Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with the 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 what are the 28 principles of the Constitution that has enabled the United States of America, indeed, to become the greatest nation ever in history, one that has transcended the backwardness of history to make a 5,000-year leap. Yes, we are examining the book by Dr. Skousen, The 5,000-Year Leap. He is one who shepherded several scholars to, indeed, establish 28 principles.

He discovered 28 principles in the Constitution that has enabled the United States of America in just under 250 years of history to make a leap over the backwardness, over the benightedness, over the moral darkness of 5,000 years of human history in order to bring to the world an enlightened republic in which more freedom, more prosperity, and more liberty has existed in these 200 brief, 250 years of American history than has ever existed on the earth before.

And this will continue if, indeed, we come to see and establish those principles again in America and, indeed, rediscover our Constitution because our public education system is in the process of causing a night of forgetfulness to descend upon the hearts and lives and brains and spirits of our children in public schools. And it's up to us, parents, you and I, churches, you and I, private schools, you and I, Christian schools, you and I, to, indeed, bring back the knowledge, the true knowledge of the liberty of America as it has been ensconced in our Constitution.

And as Dr. Skousen has done, and I encourage you to discover Dr. Skousen and his book, The 5,000-Year Leap, or his book on the Constitution as well at the website, the National Center for Constitutional Studies.org, nccs.org, the National Center for Constitutional Studies. Just a great site. And you'll find this book, The 5,000-Year Leap. It'll be an eye-opener for you if you've not read it already. But if you have read it, then you know that I am counting down the 28 principles that have been established with our Constitution by our Founding Fathers that have given us the greatest liberty the world has ever seen.

And that first principle was, of course, natural law, a principle of natural law well-established since the times of the Romans, in particular under Cicero, but indeed preceded with the tribal republic of Israel. But that principle of natural law is, natural law is the only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations. And we covered that last week, and I refer you to that lecture. And today we're going to take up the second principle that our Founding Fathers understood clearly in establishing our republic.

And that second principle was, a free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution. How many times have you heard me say such things? Myself, dear listener, how many times have you heard our Founding Fathers echo these same things? Oh, always in the background and forefront of their minds as they went about the business of building this new republic, was the truth that great liberty brings great responsibility, and that man cannot be responsible without moral integrity.

Are you listening, politicians of our day? Yes. Man cannot be responsible without moral integrity. So many of our politicians in our world today do not have that necessary requirement, moral integrity. Dear listener, when it comes to government, think of who you have ceded your power to.

You don't leave your piggy bank with Jesse James. You don't let your daughter date Charles Manson. And you don't hand the judge's gavel to the Roman Emperor Caligula. No, none of these men had the moral integrity to assume any of these trusts. And although they are extreme examples, perhaps, amusing examples, perhaps, they do prove my point.

And perhaps you've heard me cite one of my favorite founding fathers, John Adams. John Adams said shortly after the Constitutional Convention, he said, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other, unquote. Is that burned into your memory yet? It should be, because it distills the consciousness with which our framers labored as they made our Constitution.

And as I have demonstrated to you in past lectures, our founding fathers gave liberty to the states and individuals so extensive and absolute that it would be dangerous to give it to an immoral and degenerate people. Yes, our founding fathers, they gave us liberty. They gave us liberty so extensive and absolute that it would be absolutely dangerous to give it to an immoral and degenerate people. Adams and his fellow delegates to the Constitutional Convention saw the potential for great good as they constructed the document that would set up our new government.

The federal government would hopefully be just strong enough to exercise its enumerated powers and do this on behalf of all the states, not in its own self-interest as a bloated entity into itself as it is today, that it would be just as strong and no stronger. The original intent of the framers was to hem in and hedge about a strong central government, the pernicious effects of which they had so recently observed in throwing off the chains of King George III and the British Parliament. The widest possible liberty and freedom was to be given to the states that the people might live and prosper according to the dictates of their conscience.

A measure of this wide and expansive liberty is reflected in the Tenth Amendment, perhaps the most ignored and transgressed amendment in our constitutional history. And that Tenth Amendment says very briefly, and succinctly, the powers not delegated to the United States, that's the federal government, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, a reserve to the states, respectively, or to the people, unquote. The powers delegated to the federal government were to be so few and strictly enumerated, so that the widest possible liberty, would be left to the people.

When those people were just and moral, that's the essence of what we're driving at today. When those people were just and moral, they could govern their appetites and their actions so as to prosper as responsible citizens and not hurt their neighbor. But when those same people were unjust and immoral, they gave liberty to their appetites and injustices so as to debase and debauch themselves and their neighbor. Oh, our founding fathers saw this. They saw it repeat itself throughout history.

As they studied history, they were true students of history, unlike most of the mindless Antifa and Black Lives Matter people in our nation today. Our founding fathers saw this debasement and debauchery repeat itself throughout history, most recently in their own countries of origin. Thomas Paine puts it this way. He says, Americans are, in the main, industrious, frugal, and honest, while their counterparts in Europe sought after luxury, indolence, amusement, and pleasure. Unquote.

