Thanks, Art. Without Art, this conference wouldn't have happened. So if you find this helpful, remember, without Art, none of this would have gotten off the ground. So thank you, Art, for all your work to put this together. Well, we're here to talk about voting and third-party voting. And I think it would be an understatement to say that this presidential election has divided the conservative voting bloc. It's flummoxed the pundits. It's vexed the voters. And in general, it's just created more havoc and factions among the Republican Party than anything since the last presidential election. Well, there is one difference. They've given us a choice of gender this time. We can choose a man or a woman. In fact, many politicians have been elected from the grave, but if the rumors this time are true, this might be the first where a candidate is campaigning from the grave. So how do we begin to sort this all out? Well, obviously passing memes around to persuade those less enlightened folks which candidate is the better choice probably doesn't work too well. Neither is disseminating more detailed information on all the flaws of the other candidate and all the pros of the one candidate very likely to change many minds as if the problem was simply low information voters, and if only they had a little more information, then they would see the world as we do. In fact, even trying to debate the pros and the cons of various candidates is often a futile effort when there's no agreement on the standard by which those candidates should be evaluated. My slides are getting ahead of me here. But each election, we repeat that process. We spend more and more money to communicate a message with less and less content. And so this is a pattern that we find ourselves trapped in every cycle. Each election is the most important election of our lives. So we're told to hold our nose and support the Republican candidate because if we don't, we'll actually be voting for that other candidate. We're told to look past our candidate's flaws because, well, Jesus isn't on the ballot. And every election requires us to vote for the lesser of two evils. And we're told that if we vote for a third party, well, that's really a wasted vote. But before we fall for all that fear-mongering, as Pastor Kaiser talked about last night, maybe we should ask ourselves, What do the scriptures say, not just about the qualifications for office, but what do they say about the process itself of choosing rulers? Well, one relevant passage is Galatians. Five, 19, you probably are very familiar with this passage. Now, the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. Envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warned you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's a pretty bad list. Not things that we want to be associated with. And you may be wondering now, well, what does this list have to do with choosing rulers? What's those last three words of verse 20 that are of interest to us this morning? The first of those words is rivalries. A rivalry is a competition. It's where we exert an effort to obtain a goal or an object which somebody else is also pursuing. Now, not all rivalries are wrong in First Corinthians 924, Paul compared the Christian life to a race, and he told us to run that race in such a way that we win it. That's a rivalry, but that's a rivalry that is commended. But there are other types apparently here that are condemned. Galatians 520 is condemning. Rivalry where we promote ourselves as better than others instead of esteeming others better than ourselves. So a good rivalry is where we are shoulder to shoulder striving for a worthy goal, such as competing in business. Bad rivalry is where we are promoting ourselves as better than others. Now, what exactly does this have to do with choosing rulers? Well, if you consult a Greek dictionary for the meaning of the word that is translated rivalry here, it's erytheia. Erytheia. Remember that word. You're going to be hearing a lot about it this morning. Erytheia. Rivalries. And this is what the dictionary says is the meaning of erytheia. Electioneering. or intriguing for office. A desire to put oneself forward, a partisan and fractious spirit which does not disdain low arts. A partisan spirit. That's the rivalry that's condemned in Galatians 5. So we need to send a representative to Austin. With the party system, someone stands up and says, send me. I'm qualified. Another person stands up and says, no, send me. I'm more qualified. And you have 10 people lining up behind this guy and 15 behind that guy, all promoting their candidate. See, that's the rivalry of the most unsavory sort, the sort that Paul condemns. Now, good dictionaries often cite, should cite, their sources because the meaning of words comes from how that word is used in the literature of that culture, in the literature of that day. And so one of the more well-known uses of this word erithea is by Aristotle in his fifth book of his treatise on politics. Aristotle's writing a couple hundred years, 300 years before Christ, and he used the word erithea or rivalry to refer to self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means. He says in this book, he's talking about the causes of revolution. He lists a bunch of things, sort of like the Galatians 5 list, actually, come to think of it. Insolence, fear, excessive predominance, contempt, disproportionate growth of power, and also, he says, other modes of cause are election intrigue, rivalries, erytheia, the party spirit, carelessness, pettiness, dissimilarity. He goes on a little bit later in