What we were trying to point out was that she had called for mercy in some situations without admitting the abominations that were involved in it. Yes, to ask mercy for transgender kids, to ask mercy, there was nothing wrong with her asking for mercy. There's nothing wrong with her calling us to remember mercy. And for that, we ought not be put off at all. But if you're gonna cry out for mercy, make sure that you are including what's going on with the situation. Sometimes mercy is called capitulation. In other words, don't look at my sin. Just have mercy on it and let me keep on doing my sin. Don't call me to repentance. Just let me keep doing my sin and just accept it. Because Jesus accepts everybody. Jesus accepts people to bring them to a new life. They come to a change in the Lord Jesus Christ. Fair enough? So, to say, I want you to come away from your sin, but you can stay in it and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, that's making Jesus come to your terms. That's not the way the Lord Jesus Christ works. You're not, you don't have any bargaining shifts. You understand where I'm coming from? We have nothing to offer Him in return for His gracious offer of salvation. You can't bargain with Him about, you'll trust Him if... You gotta be kidding. There's not an if. There's not a but. It's either you trust him or you don't. You live or you die. This is not a gray area in there. There's nothing gray about it. But at the end of it, I mentioned the 14th Amendment. and that I didn't think she had a good understanding of the 14th Amendment. Well, turns out that she has an understanding about the 14th Amendment that seems to be a common understanding about the 14th Amendment. And we'll get to that in just a second. I hope to be able to introduce more. So I had made some statements in class about the 14th Amendment. I went home, did more research. I don't think I was home an hour before I was finding a lot more research. And I realized that the information I presented you, though accurate, was not held up by the Supreme Court. Or was it? So I posted on Facebook, I was wrong. And I stand corrected. Now I've had opportunity to go even further with it. And kids, I have read so much this week, I'm ready to do anything else but read that stuff, okay? So anyway, I think I have a pretty good understanding of what goes on in this. I've read positives and negatives. I've read those that favor it and those that don't. This that we're speaking about is birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship. And I want to share with you some thoughts about birthright citizenship this morning. And they all are resting on a period of time that's important. Now, let me just share this with you. Any time that you're trying to understand scripture, let's say you're going to pick up and you're going to read about Moses. Well, that's great. But Moses didn't live in our time. And so if I look at Moses, and understand him from 20, what is this, 21st century, 22nd century, whatever. If I understand him from the 21st century, then I'm messing up, because he wasn't alive in the 21st century. He wasn't dealing with 21st century things. He wasn't dealing with 21st century understandings of things. He was dealing with his century's understanding of things. Everybody understand where I'm coming from? When he's writing the book of Genesis, he's writing it to answer all of the mythologies of that day. He's not trying to give us a scientific understanding that rests with the 21st century, though there is absolutely nothing in what he said that defies 21st century understanding of science. It may defy scientism, but it doesn't deny the science of creation. You ever follow where I'm coming from? So when you're looking at Moses, you want to come back to Moses and say, what was his time? What was going on? What was the Pharaoh? Who was the Pharaoh? What was the slavery? Was there slavery? Was there any of that going on? So you're really looking to see what was the context of what was being done. We have to do the same thing when we are dealing with anything that has to do with American law and history. You've got to know what was going on at the time so that you can figure out, well, why did they write what they wrote? If you try to look at it from the 21st century, you're going to mess up because people were not of the same mindset 150 years ago that they are now. there were some things that were different. And we need to be able to note those differences. Fair enough? All right. So, yeah. that document, when I post this class online, I will make that available so that they can also download this document. Yes, I do. And one other thing is that on my website, Constitutionally Correct, I have the complete Federalist Papers as well as the Anti-Federalist Papers. So I'll post that as a link that people can look at that. And as you and I both understand, do your own research. Yes. this material available? This is going to be the area, and I'm glad you brought that up, this is going to be the area. I'm going to do a little history with you this morning. Most people don't like history because they think it's boring. Honestly, history, if you don't understand history, you don't know where you are right now. You don't understand the situations you're in right now. So this is not one of those things where I think sometimes even our teachers didn't want to share it with us because they were bored with it. and they thought we would be bored with it, so they didn't tell us the whole story. They told us the summary of someone's idea of what happened then. Fair enough? So it's often called revisionist history. You get history that's been revised by this one, by this one, and