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, let me ask you, should any American who is prepared to run for president automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so, as Gore Vidal so perceptively put it decades ago?

It's very clever what Vidal said, because what he said captures the paradox of the altruistic impulse of a person to perhaps do good for his fellow Americans as a president, and the reality of the venal, megalomaniacal realities of what it takes to actually be president in today's world. If you cannot be a two-faced, power-hungry liar who knows how to deceive the American public into thinking you can give them all that they want, you'll never get the votes to become president.

But on the other hand, if you are such a populist, lying, megalomaniac who grasps after such tyrannical power, well, you do not deserve to be president in a constitutional republic. You should, on principle, be barred from even running for president. Behold the inherent paradox in running for public office, period. Any high office in America today, for that matter. A strange thing seems to happen to the men we send to Washington, D.C., doesn't it?

On the one hand, they proclaim in a righteous and heroic tone, Washington is broken and I'm going to fix it. I will fundamentally transform America, I'll remember that. Or like John McCain said, it's time to take money out of politics. Or hope and change. Or I'll shrink the federal government and return us to a constitutional republic.

So many of our patriotic liberty candidates say such things. Well, the candidate portrays himself as an outsider that has the strength of character and will to descend into the lion's den, to shut the mouths of the beasts. He goes forth like St. George to slay the dragon. Where others have failed, he will succeed in turning around the direction of this country before it's too late. He is the Mr. Smith who will go to Washington.

Remember that movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Well, today's candidates say they are that Mr. Smith. And they will go and stand up to the cynical, self-serving power brokers in it. And they will, Mr. Smith, Mr. Everyman, Mr. Average, Mr. Good-Natured Citizen, he will now finally represent the people.

And then amid cheers and fanfare, we send him off to that Babylon on the Potomac to preach repentance from tyranny and a new conversion to the pure gospel of constitutional liberty. Go get him, we say. Give him what for. Show him what a patriot looks like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then off he goes in his little dinghy of liberty, his little rowboat of freedom to go up against the aircraft carriers and battleships of the corrupt Washington establishment. And then he gets sucked into the vortex of tyranny, the whirlpool of the Washington establishment, the political black hole of reptilian space alien-type creatures who are expert at subtly sucking out the human souls of freshman congressmen and substituting a slimy incubating reptile inside of him that eventually explodes out of his chest like in the movie Alien. Have you seen that movie, by the way?

And he explodes into a fully-formed beast, or what we, back at home, call a politician. Oh, yes. We send a patriot, and he returns to us a politician. Yes, in reality, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, and he gets co-opted, bought, and beguiled. He's told in no uncertain terms by the big boys who know how to play the game that if he does play along, he'll get the money he needs to get re-elected, and he'll be able to enjoy all the perks and privileges of his office.

And they are substantial. I urge you to read Peter Schweitzer's book, Extortion, to see some of the extents of these things. But if this freshman congressman insists on being a reformer and a patriot, he'll get stonewalled and isolated, and he'll be a one-term flash in the pan, or as one wag puts it, the D.C. in Washington, D.C. means dumped candidate, if you know what I mean, unquote. While my brief characterization may be a bit overstated, it's not by much. Men of character are in the race today, and they have been in the past as well.

But the nature of what the office of president has become has self-selected men who are megalomaniacal, malignant narcissists. Yes, they are malignant narcissists. Bear with me on these terms. Megalomaniacal means a mental disorder producing delusions of grandeur, a passion for grandiose schemes, and a need to control others. Megalomaniacal.

A malignant narcissist is a syndrome characterized by an obsession with self, with paranoia, accompanied with paranoia, an absence of a conscience, a need to get even, a psychological need for power, and an inflated sense of self-importance. We see this all around us in our politicians. A malignant narcissism. Yet we in the United States have allowed, yet we have encouraged the offer of the president to draw and attract such men, even as cow pies attract flies and rotting corpses draw coyotes. The office, as it is presently constituted, self-selects for the malignant narcissist.

It is wired to perform optimally the presidency when it is occupied by the authoritarian dictatorial personality. Now, I have documented in past lectures how we have slipped from electing a simple, severely circumscribed executive in a constitutional republic, which our constitution calls for, and we have slipped from that to adulating a pagan shaman king every four years in a ritualistic orgy of election. And believe me, our elections are ritualistic. All of the primaries, and the debates, and the media coverage, it's all very ritualistic every four years.

But we have this ritualistic orgy of emotion and passion and angst that we call elections. Now, Mr. Dr. Frazier has meticulously documented how our pagan tribal ancestors chose their shaman kings in the misty past in his famous book, The Golden Bough. And it is eerie how little human nature changes over the millennia in rejecting our Christian heritage and the God of the Bible. We have swiftly regressed to our pagan roots, our primitive default setting of man worship and God-seeking and magical thinking. Behold, America, your destiny of dictatorship if we keep proceeding down this road.

