Mr. Ed. Yes. Before I forget, because I'm at the age where you can just hear one minute and, you know, I'll go on the next. I was watching the Mike Huckabee show last night, and Joe Navarro, who had been part of the Trump administration, was on. And he was telling us that what Israel is doing right now in Gaza is destroying all those miles and miles of tunnels underneath that has been able to bring in whatever and take up whoever and blah, blah, blah. And then he said something, and my teeth just almost dropped out, that the reason we couldn't win the Vietnam War was because of tunnels. Well, that's probably some truth in that, yeah. I know, I'd have a hard time crawling down that tunnel. Ms. Wanda is asking for another table. Yeah, the columns would fire from the woods and then go out there and strafe and everything. He said, five minutes later, they were shooting at you. Wow. Well, I don't think it takes five minutes in Gaza right now. I think it pretty well right at the moment they were there. So pretty rough. So yeah, that's a difficult situation. I'm going to try to wrap this up this week and next week. I may not be successful. I'll give it a good try here. I want to just review where we were and try to keep, let me just try to tell you my plan of attack here. And I've had more scope I wanted to try to accomplish here, but I'm slowly, I've got to turn it off, slowly working backwards to, and realize I can't do everything I'd set out to do. Probably will not get to the issue of what is our role versus the church in terms of that. That's another day and another dollar. But I will try to finish out, at least today, to try to illuminate the problem in terms of what our aim is. And then next week, if you flip over, you'll see on the back a series of books. about the issue of resistance and obedience and the Christian perspective. I briefly went over these a few months back, but I'm gonna go back to these and try to summarize them and get to the heart of what they teach, okay, and it's sort of an historical view. And so that's an awful lot to do. I'll maybe start that, well, I won't get to start it. I give up. I'll try to get this done this week, okay. We'll worry about that next week. So, but I wanna focus in on really Let me tell you the heart of the issue in my mind is, is there such a thing as a Christian nation? Is there such a thing? Is it biblically something that we should even aim for? The reason I ask this question is I'm convinced that based on our living in America, being raised in America, being fed America, being Americans, which I am, holy heart, heart and toe to heel, okay, and head and top of my forehead and my chinny chin chin, I really want to put it, I'm an American, okay. But I don't think we can even adequately comprehend a worldview where God is at the center. It has been removed from our possibilities. that God could act in such a way that he would transform this nation into a Christian nation. And I get the heart of the issue we're getting at is this is not something men do. This is not a work of man. I'm not asking you to go out there and make this Christian, but it's not the point I'm trying to get to. But it is a work of God. And all I'm trying to hold open is the possibility that there is such a reality of a Christian nation. And in order to understand this issue of civil disobedience, and in order to categorize the different theories, you run right up into that issue. Because you have, in time, you have the, what I'll call the early Reformation, which was very biblically oriented. You have, in time, the creeping attacks from Arminianism and Athenomianism and other things and you have this slowly, this church begins to splinter and fall apart. You then have the enlightenment and modern man and in this modern enlightened world, the idea, even the idea that there can be such a thing as something outside of us and a people that could be related to God is difficult to comprehend. And my argument is that in order to understand this theory, when you read somebody like Brutus, who's a pseudonym for somebody who wrote a track on Vendikiae in the French Revolution, when you read his summary of these relationships, you've got to understand that they didn't see this distinction between political and religion that we do today. They saw it as very much united. They looked at the Bible as the Word of God and as a foundation of where we get our truth. Now, mark the time forward to John Locke. The American Constitution and all of this is built largely on Locke and Montesquieu and others and many thinkers. But if you read those men, They're not entirely secular either. They use a lot of biblical arguments. They rely on them. So it's not totally, even turn the clock forward a hundred years from our confession, there's still a biblical framework there. but yet there's still a larger and larger emphasis on natural law and reason and whatever in terms of trying to do something. So you've got to understand these arguments within that context. So I'm just trying to lay out here very briefly the possibility there could be such as Christian. I use this illustration on the front page to point out what a blessing it is to live in a land where God's word is believed to be the word of God. and generation after generation. Here's the generational influence. The Wickliffe Bible showed up in these areas. People became convicted of the word of God. This particular area was noted in Knox's day as the Lollards of Kyle, okay. Many of them were persecuted because of their religious faith. A hundred years later, during the Reformation era after the Westminster Confession and restoration of King Charles, There was continued persecution and listed down at the bottom of the page, the people from this just little area who died for not being, not wanting to accept the difference between a religion where they had to say the king was the head of the church and a religion where they didn't. Okay, that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was enough for them to die for. But the point I'm