Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, I'd like to contrast what America needs, that is Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism with what she has, and she has presently secularism, statism, and socialism. As you might discern from my simple attempt at alliteration, I have set up a comparison and contrast in the three great categories in which our human life takes place.

That is, our spiritual lives, where we see secularism has replaced Christianity, our political lives, where statism has replaced the Constitution, and our economic system, where socialism has replaced capitalism. So, for ease of remembrance, I have three C's compared with three S's, Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism, the three C's, with secularism, statism, and socialism, the three S's. Now, let me make my case with these comparisons and contrasts.

First of all, in that first category, the realm of the Spirit, which I would contend is the most important, the area of our spiritual lives, number one, Christ must replace secularism in the United States of America. If we are ever to return to our former days of glory, to where God would have us, Christ must replace secularism in the United States of America. In reflecting upon our founding, the old Massachusetts senator from the 19th century, Daniel Webster, noted, and it's as true today as it was then, he said, Let us not forget the religious character of our origin.

Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of our society and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary, unquote. And how spot on Webster was. I recommend a book to you, dear listener.

It is called The Light and the Glory, The Light and the Glory, and its subtitle is Did God Have a Plan for America? Its authors are Peter Marshall and David Manuel. The publisher is Ravel, and it's an excellent introduction to our exploration, settlement, and founding as the United States of America. And it brings home to us what we are asserting here, that Christ must replace secularism in the United States of America. We were founded as a Christian republic, I would assert as well.

Some of the chapter titles from this book, The Light and the Glory, are, for example, To the Promised Land. That chapter, of course, is about the pilgrims, how they planned and provisioned and pilgrimaged to the new world that was just on the horizon at the time. Another chapter, God, our maker, doth provide. And that talks about the survival of the pilgrims once they were here. And they would say, God, our maker, doth provide.

Another chapter would be A City Upon a Hill. And that chapter is about the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Winthrop was their governor. He first preached a sermon coining the term, Ye Shall Be As a City Set Upon a Hill, taken from the Gospels, of course, and used by presidents ever since, most notably Ronald Reagan, who said that America was still a city set upon a hill. Another chapter would be A Sunburst of Light, which described the First Great Awakening, which preceded the American Revolution.

And then, of course, there's a chapter on the American Revolution which said, No King But Jesus. There's an entire chapter of this book called No King But Jesus. And, of course, they asserted that King George III of England was no king over them, that they were indeed free and independent people. So, just know America, not only from this book, but from all of American history, you have been robbed of your history. Our collective memory has been effectively erased of its Christian heritage.

We need Christ instead of secularism in America. What school system, pray tell, what school system these days teaches government and history and civics anymore as a requirement? There is a technique in propaganda called historical blackout. This technique was cultivated and developed by Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister in Nazi Germany, historical blackout, whereby population, schools, and media are fed a history deliberately altered, erased, or covered up in order to teach the history desired by the government rather than that which actually transpired.

A perfect example of this is the otherwise excellent Civil War series produced and directed by Ken Burns. I like this series on the Civil War, but what bothers me about it is that it utterly ignores the role that Christianity played in the lives of that generation, the Civil War generation, the role that Christianity played in both justifying and condemning slavery, for example, Christianity, and paradoxically, both sides, North and South, experienced great religious revivals of deep conviction during the fighting of the Civil War, and none of this is explored by Burns as if the Civil War generation was as secular as him, Ken Burns.

So, we might extend this analysis to all of our present generation. It is a secular generation at best. Now, the Oxford English Dictionary defines secular as, and I quote, concerned with the affairs of this world, not spiritual or sacred, not concerned with religion or religious belief. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of secular. And so successful has my generation, the baby boomers, excuse me, so successful have the baby boomers been in infiltrating and co-opting our institutions over the last 30 to 40 years that Americans raised in public schools have little or no understanding of our Christian background and heritage.

For example, a study by McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum notes that 22% of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, while just one in a thousand people could name all five First Amendment freedoms. They also found that 14% of us think we declared our independence from, from whom? From France, they think, instead of England, of course. 15% of us in this survey did not know that the Declaration of Independence was adopted on, on when? July 4, 1776.