you find that the further you get from the ones who wrote the history, the differences the history makes, all right? So we're gonna start here today with understanding a little bit about the past. Federalists and Anti-Federalists. That was the two groups of people that were really working on the Constitution, not the Declaration, the Constitution. They wanted to make a government that was strong enough to bind all the states, but not so strong that the states had no rights left to them. That was getting to be harder and harder. So the first government they came up with did not work at all. They dumped it. It was too weak to get anything done. They didn't have any power in it. So they rewrote it. When the Federalists rewrote it and put it down there, the Anti-Federalists looked at it and said, wait a minute. Well, if you don't mind, let me read through this. The founding of a nation was not easy, nor was it without conflict. Believing and unbelieving men used reason and revelation to explore the best of all possible systems of government that would grant freedom to its people. That would mean disagreements about the structure of such a governing system. They differed on what level of government they should create. They had come from European monarchies and they eliminated that as a possibility. They knew democracies were unwieldy and easily corrupted with bad information. They knew republics could easily degenerate into elitist cliques of wealthy and powerful and oppress the people. They created a democratic, representative, constitutional republic with checks and balances. So if somebody says, you always hear this argument, there was a lot in this last election, he's against our democracy, she's going to kill our democracy, this one's going to do this to our democracy. And they kept using democracy, democracy, democracy. When Benjamin Franklin was asked by a lady, what did you guys create for us? He said, a republic, if you can keep it. When we say our Pledge of Allegiance, we say, I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, okay? But got to understand this, Thomas Jefferson, who was one of the framers, the framer of the Declaration of Independence said, wait a minute, we have a democratic republic. Let's get the two ideas here. Demos means people. Kratos is the power, so it's people power, or it's people rule. Well, everybody knew from past history, you can't have that, it gets too unwieldy after a while, and pretty soon, a biased majority can just tromp the minority in the ground. So democracy's not gonna work. A republic, though, they had seen, simply means a representative government, but who gets to be the representative? And that's where citizenship comes in. Everybody with me? That's where citizen comes. So when you have a representative, who gets to elect those representatives? Who gets to appoint those representatives? Well, if it's only the ones who have an elite status, then the group that's going to rule over you is going to be an elite group, or a group that the other wealthy and powerful can control. So they had to put some sort of structure on it. So they created a democratic, representative, constitutional republic with checks and balances. Suspicions of greed, power thirst, and corrupted sinners led them to a system of checks and balances. Central in this struggle were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Were they creating a federal government or a national government? That makes a huge, big difference. Federal means having or relating to a system of government in which several states form a unity but remain independent in their internal affairs. That's what a federal government is. A national meant a central government with authority over every state. They rejected a national forum as it was too centralized and powerful without allowing the states to govern themselves. You follow that? So the Anti-Federalists said, we think you're forming a national government here, we're not going to buy that. They demanded a Bill of Rights for all folk in the Union and a guarantee that the states would have all other authority. This limited the government's authority. If the Anti-Federalists and their fight against a national government that gave you the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Third, that gave you all, what's that, 25 Amendments, 26 Amendments, that's what gave you all those, right? They wanted to have, well I shouldn't say that, the Anti-Federalists gave us the first 10. It's over the years, the others have come in. They gave us the first 10. And those first 10 were to guarantee that no national government was going to dictate to the states and its people what they were going to do. They did not want the national government governing on them. The states would be able to determine what things they could and couldn't do. So the national government is not going to stop your free speech. The national government is not going to stop you from carrying weapons. The national government is not going to quarter troops in your home. The national government is not going to spy on you. The national government is not going to take your secrets away. So that's what they were guaranteeing. They didn't want a national government. Everybody with me so far? All right. In a federal government, the states had authority to withdraw from a law or act they believed threatened their constitutional guaranteed right. That's why it's absolutely essential that every state ratify whatever amendments were going to be made to the Constitution, and that those representatives went along with what was going on with the Acts of Congress. Everybody follow that? And if you didn't agree, you withdrew from that law. You had