At this time, it's our privilege to introduce Bill Federer. Bill Federer is an American legend, a constitutional expert, a historian. We're at the hotel and, you know, there's that little breakfast nook. And as I'm walking by, I see, you know, Bill's walking by and he's talking to, you know, he says hi to some of the people there. I turn around, you know, and they're making a waffle or something. I turn back and Bill's, you know, Well, you know, in the 1800s, you see the Prussian army came in and he's well into a story. And these people got to hear some history they weren't expecting at 8 a.m. in the morning. But Bill is, when you talk to him, just oozes forth history. But a passion to share people, the Christian heritage, and why we need to know it and to be able, what we can do because of it. Bill Federer, it's our privilege to welcome you here to Celina. Thank you, Randy, and also a special thank you to his beautiful wife, Lydia, right? And I would love to have her come and play a little bit at the end of my talk as well. Well, and I want to thank Pastor J.J. Sexton for allowing us to meet here at Village Bible Church. And let's give the Lord thanks for Pastor J.J. Sexton and the Lord using him right here. Well, I'm going to stand up next to my screen so that you don't have to look away every time I say something. I have a website, it's called AmericanMinute.com, and you can sign up for a daily email there. So in getting started, I wanted to talk about America's faith in God, and there is a term called Christian nationalism that you may have seen people using. It used to be called Christian patriotism. And they use that nationalism in a derogatory sense. But it used to be Christian patriotism. And every president, Democrat and Republican, encouraged it. George Washington said, to the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished character of Christian. So you have Christian, patriot, and the same quote. Here's Theodore Roosevelt. He said in 1906, as Bishop Galloway of Mississippi has finally said, the mob lynches a Negro. Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob spirit. And then Franklin Roosevelt, the whole world is divided between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal. We choose human freedom, which is the Christian ideal. Here's Eisenhower, now any group that binds itself together to awaken all of us to this is in my mind a dedicated patriotic group that can well take the Bible in one hand and a flag in the other and march ahead. And so Americans have always been patriotic, and the majority have been Christian. Did you know that in 1965, 93% of Americans identified as Christian? 69% Protestant, 24% Catholic. And then there were 3% Jewish. So virtually the whole country was Judeo-Christian. And Franklin Roosevelt, gave Gideon's New Testaments and Book of Psalms to all the soldiers in World War II. And he wrote the foreword to it. It says, as commander-in-chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States. Signed, Franklin D. Roosevelt. And then in November 1st, 1940, those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy. And then in a fireside chat, FDR said, this great war effort shall not be imperiled by a handful of noisy traitors, betrayers of America, betrayers of Christianity itself. And then last he says, preservation of these rights is vitally important to the whole future of Christian civilization. And so Christian and patriotism, Christian civilization, those were normal terms. And the left wants to replace Christian patriotism with Christian nationalism, because it has like a negative connotation. Now why would they want to do that? Because nationalism depends on what nation you're in. And if you're in a socialist nation, like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, right, the USSR was Stalin, or the Nazi, which stands for National Socialist Workers Party, in those socialist countries, nationalism means totalitarianism. no freedom of religion or speech or freedom of conscience, no right to redress grievances, no Second Amendment rights. But in America, we have a nation where it's government from the consent of the governed. In other words, nothing happens unless you give your approval to it. And we have Citizens are guaranteed God-given rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom to determine your own destiny. So in our nation, we want to preserve our nation. In other nations, that word nationalism is bad. Reagan said, in this country of ours took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in the world's history. The Founding Fathers established the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and ability to determine our own destiny. You get to decide who you want to marry, where you want to live, what food you want to eat, what job you want to pursue, what church you want to go to. You get to be a king with a little K over your life and all of us together are king of the country. They do something called projection, where they blame you for what they're guilty of. They're the ones that want to set up a nationalism, but they want it to be a woke nationalism. They want to deny freedom of conscience, deny freedom of speech, deny human rights. They want to kill innocent babies, and they want to call some races inherently evil and cancel political opponents. It's called psychological projection, where they blame you for what they're doing. And blame shifting, little kids do it. I didn't start the fight, you did. Or a cheating spouse will accuse the faithful spouse of being unfaithful. It's in the Bible. Potiphar's wife accused Joseph of lusting after her when she was lusting after him. And so Nero set fire to Rome, and he blamed the innocent Christians for it. And so this idea of they do the bad stuff, but they blame you for it. It was even an advisor to a previous president, David Axelrod, and on NPR radio, April 19, 2010, he said, in Chicago, there was an old tradition of throwing a brick through your own campaign office window and then calling your press conference to say you've been attacked by your opponent. And then the opponent has to go on the defensive. I didn't do that. And so they accuse you of what they're guilty of. Now, lastly, nationalism is the opposite of globalism. There are some people that want to won world government. And one of them is Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum. And he said, by 2030, you will own nothing. But you'll be happy. How does he know that we'll be happy? And it's interesting, because his statement is very similar to Karl Marx. Karl Marx says the theory of communism can be summed up in one single sentence, abolition of private property. You'll own nothing. So gee, Klaus Schwab wants to set up world communism. And how do you do it? How are you going to talk people into giving up their freedom? You have to have crises. And so here's the Impermiss magazine. It said, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Mallet write that if the past five centuries in Europe and America have taught us anything, it is that acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state. So they want to have crises so they can concentrate power. So the Great Reset is an orchestrated crisis to get everybody into fear so they surrender to a digital currency or whatever else health thing. Henry Louis Mencken wrote in 1956, the urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it. The one world government. Do you know what the most common form of government is? I got it on the screen. It's gangs. That's actually the default setting for human government. It's gangs. If tomorrow there were no police, it'd be fine for a couple days. And then you start having violence and there'd be gangs. And then we would have to get our neighborhood together to protect our neighborhood. And we would find... And a glorified gang leader we call a king. And so did you know the first attempt at a one-world government was the Tower of Babel? Right? That's where the population was. Most anthropologists say that the Mesopotamia Fertile Crescent is where civilization began. And so since that's where the people were, Nimrod wanted to control them all. And so he builds this tower. Josephus, the Jewish commentator, said Nimrod wanted to build the tower so high that if God destroyed the world again with a flood, he could survive on top. So it had this defiant attitude toward God, and he made everybody in town bake bricks and bring them, or he would kill them. So it was oppressive over man. And God comes down, confuses the languages, and the people scatter into language groups that turn into nations. Nations were God's invention to prevent a one-world government. God created this nationalism. God created these nations. Why? Because then the world population broke it into groups. They'll compete with each other and they'll prevent it from re-concentrating back where one guy controls it all. But every generation you have kings that want to conquer a bunch of kingdoms in their quest to re-concentrate power. And so You have Gilgamesh, King of Uruk. And the oldest story ever written in any language is the Epic of Gilgamesh. And he writes about going on this long journey to meet an old guy who survived a global flood. Talks about the world being covered with water, and this guy had made a boat, covered it with tar and pitch, filled it full of animals, settled it on a mountain, repopulated the world. It's the story of Noah, written 1,000 years before Moses. Matter of fact, over 100 ancient civilizations, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, have flood stories in their ancient past. Gee, maybe there really was a flood. I believe there was. And then you have Sargon of Akkadia, 2250 BC. He conquers a bunch of walled cities. And he's got the first empire. Then you have 2,000 years of Egyptian pharaohs. And they're taking people's lands and cattle. And then you have 5,000 years of Chinese emperors. And then 700 BC, Assyria is the biggest empire on the planet. Nineveh is the capital. And Jonah, remember? And they take the 10 northern tribes of Israel captive. Assyria is conquered by Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, which is conquered by Persia. Cyrus of Persia he's got the biggest Empire in the 5th century BC and he's the one who lets the Jews go back and rebuild the temple But Persia's conquered by Alexander the Great 330 BC. He's got the biggest Empire Conquering from you know Macedonia and Greece to India and then in India you have Chandra Gupta and the Mara Empire and he controls a quarter of the world's population even back then and then 2 BC, Augustus Caesar. He's got the biggest empire that planet Earth had ever seen. You ever see a seashell that does the little circle, little bigger circle, little bigger, bigger circle? It's called the golden ratio or phi, P-H-I, or the Fibonacci sequence. It's a rate of expansion that you observe in tornadoes or hurricanes or galaxies, right? And it gets applied to other areas of academia. Like when crypto first started taking off investments. But I thought, well, let's apply it to history. And sure