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. And today, dear Patriot, I exhort all of us, I include myself in this, in this election season with the words of the Apostle Paul, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. I love that scripture. I've always loved that scripture because I need to hear it from time to time when I find myself slothful or self-pitying or discouraged with the state of the church or my nation or myself.

Now, Paul says it to shake the lost man awake from his state of spiritual sleep and death to the daytime of Christ. And he does it to urge those already in Christ as well, to urge them to show that life they have in him by living in his spiritual light. And it's time for the church and each individual Christian to do this, myself included, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

I have outlined for you before in the past, those of you that know me and have heard this broadcast before, the crucial component that Christ serves in the three things to which the United States of America must return, election or no election. We must return to Christ for our spiritual life together as a nation, to the constitution for our political and self-governance together as a nation, and to capitalism for our economic life together as a nation. Together, for simplicity and ease of remembrance then, they composed what I call the three C's, Christ, constitution, and capitalism.

But far transcending the other two in importance and significance is the first, that is Christ. Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. The three C's, of course, they have their contrast and their dark side in diametric opposition to them. There are three other things. In opposition to Christ, our culture has lifted up secularism for our spiritual life together.

There's going to be three S's here, if you're guessing here. And of course, in opposition to the constitution, our culture has pitted statism for our social and political life together. And in opposition to the genius of capitalism, our culture in the last century has substituted socialism for our economic life together. In other words, three C's versus three S's for ease of remembrance. I need this as well as children and school children and adults.

And what I want to continually put before you, however, is the absolute requisite of one of these components over the others, and that is the spiritual element, that of Christ. Nothing else means anything without him, including our way of governance, that is the constitution, and our mode of economic life together, that is capitalism. Historically, Christ means everything to who and what we are as a nation. We were founded, formed, and finished in Christ. Columbus sailed to the new world in his name.

The pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in his name. The Puritans celebrated the first Thanksgiving in his name, and our founders established our constitution in his name. It is time that Americans stop cowering in fear at the mention of Jesus Christ and our country. We are established as a Christian republic, and we should frankly admit this, openly espouse it, wear it as a badge, as something to become fully again. But it must also be admitted that this will only happen when Americans once again feel free and comfortable in doing so.

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. This, in turn, can only happen when Americans feel ready to do it, when they do not care what the consequences might be, when they're willing to go to the trains, when they're willing to go to the showers, if you will, when they're willing to defend themselves long before that ever happens, and when they know that whether they're praised or punished for confessing Jesus Christ, they will do it. Nevertheless, what this demands is nothing less than a complete reformation of America's spiritual way of life, dear listener. Nothing less will do.

American Christians are at present cowards. We are back on our heels. We are constantly apologizing for who and what we are. Why must this be? It is historically demonstrable that all that we are and have can be traced to biblical cultural roots in the Christian faith.

Dear listener, look around the world and tell me where there is more tolerance, for example, more tolerance for divergent views on religion and culture than in the United States of America. That is precisely because of the Christian view of tolerance. Without Christianity as the heartthrob of society, this will utterly disappear, and we see it already in an incipient form with modern liberalism and progressivism. And with it, there is a great irony. That is an intolerance for the very faith that gave it birth.

Christianity, progressivism has no tolerance for Christianity. Like a spoiled, self-indulgent child who has no appreciation for the parent that gave them life, the child, that is modern progressivism, hates and despises the very parent that gave it birth. Conservative biblical Christianity, that is. We in the United States are like Oedipus who unknowingly slew his father and married his mother in an incestuous patricidal frenzy. We attack the father who seated us, and we violate the mother who bore us as her children.

Where else in the world is there tolerance as we know it here in the United States of America? For example, all Muslim countries persecute Christians to some extent, and Jews. There are no exceptions. Mali, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, all hate and murder our brothers and sisters in Christ. India is the world's largest Hindu nation and proves it by persecuting Christians in a fit of Hindu revival.

China remains the world's largest official atheist nation. This it daily demonstrates too by jailing pastors and believers who dare to speak out on behalf of their Lord. For our founding fathers, the religious wars of Europe in the 17th century demonstrated that it was the individual conscience that should decide matters of faith. And this became a fundamental Christian principle regardless of the particular faith involved. But ironically, it depended upon the fertile ground of Christianity to flourish.

Tolerance, that is. In the light of his faith and Christian history, the American could be tolerant, accepting that others could believe differently than him. And this is uniquely a Christian virtue, I submit to you. Uniquely a Christian virtue. Muslims have not learned nor accepted that fundamental human principle.