And I have also documented for you in lectures past how the office of president has morphed into its present state in a giant proportion to the growth and maturation of the once-constitutional republic we used to be into the great nation it once was and now morphed into the beast of revelation it now is.

While many megalomaniacal presidents nurtured the beast of government, and I give you the examples of Abraham Lincoln, no favorite president of mine, Teddy Roosevelt during the Industrial Revolution, and of course Woodrow Wilson during World War I, but it was FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who put the tyranny of the federal government into warp drive. His nickname? His nickname through his presidency was King Franklin. Very apt.

Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the power of the presidency has metastasized into an ugly cancer, the host body politic of the United States growing ever more delicious to the predator beast with the lever of oblivion, the doomsday box, what presidential aides have come to call affectionately the nuclear football. It contains the nuclear codes for launching an attack with nuclear weapons. Nothing goads the tyrant like the power of life and death over his subjects. What role does the president play in all of this? Oh, why do malignant narcissists lust after this larger-than-life office?

Oh, dear listener, because so much power and influence has been concentrated in this one office that he can affect every area of American life. The president has become, for the pagan tribal American, a shaman priest-king, able to magically bring prosperity to the tribe by creating jobs and stimulating the economy, by controlling the weather, as the pagan shaman kings used to claim to do, that is, influencing climate change like Obama says he can. They were able to heal the sick and cure the deaf, the dumb and the blind, even as Obama promises to do in Obamacare.

Even the tribal pagan priest-kings promised to bring peace to the planet by his persuasive charm and personality. And note with me the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Obama before he had even done a thing. This sweeping, godlike stature is irresistible to the megalomaniacal, malignant narcissist. He must grasp after it. He will sacrifice everything for it, if he must, family, marriage, character, integrity, even life itself.

But, I submit to you, God has built into the clamoring for power a price. And that is the price of the aspirant's soul. His humanity is forfeit. And the Bible confirms this at every juncture where power is grasped after for its own sake. For example, Nebuchadnezzar thought himself godlike when he exclaimed, Is this not great Babylon I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?

And the Bible says that immediately he was driven away to live in the fields like a beast for seven years. He lost his soul, his humanity, in aspiring to power. Herod, when he appeared before the people to give a speech, received the adulation of the crowds when they shouted, This is the voice of a god, not of a man. And the Bible says that immediately because he did not give praise to God, he was struck down and eaten by worms and died. He as well lost his humanity, his soul, in his grasp after power.

The Bible is filled with accounts of men who aspired to grasp after and die in body and soul, attaining and retaining power. No one better personifies this than King Saul. King Saul, in the Old Testament, began auspiciously as Israel's first king, a righteous man, righteously chosen. But somewhere along the way, he died inside. And all that mattered to him was gaining and retaining power.

When Saul determined to carry out his will rather than God's will at Gilgal, for example, by sacrificing some of the animals and plunder to God, part of which they would enjoy in a meal, by the way, well, then God punished such political hubris. The Bible says in 1 Samuel, does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, Samuel said, he has rejected you, unquote, from the book of 1 Samuel. And from here, Saul would begin his descent into literal idolatry and divination, worshiping his throne and his crown and consulting with witches, specifically the witch at Endor. And for these, he would sacrifice everything and be consumed by his lust for power.

Those who seek wealth and power follow this same pattern, the Saul syndrome, I call it, where well-intentioned people are overcome by their power, privilege, and position, and they come to see themselves not as God's servant of civil authority for the people, but rather they come to see themselves as the God of civil authority over a servant people. Ye shall become as gods. The serpent hissed into Eve's ear. And so he has been whispering into men's ears ever since. Even our Lord in the temptation of Christ.

Satan said, I will give you all the authority and splendor of the kingdoms of the world, for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours, unquote, Satan's temptation of Christ. Now our savior resisted this temptation, but most men do not. Saul succumbed to this temptation, as have most all of our presidents, including the present occupant. Saul is meant to be exhibit A in this metaphor.

While the ascendancy of his young protege with that ascendancy, the shepherd boy turned warrior, David, Saul's jealousy was aroused. The people were saying of David, Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands. Ooh, how that irked Saul. Saul's fear is telling. He said, what more can he get but the kingdom?

Uh-oh. Here was Saul's nerve. His precious, if you will. You remember from the Lord of the Rings. Gollum would call the ring of power his precious, his precious.

That is, his first love. And power proved his undoing for Saul. From here on in, Saul is visited regularly by demons who afflict his soul. And ironically, the only therapy that could soothe Saul and drive away the demons was David and his music. Behold, O listener, a regular feature of power, its alliance and association with the demonic, the Luciferian, the satanic.