the same work to say, and revolutions in commonwealths take place even without fractious strife, owing to erytheia, election intrigue, the party spirit. And then he cites an example of a city in Greece called Heria. where their magistrates were elected by the party system, by canvassing, promoting themselves, and they were so embarrassed at the low quality candidates and officers that they ended up with, they were embarrassment to them. They found they just kept choosing the same bad people over and over again, so they abandoned that system and they went to choosing their rulers by lot. They figured there's a lot less chance of ending up with a worthless kind of official. Now that city's long gone and long forgotten. It was excavated in the early 20th century. But there's the problem 2,000 years ago. This interesting, the exact same problem we're dealing with today. Candidates that are an embarrassment to us. Paul warned against the party spirit 1 Corinthians 1, where people were promoting one person over another. I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. I'm of T. I'm of H. James 3, 14. James writes, but if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, there's that word erytheia. If you have erytheia, the party spirit in your hearts, don't boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and erytheia exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. Is it any wonder that political elections have a reputation for being dirty, corrupt, dominated by cronyism and backroom deals, when our entire political process is based on eretheia, the party spirit, selfish ambition? James says where that exists, there will be disorder and every vile practice. We can't expect God to bless our nation with good rulers when the very process of choosing rulers is based squarely on what God condemns. James tells us this isn't wisdom, this is demonic. Philippians 2.3, do nothing from selfish ambition, eretheia, but in humility, esteem others more highly than yourselves. Do nothing with electioneering. Includes the process of choosing civil rulers. Let me ask you a question. When have you ever heard a candidate in his stump speech esteem his opponent above himself? That second word is. dissensions. Dissensions are disagreements and opinions, usually disagreements which are producing violent, warm debates or angry words. Parties are very good at producing dissension. You know, how much difference really is it between our two current candidates? Certainly nothing worth arguing about. But billions of dollars are going to be spent debating the differences in order to maintain that party division. The last word is divisions. You would know the word, the Greek word, heresis, heresy. The word for heresy, we usually think of it as meaning some aberrant doctrine that denies the gospel, corrupts the gospel. But you know, the majority of uses of this word in the New Testament refer to sects. The sect of the Pharisees, the sect of the Sadducees, the sect of the Nazarenes. What we would call today, parties. You see, the party spirit breeds strife, and it both produces and flows from a divided nation. Let's just look at a few examples in the Bible. In 2 Samuel 2, just after Saul died, the party spirit created a civil war in the land of Israel. Abner supported Saul's house. Job supported David. These guys met at a pool. Twelve men from each side stand up and kill each other. Why? Party spirit. They're each promoting their guy. And it resulted in a civil war, seven years of war between David's party and Saul's house. Why did the people support Saul after he died? Why not shift their support to David? David had been anointed king. David was a great war hero. David had killed Goliath. He had killed his 10,000 in the land of Israel. They sang his praises. And he was even married to Saul's daughter. Why not choose David? It would be the obvious choice because the people had a party spirit. Saul had been against David. Saul had been seeking to kill David. That was the spirit of the day and that's what continued for seven years. Absalom played party politics against his own father because he had eretheia, a selfish ambition to be the king. And 2 Samuel 15 describes his canvassing. his electioneering. Remember what he did? He got horses and chariots and 50 men to run before him to promote him. Today we would just call that campaigning for office. And he successfully turned the hearts of the people away from David. He stole the hearts of the Israelites and he brought civil war to the land. where there is erytheia, there is disorder and every vile practice. After Solomon's death, a party spirit arose in the land between Jeroboam and Rehoboam and it caused Israel to divide into two separate nations that were frequently at war with each other. In 1st Kings 16 we have another example of party spirit. Zimri assassinates the king Baasha. He reigns seven days, but his assassination creates a party spirit between Omri, the general, and Tibni, another man. And there's four years of civil war between these two parties. Judge is mine. Gives us another example. We don't have time to read this whole story. Just read it. It sounds a lot like reading the newspaper today in the political section. Abimelech was filled with eretheia, a selfish ambition to be the ruler. He went to his mother's house and persuaded them to make him the ruler. And remember this, we're going to come back to it. He persuaded them to give him money. 