Hindus have not learned nor accepted this fundamental human principle. Atheists most emphatically have not accepted nor learned this fundamental human principle. They all continue to imprison believers in China, Russia, Russia, a thousand countries around the world like Korea, Burma, and Cuba yet, even though we're opening relations with them. The next time you hear a progressive self-righteously droning on and on about how tolerant he is and about how intolerant you are as a Christian, confront him with his parentage. Every progressive owes his existence to you, a Christian.

If it had not been for generations of biblical Christians insisting upon tolerance for a fellow citizen's views, he would have no standing now, that citizen today. This is the irony of our modern age. The modern progressive bases his philosophy upon a Christian view of tolerance and diversity, knowingly or unknowingly, but he scoffs and scorns and rejects the very basis upon which that tolerance and diversity are founded. It is as if a conscientious mother taught her children to love one another and then finds herself hated by those very children.

Dear listener, Christianity taught us how to love one another, but the student has officially turned on his teacher and now slain her, if you will, figuratively speaking. So, dear listener, it is time that we Christians, it is time the church reclaimed its heritage. Wake up! Oh, if you are a believer in Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, then do not be ashamed of Christ. Declare him to friends, family, and co-workers, the entire nation.

If you do not know him, but only hear about him by the hearing of the ear, as the prophets used to put it, then come to faith and believe in Christ today. You will find a Savior not only for this age and time, but for eternity. Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. And we can sum up America with the three C's. That is Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism.

But we must heavily qualify the last two with the preeminence of the former. Christ must be a part of the Constitution, yes. Christ must be a part of Capitalism, yes, or all is lost. Why is that? Number one, the Constitution without Christ is but liberty to be lawless.

The Constitution, think about this for a moment. The Constitution without Christ is but the liberty to be lawless. Our founders were clear on their intentions for the Constitution. John Adams says, the only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue. And if this cannot be inspired into our people in greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.

How profound that was. John Adams, he knew precisely what was required for the Constitution to succeed. The virtue of which Adams spoke, too, was not an amorphous virtue. It was not a Muslim virtue, or a Hindu virtue, or a Buddhist virtue, or an atheist virtue. The only virtue that Adams or any of the Founding Fathers had in mind was that of Christ.

Man cannot be free without Christ. The Constitution was established in order to give men the maximum amount of freedom with a minimal amount of restraint. When men have their own internal moral government and compass that tells them no to theft, no to murder, but yes to honest work, and yes to benevolence to his fellow man, then the Constitution is the ideal document for a people like this. But if men have no internal moral government and cannot resist thievery or murder and no honest labor or benevolence to his fellow man can be found, then the Constitution is but a paper license for sin and corruption.

Ask yourself, dear listener, what is the difference with a man of Christian character who finds a dropped wallet in a locker, for example, and he goes to the trouble to find the owner and the man who keeps it for himself, using the cash and credit cards for his own advantage? Is there a difference? What is the difference between the contractor who uses one by threes framing a house when he was contracted to use two by fours and when the contractor who fulfills his commitments to the letter?

What is the difference between a magistrate elected to build an army to defend his country and one who instead builds a defense plant to give jobs to his constituents and charges the taxpayer exorbitant prices just because he can? Is there a difference in all these cases? With a Christian of moral character, you can leave your daughter, wallet, and liberty knowing they are safe and complete in their integrity. With a non-Christian who has no incentive to behave honestly, you have, on the other hand, a bulging pregnant daughter, an empty, flattened wallet, and tyrannized liberties by the time he is finished.

This is precisely what a constitution without Christ is like, dear listener. A government with very few restraints demands a citizenry who practice self-restraint. A minimal, limited government requires a wise populace who are capable of illimitable self-government, that is, governing their passions and emotions and desires. Hugo Grotius, the Dutch philosopher, puts it this way, a man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city. He cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family.

He cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself, and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason, unquote. Oh, dear listener, dear American, how many shelves of contract law do you need for businesses when you have two parties who are honest and forthright and they honor a simple agreement with a handshake instead of pages of signatures and a battery of lawyers looking over your shoulder? The more we as a society are men of our word from our mouths, that is, men who simply do what they promise, the fewer words we need on paper to sign, notarize, and have interpreted by a staff of lawyers.

How many drug laws do you need on the books, dear listener? When citizens honor their God-given bodies and refuse to smoke, inject, snort, ingest drugs into them? How many police and border agents do you need to combat brutal, murderous drug wars if the people are not using drugs, and there's consequently no market for them for the Mexican drug cartels? How many divorce lawyers do you need in a society where husbands and wives love one another and they honor the one-man, one-woman relationship so long as you both shall live?

