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Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church

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with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and

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faith. Today, what is principle 27 of the Constitution in the book, The 5,000-Year Leap?

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Oh, we are approaching the conclusion of our study of the 28 principles of the Constitution

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found in this valuable volume. Now, my assumption is that many of you are as familiar, if not more so,

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with these principles than me. But if in God's providence you have only recently tuned into

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this broadcast, let me preface my remarks on our topic by exhorting you to obtain a copy of this

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book, The 5,000-Year Leap, because it distills succinctly, I think quickly disappearing from

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our nation, the principles upon which our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United

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States of America. There are 28 of them discerned by our authors of this book, who include the late

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Cleon Skousen and his team of research assistants. Now, the reason for the title is that they rightly

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observe that no nation or people in the last 5,000 years of recorded history have achieved so much in

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so short a time, relatively speaking, as has the United States of America in every field of human

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endeavor. History will record that it was no coincidence. The lines of our providence did not

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fall in pleasant places by happenstance. God has ordained us, and he ordained that we should offer the

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world and the future posterity of our race liberty and opportunity unparalleled in human history.

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We have not become the most prosperous people because we are an imperialist conqueror, as the progressive

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critique of America would have it, but because our Constitution liberated the common man to take

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responsibility for his labors and succeed or fail. We have not become the religious haven for every

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persecuted religious sect of the world, because we are Christian bigots, as the progressive critique of

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America would have it, but because the Constitution guarantees religious liberty for all. And we have not

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become the nation that has literally reached for the stars and landed on the moon, eventually Mars,

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right? Because we built our science and industry on the backs of black slaves, as the progressive

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critique of America would have it. But no, because our Constitution offers the beacon of life and liberty for the

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entire world. Oh, because we suppress tolerance, diversity, and egalitarianism for everyone but a

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privilege for the issue? As the progressive critique of America would have it? No. But because our

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Constitution guarantees equality of opportunity for all, not equality of outcomes. And so, I encourage

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you to pick up this book. You can get it at the National Center for Constitutional Studies. That's

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nccs.org. Wow. Principle 27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.

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Oh, this is valuable. A valuable principle today. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as

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subjugation by conquest. Oh, the progressive. How pass say that is right? Too bad Washington,

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Franklin, and Jefferson are so irrelevant to the modern age. If only they had the demigod Biden and

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Harris showing them how to really kick off a new nation by borrowing against the future of their

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children to put together a multi-trillion dollars stimulus package or Inflation Reduction Act,

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right, and give free health care to everyone, why, we could have been consigned to the dustbin of history

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by 1824 instead of 2024. Oops, did I say the dustbin of history? I actually meant we could have become

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the kingpin of history so much sooner as we are today, right? Huh, is that what we are? Or are we

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something else? Well, I'm afraid that my former mental slip is more to the point. We are fast being

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consigned to the dustbin of history owing to our suicidal spending habits. Cleon Skousen notes in

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the book, he says, slavery or involuntary servitude is the result of either subjugation by conquest or

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succumbing to the bondage of debt, unquote, and how correct he was. This is a biblical principle

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that stretches back through the millennia of time. Solomon says in Proverbs 22, 7,

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the borrower is slave to the lender. Oh, how pathetic is the state of the man in debt. He is a

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slave indeed. His freedom is restricted because he can't acquire the things or pursue the options

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of the debt-free man because he must first repay his debt. His enjoyment of life in the present

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is narrowed because he must first repay the debt for pleasure now long past. His liberty of choice is

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limited because they must meet the demands of his creditor before his own. His optimism towards the

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future is more clouded than the debt-free man because the indebted man has as much of his future

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negatively determined as the sum of total of his indebtedness. He will engender nothing but the bitter

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feelings of posterity insofar as he passes on his remaining debt to them. And finally, he will

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experience the judgment of God because debt unpaid is nothing more than a not-so-subtle form of theft,

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a violation of the Eighth Commandment. For all of these reasons and more, the debtor is a slave.

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And this is no less a truth for the nation than the individual. As Dr. Skousen puts it, he says,

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the pioneers of the American commonwealth had the wisdom born of experience to know that the debts of

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a nation are no different from the debts of an individual. They considered it a matter of supreme

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importance for the survival of a free people to get out of debt and enjoy complete solvency

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in order to prosper." Unquote. Now, whether we as a people realize it or not or even care about it,

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the United States of America is a debt slave to a place like China, for example, who is the largest

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holder of trillions of dollars of debt that we have incurred. Very few people realize the extent to

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which everything from our economic security to our national security is bound up with this debt.