70 pieces of silver, which he used to hire worthless fellows to go out and neutralize his opponents. In this case, he killed his 70 brothers with the worthless fellows hired by the money that he was given for his campaign. Had them all killed. Sounds sort of like modern politics. You see, party spirit flows from rebellion. It's associated with civil judgment and it feeds mass confusion. Take a breath. This is sounding pretty radical, isn't it? No parties, parties are bad, the party spirit. Rah-rah for the Republican candidate is bad. Let me read a quote to you and see if you can recognize who said it. In contemplating the causes which may disturb our union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern, Southern, Atlantic, Western. Once designing or conniving men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. Sound familiar? You cannot shield yourself too much, he goes on, against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. That was President George Washington. Warning against the party spirit in his farewell address delivered on September 19, 1796, 220 years ago, almost to the day. A few minutes later in this talk, he goes on to say this. I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state. with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view. and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind, that erytheia. It's condemned in Galatians 5. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed. But in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness. That's foul, smelly, fetid, rottenness. And it is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension," there's another word from Galatians 5, which in different ages and countries has perpetuated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. He's not talking about Stalin, he's not talking about Hitler, he's not talking about Mao Zedong, he's talking about parties, the Republicans and Democrats. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual. And sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction More able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition in the people, the party spirit, he turns it to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty." The end of the quote. In other words, George Washington is telling us the party spirit leads to tyranny. When people fed up with the division and corruption produced by the party spirit and a really good narcissist comes on the scene, they are willing to trade their liberty for the sake of some peace and security. Of course, this advice was immediately ignored. And Compartis took completely over as soon as he left office. But, although parties quickly formed after President Washington, campaigning and fundraising by candidates was still frowned on by decades, for decades. The sentiment of that time, even though they had parties and they still had the party spirit, the sentiment of that day was captured by William Loundis. who died in 1922 in his very famous comment, quote, the presidency is not an office to be solicited or declined, unquote. President Martin Van Buren advised Jackson saying, our people do not like to see publications from candidates. And so Jackson explained to one disappointed correspondent that if he were to state his opinions, he would be charged with electioneering, quote, electioneering views for selfish purposes, unquote. Here's one that really makes you wonder. In July of 1839, President Van Buren took a campaign trip into New York and Pennsylvania. And in keeping with the standards of the day that were established by George Washington, Martin Van Buren's tour was professedly nonpartisan. But in one of his toasts, on this trip. He just mentioned, in a toast, he mentioned the party, his party. Imagine that. A sitting president mentioning his party in a toast. Gil Troy in his book, See How They Ran, says that, quote, enraged Whig newspapers called on their subscribers to shun the president who was degrading the office with electioneering. And New York's governor William Henry Seward subsequently refused to greet the president and his neighbor because he mentioned the party in a toast, and he was the president, and that degraded the office. He violated unwritten decorum and mentioned party affiliation. You see, the party paradigm has a number of ugly realities. The party paradigm forces candidates to engage in a party spirit and so it naturally attracts those with selfish ambition, those with erytheia. The party paradigm rewards the candidates who are best at self-promotion. It rewards the biggest narcissists and like that city that Aristotle mentioned, Heria, we end up, for our political leaders, having the biggest self-promoters, the biggest narcissists. It favors those who have the most money and can, like Solomon, fund the most people to promote themselves. We call that media. Since 1980, with one exception, the man with the greatest amount of money has won. And there's a chart of all the money since 1980 that has been spent on the presidential election, hundreds of millions of dollars. Over $7 billion were spent in 2002, the 2002 election cycle. That's $50 for every registered voter. And one thing I can guarantee you, that money was not spent equally on every voter because Not every voter is equal worth to the politician. You see, the party has in reality become like a Greek god. You know about those Greek gods. You read about them in high school or college. You know, petty corrupt entities that bicker with other petty corrupt entities, competing for the affection of the people, the votes of the people, and ultimately destructive of the people that they are purporting to help. Well, not only is the two-party system or the party spirit destructive of decency