enough, it happens the same way. It keeps coming around. People say, history repeats itself. Yeah, but every time it comes around, it's a little worse. Because of military advancements, the kings can kill more people. Instead of Cain killing Abel with a rock. They can kill with a bronze weapon, or an iron weapon, or a big long phalanx spear the Greeks had, or a composite bow that the Mongols had, or a scimitar sword that the Muslims had, or gunpowder that the Chinese invented, or drones, or directed energy weapons where they shoot fire down from satellites. And the weapon improves, but it's that same fallen nature a cane can kill and able. And with technological advancements, canes can track more people. Did you know Augustus Caesar wanted to have a worldwide tracking system? It was called the census. That was like new technology back then. If he could have had 5G and cell phones and cameras and facial recognition software, he'd have been tempted to attract people that way. And then you have an Askhomite Empire, big, huge one in Africa, and then Attila the Hun, 450 AD. He's got the biggest empire the world had seen up to this point. He has an army of a half a million men, and they are wiping out city after city across Europe. Mites and Reims and Cologne. And he's headed toward Paris with his half a million men, and a young woman named Genevieve gets all of Paris to fast and pray. And for some reason, Attila skips sacking Paris. So Genevieve is called the patron saint of Paris. And then the Byzantine Empire is the biggest empire. And then Islam comes along in the 7th century AD. They got that new invention of the stirrup and the scimitar sword. And they conquer from Arabia across North Africa, across the Strait of Gibraltar, and they conquer Spain. They're stopped outside of Paris. And they're stopped outside of Paris by? Charles Martel, whose grandson is Charlemagne. And he's got all of Europe. He's got the biggest empire, 800 AD. And then the Vikings, 1000 AD. And they have ships with low keels that they can go up every river in Europe and in Russia. They have the biggest empire that the world had ever seen to this point. And then 1200s, Genghis Khan conquers from Korea to Hungary, kills 30 million people. He's got the biggest empire that the planet had ever seen up to this point. You know what? If any of these guys had not died, any one of them would have been happy to be the Antichrist. They would have kept on killing and killing, right? And so in that sense, death is a blessing, because death lets us start from scratch again. And it's sort of interesting. All these empires have something in common. They're all rules of fear. That's the energy that these kings have. You do what I tell you or I'm going to kill you, right? And when the devil tempted Jesus, took him to a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and the devil said, bow down and worship me and all this is yours, for they've been delivered to me. I can give them to whoever I want. And Jesus says, get behind me Satan, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. But you think that's pretty audacious of the devil to say he's got all the kingdoms. When did he get them? When Adam sinned. Adam was in charge of the garden. We know that because Adam named everything. If you name something, you got authority over it. Parents have kids, you get to name your kids, you have authority over your kids. But the Bible says, to whomever you yield your members to obey, to him you are a servant. The moment Adam obeyed Satan, he was posturing himself as the one taking the orders and the devil as the one giving them. And from that point on, and so Jesus said, the kings of the Gentiles rule over them. But it shall not be so among you. He that is greatest among you shall be the servant of all. I am among you as he that serveth." So we're talking kingdoms. The world kingdoms are topped down through fear, and Jesus' kingdom is bottomed up through love. Well, then you have Kublai Khan, and then Tamerlane in the 1300s, and then Ivan the Terrible of Russia kills 60,000 in Novgorod, and then you cross into this hemisphere, and you have the Aztec Empire with Montezuma. And he's capturing neighboring tribes, taking them to the top of his pyramids and ripping their hearts out in Atahualpa, Inca Peru, where everybody was a slave of the state. 1500s, the King of Spain has the biggest empire that planet Earth had ever seen up to this point. The Philippines are named after his son, King Philip of Spain. 1600s, the King of France. Louis XIV, 1700s, England. But we're going to jump in here. Why? Because the Reformation starts and something interesting comes about. Whenever there's a king, whatever the king believed, the kingdom had to believe. But when the Reformation started, you had groups of people within a kingdom that were believing differently than the king. And that was considered treason. And so you had kings wanting to persecute their own populations. This was sort of a new thing. And so Spain did something good. It stopped the Muslims on the Mediterranean Sea, saving Europe from being conquered by Islam. But then Spain did something that was not good. King Philip of Spain sent the Iron Duke of Alba to Antwerp, Holland in 1572, and he kills 10,000 Dutch Reformed, leaves their bodies piled in the street. And then France has Catherine de' Medici. And now during this time, you have different kings that believe different things, killing. So we have French Catholics killing Spanish Catholics. And we have Protestants killing Catholics. And we got Protestants killing Protestants. There were Anglicans that killed Puritans. So a lot of killings going on. So we don't want to lay the blame and get back into all that. We're trying to trace where America came from. And so in 1572, 10% of France is Huguenot. And Catherine de' Medici is the queen, and so she arranges a wedding with her daughter Margaret, with the main Protestant leader named Henry of Navarre. Great big wedding in Paris a couple days after the wedding. She has her soldiers pull chains across the streets and sends her soldiers house to house, and they kill 30,000 of these Huguenot leaders. It's called the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Throw their bodies in the Seine River. And so you have a problem. Reformers were studying Romans 13. Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities exist and have been established by God. It's like, yeah, but what if the authority has a mandate to kill your wife and kids? Are you supposed to submit to that? And so these reformers protested, and they were nicknamed Protestants. And one of them is John Calvin. And he writes in his Institutes, we are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against him, let us not pay the least regard to it. What's he talking about? Well, there's a scripture that says children obey your parents. But what if there's a bad parent who tells the kid to sell drugs, sell themselves into prostitution and kill the neighbor? Is the child supposed to obey that? No, the child obeys the parent as long as the parent is telling them to do something that lines up with God's word. You obey the government as long as the government is telling you to do something that lines up with God's word. I mean, why would God tell you to do something in his word and then tell you to submit to a government that tells you not to do what he just got done telling you to do? And so this is similar to Martin Luther King Jr.' 's letter from the Birmingham jail. He says, one may well ask, how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws, just and unjust. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. So you obey the government as long as the government's telling you to do something that lines up with God's word. So these Calvinist Puritans developed a way that we can all rule ourselves without a king. It's called a covenant form of government. Everybody has to agree to it and everybody has to participate to make it work. And they draw the idea from ancient Israel, the first 400 years out of Egypt before King Saul. So covenant form of government is where you get blessings from God and you share them with your neighbor because you're doing it as unto God. This is different than socialism. Socialism is where the government takes away your stuff and gives it to its supporters. This covenant form of government is you get rights from God and you are fair to your neighbor because you're doing it as unto God who is not a respecter of persons. And so the Puritans got their idea from the Bible, this first 400 years out of Egypt before King Saul. So remember where we went through the Nimrod and Pharaoh and Caesar and Kaiser and Sultans and Czars, remember that? One nation stands out unique, ancient Israel. Around 1400 BC, they come out of Egypt where there's pharaohs, they come into the promised land, and for 400 years, they do not have a king? It works because every single citizen is taught the law, and they're personally accountable to God to follow the law. So you're about to steal, nobody's around, you know you can get away with it, and then you think, God's watching me. He wants me to be fair. He's gonna hold me accountable in the future. Maybe I should hesitate stealing. And it creates something in your head called a conscience. If everybody in the country believes this, you can maintain complete order with no police. And so ancient Israel had, I write about it in my books, about a dozen different unique things. Ancient Israel was the first nation with private land ownership. Because wherever there's a king, you never really own the land. It's always conditional of you staying on the nice side of the king. You cross the king, he'll take away the land and kill you. But in ancient Israel, the land was permanently titled to each family. You own land, you can accumulate stuff, the Bible called that being blessed, and you can give away some of your stuff, the Bible called that charity. Ancient Israel was the first country with no standing army. You have a king, he has an army to enforce his will. But in ancient Israel, every man was in the militia, armed with a sword upon their thigh, and ready at a moment's notice to defend their wife and kids and community. Ancient Israel was the first nation that could read. Did you know that only 1% of Egypt could read? They had 3,000 hieroglyphs, and the scribes kept them complicated on purpose as job security. When Moses comes down the mountain, he has the law in a 22-character alphabet. First letter's the left. Second letter, Beth. So easy to learn. Kids could learn it. Ancient Israel was the first literate population in world history. And so this covenant form of government is what these Calvinist Puritans looked to as the model after the Reformation. And the first 400 years was called the Hebrew Republic. These Puritan scholars were nicknamed Christian Hebraists. James Harrington, John Sadler, whose sister, Anne Sadler, married John Harvard. And so King Saul is, in a sense, the divider between England and America. So what happened with ancient Israel? The system worked until