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, why is America blithely unaware of our slide into the new American slavery? Yes, for the next couple of weeks, that'll be my theme, the new American slavery. Slavery.

Does that sound like an exaggeration or hyperbole or even an oxymoron, right? Americans and slavery just don't go together. Americans have never been slaves. We immediately and instinctively retort, don't we? We fought the British for our liberty.

We've been fighting stubbornly ever since. We are, after all, the land of the free and the home of the brave, right? Now, in many ways, this protest is true. At various periods in our history, we've been true to our roots and we fought for our freedom. But it misses one important phenomenon, and that is incrementalism.

That is change by slow degrees over time. Change so slow, no one really notices it happening. It's the old frog in the kettle metaphor, right? Drop a frog in a boiling pot of water, or he'll immediately leap out. Put him in a pot of cold water and gradually raise the temperature, and he won't even notice it until it's too late, and he is one boiled frog.

Well, I submit that Americans are like that frog in the kettle, slowly having the temperature of our tyranny raised until we are one boiled frog. And we don't have a lot of time to jump out either. There are those who have been turning up the temperature of our slavery incrementally for decades now, and we are gradually reaching the boiling point. Perhaps our servitude will become clearer if we know exactly what a slave is. I quote from the book, Slavery, A World History by Milton Meltzer, and he defines a slave as, a slave is a man who is the property of another.

Very simply put, a slave is a man who is the property of another. Banish the simplistic American image of race slavery in our past, the vast plantations of the South in the 19th century with black men picking cotton in the fields and black women cooking and nannying the children from Massa in the big house, right? American race slavery was these things and more, but in the vast scope of human history, slavery encompassed so much more, and we'll touch on it so we can get a closer look at what is happening to us as a people here in the United States.

But foundational to slavery, foundational as practiced everywhere by all men and nations at all times in history is this principle. A slave is one man who is the property owned, possessed at the complete disposal of another man with all that that entails. In fact, Meltzer's opening chapter in his book is immediately challenging. That first chapter is thing or person, a book on slavery, thing or person, right? And I urge all of us to pause and consider the evidence before dismissing the new American slavery as some sort of conspiracy theory.

Once again, if I'm a conspiracy theorist in your mind, then you are a naive, brainwashed Pollyanna. We are sliding into slavery. Consider, for example, number one, slavery is not the exception in history, but rather the rule of history. We're merely sinking back into the rule rather than the exception. Slavery is not the exception in history, but rather the rule of history.

Most Americans have no patience with history and think that they can live without it. Such people are doomed to repeat it, including the chapters on being slaves. That's very close. Most Americans living today and their children and their children's children will be slaves. This is almost a certainty with the alacrity with which our soon-to-be masters are moving.

But these slave masters in the 21st century, they are not singular monsters who have suddenly appeared on the stage of history. No! They are as old as Pharaoh, who made slaves of the Israelites. The modern masters are as old as Nimrod, who made slaves of the Chaldeans and forced them to build the Tower of Babel. Our modern slave masters are as old as the serpent in the garden, who made slaves of our first parents, Adam and Eve.

Slavery has constituted the norm of how men live from the earliest mists of time, and it's no different today. We are fundamentally the same in nature as we were then. Slavery will characterize our future. Historians have unearthed evidence of some primitive men forcing other men to work their fields and husband their animals soon after we transitioned from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled farmer shepherds. And that evidence goes back some 10,000 years.

Slavery stretching over 10,000 years. That evidence is sparse at first, but accumulates steadily until we come to the Sumerian cultures of Mesopotamia, about 3,000 BC, and then the evidence floods upon us. Sumer was composed of a small class of princes, priests, and soldiers, with a vast majority of men being chattel slaves. Chattel, that means property, property of the upper class. Most men were property of the upper class.

Such would be the basic pattern of civilization worldwide now for millennia. So, always keep in mind as you ponder the future, dear listener, and say it can't happen here. Au contraire. Always keep in mind what is foundational to slavery. He is property to another, and this has been going on for millennia.

The slave is property of another. Meltzer says, once again, in his book, he says, to possess something, to hold property, means to have unlimited power over it. The slave is subject to his master, not just to his authority, but to the full exercise of his master's power. This is coming upon you and me, dear listener. Consequently, the slave is treated as other property is treated.