and liberty, but the two-party paradigm that we have today is a clever trap. And when we fall into that two-party paradigm thinking, we are being played for the fool. It's a decoy. It's a decoy that occupies our attentions and energies, promoting the party, and it distracts us like clever sleight of hand from the inexorable march to tyranny. Professor Carol Quigley, you've probably heard of him, an author on the 20th, an authority on 20th century history. He was president George, uh, Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown university. And I suspect, although I don't know that he was the one who prepared the president, the future president for his Rhodes scholarship. He was the only mentor that president Clinton mentioned in accepting his second democratic nomination. Carol Quigley, Professor Quigley, asserts that the Eastern establishment, which he defines, has been the dominant element in both parties since 1900. And he claims that this establishment, which he describes as Anglophile, Cosmopolitan, Ivy League, and Internationalist, is above parties, and that it's more concerned with policies than with party victories. And he goes on to say in his book, Tragedy and Hope, that in the minds, quote, in the minds of the ill-informed, the political struggle in the United States has always been viewed as a struggle between Republicans and Democrats at the ballot box in November. Now, given President Clinton's respect for this man, it's obvious that he's no fan of the Republican right. So this is not some right-wing conspiracy theorist. In fact, he mocks that very idea. This is a liberal scholar who's not at all concerned with the concept that he just articulated. In fact, he goes on to say, in his opinion, the idea that two parties should represent opposed ideals One part perhaps of the right and the other of the left is a foolish idea, acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, he says the two parties should be almost identical so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading. to any profound or extensive shift in policy. He says the policies that are vital and necessary for America are no longer subjects of significant disagreement. He hasn't talked to this crowd, but are indisputable only in details of procedure, priority, and method. And then he goes on to talk a little bit about what those policies ought to be, but then he returns to the topic of parties saying this, quote, But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it every four years if necessary by the other party, which will be none of those things, but will pursue with new vigor approximately the same basic policies," unquote. Why do we have two parties? Well, Carol Quigley, an authority on the history of the 20th century, a man who has mentored our leaders, says it's so that we can throw the one party out and bring the other one in without any change in the direction of the nation. And you thought there was a difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. If you want a metric For the health, the overall health of this country in one number, I, I would submit that the national debt might be a good candidate. This is the history of the 20th century. Actually, it goes all the way back, but you see the history of the 20th century there in one slide. If the debtor is a servant of the lender, and that's what Proverbs 22.7 says, then debt is bondage. And we are a nation that has descended into bondage and servitude. The debt that that red line represents, that shooting through the roof, The debt is what has financed all the evil done by our nation in the last hundred years, from Planned Parenthood and the unconstitutional wars to the warfare state to the federal bureaucracy that has become so troublesome of late. You see, without that debt, very little of all those things would be possible. In fact, none of it would be. So what does this chart tell us about parties? Well, let me ask you, if you look at that chart, can you see any difference between when the Republicans were in office and the Democrats were in office? Hardly. Now, for those of you that are math people, I've plotted that debt in a yellow line. It's a log of the debt. You see that there are really only two little bumps in that line, that red line. One of them is down there by 1950. That's World War II. It was a big jump in the debt for war. War is a big creator of debt. There's another little bump there right in around 2000. And that was President Clinton. Thank you. That was President Clinton's balancing. See, I don't know if you can see that, but there's the World War II bump in the debt. And right here, this is when President Clinton balanced the budget as a result of that contract with America. But other than that, you don't see any difference in this number between Republican and Democratic administrations because there is no difference. There is absolutely no difference. Carol Quigley is right. The Republican and Democratic Party exists so that when the one party gets tired, you can throw them out of office. Everybody feels great. Yeah, we got them out. We got our party in. And they go back to sleep, and the country continues on the exact same course that it's been on for the last 100 years. There is not any difference even under the conservatives' hero, President Reagan. You see, the two-party mentality perpetuates this ability to continue down the same road regardless of which party is in the House or the Congress by distracting us from the good candidates. How many declared presidential candidates do you think there are for this election? How many people