So thorough has the brainwashing been that when you tell a millennial, for example, Thomas Jefferson composed the eloquent Declaration of Independence, what is the response you get very often? And that is, well, Jefferson was a racist because he owns slaves. And of course, for progressives, this is all the answer that is needed, racist. The term does not need to be defined anymore or explained or put into context. All that needs to be done is speak, racist, as a label affixed to your opponent.

Thus, anyone using it against the founding father, for example, has just diminished any reason to go any farther in studying the man. He was a racist, as far as they're concerned, and thus unworthy of the superior public school educated, dope smoking, texting, ignorant, illiterate millennial who cannot distinguish his butt from a bread roll. So, this brainwashing, historical blackout, if you will, has extended as far as the Christian heritage of the United States of America. And when I say the United States of America is secular, I mean three things by it. Number one, to be secular in the United States is to be anti-Christian.

The United States of America is becoming increasingly anti-Christian. Tolerance is for all but the Christian. We must tolerate, for example, the beating of Muslim women by their husbands as a form of discipline, or Muslim female circumcision of the clitoris to reduce the pleasure factor of sex for them, or the Muslim restriction of driving privileges in many countries as a form of religious observance.

But if a Christian refuses to adorn a gay wedding with flowers, or puts a Christmas creche on the lawn of City Hall, or says a prayer at a public school graduation, oh, then he has transgressed the rule of separation of church and state, and he must be punished. True Christians are not surprised by this. Jesus himself said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, Jesus said, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you, unquote, the words of Jesus to his disciples and to us. One of the marks of an anti-Christian system is its treatment of the church. Our government, society, and culture becomes increasingly hostile to the church and its gospel, and that is because it is demonic in nature. Oh, is this radical?

Oh, no, it is not, is it? Well, when I also say that our government and our culture and society is secular, I also mean that secular does not mean neutral. Secular does not mean neutral. There are two are not equated. The United States of America worships another god altogether.

So, when I use the word secondary to describe our leaders and culture and society, I do not mean that they are dispassionate and neutral towards Christianity and Christ. No, no, no, no. It is a given in the lives of men and their own nations that all men worship. Man is wired originally to first love, honor, and worship the God of the Bible who made him. But in lieu of doing that, and there are many in lieu of doing that, he will find someone or something to worship in his stead because that is what we do as humans.

If man does not worship the God of the Bible through Christ, he will find another God to worship, perhaps the demonic God of Islam, that is Allah, or perhaps the eight million gods of Hinduism, over eight million of them, or the Buddha, perhaps, as examples of idolatry throughout the world. Even so-called secular America worships, make no mistake about this, worship. If you define worship and it is simply that which we serve and reverence, if that's the definition of worship, how many do you know, for example, that serve and reverence money, or serve and reverence their sexual urges, or serve and reverence power, especially power over others?

Well, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, virtually defines these impulses to serve and reverence the flesh as idolatry. Even the so-called atheist, I submit, cannot find terms to express himself without first presupposing the God of the Bible, and then paradoxically using the very nomenclature of Christianity to try and deny this God. Oh, the irony. Well, as I have described earlier in other places, nations cannot be neutral either. Nations cannot be neutral, and neither can the United States of America.

We all live lives simultaneously in the realm of the physical and the spiritual. We live lives like this as individuals and collectively as nations too. Cumulatively, every people cede authority and devotion to a being in the realm of the Spirit, both as an instinct to worship, as I mentioned previously, and also as a source of law and culture. If it is not God, it will be another, and there is no neutrality. Dear listener, there is no neutrality in any of this.

Jesus himself said, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Unquote. There is no neutrality in the realm of the Spirit, dear listener. Number three, we must also remember that secular is designed to deceive and distract the general public. Progressives use this term secular to deceive and distract the general public.

So, if the things I just noted for you are true, and they are, then this is true as well. Christians' defenses go down when they hear, oh, the government is neutral towards all religions. Oh, yeah? We have already observed how false this is. Americans have been lulled into a false sense of security in their faith by thinking that a secular state in which there is a separation of church and state is going to be fair to them.