What need is there of expensive, complicated, prenuptial agreements when there is an implicit trust that all property in the marriage belongs one to the other equally? A society composed of people who police themselves has need of very few officers to police that society. Conversely, as we're seeing in our own culture today, the less moral restraint we see in people's lives, the more need we have of force being imposed from the outside on lawbreakers. We can't build prisons fast enough, can we, to house the offenders being arrested, tried, and convicted for all manner of crimes.

Judges are forced to sentence drug offenders with mandatory sentences to prisons already bulging with other drug offenders. Many of these must be released long before their sentences are completed. Consequently, we have criminals walking our streets today who would have been behind bars formerly as recently as five to eight years ago.

Our streets are far more dangerous as a result simply because, A, our culture no longer cares to inculcate an honest, moral, self-governing way of life amidst our people, and B, that same culture is unwilling to build the number of jails and prisons requisite to house the disproportionate numbers of immoral and unethical and criminal persons who are bred daily in the petri dish of our culture. Dear listener, when will our jails and prisons simply be overwhelmed? Did you ever consider this?

When might it be safer for us, the honest and law-abiding citizens, to clear out those jails and prisons and move into them ourselves simply because we're now more of them, that is the criminal class, on the outside than us? When might it be cheaper and more honest to admit that we are now a nation of criminals and stop playing incarceration games? This is the consequence for a nation that refuses to inculcate a Christian morality.

When parents cannot afford to spend the time, effort, and energy to instruct and discipline their children in the basics of the Christian faith and its moral code themselves, like the Ten Commandments, they will soon find that they're taking the time, effort, and expense to hire police, judges, and build jails and prisons for their children. Contrary to soft-headed liberal social theory, men are not born to be moral creatures. They must be carefully taught and disciplined to be so. O Israel, the Bible says, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall teach your children diligently the laws of the land and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. The sense of the Bible is that morality must be inculcated and taught in a disciplined, systematic fashion throughout a child's life. It should be so ever-present in his or her life that when they're in the house, they see and hear the law, and when they walk out over the threshold of the door, they see and hear the law. When they travel in the streets of the city, they see the law written, spoken, and kept.

So ever-present is the word of God in the lives of the children and the people in general, that God's word will be on their hearts and in their minds so as to obey it. In such an atmosphere and in such a nation, a small, limited exterior government can thrive, as our constitution was intended to give us, because a great interior government rules the hearts and minds of the people. For such, our constitution was made. John Adams puts it this way, our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other, unquote.

Therefore, dear listener, it should come as no surprise that a society expands in its tyrannical control in proportion to its decline in moral self-government. We see that around us today. Lawlessness in the hearts of the people breeds tyrants in the hearts of our governments. John Adams puts it this way once again. He says, avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net, unquote.

When men have no self-government over their wills, they will need others to govern them against their will. Let me say that again. When men have no self-government over their own wills, they will need others to govern them against their will. This is a simple historical law that is borne out over time and is being borne out in our own time. Patrick Henry put it this way, bad men cannot make good citizens.

A vitiated state of morals and a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom, unquote. Dear listener, then pray for a reformation in America. Awake, O sleeper. Every American we need to say this to. Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Then and only then will we be fit citizens for our constitution. Right now, we do not deserve our constitution, and God will sovereignly take it away from us as he is gradually doing. It's there on paper, but it certainly is not being exercised by the people, either by the people or her representatives. We have a populace that is, in general, in sheer rebellion against the God who established this nation and who established this constitution. We live in a drug-addled culture, for example, where the stoned mind and body is the baseline for our national consciousness.

It will not be enough to legalize drugs, to end the crime and death and corruption. It is a crime against God's law, and only when we reform our stoned souls to the rock of ages and turn from our drug-taking ways will we see it end. We live in a whore-ridden culture, where gay marriage, live-together couples, single-parent families, divorced couples, not collectively outnumber straight one-time married couples. Only when we return to a biblical model of marriage and family will we see a stable family life return. We live in a government dependency culture, where the Christian work ethic, a good day's pay for a good day's work.

If a man will not work, as Paul says, he will not eat. This is replaced by the secular handout ethic. You deserve a break today. The food stamp program has burgeoned. Obama's proud of it under the present administration, as has the unemployment compensation program from 13 weeks to 99.

Only when we reform our working souls and return to a Christian work ethic will we get our financial house in order too, dear listener. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports, for example, that 10% of Americans in 2015 now identify themselves as atheists or agnostics. That's up from 6% in 2012. This is part of an atheist trend that many are trumpeting as a great thing for America. And I beg to differ.

I exhort you that only when we reform our spiritual souls and return to the Christian God of the Bible will we see our nation turn around as well. Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. So, dear listener, the libertarian answer to these things is not adequate either. God will judge us for all of these things that I've enunciated above. The Constitution is not a morally neutral document that can be objectively applied no matter the state of a citizen's soul.

