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 continue asking you, how does the Declaration of Independence, that great statement of liberty and freedom for the American people, how does it speak to the necessity of abolishing our present government, which is a deep state tyranny rather than a constitutional republic, how does the Declaration of Independence today speak to the necessity of abolishing these which are so destructive of our rights and then beginning to institute a new one, right, as Jefferson puts it in the Declaration?

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. Now, Jefferson listed 29 particulars, though there could have been more. Now, while most Americans are familiar with isolated portions of the Declaration, like that soaring language, we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we passed over pretty much the remainder of the Declaration as being a bit tedious and archaic.

It was written so long ago that their reasons for declaring independence from England have no relevance to our situation today, right? Au contraire, I would say. As we have seen moving through the Declaration, point by point, complaint by complaint, 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. Only the times, faces, and particular circumstances have changed.

And that tyranny 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. One of my favorite commentators, a man named John Rappaport, who has a website, nomorefakenews.com. I urge you to check it out. John Rappaport calls CDC Director St. Anthony Fauci, President Fauci, since he seems to be calling the shots for the nation in place of President Trump.

It seems that what the deep state with Robert Mueller and the Russian collusion delusion and the impeachment hoax of predatory Democrats, what they could not achieve, a microscopic, invisible, insidious virus like the China virus may be about to do. And that is drive President Trump from office, if we're not careful. 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? That is the more dangerous virus, the virus of tyranny.

At the same time that a relatively small number of us are coming down with this fever of the China virus, many millions more 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 cattle into the chutes and then into the cars and then on to the butcher. And although Governor Gavin Gruesome of California and Governor Fredo Cuomo of New York are calling it martial law by name, they're not calling it martial law by name, excuse me.

Well, it is that, in fact, which they've done, impose martial law on their states. And one of the most egregious examples of dictatorial powers comes from the mayor of Champaign, Illinois, Mayor Deborah Frank Finan. And she signed an executive order giving herself the power to order the seizure of firearms, ammunition, alcohol, and gasoline during the coronavirus pandemic. Oh, it also goes on to claim the extraordinary measure to seize private property and cut off citizens' access to gas, water, and electricity. Woe to those who live in Champaign, Illinois, Illinois, excuse me, with Mayor Finan.

Examples like this are descending upon us from across the country. Once these powers are imposed, they will never go away, dear listener. In fact, the CDC has already proposed that even when and if the ravages of China virus are stemmed, America must be prepared to go into a virus like lockdown, lockdown, excuse me, every flu season. I don't think we're going to stand for that. Not even the most bovine cattle among us will stand for that.

Dear listener, we're being trained for tyranny. We're being conditioned for control, just as we have been trained and conditioned for 20 years now by the TSA when we fly. Oh, conditioned to be groped and body scanned and probed and patted down in every body cavity and crevice if necessary. There is no humiliation to degrading, but that your old government cannot subject you to it. America is changing forever, dear listener, and not for the good.

This tyranny is claimed to be necessary for your good, required for you to be safe. Let me just remind you of William Pitt's famous statement, prophetic. It sounds like the voice of experience. William Pitt, the British philosopher and statesman said, necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants.

It is the creed of slaves. Dear listener, are you a slave? Are you submitting to necessity? Oh, the tyranny imposed upon us is so necessary for your own good, for your own safety. Ah, but if that's the case, then you must know that your federal government is making the argument of tyrants.

It is the creed of slaves, if you believe it and abide by it. Dear listener, especially those of you who are confessing Christians, you might as well exchange the Apostles' Creed for the creed of slaves. Necessity. It is necessity for our safety and security to submit to this shame and indignity 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. It is so necessary for us to obey the dictates of an all-wise government who loves us and has our best interest at heart. Oh, yes. 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.

But it is not for me, dear listener. Those of us who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety, says Benjamin Franklin. I quote him once again. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Americans deserve neither liberty nor safety if they are indeed willing to give up essential liberty, which is essential to our existence, in order to purchase a little bit of safety from the coronavirus.

We are being promised safety from a deadly pestilence by tyrants who can neither give us safety nor help themselves from stealing our constitutional liberties in the process. The measures being used presently, that is lockdowns, isolation, the shutdown of an economy, they have not worked in places where they have been tried, like Iran or China or Italy. But on the other hand, measures which have been successful, things like extensive inaccurate testing, quarantine of infected individuals, and stringent preventative practices, these kinds of places have been effective in stemming the tide of the virus.

