Colossians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, we're talking about natural law pluralism. We're doing a, this is number 21, number 21, and we're basically a very lengthy analysis of Van Drunen's book. He's the leading scholar on, reform scholar on natural law theory. And we're analyzing it for edification. Here's what Paul says. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power. And then the parallel passage is found in Ephesians, and that says rule and authority. Now, we were discussing Van Drunen's view of natural law and its effects for society, and he's basically saying that there are no detailed blueprints for a Christian society. And, you know, we've just read a very lengthy quote of Van Drunen respecting society, so we know his view. Now we're gonna critique it. Before I do, I just want to tell you something about culture and why it's important. The term culture in a social, intellectual, or artistic sense is derived from the agricultural term. Okay, you cultivate the soil. You ever heard that, you cultivate the soil? Well, the term for culture in planting has been taken over into society. The soil is cultivated, fertilized, and planted with a specific idea of producing a certain kind of crop. The mind is cultivated with ideas and thus a collective of similar thinking minds will produce a unique kind of civilization. A certain way of thinking and looking at reality will result in a particular kind of intellectual and moral development in society. Okay, you know you. Why are certain countries in South America a basket case? Why is the Middle East a basket case? Why is the United States so much better as far as law abiding citizenry? Well, it's the different cultures, different cultures. There's different worldviews that lead to different cultures and different ways of thinking. Since one's religion, worldview, world and life view, philosophy or view of ultimate reality is a platform or foundation of thinking, doing, and developing. One could argue that culture is largely one's religion or worldview externalized. Historically, the pagan cultures of antiquity produced a status pyramid scheme of civilization. And we see that at the Tower of Babel, we see that in Egypt. The modern worldview of secular humanism also produces a certain kind of culture. a culture that places its faith in the state and not Christ or God or the Bible. While there are many things in a culture that are somewhat indifferent, such as hamburgers, hot dogs, baseball, Wienerschnitzel, wooden shoes, sandals, once the use of ethics and judicial law are not indifferent or purely circumstantial matters, There are things that are indifferent. You like apple pie. Well, this culture might like apple pie. I remember we ate with some Chinese people once and they had these Chinese desserts that were popular in China and they were horrible, but that's what they were used to. But that's indifferent. It is for this reason that Van Drunen's idea of a just society founded on second table natural law principles is both naive and dangerous. Pagans and secular humanists will at best only tolerate biblical Christianity as a foolish superstition. Many will seek to persecute it and drive it out of existence. Remember, I don't know if you remember this, but when somebody recorded Obama at a gathering of Democrats talking about those foolish Christians with their religion and their guns. They think of Christians as Neanderthal fools. Many will seek to persecute it and drive it out of existence. Hillary Clinton, Obama, they certainly would do it if they could. Christians who do not seek to transform culture will end up being persecuted by a hostile, Christ-hating culture that's taking place in our own lifetimes. A society that disregards the first table of the law can never be expected to faithfully and consistently keep or uphold the second table of the law. A soil cultivated with bad seeds do not produce a good crop. The potentiality of a worldview or philosophy cannot exceed its presuppositions. Van Drunen has ignored the crucial fact that secular humanists make up their own laws without any reference point beyond themselves or other secular humanists. And of course they would say that's quite natural. By rejecting biblical theism, men see themselves as independent and autonomous beings. While we agree with Van Drunen that an objective revelation of God is given to man both in the world around him and his own image or created nature. We do not see how a continually suppressed knowledge and unrighteousness and spiritual blindness, Romans 1.18 and following, will result in a comprehensive righteous standard. It amazes me. People always appeal to Romans 1.18 and following. Romans 1.18 and following is the best proof text against natural law you'll ever find. Because it tells us that the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, the natural man will create his own ethics. He won't submit to what God says. We do not see how men who insist on being their own God and who view nature through human autonomy and rebellion can be trusted to rule justly. We do not understand how a seminary professor who is supposed to believe in total depravity trusts in the unregenerate like a Pelagian. Men are never impartial or objective. Everyone comes to the facts with a certain set of presuppositions. Vandrenen places his faith in the reasoning and empirical abilities of fallen man committed to human autonomy. Psalm 127, verse one. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. So just understand culture and society are important. And if you have Christians, you're gonna have a majority of Christians, you should, if they're taught the word of God, if they're taught the whole counsel of God, you should have a Christian law order. You should have a Christian culture. You should have a Christian constitution. But Van Drunen, he says there's no biblical blueprints for nations. The Bible is essentially irrelevant to society and culture. The church must focus on his concept of an eschatological ethic. The Word of God, we are told, does not even inform us about wisdom or tell us how to interpret nature. Men, we are told, derive their concept of wisdom from natural revelation. And this wisdom must be used creatively and with imagination to apply principles of justice found in nature. He has more in common with Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle than he does with Christ or Paul. Van Duren has a deficient view of the sufficiency and perfection of scripture coupled with an implicit plagianism. Men do not need divine revelation for guidance, for man has the final answers to ethical questions within himself. And he is good enough in his thinking to discover a comprehensively just judicial system without any information from the word of God. While Van Drunen repeatedly denies that he is advocating human autonomy in ethics, his concept of natural law is based on the self-sufficiency of fallen man's independent moral consciousness. Yeah, I can say I'm against human autonomy until I'm blue in the face. But if I advocate a philosophy or a position that is not founded upon the word of God, that is not rooted in the word of God, that does not tell men to look to the word of God for answers, then I'm teaching human autonomy no matter how much I deny it. He does not see any need to direct fallen man to God's special revelation. In fact, his interpretation of the Noant Covenant teaches that it is wrong for nations or societies or peoples to look to the self-sufficient moral consciousness of the triune God revealed in scripture. It's wrong to look to scripture. We need to look to natural law. Scripture's only for Christians. I believe that Van Droenen has avoided the crucial question of epistemology. that is how man can attain truth, can attain true, valid, unassailable knowledge, because it proves that his whole paradigm rests on a foundation of quicksand. If a naturalist, an atheistic naturalist, defines something to be good or bad, he does so on a humanistic basis. Something is said to be good or evil, not based on an objective, unchangeable basis above man, but simply because man says so. If you read the Supreme Court decision on homosexual marriage, you'll just be amazed at how, or the one on abortion for that matter. There's nothing objective there that they're looking to. They look to Europe, they see what Europe did, They look at precedent, which is other men making up stuff, and then they just simply make up a law. The non-Christian philosophy or theology is founded upon the suppression of the truth about God and unrighteousness, and therefore not only starts out with a improper motive and goal of ethics, but also a fallen, rebellious heart that seeks human autonomy and ethics. Okay, what is the motive for ethics? What is it? If it's not obedience to God and glorification of God, then you've got a wrong motive. The reasoning, what is the why behind ethics? If it's not obedience to Christ and God, then you're wrong there. You have an improper motive and goal, but also a fallen rebellion as hard as it seeks human autonomy. For this reason, neutrality in ethics is impossible. Any agreement between Christians and unbelievers is coincidental and occurs only on a surface level. There is an intimate connection between epistemology, ontology, and ethics. You know, get a bunch of unbelievers in a room with a Christian and then sit there and have them all sit in chairs and start asking him, okay, you all agree that murder's wrong, correct? Yeah. They all raise their hand. Why? Just start asking them why, and you're gonna get several different answers. Here's what Francis Schaeffer notes this inescapable relationship. He says this, quote, what will unify and give meaning to everything there is? Jean Paul Sartre, Sartre, born in 1905, He wrote this book before he died. The French existential philosopher emphasized this problem in, in our own generation. His book came out in, I don't know, what, 67, 66? His concept was that a finite point is absurd if it has, if it has no inference reference, infinite reference point. This concept is most easily understood in the area of morals. If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute, we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals. And