the priests stopped teaching the law. You say, the priest stopped teaching the law? Yeah, here's Eli, the high priest. His own sons are sleeping with women in the very tent where the Ark of the Covenant is. And then another Levite with a silver graven image in the house of a guy named Micah. The tribe of Dan comes along, and they steal the graven image, and they say, hey, come along with us. You can be a priest to our whole tribe. And you're scratching your head when you read the story, like, what's this Levite doing with a graven image? Isn't that one of the commandments? You're not supposed to have them? Well, he's not following them. And then there's the terrible story of a Levite with a concubine. The law says the Levite is to marry a virgin of his own tribe. Here he is with the woman he's not even married to. He's not following the law. The poor concubine is raped to death by a bunch of sodomites. Something about that behavior that appears at the last stages, this casting off of self-restraint and abandonment to passion. The people go to Samuel the prophet, and they say, this self-government system's not working anymore. We want to be like all the other countries. We want a king. Samuel cries, and the Lord tells him, they did not reject you. They rejected me. And so God's original plan for ancient Israel was to not have a king. So these Calvinist Puritans, they looked to the 400 years before King Saul. The kings of England looked to the Bible, but they looked to the King Saul and on. And when King Saul got in, he ruled as a tyrant. He had the priests come, and he accused them of helping David, and he had dough egg to eat him. I'd kill them all right in front of him. And so King Saul is the divider between England and America. The kings of England look to the Bible for their authority, but they look to the anointed King Saul and on. Calvinist Puritans look to the Bible for their authority, but they look to this 400 years pre-King Saul. Does that make sense? And so this pre-King Saul period, it is called the Hebrew Republic the congregation of the Israelites, the assembly of the Israelites, and the emphasis is on the body of the people. And so when Jesus was talking to his disciples, he says, upon this rock I'll build my church. The word for church in Greek is ekklesia. E-k means out of, klesi means a calling. In the Greek city of Athens, there were 6,000 citizens. And they would call them out of their homes to the marketplace, and they would all get together, and they would get involved in fixing the city. We've got to get the walls fixed. We've got to get the Navy going. We've got to take care of the kids. And so there was no king in ancient Greece, in ancient Athens. It was this people. And so Jesus chose that word to say, upon this rock I'll build my body. It's the body of Christ. Everybody has to be a part. An eye, an ear, a foot. The emphasis was on the congregation, the assembly. And so this form of government, this covenantal, congregational church structure, everybody's involved. In Scotland, they call them conventicles. Comes from the word covenant, the Presbyterians, where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst, is what Jesus said. And so these would be small group meetings. Why? Because if they got too bigger than that, the king would notice them and go after them, and so there were these small group meetings. And in this congregational form of church structure, the pastor's job was to help everybody to have their own relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ that died on the cross to pay for all their sins, and then coach them to become mature Christians. You get in the habit of reading through the Bible yourself. You get in the habit of praying every day and then plug into the body and do something. Nursery, junior high, children's church, outreach, something. Because everything that's alive takes in and gives out. For every muscle to grow, it has to be exercised. You don't just hear a good sermon. You hear a good sermon and then put yourself in a position where there's a need. And the Holy Spirit fills you and the Holy Spirit speaks through you and you help the person meet the need, right? We've all been there. Maybe there's somebody depressed, and you start speaking to them, and you find yourself saying some really wise things, and you see them being encouraged by it. And you think to yourself, that's pretty good stuff. Well, it's not you. It's the Holy Spirit speaking through you to meet the person's need. Right? Or maybe you have some money, and the person has a need, and you give them something, and you see them being so grateful. Thank you. And you feel this joy on the inside because you were able to help them. And it's a body ministering to each other. So the pastor's job is to equip the saints so they can do the work of the ministry. And the king did not like that. The king liked the hierarchical church government because he was at the top. It's a clergy lady model where the clergy does all the ministry and the lady is lazy and watches. And so the King of England was the head of the Anglican Church, and then you have the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Archbishop of York, and the deaneries, and vicars, and curates, and rectors, and your relationship with God is through this hierarchical structure. It's sort of what happened with the COVID response. And they said, well, instead of having the church meet together, just go home and watch a really good sermon on the screen. Well, you're taking in, but you can't give out. What, are you going to witness to your pillow? Nice little pillow. No, you take in, and then you give out. And as you're taking in and giving out the Word of God, you grow in your faith. You become more of a mature Christian. And why? Because then you can do the work of the ministry, and the church can grow. Well, the king of England didn't like that, and so he said, I will make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land. And that's what happened. These pilgrims with their little congregational church government fled to the Netherlands. Then Spain threatened to attack. They fled again, and they went to America. They were going to go to Virginia and submit to the king's government, but they get blown off course to Massachusetts. And they try sailing south. But off the coast of Cape Cod, it's really shallow. It's 3,000 ships have sunk off the coast of Cape Cod. It's called a graveyard of ships. And so they almost sink, and the captain says, too dangerous. Goes back to Plymouth Rock, and he says, everybody off the boat. And the people on the Mayflower are like, we have a question. Who's going to be in charge of us? There's no king-appointed person in our little group. 102 of us, we were going to go to Virginia and submit to the king's government, and you're just telling us to get out. Who's going to be in charge? We can't be lawless. They do something unique. They take their covenant form of church government, and they make it their community government. It's called the Mayflower Compact. It says, we, in the presence of God, covenant ourselves together into a civil body politic. They took their church covenant group, everybody's involved, it's not hierarchical, we're told what to do, and then we make it our community government. It's a polarity change in the flow of power on planet Earth. In the womb of the Mayflower is conceived the child of self-government. And it's the difference between a dead pyramid, do what the king says out of fear or he'll kill you, or a living tree where every root and every tiny capillary root sucks in nutrients to keep the tree alive. Everybody's involved in church and everybody's involved in the community. And so Pilgrim Pastor John Robinson said, we are knit together as a body in covenant of the Lord, tied to care for each other's good. Puritan leader John Winthrop, this love among Christians is a real thing, necessary to the body of Christ. We ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love. We must make one another's condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us. And so it's not socialism where the government takes away your stuff and gives it anonymously to somebody and they get some anonymous stuff. No, it's where you get stuff. And it's like a prayer meeting. But you don't just pray with each other. You covet it together. Like, I'm going to be there for you. We're family from now on. You can count on it. Thick and thin. Rejoice together and mourn together. Oz Guinness wrote, covenantal ideas in England were the lost cause, but they became the winning cause in New England. Covenant shaped constitutionalism. The American constitution is a nationalized, secularized form of covenant. Covenant lies behind constitution. And the word federal is Latin for covenant. We have a covenant form of government where we get to rule ourselves without a king. It's where the people bottom up tell the government what's going to happen instead of a king saying, I'm going to rule through mandates. Well, the King of England turned up the heat, and 20,000 Puritans fled in the Great Puritan Migration, and they settled in Massachusetts. And you had pastors and their covenant churches founding cities. And you had a pastor, John Lotherp, in his Covenant Church, founded Barnstable, Massachusetts. And a pastor, Roger Williams, in his church, founded Providence, Rhode Island, and the First Baptist Church in America. Reverend John Wheelwright, in his church, founded Exeter, New Hampshire. And Reverend Thomas Hooker, in his church, founded Hartford, Connecticut, and the First Congregationalist Church in America. This was unique on planet Earth. At this time, you have Chinese emperors, Japanese emperors, Muslim sultans, Indian maharajas, Russian czars, African chieftains, kings of Spain, France, and Austria. The world is kings ruled top down through fear. And here in New England, you have pastors and their churches founding cities and coming up with the laws for them. And so let's look at Thomas Hooker. And he founds Hartford and his church members come to him and say, pastor, can you preach a sermon on how we are supposed to set up our government? He gives a sermon in 1638 titled, The Foundation of Authority is Laid Firstly in the Free Consent of the People. And this is reflected in our declaration, government from the consent of the governed. And this is different from Europe, because the kings in Europe did not ask the people for their consent. Could you imagine a king saying, please, can I do this? No, I got an army. I'm going to make you obey. This sermon goes on. The privilege of election belongs to the people. This is reflected in our Constitution. We, the people. His sermon is written down. It's called The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and it is the Constitution of Connecticut from 1639 up until 1818. Almost two centuries, Connecticut is using Pastor Thomas Hooker's sermon as its constitution. It's considered the first written constitution in history, blueprint for the other New England colonies in the US Constitution. And that's why Connecticut