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, oh America, in these days of demonic delirium, your covering of protection has been removed. Your covering of protection from God has been removed. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ has gone throughout history, a covering of protection against the evil one and his demonic cords has accompanied.

John puts it this way. He says, we know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him and the evil one does not touch him. That's the sense of the covering and the protection of God over the peoples of the church, what that means. And it goes for nations and peoples as well as individuals as Israel and Judah discovered throughout their history. For example, Isaiah says, I am the Lord your God who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.

The Lord of hosts is his name. And I've put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth and saying to Zion, you are my people. Oh, how encouraging that is indeed when God says he covers you in the shadow of his hand. But that protection can also be removed, taken away through disobedience and faithlessness. For example, because of Judah's lapse into idolatry and demon worship, Isaiah proclaimed to her he has taken away the covering of Judah.

During the conquest of Canaan, Israel found itself on the receiving and a blessing though, for the removing of the covering of protection over the demonic pagan peoples of Canaan, the land they were entering to take possession. And he tells Israel, do not fear the people of the land for they are bred for us. Their protection is removed from them and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them." Well, in establishing the nations, God has set their boundaries and he has raised up and he has put down kings.

In Acts, Paul says, he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. And the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar learned these things as well. He says in Daniel chapter 2, he changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives them wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding, unquote.

From Nebuchadnezzar's mouth. So when God sovereignly raises up, he protects and covers. When he removes and tears down, he takes away that protection and covering. What a precious thing is that covering, dear listener. America used to have it, that protection of the Most High.

As Psalm 91 reveals to us, that covering of protection guards us against the demonic enemies that are bent on conquest, disease, and mass death. He says in Psalm 91 verses 4 and 5, he will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge. And the picture there is of a fluttering, doting mother, hen, or eagle. And the psalm goes on to say, his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. These are metaphors for spiritual armor throughout scripture.

The psalmist goes on to say, you will not fear the terror of the night, that is demons who haunt the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, which of course is conquering armies, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness. And of course, that is a reference to disease and plague. And finally, nor shall you fear the destruction that wastes at noonday, and that's the ravages of death. So that covering, that supernatural protection from the hand of God, it has been over this land, the United States of America, from our beginning. Oh, all of the founding fathers referenced this in one way or another, but George Washington puts it so eloquently.

And he said this in his first inaugural speech to Congress. He said this about God's superintending protection. And I quote, no people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. Yes, providential agency.

Indeed, God has overseen, he has overwatched us, hasn't he? God has watched over us and protected us for the entire stretch of our existence to the present moment. But in our flight from him into the arms of demonic delirium that I've been covering for the last few weeks, in our flight into the arms of demonic delirium, the United States has forsaken him and consequently forsaken his protection over us too. Washington also warned us of this eventuality.

He said in that same speech, we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven has ordained, unquote. And of course, those eternal rules of order and right are nothing less than God's law as expressed in the Bible. Indeed, these we have forsaken. Washington shuddered to think what might be the consequences too. And I go on to quote another letter of his where he said, I am sure there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States.

And I would be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them, unquote. Ah, dear listener, God alone is able to protect the United States. The history of God's protection has not yet been completely written, but it is there for us to see. History has demonstrated that there is an inverse relationship between the power and presence of Jesus Christ in the gospel among the nations and the power and presence of the devil in dominion over the nations.

Where one increases in power and strength, the other decreases by the same proportion in power and strength. And John tells us of what the default situation is without the gospel. He says in 1 John 5, we know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Without God determining to take back his creation from the evil one, the world would continue under the power of the evil one. So it has been since the fall, so it is now, and so it would ever be if God had not chosen to intervene and save and redeem his creation.