there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, and there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions. But it is not only that we need absolutes in morals and values. We need absolutes if our existence is to have meaning. My existence, your existence, man's existence. Even more profoundly. We must have absolutes if we were to have a solid epistemology. That is a theory of knowing. How we know, or how we know what we know. How can we be sure that what we think we know of the world outside ourselves really corresponds to what is there? and in all these layers, each more profound than the other. Unless there is an absolute, these things are lost to us. Morals, values, the meaning of existence, including the meaning of man, and a basis for knowing. That's how we should then, how should we then live the rise and decline of Western thought and culture in 1976. And then here's, so, Francis Schaeffer nailed it on the head beautifully. So there's an intimate connection between epistemology, ontology, and ethics, which Francis Schaeffer nailed right on the head. You have to have meaning. There has to be real, true, objective reality that you can know, that's not in flux, to have meaning. The atheistic naturalist who believes in a chance universe and views ultimate reality as impersonal, of logical necessity, must view man as the sole determiner of ethics. and must view concepts of morality as ultimately subjective, arbitrary, and changing. And they teach us in universities. They teach situational ethics. The secular humanistic worldview sees man as the ultimate source of ethics in a universe of flux or pure contingency. Therefore, even though man is the pinnacle of macroevolutionary processes, determines ethics autonomously, his ethics are still relative and non-absolute, for in a chance impersonal universe, a chance universe, impersonal universe cannot produce absolutes. There's no fixedness to it, it's always in flux. Unbelievers still have the work of the law on the heart and come to some correct ethical conclusions on a surface level. but these conclusions are not consistent with their epistemology or view of reality. That's why if you really learn Van Tillen, you're gonna use Van Tillen apologetics on an unbeliever, and you get into a discussion with them, just start asking them, you know, well, you know, the Vietnam War's wrong, why? Why is it wrong to do this? Why is it wrong to do that? And they'll get so frustrated because their answers are always arbitrary and inconsistent. They must steal from the Christian world and life view to make ethical assertions. That which is finite in itself is a product of impersonal forces in flux, is not a reliable source of ethics, justice, or social cohesion. That's why our society is disintegrating and falling into factions, because the Christian world and life view has been rejected. As the West has cast off the Christian concept of reality and the Christian world and life view, has faded from culture, institutions and the social zeitgeist, humanists are left with anarchy or repression, that is, anarchy or statism. Currently, Europe is in the process of committing cultural suicide because of their commitment to secular humanism. Without ethical absolutes and a world and life view worth defending, Christianity, biblical Christianity, they have embraced multiculturalism and have opened their borders to Muslims who are Satanists, who are committed to stamping out every remnant of Christianity from European society. So because they don't believe in absolutes, they believe that everything's in flux, they don't believe in the superiority of one culture over another. So they believe in pluralism and they believe in multiculturalism. But those Muslims, they don't believe in multiculturalism. They believe in the Quran. And the Quran teaches if you don't believe, if you don't submit, you must die. So people who blow up and kill Christians think they're doing the world a favor. Van Druden's view of cultural surrender does not lead to peace and prosperity, but statism followed by persecution. It really does. Here's Herbert Schlossberg again. And speaking about persecution. Representative government is worthy of support and principle because a biblical view of human nature concludes that all of us are flawed and unable to handle unlimited power without falling into pride and irresponsibility. Nevertheless, the ratification of law by majority vote does not validate it. To the democratic ideology, any action is just if it is approved by a majority rule. To the libertarian ideology, any action is just if it is not coercive. Both are thus humanist to the core. In biblical perspective, right and wrong are not determined by the process of leading up to their proclamation, but by the degree of conformity to the law of God. At the same time, most Christians have lived and do live under authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, and the kingdom of God is not thereby made of no effect. For Christians who remain faithful to their calling under regimes that are at once idolatrous and unrestrained in power is to invite persecution. These regimes seek to know