Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I would like to challenge you to remember, to remember the Christian roots of the United States Constitution. This is a valuable thing to do, because once we realize it, once we realize the trajectory from which we were launched, that is, we were launched as a Christian republic, if you will, then we can course correct and get back to that trajectory, because we have been taken off course for two or three generations now by those who would sever us from our Christian roots.

This you must also realize, not only that we were founded as a republic, as a Christian republic, but also, make no mistake about this, there is a systematic programmatic effort underway to sever you from your Christian constitutional roots. There is a systematic programmatic effort to induce in you and your children a blissful historical amnesia to lobotomize your historical Christian constitutional memory.

For example, Friedrich Engels, who was one philosopher who provided the underpinnings for Karl Marx and communism, he, once again, was closely studied by Horace Mann and John Dewey, who were the fathers of the American public educational system. Well, Engels said, and I quote, if you remove a people from their roots, they are easily swayed to your point of view. We have been swayed, have we not? Because we have been removed from our roots. For example, how many Americans today have been so easily swayed to the point of view that there is a constitutional wall of separation between church and state?

This fallacy has been propagated by the herd of militant anti-Christians who wish to expunge all religious influence from the public square. How many people today have been easily swayed to the point of view that America was founded by secular men who wish to keep Christianity at arm's length from all of our founding institutions? How many others have been swayed to the point of view that our founding fathers were a bunch of slaveholding criminals who devised the system meant to suppress and oppress the people and protect their own economic interests?

These are indeed fallacies designed to obscure the true heritage of the United States in a cloud of ignorance and falsehood. For example, one Harvard professor of education and psychiatry in a speech to graduating, excuse me, graduating educators in 1984 said this, and I quote, every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.

It is up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future, unquote. And that was back in 1984. These educators have been pretty successful, have they not, with the last few generations of children in making international children. And the mask is off, Christian. Not only are our media, left-wing politicians, radical culture out to induce historical amnesia in us, but our public schools have now produced several generations of Americans who can scream and holler, give me my rights and freedoms, but who cannot articulate the first thing about their nature or their past, right?

In a recent civics survey, the surveyors found, for example, that more American teenagers were able to name the three stooges than the three branches of government, which of course are the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. One-third of teenagers knew or thought that the slogan, from each according to his ability and to each according to his need, was from the Bill of Rights, when indeed, in reality, it is from the Communist Manifesto. And 60% of those surveyed didn't know and couldn't name the president who dropped the atomic bomb. 20% of those surveyed didn't know where or even if the atomic bomb had ever been used.

And one half of college seniors surveyed couldn't locate the Civil War in the right half of the 19th century. Couldn't even, much less the true dates, 1861 to 1864. Well, unwittingly, many Americans are being told they are free, they're being assured that they're free, they're being told and taught that a thing called the Constitution guarantees their liberty, but who are, in reality, being shaped into the international children of the future.

In reality, they know nothing about the Constitution, they've been taught nothing about it, and indeed, they know more about the Holy Trinity of the Three Stooges than the three branches of government or the Trinitarian God of the Bible. Paul Blanchard, in The Humanist, way back in 1976, said this, and I quote him, I think the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to lead toward the elimination of religious superstition, unquote. Oh, make no mistake about this, dear Christian.

Our destiny as a free democracy depends in large part upon your remembrance of our heritage as a Christian constitutional republic. Do you remember? Do your children remember? Do you remember that the phrase, a wall of separation between church and state, appears nowhere in our Constitution, appears nowhere in our Declaration of Independence or any of our founding documents?

Rather, that phrase, a separation, a wall of separation between church and state, was first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter that he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 to calm their fears that Congress was in the process of choosing a denomination to make the official national denomination. In that letter to the Danbury Baptist's Thomas Jefferson said, and I quote, believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.

I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that our legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Unquote. That is this phrase, a wall of separation between church and state, in its context. Note with me then, in its context, Thomas Jefferson's remarks were meant to reassure Christians that the government would have no means of interference with religion.

Jefferson himself and other founding fathers expected at all times that religion would have a profound effect upon government, exhorting everyone from the Virginia legislature to the Constitutional Convention to earnest prayer, for example, and for Christian principles to inform all of government. And secondly, note with me that Thomas Jefferson's unfortunate and inaccurate use of this phrase was not meant to be incorporated as an official principle of constitutional government. No, it was an informal personal term coined by Thomas Jefferson in personal correspondence 13 years after the First Amendment had passed.

This, in effect, renders his letter, as one scholar has put it, ineligible to be considered a first-hand reflection of the intent of the constitutional delegates. Unquote. Dear listener, do you remember that this phrase lay dormant for 145 years until it was resurrected by an ACLU lawyer, Leo Pfeffer, who included it in his brief in a case called Everson v. Board of Education, which was decided in 1947. Justice Hugo Black picked it up in his majority opinion, which is a 5-4 opinion, by the way, against the Board of Education using tax dollars to transport students to religious schools.