getting, if you were to fly over this area, you'd see a church is assembled. These were a religious people. There is such a thing as a religious country, a religious nation, a religious people, a religious place. It is not something that never has existed. Now, is it ever perfect? No, that's not my point. If that's the measurement, there wouldn't even be such a thing as a church. So if you say, well, it's not perfect, it can't be true, well then forget the church too, okay? But my argument is, you take this little place in time where God poured out His grace, It's not the people, it's God pouring out His grace in such a way that you have books written like The Christian's Great Interest by Gusford, and then the Psalm by David Dixon in this area. You have people willing to die for the cross. You have John Nevaeh's sermons on the covenant of grace. Actually, John Nevaeh, by the way, translated about one-fourth of the Hebrew psalms into the common meter psalm of that day, the psalmogry of that day. He was one of the people assigned by the West Middle Confession to do this. So these weren't yokels, these were educated people who saw a role and authority and a purpose in God and it can happen, okay. That's all I'm trying to say, it can happen. And I'm going to briefly go over them. I get lost in this point, but I want to emphasize one thing. I'm not going to go back into the inner triangle, which is what does it mean to be a Christian. No condition, condition, faith, hope, love, I'm not going to go back through that. I'm just going to try to put that in a secular context. And even in a secular context, The bigger circle outside the shaded circle is our reality outside of Christ in the world. We still have the Holy Spirit. We still have the Son. We still have the Father. Just because you walk outside the church, do you think the Father doesn't exist anymore? Do you think the Holy Spirit doesn't do work? Do you think Christ doesn't influence? This whole thing is working towards a purpose for God. And as I said before, how can you know history? How can you even be an intelligent person in the definition that I described last week, without understanding history in its true sense. If you take God, the Holy Father, if you take all of that out of history, you don't really see it truly. And the point I'm trying to draw at is, on the left-hand side at the bottom, if we lived in a world where there was a Christian nation, and I know I'm dreaming, I know I'm idealistic, but there would be less conflict and issue with us, okay? Our children would hear the right things. There would be a framework for Christian life. It would be much better. We'd be much nearer to those blessings that God bestowed upon us. I'm not going to say we're going to ever be ideal in this world. This is a generalization. Whereas if you live in a world where there is a big difference between the secular world's view of things and a Christian view, that difference is covered by suffering. And the greater the difference, the greater the suffering. So I'm making a very simple, practical argument here that there are great practical benefits, logical benefits, as well as biblical benefits that are there. That's all I'm trying to argue. Okay, move on. There are five principles that I laid out in this book on church and state. And if I wrote it today, I'd write it better and differently. And I'm not going to get into that. I'm going to stick with what I said. And we went through two and maybe three of them last week. We're going to try to pick that up and finish it today. But I want to summarize something here. These principles are, first of all, the fundamental principle is the church and state are distinct. However, they have common obligations. Almost everybody agrees with that. That's not a terribly controversial statement. The second state is that the state is acknowledged to offer God as a source of authority. Christians are obligated to educate the state regarding and both share the common end to advance the glory of God and the common good. Well, that itself within the reform camp is not a controversial statement, okay. This, when we go to principles three, four, and five is where we get into the controversy, and where we get into what was missing in the early framing of our own church confessions as well as our constitution. But if you read all of these people that wrote during the time of great persecution and during the Reformation era, they would have hold to these principles. That states are obligated to acknowledge, oh, I'm just gonna go, third one. The state is obligated to promote good and punish evil according to the word. The word of God should be our standard. It doesn't mean that we should impose it on people, not the point, but it should be the standard by which we have a legal system. And it fundamentally was, to some degree, or to a large degree, but it's becoming eroded more and more and more. Fourth point, states are obligated to honor and acknowledge Jesus Christ and mold their institutions of behavior in conformity with Christian principles. That's a pretty radical idea, is it not? I mean, you may even say that that's anti-our confession. But then you have the fifth point, that there is such a possibility that God could pour out his grace on a nation or a place in such a way that a Christian nation results. And the Christian people see that grace and are so impacted by it that they come with God to maintain and sustain that and to fight to defend that. Now you say, well, that's exactly what happened in Scotland. That's exactly what happened in England. Our Westminster Confession was written by an assembly that almost every man in it swore to the solemn legion covenant. They were committed to those principles. That was the fundamental principle. That was so logical to them. It's what the Bible says. Why would God not make that a possibility of existence? It's what they said, okay? That was the framework. And so by the point I'm getting to is there is a line here, sort of like a magnet, that if the state is