instinctively. that a church which has not been tamed is their most dangerous adversary. And I'm just gonna stop for a moment. If you study what happened to the churches in the Soviet Union and in China and other communist countries, it's just shocking what they did. The state would do things like, in Russia, they would do things like, well, this is our guy, he's gonna be your bishop or pastor. We'll choose the pastor, we'll choose the bishop, and they put a communist in there. And if you didn't approve, you'd be persecuted. You're not the legitimate church, because you don't have the approval of the state. One of the most serious dangers we face in seeking to influence the political sphere is that we too may succumb to the delusion that we possess the solution to the limits of peace and justice requiring only that we grasp the reins of power. In other words, kind of a top-down revolution sort of thinking. If that should happen, we are only a step away from seeking to bring into being our own version of the messianic state. For it would imply that our salvation lies in yet another reformation of institutional arrangements. This society will have peace and justice when it repents and overthrows the idol not before." End of quote. You have to have a massive revival where the vast majority of citizens believe in Christ and submit to the word of God before you can have a Christian society and a Christian culture. If you have a top-down reformation, it won't last. That's why the Psalm-Ligon Covenant, which is great, if you read it, it's outstanding, it's beautiful, it's totally biblical. It didn't last in England because the people weren't really behind it. It was imposed from above. Were they obligated to obey it? Yes, they were. Were they sinning and wrong and disobeying it? Yes, they were. But if you want a lasting reformation, it's gotta be a bottom-up. Rashtuni has always taught that the path to Christian reconstruction is through regeneration, not revolution or a top-down imposition. This point is made clear by the Great Commission where the nations are to be discipled to the gospel, the sacraments, and the teaching of the whole council of God. Professing Christians cannot properly disciple nations if they reject the law of God. and believe that civil magistrates in the state must attempt to rule in a secular or neutral manner with respect to all the world's religions. And that's what's Van Durenen is advocating. If you're saying the state can't take a position with religion and you have to have pluralism, then of logical necessity, the state has to be secular. Van Drunen's theory, the gospel of God, by the way, commands that all men everywhere repent and bow their knee to Christ and completely rejects that view. Van Drunen's theory of natural law as refracted through the Noahic covenant is every bit as radically inscriptural as dispensationalism. Dispensationalists say we are not under law as a guide to living. We are under grace and thus handed the reins of society over to secular humanists and statists. Van Drunen says society is not under Jesus Christ and the moral law of God revealed in scripture, it is under natural law. The first table of the law excluded, we wouldn't want to offend atheists or idolaters. Both have the same outcome, which invariably is we are under a secular humanistic culture, and will never, and must never have a Christian culture, law, order, or society. Because there is no neutrality. You can't say you're against human autonomy and then propose human autonomy and ethics. It just doesn't work. We live in a time of serious declension when a theology professor from a conservative Bible-leaving seminary distrusts and rejects biblical law almost as much as liberals, dispensationalists, and secular humanists do. Gary North's analysis of the abuse of the Noahic Covenant by Christians speaks a necessary warning against Andrew and its paradigm. Here's what he says. Quote, this is from Tools of Dominion. What is judicially not discussed by the defenders of the Noahic Covenant theory of the state is that the older social contract theory relied completely on the concept of natural law, and in Locke's case, natural rights. This epistemologically naive view of civil law has been refuted from two sides. by Darwinism's view of the evolving universe, and by Van Til's presuppositional apologetic. Without the doctrine of natural law, or some version of natural rights theory to govern their theory of the state, defenders of the Noyet Covenant theory have implicitly granted judicially unlimited power to the modern state, no matter how much they protest against such a development. They may be political conservatives personally, but it makes no difference. Their personal political preferences become just that, personal preferences. Their personal political preferences are self-consciously and explicitly unconnected with any biblical theological system of social ethics and political theory. Such a view of Noah's low-content covenant. grants enormous authority to self-proclaimed autonomous men and his representatives, the messianic state. The power-seeking covenant breaker is as pleased with such a