordained government, what kind of government has He ordained for us here? That’s a self-government. He’s ordained that we be in charge of our government.

So you mean to tell me God put me in charge of it, but if I do something with it, then am I violating God’s Word? No, no, that’s oxymoronic. That’s not accurate. So Jesus tells us you render to Caesar what Caesar’s and you render to God what’s God. It’s not a Socratic choice where you have to choose one or the other. We have to be involved. And if we’re going to continue to enjoy political protection for our biblically given rights, we have to stay involved. There is no option on that. We have to be involved. We have to choose leaders who will be friendly to these values, God-fearing leaders. Only that way do we get to exercise the rights that God has told us we can exercise.

Rick:

Okay, David, let’s get another question from the audience.

Guest 2:

Isn’t God going to pick the rulers regardless of whether I’m involved or voting in the election?

Rick:

Obviously, it’s true that God does raise up leaders and raise up nations, so boys, does it matter if my one vote if I go cast that vote or not?

David:

I love what Matthias Burnett told the people in 1801, he was talking to a big group preacher in Connecticut, he said to God, and posterity, you’re accountable for your rights and your rules. You’ll answer to God if you’re religious, but you’ll also answer to your kids. He said, let not your children have a reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you. We’ve been given some great institutions, some great blessings and we say, oh, I’m not going to do anything, God’s going to raise it up. And lo and behold, we get over people who have an anti-God view, secular view of very aggressively hostile view and then our kids 40 years from now say, what were you guys thinking, now we’re going to jail for sharing the gospel. Now if we say the word God on the sidewalk, we’re arrested. It’s not just God we’ll answer to, it’s subsequent generations when the Lord tarry.

And by the way, I’ve got to say that every single generation since Christ was here, the first time thought Christ was coming back to their generation, the apostle… And I believe the Bible is inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God, no question about it. And yet, I see that Peter and James and Paul all said that they were living in the last days. Now, what’s that mean? Well, it must mean the last days last at least 2,000 years. We see, that’s not our issue. The thing that we’re told about Jesus in Luke 19:13 is “occupy till I come.” And if we let eschatology get in the way of saying, well, you know, it’s all over, this is the end time, and it doesn’t matter, whatever we do it’s already decreed by God. No, you occupy till I come.

Thomas Jefferson had a letter to his daughter 200 years ago. He said, “You’re hearing all this stuff about the end times and about the end of days and about the end is at hand”, he said, “nobody knows the end time, but the Father in heaven who will send the Son.” He said, “Therefore, you live your life here without thinking about what the end time might be. Your duty is right now, right here, it’s not out here somewhere.” And that’s the same for all of us. That’s why Jesus says you occupy till I come.

So is God going to go pick the rulers? Yeah. And He was going to pick them through us and we’ll get involved. If we choose not to be involved, then the pagans, we’ll pick the rulers, and we’ll have a whole different nation.

Rick:

Alright, David, time for one more, let’s find out what the next question is.

Guest 3:

Doesn’t the Bible say to submit to authority and not disagree?

Rick:

You know, some people will even say that’s the reason that we never should have had a revolution in America, we’re just supposed to submit and no matter what, don’t disagree with government, what about today?

David:

Yeah, the Bible does tell us to submit, but it doesn’t say don’t disagree. I mean, clearly, the three Hebrew children disagreed with Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel disagreed with Nebuchadnezzar. The Hebrew midwives disagreed with Pharaoh when he told them, you go kill all those Hebrew babies under two. Not only they disagree, they disobeyed. And you’ll find that Hebrews 11, which is our faith hall of fame, which list all these heroes are our faith, so many of the people who appear there appear there because they disobeyed civil authority. Now, does that indicate anarchy? No. And that’s the proper interpretation of Romans 13 is when God says to submit to government, those in authority, what He’s saying is submit to the institution of government, not to every single government that’s out there.

Does that mean if I’m in China, and they tell me I have to abort my baby because they have a forced abortion policy that I have to go make sure my child is murdered? No, no, no, there’s higher laws than that. And that’s what the apostles dealt with in Acts 4 and 5, were they said, hey, you civil leaders have told us to stop proclaiming in the name of Jesus, we got to make choice, is it going to be you or God? We think we’ll go with God. That’s civil disobedience.

Rick:

So help me break it into two categories, then you might have something like that, where it’s clear you have to go against what government said because they’re trying to get you to violate God’s laws. But then maybe were a part of the question was going, even just disagreeing with government at all, or fighting to change government or to bring our nation back to what it was originally founded on.