Sounds like he's talking, indeed, about the millennial of today, or indeed the Gen X of today, or indeed the baby boomer of today, too, who does the same kinds of things. In Thomas Paine's day, there was the laboring colonist in his field versus the drunken Frenchman in Europe. And then, unlike the politicians of our day, politicians of our day, rather the statesmen of our founding, they debated and agonized over whether the average American citizen was morally ready for the measure of liberty that their new constitution would provide. They really debated this.

Unlike the politicians of our day, the statesmen of our founding understood that the constitution framed liberty for we the people to be just and moral, not free to be wicked and immoral. Conditions were sufficiently corrupt in the days before the Great Awakening, for example, that many of our founders wondered if we were really ready for liberty. They debated this point among themselves before even launching independence and declaring such to the world before committing their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, as the Declaration says, to such a venture. Dear listener, historically, if you look back, the Great Awakening changed all of that.

Maybe you've never even heard of the Great Awakening. Well, starting in the 1740s, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, one of the geniuses of America, a powerful spiritual awakening swept over the colonies, a revival. God sovereignly moved to save souls and call those souls to himself. In churches throughout the 13 colonies, men and women and children underwent an amazing transformation. This has to happen today, dear listener.

For example, during the period preceding the revolution, during the Great Awakening, the taverns, previously packed with drunken citizens, swilling rum, the taverns were empty while the churches were full. Farms, which were previously derelict and run down due to laziness and sloth, these farms were transformed into thriving enterprises because of renewed consciences.

And houses of prostitution, too, which previously thrived owing to the indulgence of decadent lust on the part of the colonists, these houses of prostitution were shut down by town sheriffs as husbands returned home to save their wives and marriages because their souls were now saved. Also, crime in the streets, like in the streets of America today, whether it be Chicago or Portland, in the time of the colonists, crime in the streets, known as the pestilence of thuggery, where most cities of the colonies were not safe to be in after dark, owing to the gangs of thugs that roamed the streets. Are we talking about Chicago of today?

Are we talking about Portland of today or Seattle of today? Well, these streets and the crime-ridden streets of the colonies suddenly declined, the crime in it suddenly declined, that such men like George Whitefield felt secure enough to preach revival in those same streets. Well, dear listener, it's hard to capture the sense of excitement and renewal that infused the national soul during this time in our history, known as the Great Awakening. Its effects waxed and waned from the 1740s until well into the 1770s, right up to and including the days of the Revolution.

George Whitefield, for example, though broken and exhausted by his demanding schedule, nevertheless preached right through 1770, just after the British gunned down those colonists on Boston Green and what has come to be known as the Boston Massacre. But, dear listener, what is often missed in the study of American history is the mutual effect of the spiritual awakening on the revolution and the revolution then on the spiritual awakening. In the preaching of the awakening, for example, people were hearing the one consistent gospel of Jesus Christ, that a man is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Oh, what a precious message that needs to be preached again in America. All through the colonies, this one message united people in one faith, regardless of their denominational affiliation. And that still holds true today. This one true message that we have salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone unites all Christians. The gospel also brought home another unifying principle.

As the book, The Light and the Glory proclaim, The Light and the Glory, written by Peter Marshall, this book says, and I quote, they, that is the colonists, were beginning to discover a basic truth, which would be a major foundation stone of God's new nation, and which by 1776 would be declared self-evident, that in the eyes of their creator, all men were of equal value. Unquote. The Great Awakening and its beneficent effects on the national soul also persuaded the founders that the colonies were ready to become states.

At the time, nations were confederated together, but they were ready to become states now precisely because they were morally and spiritually prepared for liberty.

One contemporary of the revolution, he wrote this, and looking back on those days, he says, and I quote, the two or three years before the Declaration of Independence always appears to be the great period of the revolution, the time of greatest self-denial and national cohesion, when men ceased to extort and abuse one another, when families and communities seemed peculiarly united, when the courts were wonderfully free of that constant bickering over land and credit that had dominated their colonial life. Unquote. We were ready for liberty then. Can we say the same thing now? Oh, Samuel Adams, puts it this way.

He says, the sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of heaven, let us become a virtuous people. Then shall we both deserve and enjoy it. That is liberty. While, on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners through the form of our constitution, excuse me, though the form of our constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves. Yes, Adams saw this.

If we are vicious and debauched, we will in reality be slaves with all the freedom that we supposedly have. And I submit to you, dear listener, we today, we in America are swiftly becoming a nation vicious and debauched. As more and more of us demand our rights in order to escape our responsibilities. We want unrestrained freedom to indulge our appetites as if these were constitutional rights. No, your appetite is not a constitutional right.