view of the state as the responsibility-freeing Christian pietist is. This is why there is now and always has been an implicit judicial alliance between antinomian Christians and humanist statists Here is an ideal way to silence Christians in all judicial matters except murder. Insist that the Bible doesn't offer a blueprint for civil law. With this judicial affirmation, antinomian, responsibility-fleeing Christians sound the retreat, and secular humanists and other covenant-breaking power seekers sound the attack. The victim is in principle victimized even further by this view of Noah's drastically restricted covenant and the messianic state is unchained by it. All this is accomplished in the name of a higher view of theistic ethics than the Mosaic law supposedly offered to the Israelites, end of quote. He hit it right in the head, that's totally excellent. It's a theory of escapism. It's a theory of cultural and societal surrender. That's all it is. Van Dronen proposes a theory of natural law that was rejected by the West over 100 years ago. Much of what is passed as civil law today is rooted in sentiment and humanistic concepts of egalitarianism. not an objective, verifiable standard found in nature. Just read the Supreme Court decisions for the last 100 years. They don't talk about natural rights or they don't talk about finding absolutes in nature. One of the Supreme Court justices in the 1930s said, somebody asked him, well, what's the standard of law? He said, whatever the majority of the Supreme Court says it is. Does Dan Drunen think that the state of socialists, pro-abortion advocates, homosexual rights politicians, and statesmen that hate Christianity and teach that the state is man's savior will read his book and start attempting to be more objective and equitable in their reading of conscience and the natural order? Probably not. Men interpret reality in terms of their presuppositions and consequently Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Angela Merkel will not study nature and start thinking like John Calvin or the Apostle Paul. I believe the book is designed to get reformed Christians to reject biblical law, to reject the establishment principle, and any idea that the word of God speaks to all areas of life, especially to the state, or culture, or society. According to Van Dernan's interpretation of the Noahic Covenant, God does not want kings and whole nations as corporate bodies to bow the knee to Jesus Christ. He does not want them to covenant with Christ and adopt his law word as their standard for living, judging, and ruling. Jehovah, rather, according to Van Drouinen, has the nations in a kind of common grace holding pattern, where special revelation, at least respecting law, is off limits. And men can have peace and justice through natural law while they wait to be cast into the lake of fire. That's his social theory. Van Drunen's book is radically unscriptural and is an explicit rejection of the teaching of the reform wing of the Protestant Reformation. Any theory or paradigm that rejects either explicitly or by implication the absolute kingship of Christ over the nations and their duty to obey, serve, and worship him as Lord over lords and king over kings is unscriptural and worthless. Third. that Van Drunen is committed to human autonomy and a great flexibility regarding ethics is seen as a description of how natural law works. His view of an objective natural moral order does not give man, quote, a series of discrete rules, or, quote, a detailed blueprint for society. His view of natural law is both vague and very general. It is up to humans to exercise their wisdom, which according to Van Druen must be derived from natural revelation, in a creative and imaginative manner to figure out what to do. And this use of natural law does not lead to one system of ethics and justice, but quote, a variety of ways. This is a strange way of speaking when we consider the fact that Adam was created by God with distinct moral laws on his heart. This moral consciousness is regarded by theologians as equivalent to the Ten Commandments minus any positive elements. Adam and Eve had, before the fall, had the full knowledge of the Ten Commandments ingrained into their being. So we do have discrete rules in the consciousness of man before the fall. Because Van Drunen does not recognize that natural law and the moral law advocated in scripture are identical, His concept of an objective moral order is so vague as to be virtually useless. In addition, once again, he fails to consider the biblical fact that wisdom and true knowledge comes from the fear of God, Proverbs 1.7 and 9.10, not the unregenerate use of empiricism, sociology, and reason. and you go way back, like number two or number three, I do a very lengthy discussion of this topic. You have to believe in order to know. You have to trust in the Lord with all your heart before you can have understanding. If there's any differences in situations, it's purely one of application. The law of God is fixed, it's objective, it's a standard, it's transcendent, it's perspicuous. The difficulty lies in applying it to specific situations