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. Today, what is the last and final principle of the 5,000-year leap? It's hard to believe, but we finally reached the end of our formal study of the 28 principles of the Constitution of the United States of America as found in the book, The 5,000-Year Leap. So, while I've reached the end of this articulation of the 28 principles, I hope and pray that it's only the beginning of its application in your life, my life, and the lives of every American.

And why might that be? Well, let me reassert the importance of the 5,000-Year Leap. One more time, especially for those of you who may only be hearing this for the first time. Well, the title, The 5,000-Year Leap, derives from the fact that the liberties ensconced within our Constitution have liberated the human spirit and talents such that Americans have achieved more in the brief 200-plus years of our existence than the rest of humanity has in the previous 5,000.

Part of the genius of men like Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton and Adams is that they conceived just enough government in the American Republic to give form and structure to the nation while giving the widest possible space for liberty and the creative talents of the individual to achieve greatness in every arena of human endeavor. Where have more inventions and advancements in science been made in the world than the United States of America, right? From penicillin to plutonium to plastics.

Where have the greatest opportunities for economic advancement, regardless of race, creed, or color, been found than in the United States of America? Fortunes rise and fall strictly on the ability of the entrepreneur to deliver goods and services Americans want at a price they can afford, right? And where have more personal liberties in religion, personal behavior, and culture been guaranteed than in the United States of America? Ah, where Jew and Gentile, Christian and Hindu, Hispanic and Chinese, all much more are blended into the American melting pot, huh?

Well, the basic assertion of the 5,000-year leap is that our founding fathers based this liberty, the Constitution, upon 28 principles, which they may or may not have consciously agreed were operative, but which were nevertheless shot through in every element of the Constitution. The 5,000-year leap is thus a brief distillation of the general thought of men like Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin. And I am convinced that anyone who is going to seriously interact with our founding ideas is going to have to engage the ideas, at least, that are included in the 5,000-year leap, if not the book itself.

Well, therefore, you can save yourself a lot of work by first reading this book. This brings us to principle number 28, and that is, the United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race. The United States of America has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race. This is an insightful principle with which to conclude the founding principles of our Constitution. It serves to wrap up the entire thrust of the book.

The term manifest destiny is a term unique to America, first coined by a literary journalist, John L. O'Sullivan, in 1837. Well, it described a concept that had been developing for generations in America, but without a name. And he used this manifest destiny repeatedly in the debates over the annexation of Texas and Oregon into the Union. Manifest means that this is a thing which is clear and evident. Manifest means that which is clear and evident to the understanding.

And destiny, of course, means the preordained course of events set by God. Well, taken together, manifest destiny meant to O'Sullivan and his contemporaries that it was clear and evident to the world that God himself had preordained the course of America to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the North American continent. But it was more than this, too. Many modern histories of America limit the understanding of manifest destiny to this simplistic one-dimensional notion. Well, certainly everyone from Jefferson to Lincoln to Roosevelt thought that America would eventually stretch from sea to shining sea.

But our founders envisioned so much more. What else could they possibly have meant by manifest destiny? Well, number one, America would be a city upon a hill, a shining example to the world. That was also included. John Winthrop first said that we would be as a shining city upon a hill if we were obedient in propagating the gospel and laboring diligently to be faithful to God and his word in settling this new land.

This was early in our colonial history during the settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And there's a dark straight line from those days to our founders, who felt perhaps even more strongly that the United States would be an example for the world, owing to its having grown in that direction in the interim. John Adams puts it this way, I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence for the illumination of the ignorant, the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth. Unquote.

John Adams, the free Republican institutions created by the people, the bustling prosperous trade created by the people, the Christian gospel proclaimed by the people, and that gospel integrated into the lives of the people would all testify to the world that the United States Constitution is something unique in history.

Instead of kings and pharaohs and czars and tyrants dictating to the people on the one hand, as during England's most recent history with King George III, or destructive, chaotic anarchy ravaging the people on the other hand, as during the Dark Ages or the Black Death in Europe, or even the most recent French Revolution, while our founders instead created a constitution that gives just enough government to the people to keep from lapsing into anarchy, while giving the maximum amount of liberty to let a Christian, responsible people obtain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These things the peoples of the earth would see and pursue themselves. Thomas Jefferson was a most enthusiastic proponent of this model, calling the United States of America the world's best hope, a standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of the people of other countries, unquote. But modeling and exemplifying were not the only things America was known for in regards to manifest destiny. Secondly, we must also note, America would become in and of itself the last asylum of liberty to the human family. Yes, America would become in and of itself the last asylum of liberty to the human family.

As the original template for freedom, the United States of America would always be creating itself afresh. We have observed this time and again as change upon change has overtaken the world, whether it be the Industrial Revolution or the Computer Revolution or two world wars, the advent of the nuclear age. But our Constitution has proved visionary and flexible enough not only to adapt to these changes, but to have actually helped create them.