We want to indulge our sexual appetites in every manner imaginable and then abort the mistakes so that no one needs to be saddled with a baby. As Obama used to put it, we are swiftly becoming a nation of slaves chained to desires that were meant to be safely and happily answered in the exclusive bonds of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. We want to indulge the appetite of our greed such that both business and government conspired to bankrupt this generation and our children, as evidenced by our descent into financial recession.

And we are swiftly becoming a nation of slaves to chained to the desire to possess all our eyes lay sight of and possess it now. The Bible says the borrower is slave to the lender. And the more we borrow against the future, the more we will be slaves to it, dear listener. This is why I keep coming back to this theme that our nation in its present condition is not ready for the kind of liberty envisioned by our founders. What is a precondition for it is a complete reformation of the hearts and souls of individual Americans before the collective heart and soul of our nation is ready for liberty.

Oh, only then will we be fit to keep the constitution our founders gave us. What will continue to happen in the meantime is what we see increasingly, our descent into tyranny. It is an ineluctable law of nature. If you behave like a beast, you will need to be controlled like a beast. And only a tyrant can do this effectively.

If you behave like a sexual animal, you will need to be restrained like an animal. If you go prowling after another's property like an animal, stealing and forging like a Wall Street wolf, you will need to be restrained like an animal. If you kill and brutalize like an animal, whether it is in your family or in the streets, you will need to be restrained like an animal. And as our culture and our entire nation becomes more bestial, we should not be surprised to see the requisite restraints demanded by people as they groan under the weight of the beasts in the land.

We have a nation of beasts, whether it's in Congress or whether it's in the streets. A strange and fascinating dynamic begins to take place, dear listener. They will wish to indulge their own bestial appetites, but when the ensuing pain and chaos overtakes the people, they will long for some restraint on the bestial behavior of the other guy. And as long as these beasts are few and far between, as they have been in the past in a republic, it can survive. But after a certain threshold is reached, and I submit to you, we've reached that threshold.

And beasts become the rule and not the exception in our land. Then only a tyrant can answer those needs of restraint. Only a tyrant can impose the kind of law and order such bestial chaos requires in a bestial society. Ben Franklin says, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Unquote. Oh, that sounds like the voice of experience, doesn't it? Ben Franklin saw it play out in Great Britain. And it was playing out in America, too, for that matter. Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, Franklin says.

He says, as nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. Franklin understood this law of nature. If you behave like a beast, you'll need to be controlled like a beast. Bestial nations, as America is increasingly becoming, bestial nations require beast masters. That's precisely what we will get unless and until we become, in Franklin's words, a virtuous people.

True virtue. As only one source, dear listener, I submit to you, the God of heaven and earth, the God of the Bible and his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. In Christ, we find our spiritual life.

It is Christ coming to us in the Holy Spirit who first brings us from spiritual death to spiritual life so that we are able to see with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears. The Bible comes alive to us and we long for the company of God's people and we seek to change our lives into the pattern of the blessed one who saved us. And we seek to be like him and become Christ's disciples. Now, no one better epitomizes repentance and reformation like the gospel character, Zacchaeus. He was a rich tax collector in Jericho, which meant that he was both dishonest and roundly hated in the world of his day.

Just as in our own day, the locals groaned under the heavy burden of taxation the Romans imposed upon them. But when Jesus called this man, Zacchaeus, to repentance and salvation, he underwent a complete reformation of character. He became, if you will, a virtuous citizen. On account, as the account notes for us, excuse me, Zacchaeus gave half of his goods to charity and he restored all that he had taken dishonestly. He restored it fourfold.

Can you imagine the great spiritual awakening that would happen in America if every citizen underwent this kind of conversion? And note Jesus' blessing on him too. Then from Luke chapter 19, he said, today salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham. For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. Dear listeners, this year's state here today, are you one of the lost whom Jesus seeks?

All of us feel like this occasionally, don't we? We behave like beasts. But is this characteristic of your entire life? Do you feel like your life is lost in a continuous downward spiral of bestial behavior soon to end? Oh, the lives of beasts are short and miserable, aren't they?

Well, if this is the case with you, if you sense that not only America at large, but in your own life, you are heading down the path of the lost beast with your bestial behavior, then I invite you to come to Christ this day and trust in him as your only Lord and Savior. Then and only then will you become a virtuous citizen as well of the greatest republic God has made on the face of the earth. And more importantly, you will become a glorious, virtuous citizen of God's eternal kingdom. That's far more important. God's eternal kingdom, the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Believe in this one today. For the Son of Man, as he told Zacchaeus, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday. And we indeed do celebrate the liberty that we have under our constitution and we revere our constitution, but we preach the word of God as well on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

Perhaps you've been thinking of crossing our threshold and visiting us. We encourage you to do so. You'll find a warm welcome and you'll find an opportunity to worship the Savior in spirit and in truth. We meet for a worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. You can call us for more information and feedback at 208-523-0196. That's 208-523-0196.