Thence, it has been used ever since, a wall of separation between church and state, to create the false notion that the Founding Fathers intended to hermetically seal religion from government as if our system was intended to be neutral to all world religions. This is not so. John Quincy Adams says this about Christianity and the Constitution and the Revolution. John Quincy Adams says, and I quote, the highest glory of the revolution was that it united in one indissoluble bond the principles of Christianity and the principles of civil government. Unquote.

The reason that constitutional Republican government holds an irresistible sway and appeal over the hearts and minds of the peoples of the world and holds a corresponding sense of horror and revulsion amongst the tyrants of the world is that it is the only system, constitutional republic, is the only system in the world which approaches the form of government we were created to assume. All other forms of government, we can say this categorically, all other forms of government take as their starting point the deification of that which is merely human. That's the nature of humanism.

That's the nature of the principle espoused by the King George III against whom we rebelled. That is the divine right of kings, going all the way back to the ancient pharaonic deification of a priestly monarch. Inherent in all such systems is the assumption that we are endowed with alienable rights by government, which as God can grant or revoke subjects' rights as they see fit. The ancient pagan view of authority was a pyramid with power flowing from the gods to a king or a pharaoh to lesser authorities than maybe, perhaps, finally, to the people.

On the other hand, biblical authority was seen to flow through an inverted pyramid from God to the people to elected representatives. The elected representatives do, by the way, not those born to the post, not those born or seizing power, no. The Christian constitutional republic stands alone as the only system of government in the history of the world which holds out for the self-evident truth that all men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. And when you unhinge God from the equation, you are immediately reduced to the pagan humanistic view of rights and authority.

The rights of man become subject to the whims and caprice of men, not the deliberation and certainty of almighty God. Ask the average man on the street, for example, where does political power reside? You'll get answers somewhat like, well, the government, of course. Maybe in Washington, D.C., right? Or perhaps the president.

Or perhaps the Supreme Court. That's why they call it supreme. Our socialist system has been very successful with these state subjects, haven't they? Forgotten is the preeminent principle enshrined in the preamble to our Constitution, we the people of the United States of America. Political power originates in, emanates from, is accountable unto, and devolves back upon the people as it has been entrusted to them by God Almighty.

Thus, there is the greatest of dangers in seeing the approach of our government as neutral and secular. No such thing. Because it can be neither neutral nor secular. If the Christian God of the Bible is factored out of government, then government will return to its default setting of pagan statism. There is no such thing as a neutral secular state in the minds of our founding fathers.

No. For example, one scholar, R.J. Rushduni, says this. The concept of a secular state was virtually non-existent in 1776, as well as 1787, when the Constitution was written, and no less so when the Bill of Rights was adopted. To read the Constitution as the charter for a secular state is to misread history and to misread it radically. The Constitution was designed to perpetuate a Christian order, unquote.

Do you remember? I'm calling you to remember this day, dear listener. Do you remember the saturation, the permeation of our nation with Christianity in her early days? This is true. Do you remember, O Christian, that every colony, without exception, incorporated within her charters and constitutions references to their indebtedness to Christianity?

The Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, said this, and using the words of John Winthrop, We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, knit together by this bond of love. We are entered into a covenant with him for this work. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, that the eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world, unquote. The Massachusetts Bay Colony.

And then, in the fundamental orders of Connecticut formed in 1639, we have this, We do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth, and do, for ourselves and our successors, and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we now profess, which, according to the truth of the said gospel, is now practiced amongst us, as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such laws, rules, orders, and decrees, unquote, from the fundamental orders of Connecticut 1639.

So, to conceive of a government apart from the gospel was a thing inconceivable to our founding fathers. They not only clearly remembered, as I'm calling you to do today, they not only clearly remembered the depth of heritage owed to biblical Christianity, but they actively incorporated this Christianity into the very fabric of government, which they sought to establish.

In fact, this is what the Supreme Court of 1892 said, certainly no modern Supreme Court, not the Supreme Court of today, but the Supreme Court of 1892 said this, In the case, the Church of the Holy Trinity versus the United States, that court said in its majority decision, and I quote, Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. Can you imagine the Supreme Court saying that today? They go on to say, It is impossible that it should be otherwise. And in this sense, and to this extent, our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.

This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. We find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. These and many other matters which might be noticed add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation, unquote, from the Supreme Court of 1892.

So, make no mistake about this, dear Christian, unless these things are remembered, and I'm calling you to remember them today. If you have never learned them, have never known them, then learn them and begin to remember these things. Remembered in a biblical fashion too, so as to be obeyed and acted upon, unless we remember them, we will all sink into the spiritual and intellectual dementia of the modern American voter. The modern American voter who feels and emotes about an issue but cannot think and rationalize about it. The American voter who can pull a lever but can't pull his own weight in society.

The American voter who remembers every detail about Michael Jackson but who hasn't a clue about Andrew Jackson. The American voter who may bleed for the rights of two men to marry where there is no womb but will leave to bleed a child not yet out of the womb. The American voter who may be persuaded that God exists everywhere in his universe except in the voting booth. The time has come to reawaken the memory and the conscience of a nation. King Darius was enraged and he was righteously indignant when he discovered that he was deliberately deceived and manipulated by his court officials in condemning Daniel to the lion's den.