that right. If you thought that they were overwhelming things, you had the right of secession. You could pull away from the union. Does that make any sense? All right. Ultimately, they had the power to withdraw from the union itself if they felt the government was gaining too much power over the states. The southern states felt that the federal government had overstepped its boundaries and took the right of secession from that union. Get the picture. It was the right of secession. That's why they did it. They knew they had the right. They just said, we're withdrawing from it then. We're not going to be in it anymore. Lincoln sought to preserve that union at any cost and saw the southern states were taking a criminal action against that union. He did not believe in secession. Therefore, he took a step against that. He was not concerned about slavery or about making the black man equal to the white man, but he was concerned about the division in the union. That's the truth. I was shocked when I read several things that Lincoln was saying. He was not what I had been given a picture of in my history book or in any of my history classes, the great liberator. That's not what he was at all. Matter of fact, in some of his statements, matter of fact, in the Lincoln Memorial, it states there, I could not be concerned about whether the slavery existed or not existed, but I needed to preserve the Union. Anybody see where I'm coming from? That union was what he wanted to preserve, and that's what he was attempting to do, all right? The Civil War was fought over this principle. Everybody get that? I know, you're going to say, you're from Arkansas, you've got to say that. No, I don't. I don't have to say anything. I've done enough study to understand some of the principles that were involved there. It was over whether you can withdraw from the union or not. The addition of slavery was added on as the war went on because the Union was getting less and less money and was losing more and more fights. They added the slavery issue in to gain more support from people giving money so the union could win this battle. In it, Lincoln used an executive order. There weren't just a whole lot of executive orders used. Now, let me just explain this. An executive order. is an order given by the executive of the nation to govern his cabinets. He's setting up rules. You know, the first governments had a Department of State, and that was about it. They didn't have a whole lot of other things there. But with succeeding presidents, every time an issue rose up, they added another department. And with that department, they had to have a secretary. So you had the secretary of this, the secretary of state, the finance secretary, you had a secretary for each of those things. So you add them on. What rules do they work with? Well, they work with executive orders. So the executive gives the rules and the guidelines for how each department's supposed to work. That's not what the federal government wanted it to be. You see, that means he's making rules. He can't make rules. He executes the rules of the legislature. That's why it's called executive. He executes, carries out the rules that are established by the department, by, I'm sorry, by the Congress. Well, each and every year you're adding more and more departments, you're adding more and more secretaries, you're adding more and more employees to carry out the executive rules, and sometimes you have the executive going beyond what he's given power to do and creating other things that are not legislated by Congress. Now Congress came to be the people who simply funded the executive's authority. You begin to see where we're having problems? You're starting to create an executive branch that really looks close to a monarchy. It's getting really close to that. And people saw that and said, we've got to stop this. This is wrong. This is the federal government overstepping its bound. So Lincoln issued an emancipation proclamation. It was an executive order. But that executive order was about his troops that were under his command because he's the commander-in-chief. So what the Emancipation Proclamation did was guarantee that where his troops go, wherever they liberate that state, all the slaves in that state are free. You follow that? All the slaves in that state are free. They were not free in any state of the Union. And the Union had slaves. The issue was not over slavery. The issue was over whether the states can separate from the government. So every place that federal troops went and established itself there, took away the government of that confederacy, those slaves were free. But the other slaves were not. That's how he got by with that. He was in executive order. But the legislature said, man, this is really wrong. You can't do that. You are now legislating. That's not what your branch can do. You can only execute the laws we make. So we'll make a law. So they created the 13th Amendment. Everybody follow that? They created the 13th Amendment, which was going to abolish slavery. So let me let me get back to my notes to make sure. Yes. one's called Lincoln's Constitution, and others, the complete violation of the Constitution that took place in going into this war against the southern states. Yes, there were a number of things that Mr. Lincoln did that took extra power than what he had. And he's going to get into conflict with the legislatures over that. They're saying, you're doing things that you can't do. That's not the executive's power to do. And he said, we're under war. So I have to do things that I believe are necessary to get done. I mean, he had done a number of things dealing with, what's the, yes sir. Can I, can you? That became