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 ask you, has God declared the American church absent without leave in the war for the gospel as it's applied to society, culture, and government? Where is the church to be found regarding the issue of life and death? Those things that matter to the gospel and her Lord, those which formed and shaped the American Republic at her founding.

All around us, America is descending into chaos, decay, and tyranny, isn't she? And her churches are silent. Our hard-won liberties are disappearing. Our heritage of personal freedom is being stolen, and the opportunities for rugged individualism are undermined by federal dependence, and the church is deaf and dumb. Those who rule over us disregard the Constitution daily.

They govern lawlessly, and they have one standard of law for themselves and another for us. The churches are silent. International banks and federal governments steal from us, egregiously violating the Eighth Commandment as they tax burdensomely, borrow against the future, and inflate our currency. The church says nothing. The American flag is figuratively blood-soaked from her wars, her abortions, and her cynical grasping after power in bloody plot after bloody false flag incident.

And the church is absent without leave. Example after example can be given to show that the American church is absent without leave. When it counts the most, Christians are to be the opposite of what they are today in their culture. I emphasize, in our culture. For example, we are to be salt and light in our world.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exhorts us to have a profound impact upon our world around us on behalf of the gospel. He says, you are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Well, this witness of salt and light, salt as a preservative against corruption, and light as the illuminator of the right way, this witness of salt and light is not constricted to the confines of church and family either, dear listener, but rather the whole world, including culture, society, and politics. The church does not live in a hermetically sealed container from government and society. No, the light of the gospel will shine upon both institutions. In fact, she has now done that for over 2,000 years.

In fact, our founders were fond of using this metaphor of light to describe America exactly. John Winthrop, for example, who was the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 17th century, he declared, we shall be as a city set upon a hill, the eyes of all people upon us, unquote. And that metaphor has characterized us ever since, until recently. Oh, and as well, dear listener, we are to submit to authorities as they exercise justice amongst us, distinguishing between right and wrong. Yes, we are to submit to authorities as they exercise justice amongst us, distinguishing between right and wrong.

The apostle Paul is very clear as to what our attitude towards human government should be. He says in Romans chapter 13, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And those that exist have been instituted by God, right? All through this passage, and that includes seven verses, there is an implicit understanding that magistrates distinguish between good and bad conduct, right? Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad, Paul says.

Do what is good, and you will receive his approval, that is the magistrates, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. Oh, what is the Christian to do, though, when the magistrate demands bad conduct, and he demands unjust behavior of his subjects? Further, what do you suppose Paul had in mind as a standard for good and bad? The just and the unjust.

What standard do you think? Well, I suggest to you it was indeed the Bible and God's standard of justice. Yes, in subsequent lessons, we'll expand our interpretation of this passage. What's been so much abused and misinterpreted by the contemporary American church, but for now know that it has been employed by pastors and churches as a counsel of weakness, Romans 13. In fact, this is one of the prime reasons for the loss of America, as we have known her.

For example, number one, the American church has counseled a passive non-involvement or uncritical submission to government. Oh, the American church, of which we are a part, the American church has counseled a passive non-involvement or uncritical submission to government. Owing to a misinterpretation of Romans 13, and it's being made the one and only absolute text that deals with the Christian and his relationship to government, American Christians have adopted a kind of, oh, well, what can we do about it, attitude in the face of tyranny and injustice.

According to this mode of thinking, we are to be content to preach the gospel and not soil the garments of the gospel with politics and society and wait for the deliverance brought by the pre-tribulational rapture of the church, right? Oh, these attitudes have been effectively popularized and articulated by men like radio preacher J. Vernon McGee, a beloved commentator. I love him myself, but he's wrong here. But this was not the intent of Paul in this scripture.

