This is a very, very important subject, as you see, I hope you see anyway, with your handout sheet. And it's a subject that most, believe it or not, most Americans don't understand. They don't really understand it. And I hope tonight with just a skimming through of things, because there's a ton more I could say, we'll get a little understanding of it. Now I'm gonna say something here, please don't get offended, I know where I'm at, I'm in Dover, I know we have Dover Air Force Base, but would you not agree that we are Christian before we're American? Amen. Do we get that, right? Now we're patriotic here, we love the flag and all that, but we're Christian first. Amen? And that's very, very important to understand. 1 Peter 2, and notice verse 13. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Now we'll stop there. Let me say this. This is one of two main passages in the New Testament that talk about civil government. We'll see both of them. We'll come back in a moment here, but let's go ahead and pray. And I want to ask just for your attention here. I'll do my best to get us out on time. I know we have a brief business meeting. We'll get through it, but I want us to get it. Amen. Let's pray. Father, please bless the message. I recognize my need of thee tonight. Please fill me with thy spirit afresh and anew, and Lord, help us all tonight to be attentive. I know this time of year with all the things we have to do, all the lists that are there of shopping and trying to be a blessing to people and cards to get out, God, I just pray now that we would set that aside for a few moments here as we look into your word. Please rebuke and bind the devil again, lead and direct all that I say and do. For it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. On October 17th, 1986, 100 armed law enforcement personnel surrounded the Community Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. They had entered the property of the church and they attempted to remove boys from the church's Otwell home. Now, the Otwell home was a home that was named after their pastor, Pastor Otwell, that they had opened three years earlier to help wayward boys. The attempt to remove the boys was unsuccessful, and so five days later, on October 22nd, 1986, District Judge Paul Davis ordered the home to be padlocked, and he did. They padlocked the home, and they imposed a $67,000 worth, actually $67,000 worth of fines on the church. The home was forced to close down. Now you ask, what was it that caused the state to close down the Otwell home? Were the boys in the home suffering from neglect, you may ask? No. Was there abuse taking place in the homes? No. Were they violating some sort of health standards, maybe food or something else that it was, you know, a dirty type place, was that the problem? No. Were there safety issues? Maybe they didn't have enough fire extinguishers or smoke alarms or whatever and they were concerned about that. Was that it? No. Then what was it? Just seven months earlier, in March, Judge Davis ruled that Community Baptist Church had to accept a state license or close its children's home ministry. The 1975 Texas Child Care Licensing Act required any institution or person They cared for more than six children to obtain a state license. Obtaining the state license would require the home to be in 100% compliance with the Department of Health and Human Services, the DHS, and their 240 minimum standards, many of which conflicted with the Bible. Let me give you some examples. They required that every child would be required to meet with a DHS-approved psychiatrist on a regular basis. The DHS reserved the right to determine who is or is not qualified to work in the child care facility. The DHS would also determine what mode of dress would be acceptable for the home. In short, the act gave DHS almost total control of the facility. Now when the state first found out about this home that the church had, they came in and they secluded the boys in the church sanctuary and they interrogated them for some time, only to find out that not one boy had anything bad to say about the home. They were all saying it was a good place, they were being helped and so forth, but because of their failure to obtain a license from the state, the state of Texas shut them down. Is that right? And why not? Tonight we're going to conclude our study on the final distinctive of our eight Baptist distinctives. We've been talking about this subject of why I am still a Baptist. I hope you're still a Baptist tonight. And we saw this as eight and final distinctive. Of course, we use the acrostic B-A-P-T-I-S-T-S to remember what they are. But this last one, this last S, was separation. Now, the last two weeks, we've already looked at the first two subtopics, and that is personal separation. In other words, those things that you and I, as individuals, separate from. Last week, we looked at ecclesiastical separation, the things that we ought to separate from as a church. Now, tonight we're going to look at this subject of separation of church and state. You say, that's a Baptist distinctive. Yes, it is. Separation of church and state is a Baptist distinctive, but may I add, not like the ACLU defines it. Totally different. And out of all the Baptist distinctives, I believe, as I've studied Baptist history, that this distinctive is our second most prominent distinctive. right behind believers' baptism only by immersion only. And the biblical understanding of separation of church and state is vital, vital