John also says in chapter 3 of his first letter, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, unquote. So wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ has gone, the works of the devil have been destroyed. How eloquently redemptive history testifies to this too. For example, Jesus initially rolled back the power of the evil one in his earthly ministry, delegating that authority to the church. Even as Luke chapter 10 tells us, the 72 returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you, unquote. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ went, so went the protection and covering of God over those nations, tongues, and peoples. Oh, the church did in fact wrest control of the world from the evil one wherever she went, civilizing them as she grew. Even as Jesus said in Mark 16, and he said to them, go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe. In my name, they will cast out demons. They will speak in new tongues. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them.

They will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover, unquote, from Mark chapter 16. And we know, wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ went, so went the protection and covering of God over those nations, tongues, and peoples. Each and every one of those signs I just mentioned for you from Mark was signaled in the book of Acts as the gospel went out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to all the world. Gospel increased. Paganism decreased.

Satan's power and those nations coming under the influence of the gospel saw a corresponding decrease in influence of his ability to control the peoples of those nations. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ went, so went the protection and covering of God over those nations, tongues, and peoples. Now, St. Augustine, in his magisterial work, The City of God, spends chapter after chapter going into great detail about the pagan demons behind the gods of Rome and how they have lost their power now over the minds and hearts of men as the gospel of Jesus Christ advanced.

A major reason St. Augustine wrote The City of God was to explain to pagan Rome why their religion didn't work anymore. The city of God, to which Christians belonged, was gradually, step by step, heart by heart, replacing the city of man to which they had belonged. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ went, so went the protection and covering of God over those nations, tongues, and peoples. Now, a shining example is that of the missionary St. Boniface, who preached the gospel to the pagan German tribes way back in the early 8th century.

Now, at one point, he dramatically chopped down an ancient oak tree thought to be sacred to the Norse god Thor, and that anyone desecrating that tree would be instantly killed by a bolt of lightning from Thor. Well, the German tribesmen anxiously awaited the outcome of St. Boniface's chopping down that tree, and when Boniface came through it unharmed, and in fact, he began dressing the wood of the tree to build a church, the pagans were converted. The pagan demonic influence of Thor's priests began to diminish. Wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ went, so went the protection and covering of God over those nations, tongues, and peoples.

So, this historical phenomenon is nothing less than the fulfillment of his gospel of the kingdom. You may remember from the gospels that when the Pharisees dismissed his casting out of demons to doing it by the power of Beelzebub. Jesus pointed out that that is a contradiction in terms, because no creature works against his own interests, and that is precisely what the devil would be doing if he cast out his own agents from men. Jesus goes on to say, but if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, that is, if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, not by Beelzebub, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man? Then, indeed, he may plunder his house, unquote, from Matthew chapter 12. Jesus Christ has indeed bound the strong man, that is, the devil, and since Christ's advent, he has been steadily plundering the devil's house, that is, gaining souls for the kingdom, retrieving them from the grip of the devil, growing and expanding that kingdom wherever the gospel goes, and diminishing Satan's power and control over whole tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations.

That is what we mean when we say that wherever the gospel of Jesus Christ goes, a covering and protection accompanies the church as it flourishes in those tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations to which it comes. This is just an historical fact, dear listener. Over the centuries, demonic enslavement and pagan superstition and the shadow of sheer ignorance diminishes in an inverse proportion to the spiritual liberty, biblical truth, and the light of the knowledge of God that is inculcated there.

So much so is this true that scholars used to point out that even Western science, as we know it, first found its fertile ground among Christian scientists who were able to explore an objective universe created by a good God who wanted his creatures to investigate how it works so that they might improve the lot of man, thus fulfilling the creation mandate, which runs from Genesis chapter 1 verse 28, that creation mandate is God bless them, that is, Adam and Eve.

And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Unquote. The dominion mandate given indeed to the church. Oh, just one resource I'd like to refer you to in terms of how Christianity has influenced science. And that is this book by Jonathan Hill.

And it's called, What Has Christianity Ever Done For Us? And the subtitle is, How It Shaped the Modern World. What Has Christianity Ever Done For Us? Oh, How It Has Shaped the Modern World by Jonathan Hill. But I must say, to such a turn have we come that now it is the Christian faith that is attacked at every turn and has become the whipping boy for every ill in society, hasn't it?