Nowhere was there an unconditional submission to authority required to government any more than to masters or parents or husbands in the following verses, all of which deal with authority, a being under authority. Whenever those in authority require those under authority to do evil, it is the responsibility of those under authority to resist that authority. That indeed is implicit through all of this chapter. Joseph resisted Potiphar's wife, for example. Nathan resisted David in the matter of Bathsheba.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego resisted Nebuchadnezzar and his demands for idolatry. Daniel resisted Darius in his worship, and Peter resisted the ruling body of the Sanhedrin with the words, we must obey God rather than men. Oh, but the American church, the American church has effectively turned off its conscience in this area. Those under authority are to be obedient to God first in their marriages, families, and churches, but not under government, right? When it comes to civil government, God has ceded his authority wholesale to government, according to these teachers.

We obey authority in the home and church. We do this conditionally, that is, as long as it does not violate the will and the law of God. But when it does, we resist that authority. Like, for example, just using the example of wives and daughters being forced to have an abortion by their husband, for example. But we are expected to obey civil authority unconditionally.

We are expected to passively turn a blind eye to tyranny or bloodshed or corruption. And when asked why, the American Christian mouths unthinkingly, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, right? From Romans 13. Oh, dear Christian, it's not always been so. No, the English pastor Samuel Rutherford, from whom the founders drank deeply too, by the way, he noted in his classic book, Lex Rex, that is, the law is king, right?

He says, and I quote him extensively, he says, God has given no absolute and unlimited power to a king above the law. When a magistrate does anything by violence and outside of law, insofar doing against his office, he is not a magistrate. Then that power by which he does these things is not of God. None do resist the ordinance of God who resists the king in tyrannous acts. Therefore, an unjust king as unjust is not that genuine ordinance of God.

And so we may resist the injustice of the king and not resist the king. If any cast off the nature of a king and become habitually a tyrant, he is not from God. If the office of a tyrant be contrary to a king's office, it is not from God. And so neither is the power from God, unquote. Well, this was the understanding of King George III by our founding fathers.

Without it, without that understanding, the modern evangelical church would have none of the liberties they now have to worship and to evangelize and express their non-biblical views. With the modern understanding of Romans 13, now extant in the evangelical church, why George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison would have had to conclude the Declaration of Independence with something like this, and there's nothing we can do about the tyranny of Parliament and King George, as the Apostle Paul says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, and we would have no America.

So, therefore, to me, this is the chief reason that the American church is absent without leave in the current disintegration of our republic. But there are other reasons, too. For example, reason number two, oh, church in America, you are the church of silence. Yes, this is another reason that freedom and liberty and Christianity are disintegrating in this country. We are the church of silence.

The wisest of all men, King Solomon says eloquently, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to keep silence, a time to speak. Oh, church of America, you who speaks with the voice and the authority of the gospel of your master, Jesus Christ, it is time to shout from the rooftops, in every street and alley, from every pulpit and media microphone. Stop serving the beast, the antichrist of the federal Leviathan. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. We will have no king but Christ.

Awake, oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Call these things from the rooftops. Awaken people. If, as Edmund Burke observed, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good men to do nothing well, then it's no wonder that evil triumphs in America, because her churches do nothing against the aggressive encroachments of evil in our day. For example, the church's eschatology deceives and distracts and hypnotizes her.

The idea that the beast and the antichrist won't appear until after the rapture. Our government is good, ordained by God. I must be subject to it. Or the American church's Anabaptist pacifist theology effectively neutralizes the church. That is, we're not to soil the gamut of the gospel with culture, politics, and society.

No, we're above this. Oh, just preach the gospel and wait for the rapture. That line of thinking has brought us to our knees. Or the American church's inability and incompetence and cowardice in applying the law, the ethic, and morality of the Bible to culture, politics, and society. This ineffectiveness has rendered the American church impotent and blind in the continuous rise of evil in America.

All of these have contributed to silencing the prophetic voice of the American church. And then also, number three, old church of America, you are the church of blood. The church of blood. One of the first reasons that God brings judgment on a nation is for taking of innocent life and the concomitant sin of sparing the guilty. The Old Testament metaphor for this situation is the shedding of innocent blood.