think there are more than 10? Raise your hands. Okay. How many people think there are more than 20? Keep them up. How many people think there are more than 30? How many people think there are more than 50? How many people think there are more than 100? How many people think there are more than 200? I see two hands. You can put them down. Thank you. In reality, for this election, there are 567 declared candidates for president. Here they are. I counted them. Can you read Hillary on there? Can you read Trump? They're on there. And there are no Santa Claus or Mickey Mouses in those numbers I checked. Why is it that we only know about two of them? because we're utterly dependent on a small set of corporations who decide what is news and what is not. Who is a serious candidate and who isn't? Really now, think about it. How much difference is there between our party-driven, media-controlled election process that in reality gives us two candidates who are basically the same, except this time for their gender, How much difference is there between that and the elections of the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where there was one candidate on the ballot, picked by the Politburo, and voting was mandatory? You see, the two-party paradigm has been effective mind control for over 100 years. And the only way to stop that mind control, demonic mind control, James tells us, is to be willing to do the opposite. to vote for someone who isn't a candidate in the Demoblican or the Republican Party. We have to ditch the whole party system, but especially the two-party paradigm. And the first step to ditching it is to be willing to vote for third-party candidates. I don't mean forming a third or fourth party. I mean voting for third parties, people who aren't part of any party or either party. There are a lot of myths about third party voting. You know, I hear them all the time. In fact, just last night when I got home, I got another email from somebody you probably all know. telling me a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. You need to vote for Trump. Now, we have to unpack the assumptions in this error here. A vote for a third party is a wasted vote. Well, first of all, what is a wasted vote? To answer that, we need to understand what a vote is, and what purpose it serves. So a vote is the expression of our choice of who we want to rule. That's what a vote is. Us expressing our choice about who we want to rule us. And that voter expression can be given in any number of ways. You can do it by raising your hand. You can do it by writing a name on a piece of paper and so on. But the purpose of a vote is to provide input, to express our voice. And so if we have done that, then the vote, our vote is not wasted. The vote has expressed our will regarding who we want to hold a particular office. You see, a vote is not an attempt to guess who will win the election, so that if you don't vote for the winner, you voted wrong. A vote is not betting on a horse race. A vote is more like a wheelbarrow race, where you make the winner, and if you don't vote, your wheelbarrow doesn't go very far. You see, it's not the voter's job to win an election. That's right, you don't have to worry about that. It's not your job. The election is determined by the hearts of the people who are voting in that election. In Proverbs 13, a vote is a lot like a lot. You can't determine how that dice is going to roll and fall on the ground. You just throw it. Proverbs 16.33 says, the lot is cast into the lap with the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Determining the outcome of an election is not our responsibility any more than determining the outcome of a lot. The outcome of the election belongs in the hands of the Lord. He is the one who holds the hearts of kings and people in his hand, and he is the one who turns those hearts. And so a vote for a third party is not a wasted vote if you have expressed your will, your desire for who you want to rule. Another one I hear all the time is that a person is not able, and they're referring to one of the qualifications in the Bible, if they are not electable. You heard that one? Person is not able if they're not electable. And so to decide if a candidate for civil office is able or not, well, we first need to know what their job is and then we can figure out if they are able to do it. So is a candidate's job able? Is a candidate's job to get elected? Well, some candidates think that's their job. In fact, some think it's their only job given by the fact that they seem to spend most of their time in office campaigning for office. But I would submit to you that it is not the job or duty of a candidate to get elected. The outcome of the election, like the lot, it belongs to the Lord. God disposes. The job of the civil magistrate is given in Romans 13, to bring God's vengeance on those who do evil and reward those who do well, encourage those who do well. It's our job to choose qualified people and to express that choice. It's not the candidate's job to get himself elected. So a person then is electable if they can be chosen. Dead people are electable. In fact, a number of dead people have been elected to office. They just can't serve, but they can be elected. A vote for a third party candidate, another myth, is really a vote for the greater evil, main party candidate. A vote for a third party is really a vote for the worst other party. This one baffles me. It's completely illogical. Remember, voting is the expression of your choice. It's expressing your desire, who you want to be your ruler. And so if you express