an additional part. The original part was a fighting over the, whether you can secede from the union or you can't. It became slavery when Lincoln added that to gain support. The union was not doing well. Their troops were not good. They didn't have good commanders. They didn't do well with the fight. And Lincoln was losing out. It was losing money in that situation. He needed support. So he added the slavery issue on it. But once again, if you read what Lincoln said, that was never important to him. He did not care whether the slavery was abolished or stayed. The Union had to be preserved. Not really. Because if the union was going to fight to free the slaves, they'd have done so first in their own states. And they didn't do that. They retained slaves even in their own states. That's a great question, thank you. I'm down at legislators sought to bring the southern states into conformity to the laws of the union, which was in the process of becoming a national government. So the union itself by the laws it's gonna pass, is moving from a federal government to a national government. So let's go a little further with it here. Oh, I should say, let me go back up where it says the Civil War, on page two there where it says the Civil War, about mid of there, it says, the federal legislatures understood that Lincoln had overstepped his authority and it created law. The executive branch constitutionally cannot create law. Lincoln and the legislature saw that only a constitutional amendment could abolish slavery and free all slaves, North and South. This culminated in the 13th Amendment, passed before the Southern states had been restored to the Union. Why do you suppose they passed it before the Southern states had been restored to the Union? They wouldn't do it, so it wouldn't have passed. So, taking the states that were still in the Union, they presented the 13th Amendment. Once it passes, once the southern states are restored in it, it's national law. Everybody follow where I'm coming from? They don't have a choice. If you're going to get back in the Union, and you're going to get back in the Union, then you're going to have to accept the laws that are being passed on you. And that's what they had to do, all right? So, legislators sought to bring the southern states into conformity to the laws of the Union, which is in the process of becoming national government. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by law. It was mainly intended in the wake of the Civil War to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to the United States. The act had three primary objectives for the integration of African-Americans into American society following the Civil War. One, a definition of American citizenship. Number two, the rights which come with this citizenship. And number three, the unlawfulness to deprive any person of citizenship rights on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of slavery or involuntary servitude. The Act accomplished these three primary objectives. It got it done. That's what the Civil Rights Act of 1866 did. Here is the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Be enacted that all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, you follow that? All citizens born in the United or all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians, not taxed. So already we know that Indians can't have citizenship. Are they born in this country? Yeah, probably before we were, but they can't have citizenship. in even being born in the same land you're born in. All right, let's go further. Hereby declare to be citizens of the United States and such citizens of every race and color without regard to any previous condition of slavery, involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right in every state and territory in the United States to make and enforce contracts to sue. to be parties and give evidence to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as it is enjoyed by white citizens. And it shall be subject to like punishment, pains and penalties, and to none other than any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom to the contrary notwithstanding. The president, Andrew Johnson, because Lincoln has now been assassinated, Andrew Johnson is now the president. The president, Andrew Johnson, did not believe in reconstruction of the southern states was needed. He vetoed it. He vetoed the Civil Rights Act. The Congress passed it by two-thirds majority, so they just went right over it. This is the mindset that led to the passage of the 14th Amendment. It was to give national authority to enforce citizenship to the African-American people. It was feared that the aftermath of the war may see a bloodbath of freed slaves and a restoration of reactive southern state governments that would punish newly freed slaves and allow their bigotry to destroy them. Was that a possibility? Yes. It was a very real probability. It was in fact going to happen. All right. The 14th Amendment defined who is an American citizen and who is not. To those who are, it guaranteed the same equal protection of the laws with due process. And here's what the 14th Amendment says. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. Does that sound familiar? Yes, because it's the wording of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. They felt that a constitutional amendment would have more authority and power, and a constitutional amendment could not be vetoed by President Johnson. So this was going to be to guarantee, once again, who has to ratify it? The states that are in the Union. So it's going to pass. It's going to find a pass and become ratified and become a part of our Constitution. But did the 14th Amendment give citizenship to all who were born in America? No, it did not. The exclusions were foreigners, aliens, families of ambassadors of foreign ministers, and Native Americans and women. Now, think this over with me. Who were the citizens of the United States of America? Men. White men. That's who citizens were. Were white women citizens? No, they had privileges. They had certain things they could do, but sometimes they couldn't inherit property. They couldn't have property deeded to them because they were not full citizens. You understand where I'm coming from? So did the 14th Amendment give them citizenship? No, no it didn't. It was directed to African-American people who'd been freed from slavery. Does that make sense? And make sure that you don't get confused because it's not given to a foreigner. It's not given to an alien. That's somebody that's here that's hostile to our country. You can't be a citizen. Number three, you can't be an ambassador or official of some other government. Your children born to you in this country are not citizens of this country. But notice, he said first, it's foreigners. What makes a foreigner a foreigner? He still has an allegiance to the country from which he came. of that country. So since he's a citizen of that country and still under that country, he could not have children here and they become citizens of the United States. They are citizens of the country from which he came. That's what was the intent of this law. Everybody follow that? Because notice the Civil Rights Act said, what was the word it used here? that all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power. So if you were a citizen of Mexico, you were under Mexico's jurisdiction. Now, you might be living here or staying, you might even take up residence here, but that did not mean you were a citizen of the United States yourself. Therefore, your children could not be citizens. That was the intent of it. But let's go on further. Women had some privileges, but they would not gain full citizenship and allowed to vote until 1919. Okay, now I hope you follow what I'm saying. A democratic republic all depends on who the demos are, right? The rights of citizenship are guaranteed to the demos. They're the ones who are we the people. It's not everybody is we the people, it's who's the citizens are we the people. Does that make sense? And it was written at a time when the only citizens are white men. So we don't have women with citizenship, so they're not part of the we the people, they're going to live under we the people, and the children they have are all going to be citizens of the United States. Because dad is a citizen of the United States. Fair enough? All right. And that question's gonna come up a number of times. Citizenship in this country had been an evolving journey since the Declaration of Independence. After July 4th, 1776, this is the way the ruling went. After July 4th, all persons living in America were American citizens and no longer British citizens. So, remember this, everybody living in America was either a British citizen, a German citizen, a Dutch citizen, or somewhere else. But once July 4th took place and you were now living in the sovereign country of the United States of America, you're all citizens. There was a way that you couldn't be a citizen, and that was if you said, I don't want to be a citizen of the United States, I want to be a British citizen. At that point, you don't have the guarantees of the laws of this country. Does that make any sense? All right. This citizenship could be broken if an individual were to retain his British citizenship. Of course, this decision to make all people living in the United States did not include women, African-Americans, or Native Americans. So the idea, matter of fact, I read several articles that said birthright citizenship has been the standard practice of this country since its beginning. That's just not true. That's just not true. If you're going to deny citizenship to women and you're going to deny citizenship to African-Americans who were being born here, that's not birthright citizenship that was guaranteed. So, all right, so here we go further. You can see how it is thought today that America was racist from the beginning. Does that make sense? So before you get your emotions up that the United States was racist from its very start, stop. Is that right or not? It's probably very true. Who gets to be citizens? White men. What does that sound to you? Sounds a little racist, doesn't it? But to be fair, it isn't just racist, it's also anti-gender. Because it's also against women being citizens. All right, so I've said a lot at this point. Anybody got any questions or comments at this time? What's that? I find that hard to believe. Well, I hope that also helps you understand why there has been a feminist movement. You understand where we're coming from? Yes, ma'am. Yes. Matter of fact, I think I go in there. However, they believed that landowners were the only ones who could be citizens. And most of these happened to be white European males. So yeah, it was about citizenship and being a male, you had to own something. So even here, one must, matter of fact, there are a lot of times even to vote, not only did you have to be a citizen, you had to be a member of a church in good standing. So. It did preclude you from owning property. It didn't preclude you from being a citizen, but it did preclude you from voting. You couldn't vote unless you were, which somebody could say that would equate to citizenship. But just like you were saying, there was an additional thing. Being a member of a church of good standing didn't necessarily preclude you from voting. See, let