Including being anti-science. We are anti-science if we wish to trust our God-given immune systems, for example. Strengthening it and supporting it rather than an experimental gene therapy drug. An mRNA jab is not a vaccine in the strict sense. Some of us prefer to trust that with which God has naturally endowed us.

A complex immune system honed and perfected over millennia of experience. We're not anti-science nor anti-vaccine, but we are anti-vax quacks. We are anti-science according to the world if we calmly, patiently reassert the obvious truth that there are two genders, male and female, and not the demonic fiction of multiple genders numbering into the dozens and yea, hundreds. We are also labeled as anti-science if we challenge the settled science of the religion of climate change. Remember that all through history, it is superstitious religion that can never be questioned.

Unchallenged obedience to the received orthodoxy must always be maintained on pain of ridicule and ostracizing and sometimes even death. Every other avenue of truth must be silenced as the mainstream media is doing on climate change. On the other hand, as nurtured in the early days of science exploration guided by Christian scholars, there was no such thing as a settled science. But by its very nature, every hypothesis, every theory and settled truth was open to testing and challenge, limited only by freshly discovered facts and truths.

All of that is being squashed now by the superstition of climate change, and it's done for financial and political reasons, not for Mother Earth. Make no mistake about that, dear listener. And all of this is truly reminiscent of the old religious orthodoxy of geocentrism, for example, desperately clinging by the church against the fresh discoveries of Galileo. Today, however, it is the church of scientism, and scientism is not science. Scientism is the merging of pseudoscience with political interests, and it is the church of scientism which mercilessly persecutes any facts or truths brought forward to challenge the received orthodoxy.

Oh, dear listener, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, our Western heritage of the Christian faith has been eroded, ridiculed, and marginalized in its shaping of the future. We need not here rehearse the history of that decline. I've done that abundantly elsewhere, but suffice it to say that we have emptied our national character of its Christian spiritual formation. And in its place, we have put, we have put ostensibly nothing, a vacuum, right?

But is it really a vacuum? Are we just a spiritually neutral, objective society? Is that even possible? Can the soul of a nation be a vacuum? No.

Your demonic, deep state, rodent gnomes would have you think so, but not Jesus. As Jesus points out, nature hates a spiritual vacuum. Something will come to fill it. The devil will not leave our vessel empty. In speaking of the Israel of his own generation, Jesus says, and I quote, when the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.

Then it says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits, more evil than itself. And so they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.

So also will it be with this evil generation. Unquote the words of Jesus. Are you listening, America? So it is with this evil generation. Behold your present state.

It is worth worse, excuse me, than the first. This is what I mean by demonic delirium. A case can be made that on this continent has come a demonic state seven times worse than when we first arrived with Christian missionaries and colonists who labored to establish the church and the gospel among the then pagan tribes of America. Better by far to be a man in the native tribes which inhabited this continent 500 years ago. That is the noble savage of our western myth.

Better to be him than the pathetic, demonic, pencil-necked, man-bunned, skinny-jeaned, soy boy Antifa rioter of today. Oh, the punk puke of today is seven times more demonic and seven times weaker and more unprincipled than his pagan counterpart of 500 years ago. And the case can be made that our culture and so-called leadership is becoming more and more luciferian too, overtly so, than in the past. For example, not only has Hollywood crawling with stars become wormwood crawling with fallen stars, but culture-wide evil is celebrated, isn't it?

Movies, music, and media in general has more and more boldly incorporated satanic symbols and rituals into everything from Super Bowl halftime shows to children's Saturday morning cartoons. For $100, you can get a pair of Satan shoes, festooned with pentagrams and filled with real blood. Satanic cults thrive in the highest echelons of our government and military. Do some homework. It's not just a conspiracy theory, dear listener.

