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, what are the principles numbered 16 and 17 of the 28 principles of our Constitution as described in the book, The 5,000-Year Leap by Dr. Cleon Skousen? I am returning to this book, The 5,000-Year Leap, after a winter and spring dealing with other topics. But in the summer, I like to catch up a little bit on the 28 principles of the Constitution as described in the book, The 5,000-Year Leap by Dr. Leon Skousen.

And up to this point, we have covered the first 15 of those. And you can find those cataloged on our podcast website, which is americastruths.org, americastruths.org. And there you'll find under the heading series, the series, this particular series on the 28 principles of the Constitution. And this summer, I hope to work my way from principle 16 all the way through to principle 28. And I'm looking forward to covering those with you.

Just to have, as things fall apart in our country, and memory seems to be lost as to exactly who and what we are and were and where we've come from, we need to have recorded the principles of our Constitution for future generations. So I hope this contributes in some small way towards that end. But today, I want to cover principles number 16 and 17 of the 28 principles of our Constitution as described in the book, The 5,000-Year Leap by Dr. Leon Skousen. Get this book, read it, teach it to your kids.

Now, in the past, we have covered the previous 15 principles, and they're beginning to fill out our worldview of the Founding Fathers when it comes to what John Adams calls the divine science of government. Yes, it may seem dirty politics to many of us, but the Founding Fathers saw when practiced right, when practiced biblically, they saw government as the divine science.

And one of the superb accomplishments of this book, The 5,000-Year Leap, is that it so succinctly encompasses the philosophy of men like Washington and Jefferson and Adams as they sought to bring together the best of governments of the past into the great experiment of the American continent.

In our own day, the Constitution is under subtle and indirect assault, increasingly less subtle and more direct assaults by every branch of our government, and in particular by the fourth branch of government, I like to call it, and that is the intelligence branch, that is the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, all the alphabet soup agencies, increasingly under attack. Our Constitution is. To them, our Founding Fathers were just a bunch of old white men who were chauvinist males who owned slaves and grew the deadly weed tobacco, which they stole from the peaceful Native Americans who were the real owners of the land.

And with our evolutionary model of human development, however, it's time to evolve and grow up beyond the stale Constitution, these people would say. Beyond the stale Constitution. And we should govern ourselves in line with the systems of the rest of the world. But the only trouble is, most of the people of the United States still love and revere the Constitution, and pretty much ignorant of what we, the wise ones, know about the world and government. And so we cannot do it all at once or reveal the true nature and extent of how we want to change things.

This is what they tell themselves. This is why you hear such exponents, use code words and phrases like, the Constitution is a living, breathing document, which we can alter and interpret in a variety of ways, right? Or we must be free to consult, as one jurist was fond of saying on the Supreme Court, we must be free to consult the international standard of jurisprudence when deciding cases.

Oh, on and on we could go, but all of these ideas our Founding Fathers would reject, of course, having encountered them in their own thorough study of human governments from the past, a study far deeper and more thorough than the people who pretend to know better today. Which brings us to principle number 16, a principle hammered out after a great deal of study, and that is the government should be separated into three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial. Principle number 16 of the 5,000-year leap is government should be separated into three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial.

This is the seminal principle we sometimes refer to as the separation of powers. This principle is not a mere academic abstraction that George Washington dreamed up so that your kids' civics textbooks could have something to fill it. No, the separation of powers doctrine goes right to the heart of why we are a nation of laws and not of men. What it does then, the separation of powers, is break down and decentralize power. Formerly in history, supreme power was lodged in one of several forms of rule.

I'll give you three of them. Monarchy. Here, all power was centralized in one kingly figure. He made the laws, enforced the laws, judged cases that came to trial through his surrogates, and positively, it was tremendously efficient, decisive, clear for managing the affairs of state. But negatively, of course, the potential for corruption and tyranny was obvious and had plagued mankind from the days of Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible to Napoleon in the Founder's Day.

The second system of government, aristocracy. Here, all power was invested in a few ruling families or the wealthy of the land, which was technically an oligarchy. Positively, an aristocracy. Wealth and developed resources of the land would be conscientiously represented and nurtured, of course, but negatively, these interests became narrow and selfish, as they did in pre-revolutionary France, resulting in oppression and tyranny for the vast majority of the impoverished peasants, and issued, of course, in the French, the bloody French Revolution. And then there is, of course, number three, democracy.

