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, I want to challenge you to think through the issue of how does the Declaration of Independence speak to the necessity of abolishing our present government, which is a deep state tyranny versus a constitutional republic, which is so destructive of our rights, and then instituting a new one, as Jefferson puts it, in the Declaration.

Now, over the last few weeks, we have been carefully going through each clause of the Declaration to identify just what the founders faced in terms of their particular complaints against their liberties. And there are over 30 of them. And while most Americans are familiar with isolated portions of the Declaration, like we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right? Everybody seems to know that one, or at least has heard it often before. Most of us pass over the remainder of the Declaration as being, oh, maybe a bit tedious and archaic, right?

It was written so long ago that, well, their reasons for declaring independence from England have no relevance to our situation today, right? And so we can ignore it. Well, I submit to you, au contraire. As we have seen, moving through the Declaration point by point, tyrants do not change any more than a leopard can change his spots. Most of the same reasons Jefferson articulated for separating from England are very much the same reasons for us separating from the current state of affairs in the deep states of America.

Today, we have turned from the United States of America to the deep states of America. And only the times, the faces, and the particular circumstances have changed. Oh, and that tyranny of which we speak has just gotten a fresh injection of steroids with the onset of the China virus. It is not altogether inaccurate to call what is coming upon us now a full-blown medical tyranny. A medical tyranny, yes.

One of my favorite commentators, a man named John Rappaport, and he has a, just a great website, nomorefakenews.com. Check out John Rappaport. And he calls the CDC director Fauci, President Fauci, since he seems to be calling the shots for the nation in place of President Trump. Now it seems that what the deep state with Robert Mueller and the Russian collusion delusion and the impeachment hoax of predatory Democrats could not achieve, oh, a microscopic, invisible, insidious virus like the China virus may be about to do, hopefully not, that is, drive President Trump from office.

That indeed is what his enemies are trying to do with this virus. The CDC may soon be able to offer America a vaccine for the virus, but where is the inoculation for the virus of tyranny in our body politic? At the same time that a relatively small number of us are coming down with the fever of the China virus, many millions more Americans are gripped by the fever of fear and hysteria. And it is always fear and panic that tyrants use to their advantage to stampede people into greater and greater control, like cattle drovers herd them into chutes to the cattle cars and then the butcher.

And although Governor Gavin Grusom of California, that's what I call him, Gavin Grusom of California, and Governor Fredo Cuomo of New York, they're not calling what they're doing martial law, they don't do it by name, but it is in fact what they have done. Oh, and once indeed a tyrant gets a hold of power, he is very loath to let it go. And one of my favorite examples from the headlines recently of dictatorial powers of a tyrant who fortunately only has a small domain, but it comes from the mayor of Champaign, Illinois, the poor residents of Champaign, Illinois. Mayor Deborah Frank Finan signed an executive order.

Now, I didn't know mayors could sign sweeping executive orders, but apparently she has. It hasn't been challenged it, but it should. Mayor Deborah Frank Finan signed an executive order giving herself the power to order the seizure of firearms, ammunition, alcohol, and gasoline during the coronavirus pandemic, or the China virus pandemic, as I like to call it, with President Trump. This executive order goes on to claim the extraordinary measure to seize private property and cut off citizens' access to gas, water, and electricity. Now, examples like this are descending upon us from across the country more than I can report at once.

And once these powers are imposed, they will never go away, dear listener. Oh, tyrants are loath to give up power once they've grabbed it and seized it. In fact, the CDC has already proposed the idea that even when and if the ravages of the China virus are stemmed, America must be prepared to go into a virus lockdown every flu season. Oh, dear listener, we are being trained for tyranny. We are being conditioned for control, just as we have been trained and conditioned for the last 20 years now by the TSA.

When we fly, we have been trained and conditioned to be groped and body scanned and probed and patted down in every body cavity and crevice if necessary. There is no humiliation, too degrading, but that your government cannot subject you to it. Brothers and sisters, fellow Americans, dear listener, America is changing forever. If you long for the days of yesteryear, they're not coming back. And America is changing forever and not for the good.