And of course, since Roe v. Wade in 1973, over 9 million babies have been aborted, rivers of their bloodshed, to the delight of the evil one and his minions, many of whom celebrate luciferian rituals at abortion clinics. The biblical family, too, is being systematically destroyed, and in its place, a redefinition of family, with redefined gender and sex roles, goes on apace. In many quarters, it's getting increasingly difficult to distinguish male from female, with the demons in government recently banning even the use of traditional terms like mother and father from government documents. Well, on and on we could go.

What we see today beginning to reappear used to be a routine thing throughout the earth, and that is the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. It is as if in Revelation chapter 9 unfolding before our eyes, where we see in chapter 9, and the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.

Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. As we showed in our series on Revelation, the fallen star is Lucifer, the angel of light, and the numberless locusts are his demonic hosts. From time to time, the earth has crawled with them. It's not a one-time circumstance to happen in a far-flung future great tribulation. No, it is a recurring historical phenomenon.

It's happening again. We are entering days of demonic delirium. As Isaiah says, he has taken away the covering of Judah. As Joshua and Caleb said of the nations of Canaan, their protection is removed from them. It has happened to us with terrible, portentous consequences.

As we observe throughout the prophets and in the apocalypse, when God's protective spiritual covering is removed from a people, the four horsemen of the apocalypse have free reign to ride. War, famine, and disease come upon a people so abandoned. All of these plagues are soon to fall upon us, if not beginning already. COVID-19, anyone? Well, what are we to do?

What is to become of us, dear listener? Oftentimes, such people and cultures are utterly destroyed. As the apocalypse shows, when tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations are this far gone, they rarely repent and turn back to God in order that they might be saved. Extinction and oblivion are their destiny. This is most likely our future.

Don't be falsely reassured by Mr. F. Only. If only we can re-elect Trump. If only we can get a majority of conservatives on the Supreme Court. If only we can get through this coronavirus pandemic on and on. The if-onlys are false hopes.

They will only lead you to disillusionment and despair. Then again, on rare occasions, a people genuinely repent and turn to God. The pagan city of Nineveh did so at the preaching of Jonah, when he finally got around to executing his God-given mission, that is. And Judah briefly repented of her idolater and of the good King Josiah. And America, too, underwent two great awakenings when she turned back to God.

It can happen, but usually not when we are this far gone, that is, given over to Lucifer as we are. We are presently as far gone as the hard-hearted dwellers on the earth in the apocalypse. The most likely scenario is that we Christians, that is the church, will have to be prepared to pick up the pieces when the earth, as we know it, completely disintegrates and is destroyed. The church was there after the fall of Rome, for example, and the church was there to rebuild after the barbarian invasions. But each time, Christ's kingdom advances a little further.

Christ takes more dominion in creation with every defeat of the evil one. May the evil one be defeated in America. The kingdom of God has grown like the proverbial mustard seed. It began very small among a few disciples in Jerusalem until it is now a huge tree in which the nations take up nest. God's provision and protection is with those who trust him.

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him, as John says. God's promise is to us, dear listener. He says in Psalm 91, he will cover you with his opinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler. Oh, this is just as true for nations as it is for individuals.

If we rebuild in faith, his protection will once again be over us, and the kingdom will have advanced a little further in the process, too. So don't despair, dear listener. Do not give up hope. Be realistic in seeing that our job will probably be not in turning America around as it is now, but rather rebuilding from scratch a whole new country. It may mean years of blood and chaos and destruction, but if we fight with the weapons of our warfare, which are mighty to the pulling down of strongholds, that is the blood of the saints and the word of our testimony, as Revelation says, then we will prevail.

It cannot be otherwise. The gates of hell will not prevail against us. As Psalm 2 says, he has made the nations his heritage, the ends of the earth, his possession. Christ will break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Oh, go in confidence, dear listener, through it all, knowing that it cannot be otherwise, that that Christ will triumph.

His covering will one day be over us again. 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 more information at area code 208-523-0196. Once again, call us for more information or feedback at area code 208-523-0196.