not that, doesn't the Bible also say that we can't have any league with evil? Okay. Is there also some sense in which we have to say no? Well, okay, I can't join you in this, all right, because it's an evil association. So you have this ultimate conflict here of a world that goes on. Now, you take those five points, and I'm not going to go over them today, but if you go to the next page, I've listed out three different confessions. They are a P confession, I've written about the same time, or PCA, or Southern Prebiterian, or Prebiterian American Confession, same thing. And then we have the original confession by the Westminders Assembly. Each one of them gets longer, but not necessarily clearer. And the point I want to get to is, if you map these up versus these five principles up here, you say, does our confession today agree that we're separate but common obligations? Yep. Does our confession basically say there's a role for the state of nursing home? Yes. Does our confession say that the state should Help me out here. Where does it say that? The larger catechism says that. Oh, OK. OK. All right. Good point. All right. Good point. OK. All right. OK. Good point. So I'll give you credit. Larger catechism. You can give it a half check. OK. All right. Larger catechism. OK. Give it a half point. OK. Great. I'll give it a half check. All right. All right. Yeah, kind. OK. But not as clear. It's not as clear as it is in like the ARP or like the regional competitive. It's just not as clear. Essentially, what we're saying is that there's no standard. You're right, the larger catechism, the foundation, you can get it out of there, but let me just ask you this. Shouldn't Christians be clear? Shouldn't we have clear ideas? Shouldn't we know right and wrong, what's right and proper? So why the ambiguity? Why the hesitancy to say that? Go to the next one. Should a state acknowledge Jesus Christ? I don't think so. Maybe I'm missing it, maybe I've read it. Maybe again you can give a half credit here. Now, if you go to the A.R.P. Confession, yes, yes, yes, yes. If you go to the original West Mississippi, yes, yes, yes, yes. There is something decidedly different, and I'm not saying there's not, I am supporting our confession. But you need to understand where I'm coming from. I was on a committee in presbytery one time, and the issue was, well, how do we deal with this particular coming up again and again. And there were two camps. Anybody that goes to Preparatory knows there are two camps. There are the true reformers, and then there's the bulk of everybody else. I made myself an enemy of both sides. Because my point was, just the same, when I read a lot of the reformers, I read a lot of the Puritans, they were very insistent. Is the Westminster Confession of Faith Our foundational document. What is our foundational document? The Word of God. The Scripture is our foundational document. We should always be challenging 1st Scripture. So in my view, when someone comes up and has a difference to the confession, the issue isn't, well, we've declared that as an exception, let's just move on. The issue ought to be, let's challenge it. Have you read this? Have you studied this? Have you looked at what the Word says? We ought to go back to that every time. That ought to be the foundation. So all I was trying to argue was, yeah, our confession says this, and I get you. But the real principle is here. And every time somebody comes up with an exception, we ought not be in this box of, oh, well, that's been granted. That's not. We ought to challenge it. What does this book say right here? And whoever wants to hold that difference ought to be able to defend or argue this point. That would do the church good, and it would do the person good. That was all I was trying to argue. OK. Well, anyway, my point is we're in a world to where where arguably even our own denomination doesn't emphasize these, I'll be kind, as clearly as they should, as we should. I'll just be kind here. And so my argument is not that our confession is wrong. First of all, depose me if you need to, okay? I'm just trying to tell you that my commitment is to the Word of God. Argue with me in the Word of God relative to all this, okay? Okay, great, might just work out. Well, I don't know, but I remember him saying that, you know, they prefer two-letter Uncle Church order and everything. He said, let's go back to the word of God. Amen. That's exactly what he said. Okay, and so, you know, so anyway, the point I'm trying to get to is, don't tell me there's not a difference. Don't tell me that we have it as normal. And what I'm trying to go, as I went back, what I struggled with is, I said, where do we get off the rail? Well, let me go back and look at James Stormville. I think James Stormville unequivocally would agree with these two things right here, all right, for sure, undoubtedly, okay? It's right as ooze with it, and I'll show you that, all right? That was 100 years ago, okay? So not only have we gotten off the train, we're becoming increasingly more difficult to understand how could anybody believe that, okay? So anyway, I want to get into that. Now, that is the last point. Is it possible to come to God If you're not in a nation that's covered with God, yes, there are different roles than if you are in a nation that's covered with God. And that question, if you wanna understand what John Knox had to say, and you wanna understand the nature of the religion that overthrew queens and kings and nations during the Reformation, you need to understand that's where they were coming from. That there is this sense to where this is a possibility, and that we're in covenant, and what is the extent of that covenant? Next week, I'm gonna get more into that topic. I'm gonna leave it right now, because I'm still reading, okay? To what degree, because when you read these authors on this last page, they refer to basically two, I'll say there are three fundamental principles that should come out there. One of them is there's a natural law, and a natural right, and