This tyranny is claimed to be necessary for your good. Your government loves you. Yes, and what we're doing to you is necessary for you. It's required for you to be safe. Don't you want to be safe?

Don't you want to feel safe? Oh, don't you want to feel good again? Well, take the thumb out of your mouth and realize, as what William Pitt said, who was the British philosopher and statesman and parliamentarian, he said, necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.

Pitt was so right in his day and in ours. Tyrants don't change. The characteristics of tyranny do not change. We've been seeing this over the last few weeks. Necessity, and that's what your government is pleading for right now.

They are making the plea, trying to make the case in hurting and stampeding the American people. Oh, it's necessary for us to do these things. And as Pitt said, necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.

And America is not requiting itself very well right now. Dear listener, especially those of you who are confessing Christians, we might as well exchange the apostles' creed for the creed of slaves. That is necessity. Oh, dear listener, it is necessary for our safety and security to submit to the shame and the indignities, excuse me, of the TSA. It is necessary for our health and well-being to huddle like moles in our homes for weeks on end, sacrificing our jobs and callings and businesses for the sake of an ephemeral virus.

It is necessary to indulge in the collective hysteria and panic of a culture that obeys the herd mentality of lemmings hurtling over the cliff of China virus panic. Dear listener, it is your government that's telling you it's necessary for us to obey the dictates of an all-wise government who loves us. Yes, they only want a service. They want a service medium, rare, and well done. That's how they want a service.

An all-wise government that loves us and has our best interest at heart. Yeah, right. Oh, dear listener, it is necessary for us to flatten the nation in order to flatten a curve. If you believe any of these propositions, then you deserve your slavery. As Benjamin Franklin so cogently put it, he said, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

We are being promised safety. We're being promised safety, safety from a deadly pestilence. We're being promised this by tyrants who can neither give us safety ultimately, nor can they help themselves from stealing our constitutional liberties. The measures being used presently, and you can look this up too, things like lockdowns or isolation, shutdown of the economy. These are the measures, heavy-handed measures being used by our government presently.

They have not worked in places where they've been tried, like Iran and China and Italy. On the other hand, measures that have been successful, like extensive and accurate testing and quarantine of infected individuals, not the whole country, but quarantine of infected individuals that have been tested, and then stringent preventative practices. These have been effective in stemming the tide of the virus in places like Singapore and South Korea and Taiwan. Oh, dear listener, tyranny never changes. It has a default setting.

Rob you of your free speech, which is being done, the practice of your religion. You can't meet on Sunday. You're non-essential churches, and your freedom to assemble peaceably on Sunday as churches. This is happening now in the streets of America, but it was not true. Only here, but also in the days of the colonies.

Well, what were those particular complaints? I take up now a complaint about the tyranny of cutting off trade with America. That is complaint number three under M. Remember, M is the combined actions of parliament and crown. We saw a whole bunch of them under King George III, but then King George III also used parliament to tyrannize over the colonies, and we're at number three of those tyrannies of the combined forces of colony and king. And colony and king, according to the complaint in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, was cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

On cutting off our trade, the trade of the colonies with all parts of the world. The colonists, free, industrious, ambitious, energetic, and enterprising. They were competing across the world with the economy of Great Britain. That was what the British were trying to stem. Trade with Spain, the colonies, but especially France, flourished at the expense of Britain.

In an effort to curtail and control these upstart capitalists, the crown and parliament established restrictive trade rules on the Americans. Heavy duties on rum and cotton and manufactured goods made our goods more expensive. Embargos on trade with certain regions meant that our goods couldn't gain access to those markets, and on and on the manipulative controls went. Our economy suffered, having one arm tied behind its back in the rustling match of international trade. Understandably, the founders wanted the kind of liberty to trade which Britain, British merchants and businessmen, excuse me, had.

This is precisely the situation in the United States of America today. Ah, we have faced this for so long in the deep state's effort to make our trade policy subordinate to the interests of a global elite. And I've told you about this global elite in the past. Look to past messages to see the details there. And President Trump has ripped the mask off of this monster in renegotiating so many disadvantageous trade agreements, which were signed by his predecessors.