to understand for all of us. It is this distinctive that has been understood by and fought for primarily by the Baptist. It is this distinctive that is essential for us propagating the gospel. It is essential for us, it actually has made America what it is today, and is perhaps more misunderstood than any other distinctive. And so tonight I hope, I say that word lightly, but I hope, actually I say it seriously, that we will get an understanding of what this means. So we're dealing with the subject of biblical separation of church and state. So what is meant by that? If it's not what the modernists and the liberals say today, if it's not what the ACLU says it is today, that we ought to keep God out of the government and keep God out of all public places, then what exactly is separation of church and state? Well, let's go through that tonight. So number one, I'll write this down. Let's talk about the decree of human government. Let's go back to Genesis. We'll look at Genesis chapter 6 and also Genesis chapter 9. But let's perhaps go to Genesis chapter 6 for a moment. Now, despite what our culture may think, God is the supreme ruler over everything. He is the ultimate governor, if you will. He is the sovereign ruler over the universe. Don't miss that tonight. Psalm 24, 1, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. Daniel chapter 4 and verse 35, And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say unto him, What doest thou? I say it again, God is the supreme ruler over everything. But understand something as well. God has given man a free will to choose. You and I have been given a free will by God to choose whether we will live by his principles or whether we will not. Do you know that God does not force man or nations or groups of people or churches for that matter to comply with his ordinances? He doesn't force any of us. But our choices are met by either blessings or by judgment. We are blessed and rewarded if you and I, as a church, as an individual, as a nation, obey God, and we are judged for disobedience. Now we won't go there for time's sake, but Deuteronomy 11 talks about that. A blessing if you obey the words of the Lord, and a cursing if you do not. That is how it works. Now notice the definition on your sheet of government. It is the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states." Can I just concise that, make it concise in one word? Government means control. That's what it means. To govern means to exercise authority over, to rule, to control the actions of. That's what it means to govern. Now when God created man, understand what he did at first. He allowed man to be self-governed. Adam and Eve had to decide, guided by their conscience, and by the inner law of God that Romans 2 talks about. They had to decide, as God commanded them, whether or not they would live under God's directives and be blessed, or whether they would reject God's governing of them and not be blessed. We know the Bible. We know Genesis chapter 3. We understand what they did. They chose to reject the rule of God. That's what they did. And what happened? Mankind fell, and sin entered into the world, and all of mankind inherited a nature that is sin-bent. We are all bent to do sin. We speak lies as we come out of the womb. That's what the Bible teaches about our nature. Now understand that this choice of Adam and Eve and mankind led to devastating consequences. These consequences were demonstrated in the very next chapter, Genesis chapter 4, when Cain murdered Abel. But the consequential condition of the world, as we see in chapter 6, is also a result of this as well. Look what happened because of man's rejection in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 5. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Notice verse 12. And so because of man's refusal to allow God to govern them, they rebelled against God to this point that we find in Genesis chapter 6. And so what did God do? You were here Sunday night several weeks ago. God sent a flood. He destroyed humanity, save Noah and his family. But understand what happened after the flood. Look at Genesis chapter 9. That's where we'll go. I think that's the text. Maybe not. Yeah, no, I didn't even write it down. Genesis chapter 9. We'll see this in a moment. Look at verses 5 and 6. Because it was after the flood, that God ordained civil government. Notice we read in verse 5, "...and surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother will I require it, the life of a man." Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man." So understand this is God instituting now civil government. In other words, in an effort to protect mankind from himself, God instituted human government. Now here in Genesis chapter 9, man was given the basic rule of government here to exercise capital punishment for a man who wrongfully took the life of another human being. Again, this was the seeds, if you will, or the beginning of civil government. Now throughout history what we find is that there are basically four types of civil government that have been formed. Now I want you to look at this handout sheet here as well. When you look at the very first institution of civil government in Genesis chapter 9 and follow throughout history all the civil governments that have existed, you'll find that they will fall basically into one of these four categories. Notice the first one, letter A, write it down, a theocracy. Now, a theocracy is government under the direct rule of God. Notice we read, the