David:

Let me answer that by going back to the premise, do we submit the government? In America, who’s the government?

Rick:

It’s us.

David:

That’s us. Let me pull a document here. This is original from 1780. That’s the original Constitution of Massachusetts. By the way, the Constitution of Massachusetts, the only constitution in the world older than the US Constitution. We have the longest ongoing constitutional republic in the history of the world. But Massachusetts did their constitution nine years before we ratified the US Constitution. Now, unfortunately, a lot of the judges in their state don’t read their Constitution, but they got a great Constitution.

Rick:

It’s still there, it may get ignored by the courts.

David:

It’s still there, it may get ignored. And by the way, the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention said that they were copying what the states had done in their constitutions and creating the federal constitution.

Rick:

And so this was one of those states that they really modeled?

David:

So this is one of those states. Let me read here. In the first part it starts with John Adams given address to the people because he was a key part of writing that Constitution, then they get to the Declaration of Rights, these are the Declaration of Rights right at the front, they’re the rights of the people and they’re fundamental principles of government that are set forth. Now let me just read the fifth principle here. “All power, residing originally in the people and being derived from the people, the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, all three branches, are the people substitutes and agents and are all time accountable to the people.”

Now, if we’re supposed to submit the government, hey, we are the government. That’s why the only title in the Constitution says “We the People”. You know, who’s really supposed to submit, is the leaders who supposed to submit to the people. When the people express their will, as you know, we’ve had 31 states express their will that marriage is between a man and woman, we get leaders not wanting to submit to that. America’s overwhelmingly prolife nation, we have leaders don’t want submit to the will of people. We’re the authority. See, we often get reverse. They are servants. They are substitutes. They’re always accountable to us, not us accountable to them.

Rick:

And that’s why we should call them public servant, it’s not public officials? So they said something like agents, so there are substitutes. So we give that power to government?

David:

We loan that power loan, we can take it back…

Rick:

And then they are still accountable to us. So it’s not that we’ve set up government said, okay, now you run our lives and everything, we’ve said, we’re going to hire you basically to go do certain things?

David:

And we believe again, that government is ordained by God and believing that it’s ordained by God, this is the kind of government He’s ordained in America, is self-government. We are in charge of our leaders. So when we say submit the government, what does that mean? That really means the leaders are supposed to follow the will of the people as we’ve expressed in so many ways. But submitting to government, really the way you express that is by your involvement in the process that God has ordained and established here under a Constitution, which is choosing our leaders, helping reflect our laws, disagreeing with laws that are wrong, working to change those laws, contacting members of Congress or legislature or school board or city council saying, whoa, guys, this is not right.

If we don’t use our voice we’ve been given and this is a real important thing to use our voice, because if you go back in the scriptures, remember when Moses who led, God used him to lead the people out of slavery and through the wilderness in the Promised Land, Moses didn’t get to go on the Promised Land. And the reason was that when the people were murmuring and complaining, and God said, well, strike the rock, bring forth water out of the rock. Moses said, do we have to do this again for you guys? Who is this we business? I think God’s the One who brings water. And God says, because you didn’t sanctify me in the eyes of the people, because you didn’t set me apart, you didn’t send me above, you’re not going to Promise Land. By the way, He says, oh, by the way, Aaron, you’re not going in either. What did I do? I didn’t say anything. Exactly. When Moses made that bad statement, you kept your mouth shut. You says that Moses is God that does it, you’re not bringing water out of the rock. You didn’t say anything. You’re not going in. That silence, that inactivity was counted as something wrong. And it still is for us today.

Rick:

So that’s the same in our culture today. If we see government doing things that are wrong, we see our culture going the wrong direction, we need to step back, we’re guilty.

David:

Well, see, that’s what we’re told in Scriptures too; if you see someone being led to slaughter and you don’t step up, the blood is on your head. And see, that’s the way it is in so many policies that are wrong has been advanced, unrighteous has been advanced, we see it, but if we keep silent, God will say you had an opportunity to speak out. Now why was it that you didn’t say anything on that? And so yeah, we’ve got to be involved, submit the government, that simply means don’t have anarchy. The institutional government is what God wants. To have no government is to have anarchy, and that’s what God doesn’t want. So yeah, we submit the government by submitting to the system which puts us in charge, we need to be involved.

Rick:

Thanks for listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You could get the sequel, which is Building on the American Heritage Series, a lot of new materials and fantastic programmes you want to have in your library, you can get it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.

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