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, history and the Bible clearly demonstrate that spiritual change always precedes genuine political and economic change, especially in the United States of America. This is my chief criticism of the modern Tea Party patriot movement in the United States, and it's also the 800-pound political gorilla in the room, if I can borrow a metaphor, the 800-pound political gorilla in the room in this presidential election cycle.

There is a complete and arid void of substance on this factor for a return to the United States' founding values. Now, especially during this election season, there's a torrent of talk about the Constitution, but little consideration of what constitutes the character of the people who bring that Constitution to life. George Washington says, to the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished character of Christian, unquote.

Part of the problem we have today is that our constitutional offices are taken by people who have no moral scruples about violating their constitutional oath of office, many of them. They have no character, in other words. Listen to this. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and rule to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, unquote. Well, what kind of cynical man swears this and then goes out and selectively enforces the border laws enacted by Congress?

In fact, does all he can to do just the opposite of the intent of those laws? What kind of lawless president appoints cabinet officers without the advice and consent of Congress? What kind of president passively ignores the laws on the books already concerning drugs or the Defense of Marriage Act? What kind of moral character swears this oath and then plunges us into a war in the Middle East without obtaining a declaration of war from Congress?

What kind of president swears this oath of office and then blatantly lies about legislation before Congress, and I think of the Affordable Health Care Act, that removes the ability to keep one's doctor, to obtain health coverage more cost-effectively, and to do so affordably? The kind of man who does these things is an immoral and characterless man. No Constitution on paper is able to check a tyrant in the flesh. That requires a check and balance is required of constitutional men with character in the other two branches to stop admonish and impeach the executive who violates his oath of office.

We have obviously had no such men in those two branches recently, have we? There was also a torrent of talk about a return to capitalism as our founding economic system. That's one of candidate Trump's favorite themes, and I'm in hearty agreement with this. As men like John Locke and Adam Smith taught us, the fruit of a man's labor is his property, and it is sacred. No other man has the moral right to take another man's property through taxes or inflation or creating debt without his consent.

The notion that property is sacred implies that God has sanctioned private property and the righteous way in which it is obtained. Yet no one thinks through the moral issues of capital and its use today. This is part of what we need in the reformation of America is the understanding of the sacredness of property. Not only is it immoral to tax away the fruit of a man's labor, but it is immoral to undervalue that labor by suppressing wages as happened during the Gilded Age, for example, when the captains of industry conspired together to fix wages while prices of the goods produced continue to rise.

Not only is it immoral to devalue another man's labor through inflating his currency, as is happening wildly now in our own nation, monetizing our debt, while it is also immoral to artificially keep prices higher than wages such that the worker is chronically in debt. And that happened in the so-called company towns, like the coal mining towns of Kentucky and West Virginia, where the rents and prices were deliberately calculated to make the miner more in debt at the end of the year than when he began.

And I tell you, not only is it immoral to borrow limitlessly in the name of those you govern, but it is immoral to loan it to borrowers whom you know can never pay back these loans that you offer. And they're also backed by the taxpayers. Happened in the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac collapse in 2008. On and on we could go. For example, many in the Tea Party movement are familiar with Adam Smith.

You must be, if you're going to be a good patriot, a good conservative, you must be at least passingly familiar with Adam Smith and his grand magisterial work, The Wealth of Nations, that laid the groundwork for the conscious practice of capitalism. Yet sadly, very few are also familiar with his equally profound work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Yes, Adam Smith also wrote the book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he put forth his understanding of precisely how men behave in society one with another.

Despite the greater success of Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith always considered his other magnum opus, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, his more important work. He begins that work by saying, How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortunes of others and render happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Unquote. This natural capacity for compassion, which Smith articulates, or sympathy as Smith calls it, is God-given, and it's wired into man's nature.

And this he accomplishes and expresses in the normal course of his everyday life. But the first and primary directive for the individual, in order that he might not have to be the object of some other man's compassion, is the care of himself. And Smith is very particular about this. I quote, once again, from The Moral Sentiments of the Universe, Smith says, The administration of the great system of the universe, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man.

To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers and to the narrowness of his comprehension. That is, the care of his own happiness and that of his family, his friends, his country. Unquote. Oh, note the crucial premise that Adam Smith establishes in his theory of moral sentiments. The administration of the great system of the universe, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man.

Are you listening to this, you so-called compassionate progressives? How unlike the modern progressive was Adam Smith? For him, for Smith, it, or I'm sorry, for the progressive, it is the business of man to ensure the care and universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings. And thus we have the bloated, burgeoning federal government.