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China can dictate to us our economic policy at home and abroad, owing to their ability to

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manipulate the amount of free capital flowing into our economy based upon the rate of repayment

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of the debt owed them that they demand. Can we levy tariffs on Chinese goods dumped at low prices?

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Low, because these goods are subsidized by the Chinese government? Oh, no, we cannot levy such

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tariffs because China can threaten to stop buying our debt and call in the chits that are already

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out there. On and on the restrictions go, all the while being manipulated to the advantage of the

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Chinese by the Chinese, while we go on lavishing present dollars on frivolous programs created by

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the Biden administration to be paid for by our children in days to come. In the meantime,

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this present generation goes on spending their children's inheritance like mind numbed prodigal

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sons, oblivious to the effects of this spending, like a crystal meth user who can only think about

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his next high, ignoring the slavery and death he is building up for himself in the future. America is

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no longer free, dear listener, and Thomas Jefferson would be appalled by this state of affairs.

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Jefferson said, I place economy among the first and most important of Republican virtues

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and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared, unquote. Our founding fathers were

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conscientious about economy and debt, laboring for both personal and public prosperity, with the

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ledgers filled with black ink, not red ink. They cherished thrift, and they abhorred profligacy.

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Our present politicians do not have a conscience when it comes to public debt, but can only see what

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is immediately in front of their noses, whether it be health care, or the next election, or a

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inflation reduction act, or money for illegal aliens. Our founding fathers had scruples

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about piling up debt for the next generation, and our present gang of politicians has no scruples

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about enslaving their children to debt. Jefferson, once again, says, that we are bound to defray the

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war's expenses, that would be the Revolutionary War, that we are bound to defray the war's expenses

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within our own time, and that we are unauthorized to burden posterity with them, I have proved already,

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we shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves, and consequently within the

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life expectancy of the majority, unquote. There is this moral component to debt that is missing in the

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deliberations of the band of immoral politicians who presently rule us. A seared, cauterized conscience

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characterizes people like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer,

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all of them, and the Republicans who preceded them were little different. So many people I know have

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little time for these matters. They're going about their daily lives in utter oblivion to what is

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happening to their country, and yet this matter of the national debt has perhaps a more direct impact

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upon their daily lives than any other issue. What would be the national debt, for example, if America

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were an ordinary consumer? Let's pretend for a moment, huh, that suddenly the entire spending budget

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of the United States government were condensed to your single household budget. Poof! Voila!

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Ha! Magic! And just for the sake of simplicity, we'll just say that your income is for 2024. It will be

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$75,000. And the federal government estimates that it will take in just over $2 trillion, excluding the

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money that we'll borrow. Some of you listening today will say, well, I'd give my right arm to make

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$75,000 a year. Others might say, I couldn't live for 75 days on $75,000. Well, that's the beauty of

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America, that every man has the opportunity to earn and acquire as much as his skills, ambition, and God's

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providence will take him, right? Well, let's just say that your credit card statement comes in. You're

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making $75,000 a year, and your credit card statement comes in, and our national debt, parenthetically,

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our national debt is recently topped $35 trillion. I can't even imagine what $35 trillion is. Some

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economists say that the numbers have been fudged, really, and it's much closer to $41 or $42 trillion

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that this country has piled up in terms of its debt. But for the sake of argument, we'll use the figures

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put before us that our national debt is some $35 trillion and climbing. Well, your individual

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credit card statement would come in with $104,563. That would be your statement just for this month.

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Oh, our national debt can easily be likened to the average household credit card debt since we spend

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so much on what we want rather than what we need. And we have no qualms about running it up without

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regard to paying it back, do we? Oh, I hope this simple illustration shows you the desperate straits

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into which our nation has sunk by its profligate spending and blind borrowing against the future.

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What would happen to such a family in the real world? Huh? What would happen to such a family

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in the real world? What would happen to you if by the end of 2024, your credit card debt came to almost

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$105,000? You would be forced, of course, by your creditors to go into bankruptcy if you weren't

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thrown in jail. All of your assets seized and sold at dimes on the dollar and your family forever

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disgraced and impoverished. This is where we are headed, my dear fellow American. This is it.

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Welcome to government spending, Washington style. What would happen, right? What is going to happen

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to the United States of America? All of the receipts, I learned this recently, all of the receipts of the

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United States government coming in this year, that includes everything the IRS takes in, that includes

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taxes on imports and exports. All of the receipts of the United States government go to pay the interest

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on the debt, not even the principal on the debt. We can no longer even service that debt. What happens

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then? Huh? What happens when we can no longer even service that debt? That is a prescription for

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bankruptcy. And especially if the dollar loses its status as the world's reserve currency, that's the

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only thing that's buoying up the dollar at the present time. And if that goes away, America will

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go into receivership. As George Washington puts it, I entertain a strong hope that the state of the

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national finances is now sufficiently matured to be able to enter upon a systematic and effectual

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arrangement for the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt, according to the right which has

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been reserved to the federal government. Unquote. That was the attitude of our founding fathers.