In places like Singapore or South Korea or Taiwan, tyranny never changes, dear listener. It has a default setting to rob you of your free speech, the practice of your religion and your freedom to assemble peaceably. This is happening now in the streets of America, but it was not true only here, but also in the days of the colonies. This is we we've been covering as we've been looking at the Declaration of Independence and what were those particular complaints? We've been going through them and we left off covering number 16, which was the cutting off of our trade with all parts of the world.

We covered that briefly last week when indeed Great Britain attempted to cut off trade with the colonies so that they can only trade then with Great Britain. But we covered that in some pretty good detail then last week. So let's take up number 17, complaint number 17, which has application to us today too. And that is for imposing taxes on us without our consent. The colonists, Jefferson and Washington and the leaders of the revolution felt it necessary to separate from Great Britain for a variety of reasons.

And number 17 was for imposing taxes on us without our consent. Behold the primal state of the parasite on its host in its very nature. That is taxation without representation. We can tax you at will, whatever we want, for whatever amount. The leech, doesn't the parasite leech suck blood from its host to its very heart's content, never soliciting the needs or cares or concerns of its host?

If that leech wants or needs more blood, it merely takes more. In fact, in many cases, the parasite will end up killing the host, if not abated and removed. 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, they had no voice, they had no say in parliament, thousands of miles away.

Instead, what would happen is, if the king or parliament determined that more revenue needed to be raised for whatever reason, they would vote to raise taxes on the American colonies by whatever amount they saw fit. Then, 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. Oh, the colonists were cows to be milked in the eyes of King George III and the Parliament of Great Britain. The colonists were cows to be milked, slaughtered. They were mere sheep to be shorn.

Oh, dear listener. But our founding fathers, accustomed to electing those who would tax them prior to to King George, our founding fathers steadfastly resisted this impulse in the fallen human condition. How about us? How about us, dear listener? 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 the host taking charge as the host and removing the parasite.

Oh, our founding fathers did, they removed the parasite of Great Britain, of Parliament and King George III from them, and then began to impose taxes as the United States of America with representation. Oh, instead of a Parliament thousands of miles away in the colonies, we have a parasite deep state in our very midst. That's how it is today. Taxation without representation, virtual, instead of a thousands of miles away.

We, in the contemporary United States of America, have a parasite deep state in our very midst that taxes us incessantly and indirectly, too, through raising rates, for example, in the numberless agencies that the deep state has created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Federal Drug Administration, or by deliberately inflating our currency, for example. This is one of the ways government steals from you, by deliberately inflating our currency, or by borrowing beyond our ability to pay.

All of these measures are indirect taxation without representation, because the American people were not consulted were not consulted in their enactment, but nevertheless, we pay for it all. Now, on the surface, we have some representation in the elected officials who vote to raise our individual income taxes. We can vote Republican, ostensibly for lower taxes, or Democrat, ostensibly for higher taxes, 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 his right hand pulls the rabbit out of his hat, relative to the myriad of other measures government uses functionally to raise our taxes without our consent. So many ways that government functionally raises our taxes without our consent. This is at the heart of the deep state. We have as much, if not more, reason to withdraw our consent to be governed by the deep state of America than did our Founding Fathers to withdraw their consent to be governed by King George III and Parliament.

Most Americans are just too ignorant to know or too busy working their devices to be bothered enough to do anything. It is time to be peacefully fostering a revolution in this area that we should again not have taxation without representation. That is complaint number 17 from the Declaration of Independence, which is just as true today, ironically, over the centuries. It has morphed to being another reason why we should separate ours from the deep state of America, just as our Founding Fathers separated themselves from King and Parliament in their day.

Well, number 18, the 18th reason for separating themselves then from the mother country was because England, and I quote, depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury. Oh, one of the most valuable elements of our liberties and freedom in the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights is a trial by jury. Many Americans don't realize how valuable this is in the life of every citizen, their right to be tried by a jury of your peers. Who knows the extreme value for justice and for the guard against tyranny that a trial by jury represents? Americans have forgotten this.

We don't have them much anymore, trials by jury. But that is what was at stake in the colonies when Jefferson penned the Declaration. Ever since the days of the Magna Carta, which was composed in AD 1216, freemen in England ever since then, freemen in England were accustomed to being tried for a crime before a jury of their peers, rather than a biased judge appointed by the king on whom said judge was dependent for his job and salary. Well, how would you expect that judge to rule, right? In favor of the crown, of course.

A jury of one's peers, however, would rather hear the case with two mutually balanced motives. Two mutually balanced motives. Number one, as peers with understanding of the accused life situation. That would be one of the things that a trial by jury of one's peers would bring because those peers, those fellow citizens, would understand the accused life situation. And then secondly, as a jury impaneled to administer justice in their own community, too, to weigh the facts and the law fairly.