is called the Constitution State. Here's a plaque in England, Thomas Hooker, founder of the state of Connecticut, father of American democracy. Another plaque in England, Thomas Hooker, Puritan clergyman, reputed father of American democracy. Statue of Thomas Hooker holding a Bible on the old Capitol grounds in Hartford. At the base, it says, leading his people through the wilderness he founded Hartford. On this site, he preached the sermon, which inspired the fundamental orders. It was the first written constitution that created a government. Another plaque, here ministered Thomas Hooker, peerless leader in New England thought in life in both church and state. Another plaque, Thomas Hooker, leader, preacher, statesman, who based all civil authority on the free consent of the people. They chiseled it in stone so we wouldn't forget. This was unique on planet Earth. Remember, we went through the Nimrods, Pharaohs, Caesars, Kaisers, all those different kings, and it's all top-down, ruling through fear? And he's like, no, this is something new. This is the bottom-up, people giving their consent. And here's another plaque. It says, near this site, May 31st, 1638, Thomas Hooker preached his famous sermon, the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people, and then representatives of the people adopted as the fundamental orders of Connecticut. What do the fundamental orders say? The people conjoin ourselves to be one public state or commonwealth. Well, who are the people? It's Pastor Thomas Hooker and his Congregational Church. And so you have the people conjoining itself into a public state, very similar to the pilgrims, right? A church group covenanting itself into a civil body politic. Now, why did they do this? To preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus, which we now profess. They picked the form of government that would best preserve the preaching of the gospel. And here's another plaque. It says Thomas Hooker's congregation established the form of government upon which the present constitution of the United States is modeled. Do you grasp the significance of this? America started as a church plant. Instead of hierarchical, do what the king says, we have these little congregational churches. Everybody gives their consent to stuff, right? It turned into the colonial government in Connecticut and these New England states, and it turned into our U.S. Constitution, we the people. And so in New England, instead of separation of church and state, it was the pastors and their churches that created the state. How could you say pastors don't preach on politics when it's the pastor's sermon that's their constitution? How could you say church members don't get involved in politics when all there was in Hartford was the church members? There were like no non-church members in the group to be lazy and let them run stuff. The word polis is Greek for city. Indianapolis, Minneapolis, polis means city, and politics is simply the business of the city. And again, all there was in the city of Hartford was the church members. They had one building called a meeting house. This is where the pastor would teach the Bible and this is where they would gather and do their city business. The word synagogue means meeting house. That's where the rabbi would teach the law, that's where they would gather together and do their city business. I mean, why build a separate building just to talk about a different topic? And so when the Revolutionary War started, the British sent over a military governor, Thomas Gage, and he outlawed meeting houses. Democracy too prevalent in America. We don't need the people meeting and giving their consent to stuff. You just obey government mandates. Easy. When the government issues a mandate, you jump. When they issue an executive order, you obey. You're a zombie. You're a robot. You just do what you're told. But in America, we say, uh-uh, we have a century under our belt of nothing happening unless we give our consent to it. And so you had this top-down, no, you do what we mandate. No, no, no, nothing happens unless we give our consent. No, no. And it turned into the Revolutionary War, and we won. And we turned into America, where we, the people, get to decide what's going to happen. And America became the most blessed nation on planet Earth. So that was the 1600s. These Calvinist Puritans coming up with a congregational form of church government, covenant plan, everybody has to agree to it, and everybody has to participate in it. It's a tremendous plan. And after a century, it got a little dry. To some, it became only a plan. And Harvard and Yale were teaching, and these professors got a little stodgy, and they're just teaching this plan. Some of them went to the far end and said, God already has it planned out who's going to go to heaven and who's going to go to hell, so don't even bother evangelizing and sharing the gospel. And so David Brainerd got expelled from Yale because he said his professor was as spiritual as a chair. The Yale students were reprimanded because they went into the nearby town of New Haven and they were presenting the gospel to strangers in pubs and in restaurants and on the street. And that was considered disrespectful. You're only supposed to present the gospel when you're wearing the black robe and you're in the pulpit and you have to do it really formally. And this was an embarrassment. I mean, the kids were not like smashing windows and setting things on fire. No, they were like preaching the gospel to strangers. Oh, they can't do that. And so they were nicknamed old lights. And in the 1700s, you have the new lights. And the new light said, it's more than a plan. Even if it's a great covenant plan, it's more than a plan. You have to have an experience with Jesus. But when you do, you're not going to be involved. It's like, what? Well, let's look at where the pietists come from. 1517, Martin Luther starts the Reformation. Because he had a personal experience with Jesus, the revelation that the just shall live by faith. Very, very personal to him. So much that he was willing to stand up to the Holy Roman Emperor. and say, unless you can prove me wrong from scripture, here I stand, so help me God. Very personal to Martin Luther, but some German kings want a break from Rome. And they go, this is my chance. Kingdom of mine, I just decided you are all now Lutherans. And the people in the kingdom are like, OK, king, we're Lutheran. What do we believe? So for the people in the kingdoms, it's not the same personal revelation Martin Luther had. It's just a new state doctrine. A little more scriptural emphasis, but to some it was just a plan. And so this revival movement starts called pietism that said being a Christian is more than a plan, more than doctrine. You have to have an experience with Jesus. And when you do, your life will change. And you will no longer do the worldly things you used to do, like go to bars and brothels and lewd theaters and get involved in worldly government. Wait, what was that last thing? Yeah, government. It's worldly. If you're really a Christian, you won't be involved. This is where that concept came from, that our church is more spiritual than yours because we just preached the gospel. I'm at a higher spiritual level than you are because I'm not involved. You're still sort of lowly and you still get involved in that politics stuff, and I'm more spiritual because I'm withdrawing from all worldly things. That idea did not come from those Calvinist Puritans. The Calvinist Puritans are like, everybody, we need you to be involved. This is our chance to rule ourselves without a king. We all get to give our input. It's consent from the government. But the 17th is, no, no, no, don't get involved. It's worldly. And so it turned into the German concept of the two kingdoms, the kingdom of the government, the kingdom of the church, and the two don't touch. There were even German princes that would donate money to the pietists so they would teach their people not to get involved in the prince's business. And four centuries of that allowed Hitler to put Jews on train cars. And they're going right past the churches, and they're screaming for help. And the church's response was, well, that's the government doing that, and we're the church, and we can't get involved in government stuff because of the different circles, and we're over here. So let's just sing praise songs to Jesus louder. Can anybody see there's something wrong with that picture? And so let's recap. Puritans, the 1600s, they came up with a revolutionary plan of ruling ourselves without a king. They borrowed it from ancient Israel that first 400 years out of Egypt before King Saul. Good plan, but It became bad in the sense that to some it became only a plan, and it got spiritually dry. Pietists, 1700s, they're called the New Lights. Good, you can have a personal relationship with Jesus, but to some it was only personal, and they would withdraw and not be involved and not care what kind of country they're gonna leave their kids. Now I have to give credit where credit's due. These German Lutheran pietists did impact the world. One was a guy named Ludwig von Zinzendorf. He was royalty, raised by his pietist grandmother in the 1700s, and he had a big estate and he opened it up for persecuted Christians to come and live on his farm. And they built little houses and sheds. And then they start bickering with each other. And so he leaves his nice house, goes and lives amongst them. And he says, we need to have a communion service, forgive each other. And they do. And they pray all night, all day, all night. They pray a week, all month, all year. They're taking turns with the kids and the farm and the family. But they kept that prayer meeting going and going. That prayer meeting went on uninterrupted for 100 years. And these little group of Moravian, German, Lutheran pietists send missionaries around the world. The first ones went to the Caribbean, to the Danish island of St. Thomas to minister to the slaves. And these are young couples. that are not getting checks in the mail. They're just praying, and they say, we feel that we're supposed to go to India. It's like, okay, let's pray, lay hands on you, you're off. And they would go there, and they would have to learn the language, they have to learn to work five jobs, and in the meantime, they would present the gospel, and they went to Iceland, they went to Egypt, they went all around the world. Imagine all this woke energy that kids have, risking their lives to spread the gospel. And some of them were going to Georgia. 