That giant sucking sound that Ross Perot warned us of. And he was a prophet, wasn't he? Looking back, Ross Perot was very, very correct in how jobs and corporations would leave America for cheaper labor overseas. That giant sucking sound of jobs and manufacturing plants leaving our shores for places like Mexico and China became a reality under the unfair trade deals like NAFTA or separate deals with China. We were told then we would be prosperously integrated into a global economy and that every benefit.

And of course, time told the tale. We discovered quickly that everything from wheat to widgets were either made or grown somewhere else or made so cheaply elsewhere that we could no longer compete. On top of this indignity, the creative genius of American innovation was stolen by the Chinese as our intellectual property became a hostage to entering their markets. And on and on we could go. Make no mistake about this point, dear listener.

This article describing the cutting off of trade with all parts of the world applies with even greater impact today for us than it did for our colonial brethren then. We have as much reason, if not more, for withdrawing our consent to be governed by the deep state now than our colonial forebears did for withdrawing their consent to be governed by king and crown. Well, number four then. The fourth complaint under M is for imposing taxes on us without our consent. Yes, Jefferson and the founders complained that Great Britain imposed taxes on the colonies without our consent.

That's the primal state of the parasite on its host. This is the primal state in nature. That is taxation without representation. The leech sucks blood from his host to its heart's content, never soliciting the needs and cares and concerns of its host. No, if it wants or needs more blood, it merely sucks more.

In fact, in many cases, the parasite will end up killing the host if not abated and removed. That's what the colonists were trying to do to Great Britain. The polite term for this relationship between crown and colonies was taxation without representation. Great Britain could tax the colonies to its heart's content at will because the colonies could do nothing to stop them. They had no vote, no voice, no say in parliament thousands of miles away.

Instead, what would happen is if the king and parliament determined that more revenue was needed for whatever reason, they would vote to raise taxes on the colonies, on the American colonies by whatever amount they saw fit. Then pestilential tax agents would be dispatched to the colonies to tyrannically impose the new increases upon them by force of arms, if necessary, without consultation or vote in the local legislature. The colonists were cows to be milked and even slaughtered, mere sheep to be shorn.

Our founding fathers, accustomed to electing those who would tax them prior to King George, they steadfastly resisted this impulse in the fallen human condition. Well, how about us? We seem to have succumbed to the parasite syndrome where the host attempts to adapt and adjust to the conditions imposed upon it by the parasite rather than taking charge of the host and removing the parasite, the leech of taxes.

Instead of a parliament thousands of miles away, however, we have a parasite deep state in our very midst that taxes us incessantly and does it indirectly through raising rates on the numberless agencies as it has created, like the EPA or the FDA, or maybe by deliberately inflating our currency as they're doing now, or by borrowing beyond our ability to pay. All of these measures are indirect taxation without representation because the American people were not consulted in their enactment, but we pay for it all. And on the surface, we have some representation in the elected officials who vote to raise our individual income taxes.

We can vote Republican for lower taxes or Democrat for higher taxes generally, and we can perpetuate the illusion that we have taxation with representation, but it is only a dog and pony show. A magician's bauble in the left hand to distract, while the magician's right hand pulls the rabbit out of the hat. And that's all relative, of course, to the myriad of other measures that government uses functionally to raise our taxes without our consent. We have as much, if not more, reason to withdraw our consent to be governed by the deep state than did our founding fathers to withdraw their consent to be governed by king and parliament.

Most Americans are just too ignorant to know or too busy to be bothered enough to do anything. Dear listener, it's time for us, though, for you and me to peacefully foster a revolution in this area that we should, again, not have taxation without representation. Well, then, number five under M, the combined efforts of king and parliament for depriving us, Jefferson says, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury. Oh, king and crown, parliament, we're endeavoring to deprive the colonists of the benefits of trial by jury. Listener, who knows the extreme value for justice and the guard against tyranny that a trial by jury does represent?

We don't have them much anymore, but that is what was at stake in the colonies when Jefferson penned the declaration. Yes, ever since the days of Magna Carta in 1216. Freemen in England were accustomed to being tried for a crime before a jury of their peers versus a biased judge appointed by the king on whom said judge was dependent for his job and salary. Oh, how would you expect that judge to rule, of course, in favor of the crown? A jury of one's peers, however, would hear the case with two mutually balanced motives.