Oh, what a mistake we first make, right? We see how great advances the evil one has made in America through this ruse over the last number of generations. Abortion, broken homes, and marriages, the breakdown of traditional marriage, and wars, violence, poverty, ignorance, all of these and more, spell the death of Christian culture and influence. All of this is under the guise of a benevolent, neutral government who only wants to practice tolerance, tolerance, diversity, and equality.

And so, we see how Christ is at war with secularism in America, at war with secularism in America, a secularism that is really idolatry in a pleasant, neutral-looking sheepskin. Without him, that is, without the living, risen Christ of the Bible, there will be no more America. We need Christ rather than secularism for America. Daniel Webster also observed, and I quote him again, if the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end, unquote. Oh, dear listener, we're already insensitive to Christ.

We are already insensitive to that feeling for the gospel. We need Christ, not secularism in America. If the United States of America requires the three C's for its restoration and its reformation, and that is Christ, constitution, and capitalism, in defeat of the three S's that presently obtain, those three S's, of course, are secularism, statism, and socialism, well, then this first thing is the chief thing, and that is Christ, the desire of the nations, the desire of this nation. We have just compared and contrasted Christ with secularism. Let's now do this with our second set, and that is the constitution with statism.

We must assert, indeed, strongly that the constitution must replace statism as our political system. In the sphere of politics, in the realm of the political, the constitution must rule us rather than statism. Can anyone deny, for example, that we have passed from a constitutional republic to a statist tyranny? Now, the Oxford English Dictionary defines statism succinctly. It defines it as centralized government, administration, and control of social and economic affairs.

Statism is centralized government, administration, and control of social and economic affairs. That's a pretty good, succinct definition of what statism is. And now Americans have seen this happen over the past few generations and put into warp drive by our Borg bot, President Obama, and Americans are either apathetic or they seem to like it. It's exasperating, is it not? Our centralized federal government, a beast warned against by our founding fathers, our founding fathers, Washington, one of them, Washington, said, government is not reason.

It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it, that is government, be left to irresponsible men, unquote. So our centralized federal government today, however, does precisely these things.

It administers and controls our social affairs, for example. That is from the line in the maternity ward where you were cradled until you could be registered to the immunization line as a child to the cafeteria line in school to the unemployment line as an out-of-work adult, to the welfare line as a needy indigent, to the social security line as a senior citizen, to the line at the Bureau of Records where your kids must stand in line to get a death certificate, to file insurance claims. Oh, the beast of government administers and controls your social affairs, dear listener. They also control your economic interests.

Every baby born into American society ends up beginning his existence, for example, owing over $56,000 as his or her share of the national debt. And from there, things only get worse. Taxes, inflation, government borrowing only rob him of his wealth that he earns with his labor. And when you start a business, remember when President Obama said during the campaign, you didn't build that, somebody else did, right? Or when you buy land or create a product or provide a service, the federal government is there to control it, tax it, and punish it beyond all reason.

So, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, statism is centralized government controlling your economic affairs, too. This is statism, pure and simple. How do you like it, dear listener? You will never flourish or prosper as long as statism continues to grow. Do you even know what it was like to live under a constitution rather than a dictatorial state, as we now know?

Over the generations, Americans have become like trained SEALs, groomed to arf, arf for a fish from the government. And when they get it, they clap and they ask for more. And in the meantime, your trainer, the federal government, is robbing you of every quarter from every quarter of the globe. That ringwraith Nazgul of a president of ours is deliberately usurping the legislative functions of Congress, is he not, overstepping the separation of powers established by our Constitution.

Our Constitution says in Article 1, Section 1, all legislative powers herein, granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Well, to the pigs in the animal farm, animal farm, of course, the fictional allegory written by George Orwell of Soviet tyranny. He wrote animal farm as an allegory of Soviet tyranny. And to the pigs in the animal farm of this administration, the Constitution is just the writing on the barn wall in animal farm. They used the barn wall during the Revolution to write in big, bold letters, the seven commandments of animalism.