first man, Adam, lived under a theocracy. Israel also, notice, was God's, and please note this phrase, soul-ordained theocracy. There is no desire for a theocracy in New Testament times today. And we'll talk about that hopefully in a little bit. So we see the theocracy is a government under the direct rule of God. Another form of government, the second one, or letter B, number 2 on your sheet, is an autocracy. Now, what is an autocracy? You can read that whole thing, but I'll sum it up by saying this. An autocracy is the absolute rule by either a man or a family or a committee or a ruling party that holds complete power over the people. In other words, in an autocracy, let's say one type would be a king. All he has to do is say something is law, and it's law. And there's no voting, there's no what-do-you-think, there's no freedom of speech. He holds complete power. over the people. Again, it could be a man, it could be a family. We saw this, of course, I have some examples on your sheet, Louis XIV of France, dictators like Hitler, and also the first triumphant of Rome, political parties like the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union, all examples of autocracies. They say something, it goes, and the people either like it or lump it. Doesn't matter, they're the autocracy. Then there's a third type of government on the backside, and that is letter C, and that is a democracy. Now, please don't miss this. This is very important, and I say this now. I was going to say it later, but I'll say it now. America was not founded as a democracy. And by the way, we're not a democracy, and I hope this will help you understand why. Notice, democracy is ruled by the prevailing collective opinion of the masses. Now, it would seem like we do function that way today, do we not? This amasses it basically, but we're really not that, and we'll see the next one. In other words, with a democracy, whatever the majority wants, the majority gets. Again, the minority loses every time. Notice the word democracy literally means the people rule. People are indeed the god of democracy. Again, in a democracy, laws, constitutions, and even God's law are subservient to the will of the people. Notice this, and this is a very important fact because it should warn us about the direction that America is going in. Historically, democracies have proven to be unstable and short-lived, many times resulting in anarchy. That is a natural outcome of a democracy to its extent, and that is, again, anarchy. And notice democracy can be carried to either one of two conclusions. The system may become one of total government or it may degenerate into unlimited license for every person and result in the chaos of a lawless society." Boy, that sounds like America, does it not? That's because there's this war going on, some trying to say we're a democracy, we're a democracy, when we are not. Then what are we? We are number four. Notice the last one. And that is a republic. You know, we say the pledge to the flag and to the republic, right, for which it stands. That's what we are. What exactly is a republic? You could say, also, we are a representative republic. In a republic, here's what happens. Notice, citizens elect representatives. Those representatives are to make laws based on, and this is what my notes I'm reading, based on the compact that citizens have agreed to, in our case, it would be the Constitution. Now notice in here it says these representatives are charged with responsibility of carrying out the administration of the government according to the compact. So what happens is this, is that the society agrees on a compact. For example, in the United States, it would be our Constitution. We agree to have this is the law of the land. And so every law, every vote we have has to fall underneath the rule of that compact or that Constitution. And that's very, very important. Because that means that the citizens are subject not to the whims of the people, but we're subject to a written body of laws. And that's very important, that society, and by the way, which we agreed to at the formation of our nation, hence the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So our Constitution, what it does, understand how important this is, it protects the rights of the minority. It avoids a mob rule scenario. And that's very, very important. But these are the four basic types of government that exist. Now, to move on from this, and you should chew on this a little bit, and I could have done a whole sermon on that. But whatever civil government man adopts, whatever he did, has adopted throughout society, throughout history, whether it be kings, whether it be queens, whether it be governors, whether it be a democracy, a republic, a theocracy, or an autocracy, understand that God has decreed all civil government to honor him and his principles. Every nation, by the way, is going to stand before God. Now how exactly that's going to happen, I don't know, but that's what it says in Matthew chapter, I believe it's 25. So God has decreed that all of these civil governments honor Him and His principles and perform a very simple and specific function. You say, what is that? I'm glad you asked. Which leads us to number two. So we see the decree of civil government. We started out as being self-governed, we fell into sin, and so God instituted civil governments. Civil governments come in different forms throughout society, throughout history. But what are we to do? Number two again, the design of