That would be the other mutually balanced motive. They would want justice, but they would also want mercy. Few Americans realize this precious liberty. A jury of one's peers, that is, his neighbors and colleagues who knew him and his character. They would hear both the facts surrounding the alleged crime and, as well, the law upon which its violation was based, and then they would decide guilt or innocence.

Most Americans are utterly, and I'm afraid, completely ignorant of this lost gem in our Western tradition, a trial by jury. If an overzealous prosecutor, wishing to pad his prosecutorial record, or maybe having a distinct bias against an accused, if such a prosecutor brings trumped-up charges against someone, the jury is the last line of defense. Even if a law is on the books and the defendant has violated that law, but the jury feels that the law is unjust, that jury can still acquit the sovereignty of the jury. Who realizes this today, dear listener?

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 being accused of, but the jury must also decide the law, 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. The jury can do this.

Juries have plenary power, it's called. Juries have plenary power to do this. But no one tells them this anymore, especially the judges. In his essay on the trial by jury, it's a famous essay that all law students had to read, at least in the distant past, all law students had to read Judge Lysander Spooner's essay on a trial by jury. Even as Judge Lysander Spooner wrote, he said, 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, unless the weaker party have a veto, they have no power whatever in the government and no liberties. The trial by jury, Spooner says, 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 that gives them any effective voice in the government or any guarantee against oppression. Unquote, the trial by jury. Do you see how crucial it is to our republic?

This is a God-given right that has almost completely disappeared from America. Quickly, it became apparent in the crucible of history that, more often than not, under the jury system, if the guy did it, he was convicted, right? Yes, he was convicted. If he didn't, he was acquitted, and that's how it's supposed to operate. It's not a perfect system either, because that didn't always happen, but generally, it was fair and effective.

It had worked for centuries in England, and then for multiple decades in the colonies, too, until the advent of George III. He began to drag accused colonists summarily before his hand-picked judges, and then, like a sausage factory, he 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 also unjust. It is to this unjust system that the founders complained he deprives us, in many cases, of trial by jury."

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, we withdraw our consent to be governed by that deep state system, and we insist upon establishing a new one, that is a Christian constitutional republic to take the place of the deep states of America, and maybe then we will once again see that indeed we have a trial by jury then again. And then we go on now to number 19 for complaint number 19, which was, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

Number 19, for transporting us, the complaint was against George, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. Ah, this was a complete captive change of venue. It's a corollary of a trial by jury. If you can't have a trial by jury, then you will be transported overseas in this change of venue. And we see this effectively done in our day, too, when in many federal cases where a trial is shopped for a friendly judge to the prosecution.

And once more, this is precisely what happened most recently to Roger Stone. Examine this case and you'll see. Well, number 20, complaint number 20 in the declaration of independence as we continue to move through them. Complaint number 20 involved abolishing the free system of English laws, Jefferson says.

He complains against King George and the parliament as a reason for separating from them because they abolished the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies. Unquote. Complaint number 20. Now, what King George's ministers did very cleverly was arbitrarily enlarge the jurisdiction of a province in a state friendly to the king into the province of another resistant to the king.

And they could then impose the tyranny from the former onto the latter. Our federal system allows for much the same thing when a federal judge rules in one jurisdiction and then it goes on to apply in every other federal jurisdiction, jurisdiction, excuse me, across the country. The attempt to upend President Trump's building of a wall at the southern border is a good example. When opponents of President Trump find a federal judge friendly to their case, they file it in whatever venue over which he presides. But then it goes on to be binding over the rest of the country, not just his jurisdiction.

And in this manner, the Democrats have been effective in at least delaying many of the measures the president has enacted, regardless of how frivolous and absurd those measures and those attempts at delay may be constitutionally. Oh, then, dear listener, we will continue to move on through and complete the complaints that have been lodged against King and Parliament in England and see, go on to see. Indeed, there are specific applications in our own day to our own situation as we struggle to separate ourselves from the deep state.

It is time that we declare our independence from the deep states of America and establish a Christian constitutional republic in its place. This must be done. It's coming. The destruction of the old is coming. So we must be prepared to institute the new.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And we meet for holy worship. I encourage you to visit us, come and see us. Many of you have considered crossing our threshold. I would urge you to do so in the next few weeks.

We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for more information at area code 208-523-0196. And you can check out our website, newgenevaopc.org. Or check out our radio website, which chronicles and catalogs this message, uh, among all the others that we've had. And you can check that out at omnispotestas.org.

That's O-M-N-I-S dash P-O-T-E-S-T-A-S dot org. Omnispotestas.org. And you can then call us once again for further information at area code 208-523-0196.