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This ambitious effort was taken on by succeeding generations after Washington, such that by 1835,

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the national debt had shrunk from $75.5 million to $33,733. Can you imagine the national debt being at

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that level today? It had taken them some 45 years, but they had virtually paid off the national debt.

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Does any mere politician in our present administration have the personal integrity to place this as a chief

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priority? The same pattern repeated itself after the Civil War, too, when our national debt had

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mushroomed to $2.6 billion. Yet by 1890, that number had shrunk to $1.5 billion. As administration

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after administration labored to reduce the debt, it has really been since the radical administration

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of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that no one has looked back at the national debt. Now no one takes an

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interest in subtracting from the national debt, but only adding to it. Oh, after World War II, for example,

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the pattern of conscientiously attempting to pay down the debt incurred during war was reversed. Now we see an

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ever-increasing growth of spending and borrowing such that the $258.6 billion deficit in 1945 has now only

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grown and never decreased until we began to speak in terms of trillions of dollars, not billions anymore.

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Do you know when we crossed that threshold? Do you, dear listener? Do you know the year, the exact year

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we went from billions of dollars in deficit spending to trillions of dollars? Oh, it was in 1981,

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under Ronald Reagan, of all people, that we went from spending 900 of billions of dollars to thousands

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of billions, which is a trillion dollars of deficit spending. Oh, finally, we could pride ourselves in

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outspending our founding fathers in numbers that they would only shrink from in horror. We certainly could not

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outdo them in wisdom and integrity. So I suppose that what I've come to call our floundering fathers,

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that is, those who wittingly or unwittingly seek to undermine the 28 principles of the Constitution,

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that they should take great pride in their having outspent all of their predecessors combined.

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Remember, it took America from 1791 to 1985, 190 years, to incur our first trillion dollars in

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national debt. Oh, but it only took until 1986, that is five years, to reach two trillion. And now,

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oh, estimated just to rack up 36 trillion dollars in 2024. Now, these are not mere academic numbers,

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dear listener. A man's credit and debt ratio is an index of his character and integrity. Is he a borrower

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or a lender? Does he have more money working for him as a creditor, or does he have more money working

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against him as a debtor? If he is conscientious and hardworking, it will be the former, of course.

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If he is shiftless and lazy, it will be the latter. Proverbs 10, 4 says, a slack hand causes poverty,

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but the hand of the diligent makes rich. Oh, right now, we have a class of rulers who are following

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leftist progressive agendas that have nothing to do with what has made America great in the past.

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Industry, mining, agriculture, the creation and invention of products and services to make a profit

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have made America great in the past. Our Constitution provides the widest possible liberty

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for these kinds of things. Instead, the Biden administration is pursuing worthless pursuits that

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only suck the financial air out of the room. Things like climate control legislation for the

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discredited theory of global warming or government-run health care or money for the evil wars and

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inflation reduction, so-called, that only ends up increasing inflation. All the things are worthless

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pursuits that only add to the national debt and do not subtract from it. Proverbs 28, 19 says,

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whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty

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of poverty. America is headed for plenty of poverty, as Solomon puts it, because it chases worthless

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pursuits. And as it does this, it sinks further and further into debt slavery. Very few people realize it,

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but the very same path we trod towards destruction has been trod before by the Roman Empire. The scholar

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Lewis C. West, in his article, The Economic Collapse of the Roman Empire, asserts that the desperate

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economic policies of the decadent emperors contributed significantly to the collapse of the empire.

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All nations who pursue them will come to the same end. There were three policies, in particular, that

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destroyed the Roman economy, three that always do, and three that tyrants pursue in destroying the worth

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and the labor of their people. And that is reckless spending, confiscatory taxation, and hyperinflationary

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borrowing. First of all, Rome was guilty of reckless spending. Reckless spending propels the spender

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into ever-spiraling debt. In the same spirit as our own emperor, Joe Biden, or Kamala Eris,

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the Roman emperors felt compelled to outdo their predecessors in giving the people free housing,

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which is really little more than flea-infested hovels, or free food, which is little more than

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stale bread, and circuses. That is, lots of government holidays with free tickets to the

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gladiatorial games. Well, legendary among their own generations were emperors like Commodus from 180

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to 192, Domitian, even Nero. Each of these were wildly popular with the masses for a time because they

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taxed quite heavily the upper classes and distributed as bread and circuses among the masses. And as the