in life. The Bible gives man a very detailed comprehensive system of moral laws and tells us how to deal with moral infractions defined as crimes judicially. Consequently, it gives us distinct biblical rules, ethical rules, and a detailed blueprint for society. Van Drinnen rejects what the Bible teaches because he has adopted an essentially dispensational concept of the Old Testament moral laws. He basically teaches that Israel's theocracy has nothing to say to modern nations because it was only designed to cause that nation to fail and recapitulate Adam's failure in the garden. when the Puritans and the Calvinist reformers had a very different view, that it was a model for all nations. Van Duren must adopt this position, which explicitly contradicts Deuteronomy 4.8 and following, because his goal is to turn men away from biblical law towards his vague, amorphous concept of natural law. But this view is not only unscriptural, it is out of touch with history. The Reformed and Puritan concepts of the Word of God, doctrine, and ethics did produce a distinctly Christian culture, far superior to heathen nations and even Roman Catholic countries. The Puritans in New England believed they had a moral obligation to Christianize the world and bring all earthly institutions under the Lordship of Christ. This is also true of John Knox, Rutherford, Gillespie, the Presbyterians for centuries. The preacher college president and anti-slavery writer, Edward Beecher, 1803 to 1895, son of the famous Lyman Beecher, tells us how Christians used to think when he said that the church had a duty, quote, and this is how Christians used to think, they don't think that's the way anymore, quote, not merely to preach the gospel to every creature, but also to reorganize human society in accordance with the law of God. and that's the law revealed in Special Revelation, to abolish all corruptions in religions and all abuses in the social system. And so far as it has been erected on false principles, to take it down and erect it anew. End of quote. What theonomists are teaching today about God's law, the cultural mandate, and the implications of Christ's kingship and the Great Commission is not new or radical. It's not. It only seems radical because most churches have been corrupted by unbiblical views of God's Old Testament moral law. Deficient views of Christ's kingship over the nations. For example, it's either holy future, premillennialism, it's in the future, it's not happening yet, or they redefine his victory in terms of a few Christians here and there, which contradicts the prophets. and escapist forms of pietism. And they believe there should be no tangible difference in this world until the second coming. The advantage of the modern theonomy movement has over the older views is its greater epistemological awareness due to the contributions to theology and apologetics by Cornelius Van Til. And I wrote a, the seminary lost, my master's thesis for Reformed Episcopal Seminary was on Apologetics and it was on John Calvin. And Calvin was very similar to Cornelius Van Til and his way of thinking. Natural revelation is never interpreted in a vacuum. Thus there can be no real neutrality between believers and unbelievers except only on a surface, superficial, coincidental level. Therefore if Christians do not seek to apply scripture to every area of life, but rather seek peace and compromise with unbelievers in a supposedly common grace secular sphere, they in reality are handing the reins of society over to the devil and his followers. Now I want you to think about it. The public schools, of course, were started by Unitarians. But the purpose of the public schools was, originally, the Protestants were in favor of it because they were afraid of Roman Catholic immigrants coming into the country, and they thought it was a good way to Protestantize all the children. But what it is, it's the greatest advocate of atheism and secularism in the whole history of the United States is the public school system. And 90% of evangelicals send their children to state schools. And I was watching a thing about the Southern Baptist Convention, the conservative Baptists. They also send 90% of their kids to public schools. 89% of their children go apostate. 89%! They, in reality, are handing the reins of society over to the devil and his followers. What Van Til and Maroussas John Rustuni have taught in this respect has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt by how history is played out. Unbelievers have done everything in their power to curtail the effects of Christianity on a society level, and have become more explicitly anti-Christian and immoral over time. For example, the Democratic Party, is following the same path as the Jacobins in France, the communists and the Nazis. There are Jews doing it very slowly and incrementally. The outcome, however, will be the same. I'm not saying the Democrats are gonna go after Jews. I'm just saying their lust for power, their lust for human autonomy, their lust for statism. Christians will be persecuted in the name of human rights and compassion. They're gonna pass laws, you can't just talk