Yes, it can be argued that without the spirit of innovation encouraged by liberty here, without the guarantee of invention and intellectual patent rights in our Constitution, without the free market capitalist economy nurtured by the commerce clauses of our Constitution, and without the personal liberties guaranteed us by the first ten amendments to the Constitution, well, in short, without the culture and rights guaranteed us in that Constitution, well, America would not have become the very place to which the world flocks.

By the millions, whether they drift in tiny rubber rafts from Cuba, or they hide in containers destined for LA Harbor from China, or they come as illegal aliens from Mexico, or they wait patiently through the visa and naturalization progress in Bulgaria, people from all over the world flood here first for liberty and opportunity.

The great waves of European migration that settled us initially from Northern Europe during the colonial period, from Southern Europe in the late 19th century, and from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, well, these migrations stand as a testimony to the oasis of liberty America has become over the centuries of its existence. My own great-grandfather fled here from Holland in the 1870s for religious freedom. Oh, yes, I found out later, but it was not because he was persecuted for his belief in God, but because he was the village atheist in his hometown. Wow, it was our manifest destiny to be such a refuge.

Even as Abraham Lincoln's political opponent, Stephen Douglas put it, who said, who would blot out the lines on the map that now mark our national boundaries on this continent and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself, unquote. I like that phrase, the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself, because it encapsulates what our founders meant by manifest destiny, meaning in part that we would be the last asylum, the best hope of the earth for freedom. The French nation understood this when they gave us the statue of liberty and every tired, poor, wretched refuse of humanity who longs to be free.

Understands it, right, when they first come to our shores to become Americans. Well, thirdly, about manifest destiny, it also means, number three, America would stretch geographically from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. We take for granted today our borders as part of the problem of immigration policy in our own country. We take our borders for granted. But this was not always so in our history.

For most of the 19th century, the territorial extent of the United States was still at issue. Would Texas or New Mexico and Arizona be provinces of Mexico or sovereign states of the United States of America? Would Washington and Oregon and our own Idaho be provinces of Canada or England or even Russia? Or would they be sovereign states of the United States? We actually went to war with Mexico in 1845 over these issues and almost went to war with Great Britain over the borders of Washington and Canada.

Do you remember the campaign slogan that James Buchanan had to try and defeat Polk in 1846? It was 54-40 or fight. 54-40. What an odd campaign slogan, right? But it meant that England must cede to America all of the territory of Oregon to the 54th parallel and 40th longitude.

Or the United States would go to war with England. Oh, but fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. And President James K. Polk signed a compromise in which the Oregon territory, which included present-day state of Washington, would extend to the 49th parallel. And we have our present-day borders. Well, what we also tend to forget is that California was not a hippie state tapping its foot, waiting around with Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and a trillion-dollar deficit for Arnold Schwarzenegger to claim it for America.

No, it was an unsettled, California was. It was an old west territory as wild as any in Montana or Wyoming. California was once rugged, self-reliant, and had an ornery independence all of its own. It was not the soft, government-dependent, and politically correct place like it is today. California's status was at issue for decades, having claims made to it by Mexico, Great Britain, and even Russia.

Yeah, a few people know that Russia even claimed territory in what is now California. Well, owing to brave men like General John C. Fremont, California was literally conquered by military force. And as I have asserted many times before, no great nation has ever achieved greatness without being a martial nation. What we know now as Hotel California, maybe, home of fruits and nuts and flakes, where Berkeley is so radical it is nicknamed berserkly, and where San Francisco is so left-winged that it is known as San Francisco, well, this California was once as originally American and conservative as any county in Idaho.

Oh, dear listener, may it return to those original values very soon. Well, what we see with manifest destiny is the courage, foresight, and boldness of action of the American character to seize what is ours by a God-given right and cultivate and nurture and bring it to full fruition. We can assert in all modesty that no one has done it better or with more faithfulness to the principles of God and His order than has the United States of America as it crafted the Constitution.

Unlike the haphazard tyrannies of the world before that of our founders, as Madison would put it, I love this quote from James Madison in the Federalist Papers, Federalist Paper number 14, Madison says, happily for America, happily, we trust for the whole human race, they, that is the founders, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, even himself, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe.

They formed the design of a great confederacy which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate, unquote. Dear fellow citizen, fellow believer, and listener, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are their successors. We are the beneficiaries of their labors. We have to look into the mirror of history collectively as a people and we have to ask ourselves, have we been faithful in improving and perpetuating that great confederacy of which Madison spoke? Or have we surrendered our liberties for the same old, same old of world tyranny and socialism that has characterized the bulk of human history?

Increasingly, we are captivating and capitulating to the siren song that every tyrant has sung, give me your liberty and I will give you death. That is the security I'll give you of a shack, stale bread, and low-paying, back-breaking jobs. Well, consequently, no man in such tyranny ever utterly fails, nor does he ever completely succeed either, although to his fullest capacity. But such a man settles and drifts into a deadening mediocrity where there is no great success and no great failure, but only an equal sharing of the misery of the human condition. Ah, behold, equity, dear listener, despising equity.