your desire for a certain third party to be your ruler, that doesn't mean that, in fact, you're really expressing a choice for the Democrat to be your ruler. And if anyone tells you that, ask them, well, does that mean that if I vote for a Democrat, then I'm really voting for the Republican? This is just as logical. You see, this is really how thieves think. If you say, no, you can't have my wallet, they say, yes, that means yes. If you say, yes, you can have my wallet, they say, yeah, that means yes, I can have it. The result of the election is not our responsibility. We cast a lot, but God disposes the outcome. Our responsibility is to choose and to choose well and to express that choice in the appropriate manner and at the appropriate time. And having done that, we have done our duty. A person is not electable if they don't have sufficient money. Well, we heard yesterday from Pastor Kaiser that all authority comes from Jesus Christ, and Christ told Pilate, you don't have any authority except what I have given to you. In giving authority to civil rulers, is God influenced by how much money they have or don't have? Does he care? He owns the gold under the hills, the cattle on a thousand hills. I don't think that's an issue. Well, we've seen what Scripture says we shouldn't do, but what should we do in place of the party system? And I think there's just two principles I want to touch on very briefly. And that is, first, the people or their representative persuade their choice to accept the office. See, what do we have in the party politics? Self-declared candidates seek to persuade the people to make them their choice. But in the Scriptures, we find just the opposite. The people persuade their choice to accept the office. And that's what William Laundis meant when he said the presidency should not be solicited nor declined. David is a great illustration. In 2 Samuel 2, he had been anointed by God to be the next ruler. Not in 2 Samuel 2, but he had been anointed earlier. But David did not travel around. You know, that was after Saul died. He didn't travel around Israel. telling them God told me I would be king and canvassing the people to say, why don't you make me your king? He didn't campaign at all. Instead, after inquiring of the Lord what he should do, he moved to Hebron with all that he had. And he waited for the men, the elders, to come to him and ask him to be their king. And when they did, he did not decline because God had anointed him. See, if it had been party politics, then David, when Saul died, then David would say, well, I've been anointed king. I should canvass the country. God has called me to be king. How many people can say that today that run for president? God has told me to be president. God has anointed me to be president. But that's not what David did. He didn't canvass like Absalom would do. He didn't run around the country promoting himself and trying to persuade the people to make him their king. In fact, when the northern tribes' elders did not come to him, he waited seven years until they did come to him, and then he accepted. The second principle we read in the scriptures is that rulers are not to multiply gold, wives, or horses. And yet, what is the first thing that a candidate does today? Pass the hat and ask for money. Those who give a lot have more access than those who don't. And those, as we've seen, who raise the most money usually win. And so what do we end up having in office? Those who are the best fundraisers. But those who are the best fundraisers aren't necessarily the best rulers. But if the people don't have to campaign, then there's no need to raise funds. Now, you might think that this is getting really, really crazy. How are we supposed to elect anybody if we're not supposed to raise money, if they're not supposed to campaign, if we're not supposed to have parties? Well, here is the most amazing thing. The answer is right in our own Constitution. It's been right under our noses the whole time. President Washington warned us not to do what we've been doing And follow the Constitution. Embodied right in our own Constitution is a method of electing the president that does all of these things. Did you know that? I didn't know that until recently, thanks to Brother Art. Many people want to get rid of it. It's not a very popular system today. In fact, one political pundit described the Electrical College as a system of incredible complexity that only a handful of experts can understand. But what we need to realize is that the Electrical College as we know it has been eviscerated. Its purpose has been actually subverted to the exact opposite of what it was intended to do. the original system wasn't complicated at all it was incredibly simple but it implements a representative method of electing presidents and that's what we can't get our head around because we've all been steeped in democracy and the idea that we have to vote for our president that's not what's in the Constitution originally What's in the Constitution is exactly in line with the principles that we've been looking at in the scriptures. There was no party. There was no campaigning. There was no fundraising and no self-promotion. Let's look at this process. I'll read Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. Bear with me. It's slightly long, but I think we need to hear it. It says, each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct a number of electors equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress. Okay. Electors are chosen by in each state by a process prescribed by the state legislature. It's