Judgment came upon Israel because she would acquit the guilty for a bribe, as Isaiah says, and deprive the innocent of his right. Oh, it was in Israel, as it is in America today, when justice is required. Ecclesiastes 8.11 says, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Make no mistake, American Christian, God hates and judges nations with blood on their hands. Jeremiah 22.17 says, but you have eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence, unquote.

Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the Lord to remove them out of his sight for the sins of Manasseh, second King says, according to all that he had done, and also for the innocent blood that he had shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not pardon, unquote. Second Kings 24. Dear Church of America, you have been complicit in the shedding of innocent blood with your lukewarm response to abortion, or the needless wars of conquest, or the inability to hold murdering magistrates accountable in the halls of justice.

Church of America, if there were a true church here, abortion would be a bloody blot upon our collective memory, full of shame and regret, not an ever-present reality yet today. The recent Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade is an important step towards ending this bloody chapter in our history, but it must be followed up by an aggressive campaign by the church to extend mercy and help to pregnant women, for example, who need support, as well as then doing legal and cultural steps to counter the evil advocates of abortion all over America.

How many more millions of rivers of innocent blood must be shed, dear listener, like the child sacrifices of Israel before we say enough, or before God then finally requites every drop of blood shed by us, and he requites it in judgment upon us? And as well, O Church of America, how many more wars of conquest with no national interest at stake must we engage in before the church says enough? There is a time for war, as Ecclesiastes says, but also a time for peace. O Church of America, if there were a true church here, when will we demand the exacting of justice upon our murdering magistrates for their shedding of innocent blood?

When will the Clintons be held accountable for their murders? When will the federal government be held accountable for the deaths of our veterans at the VA? The deliberate cynical death panel debacle of Obamacare? Or the CDC's cynical experimentation upon the American people? When will this and those responsible for the death of Ashley Babbitt, for example, at the Capitol, remember on January 6th, when will they be brought to justice?

And when will the alphabet agencies of the federal government be held accountable for the poisoning of our food, our air, and our water? On and on we could go. Justice must be done. With a clear understanding of biblical law and morality and ethics, the church should be shouting with the prophets, purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel so that it may be well with you, right? And then as well, O Church of America, you are the church of pluralism too.

You have lost your way in world religions. America was not founded as a pluralistic nation in which all religions were held to be equally good and beneficial to the republic. As Thomas Jefferson says, he says, we owe our liberty not to the Constitution, but to the commandments of the Bible upon which it, that is the Constitution, is based, unquote. Many other citations could be mustered to demonstrate that our founding fathers, at least they understood that, as John Adams says, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is entirely unsuited to any other, unquote.

Well, that moral and ethic was understood to be a Christian moral and ethic, dear listener. Other religions were to be tolerated and practiced by their practitioners as long as they were consistent with the principles of liberty given in the Bible. This encompassed the wide spectrum of Christian denominations, then extant in America, but it did not include the virulent, evil atheism of today, or the wicked secularism that wars against Christianity today, or the utterly incompatible jihadist Islam that is quickly supplanting Christianity as the religion that dictates culture, society, and politics.

Oh, dear listener, tolerance and pluralism have been severed from their Christian roots and twisted to elevate anything that destroys Christianity, but which, excuse me, simultaneously gags and silences the Christian. Church of America, when will you find your right mind and your clear voice to re-articulate biblical law, morality, and ethic on behalf of the nation?

If we continue to move our national culture, society, and politics away from its Christian mooring, then we will make of America what we are seeing today, a politically correct, brainwashed nation in which true tolerance and pluralism is transformed into the Maoist, Stalinist groupthink we see materializing before us. And then finally, number five, the church in destroying America, the church counsels cowardice in resisting the state. Yes, once again, I cannot help but return to this theme, the church counsels cowardice in resisting the state.

Oh, I cannot emphasize enough this abiding failure of the contemporary church to take a prophetic stance against the state when necessary. Nowhere was this more evident than in the monumental failure on all levels of American society to resist the COVID lockdowns. Regardless of how you see the motives for the lockdowns, and I have my own suspicions concerning the whys and wherefores of the draconian measures taken by the state to lock us down, regardless of how you see these motives, it must now be admitted by all that the lockdowns have had a disastrous effect upon our economy, our national psyche, suicides, insanity, craziness, right?