civil government. Now, when we're talking about separation of church and state, understand we are dealing with two different, separate, ordained institutions. Again, one is the church, the local New Testament church, and the other is the state. So we see when we're talking about this subject that we have two separate God-ordained institutions with two separate God-given roles, with two separate God-given responsibilities. Now we see this truth, go over to Matthew chapter 22 if you would, and we see this distinction given by the words of Christ when he made a statement here when his disciples were asked, doth your master pay tribute? And of course, he said some things, but he made this statement in verse 21 that I want us to see. Notice, they saith unto him, after he has asked whose inscriptions on the, whose image is on the coin, or whatever, he says unto them, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, notice this, render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. So notice there's two separate things here, institutions. You have Caesar, or the state, and then you have God, or if you will, the church. New Testament times. Again, two separate institutions with two distinct roles. Now, what are, and I don't have this written down, you may want to write this down on the back side of it, maybe somewhere, but what is the God-given role of the local church? What are we here for? Well, I hope you know that by now. A lot of churches don't. They think we're here to have fellowships, or to have fun, or to hang out, or protect ourselves from the world. It's more than that. I think we know, in reality, the commission given to us in Matthew 28. Flip over there. You know the verses. It tells us what we're to do. Why are we here? Well, go ye therefore and teach all nations, right? Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Now, that is the Great Commission. Now, really, the entire New Testament is what we're supposed to be doing, but in a concise way, this is what we are to do. May I remind you that this is not the role of the government. The government's not to reach the world. They're lost, you know. Well, some maybe say, but still. That's not that institution's design. That's not what they're designated for. The local church is to reach the lost. We are to teach, reach the world. We are to teach doctrine. We are to observe the ordinances. We are to exercise church discipline. And so we are to promote the things of God. That's what we're to do. We are to propagate the gospel. We are to persuade men in the things of God. We are to offer salvation to every man. Again, that is the local New Testament church's God-given responsibility. What about the government? What is the God-given role of government? What is it? Do you know, it's really much... If I were to ask the average person, what's the purpose of the government? What would they say? I think many of them would say, well, I'm not sure. I would be interested, and I've heard, actually, James Beller preach on this. He has asked, of course, he's in heaven now, but he was saying how he's even asked politicians, people running for office, people currently holding office, what is your responsibility, what is the responsibility of government? And he's gotten over and over these blank looks. Like, I'm not sure. Well, what would you say? You know, if we were to ask the average citizen today, boy, they'd have a whole list. But it's really more simple than most Americans think, at least biblically. Many see the government today as being responsible for things that the government should not be responsible for. Can I say that again? Many see the government today as being responsible for things that they should not be responsible for. The government today is seen as the great provider. Everybody turns to the government for things, providing jobs. They turn to the government. They turn to the government for providing health care. They're trying to turn to the government now to take on the responsibility of paying for people's And they do that in France, by the way. That's why we're seeing what we're seeing in France today. Provide welfare programs for many who don't want to work. This is what people think is the responsibility of the government. That's not the responsibility of the government. You see, the sole purpose of civil government is found in two passages in the Bible. The first one is over where we started in 1 Peter 2. Would you go there, please? 1 Peter 2. Let's read what the Bible says. What does the Bible say is the role of civil government? 1 Peter 2 and verse 13. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man. for the Lord's sake." By the way, that's civil government, the ordinances of man, the laws. Notice, whether it be to the king, as supreme, or under governor, it's interesting, he says, whatever the form of government is, if it's a king, if it's a governor, whatever it is, submit yourself. Notice what it says, as unto them that are sent by him, here it is, for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. There it is. You say, well, that's it? That's it. What about funding all of these scientific studies to find out why the seals in Greenland are becoming extinct? Isn't that the government's job? No. It is very, very simple. Again, it is to punish, and I'm gonna give you the one and two there in a moment here, but again, it's for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well. Now go over to Romans 13. We'll see it stated again. Here is the other