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Note to any new and possibly younger readers: This is directed especially at younger readers who may have been taught little about America’s Founding Fathers, or worse, that the Founding Fathers were a bunch of racist, misogynist, evil old white guys. I ask that you forbear and look at another perspective.
Consider the possibility (as I did when I was graduated from the Ohio State University decades ago) that just maybe, I did not get the well-rounded education I had been told that I was getting. As I discovered, I learned a lot of things that just aren’t so! Be intellectually honest! This means you must keep an open mind, and then do your own homework to “see if these things be so.” (And don’t disdain “homework.” Good heavens, with the www, it is all at your fingertips now in the year 2020.) Happy learning!
In my previous blog series (Chapter 2), I strove to give my readers a biblical kind of hope—which means a true and earnest expectation of a future reality—a hope that tells of deliverance. I wanted you to have hope from the Scriptures so that through the seemingly dark times which are clearly on the horizon (and especially at this very time of March 2020 with the emergence of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Note: this was initially presented as an oral lecture in July of 2010.) that we—God’s people in Goshen, as it were—that we will not only have light while all Egypt is in darkness, but that we will be delivered from the bondage which has enslaved us.
We often hear ministers talk about the bondage of sin, and slavery to sin, etc., and that is all true; but there is also a physical bondage and physical slavery. The remarkable thing is that the two are related. That is to say: the spiritual concept of sin is related to physical and economic slavery.
The Bible teaches that when the ancient nation of Israel was disobedient to God’s laws, that God applied the whipping rod to the nation in the form of what are called in Scripture “the curses of the law.” Sin results in disciplinary punishment.
We in America have been subjected to these biblical curses for many decades. They start out slowly at first and they are scarcely noticeable. But as the decades wear on and the people continue to fall away from obedience to God’s law, then the curses increase in intensity and in their forms, until finally the people lose their liberties. We are reaching that point in America.
As the Founding Fathers of America knew—because they were thus taught by the ministers in Colonial America, that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)
I am here to reiterate what they knew: that such liberty is not only applicable to our souls, but it is equally applicable to our liberties as citizens of a nation. In the first chapter, I stated that much of this series will deal with government because that is what both Mystery Babylon and the Stone Kingdom are all about.
Christians have been dumbed down in the past century or more to believe that the affairs of church and state are two distinctly different arenas and that neither should ever overlap the other. But I assert to you that such was not the original intent of the Founders.
In fact, just the opposite was the case. The whole notion of the “wall of separation between church and state” penned by Thomas Jefferson has been twisted and distorted to mean something quite apart from Jefferson’s intent. I will not detour into the details of Jefferson’s statement right now, because in this chapter we want to discuss forms of government and more.
We know from our study of the Bible that when the children of Israel were led by Moses out of Egypt, when Yahweh, God Almighty, then established Israel as a nation in the wilderness, that it was a theocracy, meaning that God Himself ruled the nation by means of His Law: the commandments, statutes, judgments, and the ceremonies, rituals and blood ordinances.
Nonetheless, there was a form of government on the human level, exercised and executed through Moses, Aaron, and the elders of Israel, which some of us today would recognize as a republic. (This is in stark contrast to a democracy—more on that later.) That it was a republican form of government—albeit, a theocratic republic—is something we will demonstrate to you later in the series, Lord willing. For now, for the sake of discussion, please accept it on that basis.
Do you think it was pure chance or coincidence that there is a clear parallel between Israel in the wilderness of Sinai, and Israel in the wilderness of North America in the 1700s? You may be familiar with the famous quote by Benjamin Franklin.
When he was leaving Independence Hall in Philadelphia after there had been many days of intense debate and they finally agreed on a Constitution and thereby formed the united* States of America, he was asked by a woman: “Mr. Franklin, what type of government have you given us?” To which he responded: “We have given you a republic, madam, …if you can keep it.”
His afterword—if you can keep it—implied that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance on the part of the citizens of the republic. Franklin’s point was supported by the statement of another Founder at another time who—and I am paraphrasing because I did not have time to look for the exact quote—but I think it was George Washington who stated that this form of government (a republic) can only succeed and survive as long as the citizens remain a people of good morals.
Furthermore, the context of that comment was that the moral qualities of the citizens was derived from the holy, Christian Bible. Period. The Founders did not intend a separation of church and state in the sense of a government separated from the Christian religion. In fact, it is clear when one studies their original intent, that just the opposite was true.
Because they actually understood history, and they saw that whenever a nation’s people became fat with prosperity and lazy concerning their responsibilities involving passing on the true religion to succeeding generations, then the decay and destruction of that nation is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow.