a natural obligation as a people to promote and defend good things. There is also a Christian obligation as a people of God to promote religion and to defend religion and to have the right to have, we don't have any right, it's not a right, it's an obligation, that's the point. They make clear, it's not a right, it's an obligation on our part to have a Christian framework in the world and where we're going, that's an obligation. It's not a right, it's not a right, it's an obligation. And that they saw that obligation of, yes, we should have a Christian nation, and yes, we shouldn't be having this obnoxiously and that. And the degree to when individuals and magistrates and all that, I'll save that for next week. I'm just trying to settle the issue of there is something, there is something in our little world that we're missing. Okay, we're missing something. That's all I'm trying to say. And maybe it's good we're missing it. Maybe we shouldn't have it. Maybe we've made the right decision. Maybe we've decided that we know better than God. Maybe we've decided that this is right and this is wrong. Could be. But my argument is, I don't think so, then throw these guys out the door. Now, the ARP wouldn't go to that last check, but the Westminster Confession would. They would say that it is okay to have an established religion in a Christian nation. And that's all John Knox was arguing. If you go back and look at these people, if you read them, The argument was, what does the Bible say about a Christian people and nation? They have example after example after example after example, and this is what we should try to do and accomplish, okay? And there is such a thing. We believe God has done that in our nation, at least I'm putting my words in their mouth here. We're gonna swear a covenant with God to maintain that. Let me just say that even though they did that, you have to ask, how did that work out for them? How long did that covenant last? Let me count the days, okay. It wasn't that long, okay. Why? What happened? Where did it go down? Is it because it's not meant to be? Well, that's what led me to read, that's what I found so interesting about John Dubbee's sermons. I said, okay, here's a guy that was actually in this little town here, on this picture I drew about, that wrote these sermons about the covenant of grace, You know, he swore the solemn legal code. What does he have to say about the solemn legal code? Can he help clarify this for me? And I was surprised at his answer. Do you know how many times in a several hundred page book and 52 sermons that he mentioned the solemn legal code? One time. One time. That's the other point I'm trying to communicate here. I'm trying to distinguish between an understanding of what is right and proper and reality of what is really better, okay, what is more important. The point I'm trying to get to is, yes, these are important things and principles, but is that really our principal concern? No. Our principal concern is to be a Christian, but I assure you that being a Christian is such a difficult thing that if you try all your life and then everything you ever do, you never will succeed in doing it. It's such a difficult, that's our main goal, to be a Christian, okay. I'm not trying to get you out here to want to bandwagon and go promote war. When God brings it about, all I'm trying to say is if God does, all I'm trying to communicate is this. If God does indeed pour out His grace on this land in such a convincing way that we have national leaders who are Christian, that we're not so stupid as to say, oh, our confession won't let us do that. That's all I'm trying to say, okay? That's all I'm trying to say. That's all I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to turn you into zealots because they weren't zealots. These people that died on the cross didn't die to be a Christian nation. They died because Jesus Christ saved their life. They died because that was the focus of their life. And to me, when you get down to trying to answer this question of how do we respond to several magistrates, it comes down to that singular principle. Our primary obligation is our covenant obligation to God the Father, the three Jesus, Jesus Christ, And that's where our commitment is. And nothing I want to say here confuses us. Don't get me wrong here. I'm just trying to make sure you've got the whole loaf of what I'm trying to communicate here. Yes, there is a difference. Yes, we're woefully injured by not having these things. Some of these things are what God brings about in time. They're not something we do. All I'm trying to say is don't close the door on God being able to do it. I'm also trying to say, and for pity's sake, do not cease to pray for such a condition. Oh, we're not even to pray for these things because, you know, they're just against our confession of constitution. That's the point I'm trying to get at, is that there's an intellectual weakness here. So anyway, I've laid out my argument. Let me lay it out in a little more detail here. Yes. an assumption, an understanding that nations serve gods. Yes. And the reformation that happened in Scotland and England and the continent and all that stuff, it was a matter of moving from one form of a Christian nation to another, a matter of purity, and we are, like you said, several steps removed from that. We don't even have a faulty nation that tries to serve God. And half of our Christian leadership doesn't even believe what you're saying is possible. And it's just a totally different historical moment. It is. But also, the other thing, to deny the possibility of a Christian nation is to deny the possibility of a Christian faith. Good point, good point. Well put. I wish I had said that. That's a great argument. I like it. Amen. It is because the family feeds into, the family is the foundation of both the church and the state. Amen, amen. Well said. We don't deny that there's such a thing as a Christian family. Right. We don't deny that. a Christian nation. It's a logical absurdity. That's all I'm