great chapter on civil government. We could read verses one through four. For let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Now notice in verse four, for he, the power, the state, the civil government, the leader, the ruler, he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, here it is, for he beareth not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. There it is. So as we put those two together, we find that the sole purpose of the civil government or the state, biblically speaking, is first of all, number one, on your sheet, write this down, is to protect man from evil doers. You see, it is a duty of the state, it is a responsibility of civil government to protect you and protect me from someone who is trying to hurt us. That's why we, or to take our life, or to steal our goods, or to steal or damage our property. In other words, this would include law enforcement, this would include our military, our court system, and all of that. You see, they are ordained to protect us from sinful man. That's why we have government. That's why we have it. By the way, civil government is also to protect my God-given liberties. In other words, those inalienable rights that are stated there in the Declaration of Independence, that by nature our God has given to all of us, certain inalienable rights, we can't give them away, we can't transfer them to other people. They are given based on Him and our existence, and that is we have been given life, liberty, or the freedom to choose, the freedom to live, and the pursuit of happiness, and the ownership of property. That's the role of government. To protect my God-given liberties, watch this, to believe what I want to believe. That's why the government has been ordained, and again, to spend my God-given life as my conscience dictates. They're to protect that. Now who recognizes these words? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Anybody know what that is? Well, where that's from? The Declaration of Independence. If you haven't read it, you ought to read it. Because they state exactly why America was formed. Exactly why human governments are formed. To protect me from someone, and you from someone who's trying to hurt you, or take your life, or steal your property, or damage your property, and to protect your God-given liberties, and to spend your God-given life as your conscience dictates. Amen? So we see, to protect man from evil, there's another thing, and that is this, believe it or not, to promote good. The government is supposed to promote good. My point is this, the state and the church have two separate distinct purposes. And anytime these two function outside of their jurisdiction, or they cross over or wed together, historically there is always a problem. Always. You know, throughout history, Baptists, because of our theology, have understood this. We've believed this. Men like John Bunyan, John Merton, Roger Williams, and there's an argument about whether or not he was really a Baptist, but he certainly was a champion for religious liberty, no doubt. John Clark, John Leland, and countless others all taught that the civil government's role and the church's role are separate and distinct. that they should function independent, as far as their roles, one of another. And if you remember, the way that they explained this was by using the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were given on two tables of stone. The first five commandments were on one stone. The second five, or the second table, was the second stone, or the second table. The first five, or the first table of the law, dealt with man's relationship with God. For example, thou shalt have no other gods before me. That's between me and the Lord. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. That's my relationship with God. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day. Keep it holy. Honor thy father and thy mother. That was not a part of the state. Of course, that was part of the home. These are all areas that deal with man's conscience, and civil government has no authority over them. None at all. These are all issues of conscience. These are all issues of belief. Again, the church has jurisdiction over that, not the state. You see, the government, the civil government, the state, has no right to tell us what to believe. They have no right to tell us what to preach. They have no right to tell us what not to preach, and what ministries to have, what ministries not to have, and so forth. Because that is between us and our God. Amen? You say, but wait a minute, then what about the second table? Well, that's what I'm going to get to now. The last five commandments were on the second table. of the law, and they deal with man's relationship with man. Now get this straight. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, and so forth. These are all issues not of conscience, but these are all issues of actions. things that I do, stealing from somebody, murdering or killing somebody, and so forth. These are the issues that the state has jurisdiction over. Amen? That's what the Bible teaches. And to confuse this, to misunderstand this, is a very dangerous thing to do. So we see, number one, the decree of civil government. God decreed it. Shown in different forms of government. We see the design of civil government. They are to have only jurisdiction over the second table of the law. Man's relationship with man, not man's relationship with God. But then number three, write this down, and we'll go quickly, the doctrine of separation of church and state. Now, we have seen the error, the result of the error of mixing this thing up in many, many forms. You say, how do you mean? Well, notice the idea of the different relationships you can have. There are times in history where we saw the church was ruling over the state. You say, when was that? That occurred during the Dark Ages and the Roman Catholic Church. You see, the Roman Catholic, we'll call it the institution, but at any rate, the Roman Catholic institution held the world hostage. Why is that? It's because they were over the state. They ruled, and this resulted in a persecution of anyone who didn't believe as they believed. We're looking at the doctrine, if you're looking for that word, the doctrine of separatism. Martez, did you get that? The doctrine, aye. But anyway, then we see the second one here. We're on the back right here. And I must be messing up tonight because a lot of neck moving tonight. So there must be some things that I got wrong here. But notice the second one. Sometimes in history, we've seen the state over the church. You say, when is that? Well, this occurred in England in the Anglican Church, the Church of England. The Church of England was actually a department of the government. And the government told them what to do, the government taxed people to fund it, to pay for the preachers and so forth. What did this result in? The very same thing. It resulted in the persecution of anyone who didn't believe as they believed. You see, there has been no place on the face of the earth where the church and state operated independently, which is your third choice there, one another, where there was no state church or church state until America. None. Nobody, and so, particularly in Rhode Island. And so the biblically correct one is not the church over the state. It's not the state over the church. It is the church working independently of the state. Did we all get that? All right, I'm getting a lot of weird looks tonight. Tell me when I shake your hand what I did wrong. Okay, we'll fix all that. You know, when the Puritans and the Separatists came to America to flee persecution in England, do you know what they set up? You know, you've heard me say it a zillion times. They set up their own state churches. They had the state over the church. In the North, if you were not a member of the Congregational Church in Massachusetts Bay Colony up there, then you were not considered a citizen in good standing. If you were a Baptist in Colonial America in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, you could not vote. You could not go to college. You could not marry. You could not be buried. You are not allowed to assemble as Baptists. If you met other people that were Baptists, you could not do that. It was illegal to do that. You couldn't preach Baptist doctrine, which I believe is Bible doctrine. You couldn't do any of that because you got penalized. I'll say more about that in a moment. Fined, imprisoned. beaten or your property would be confiscated. In the South, in Virginia, it was the Anglican Church. You had to be a member of the Anglican Church and pay the dues and get a license from them and so forth. And if you did not comply, again, England heard about the persecutions and they said, no, no, no, you can't kill anyone. Don't do that. So they forbade them to kill people But what they did do was they beat them, Obadiah Holmes. They fined them. They imprisoned dozens and dozens of preachers in the state of Virginia that did not comply with the state church. And our Baptist forefathers fought for decades during the formidable years of our nation to keep the state out of the church, to make sure these were separate. And it was a result of our Baptist forefathers, men like John Clark and Isaac Backus and John Leland, who influenced James Madison, that you and I had as a part of our Constitution a few years after it was adopted, the Bill of Rights. Praise the Lord for that. Article 1 reads this, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That is the first amendment that you and I could say, honestly, it was a result of our Baptist forefathers trying to get people to understand that there shouldn't be a church state, there shouldn't be a state church, they should operate independently one from another, and the government should only have control, if you will, or deal with the second table of the law when man is hurting man and so forth. And they got that, praise the Lord for that. And so the intent of the First Amendment was to secure that there would be no state church in America. Again, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. They said, we are not going to have, do you know that we would disagree with a Baptist society, forced Baptist, amen? We don't want a state church, we don't want that. I don't care if it's Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic. No, we believe in liberty of conscience. When you have a state church, all that you produce is a group of hypocrites. God wants people that follow him out of their own free will. And so this first amendment was designed, watch this, stay with me here, I'm almost done, because the last two are real quick, to keep the state out of the spiritual affairs of the church. Amen? And to keep the state out of men's consciences. Rhode Island, again, the first colony, and then America, became the first nation on the face of the earth that guaranteed complete religious liberty. That's why you and I can