King Saul is emblematic of this state of affairs. It is Lucifer who dangles the kingdoms of this world before the eyes of men. And it is Lucifer who afflicts them with the fears, freight, and fright, and failures of power. And it is Lucifer who demands the awful price for that power, a man's soul. If you worship me, it will all be yours, he hisses into the ear of the politician.

Saul is a biblical example, a prototype of what we see in Washington, D.C. Make no mistake, dear listener, Lucifer is alive and well in the new capital of his kingdom, Washington, D.C. D.C. could well stand for Devil's City. These people are no longer like us. They are different inside. Behind closed doors, more souls than you may think have it all precisely because they do worship me. That is the angel of light, the light bearer, the prince of the power of the air, Lucifer.

Power is the precious for many there. The hollow men and women you see there have sold their souls to Lucifer and are just biding their time in the lap of luxury and power until death and the judgment day. But that day of judgment will come, dear listener. Make no mistake about it. That day will come.

God's vengeance does not sleep nor does his judgment slumber, as the Bible says. As with all men of power, men characterized by malignant narcissism, they grasp onto power but they cannot hold it. It's like jello. The more it's squeezed, the more it slips from one's grasp. They lash out at real and perceived enemies they cannot defeat.

Herod the Great killed so many of his family, for example, in paranoia for his throne that it was said as a proverb of Herod. It is safer to be an enemy of Herod than a loved one. And then they end up dying as hollow souls that cannot be satisfied, corrupted by their own power and greed. So it is with Saul. Saul tried to kill the best man in his kingdom, David.

David was Saul's best general, winning all of Israel's battles against the Philistines. David was Saul's best counselor, soothing the soul of the savage beast with his music when the demons beset him. David was even Saul's son-in-law, having married his daughter, Mishal. Even so, Saul hated and envied David and sought on numerous occasions to have him killed. Saul's end, then, was as he deserved.

Saul had so sunk to depravity that no longer able to consult God because of his rebellion, Saul finally resorted to witches, in particular, the witch of Endor, demonic paganism, to discover the omens of success for an upcoming battle. By the end, Saul is completely despondent, dejected, and deluded. He ends up dying the death of a pagan idolator in that battle. Saul's head is severed as a trophy for the Philistines. His armor is placed on the altars of the Philistine goddess Ashtoreth, and Saul's body is nailed to the walls of the pagan temple city Beth-shan.

Oh, behold, dear listener, behold, pursuers of power, the end of your ambitions. God is not mocked. His vengeance does not sleep, nor does his judgment slumber. Sell your soul for earthly power, and worship Lucifer to get it, and you will die the death of Saul, the death of Stalin, who died in paranoia and regret, the death of Mao, who died in fear and constant reprisals to the very day of his death he was executing perceived and real enemies, or the death of Hitler, committing suicide as the Allies stormed his bunker, or the death of Nero, who committed suicide by cutting his own throat in flight from his own soldiers.

Oh, behold, the death of those who sacrifice all for power. The ring of power destroys those who possess it. This is one of the themes of J.R.R. Tolkien's great magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings. The universal power of evil, summarized in Lucifer's Temptation of Christ, if you worship me, all of the authority and splendor of the kingdoms of the world will be yours, is given in the metaphor of the rings of power in J.R.R.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Read this series, dear listener. Ten of these rings have been forged in the fires of Mount Doom, nine of which are in possession of the ringwraiths of Sauron, the personification of Lucifer. These ringwraiths were once men but are now hollow, swift, screeching demons of Sauron, having sold their souls for temporary power in the kingdom of the Dark Lord. But the one ring of power that unites and perfects Sauron's complete domination and dominion of Middle-earth, this one ring that binds them, the one ring to rule them all is lost temporarily to Sauron.

This is the dual motive that impels the action of the Lord of the Rings, the dual motive, number one, Sauron's quest to regain the ring of power and then Middle-earth's quest to destroy the ring of power before Sauron regains it and conquers completely. But in the meantime, the one ring of power, lusted after, fought over, possessed by many in the story, ends up destroying all those who possess it. It is only the simple heart of Frodo that remains uncorrupted by it, though he does pay a terrible price nevertheless for his mission to destroy that ring in the fires of Mount Doom.

Oh, what a perfect and exciting metaphor for power in the beast of Revelation, Washington, D.C. How many in the bowels of Washington, D.C. are ring-wraiths of Sauron, if you will, hollow men intoxicated with power, wealth, and influence, but who use it for evil and selfish ends. Power and wealth, dear listener, are being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer men, the superclass, as some call them, or the plutocrats, as others call them.