trying to, amen. You captured the essence of what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to say be a zealot, go after it, because only God can do it. Yeah, but just a pragmatic question I have, and I know what you mean by saying that it is the work of God, amen, and you probably wouldn't want to try to institute a Christian nation with less than a majority of people being. Certainly not. Something I would maybe like for us to talk about or think about is does a civil leader who becomes convinced of Christianity need to wait until a certain number of people that he leads becomes persuaded of Christianity before he tries to rule in a Christian way? Because we wouldn't say that about a mother or father who's the only converted Christian in their home. I tell them to go read Daniel. Right, yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. Because Daniel was in exactly that situation. Okay. Yeah. And let me get to the heart of where I'm coming from. Let me lay down a schism of things. This chapter 13 in Rome was written when the Roman Empire was in power. I've been reading some good books on the Roman Empire. It's just, I've read Pax Romana and several other books trying to get more knowledge of the Roman history. As an aside, do you think the Jewish persecution was over at the fall of Jerusalem? No, okay. The Jews were persecuted by Rome. They went into Babylon, they went into Egypt, wiping them out. They came back into Israel several decades later in Judea and wiped them out again, okay. And the Romans, you talk about the Roman culture before being Christianized, even after Christianized. Here you have Nero, had a beautiful wife. Must have been beautiful women in the world. And apparently it was said that he kicked her in the stomach since she aborted a baby, and that's what was said, probably the truth. And he was very, very much hurt by that. Anyway, to make up for her, he found a little Greek boy who looked just like her. He had the boy castrated and denuded of important body parts. and that child became his love, okay. Now that's Roman culture, okay. That's the kind of culture that can simply happen in a world, okay, that's there. So Roman culture, I don't mean to diminish it, but the point I'm trying to get to is that nations are powerful things, okay. they have and these influences of where we come from and other things are just are just shocking what can happen in the world. I don't know that we're that far away from that in our society. Okay, but but okay, I don't know the answer to your question, Trent, but but I would argue maybe let's just think on it. Let's put it on the shelf here. Principle two, I've already let's go to page two principle two. I've already done that last week and And, you know, the point of getting at it is we've kind of accepted a partial rather than complete statement. What we have in our confession is absolutely true. I'm not arguing that. I'm just trying to say that it isn't the complete truth. That's my only point. Number three, the state is out to provoke, good, and punish evil. I don't have time to get into all of this, but I have here what Calvin stressed, the duties of magistrates, you know, and how important it was there. And for many, most modern reform laws would limit the scope to the first table. But again, you go back and read Calvin and Company, they saw it as much broader than that. As you mentioned, Trent, too, our larger catechism is much clearer than our confession in regard to a lot of these things. Thornville, who was my reference point here, he sees the state as a moral argument. He argues that it's subject to the consequences of sin and bound to do the duty to obey the moral law under the same sanctions which pertain to the individuals. Okay, so that's the way he's coming. And he also says he offered two guiding principles in applying scripture in several matters. First, that the state must acknowledge scripture as true. Okay, you mean Presbyterians believed that one time? Yep, yep, even a hundred years ago. And regulate their conduct and legislation in contormity with their teaching. Yep, that's the way they believed a hundred years ago. It must pass no laws inconsistent with the will of God as revealed in the Holy Scripture. However, Scripture is not a positive constitution for the state in the relation it stands only with the church. Second, Thornville proposed a formula according to which the state could accept Scriptures as nothing shall be done which they forbid. The state only has a negative restraining power. It has no authority over the consciences of men, okay? So I think it's a well-written statement, okay? Now, whether we ever have a chance to apply that or not, but I'm just trying to point out that there isn't, you know, we're so used to doing these straw man arguments that when our intellectualism is reduced to straw man, oh, there's, you know, there's one extreme where there can only be 100% this and 100% that, and Thoreau will say, no, there can really be. a way in which Scripture is upheld. You look at the original constitutions of almost all the states in America before the American Constitution, and you'll see these principles laid out there. Fortunately, after a simple look at it, I'm getting into another dig on us and praise for the ARP. And again, I'll get into a ding on the ARP, but let me just get this out, let me burp this out. During the Civil War, the press adopted an increasingly spiritual and isolated perspective on the church and state relationship. In other words, we got away from Thoreau's principles. We became more and more isolated. and provided a convenient moral cover for the rationalization of slavery and then the reconstruction. So anyway, we were wrong, okay? I mean, anyway, now you say, well, does the Bible talk about slavery and we get into all that argument? No. But is slavery right? No. Morally, principally, by our conscience, no. Okay, so, you know, we've got some baggage here in that regard. Okay, we could argue whether that's right or wrong, and that's not my point