do what we're doing tonight. Do you know we're the only place in the world that has guaranteed religious liberty? There's places that have toleration that say, okay, we'll let you exist, but you gotta abide by these rules and you can't say this or that. We're the only nation in the world that has complete religious liberty. Praise God for that. So we see the decree of civil government, the design of civil government, the doctrine of separation of church and state, and then, fourthly and quickly, the decay of America. So what's happened here? What's going on here? What's happened? Do you know over the past several decades, there has been an all-out assault on the First Amendment? They'll quote Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists out of its context, out of its historical context, and say, yes, Jefferson talked of a wall of separation. Did you notice it when I read the First Amendment? It did not have that phrase, wall of separation. It's not even in the Constitution. It's not in the Bill of Rights. They pull that out of a Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptists, who was assuring them, through that, that there would be no state religion. They were worried about that. They didn't want to go back to England. They didn't want to go back to the Dark Ages. And again, they use that phrase of wall of separation to say that government should have nothing to do with religion. They use that phrase to say religion should have nothing to do with government. And no mention of God in public places, no mention of the Bible or Ten Commandments. And so over the past decades, they have systematically removed Bible reading out of schools, removed prayers from our schools, removed the Ten Commandments from our courtrooms. taking nativity scenes from statehouse lawns, trying to prohibit religious speech by government officials, public employees, military personnel, and even school students at graduation ceremonies are trying to silence them! And they'll claim a wall of separation. That's not what the First Amendment is about. It's that there's no state religion, no state church. Any human being, any person in America, as an individual, has a right to speak out what he believes, wherever he wants. That's the way, I know it's not that way today, but that was the design of America. Do you know that Thomas Jefferson, ten years after they adopted the first amendment of the establishment clause, he invited the Baptist preacher John Leland, who was from Massachusetts, to come down and preach to Congress? and he preached on a greater than Solomon is here, a Baptist preacher preaching to Congress. He had the Supreme Court there and everything. How do you explain that if he said he didn't want religion in government? How do you explain that? That's not what he was saying. The First Amendment, again, and I know it was Madison, but the First Amendment, again, just guaranteed that there'd be no state church. And the tragedy of this thinking is that for years, the Supreme Court has listened to this liberal philosophy and it's shaped many of their opinions. And we're paying the price for it today. So what do we do? And we're done right here. Last one, number five. Couple statements, we're done. So what do we do? What are we to do as believers? Well, three things, and we're done right here. Number one is this. We ought to be, first of all, ideal citizens. Understand something very important. You and I are commanded to whatever government we are under, whether it be a king or queen or governor or autocracy or democracy or republic, you and I are commanded by God in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 to submit to the government. Now let me put a disclaimer there. It does not teach unlimited submission. If the government tells us to do something that violates the word of God, we ought to obey God rather than man. But understand, if they ask us to put fire extinguishers and fire alarms and have safety things and so forth, guess what we're to do? We're to submit to that. We are to be, you and I should be, the ideal citizens obey all laws, all the laws of the land. And then number two, what else should we do? We need to get the gospel out to a lost and dying world. Folks, this open door of religious liberty is not going to last long. If we have this idea, it's going to... By the way, we know it's not, because look at the government and the tribulation. What is it? It is a church over state. It's a state-church marriage. All people will be forced to take the mark of the beast, or they can't buy or sell, and to worship the beast. What is that? What's he going to do? It's going to be a state-church marriage. So what do we do? While we're here, while we can, get the gospel out to a lost and dying world. And then number three is this, stand up and speak out for true separation of church and state. We need to express to people what the real meaning of separation of church and state is. We need to teach this next generation that yes, you can give the gospel out, you can preach the truth, you can not like sin, amen, you can speak out against same-sex marriage, you can speak out against sodomy, but we're not to, again, invoke violence because of it. That's when we're wrong. We can have that belief in our hearts. Stand up for what's right. Folks, this doctrine has been fought for for centuries. Men have stood up for it, and we need to continue to understand and tell others about this doctrine of separation of church and state. All right, let's pray.