But Smith realized, as should every modern Tea Party advocate and every presidential candidate should realize that if man acted his moral part in the realm given him, that is, the care of his own happiness and that of his family, friends, and country, then the great God of Providence would so weave and intertwine those destinies that a greater sense of the universal happiness of all men would begin to take place. The modern Tea Party movement and patriot movement has forgotten this, and no presidential candidate has a policy position on it. Did you hear any question during the debates about self-reliance as a moral principle?

At best, it has been relegated to a kind of embarrassing, oh, well, this too, status. Prayers are offered at rallies, speakers allude to God here and there, and a vigorous defense is given for him in the public square, for Ten Commandments at the courthouse, or in God we trust on our currency, prayer in the public schools, all of this. But the absolute necessity of Christ at the very core of the movement is absent.

I am here to draw a clear, dark line to the contrary, and I would establish with you, without the Christ of the Bible, at the center of your passion and concern, all of your efforts to bring the United States of America back to the Constitution or capitalism will fail. Without the Christ of the Bible, at the center of your passion and concern, all of your efforts to bring the United States back to the Constitution or capitalism will fail. You will rally for limited government, but see it cynically metastasize even larger.

You will clearly articulate constitutional principles for your kids and all who hear you, but see tyranny continue to grow unchecked. You will argue vigorously for individual self-reliance, but you will see government dependence and passivity go on and on. You will establish beyond doubt that a people should not spend more than it has, borrow more than it can repay, and print more money than it can back with true wealth, but you will nevertheless see your nation tumble over a financial cliff with its profligacy, unless there is indeed genuine spiritual reformation.

This is precisely because neither the Constitution nor capitalism is capable without the spiritual and moral integrity of the Christian faith. When I say these things, I hear howls of protests from atheists and agnostics and practitioners of other religions, but I'm not alone in asserting this very strongly. Thomas Jefferson said this, the reason that Christianity is the best friend of the government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart. Oh, that is so true. So valuable to understand today.

Jefferson said this. It's a crucial insight on his part. I lecture elsewhere that no other religion on the face of the earth changes, transforms, and gives birth from heaven above, as does biblical Christianity. Jesus himself observes, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your strength and your neighbor as yourself. The biblical gospel of Jesus brings to life the human soul as no other religion can.

It first saves the soul for eternity and secondly makes one capable of behaving in a true moral and ethical fashion here on earth. Traits that our founders recognized were requisite for a free people. Even the so-called morality of the atheist, I would submit to you, is a see-me-too morality that's entirely derivative of Christianity. Even the atheist faith is derived of biblical faith. True liberty, dear listener, true liberty gives space for a man to act according to his nature.

True liberty gives space for a man to act according to his nature. And conversely, those choices made in liberty will reveal his true nature. If that nature is fallen and corrupt and dead to God, then that liberty will give him space to see what we see today. A nation laden with debt and lies and tyranny. A people dependent, lazy and debauched.

A country teetering on the brink of extinction. True liberty gives space for a man to act according to his nature. And if that nature is reborn in Christ and it's virtuous and alive to God, then that liberty will give him space to see what we saw at our founding anyway. That is a nation spiritually alive and virtuous, living the principles of the Constitution, and prosperous in a capitalist economy. This cannot be emphasized too strongly, dear listener, especially in this presidential election year.

Without the Christ of the Bible at the center of our passion and concern, all of our efforts to bring the United States back to the Constitution or capitalism will fail. Do you realize how unanimous this was amongst our founders? James Madison said, the future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God in which this Constitution is founded, unquote. How valuable an insight. This should be plastered on the forehead of every presidential candidate.

The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God in which the Constitution is founded, unquote. James Madison, the Constitution is but an empty vessel without the law of God. It is a hollow parchment without a virtuous people to execute it. The Constitution is an exercise in futility until Americans are brought alive in their Savior, Jesus Christ. You can rally at the courthouse till the Lord returns.

You can elect Tea Party candidates until the Congress is choked with them. You can slash the size of our bloated federal budget until it goes from the carnival fat lady it is to a fashion model on the runway, so to speak. But you will still have tyranny, poverty, and despair because men's hearts have not been changed. When will the Tea Party and the Patriot movement recognize this and get their lives right with God first? Every other presidential candidate should do that as well.

James Madison, the future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God in which this Constitution is founded. If the foundation of the Constitution is the law of God, as Madison says, what happens when you destroy that foundation as progressives are only too glad to do and Tea Party is casual or neglectful in repairing? Of course, the whole structure collapses as we see happening before our eyes. Jesus tells us that a wise man builds his house on rock so that when the tempest comes, it stands the forces that beat upon it.