about the law of God and the view of sexuality is taught in Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20 in the Bible. That view of sexuality will be outlawed as hate speech. And then if somebody has something on the internet, they'll be arrested. The influence of biblical law The Old Testament political institutions and doctrine on Northern Europe, England, and America is unmistakable and exceptionally positive. I mean, look at what Christianity did to what became Europe, the Roman Empire. Gladiatorial games, torture, slavery. Of course, slavery took a long time to get rid of, but it greatly changed Europe. The dark ages weren't as dark as people say they were. The influence of biblical law, the Old Testament political institutions and doctrine in Northern Europe, England, and America is unmistakable and exceptionally positive. The pagan nations, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Rome produced pagan cultures that had a weak corrupt base because natural law without the restraints and interpretation of special revelation is at bottom, always autonomous law. There is no true, fixed, transcendent rule of law or liberty in such systems. The more faithful a nation is to the teaching of the Bible, the better its culture will be. The more that nations compromise their view of doctrine and law by adopting non-Christian concepts, whether of Greek or Roman origin, or ancient pagan traditions, the more corrupt and ploblantic their cultures become. The Roman or Puritan Christians produced the best cultures or societies because they most faithfully applied God's law and doctrine to the state, economics, and the arts. Nations and kingdoms rise and fall because without faith in divine revelation, culture and society decays, and faith in the state and society decays as well. A society that purposely sets aside, rejects, or ignores Christ in the first table of law will experience a cultural crisis. We're seeing that today. A nation not rooted deep in the biblical world and life view will slide into hedonism, narcissism, nihilism, and barbarism. Van Drunen's second table version of natural law has left every great empire in the dust. In the West, as the biblical world and life view has faded from memory in everyday life, the young have increasingly retreated from responsibility and family. personal pleasures and self-fulfillment take precedence over family and dominion. I went and visited relatives in California and I was at this beach, they have a beach there where people can take their dogs. And it's all these young couples, most of which are not married, they just live together, and they don't have children, but they all have pets. People aren't having children, or they have 1.5 or whatever it is. Families takes a back seat to hedonism. Unregenerate man use natural law to pretend to be God. They seek to be the final source of authority, determining what is good and what is evil. The result in the end is not a just society, but hedonism, feminism, abortion on demand, fascism, statism, socialism, and conflict. The goal of the modern state is not to find objective truth or ethics in nature, but rather is control and power through man-made laws, human autonomy, and a vast bureaucracy. We'll stop there and pick this up next week, but I only have a little bit more of concluding chapter, and then we're gonna look at some, I have an appendix on what the prophets have to say about the kingship of Christ. What do the prophets have to say about the kingship of Christ? They have a lot to say. And Psalm 2, for example, warns rulers, lesser magistrates and kings, that they better bow the knee to Christ and kiss the sun, which is pay him homage and worship and obeisance, obedience, or they'll suffer under the wrath of the lamb. They'll be hit with a rod of iron. The first nation to be hit with a rod of iron, of course, was apostate Israel in AD 70. There are consequences to not obeying the Word of God. We need culture that is distinctly and explicitly Christian, or we're going in the wrong direction. But we'll continue this, Lord willing, next week, let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the Word of God. We thank you so much for Christ. We thank you especially for the Holy Spirit that he sent unto us from heaven, from your right hand, to open blind eyes and open deaf ears, that we could see the beauty of your Son, and see his great salvation, perfection and sufficiency of the word of God. Cause your church once again to love your law as David loved it in Psalm 119. That we would look to your law and not trust in human autonomy, not trust in fallen men. to develop good laws. But we would trust in men to apply biblical law to culture. Men who believe in Christ, men who love your law, men who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Help us, Lord, to have a Christian nation, and a Christian constitution, and a Christian culture. We're a long way off. We need reformation in the churches first. It won't happen, so do your work, Lord. We know that your prophecies will be fulfilled. And we know that it will come, it will happen. It's just a matter of time. We thank you for it.