13th Colony. James Oglethorpe was the founder, and the secretary was Charles Wesley. And the first minister was John Wesley. They were from Oxford. And they're on the boat going to Georgia. And there are Moravian missionaries on the boat. And they're in a storm. And the storm nearly shoves the boat. John Wesley says, we thought we were shoved to the bottom of the ocean. The waves were just flooding in. And they were screaming. And John Wesley goes to where the Moravians are. And they're just singing praise songs to Jesus. Oh, we love you, Lord. Wesley's like, what? He asked them afterwards, he goes, weren't you scared? They go, no, we love Jesus. He wants us in heaven, he wants us here, we belong to him. And the Wesleys are like, you guys have a personal experience with Jesus that we don't have. So the Wesleys sort of fail in Georgia, go back to England, and they meet another Moravian who invites them to a prayer meeting in Aldersgate. John Wesley writes, I went very unwillingly to a society meeting in Aldersgate where one was reading the Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, And when he was explaining the change which God works in the hearts of those who have faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation. And he gave me assurance that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. John Wesley had a personal experience with Jesus. He goes over and lives with these Moravian Lutheran pietists for eight months, calls it the religion of the heart, comes back to England, and says, look, it's more than Anglican doctrine. You have to have the experience with Jesus. He starts the Methodist revival movement inside of the Anglican church, gets his friend George Whitefield involved. George Whitefield comes and preaches up and down the colonies in America seven times. Like 90% of the country personally heard George Whitefield preach. But some of them, They would get saved, and they would do what? Withdraw from being involved in government. And so my thought is, why can't it be both? A covenant plan where we're all involved, nothing happens unless we give our consent to it, and a personal experience with Jesus. So our faith is a personal experience with Jesus. If it's not that, there's just a bunch of following a bunch of rules. No, it's a personal experience, but we want to be involved so we can leave a nation to our kids where they have a chance to have a personal experience with Jesus. Because if you don't get involved, what they're teaching in the schools is there is no God. And if he does exist, he is messed up. He's put in men and women's bodies, and you have to have operations to fix it? And he's either totally unorganized up there, or he's powerless, or worse yet, he's sadistic. And if that behavior's not sin, sex outside of marriage, then arguably there are no sins. And if there's no sins, you certainly don't need a savior. And so if you're not involved, that's what they're teaching the kids. It's an anti-Christian gospel. It's the gospel of Antichrist. And so the most important thing is to bring people to Christ. But the second most important thing is to preserve the freedom to do the most important thing. We just preached the gospel. If you really believe that, you're going to be involved wanting to preserve the freedom to preach the gospel. Because if you don't, where we're headed is like China, where you can see those videos of them bulldozing down churches, or Pakistan, or these different countries where it's the death penalty, or atheistic countries. So I have a thought, it's a question, to those that think they're being holy by not being involved. And there are lots and lots, I was talking with David Barton, and he works with the Gallup polls, and they said that the counties that have the largest percentage of Christians have the lowest voter turnout. Oh, we're just trusting the Lord, but they're not doing anything. But the question is, is it holier not to be involved? Well what do you do with Numbers chapter 30? It's the silence equals consent chapter in the Bible. A half a dozen scenarios. One is if a daughter binds herself with a vow while living in her father's house in her youth and her father hears her vow and holds his peace. then all her vows shall stand. But if her father overrules her on the day that he hears, then none of her vows shall stand, and the Lord will release her." That's come down to us as vows in a wedding ceremony. And the pastor tells the church members, if you are silent when you hear these vows, your silence is giving consent to the vows. Right? Book of Common Prayer. If anyone present knows of any reason why the couple should not be joined together in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace. If you're holding your peace, you're giving consent. It's called the Rule of Tacit Admission, T-A-C-I-T, Black's Law Dictionary, an admission reasonably inferable from a party's failure to act or speak. And it's in property law. If you have a piece of property and there are squatters on it, and you know about it, and you're not evicting them and not charging them rent, they can gain title to your property through something called adverse possession. You knew about it, and the judge will say, well, you must have known about it, you must have been given your approval. Trademark law. If you have a trademark and somebody else copies it and they're using it, and you know about it, and you don't try to defend it, the judge will say, well, you knew about it, and you didn't try to stop them, so you must have been given your approval, so they get to use your trademark. It's even in our U.S. Constitution. Article 1, Section 7, Congress passes a bill, puts it on the President's desk. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within 10 days, the same shall be a law in like manner as if he had signed it. Put the law on his desk, all he has to do is be silent and ignore it for 10 days. It's law exactly the same as if he had signed it. Our Constitution recognizes that silence equals consent. And so if a church member's silence gives consent to wedding vows, it gives consent to other things. And if they're killing babies, and the church members know about it, and they're silent, they're giving consent to killing babies. And if you give consent to sin, you share in the guilt as an accessory to the crime, you share in the judgment. Leviticus 20, any Israelite or foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Moloch is to be put to death. If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Moloch, I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together. All you have to do is close your eyes when they do it and you're guilty. California actually had a bill to kill a baby up to 28 days after birth. I was speaking out there when this was going on and they were talking about, and a bunch of pastors says, we just can't be silent. And black, Hispanic pastors, Asian pastors, white pastors, they all went to Sacramento and they pressured those politicians to change that wording. The Apostle Paul, Acts 22, is talking to the Lord and he says, Paul did not throw a stone. Paul did not say a word. But he knew just by standing there, silent, he was giving consent to the death, he was guilty. Proverbs 24, rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death. Don't stand back and let them die. Don't try to disclaim responsibility by saying you didn't know about it. For God, who knows all hearts, knows yours, and he knows that you knew, and he will repay everyone according to his deeds. Mordecai tells Esther, there's a mandate from the government to kill the Jews. If you remain silent at this time, deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. Here's an interesting passage, Numbers 20. Moses and Aaron are called to the door of the tabernacle. And the Lord spake to Moses, take the rod, gather the assembly, thou and Aaron. Speak to the rock, and it shall give forth water. But they gathered the assembly, and Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice. and water came out abundantly. End of the chapter. And the Lord spake to Moses, Aaron will not enter the land because both of you rebelled against my command at the waters of Meribah. It's like, both? I just read the chapter. Aaron didn't do anything. He didn't say anything. Yeah, that's just it. He heard God tell Moses, speak to the rock. When Moses lifted up the rod the first time and hit the rock, it probably took Aaron by surprise. When Moses lifted up the rod the second time, Aaron knew what was coming, and he did not protest. He didn't say, well, Moses, hold it. I was there. I heard God say speak to the rock. No, he was silent. And in that instant, Aaron was guilty. Moses's was a sin of commission. Aaron's was a sin of omission. Leviticus 5, a person sins because he did not speak up, even though he was an eyewitness to a cause or knew what happened. Anyone who failed to testify is guilty. Martin Luther King, Jr., he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he hopes to perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting it is really cooperating with it. We all know the verse Leviticus 19.18, love your neighbor as yourself. Do you know the verse right before it? Confront your neighbor directly so you will not be held guilty for their sin. Ancient Israel, love your neighbor. Oh, they're loving their neighbor as themselves. Then they're confronting each other. There was no police in ancient Israel. Everybody was taught the law. Everybody helped enforce the law. There wasn't a king ruling through bright soldiers. No, everybody knew the law, and everybody helped enforce it. You heard somebody do something wrong, you had to correct them. Like a mom watching a bunch of neighborhood kids. She has no problem correcting somebody else's kid. Right? In ancient Israel, they were correcting each other. Another translation of this says, rebuke your neighbor directly so you will not incur guilt because of him. New Testament says, if your brother sinned, rebuke him. We sort of left out sort of parts of the gospel that, you know, the left has a woke tactic, and it's to guilt trip Christians into being more Christian than Christ. You say, say that again? Yeah, they say, if you're really Christian, you will be silent while we teach your children the trans agenda. It's like, okay, would Jesus teach that agenda? Jesus taught in the beginning, it says, he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, in the image of God. And yet they're telling you, you be silent. You're a Christian, you're supposed to be silent, you're supposed to shut up. You be silent, and by your silence, give your consent to us teaching something that Jesus would never teach. So if you're really a Christian, you won't act like Christ. Jesus said, if you cause one of these little ones who trust in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck. So they're telling you, if you're really Christian, you'll be silent. But Jesus says, if you're silent and you let one of these kids fall, it's better than a millstone around your neck. I think Jesus is more of an expert on what a Christian is supposed to do than those people. I mean, think of it. How can teachers who cannot even define what a woman is be capable of telling a boy he's supposed to be a girl? I mean, they can't even define a woman. You're supposed to be one of them. So I think it's going to be a rude awakening for church members who think they're being holy by not being involved when they realize by their silence they're giving consent to all that evil. They're inviting the judgment of God on their heads. Now, a scriptural case can be made that God cares about children. He cares about the children in your neighborhood. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. So the answer is local, local, local. I ran for Congress three times back in 2000, 2004. And then in 98, and I had the president's uncle chair my finance committee, Bucky Bush. We had the top three members of the U.S. Congress come in and campaign for me against my opponent. It was Dick Armey, J.C. Watts, Dennis Hastert. We raised millions of dollars. We had Chuck Norris doing commercials, Ted Nugent, Pat Boone, Art Linkletter, Zig Ziegler. James Dobson, Alan Keyes, Judge Roy Moore, Phyllis Schlafly, D. James Kennedy, Tim and Beverly Lay, it was a big deal. I could tell that to you, and most people say, if that's what running for Congress, I'll never do that, forget it. But forget all the national races, you drive by that school every day, and if you know they're teaching something other than what Jesus taught, and you're silent, you're giving consent to that. Do you know there are more people in churches in the community than vote in school board races? It's just pick some mama bear and get behind her. It's like we don't agree with everything every church does, but we're all not happy about what they're teaching, so let's just get behind some mama bear and says, look, we'll get behind you, vote you in, and then fill up the school board meeting early to show our support. Don't just let them out there to hang. And if churches can be concerned about children, in their community, in and out of the womb. I mean, the same spirit that wants to mutilate them in the womb with abortion wants to mutilate them outside the womb with trans surgeries. If churches can be concerned about the children and these school board races, I'm convinced all the higher races will take care of themselves. Once people learn how to do it, they'll say, OK, I want to run for this higher office. And as long as they know that the pastor's blessing their involvement, they'll do all the rest of the work themselves. If we could just care about what children are being taught in our own little neighborhoods, and if every church in the country does this, we can begin to turn it around. Because we looked at history, and we looked at Nimrods, and Pharaohs, and Caesars, and Kaisers, and anybody that can plot on a graph sees that it's going to max out on a global level at some point. Jesus says wheat and tares grow together till the harvest. But I was noticing as power concentrates into fewer and fewer hands globally, God's counterbalance is to get more and more people involved locally, right? Fewer people getting power globally, more people involved locally to counterbalance that. And then here's a thought. Maybe God is letting the evil expose itself to expose the condition of our heart. I mean, how much will we stomach? How much will we put up with? What will it take to get us to do something? And if we remain silent, doing nothing, just waiting for Jesus to come and take us out of this mess, then our silence while we're waiting, we're giving consent to all that stuff. And the thought is, who do you think you're gonna meet when you're raptured? Jesus? Do you think he cares about the children? Do you think? And he's going to say, why were you silent when they were doing that? Now, the fact that you would come out on a Monday night to hear some strange speaker shows that you're ones that care, right? Your heart is in the right place. I want you to know that. But what does the silence say about the condition of hearts? Jesus says, because evil shall abound, the love of many will wax cold. There are some that as they see this evil, they're gonna get fine with it. Oh, I'm fine with that. Okay, kill the babies, 28 days after birth, fine, whatever. I was reading Ezekiel. I speak at a lot of conferences and I get to hear these other ones. And they have these, children that are detransitioning, like they had the surgeries and now they feel, and one poor girl, she was 15 and they talked her into having a mastectomy, and now she's 18. And she's like, why did you let me do that? I didn't know what was going, I couldn't give my consent to that. And then there's this other poor girl, and she's crying, and she says, I rejected being a woman before I knew what a woman was, and now I can never be one because of their operations. And then there's this other girl, and there's a video, and she's holding her camera on her phone, and she says, I don't know what to say. I shave my head. They told me I have male pattern baldness, and my hair will never come back. And I don't know what to say other than this is what happens when a girl takes testosterone for five years. And these are children that are clearly not happy. They were pushed into something. And how can the church be back and be silent? So in Ezekiel, the Lord gives him a vision. And he cried and said, cause them that have charge over the city to draw near. Behold, six men came, every man with a destroying weapon in his hand. And he called the man clothed with linen, who had the riders in court at his side, and said to him, go through the midst of the city. Put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and cry. over all the abominations that are done within it. And to the others, he said, go after them through the city. Slay old and young, but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark, and begin at my sanctuary. It's like, what's the difference between being slain or not slain? Does your heart sigh and cry over the abominations in the city? Now, yours does, because you wouldn't be out here on this night. But there are others that they go to church, and they're fine with it. Their heart's not sighing and crying. like listening to praise and worship music, and there's a artist, Kim Walker-Smith, and she has a version of this song, Hosanna, with the little kids choir. And the little kids, their faces are so innocent, and they're singing. And then there's a verse in there that says, break my heart for what breaks yours, everything I am for the kingdom's cause. And I was listening to that, I thought, that's an interesting line in a praise song. Break my heart for what breaks yours. And it's like, do you think it breaks Jesus' heart to have these little kids? being pushed into that type of stuff. I mean, I was at the one conference, and they had the video of this pink-haired Oregon doctor doing these trans surgeries and describing how they would, you know, I can't even, don't want to even say it in church, but he admits, he goes, they will be sexually dysfunctional the rest of their life, they will be incontinent, I mean they have their word diapers, and they'll continually have infections, continually have, and they're admitting it, that these kids will never, so you're not turning your boy into a girl, you're turning him into a eunuch. And then we have this recent movie of Sound of Freedom with Jim Caviezel. And he said, in the movie there's the, it's just rescuing kids out of sex trafficking. And he was explaining that child sex trafficking is the new drug. You smuggle drugs into a country, you use it once, it's gone. You smuggle kids into sex trafficking, they can be used 10 times a day for 10 years, and then you sell them as body parts. It is the most horrible, it's no different than what happened in the Old Testament with the Baal worship. So I was meditating on that Jesus didn't sit around and pet lambs all day long. Do you know his first sermon ended with them wanting to push him off a cliff? Another sermon, Jesus' sermon, ended with them picking up stones to stone him. Another sermon ends with people saying, that is a difficult saying, who can bear it? And they walk with him no more. I mean, imagine preaching a sermon in heaven, everybody get up and leave. And he didn't go after them and say, you guys misunderstood me. No, he turns to the 12 and says, you guys want to go too? There's the door. And Peter said, where else can I go? You're the only one with the words of eternal life. And then Jesus is invited to somebody's house for dinner. And the host noticed that Jesus did not wash his hands. And Jesus said, you Pharisees are more concerned about the outside of the cup and not the inside. You're like a sepulcher, outside pretty, inside full of dead men's bones. And the lawyer says, Jesus, by saying that, you're insulting us lawyers. He says, let me tell you about you lawyers. You hit burdens on people too heavy to carry. Don't even lift a finger yourself. You hold the keys of knowledge. You don't go in and you don't let anybody else go in. And he's laying into them. And then the chapter ends. And you wonder if they ever got around to eating dinner. You sort of get the feeling they pushed him out on the street. This is our loving Jesus. To the prideful, he was tough as nails. To the humble, he was as loving as could be. God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. It says, he that humbles himself under the mighty hand of the Lord, he will exalt him. You fall on the stone, you're broken, the stone falls on you, you're crushed. In other words, you voluntarily admit you're a sinner. You voluntarily humble yourself. He lifts you up, gives you grace. If you're prideful, guess what? There's in the Psalms it says, to the pure he will show himself pure, to the froward he will show himself froward. It's like magnets. You approach God humbly, the magnets connect. If you approach God with pride, he's never gonna touch. And then there's this verse, I've read it thousands of times, but this one time I read it and something stood out. Jesus says, who do men say that I am? And some say thou art John the Baptist, some Elijah, some Jeremiah, and then of course Peter says you're the Christ. But let's look at it, who was John the Baptist? He stood up to the corrupt King Herod. Who was Elijah? He stood up to the corrupt King Ahab. Who was Jeremiah? He stood up to the corrupt King Zedekiah. And they're mistaking Jesus for this? So choosing God means that there has to be something else that we're not choosing. To be accepted by God is rejection by man. That's the choice. One of the strongest desires of human nature is to be accepted by a group. And some won't choose Christ. Even Jesus says that some refuse to believe on him publicly because they did not want to be put out of the synagogue because they love the praises of men more than the praises of God. And so the acceptance of a group is the magnetic pull that we have to break to be accepted by God. And so you have Peter's around a fire. There's a group. And a girl gets in his face and says, you were with Jesus. And you can just picture Peter looking around the fire, and everybody's eyeing him. And he says, I never met the guy. That's it. You were with him three years, a couple minutes ago. You told me never to deny him. Here he is. It is a real fear being pushed out of a group, out of a family group, out of a clique, out of a club, out of your friends. It's real. It's real. But after the resurrection, Peter's filled with the Holy Spirit. And the Sanhedrin said, we gave you