Here, the power is vested in the people as a whole, with every matter of state being voted on by the whole of the people. Positively, it represents the interests of the mass of the people, without whose support no government can exist. But negatively, democracies have always sunk into rash, inefficient populist movements, where the passions and prejudices of the masses end up destroying and working against the good of the whole nation. Back and forth, humanity is gone for millennial, trying first one and then another form, each time failing because of the various weaknesses built into the respective systems.

And two men stood alone in history, suggesting a better way, the very way that was eventually adopted by our founding fathers. These men were the Greek philosopher Polybius, who lived during the second century BC, and the French philosopher, Baron Charles de Montesquieu, who lived during the 18th century. Maybe you've never heard of these men, but both of them suggested a variation of a separation of powers, which they called a mixed constitution. Montesquieu especially drew heavily upon Polybius, and he expanded that notion of separated powers in his great work, Spirit of the Laws. You must read this.

This is worth reading today. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Montesquieu. It was this work that our founding fathers picked up and read very carefully. Very few people know this. And I point this out to you so that you know our founding fathers did not pull our government out of a hat, but from their heads.

They thought carefully and thoroughly about every component of our system, and they drew richly, drank deeply from Montesquieu. Well, there are several points that we must observe over which much discussion was given. Number one, there is the ever-present danger of human frailty. This reality we've dealt with in some detail in principle number 13, that is the constitution should be permanently structured to protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.

And this principle now helps to do this, separation of powers, by carefully dividing the three main power functions of government, that is the making of laws, which is legislative, the enforcement of laws, which is executive, and the adjudication of laws, which is judicial. By dividing these major functions into three separate branches, the likelihood of power concentrating in the hands of one or a few men were dramatically reduced. Doesn't mean it can't happen, it might be happening today for that matter.

Now, our founding fathers realized that even the best of intentioned men often succumbed to the temptations of absolute power, and grasped after more and more of it, even to accomplish the supposed good, quote-unquote, on behalf of their fellow citizens. Even the tyrant king Charles I of England flattered himself. He thought, I truly desire the people's liberty and freedom as much as anybody. But then he went on to rule in an arbitrary, foolish way. He was perplexed beyond wonder on the way to the executioner when he became the first and only modern tyrant to be executed by beheading by parliament in 1649.

Well, with these lessons fresh on the minds of our founding fathers, they carefully considered the human frailty of their rulers and separated the powers of government. And secondly, they also understood the problem of the one, the few, and the many. Our founders wrestled with a question that very few ask today. How do we balance the needs of the one, the few, and the many? Mankind is wired to associate at these three levels.

At the one level, for example, as an individual. Looking to an individual in power as dwell, that's why men are drawn to kings, and ultimately to God himself, the one. He also dwells, man, the individual, dwells with the few. He dwells with the few in family or church or a local community. And he looks then to a few in power.

But he also dwells with the many, that is the great mass of his fellow citizens. And he also looks to the great democratic mass in power, too. The few, the one, the few, and the many. Previously, these three levels were represented by the aforementioned forms of government. Monarchy, representing the one.

Aristocracy, representing the few. And democracy, representing the many. No one of these systems fully and adequately represented all three of these levels of human relations. But by separating the powers of government, such representation could be achieved. The one in a president, the few in a Senate, and the many in a Congress.

So our founding fathers wisely solved the ancient riddle of the one, the few, and the many. And then number three as well. The exact form separated powers should take. They considered, they thought about this very thoroughly. The exact form that separated powers should take.

The system we have now did not come into being whole cloth the first day of the Constitutional Convention. For example, how many presidents should there be in the executive? The New Jersey plan called for two. And Governor Randolph of Virginia advocated for three presidents. James Wilson held with Montesquieu for one president, which is eventually what the convention adopted.

One of the most contested matters of separated powers was whether Congress should have proportional representation or equal representation. Should the states have representatives in proportion to their respective populations, which the large states like New York loved? Or should they have representation with equal representation across the board that small states like Rhode Island loved?

Now, as this debate raged day after day with large states threatening to walk out when it seemed like equal representation was about to win, and it was small states threatening to walk out when it seemed proportional representation was about to win, well, the convention seemed at a real impasse. Part of the real genius of our Constitution is the solution arrived at over this particular dilemma. The Congress would be divided into two houses, a bicameral legislature, that is called.