me go another step further with you on that, because the voting was done at state level. So the states could require things for you to vote. They might not require that you have to own land, but you have to own property. It might just be your backpack and your rifle, but you had property that made you a citizen of that state and you could vote in that state. But some states could say you can't vote in this state unless you are a member and good standing of a church. So that's how the states were governing the voting rights. Yes. And that's what federal meant. National doesn't mean that. And we'll get to that. Yes, somebody else. No, it would go to your brother might go to your son But she's gonna be left out in the cold Yeah Well that It's gonna go to whatever the closest relative is Another male relative. Yeah Now, kids, I want you to get this. If you're taking your 21st century mind and you're shoving it back in and say, man, were they wrong? You are wrong in your context. Stop thinking that way. You can judge those people all you want to, but until you've walked in their moccasins, you don't know what you're talking about. Much has evolved over time. Many things have changed over time that are different than they were in 1776. Everybody with me? What they were trying to do in 1776 was establish some principles of government that could be worked over centuries of time. Could they make a mistake? Yes. Yes. Could it need improvement? Yes! Why? Situations change. People are sinners. You don't have people that are always self-governing. You don't have people who have the same mindset they were in 1776, 1787. You have people that are changing. Frank? Yeah, I was going to say, if you were a family that lives in Venezuela and you were claiming to be in asylum, you, your wife, and your wife's husband come over to her as a baby, Now, asylum brings up a whole different situation, because what am I doing in asylum? I'm fleeing a government. I'm saying I don't want to be subject to its authority. It's tantamount to giving up your citizenship. If you flee to another country and seek asylum, you're losing your citizenship back in the other. So what is that going to make you here? You're seeking citizenship in this country to make yourself subject to the jurisdiction thereof. You understand where we're coming from? Why do you think so many, even illegal immigrants, are seeking asylum? From what? An oppressive government? No, they're seeking asylum to be a citizen of this country. Asylum is a quick pathway to it. What we've not been doing is vetting asylum. Why are you running? What are you getting away from? So that's what makes it a complicated situation. Does that make sense? All right. Let's go on just a bit further. All right. So even here, let's see, however, they believed that landowners were the only ones who could, and that probably should be more appropriate, property owners. Matter of fact, that was such a prevalent thought that when the Declaration of Independence was written, Thomas Jefferson didn't write the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit, did not guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He said life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. because that was believed to be happiness. So what they did was change the word to happiness because they didn't think people would understand what it means to pursue the property. But that was because they believed property gave you the right of voting. If you had property, you had a stake in what was going on with the states. If you didn't have property, you had no stake. Yes. Try to remember, these are people who are coming from a monarchy that owned all land. You could only steward the land, you couldn't own it. It was a rare thing. If you're going to own land, it's going to be because the king authorizes you to be the duke of that land, or the earl of that land, whatever it's going to be. That's what your whole titles were about. As a title person, you now got to have land. As a title person with land, you got to vote in parliament. That's what the United States was doing here. Same kind of, yes. You're going to have to speak up. These are people who came over as indentured servants. They didn't have anything. to be able to have property was wealth. And that's what's going to give you your power in this world. So you understand what I'm saying about there? You're living in a time where buying property is just a given. You can do that. Anybody that can get a loan can get property, OK? They say that if you buy a property, you can loan it. But if you don't pay the taxes, they get the money. That's exactly right. No. I mean, no reason. No, we're renting it. You and the bank that you paid enormous interest with and the insurance company that guaranteed they'd pay it back. One can truthfully say that citizenship in America has always, cannot truthfully say that citizenship in America has always been birthright citizenship, as I hope I have already demonstrated. You follow where I'm coming from? It's not birthright citizenship, has not been the practice. Much of our practice of citizenship is based on Supreme Court decisions. I hope you do understand that courts can be, and have been, wrong in their decisions, as those decisions are often based on the mood of the day, among the elite of the day, and the sense of the mood of the people. The Dred Scott decision that all but denied humanity to those not white, and the Plessy v. Ferguson that approved segregation for separate but equal educations. Those were both wrong. Both were extended into practice that was destructive and both were wrong. So those two decisions that made those decisions about you can, in fact, there