strict orders not to teach in this name. And Peter says, we must obey God rather than men. Suddenly, Peter doesn't care about what men think about him. All he cares about is what God thinks about him. It's only when you have a relationship with God can you not care about what people think about you. And if you're still thinking about what everybody thinks about you, maybe you need to spend a little more time in the presence of the creator of the universe. I think that's one of the reasons why he starts off the Our Father, Our Father who art in heaven. Because when you start thinking about how big heaven is, it makes all these other people, what people think, seem smaller. So this is a thought. Maybe one of the evidences of being filled with the Holy Spirit is having the courage to stand up to corrupt government. Peter, before he had the Holy Spirit, he was denying Christ, and then after the resurrection, he's filled with the Holy Spirit, he stands up to him. Some might say, I'm not gonna do anything, but God knows my heart. It's like, yeah, but he knew Abraham's heart, but he wanted to see Abraham be willing to take his son Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah. I mean, imagine a guy watching football and you ask him, hey, when was the last time you told your wife you love her? And he's like, I can't remember, but she knows my heart. It's like, okay. When was the last time you did anything to show your wife you love her? I can't remember, but she knows my heart. It's like, dude, we need to have a little talk here. People say, God knows my heart. Yes, he does. And he wants to hear some words out of your mouth, and he wants to see some actions. We are spiritual beings in a physical world. I mean, even salvation is what? You believe in your heart, and you confess with your mouth. You speak it out. And then there's a prescribed act that follows, right, getting baptized. But you let the outside expression of what's on the inside. And we're the bride of Christ, and every romance novel builds up to a decision-making moment, a forsaking of all others and choosing the one. You're watching the movie and you're like, okay, this is going to get to this point. They're the forsaking of all others and choosing the one. We're the bride of Christ. I think God is pushing the world to a decision-making moment. And some people are going to choose the all others. They're going to want to be liked and friended and followed. It's all done online now, right? And others are going to be, I don't care about the all others. All I care about is Jesus. And I think God's pushing the world to a decision-making moment. I think he's actually pulling back the curtain. like Wizard of Oz, the dog Toto pulls back the curtain, and you see Satan for who he, I mean, here we have Satan clubs on school campuses, Satan worshiping Grammys, Satan trans clothes designers for Target. I mean, it's like, hello, Satan, and then on the other side, people are being bolded for Jesus, and God's like, okay, we're wrapping up, we're coming to the end of the Book of Revelation, we're gonna get there pretty soon, hurry up and make your choice, right? God or devil, choose. And I thought, you know, when a cell divides, some stuff goes to one side, some stuff goes to the other side. There are those that are doing evil and those that are silent in the face of evil. And by their silence, they're giving consent to the evil. And there are others that are saying, you know what? I was silent and tolerating something I didn't feel good about, and then I stretched the rubber band and was silent, tolerating something else I didn't feel good about. But I'm sorry, I just cannot go with hysterectomies on eight-year-old girls because they went through a tomboy phase. I'm sorry, I can't go with castrating little boys because they play with their sister's dolls. And you cut the rubber band and it snaps back and you say, since I don't care about what people think about me anymore, I may as well be bolder for Jesus than ever. And you got the split, right? And I think God's pushing the world toward this, to have people make the decision. Now, we talked about world history. We talked about America being this experiment where you get to have freedom of conscience, and it's a bottom up, you get to give your consent to government. But in a sense, we look at the whole plan of redemption, it's us voluntarily giving our consent, our hearts to God. You know, I was thinking if we zoomed out all the way, like all of creation, It gives us a picture. So in 2003, they focused the powerful Hubble telescope on a spot in the sky where there was nothing. Tiny spot, size of a grain of sand held between your fingers at arm's length against the night sky. Tiny spot, nothing there. After 11 days, they developed the images. In that spot, right, where there was nothing there, was 10,000 galaxies. with hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy. And this is the picture, the Hubble Ultra Deep Space Field. This is not an artist's rendition. This is the actual picture. This is the furthest picture ever taken away from planet Earth. And every dot you see is a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars. And now with the James Webb telescope, they can see it even clearer. And then they saw the red shift. Light travels in waves, with blue being the shortest, fastest wave, red being the slowest, longest wave. The red shift means you're seeing the slow part. You're seeing these galaxies moving away from us. And now they've looked in other directions. They now estimate the observable universe is 93 billion light years across. And get this, still expanding at the speed of light. And the largest star they found is Stephenson 2-18. It's a super gas giant. It's so large, if you were to place Stephenson 2-18 in our solar system, it would engulf the orbit of Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun. We're the third planet from the sun. Could you imagine one single star that enormous? And God made it all. And he made you. Why would he make you? What could you possibly offer a being that is that powerful? Nothing, except maybe something. What's a galaxy anyway? It's a bunch of rocks. Hot rocks, cold rocks, vaporized rocks, molten rocks. A rock cannot love you. So it's almost like at some time in eternity past, God said, been there, done that. I can make everything. I would really like someone in my image that could love me. Now it gets interesting, because love by definition must be voluntary. The moment it's forced, it evaporates. So in the context of everything God controls, time, matter, space, energy, he intentionally created one tiny thing he does not control, your will. Now he could control it if he wanted to, but that would defeat the very reason he made us different than everything else. And he doesn't need our love. He's not incomplete, and our love somehow completes him. He doesn't need our love, but he wants it. Parents don't need the love of their children, but they want it. And the more you love someone, the more you want that someone to love you back. God loves you infinitely. He has an infinite desire for you to love him back. But he'll never force you. Because the moment he would force you to love him, he himself would know he's forcing you to love him. And he would know your response is not a love response. So he'll never force you to love him. But he wants your love. You're made in God's image. What's the most important thing in your life? Well, somewhere near the top of the list, it's loving and being loved. If you're made in God's image, could it be that loving and being loved is a big deal to God? I mean, God is love. Now, God loves everything he created. But the question is, could what he created love him back? Galaxies can't love, rocks can't love, inanimate objects, animals follow instinct. I looked up the word angel in the King James Bible, it appears 289 times. Not one time is the word love used to describe an angel's relationship with God. They worship God, they glorify God, they praise God. The word angel means messenger. They deliver God's messages to Ezekiel and Daniel and Mary and they deliver God's judgments to Egypt and to the Moabites. And they're heavenly witnesses. Jesus says, I'll confess you before the angels. And they rejoice when a sinner converts. But they are not made in the image of God. And Jesus did not die on the cross for angels. They are mighty beings. They are incomprehensibly intelligent beings. They are powerful beings. But they were made for a purpose. What purpose were you made for? We're not mighty. We're not powerful. We're not very smart. You know, a king can have a castle with really powerful soldiers and really smart staff, and then he can have children. Well, guess what? The word love is used all throughout the Bible to describe men and women's relationship with God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Psalms 91, because he said his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him. Jesus rose from the dead and said, Peter, do you love me? We are beings uniquely created with the ability to love God back. But for love to be love, it must be voluntary, so he'll never force us. Now here's a question. How can God give us free will to love him back, but him still be in control of everything? God created light. And light is a photon, which is a perpendicular wave in the electromagnetic field that travels at 186,000 miles per second. And visible light is one small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. You have infrared rays, and ultraviolet rays, and gamma rays, and radio waves. And so when God said, let there be light, he stretched out the heavens. He stretched out the electromagnetic field. And Einstein's theory of relativity is the closer you can travel approaching the speed of light, for you, time would slow down. And if you could travel the speed of light, for you, time would stand still. God created light. He's faster than light. So for God, time stands still. We'll never comprehend that, but there is a verse in the Bible that says a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. Imagine experiencing one day as if it was a thousand years. In other words, we are living in slow motion compared to God. God exists in the ever-present now. I am that I am. When you are in God's presence, you cannot think about the past, you cannot think about the future, you can't even think, you just experience. I'm in the presence of all power and all love and all beauty. Irresistible love, terrible power. So for God to create our reality, he had to create a space-time bubble where everything moves in slow motion compared to now. So we think of the speed of light as fast. To God, it's slow. In physics, it's called the speed of causality, and it's the delay between cause and effect. It's the fastest two points in the universe can communicate in a vacuum. Why is that important? Because if there wasn't a delay between cause and effect, that everything would happen right now. And physicists say the whole universe would collapse into an infinitesimally small spot where everything happens