The final solution was the Congress would be divided into two houses, a bicameral legislature, that is, one would be represented in proportion to the population of the respective states, that's the House of Representatives, they now number 435, and the other would be represented with an equal number of delegates from each state, and that would be the Senate, with two senators from each state. Well, with these and many other issues, our founders wrestled as they sought to hand down to their posterity a form of government with carefully separated powers.

If that posterity had the wisdom and care to preserve and keep it, our own generation, however, is like a spoiled teenage son who's been given a carefully engineered and maintained Maserati, but who treats it carelessly as if it were an old jalopy, refusing to change the oil, rotate the tires, lube the joints, tune the engine, or even drive it with care and respect. No, we carelessly blur the lines, between the branches, right? It seems to be, especially with the onset and the growth of that fourth branch of government, the intelligence branch. Oh, do not underestimate its power and influence, dear listener.

In fact, so insidious is this tendency of despots in any given branch of government. It doesn't have to be a president either who turns into a dictator. We see the encroachment of the judiciary in the fourth branch of government, the deep state in our own day to usurp power that our founding fathers saw the separation of powers to be bound up with the essence of liberty and the grasping after concentrated power would be the essence of tyranny. James Madison in Federalist paper number 47 puts it this way.

He says, the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Oh, the accumulation of power into one hands. Oh, if we are to return to greatness and goodness, we must begin the process of returning to our founding fathers vision of our constitution, of which this principle number 16 is crucial. The government should be separated into three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial.

Well, additionally, if we are to return to greatness and goodness, we must return to another vital principle. That's number 17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. Principle number 17 of the 28 principles of the constitution as found in the 5,000-year leap. That is, a system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power.

Our founding fathers emphatically wanted to separate the powers of government into three branches, but their intention was never to isolate the respective branches in their own autonomous spheres. No, they saw with prescience that while a president may not have legislative or judicial power at his disposal, he might well run away unchecked with the powers he did have within his own sphere. What is to stop a president as commander-in-chief, for example, from declaring war for his own personal reasons at odds with the interest of the nation?

Oh, that was part of the problem with the kings of France, like Louis XIV and XV, or the kings of England, like Charles I. That was front and center in the minds of the founding fathers. And of course, the answer there was only Congress had the authority to declare war. Well, what is to stop Congress from passing rash and foolish legislation at the pressure from the passions of the moment, as Congress did when it passed the foolish Medicare drug supplement bill? Well, the answer is, the president has veto power over bills passed by Congress.

What is to stop a president from potentially vetoing legislation willy-nilly that's good and necessary for the people, as Bill Clinton did time and again with welfare reform bills? Remember those days? Sent to him by Congress in the 90s? Well, the answer was, Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds vote. Oh, part of the greatness of our Constitution, dear listener, is the ingenious way our founding fathers not only separated power into three distinct branches, but how they then brought them back together at crucial interfaces to check one another's potential abuse of power.

As the 5,000-year leap notes, and Madison says, the trick was to separate the powers and then delicately lace them back together again as a balanced unit, unquote. This balanced unit is the one functioning federal government, we now know, embodying the separated powers with checks and balances against abuse of those separated powers. Could you construct such a system, given the strong wills of the men gathered at the Continental Convention? Could I do this? Oh, all of this required the greatest skill, crafting our founding document, the Constitution.

It is agreed by many that only by God's distinguishing providence could such a thing have occurred. J. Reuben Clark, Jr., who was a former undersecretary of state, but a student of the Constitution, he puts it this way, while severally independent, the three branches were at the same time mutually dependent. It is this union of independence and dependence of those branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, that constitutes the marvelous genius of this unrivaled document. The framers had no direct guide in this work, no historical governmental precedence upon which to rely.

As I see it, Clark says, it is here that the divine inspiration comes. It was truly a miracle. Unquote. J. Reuben Clark, student of the Constitution. Well, it's difficult to overestimate the importance of this principle to our liberty and freedom as a nation by decentralizing power to the states and then taking what remained in the federal government and dividing it further into three branches, who then turned around to provide mutual checks to each other's power, has provided the maximum opportunity for individual freedom for the citizen, while providing the requisite authority for government to exercise its duties.