Someone wants to find capitalism as the unequal distribution of wealth, while socialism is the equal distribution of poverty. Dear listener, we are swiftly headed towards the latter, right, under Bidenomics or Harris. Oh, may America awake to this slug-like state and throw off the chains of slavery and embrace the liberty that our founding fathers bequeathed to us in the Constitution of the United States of America. This, indeed, is our manifest destiny. What I'd like to do now is ever so briefly review for you all 28 principles so that you have a chance to hear them all together.

We have been some six months treating one or two per half-hour segment, right? So I want you to hear them all at once to get a kind of collective impact for the whole. Here we go. Number one, the only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is natural law, right? God has wired into us a basic understanding of law and government that, with the aid of right reason and the Bible and a largely Christian people, can issue in liberty an equal opportunity for all.

Number two, a free people cannot survive under a Republican Constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. Oh, the kinds of liberty and its breadth and depth and height are freeing to a righteous man guided by principle, but they are enslaving and crushing to the immoral and debauched man who only uses his liberty for a license to sin. Oh, and number three, the most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally stable people is to elect virtuous leaders. Oh, dear listener, our leaders come from our own midst. We send them to do our local, state, and national government policies.

If the people are scoundrels, they'll send scoundrels to do their dirty work. If they're virtuous and moral, they will send righteous men to represent them. Oh, in the end, we get the government we deserve, do we not? Number four, without religion, the government of a free people cannot be maintained. Oh, important.

Every man, especially the atheist, has a religion that shapes his moral and ethical framework. Our founding fathers recognized that it was biblical Christianity that shaped our constitution and thus uninculcated Christianity, not any other. Number five, all things were created by God. Therefore, upon him, all mankind are equally dependent and to him are equally responsible. Oh, yes, we are responsible to God.

Number six, all men are created equal. Number six, principle number six, all men are created equal. Stirring phrase from our Declaration of Independence asserts that every citizen is entitled by God, their creator, to equal treatment before the law, not equal outcomes. Number seven, the proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things. Oh, important in our day to hear this.

When we protect equal rights and enable open-ended opportunity, we all prosper. We prosper to the degree to which we have God-given gifts and energy. Some will have more and some will have less. That's just the way it is. We don't guarantee equal outcomes, equity for all.

No. Number eight, men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Once again, from the Declaration of Independence. Number nine, to protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law. Very important to understand.

Special, special, excuse me, revelation. The Bible is necessary for the full and complete salvation and happiness of mankind. Yes. Principle number 10, the God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people. We the people.

Oh, there is no king. No, America's battle cry during the revolution was, there is no king but Jesus. No divine right as sovereign, but that in God, as our founders maintain. No king but Jesus. Number 11, the majority of the people, principle number 11, the majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.

Oh, the people have sovereign authority. They and they alone can change that constitution. Number 12, principle number 12, the United States of America shall be a republic. Democracy has become a code word for socialism in America. No, a republic strikes a balance between the one, the few, and the many by governing through representatives in a federal system.

Principle number 13, a constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people. Once again, we the people, right? Principle number 14, life and liberty are secure only so long as the right to property is secure. So important just because you burn down a city and say, it's just property. We didn't hurt anybody.

No, it's an extension of the man, the property, protect his property. Number 15, principle 15, the highest level of prosperity occurs when there's a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations. Sweep it away. Sweep away the government regulations and liberate the American producer and consumer. Well, number 16, the government should be separated into three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial.

This is the famous separation of powers doctrine. When practiced and protected, it guarantees that no single person or group of persons will gather into its hands all the levers of power to exercise tyranny. No. Number 17, a system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. One branch relying on another to check it.

Yes, checks and balances on those respective branches of government. Number 18, the unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution. No mere oral traditions. A written document was provided so we have a clear and objective standard, the constitution written down. Principle 19, only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained in the people.

All our founders severely restricted the federal government, as it should have been. There are only 20 articulated powers in all the constitution, but we've obviously metastasized far beyond that. Well, principle number 20, efficiency and dispatch require a government to operate according to the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. This is the favorability of a republic. You have the will of the majority, but you protect the rights of the minority.

Principle 21, strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. Make it all local. Oh, just as a bullet loses power and velocity to the further away it travels from the Mosul, so political power loses its efficacy the farther away it travels from its source. The people in their respective locale. Principle 22, a free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.

The rule of law, ever so important. Principle 23, a free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education. We cannot be free in ignorance. We must know how we are governed, how we govern ourselves. Principle 24, a free people will not survive unless they are strong.

We treated this recently militarily strong, morally strong, strong of character. Principle 25, peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. Oh, so important. Entangling alliances that got us into World War I, World War II, and the despicable Ukraine war. Principle 26, the core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family.

Therefore, the government should foster and protect the family's integrity. Oh, that speaks for itself, doesn't it? Principle 27, the burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest. We treated that last week. And of course, 28, principle 28, which we've dealt with today, the United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

Dear listener, fellow citizen, these principles articulated for you are not a newfangled system, but enduring principles. I urge you to come to know them thoroughly. Teach them to your children and friends and bring them into the marketplace of ideas and action. Then, by God's grace, we will make good our responsibility to uphold, protect, and preserve our Constitution. 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 at area code 208-523-0196.