As I've outlined for you above, our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other, as John Adams says. And that morality was not a Muslim morality, nor a Hindu morality, nor an atheistic morality, nor a secular morality. Our Founding Fathers had in mind only and exclusively a Christian biblical morality. So, pray for a spiritual reformation during this election season.

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from sleep, and Christ will shine on you. There are many dark spiritual forces that are arrayed against us that we Americans have allowed to flourish for that matter. The Republicans, for example, that is the Republican and Democrat establishment, represented by Hillary Clinton, herself a practicing witch, if you will, and a certifiable malignant narcissist, on the order of Obama and Stalin and Mao and Hitler. The Republican Democrat establishment, the Republicans are evil parasites, sucking both the physical and spiritual lifeblood of the American people.

Think of it, dear listener, government continues to grow like a fat tick on the body politic of the people. Whether a Republican or Democrat is in office, it doesn't matter anymore, whether at the federal or the state or the local level. Republican ticks may suck our lifeblood at a little slower pace, but they're still sucking the lifeblood of our wealth and our liberties and our religious freedom, just as inevitably as the most progressive Democrat tick. Donald Trump is a well-meaning watchdog, if you will, or hound who will be swallowed up by the ravenous establishment ticks, precisely because he has no spiritual center.

Trump's claims to be a good Presbyterian are too little and too late, I'm afraid. There's no record of faithful membership in any church, Mr. Trump. You have never articulated a clear expression of faith in the Savior, that is Jesus Christ. To this pastor and voter, Mr. Trump, your coddling up to the evangelicals is just that, an obsequious groveling for votes. Now, this doesn't mean you cannot make a good president.

I think that you could make a good president. In spite of this, Jimmy Carter was an espoused evangelical Southern Baptist, but he was a lousy president. Yet there have been other many good presidents who have not been particularly religious. So I have high hopes that indeed, you might be able to follow through, but you will not be able to follow through eventually into eternity, that is, unless you find your spiritual center in Christ. To you, Mr. Trump, I exhort, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you.

America, there is no hope for us at our present rate of decline, is there? We will not stop the coming collapse of the economy, for example, because the church is greedy and ignorant and lazy. There is a financial crash coming. And dear listener, because of that greed and ignorance and laziness on the part of the American people, that economic collapse will fall upon us. America, you will not be able to resist the spiritual possession of your national soul by Islam and atheism and secularism, because the church retreats from its culture, society, and politics.

And this is largely from a misunderstanding of Romans chapter 13, right? And many, many pastors across this nation inculcate this understanding of Romans 13, that we submit to the authorities without qualification, because God has ordained them. But this is not the only text that speaks to government. We are to resist the proud. We are to resist those who tyrannize and oppress as well.

This is inculcated throughout the Old Testament and New Testament as well. Romans 13, that says, submit to the authorities. They are, because they're ordained by God. This will drive us all to the trains, and your pastors will be exhorting you to go. Oh, that's okay.

That's okay. Because the Bible says that we must submit to the authorities. They are ordained by God. Right into the showers, you will go, O church, because you have a misinterpretation of the scriptures. Indeed, you will not be able to resist the spiritual possession of the United States national soul, and it will be possessed in a vacuum by organizations and by movements like radical Islam or atheism or secularism, secularism, because the church retreats from culture, society, and politics.

America, you will not secure your liberties either, precisely because the church does not understand the essence of liberty. Christ himself said, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Oh, how many times is that quoted and taken out of context? You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Oftentimes, it's some person's petty point that he's trying to make or some secular truth or some philosophical truth, and they cite Christ when he intended, if you abide in my word, that is, if we abide in Christ's word, if we obey him, if we follow him, then we are truly his disciples and we'll know the truth then, and the truth will then set us free. Dear listener, arise from the dead. Awake, oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you. We need to follow this indeed in this election season.

We need to follow closely this maxim, because otherwise, we will find ourselves, election or no election, whoever succeeds and whoever obtains victory, it will matter, not one whit. The president is only the executive peak of the mountain of the people. He's a reflection of what that mountain is. He's only the peak of it. We get the government that we deserve, dear listener.

That is why it is utterly requisite for that mountain, for the people that indeed build up and summit the peak of the people, that is the constitution. Only then will we be able to succeed as a nation, come back to Christ's constitution and capitalism by awaking, oh sleeper, arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you. 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 for feedback and you can call us for more information too at 523-0196.

That's 523-0196. And check out our websites too. We have two websites now. That's newgenevaopc.org, newgenevaopc.org, and our catalog of radio messages. That is omnisprotestas.org.

O-M-N-I-S dash P-O-T-E-S-T-A-S dot org. Omnisprotestas.org.