Meltzer, once again, says, like cattle, a slave can be bought, sold, hired out, exchanged, given as a gift, or inherited. For, in theory, a slave is legally not a person. In most cultures, he had no individual rights and has enjoyed no legal protection. The law bothers with him only to ensure his complete subjection to his master, unquote. Now, men were made slaves for a variety of reasons, even as we will be made slaves, but for the very same reasons.

Men were made slaves when they went into debt to another. Debt slavery was outlawed in England and then in America many centuries ago, but it's coming back in our ability to have to pay in debt, pay with whatever means necessary. Or men were made slaves when they committed a crime against another or against society or when they were caught up in the dragnet of slave hunters who would prey upon whole villages and whole regions, sometimes, of a particular continent. This happened in Africa.

But most often, slaves were either captives of war or else, later in a civilization's history, as civilizations matured, slaves were born into slavery as a child then of another slave. The master inherited the children of his slaves. There was no escape either for most slaves, no escape, no upward mobility to look forward to, no way out of a life of servitude except death. Slavery was ubiquitous throughout our history as a human race, dear listener. Slaves built the pyramids in cities of the Nile.

In Egypt, slaves tilled the terraced hills of Greece and they built the Parthenon of Athens. Slaves manned the oars of the ships of war in Carthage. Slaves composed almost two-thirds of the population of Rome during the empire and they did everything from blow the nose of the emperor to dig in the mines of Las Medulas. One of the most notorious mines where life expectancy was very short. Slavery was an integral part of every civilization and culture in history, dear listener.

It was a given. It was assumed to be the natural state of mankind and still is, if you consider the broad sweep of history and the broad sweep of thinking, even in modern 21st century humanity. Slavery is assumed to be the natural state of mankind by not only the master, but also by the slave himself. Once again, Mr. Meltzer puts it this way. He says, how much slavery was taken for granted can be judged from the absence of discussion in ancient literature.

Slavery existed in every society as a vital part of economic life, yet most ancient authors did not write about it as a problem. They may have conjectured about its origin or detailed the slave's life, but few imagined it was possible to abolish it. Unquote. Slavery was the way of life in the ancient world. It's an important fact to keep in mind when we come to consider a thing like the abolition movement in 19th century America.

It was then that slavery as an institution was challenged on Christian principles. It was then that men and women imagined that it was possible to abolish slavery altogether from the experience of mankind, but not so for the bulk of our history. Slavery is the norm, not the exception in the history of mankind. Well, secondly, we must also consider that man is cursed with a slave mentality, making him susceptible to being either a master or a slave. Yes, this is the general composition of the inside of man.

Man is cursed with a slave mentality, making him susceptible to being either a master or a slave. And it's important to include the master as part of slave mentality, for slavery could not exist without the attitude of one man presuming to have the right of property over another. To have a slave, one requires a master. But it is of a whole that the mentality or the state of the spirit, we might say, is one of slavery. Your modern masters rely upon this baseline mentality, dear listener.

Your modern masters rely on this for most men in order for their system of modern American slavery to work. Slavery does not work if the slave refuses to comply and cannot be persuaded or forced to comply. But fortunately for the masters throughout history, the vast swath of mankind is already predisposed not to freedom, but to slavery. That is the sad commentary on our race. The slave complies with all of the indignities of his state because of three reasons.

Number one, the slave complies with all of his indignities because the consequences for not doing so are perceived to be harsher than those for complying to the command of the master. These consequences could be anything from not getting his bowl of gruel that night to being whipped and beaten all the way to being disposed of altogether, ultimately in death.

Americans are facing this quandary as the state grows in its tyranny and brings consequences, punishes Americans, not for a lack of compliance to law, but punishes its citizens for lack of compliance to mere dictates of a president, for example, or a mayor or a governor of a state or even a health official who has really no legislative power or enforcement power at all. This tyranny is a red flag for the sure state of the new American slavery.

Well, number two, the slave also complies with all of the indignities of his state because the slave perceives that he has no personal power or resources to alter or abolish his present circumstances and institute new ones for himself. The perceptions of the slave is that he's powerless, resourceless to change anything. The slave's strength is limited to that of his own person, and he has not the time nor resources to plan or execute a strategy for freedom. That's been the case for millennia. It is the old, what can I do alone syndrome, right?