Or our children's growth and development by being locked out of schools, or the health and well-being of our people, which ironically, it was supposed to be for our benefit, right? The lockdowns. Or the final degradation of our rights and liberties, which have disappeared so that we might be safe, right? And rather than stand against this madness, the church compliantly went along with it, went along with everything the state required.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities was the mindless mantra I heard, whether it meant shutting down the unnecessary services of the church, or wearing the useless counterproductive face diaper called a mask, or locking down everyone in their homes, destroying small businesses across the country to the advantage of big box stores, or as a capstone counseling the sheep to take a deadly gene therapy experiment into their bodies that was sold as a vaccine, right? Presently, the church is a coward. She will be shown more and more to be a coward, too, as tyranny advances in America.

She will refuse to speak out against our involvement in a useless, bloody civil war in Ukraine. She will refuse to speak out against the deliberate destruction of our Constitution by those magistrates sworn, ironically, to uphold and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The American church will refuse to take a prophetic stance against the transgression of the principles of justice in America, principles that God holds dear in human society. He says in Deuteronomy, justice and only justice you shall follow, that you may live and inherit this land that the Lord your God is giving you, unquote.

And presently, we live under tyrants who have one system of justice for themselves and another for you and for me. And the church is expected to speak out against injustice wherever it appears in government. Nathan took a prophetic stance against the injustice of King David towards Uriah and his wife Bathsheba. Amos took a prophetic stance against injustice and King Jeroboam for his corruption of Israel with blood and idolatry. John the Baptist took a prophetic stance against Herod for his unjust marriage to his brother's wife.

The church has a long history of using its prophetic voice against injustice, to which most are ignorant because they're poorly taught in history. Oliver Cromwell, for example, and his roundheads, resisted tyranny in England, and they established the English Republic after the English Civil War. And of course, famously, our founding fathers resisted the tyranny of Parliament and King George III, and they established what we now know as the American Constitutional Republic. In each of these instances, dear listener, the church used its prophetic voice to call for justice on behalf of the people. Will this be us?

Will this be us tomorrow, dear listener? I hope it is. But it might also well be more like the church in Germany under the Nazis. The German Lutheran church in the 20s, 30s, and 40s was largely silent during the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. That church counseled precisely what American pastors and churches are counseling today.

That is, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, right? And of course, chapter 13 of Romans, the minister of propaganda in Germany, Joseph Goebbels, saw to it that every Lutheran minister in Germany preached on that text from Romans 13 at least once per year. Will we be like them in the coming madness and nightmare that is overtaking America, the tyranny of the deep state? Oh, pastor, will you be a Holocaust pastor, counseling your congregation? Just get on the trains.

You're going to a better place. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, right? Like the German pastors counseled their people and then they went to the camps, right? Or will you be like those pastors? Just go to the showers.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, right? Cyclone B came out of those shower heads. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities and they perished in the showers. Will you be a Holocaust pastor, counseling your people to be compliant to the state? Or will you be more like pastors Richard Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted?

The Nazis preached against their tyranny and they were thrown into concentration camps and executed as a result. The choice is ours. It is a historical truism that as goes the church, so goes the nation. If that's the case, what will come of the United States of America as civil tyranny grows? It's up to us, the church, to awaken to our labor and our destiny when it comes to calling the magistrate to account.

Paul calls the church the pillar and ground of the truth. And as such, we must hold our magistrates to that which is true, commending them for faithfulness, rebuking them for unfaithfulness to God's standards of justice. Yes, do your part, dear listener. Let us both do our parts to awaken America to its standard of righteousness. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people, Proverbs tells us.

Let us call first and foremost for a renewal, for a reformation, a revival in America, and then proceed to call our magistrates to account. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us for more information or feedback at area code 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.