And Darius wreaked a terrible vengeance upon them by throwing them into the lion's den. America was enraged and righteously indignant when she discovered on December 7, 1941 that she had been deliberately deceived and manipulated by the Japanese Empire when it attacked Pearl Harbor while peace negotiations were still underway and Japan paid a terrible price for her treachery.

Well, I have faith that the American people when they finally discover that they have been deliberately deceived and manipulated by the forces of progressivism and socialism and communism and one world government in part by having the nerve of their memory severed and lobotomized that the American people when they realize this will also be enraged and righteously indignant. But this will not happen until that nerve of memory and remembrance and Christian conscience is re-established. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. says this. About history. History is to the nation as memory is to the individual.

An individual deprived of memory becomes disoriented and lost not knowing where he has been or where he is going. So also, a nation denied its past will be disabled in dealing with its present and future. Unquote. From the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. on the importance and the necessity of history and of remembering, dear listener, well, what can we do then to re-establish that memory? Well, I have three recommendations for us as a people, as the American people.

Number one, continue, dear listener, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, as the Apostle Paul says. Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to work for his good pleasure. Continue, dear listener, to live your Christian life to the fullest, aiming toward heaven, and you will elevate all and everything around you as you continue to work out your own salvation in fear and trembling. This is called sanctification.

Once again, that process of making you and your life and all that your life touches holy, we have many great covenants which we must learn to sanctify as we live out our lives as Christians. You have your marital covenant, the covenant of marriage, which was established in the garden and perpetuates unto today. You have that covenant to sanctify, dear listener. That is, you make it holy. You make you and your wife espouses holy.

You make you and your children holy, too. That is, you treat them biblically. You treat them as God would have you treat them, as he commands you to treat them all through Scripture. So then you sanctify that covenant, that marital covenant. You also have then the covenant of redemption that God made with Christ to redeem for himself a people.

This is what saves you, dear listener. Faith in Christ who graciously gives you forgiveness of sin and then his own righteousness in the covenant of redemption. This is a great covenant that you sanctify then by living a holy life and pleasing God in all that you do. This covenant then you sanctify as well. But how many of us realize then that we also have two other covenants?

We have a church covenant. Indeed, we are combined then into the body of Christ and we have a church covenant that we live out as well as we sanctify that life in Christ as well. But we also have a civil covenant established with Noah. This covenant we sanctify as well. That is, we make holy insofar as our world is affected.

We make holy all around us, do we not? We live out Christian lives and we demonstrate that by making our wife, our husband, our children, our neighbors for that matter, and extended family, all with whom we come in contact, workmates, neighbors, we live righteously. We live the gospel out before them, but we also then live it out in politics. So many of my Christian brothers and sisters have the false notion that we do not soil the garments of the gospel with politics, do we not? That religion and politics are hermetically sealed from one another.

No, dear brother and sister, you have a civil covenant under which you are responsible insofar as you are able then to make your political world, the government, that is, whether it's local, whether it's state, whether it's national, you have an obligation to make that world as righteous and as holy as possible. This is a responsibility that you have, dear listener. So continue, number one, my recommendation is to continue to work out your salvation than with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do for his good pleasure.

Secondly, also read, study, remember, connect with your past, and you will quickly discover that you've been cheated by your public school education. This is part of remembering, dear listener. You can't act on the past until you remember the past. So read and study and remember and connect with your past. You have been cheated by the major news and communications media and your public school education.

You have been cheated by the entertainment industry, which is part of the complex severing the nerve of your memory, of lobotomizing your brain from the past. And you have been cheated by the major political parties in our nation, too, who are no longer committed to our Constitution. Only in name do they do so. They are committed, rather, to a world system of government. Thirdly, become active in your world, dear listener.

No one person can do everything, can they? But everyone can do something. You can do something. Give a little to a worthy charity, perhaps. Write a letter to your congressman.

Volunteer your time at your church. And for a worthy candidate, perhaps. Become an informed voter and vote, vote, vote, vote, dear listener, and vote righteously. And ensure, work to labor to ensure that the voting process is not corrupted, too, as it has been in so many large cities. And then encourage your friends and neighbors to vote as well.

And perhaps God prompting you, neighbors prompting you, those with wisdom prompting you, telling you that perhaps you have the influence and the skills to become an elected representative of the people, then run for office as well. All of these things and more are prompting many to become active in their worlds. And I encourage you to do so. It's not enough just to reestablish the nerve of your memory of the Christian past of our Constitution, but we must act on what we then remember. Act upon what you learn.

May the next generation, when and if there is one, capable and willing to remember, may that next generation, when it recalls us then, when it recalls you and me, may they say that we were faithful to the memory and traditions of our founding fathers and to the God of their fathers as well. 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. I encourage you to drop by and visit us to be with us in our setting of worship as we do these things. And you can call us for more information too or comment at 523-0196.

New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church meets for holy worship at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196. Phillips.