here today, but I'm saying that once you start, you know, that there's a slippery slope here. The Associated Center of Reformed Presbyterian Church demonstrated much of this Christianity. They actually tried to have places where they set up institutions for educating the slaves and other things. And most, one of the reasons why the AARP isn't very dominant today is that they couldn't exist in the South. They really had a very, they thought slavery was morally wrong at heart. So anyway, I don't have time to plunge the whole depths of that history, but I'm saying there's a lot of ancillary issues with this relation of what is a state and how do we get into this. On the other side, on the downside, the AARP's religion was a little off. They adopted, because they felt prey to a doctrine called Mara, Modern Theology, a book written a couple hundred years ago, which is very ambiguously written and frames the issue of grace and human works in a very ambiguous way, in my mind. It tries to keep on both sides of the camp, all right? And Thomas Boston is a good example of following that, all right? So I think a lot more about Thomas Boston than most people in Scotland hate him because I'm not a friend of Thomas Boston's in that regard, okay? But nonetheless, my point really is that that set the ARP up to adopt two chapters in their confession, one on love and one on the Holy Spirit, which are not in our confession. And it wasn't until actually a few years ago, about a decade or so ago, they got rid of those two chapters. Their confession is much like ours, okay, today, okay? They're getting rid of that. So I'm not claiming they're always right or anything, I just want to be fair in what I'm trying to say here. Move on. Principle, principle, principle four. Okay, I kind of got it. Okay, the issue is the relationship between church and state. According to the two kingdoms principle, Christ, has a kingdom administered by an ecclesiastical order and a kingdom administered by divine power without an ecclesiastical order. So there are two kingdoms here. And again, if you read Augustine and whoever else, the two kingdoms we're talking about are the eternal kingdom of the invisible church, and the visible king and the nation. Now there is a visible church, and that fits into this, but it is not the principle and not the key idea here in that discussion. In that one kingdom, Christ is the eternal son of God, exercised sovereign dominion over all things, even as a father does, for he and the father are one. In the other kingdom, Christ is mediator, rules, to govern the elect. The dual government raises an important question. Should a Christian magistrate serve Christ as he is mediator and king of the church? Gillespie answers, certainly ought and must, not as a magistrate, but as a Christian. So here's an important principle of behavior here. What is our obligation as a magistrate, as an individual? I'm gonna put that off till next week. That's an important question. And again, I'll try to develop that better for next week. Thornville's real issue is not the relationship between states, but the relationship between states and Christ. Okay, so that's the real fundamental issue of acknowledging Christ. Thornville opposes the establishment of a single denomination over others, which is consistent with our confession. It clearly supported a Christian government. The state realizes its religious character through the religious character of its subjects, and the state is an ought to be Christian because its subjects are Christian. Now, I don't know whether that may have been true in his day. I don't know that that's true. Here, a hundred something years later, I don't know that that's still true. It is not enough for the state to acknowledge, in general terms, the supremacy of God. It must acknowledge, in general terms, the supremacy of his son, who is the ruler of nations, the king of kings, the Lord of Lords. Thorvald argued, it is illegitimate for the state to have a religion, i.e. Christianity, that the Christianity was a religion of the state. I'm sorry, Christianity. Neutrality is impossible. Magistrates would not have to profess belief, even a Jew could be a magistrate, but only acknowledge that Christianity was a religion of the state. Very simple rule. I mean, you're not trying to say everybody has, he just says that's what the state believes. Doesn't mean you have to believe that. It's not being forced on you. But you can be a magistrate without believing that, in Thornville's view, which I think is fairly reasonable. Further, the state must mold its institutions in conformity with Christian principles. Thornville concluded, the gospel is the only solution for the state, given the power of the gospel is the only force that can change the inner man and eventually transform the outer world. Thornville contended that its proposals do not imply a single element of what is involved in a national church. So Thornville would not and all his national church in that sense, but he would have the church to essentially be Christian, which this may be a little bit broader view of things. Okay. Principle five. And I'll be brief here to the point that there was, you know, the more proactive role of the state is only valid in a covenant in land. Such lands are not the work of man, but of God. Until the church attains such a unity of truth, the state should not attempt it. So I'm saying, hey, no, I don't agree. America ought to go do this tomorrow. No, that's not the point I'm trying to make. Matter of fact, that would be wrong. Until that time, it is the duty of every Christian in his place and station to combat false religion. So to me, I'm sort of walking on both sides of the camp here. It is an individual thing. If God pours out his heart and causes us to do that, great. But on our own, should we as a people? No. It's an important principle. The goal of the Scottish Church was complete victory to them, Christian nation, leaders zealous to promote true religion was a desire of blessing God. Under Knox, the Scottish