Our founding fathers recognized this and so built the foundation of the Constitution on the rock of God's Word and His law. Progressives have so effectively brainwashed and propagandized generations of Americans that they are euphemistically referred to now as low-information voters, such that we are now fools who have built upon the sand of secularism and statism and socialism. And what is the result? Oh, even as in Jesus' parable, the house fell and great was its fall. Am I a lone voice in this?

Am I crying in the wilderness? America, repent? No, I'm only an echo of many in the past and I hope others in the future. As Daniel Webster said in a speech famously back in the 19th century, if we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper. But if we and our posterity, that's us, dear listener, Webster says, but if we and our posterity neglect its instruction and authority, that is the Bible, no man can tell how suddenly catastrophe will overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity, unquote.

We are being buried in profound obscurity, dear listener. In the founding spirit of America, the posterity of Daniel Webster and the founders are frittering away the rich heritage bequeathed us like the prodigal son who spent all of his inheritance on whores and hors d'oeuvres in a far country. And we will come to as great a ruin as that prodigal son unless we too return to the father. All of America needs to have the prodigal son's eventual heart, Jesus said, but when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger.

I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants, unquote. Only such humility, dear listener, and repentance too. The kind of humility and repentance shown by the prodigal son will bring us back from the brink of ruin and the catastrophe, as Webster puts it, the catastrophe that will overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

Good intentions are not enough. Hell is paid with such a pure spirit towards the constitution and great labors to restore it will not suffice. Inculcating conservative fiscal policy and electing patriot candidates is mere economic spitting in the wind. Trump is not our last best hope. Cruz is not a paragon of virtue and constitutional principle.

Electing to burn will only burn down what's left of our republic. Choosing the demon Hillary Klingon will only sink us in evil and confirm the voters' stupidity and spiritual blindness. The spiritual renewal of all of America must first precede the constitutional and economic renewal of all of America. Without your own new spiritual birth in Jesus Christ, dear listener, Jesus himself said, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Without this, you will not only perish eternally in hell in the life to come, but in this life you will live a life of death and be incapable of living the life of liberty under our constitution that our founders intended. And additionally, you will live one of two economic extremes. You will live the life of predator capitalism that we saw historically during the Gilded Age. I have an entire lecture on this period. Why?

Or the other extreme, perhaps, of government socialist dependency that we see today. The spiritual revival of the late 19th century brought us back from the catastrophe that almost overwhelmed us then. There were men like Dwight L. Moody and Billy Sunday preaching that revival. Then and only then did we begin to return to constitutional principles and economic prosperity. Will God intervene to bring us another renewal, I ask of you?

This is, always has been, and always will be the bellwether of constitutional and economic renewal. Has the people first and prior experienced a spiritual renewal in Christ? There will be no former without the latter, dear listener, dear fellow pilgrim on our mutual spiritual journey. Examine our history and you will see that this has always been the case in the United States. There would have been no declaration of independence, no war of independence, no constitution without the first great awakening.

There would have been no continuing American union under the constitution, no war between the states, no liberty for slaves without the second great awakening. There would have been no child labor laws, no Spanish-American war, no prosperity for the American worker if there had not been the great revival of the 19th century happening first. So, as God is sovereign over the affairs of men, there will be no constitutional renewal today. There will be no economic recovery and prosperity in America today.

There will be no consecrated presidential candidate until there is first a prior spiritual renewal in the Jesus Christ of the Bible amongst the people first. It's not enough to say, yeah, you tell them, pastor, and walk away. You, dear listener, must repent of your sins and believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior. You must reform your life according to biblical principle. Live honestly in dealings with your fellow man.

Live a life of sexual and moral purity before the Lord. Practice the religion of the Bible. You must apply those principles of the Bible to your daily life, politically, socially, and economically. And to this, I must warn you of several grave errors that will prevent true spiritual, political, and economic reform. Two grave errors.

Number one, libertarianism is a grave error that will bring catastrophe. If you are considering yourself a libertarian today, you must reconsider because it is a path down which we've already traveled during the Gilded Age and it was a disaster. This moral and spiritual error of libertarianism is fashionable in many circles today. Now, while I recognize that the Libertarian Party does not speak for all libertarians, that be a contradiction in terms, the Libertarian platform does reflect many of the values of libertarians. And I quote from it now.

The Libertarian Party platform says, we seek a world of liberty, a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives. We defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. Unquote. Now, our founding fathers, on the other hand, recognized that God was sovereign over the affairs of men and that human activity was accountable to more than being peaceful and honest. And that activity must be in line as we have seen with God's law and righteousness.