are people who are not really human. And that's what the Dred Scott was saying. They're not really human, therefore they can't be really citizens. Plessy Ferguson was saying essentially that as long as you've got a black school that's equal in its education to a white school, it's okay to be segregated. And it improves segregation. Now, once a decision like that is made, when that gets down into the community practice, what's going to happen with it? Oh my goodness, it got ugly. And it took a long time to get Plessy versus Ferguson overturned. It never was overturned by the Supreme Court. But by acts of the Congress, its effect was diluted. OK? When I grew up, it was probably the 19th century. The white school had all the textbooks. And when they were already in form, Yeah, they were anything. They were not separate but equal. Separate, but not equal. Right. So, the court decision that has enabled the idea that anyone born here is automatically a citizen of the United States is United States versus Wong Kim Ark. It involved a Chinese American citizen born to Chinese parents living legally in America. Now, get that picture. The Chinese parents were already living legally in America. They had a son while living legally in America. They were operating a lawful business and returned to China to live, leaving their business in the hands of their son. Homesick to see his parents, he went to visit them in China. Upon his return, he was not granted reentry because he was not an American citizen. His case was taken to the Supreme Court and the court found in favor of him because he's born in the United States, even though his parents were Chinese. So the practice came to be, if you're born in America, you are an American citizen. But let's look a little closer at what that court says. The court ruled that at the time of his birth, they were not subject or officers of the Chinese emperor and having lived legally in the United States. There was no violation of the 14th Amendment since all was done under the jurisdiction of the U.S. You can easily see how this is not the same as being illegal immigrants who are not subject to American law since they already broke it by entering without permission. This is what the newly elected president and the Immigration Department challenged and were blocked from enforcement until February 5th, 2025. This was what President Trump and the Immigration Department wanted to stop. They said, look, they have not been obedient, they haven't been subject to the government thereof, and because they haven't been, they are subjects of another country, therefore they are not Their children are not citizens of the United States. That's what they're trying to say. The most puzzling practice that has come from Wong Kim Ark's decision is that of allowing children born of foreign parents while in the U.S. to be American citizens. In other words, there is actually a way in which you can be a tourist in America and have your child while you're in America, and that child has American citizenship. That one, kids, does not make any sense to me. I don't understand it, and I'm confident that one's gonna be overturned sooner or later. But that's the practice, not the law. You understand what I'm saying? That's the practice, and the practice is to come from executive orders that make it equivalent to law. We will see in the coming days upon which understanding of the 14th Amendment this current Supreme Court will take. Get the picture. Supreme courts are made up of real people. And real people are sinners. And real people have understandings of their own. Real people are affected by opinions. You follow where I'm coming from? So you could have a Supreme Court that makes a decision one time, you get new people in, a Supreme Court make another decision another time, a Supreme Court make another decision. Usually courts make their practice based on president law, law that preceded it, and they make the decisions based on that. But as you've seen with Roe v. Wade, when they made their decision, they said there was nothing in the Constitution that guaranteed that. There was nothing in the Constitution that guaranteed it's all right to kill your children. We didn't see that. So we therefore refer it back to the states. Why? Because the 10th Amendment says all other powers not stated herein are the powers of the state. That's federal government. But when you have a national government, the national government tells the states what they have to do. Follow that? All right, questions or comments about anything I've said so far? How many of you now are in a solid state of disagreement with everything I've said? All right, let me close with this last little bit here. There are three levels of authority created by God to help regulate sinful humanity. They are the home, the state, and the church. The home, Genesis chapter 1, that's created. God created the family to be the primary dominant force on the nation. But the state came along after Noah's flood, God created states to be a priority. Why? Because before the flood, things got really out of hand and there was no way for the families, which had now been polluted, to take care of themselves. So they created a state that would take care of punishing people who had done wrong. All right. So that was state. Then God creates the church. And I'm going to just say here, before he created the church, he created the covenant people of Israel and they were given the law of God. Now, with this, with Israel, these two were highly connected, the state and Israel. They were highly connected. They were supposed to be, and I should say this, all three of these are bound by the law of God. So, let's just look at my