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empire grew and people moved from the countryside to the larger cities, the pressures on an emperor

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to provide these things grew, and he had to borrow more and more money to get them, even as our cities

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mushroom out of control. Pressures also grew to use and expand the army, which demanded greater and

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greater resources and an expanding military budget. Well, secondly, they also had, as policy,

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ever spiraling debt drives rulers to confiscatory taxation. That's the second way that tyrants

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oppress you financially is with confiscatory taxation. Ah, each of the aforementioned emperors

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found their programs pushing the limits of available funds, and so they had to become very creative in

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how they seized the money of the people. In the past, as Rome conquered more and more territory,

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they could sell off huge tracts of the new provinces to new prospective senators, who would then exploit

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the territories, keeping tax revenue flowing into Roman coffers, as well as enriching themselves.

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But what happens when the bubble stops expanding? Each of the emperors answered with the same solution.

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Since it was not expedient to tax the masses, they would tax the rich more and more. Does that sound

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familiar? That's exactly what the emperors above you now promise you as the masses that will just

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make the rich pay their fair share. Yeah, right. Well, the third way in which tyrants exploit us

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financially is with grasping confiscatory taxation also drives rulers to inflate the currency with

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borrowing. Inflating the currency with borrowing. Do you know why they used to call Nero Brownnose?

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Not because of the euphemisms we have. No. He did it in their day by inflating the coinage of the Rome.

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For most of the history of Rome, all coins were 100% precious metal. Gold was gold, silver was silver,

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copper was copper. But when you paid in silver or gold at the end of the day, you could rest assured that

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the coin you held in your hand was 100% of whatever precious metal it represented. But what happens when

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those precious metals become rarer and rarer? What happens when you need more money to finance programs

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to stay in power? Oh, why you strike more coins anyway, only you begin to cut the precious metal

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with baser metals like copper or bronze. And so, with each succeeding generation, the precious metal

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coins grew less and less precious. Pretty soon, the so-called gold and silver coins were no more than

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copper coins with a thin gold or silver wash over them. And of course, each coin had the image of

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the current emperor struck on it. And the most prominent feature on any coin, it was the nose.

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Some were bigger, some were smaller. But soon, the image of the emperor had a brown copper nose

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as the silver or gold wash began to wear away. Well, while not employing exactly the same tactics

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as the Roman emperors, our American emperors employ exactly the same strategy by debasing the currency

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that's in circulation. The net effect of inflation is that real value remains static. That is, real value

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is wealth produced by actual labor. Make no mistake about this, dear listener. Every dollar rolling off the

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government printing presses or clicked digitally will someday in the future have to be backed by your

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actual backbreaking labor, not Biden's. That's the essence of the theft taking place here. While the

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medium of exchange expands, the medium of exchange is the money of a society, which is only a symbol

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of real value. So, printing more and more money, clicking more and more digital markers only waters down

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the real value of any economy. Therefore, it takes more and more money to represent the real value of

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that economy, and thus the need to print more of it, to digitalize more of it, and voila, you have the

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downward spiral of inflation. And so, if we are ever to extricate ourselves from the immoral debt cycle

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which we presently find ourselves, we're going to have to smash the government printing presses,

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so to speak, yeah, and do the simple things that my father taught me to do with my allowance as a boy,

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don't spend more than you have, and pay your debts promptly. Jefferson puts it this way,

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the maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make our country one

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of the happiest on earth, unquote. It would also make us one of the most biblical and moral countries

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on earth. Everything our government is doing in this realm today is a form of theft, a violation of the

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Eighth Commandment, and therefore disobedience against God and immoral and sinful. Borrowing an

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impossible load of debt with no intent to repay is theft. Taxing beyond the tithe is a form of theft.

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Inflating the currency robs it of real value and is a form of theft. Dear listener, unbeknownst to

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most Americans, our executive and legislative branches are little more than a nest of thieves

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without honor and integrity. It is up to us as the people to hold them accountable for this

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travesty. They and we will be held accountable before God for these sins. Dear listener, in many

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places and at many times, God has told us these things. When a series of government officials came

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before the last great Old Testament prophet, John the Baptist, they asked, what shall we do in

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repentance? He told them nothing more than Moses or the other prophets told them, that is, to the tax

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collectors. He said, collect no more than you are authorized to do. And to the soldiers, don't extort

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money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, but be content with your wages. Dear listener,

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fellow citizen, taxpayer, while there is still time in America, let us work together to hold our

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government responsible to this constitutional principle number 27. The burden of debt is as

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destructive to freedom as subjection by conquest. Before we're conquered by our own sin and lust,

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let us find our liberty in the God of the Bible and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This has been

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Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday

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at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us for more information or feedback

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at 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.