Confession of Faith clearly defined the responsibilities of the civil magistrate. We affirm chiefly in most principles that conservation and purgation of religion appertains so that not only they, i.e. magistrates, are appointed for the civil polity, but also for the maintenance of true religion. and for suppressing the idolatry of superstition, whatever it may, whatever as is David, as was David, whatever, Hezekiah, et cetera, all of these and others. Highly commended for their zeal in that case, not to be a spy. So again, walking a thin line here, that's a little different than what Thornville says. I'm just giving you where, if you march the clock back to Knox, that's where Knox was. According to James Bannerman, without some religion, no society on Earth, it is admitted by all parties, no longer commonly held as true in this century later, could exist at all. And without the true religion, no society can exist happily. That's always true. Without true religion, we're not going to exist happily. Unfortunately, the modern church has lost this vision. In fact, our forefathers lost it when they agreed to lower the standards of ideal religion from a true religion to religion. Others' contributions have been to remove the need for religion altogether. The more proactive role of the state and vision by the covenanters require important safeguards. And I'm not gonna get into all of these safeguards here, but again, just as I read in Thornmills Ray, if you read Bannerman and others, there are some principles upon which that can be done that are well established in the word of God. Process number five, continuing the more proactive role and vision by the covenanters requires important safeguards. And again, that's number three, four, there are some important safeguards here. And you kind of can follow some biblical principles, like the building of the temple. You know, once the temple is rebuilt, symbolic of the church, as Nehemiah said, both the church and the state may cooperate. In other words, we've got to begin in the church, is the point here. We don't begin in the state, we begin in the church. You know, that's where the Reformation has to play. The other Reformation will follow. If the church is right, God's poured out that grace, the state will get in line. Fifth, the consent of the governor in leading the Christian state must covenant to establish and preserve the true religion. And again, I'm just reading here what the Westminster Confession, what our founding principles were a long time ago. Even Calvin, that whoever does take into his protection by the covenants of the word any realm, nation, or private city, so that of mercy he becometh to them conductor, teacher, protector, and father, that he may cast this off the same care and fatherly affection which is in his word, until they do utterly declare themselves unworthy of his presence." OK. Next point. The true question is whether Christians should join a separate or separate from a moral state. Paul clearly teaches us not to form alliances with lawless parties. So you have two very important principles here. Is there such a thing as a Christian nation? Yes. Can we be involved in it? Yes, when it happens. But is there also some reality that we also, it's back to this issue of family. I mean, is it okay for people of different views to marry? There is this reality where we're either on one side or the other of the question. And so I'm gonna largely leave it at that and leave time for discussion here. I've already given them a point on a solid legal covenant. And again, there's some admonitions and possibilities here, but I'm not going to bore you with that. I'm going to leave you for these books. If you have some, I'll start reading them, and we'll pick that up next week. But any discussion of what we said here, if I've said something wrong, shoot me in the eye. Tell me, OK? I'm just trying to get my mind around this topic. When you read Knox, when you read Calvin, when you read the Westminster Confession writers, Here you can turn the clock forward. Let me go back further. First Reformation. Calvin, and we'll get to this next week, was very largely focused on this relationship between us and Christ, the individual. He wanted to have little to do with individuals or fighting governments or whatever the case may be. You turn the clock forward to St. Bartholomew's by massacre in France. When the Protestants in France were massacred and it started a destruction of many of them, after that their writings changed. They weren't quite so generous. They became much more open to natural law ideas and other things. Turn the clock forward. You have John Locke. You have the Enlightenment. You have our disengaging from this original framework all together. You turn the clock forward. You have James Thornbill, who still believes in such a possibility and even outlives some ways in which they can coexist. And you have today, when we don't give a flip. So what happened? Are they wrong? Which one of those is wrong? Where did they go wrong? Are we wrong? That's all I'm trying to ask. I'm trying to get you to think about that question. Because when you read these books, or we go over these books, each of these books are written in a historical context. You have to understand what the author's world was at that time, and where they were in this battle. And we'll pick that up next week. Anyway, I'll leave the floor for discussion. Since this war in Israel started, there's a lot more talk about listening to the podcast. There's a lot of secular folks talking about the nature of Islam. While we as Christians have grossly lost our way in understanding what is implications of the faith and what it means to be a nation, our enemies, one of them being Islam, has not forgotten our implications. One of the ways you can measure your position is by how how much resistance you're getting. And I don't, you know, as Americans in our context, when we look around the world and we see how other Christians are being persecuted, we fail to realize that they're