What they did intend concerning church and state was a one-way street; namely, that the federal government would have no say in the affairs of churches. You see, once again, they knew history. They knew that their forefathers had fled England and Europe because of religious persecution.
Because when one particular brand of Christianity attained dominance in the government—hence, the term: a “state church”—it always spelled persecution for those who disagreed with the doctrines and the alleged authority of the state church.
Consequently, the very first amendment to the new Constitution included the idea that Congress, i.e., the federal government, “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
And by the way, in speaking of the free exercise of religion, do you think that the Founders had in mind the free exercise of Islam? or Hinduism or Buddhism? Or the Aztec religion of human sacrifice, or even the religion of Wicca-witchcraft?
Or do you think that by the word religion, they meant almost exclusively the various forms of Christianity? In fact, what they intended was to prevent the Baptists from becoming the state religion of the united States.
Do you see what they were trying to accomplish with the first amendment? In other words, it was acceptable if Connecticut, for example, establish Congregationalism as the state church for the state of Connecticut, or for Pennsylvania to establish Quakerism as the state church of Pennsylvania.
That way, if a person’s conscience would not allow him to submit to the Quakers, for example, then he could move to another state where he could abide. As it happened, of course, none of the united States, to the best of my knowledge, had an enduring state church.
I know that for some, especially of my younger readers, who have not been exposed to the true history of the Founders, that such a concept seems out of line with what you have been taught—or rather, what you have been falsely taught, but I am just planting the seed for today. I hope that we will have time to rejoin that line of investigation in a future lecture.
The point we originally began to assert was that in the Israel nation of old, as it was founded by God Almighty, there was no separation of church and state. God’s law was the law of the land. Furthermore, God’s law governed the government; it governed the governors as well as the rest of the nation.
In 1789, our Founders came close to that ideal of the theocratic republic governing ancient Israel in the wilderness. They came closer than had any other government in history.
Today, the Leftist collectivists and progressives have succeeded in persuading the American people by and large, that religion (meaning primarily, of course, the Christian religion) should be entirely kept out of anything and everything that has to do with civil government. Exactly 180 degrees opposite of the original intent of the Founders!
Why or how were the collectivists able to persuade our people of such a disastrous notion? Because we have not been taught our history or our Bibles correctly for many generations, that’s the answer in a nutshell.
So, last chapter, I showed you that because America is the gathering place of all the tribes of Israel, there is a special covenant that God has with our people. It means, on the one hand, that we are going down the sewer as a nation because God is fulfilling His Word to bring the curses of His law upon us, in order to discipline us, in order to bring us to repentance.
One of those curses is the invasion of our nation by vast numbers of…? Muslims! This has happened to our people before—in Europe, where from approximately the 7th century to the 15th century, the Moslems gained a strong hold in the Iberian Peninsula and in southeastern Europe as well. They would have conquered and overrun all of Europe except for the hand of God working through the armies of Israel in a few key battles.
Now, for those who might read this blog or connect via Twitter, and who might be new to our teaching, I will just insert a brief note here that when I say, “the armies of Israel,” I am referring to the non-Jewish, Christian people of Europe whom we teach to be the descendants of the ten tribes of Israel who had been carried away into Assyrian captivity in the 8th century B.C. and who centuries later migrated into Europe.
So, a bit of European history refresher course here—one key battle which stopped the advance of Islam into Europe occurred in A.D. 732. It was fought in north central France between the towns of Poitiers and Tours. In that battle, the armies of Charles Martel decisively defeated the Moslems, and in the process set the stage for the great empire of his grandson whom we know as Charlemagne.
But it took another seven centuries before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain forced all the Muslims out of Spain—unless they converted to Catholicism, of course. (I am not saying forced conversion was right and proper, I am only saying this is history.)
Now, here we are in North America, where once again, our failure to be a nation obedient to the laws of Yahweh-God, has resulted in the curse of alien invasion. Most Muslims in America seem to be decent people. I know some personally who live in Asheville and they fit that description, but at the same time, did you know that some of the more radical Muslims here in America are calling for the establishment of their religious law, called Sharia law, over all the people of the United States?
I will not take the time to go into what all that entails—but just think one word: Taliban. And now, we can add two more: Al Qaeda and Isis. Believe me, we do not want Sharia law in the United States and Canada! But, if we do not repent; if we will not have the laws of our Father-God, then He will bring the heathen to discipline us. It is happening before our eyes. More on this topic in the next blog.
/* Yes, I deliberately used a lower case “u”, but the reason is too involved to explain here. Some readers will understand, but most will need more background in order for it to make sense. So, I will push that explanation off to another time.