Some examples. Well, the House and Senate have a mutual check upon one another. Now, bills must pass both houses of Congress. While financial bills must originate in the House, they must pass the Senate, too. This is well and good.

While plenty of foolish legislation is passed by Congress in spite of this check, can you imagine the travesty that would have obtained if there was only one unchecked House of Congress? Secondly, we must also point out, for example, Congress has the power to advise and consent the president's appointments. Charles Townsend, back in England, was the minister of finance under King George III, and he ruthlessly set out to make the American colonists pay for the French and Indian War that ended in 16 or 1767. And King George appointed Townsend, nevertheless, to that office with impunity, even though there was opposition to him in the parliament.

But parliament had no legal right to act in this appointment. So, Minister Townsend enacted the infamous Townsend Acts, repressive tax measures that helped bring on the American Revolution. And our founding fathers saw this and other abuses, and they created the check on executive abuse of appointments by insisting that the Senate have the power to advise the president on his appointments and give or withhold their consent on them. Well, thirdly, then also, Congress has the absolute right to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in any matter it so chooses.

This is a little known solution that Congress has failed to exercise in decades. Congress has the absolute right to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in any matter it chooses. What gives them that right, Congress? Well, it's Article 3, Section 2, Paragraph 2. And it states that the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction in all cases, and I quote now from that paragraph, with exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make, unquote.

In other words, if Congress had had the guts to do it years ago, it could have taken exception to abortion under Roe v. Wade. But it didn't, did it? Well, finally, that's been reversed. Anyway, number four, the president has a check on the judiciary by nominating its judges subject to the consent of the Senate. Well, if the Supreme Court were autonomous, it would appoint its own judges.

But that's not the case. The president nominates a candidate for the bench, while the Congress either approves or rejects that appointment. And so the court cannot be a self-perpetuating branch of government unto itself. And then number five, another check on power, is the judiciary has a check upon the executive and legislative branch through a lifetime appointment, although this is coming under question. Well, if a judge knew he could be hauled down from his place on the bench, how many of them do you think would be beholden to politicians in the executive or legislative branch of government?

Well, all of them would be. That's why they have lifetime appointments. Number six, the judiciary has a check upon the legislative and executive branch by being able to declare a particular act unconstitutional. That's the storied principle of judicial review. Okay.

So the attempt of the framers, dear listener, despite the efforts of modern obfuscators to try to muddy the waters, is that indeed the courts were intended to be passive with cases of law brought to them for review, not to legislate from the bench as we so notoriously see in our own day, do we not? Well, through a system of checks and balances, dear listener, your liberties were to be protected, not proscribed. That's the heart of the principle 17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. Over the last few centuries, however, beginning with Abraham Lincoln, we have a whole history on this.

The executive branch has steamrolled unchecked over Congress, hasn't it? While Congress has refused to balance the power of the courts. And the court has run over, unchecked our liberties and our rights too. And on top of this all is the growth and expansion of that fourth branch of government, the intelligence branch, we often call the deep state. Yes, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, they have a great deal of blackmail power over Congress and over the executive branch, do they not?

And they virtually run things in Washington, D.C. Now, instead of constitutional checks and balances, the last century has seen checks become imbalanced and the imbalance has gone unchecked. Oh, the time has come, dear listener. Not only must our elected magistrates learn and relearn this document, the Constitution of the United States of America, but so must you and your posterity. If we are to survive as a free and independent people, we must take responsibility for this document. The various branches of our government have been negligent in their constitutional duty, and we must hold them accountable.

Original authority and power originates in the God of the Bible and is delegated to the people as a whole in the civil covenant. Our Constitution recognizes this when it declares in the preamble, we the people ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America. Is this more than words on a page to you, or more than empty words ringing in the chamber of your ears, dear listener? Oh, I appeal to you to let them ring in the chamber of your heart as well as the chamber of your ear.

Reform your heart and life in accord with the gospel of grace and salvation by faith in Jesus Christ first, and then you will be ready to live under and reform a nation for which the Constitution was written, a religious and moral people, as John Adams puts it. May the God of heaven and earth, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, so bless you and keep you, dear listener. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth. New Geneva meets for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

I encourage you to check out our website, americastruths.org, where you will find a whole catalog of previous messages, recorded messages on that website. That is americastruths.org, all one word. And you can also call us for more information and for feedback, too, at 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.