These are titles of two books that you must read of the same names, one called superclass, the other called plutocrats, but wealth is being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer men, and Washington, D.C. is one of those portals of hell, one of those gates of the underworld, Washington, D.C., where that wealth and power of the people of the United States is being funneled like a powerful black hole into the hands of fewer and fewer men, ring-wraiths, who serve Sauron and end up destroying Middle Earth. Even the good men of our country end up being corrupted by power.

They go, like Mr. Smith, to Washington with good hearts and good intentions, perhaps, but they end up like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, a once innocent hobbit who found the ring, and possessed it for decades, but is now corrupted, debauched, and depraved by too long possession of the ring of power, a thing that had become his precious, the first thing in his life, replacing God, an evil that has reduced him to a weak, pathetic creature. This is the state of the establishment Republicans and the establishment Democrats in Washington, D.C. today. They are weak, pathetic creatures.

This is why they squeal like stuck pigs when anti-establishment candidates threaten to kick over the pig trough, when outsiders and patriots threaten to throw the ring of power into the fires of Mount Doom and return sovereignty to the people. How should we behave towards power then, dear listener? If not, like King Saul, how should we behave? Once more, the Bible provides a parallel counterpoint to Saul, and that is David. If our public servants lived power like David did, we would indeed return quickly to a constitutional republic.

Note with me, David's attitude toward power. Five things. Number one, David put God first. We know this from the account of Samuel and Israel's songbook to the Psalms, many of which David composed. David put God first.

For example, in Psalm 73, he says, Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Unquote. David put God first.

In David's heart, there was no room for the God of power or for any other precious but the living God. From president to dog catcher, dear listener, I submit to you, we must elect men and women who put God first in their lives. Such men cannot be bought, sold, corrupted, or compromised. Secondly, note with me as well, David recognized God as king, not himself. Unlike Saul, and all godless tyrants, David understood to his toenails that God was sovereign and that he, King David, ruled Israel as God's vice-regent, a man who served at God's discretion, not by self-appointment.

David says in Psalm 103, The Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules over all. Unquote. All of our leaders must understand this crucial truth. God is king, not himself. Thirdly, David let God open doors to power.

He did not smash down doors of power himself. Oh, so important to keep in mind. David let God open doors to power. David did not smash down doors of power himself. And this is in stark contrast to the tyrants of the earth.

David did not seize the throne of Israel for himself in his own timing. Oh, no. On multiple occasions, he could have killed Saul and seized the kingdom and the people would have applauded it. But David refused to slay the Lord's anointed, as he said, that is the man God had placed in power. Only after Saul had become a party to his own demise and other forces had removed Saul did David find himself presented with that open door to power.

All of our leaders must have the wisdom and discretion and timing to discern when God is opening doors of power to them or whether they are elbowing their way through those doors in arrogance and ambition. Fourthly, when God did open a door to power, David strode through boldly. Keep this in mind as well. This cause for wisdom went to do one and went to do the other. When God did open a door to power, David did stride through that door boldly.

And we know from the historical prophets that David was no wilting lily. He was no court dandy, was he? He was a bold man of war who could take charge. And when the elders of Israel came to him to anoint him king after Saul's death, David received that anointing and promptly united Israel under his leadership with both persuasion and force. Our own American history serves us many examples of men like this with such leadership.

I would submit to you men like, oh, George Washington or Dwight D. Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan are but a few men who were bold when they knew that they had been chosen. And then lastly, fifthly, David ruled wisely seeking God's counsel. For the most part, until his later life, David was a godly ruler seeking counsel from godly men and from God's word and then in earnest prayer as well. For example, from Psalm 25, David pleads for wisdom. He says, Show me your ways, O Lord.

Teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me. Oh, David appealed to God for these things as he ruled Israel. David did not forget God once he had achieved the throne, but rather, David ruled in the light of God's word and God's ways. Government from top to bottom needs to eschew the godless pagan world system now being established and they need to return to God's word and ways under which so many of our early colonies and our early states did under their particular constitutions and then under our federal constitution once it had been drafted and passed.

Now we need men and women who know these things and practice them, dear listener. Now we have contrasted two models for office in these two men, Saul and David. The choice is ours as Americans, dear listener, whether we will elect more and more Saul's as we seem to be doing for the last few generations of leadership or whether we will begin anew to elect men of the caliber of David to office. Oh, I invite you, dear listener, I'll be doing this all through this election season.

Pray with me for the reformation of the American character and then once that is done, once we return to Christ in a wide-ranging national reformation of character in believing on Christ and embracing him as our only Savior and God, then we will see a consequent reformation of our constitutional republic as well. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sundays. I urge you to join us. Some of you have been hesitating to cross our threshold.

We need your support. Now is the time to come and visit us. Come see us. Come find out who we are and worship with us. And we meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

For more information, you can call us at 523-0196. That's 523-0196. We'll be right back to you next time. a little bit more. at the end of the day of the day. We'll be right back to you next time.