little paragraph again here. They have separate but interactive powers and functions. The home prepares the citizens who live under the authority of the state and church. It has characterized children who, through self-governing citizenship, populate the state and the church. All three are accountable to the law of God and the lawgiver himself. Any or all of the three can violate God's word and be in sin. Chaos, disorder, violence, and oppression are the fruits of such sin. If any one of these does not retain its attention and obedience to the law of God, what you're going to have is chaos, disorder, violence, and oppression. That's all you're left with. Because you have sinners now operating on their own. And when sinners operate on their own, they are going to show discrimination against certain groups of people. You either do it my way or it's the highway. You're going to die. So enslaving other people is a proper thing to do in their eyes. You follow that? So, all right. It can plunge all of society into decline and disaster. It is the function of the state to operate under divine natural law and to execute it as servants of God. It is not the family's power or function to be vigilantes and take over the power of the state. So it's wrong for a family or a church to decide they know what the law is better than you do, so they're just going to take over and take over the position of the authority. You remember when David had been selected to be king, but Saul was still king? You remember how David said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not doing anything to Saul. Why? Even though he knew Saul was sinful, he knew that Saul was persecuting him for no good reason, even though he knew all those things were correct, he said, I refuse to go against God's chosen. I won't do it. He let someone else take care of the whole situation, namely God, take care of the situation, but he was not going to overtake it the same way we cannot overtake it. All right. However, there is something that can be done. It is not the family's power or function to be vigilantes and take over the power of the state. It is the function of the church to be mediators and advocates of the law of God. The church is not to attempt to overtake the power of the state, but to inform, remind, and admonish the state to remember its biblical responsibility and accountability. It is not the function or authority of the state to assume the authority of the family or the church and to interlope in its God-given functions. It is not the function of the family or the church to determine who has or has not broken the law of the state, but both are obligated to honor the higher law of God even if a resistant state takes action against them. Therefore, the church and family are obligated to act biblically regarding the foreigner, the stranger, the oppressed, the widowed, and the orphan, regardless of their status with the ever-changing state. Let us examine God's word to us of our responsibility to them. So, what am I doing? Next week, we're going to look at what the scriptures teach us about how we're supposed to deal with the stranger, the foreigner, the alien, how we're supposed to do them. So we'll look at that next week because ours is to deal with what God told us to do. And God did not give us the authority of the state unless you are in that state government. Everybody understand that? The same thing is true if you're an enforcer of that. So if you're in the police department or the army, your function is not to take over the family. Your function is to carry out and execute the law that has been given. All right. Comments, questions? What's that? Yeah, I think we're really uninformed. Yeah, and all the time it's misinformed. I'll go along with that. We are, if I say this, and I'm not trying to be ugly, we're ignorant. And ignorance is not the same as stupid. Stupid is when you know what's right and you don't do it. Ignorance, you don't know what's right. So we've been ignorant because we've been dumbed down. We don't want to pay attention to these things, yet we're going to get hot every four years or every two years when we're voting for somebody. We're voting for somebody without knowing really what are we voting for? What are we needing? Because we don't know what we're talking about. So we're letting them do the talking, and if it hits my emotions just right, then I'm going to go along with it. One of the reasons, you probably are saying, I wish you'd have been more in favor of Trump. I can't, because I see that some things he's seeking to do are unconstitutional. I'm not going to be a cheerleader for something I think is going to be wrong. Honestly, I haven't had a candidate probably for 25, 30, 40 years. You understand what I'm saying? Because I know that there are some things they're going to do that are outside the Constitution. When you start talking about executive orders, you're scaring me because that's legislating. That's not the job. I understand some executive orders are written to nullify previous executive orders. What a bunch of... All right, well, anyway. Father, thank you so much for letting us have the time to be together. We ask in Jesus' name, please use us to get things right again. We want to be just people. You've told us to love justice, or to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. We don't want to take over the position of the church or the state, Father. We know that we're families and we're churches. We have certain responsibilities. So teach us how to restore our families, then how to restore the church. Thank you for what you're going to do in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you. We'll see you again soon.