What can I do alone all by myself? Ah, the slave is too busy laboring for his next meal to worry about freedom. We see this situation quickly developing in America with our supply lines breaking down, inflation, excuse me, inflation literally taking food off of our tables. Americans are quickly being reduced to giving all of their strength, energy, and resources to just simply feeding themselves and their families. That in and of itself is an infallible sign of the new American slavery.

And then thirdly, the slave complies with all of the indignities of his state because finally, the slave resorts to the default setting of the human heart, that of habit, or what we call today the normalcy bias, that this is the way things are, always happen, and always will be. That sense of the normalcy bias, of habit, stems from a lack of imagination, that things could possibly be any different. A slave has been told the gods have ordained these things to be so, or that because this is the way our ancestors have done things, that this is the way we must do them, right?

The slave then becomes a prisoner of his own mind, preferring to let things proceed the way they are because they're safe and they're known, and they don't involve the risk of non-compliance, we mentioned earlier, or the risk of self-reliance. I have to rely on myself, that's the good old American way of freedom, but it is not the way of slave mentality. The slave tells himself that he can't rely on himself, but has something he must rely upon from massa, if you will, or just the plain scary unknown. The slave becomes a prisoner of his own mind.

Americans are lapsing into this default setting of the human soul, and they're doing it very quickly. Previous generations of Americans were taught, and they were groomed for liberty in their schools, in their churches, and their families. It was an American principle, wasn't it? But now, the old shadow of habit creeps upon us. The normalcy of slavery returns in the shape of the new American slavery.

Now, it is important to note the direct cause of the slave mentality, and that is, of course, the fall of mankind in our first parents, Adam and Eve. In our high-handed rebellion against the one who created us, the human race gained not our freedom, but our slavery. By falling prey to sin, we become slaves of sin. Jesus himself tells us, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. So, if, as the abolitionists of the 19th century America tell us, chattel slavery is a sin, well, then it, of itself, is a product of the sin nature, chattel slavery.

The sin mentality, which is intrinsic to our nature as a race. Slavery exists because we are predisposed by our fallen sin nature to practice slavery, to live in it, to make of it an institution of our respective civilizations, yea, to be slaves ourselves. What else can we do as slaves to sin? But to sin, and sin by doing chattel slavery. So, dear listener, do not be so proud as to think that you cannot succumb to that ancient predisposition towards a slave mentality.

It can happen to us all unless we indeed are educated, redirected, groomed to be free men and women. That idea of an intrinsic slave mentality, a predisposition towards it, it's wired into our nature, and it must be transformed out of us. And we'll deal with that more a little bit later. But it is indeed, just a tease here, it is indeed through Christ and Christ alone that we are transformed from slavery into liberty. And the most freest, and the most free, excuse me, the most free countries in history have been those that have been under the rule of Christ and under the influence of Christian culture.

That is a fact. Well, then thirdly, we must also note that slavery was, is now, and always will be the most profitable business on the planet. Excuse me, let me say that again. Slavery was, is now, and always will be the most profitable business on the planet. Oh, this all too pertinent fact was brought home to me recently by the scholar Catherine Austin Fitz.

Catherine Austin Fitz, F-I-T-T-S, who is a currency expert and author of the publication, The Solari Report. I encourage you to resource her. She maintains that slavery is, was, and always will be the most profitable enterprise ever, bar none. Wall Street, big oil, big pharma, even a soft job in Congress, cannot compare to the rich returns of slavery. And this is being made manifest before our eyes in our own day.

For example, just one example, at our southern border, as the Mexican cartels trade in human slaves for their sex, labor, and drugs. Oh, exacting a man's labor for one's own benefit, and then giving him nothing in return, is hugely profitable. It's slavery. Exacting a man's labor for one's own benefit, and then giving him nothing in return, is hugely profitable. And this has been evident to men very early in our history, whether he has had the chance to sit down and chart this fact on a ledger or not.

It is the old illusion of getting something for nothing. Although we'll see that this apparent abiding truth is, in reality, an illusion. You don't get anything for nothing. A price is always paid for one man enslaving another. Both men pay a price.

Once again, Meltzer says this about the effect of slavery on both men. He says, for both, it is a moral disaster. Keep that in mind just briefly. Slavery for both master and slave is a moral disaster. We'll expand on this here in the future.