now. So God had to basically take now and stretch it out into slow motion. Now why is that important? We get to make our little free will decisions in time, but he is outside of time. He can readjust every electron in the universe so that his will is going to take place. You know, we all have GPS on our phones, and you make a wrong turn, it recalculates. What if the guy in the car next to you is making a wrong turn at the exact same time, and his is recalculating? What if everybody in the city is making wrong turns and it's recalculating everybody at the same time? What if everybody in the whole world is making wrong turns? We make good decisions. We make bad decisions. God is outside of time. He can readjust every electron in the universe before he lets time go forward to the next nanoframe to ensure that his will is going to take place. So it's our limited free will inside the context of his unlimited sovereign will. And we sort of know that, you know, because if you meet somebody and you know it's more than just coincidence that you met this person or you're with them. And you're like, this is like a God-ordained meeting. This is like providential. This is like a divine coincidence. And you feel this chill of the presence of the Lord, like God orchestrated this meeting right now. You've been there. God lets us make our free will decisions, but he's outside of time. He can readjust it, so he's still in control. So we get to make our free will decisions, but he's still in control of everything. You know, God, Mordecai goes to Esther and says, there's a mandate to kill the Jews. If you're silent, you'll be killed, and God will raise up somebody else to deliver the Jews. So in other words, God comes to you and says, I've got an ordained plan for your life. But if you say no, he's going to get his will done. He just might have to do it through somebody else. So God creates us as free will beings that can love him back. He creates time so he's still in control. There's a third thing. He has to hide himself. Because if he ever revealed himself to you, in all of his universe creating omnipotent power, brighter than a trillion, trillion suns, your response, if you didn't melt, would be like the Apostle John, the book of Revelation, I fell at his feet, is dead. It would be an involuntary response, in the presence of all power. So God has to hide himself behind his creation. And people say, if God's real, why doesn't he show himself? Because the moment he shows himself, your free will's gone. And the same hiding of himself that allows us to have free will necessitates that we have faith. There's the song as well with my soul, and there's a line, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight. Right now we're in faith, but then we'll have sight. So I was trying to think of a way of explaining God hiding himself. Imagine a billionaire has a son who goes to college, and he flies in on his private jet, drives up in his Lamborghini, he's got a $40,000 Rolex watch, he's got gold rings, fancy clothes. He's gonna have every girl on campus wanting to meet him. But if he lays that aside and drives up in a clunker and he's got holes in his jeans, all the uppity girls are going to ignore him. But then there's a girl that likes to study with him in the library. And they eat together in the cafeteria. And they become friends. And she takes heat from the click for hanging around this nobody guy. But she believes in him. They fall in love. They get engaged. And then one day he says, hey, I want to take you back to meet my dad. And they're like driving up to this castle mansion, and the girl's like, whoa, you didn't tell me about all this. He knows that she loves him for him, not because of all of his stuff. If Jesus would have come in his glory, every political ladder climber would say, I'm your friend. No, he's born in a manger. It says in Isaiah 53 of the Messiah, there was nothing in his countenance that would make us want to desire him. He only wants those that love him for him. So God creates us as free will beings that can love him back. He creates time so that he's still in control. He hides himself so that we have the opportunity to use our free will, but there's a last thing. He is just. and He cannot help it. He's just. In mathematical equations there are constants and variables. The constant in the equation of redemption is God is just. Was, is, and forever will be just. The variable is who takes the judgment. You are a substitute. God is just. He has to judge every sin because if He does not judge a sin By default, his silence would be giving consent to the sin. Like in a wedding ceremony, you're silent, you're giving consent. And if God gives consent to one sin, one time, he denies his just nature. He denies himself. He ungods himself. He's kicked out of heaven. And he is not gonna get kicked out of heaven, and he is not gonna deny himself, and he is gonna judge every sin. So he can never be loved back. Because if he creates free will beings that can love him back, creates time so he's still in control, hides himself so that we have the opportunity to use our free will. But if we step out of line one time, he has to judge us. Because if he doesn't judge our sin, his silence will be giving consent to the sin. If he gives consent to sin, he denies himself. And he cannot deny himself, so he can never be loved back. Until he came up with a plan. He actually had the plan before he created the first electron. And the plan was his own son would become man. And only as a man could God hang on a cross and die for our sins. Charles Wesley wrote to him, amazing love, how could it be that thou, my God, should die for me? So God is just in that he judges every sin, but he's loving that he provided the lamb to take the judgment for the sin. Abraham and Isaac going to the top of Mount Moriah. Isaac says, Father, we have the wood for the sacrifice, we have the coals for the sacrifice, but where is the sacrifice? And Abraham says, Son, God will provide Himself a sacrifice. And it has a double meaning. I'm trusting God will have the ram up in the bush, but the other is God will provide himself as the sacrifice. And that's what happened. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the only begotten son of God, in the plan of redemption that was hidden from ages. It was a hidden plan. It says, if the princes of this world had known, they never would have crucified the Lord of glory. The apostle Paul called it the mystery of the gospel, hidden from the foundations of the world. In this hidden plan, Jesus, the Son of God, became man, became the Lamb of God, and He took the wrath of a just God upon Himself in our place. You know, I've read the book of Revelation hundreds of times, still trying to figure it out, but one thing seems clear. It's God that is pouring out the vials of judgment in the book of Revelation. Lamb breaks the seal, angel throws the censer, angel blows the trumpet. Why is that? This is the final judgment. God is a just God. He has to judge every sin he missed along the way, so you can't get 10,000 years into eternity and say, God, there was a sin way back when, and you didn't judge it, and you were silent. Were you giving consent to that sin? Is there a part of you that's unjust we didn't know about? It says, the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. And the angels cry out, righteous and true are your judgments, O Lord. Nobody's going to question for the rest of eternity that God judged sin. But in that sense, Jesus had the book of Revelation judgment poured out on his head. He took the judgment for every sin that everybody would ever do upon himself on the cross, experienced it as if it was 1,000 years. That's why he was sweating drops of blood. I have a degree in accounting, so I like things that balance. You take an eternal being, Jesus, who is innocent, suffering for a finite, limited period of time, it's equal to all of us finite, limited beings who are guilty, suffering for an eternal period of time. Let me say that again. An eternal being who is innocent, suffering for a finite period of time, is equal to all of us finite beings who are guilty, suffering for an eternal period of time. Infinity times finite equals finite times infinity. An unlimited being suffering for a limited period of time is equal to all of us limited beings suffering for an unlimited period of time. Jesus suffered the equivalent of eternal damnation in all of our places. He is the only one who could have done it. And out of love for you and out of love for the Father, he became the Lamb. And he took the wrath of a just God upon himself. It says in Isaiah 53, it pleased the Lord to crush him. And then he rose from the dead to prove he was who he said he was. This way, you and I can approach this universe-creating, omnipotent, eternal, and all just God and not have to worry about being judged. Because all the judgment you deserve went on Christ, and you are approaching him through Christ. The Lamb is God's way to love you without having to judge you. It's his plan. He came up with it. So he can love you for the rest of eternity, and you can love him back for the rest of eternity, and him not have to judge you because all the judgment you deserve went on Christ. And then he fills you with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. And then the Holy Spirit reaches out through you to share the love of God to the world, to a hurting world, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death, to care about the kids, right? God is expressing his will of love through you. There's nothing more exciting in life than letting the God of the universe use you to love people. So tonight, as we realize that the God who controls time, who controls every electron, arranged for you to be here right now tonight. because he wanted you to hear of his infinite love for you. And now he provided the lamb to take all the judgment you deserve. So all you have to do is love him back, approach him through Christ and love him back. So tonight, if you've not yet put all your faith in the lamb that God provided, this is your night. So I'm gonna ask you to pray with me. So let's bow our heads. The Lord is calling. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. Just say this prayer silently under your breath. Heavenly Father, I thank you for creating the universe I thank you for creating me out of nothing. Thank you for loving me so much that you sent your only begotten son, Jesus, to die on the cross to pay for my sins. Jesus, I believe in you. Thank you for suffering and dying and taking the judgment I deserve upon yourself. Thank you, Jesus, for rising from the dead. I confess you as my Lord and Savior. Fill me with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. Holy Spirit, come in me now. Fill me up. I'm the temple of the Holy Ghost. Holy Spirit, speak through me. Love through me. Help me to stand up for righteousness. Help me to care about people enough to tell them the truth. Use me to share the love of the Father with the world and be the hands and feet of Jesus. I'm gonna turn it back over to