And those seven commandments of animalism were empty phrases used by the pigs to cow and to deceive the animals of animal farm. And so the words of our Constitution are used by this present administration to deceive the people into thinking they live in a constitutional republic. But really, they're living in a status tyranny. And it's used to cow the farm into submission and reassure us that the pigs are of true conviction in terms of their principles. But in reality, like the fat swine of animal farm, they ended up doing what they wanted, pigs being a little more equal than others in the end.

So whether arbitrarily changing Obamacare law or making up immigration law or Second Amendment ammunition bans or signing treaties with Iran circumventing Congress, he and his administration, the president, have cynically decided to see just how much power they can exercise before Congress will act. And like an abused wife bitch slapped into submission, Congress just takes it and asks for more. I'm sure that behind closed doors in the White House, they laugh at John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and all of Congress and the American people for what they are able to do.

And many in Congress, and I would say Obama's fellow progressive patsies in particular, simply fall in line, hand over their sacred trust in facilitating the executive grab for power. There is no difference now in our Congress, between our Congress and the German Reichstag under Hitler or the Supreme Soviet under Stalin. All of them were cowed puppet lackeys who rolled over to the will of the Fuhrer and the Benevolent Father and rubber stamped whatever was decided by the executive in a grand charade of Republican government, not real Republican government.

Most of these that do this now in America, and I would include here Obama and Biden and Reid and Pelosi and Boehner and McConnell and many more, they should be impeached. And tried for violating their oath of office. Instead of protecting and defending the Constitution, they have consciously, cynically perverted and defamed the Constitution. Congress refusing to wrest the bottle of power from an executive branch drunk with it. The ultimate responsibility for statism in America, and I would contrast this with the Constitution, of course, lies with the American people.

There's no excuse for us, dear listener. There's no excuse for this state of affairs in our state of tyranny. We get the government that we deserve. The Constitution for us is like a holy book that no one opens and reads. That holy book is revered and put into a place of reverence on a golden pedestal.

It's printed in indelible ink with gilded pages and ornate jeweled covers. But no one knows what's inside. Israel did this precise thing with the Bible in her decadent days before her destruction. For Israel in those days, the Bible held a revered position in the temple, but it gathered dust because no one bothered to open it, read it, and do what was inside. Dear people of America, our founding fathers bequeathed a people's document in which power devolved to us, to a religious-informed electorate.

It begins, it begins, for crying out loud, we the people of the United States. And Obama has morphed our preamble into me, the person of the United States. And we seem to like it just fine, most of us anyway. And it is time then to return to the three C's that I've been outlining for you. That's Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism, and stark distinction between secularism, statism, and socialism.

So that brings me then to number three. Capitalism, not socialism, should determine our economy. Oh, someone once observed capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth, while socialism is the equal distribution of poverty. How true it is. And a case can be made for the biblical basis for capitalism, as I have done elsewhere.

But as long as we populate this earth on this side of heaven, there will be a variety of gifts and rewards according to our individual talents. And capitalism merely recognizes this. And when government is doing its job of administering true justice, then government creates equal opportunity, not equal outcomes, but equal opportunity to all men to exercise those gifts and talents in a free market and then enjoy the fruits of that labor as they see fit. Principles like the ownership of private property is derived directly from the Bible, where in the Old Testament, for example, property belonged to families, not to the state.

So sacred was this principle of property that every 49 years in the year of Jubilee, all property returned to its original family boundaries, regardless of how it had been bought and sold during their interim. We saw and we see all around her. Israel saw nations like Egypt and Babylon, where the land was by definition a possession of the godlike pharaohs in Egypt and the kings in Babylon, but not so in tiny Israel. Well, no, in Israel, the promise was, and I read now from Micah chapter four, they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree. No one shall make them afraid for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken, unquote.

Dear listener, capitalism must replace socialism in the United States of America if indeed we are going to survive, we must return to the Constitution, not statism, as is presently the case. We must return to capitalism, not socialism, as is presently the case, if indeed we are going to survive and prosper as the United States of America. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196.