But for now, we must consider why masters are motivated to enslave their fellow man as property. It is for profit, nothing else. For example, the scholar Kenneth M. Stamp. That's a double P, S-T-A-M-P-P. Kenneth Stamp. In his book, The Peculiar Institution, Slavery in the Antebellum South, Mr.

Stamp goes through a whole list of reasons why Southerners justified Negro race slavery. For example, because the black African was made by his nature to be a slave. That was one reason they gave. Or that God had ordained that the black African slave was to be civilized by the white man through slavery. Or that because the best of Western life and culture could never exist without slavery.

But after all was said and done, Stamp concludes this after popping those balloons of illusion, Stamp concludes this, and I quote, the pathos in the life of every master lay in the fact that slavery had no philosophical defense worthy of the name, that it had nothing to commend itself to posterity, except that it paid, unquote. Very succinctly put, nothing. Slavery in the South, and I would submit to you, slavery across time throughout the millennia has had nothing to commend itself to posterity, except that it paid. That's the essence of the pursuit of slavery is profit. It's true throughout history, and it's true today.

After chronicling the rise of Italy's Renaissance culture and economy, once again, Meltzer puts it this way. He says, in Renaissance Italy, traders from Europe and the Levant brought silks, carpets, furs, spices, and timber, and sold wines, figs, linen, and woolens. But the most profitable commodity of all was slaves. Yes, that has been true, not only in Renaissance Italy, but all through history. The reason why your masters now today are hurting you, they're manipulating you into slavery, is precisely because it is the most profitable enterprise ever, bar none.

It is the ultimate form of business success, guaranteed to control the market for profits. Oh, do you remember, have you heard what Klaus Schwab, the chairman of the World Economic Forum, has said about us in the future, about the great swath of mankind here coming in the future under the Great Reset? Under the Great Reset, Klaus Schwab says, you will own nothing, have nothing, and you will be happy. The temerity of this man. You will own nothing, have nothing, and you will be happy.

Oh, you get that? Be happy or else, right? The beatings will continue until morale improves. That's the upshot of what Klaus Schwab is telling you. You will own nothing, have nothing, and you will be happy.

That's a summary of the Great Reset. And what does that sound like to you, huh? What does that sound like? Yes, it sounds like slavery, doesn't it? That's precisely the condition of slaves from the beginning, from millennia.

You own nothing, you have nothing, but you're expected to be happy. You are being made poorer, dear listener, through inflation, aren't you? Your dollar is worth far less because of government spending. You, dear listener, are being brought closer to having nothing, as Mr. Schwab says. You are being brought closer to having nothing by supply line shortages.

Actual goods, physical goods, are becoming less and less and dira and dira. You are closer to having your liberty of movement severely restricted, as all slaves had. They couldn't move about as they pleased. You are coming closer and closer to having your liberty of movement severely restricted through high gas prices and interruptions and inconveniences in air travel, for example. And you are being brought to the brink of debt slavery, too, with impossibly high mortgages, credit card balances, high taxes, the whole panoply of the expenses of living in the modern world.

And in addition, the cost of noncompliance, too, to the state is getting higher and higher. Oh, the so-called whip tactic of the slave master, costs for noncompliance. And this is guaranteed, dear listener, if your guns are taken away, if indeed the state is successful in taking away your last bastion of defense, that is your arms, your guns. If these go away, then swiftly your liberty will go away as well. And the slavery, which is coming upon all of us, if something is not done to intervene, that slavery will come upon us very swiftly.

So these are just a few of the things, and I'll cover others. Next week, for instance, liberty is the all too rare exception. If slavery is the norm, then liberty is the exception, right? And we'll cover other items here, indicators of how we are moving into the new American slavery. And stand with me.

Become aware of these things, dear listener. Become aware of the new American slavery coming upon us, and let us find liberty. We find liberty, first and foremost, in Christ Jesus. The first liberty is spiritual liberty, and we find liberty there in him first and foremost, and then it spreads to our families, to our churches, and to our nation as well. Our founding fathers understood this, and we need to understand this as well as we battle the new American slavery.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday. Come and join us Sunday mornings at 10 a.m., and we meet 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. 208-523-0196.