Number one, as peers equals with understanding of the accused life situation. And then secondly, as a jury impaneled to administer justice, true justice in their own community to weigh the facts and the law fairly. Few Americans realize this precious liberty. A jury of one's peers, that is, his neighbors and colleagues who knew him in this character, they would hear both the facts surrounding the alleged crime and the law upon which its violation was based. And then they would decide guilt or innocence.

Most Americans are utterly, completely ignorant of this lost gem. In our Western tradition. Yes. If an overzealous prosecutor wishing to pad his prosecutorial record, or maybe having a distinct bias against an accused, well, if he brings trumped up charges against someone, the jury is the last line of fence. Even if a law is on the books and the defendant has violated that law, but the jury feels the law is unjust, it can still acquit.

Oh, very few people realize this. Who realizes this today? In the forest of unjust laws on our books, juries can and must judge both the facts of the case, that is, whether the guy did what he's accused of, and they must judge the law as well. That is, whether the very law he's alleged to have broken is a good law or not. So what if he's broken a lousy law?

Let him go. Not guilty. Juries have this power. They have plenary power to do this, but no one tells them this anymore, especially judges. Dear listener, in his essay on the trial by jury, Judge Lysander Spooner wrote this, and I quote him, government is established for the protection of the weak against the strong.

Unless the weaker party that is the accused in the face of the whole legislature and judicial system, that's the greater power, the stronger power. And so, Spooner goes on to say, unless the weaker party have a veto, they have no power whatever in the government and no liberties. The trial by jury is the only institution that gives the weaker party any veto upon the power of the stronger. Consequently, it is the only institution, and he's talking about trial by jury here, it is the only institution that gives them any effective voice in the government or any guarantee against oppression, unquote. That's pretty strongly stated, isn't it?

But it is so, so true. Trial by jury. You need to apprise yourself of this right and this bastion, this last guard against tyranny, this bastion of liberty, the trial by jury. Come to understand this. Grow in your knowledge and application of this.

This is a God-given right, trial by jury, that has almost completely disappeared from America. Oh, quickly. In the colonies, however, it became apparent in the crucible of history, ever since, especially ever since 1216, in the Magna Carta, in the crucible of history, more often than not, under the jury system, it was discovered that if the guy did it, he was convicted, but if he didn't, he was acquitted. That's the kernel of justice, isn't it? It wasn't a perfect system.

No system is. But it was fair and it was effective. It had worked for centuries in England and for multiple decades in the colonies until the advent of George III. And for us, of course, it's the advent of the deep state. Poor Roger Stone.

Look at the case of Roger Stone and you'll see the abuse, then, of trials and judges, the abuse of juries as well. That poor man should be retried and acquitted. Look into his case, the case of Roger Stone. But over the course of history, it became apparent in England that more often than not, under this jury, precious jury system, if the guy did it, he was convicted. If he didn't, he was acquitted.

That's justice. It had worked for centuries in England and then in the colonies too until the advent of George III, a true tyrant. George began to drag accused colonists summarily before his hand-picked judges. And like a sausage factory, it turned out conviction after conviction. The only thing wrong was that not only many of the convictions were bogus, but most of the laws upon which the convictions were based were unjust.

That's why a jury has the ironclad right to judge not only the facts of a case, but also the very law which underpins and underlies the prosecution of the accused. It is to this unjust system that the founders complained he deprives us in many cases of trial by jury. And it is to this unjust system of the deep state in our day that we complain, that we too are deprived of a trial by jury fully instructed in its rights. And consequently, dear listener, we must withdraw our consent to be governed by that system. And we must insist upon establishing a new one, as Jefferson puts it.

We indeed have the right and we are compelled to, we must establish a new system that is a Christian constitutional republic to take the place of the deep states of America. Dear listener, this has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Idaho Falls. We are located on the corner then of 4th and Boulevard. We meet for holy worship at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. We hope to be meeting soon again.

I will alert you. I'll let you know when we are meeting formally in our building again at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call me for feedback. Call me for more information on us and our church at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.