being persecuted because of the threat that they present to these other systems. So like right now in Africa, there are Christians who are being genocided by Muslims. Not because Muslims are just, well, we just hate Christians. No, they hate Christians because Christianity, taken out to its logical conclusion, makes Christ king. So in America today, we don't give a flip, as you said, because we don't really believe Christ should be king. If we're being really honest with ourselves, right? Like, we'll pray for Christian baptist churches, but we don't have to believe it. Like you said, it's right. If it were to happen, there would be a group of Christians that would say, well, our confession doesn't allow it. Jesus could come down now and say, I am king of kings and lord of lords and all nations must bow to me. And there would be some TR who would stand up and go, wait a minute. We have a goofy view of Christianity because we don't understand really what it is. We don't really believe what we believe, but our enemies know what we all believe. It says they're united. They know what they want. They want our destruction. They want our destruction because we are their existential threat. You know, Muslims really believe it. Muslims really believe the Quran. Muslims really believe, right? Our enemies are the woke people, right? Radical leftism or whatever you want to call it, woke, you know, they really believe their thing too. But we're, I think we're losing the day sometimes because we don't really believe. You know, we have been allowed to hold on to, on the whole, I'm not saying individually. All of us have had different experiences of Christianity in our lives in different places. But on the whole, it seems like we have been allowed to hold tentatively to things without actually having to prove them. And when you live that way, you don't really care. You know, it's easy believism. And one of the questions I have just is, Do you think part of this too, and you've mentioned some of it with Norman, post-Enlightenment, one of the big things that I'm starting to realize, in the Reformation era, you could argue that there was more formalism. If you made the outside of the thing right, the inside would follow. And sadly true, yeah. But now, we're also on the other end of that spectrum, where there's a sense in which the outside of a thing doesn't matter at all. Do you think that that's? I think, first of all, if you could summarize my view better than what you just said, that's it. I've studied this thing, and I try to, which of these views is right? But when I get to the heart of each one of these views, when I get to Calvin and his insistence on us The key point I want to leave you with is the inside. If the inside of the church is right, we'll have less problem with the state. If our inside is right, we'll have less problem with the church and the state, and our family and everything else. The key is on the inside. And like I said, when I read Nevaeh's sermons thinking I'm going to get an answer to this question, he only focused on one thing. Do you have a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? and are you living as a required Christian? That's the fundamental question. This is an interesting topic. I enjoy it. It's intellectually stimulating. I get it. I don't mind going through it. I think it's wonderful to understand it because it helps us realize our context better. So I'm not advocating for evolution. That's not what I'm here for. But I will say that if God brings about a change We need to, we'll be part of it. We won't have to debate it. These people didn't debate this. They went out and signed that document one right after another. They didn't debate it. It was clear to them, okay? It's not clear to us today, okay? So we need to stay, you know, I'll leave it at that. That when you read these things, and I'll, if I had to pick one of these books, which I think's the best, When to Obey, okay? of all of these, and Vindicae is good, but it gets a little off the wagon in a few places, but When to Obey, you had to pick one of these books, and the other one would be the Contested Public Square. Those are the two best books on this page. And I would argue that if you read, if you go back and look at When to Obey, you get down to the issue of didn't Christ tell us we'll be persecuted? Didn't Christ tell us that we'll be in this world where the enemy is united against us and we're not? Didn't Christ tell us all of this? You know, what, are sheeps required to be wolves? What is this question? God forbid. No, we're required to be sheep, okay? That's who we're made, that's who we are. And we need to understand, so the point I'm trying to get at is, yeah, we need to understand, but this way, as sheep, Wouldn't it be nice to have a pasture? Wouldn't it be nice to have the field being rained on? Wouldn't it be nice to have all of these? Yes, okay. I'm saying, hey, let's just, yes, I don't want to get you from the idea of you're a sheep, be a sheep, God bless you. That's what you're here to do. But something's wrong when we don't even want the good pasture anymore, when we don't want to have the trough to have our feed and the food, okay? We don't want the other sheep to not bite our backs all the time, okay? Is something wrong with us? That's all I'm trying to argue. There's something we're missing, and it breaks my heart. And I'm just trying to share that. That's all I'm trying to say. Let's close a little prayer. Dear Lord and Heavenly Father, help us through this journey. But above all, remind us who we are. We're your people. We're the sheep of your pasture. Lord, we are in a covenant relationship with you. And Lord, with that covenant, we shouldn't focus on the rights, on the obligations that you have for us there. But Lord, those obligations are duties, and those duties require our perseverance, but they also require our dependence and trust on you alone. Because if anything's gonna change this, Lord, only you can do it. We lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.