totally up to the states how they pick these people. There is one requirement. No Senator or representative or person holding an office or trust or profit under the United States shall be appointed an elector. You can't be an office holder. Other than that, the states were free to choose anybody by whatever means they wanted. They could have an election, they could have the House of Representatives pick it, they could have the House-Senate pick it, the governor could appoint them. Whatever method they came up with, they were to choose. The Constitution only specified the number and who they couldn't be. The Constitution goes on. Well, before we go, you notice that we're not talking about any party's candidates for president yet, right? That hasn't even entered the picture yet. There are no candidates on the table. There's nobody running. There's nobody that said, I want to be president. Back in this day, that would have been considered the height of impropriety. The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom at least one shall not be inhabitant of the same state with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for and of the number of votes for each, which list they shall sign and certify. So, very simple process, you pick the electors, they gather in their state capital on the day specified by Congress, and they gather in 50 different places. So it'd be very, all at the same time. So it'd be very hard to subvert that purpose. It's hard to campaign in 50 different places at once. Constitution goes on. They shall make a list or they shall vote for two people, one of which can't be an inhabitant of the same state as themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for and of the number of votes for each. That's done in each capital. And they take that list and sign it and certify it and they transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States directed to the president of the Senate. Now, how hard has this process been so far? You pick a bunch of guys, on the right day they gather in Austin, and each of those people writes down two names, one of whom can't be from Texas. You gather up that list, you seal it, you certify that it's correct, you seal it, and you send it to the President of the Senate. Think we could do that? The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all their certificates, and the votes shall be counted." Now, think about this. If you gathered... Texas has, what is it, 38 plus 2, 40, so we have about 40 electors. There are 38 electors. Okay, 38 electors. So 38 people gather in Austin, and they each write down two names. And you've got this going on in 50 other states. And those lists are all sent to Washington. Now, how many names do you think are gonna get written down? How many names do you think are gonna show up in Washington? You think it's gonna be more like that list that we saw earlier with 567 names on it? I think so. I mean, just take this room, if we all wrote down two people for president, you think we're all going to write down the same two people? I doubt it. Because we're all, you know, those of us from different states, we know different people, we have different experiences, and we're going to think different people should be the president. So you're going to get this list from 535 people, or it's 38, I guess, with the District of Columbia, with, you know, coming, and you're going to have 100 names on it. The President of the Senate, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, opens the certificates and the vote shall be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be President. You think that's probably going to happen? Probably not. Not if you have 50 different states all sending their name into Washington, D.C. You're probably going to have some with 10, some with 5. There's going to be a smattering of names. So normally, if such a number be the majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if there be more than one who have such majority or have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for president. So if you have more than one that has a majority, which is possible in this election because you're voting for two people. So you could have two people with a majority. Or if you have two that have the same number at the top, then the house goes and they vote on those people. But normally, if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list, the said house shall in like manner choose the president. So they're going to take the five top names that came in on that list. Send it to the House of Representatives, and the House is going to vote. But the Constitution says, in choosing the president, C-H-U-S-I-N-G, the vote shall be taken by the states, the representation from each state having one vote. So it's done by the House of Representatives. They are the representatives of the people. But the votes are counted by state. So if our delegation of 38 representatives get together and they vote on those five, they vote, but their vote counts as one vote in the House total. A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. So you've got to have a majority of states. In every case, after the choice of president, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be vice president. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the vice president. Now, is that a complicated process? I don't think so. We just naturally rebel against it because it's not a democratic process. It's a representative process. It's exactly what we find in Samuel, where the elders of the people came to David and asked him to be king. The elders of the people came and selected their ruler. That's what we have here. That's what the Constitution gave us, is a representative system of choosing the president. And it solves the representation problem, because they understood the representation problem, and they realized that with that many people in a big country, you can't have a democratic election of the president. It won't work. You're going to end up... These were literate men. They probably knew about Herrera and Aristotle and all those, and the scriptures. And they knew that if you have a democratic process driven by parties, you're going to end up with worthless candidates who are the biggest self-promoters and the best fundraisers. That process just naturally attracts those with eritheia, selfish ambition. And there's no reason why we couldn't implement a very similar system at the state level for electing our governor. or electing any other state level office. You see, we may not, individually, we may not know who to elect, but when you elect an elector who does the election, then you're electing, then he can know the right kind of people. There's no clock around here. How much time is it? Thank you. Okay, we have a little bit of time. No, are we late? What was I supposed to say, 9.30, 10.30? Well, no one is going this way, right? You're probably thinking, how we ever turn this ship of state around? How do we ever go back to what's actually in our Constitution? Well, let me just tell you real briefly here a little story that happened right here in Texas. Back in the 70s, nobody was homeschooling either. In fact, there were a few people that did it that went to jail. They were prosecuted. But they didn't say, those parents didn't say, we're never, this is hopeless so we might as well just send our children to the government school because what can we do about it? No, they said we can change it. And they got a lawyer by the name of Shelby Sharp who was a God-fearing man who said, no, the law allows it. All we need to do is to get the courts to recognize that the law allows it. We don't need a bunch of new laws. And never having presented a class action suit like this, he took the case because who else was going to do it? And there were seven homeschooling families that formed the class action lawsuit. And he sued seven school districts in the state of Texas, Katie being one of them. This was a case of David versus Goliath, if there ever was one. The Texas Education Agency stalled that case for two years, searching in vain for some homeschooling family where, you know, the mother shoots the kids and drowns them and all that sort of stuff. And they couldn't find anything like that. And they went to trial. in a court. And this story is just filled with amazing providences that I don't have time to get into, but if you're interested you can track down the video on this. Shelby Sharpe made some mistakes in his initial filing, for example, and it was the lawyers on the other side that pointed it out to him. I don't know if they realized what they were doing. And it was a judge overturning a motion, one of his own motions, that gave him the opportunity to correct the defect in his lawsuit. This thing goes to trial. A man by the name of John Rustuni testified at this trial. He took the defense attorney to school on a couple of things, on Texas history, and impressed the judge. The judge got involved in asking questions. There are a number of amazing incidences in this testament. I'll just tell you one of them briefly. There was one of the families was the Jackson family. And Helen Jackson was a black woman and she was on the witness stand talking about why she was homeschooling and so forth. And they asked her, well, what's going to make you get up in the morning and homeschool? You mean you're just a mother, right? If you're sending your children to school, their idea was, well, there's some structure there, it's going to happen, but if you're just a mom in a home, well, you might just forget. So what's going to make you do it every day? And so she's talking about her purposes for homeschooling, and it comes out in a bombshell that this Helen Jackson had resigned from NASA to homeschool. And you know, these lawyers see all these things. They saw that she worked for NASA, I'm sure. They must have assumed that she was the janitor. But she had moved down to Texas, down to Houston, and then more or less pulled back from NASA after she had gotten a letter accepting her as an astronaut. She would have been the first black woman astronaut. And she turned it down to homeschool her children. How does a defense attorney handle that? They won. The Texas Education Agency said, do not appeal this. Sorry, the defense attorney that fought the case said, don't appeal this to his boss. The TEA said, we've got to appeal it. We lost. We can't lose. So they appealed it. They lost on appeal. They appealed it to the Supreme Court and lost. And it was a recorded decision. And because of that leaper decision, there was a chilling effect across the U.S. in prosecuting homeschoolers. And to boot, they won attorney's fees too. And there is now a permanent injunction against the Texas Education Agency in Texas from ever prosecuting parents for homeschooling. See, we have to remember that all authority in heaven and earth, as Pastor Kaiser powerfully told us yesterday, is given to Jesus Christ. And an unwillingness to look outside one of the two parties for candidates for office is the fruit of adopting the presuppositions of party politics and all that is condemned in scripture and in history. Thank you.