Libertarians have a hands-off approach to social issues like gay marriage or faithfulness in the bonds of marriage or drug use and abortion. For a host of reasons that I detail elsewhere, you must see my lecture on libertarianism in particular, all of these social issues will destroy us as swiftly as the issues we agree upon with libertarians. And we do agree with much with libertarians. That is limited government versus statism. We agree with them in fiscal austerity and government versus profligate spending, debt-ridden spending too.

There's also an emphasis upon personal liberty versus the tyrannical nanny state. And the alliances amongst the nations of the world too, we agree with libertarians that we do this only when it serves our national interest. So, realize, dear fellow pilgrim, that the areas in which we agree are only half the bridge to salvation under libertarianism. God will not act to save the United States until the other half of the bridge is built. That is a spiritual rebirth in Christ that transforms the so-called neutral social issues into biblical issues.

That is traditional, faithful, one-man-one-woman marriage, sobriety in the use of drugs, and an ethic of life instead of death on the abortion issue. You will end up in the river crossing half a bridge, as surely as if you drove up a bank with no bridge under libertarianism. So, the second grave error we can fall into is that of the Anabaptist tradition. The Anabaptist tradition. It has a tradition of withdrawal from the world, and it will bring catastrophe too.

During the period of the Reformation, a sect appeared called the Anabaptist, who taught that Christians should only be concerned with issues of personal salvation, and they should not soil the gamut of the gospel with things of the world like politics and economics. They felt that all of their energies should be devoted to saving souls and nothing else. This is a current strain that you find all over the evangelical church today, and it will end in catastrophe. Their descendants are alive and well in the United States today. I get flack from them on a regular basis.

Not only do I have to cope with the virulent enemies of the Constitution and the progressive movement, but also I see my own brothers in the faith nipping at my heels by saying I should restrict myself to preaching the gospel in church, calling people to get saved and nothing else. To those of you who espouse this view, I say you preach half a gospel. You preach half a gospel. The gospel saves and transforms the whole man. All that he is, does, and thinks, and this includes the realm of society, culture, and politics in which he moves.

Paul says that government magistrates are God's ministers to do you good, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. As many before me have pointed out, how can the civil magistrate do this unless he knows the difference between good and evil and then practices it, practices it himself? As centuries of history have proven, it is only and exclusively the biblical Christian faith applied to society, culture, and politics that has culminated in the most just, prosperous, and freest nation the world has ever known, the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America.

Dear listener, dear Anabaptist friend, the very fact that you can freely, openly express your anti-gospel view is because of what we integrated gospel believers have accomplished on your behalf. Make no mistake, Christ's salvation redeems the whole man, his soul for eternal salvation, and his life and place in culture, society, and politics, as well as a shining witness to that world to come. Withdrawal and rejection of involvement in the world of society, culture, and politics will only bring catastrophe to us. Dear patriot, you have been cowed, you have been propagandized, you have been tyrannized into hiding your lamp under a bushel.

You have been cowed, you have been tyrannized into separating church and state such that the two are isolated in airtight compartments such that the twain shall never meet when they, that is church and state, were meant to be mutually dependent and interactive. Girt up your loins, as Gideon would exhort you, dear Christian, and make this known among the peoples. Proclaim it from the housetops, dear listener. Otherwise, you will never see the constitution practiced as you know it should be, and you will never see our economy put back on track as we know it can be. Dear listener, pray with me.

Dear patriot, pray with me for true and genuine reformation in America, spiritual reformation, not just superficial religiosity. Do more than mouth religious cliches, as our two presumptive nominees do. Mouthing religious cliches, like in God we trust, or we're a Christian nation, or Christ is the God of this country, on and on it goes. Rather, first must come all candidates and voters and every American must first come to the God of grace who saves you for belief in him. And then bring your life in line with Christ's as you live out the remainder of your pilgrimage here on earth.

That pilgrimage here on earth includes not only calling lost men and women to salvation in Christ, but then demonstrating that too and being a beacon and a light and a witness to the, to all of the earth, to Christ's gospel as we practice it in society, culture, and politics as well. Pray for this with me, especially during this presidential election season. Pray for revival, pray for renewal in America, spiritual renewal first, and then we will see constitutional and economic renewal follow as a consequence as day follows night. 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. You can call us at 523-0196 or check out our brand new website, which is omnispotestas.org. That's O-M-N-I-S-P-O-T-E-S-T-A-S dot org, omnispotestas.org, where we have a catalog of past messages as well. Once again, Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 523-0196.