Last week I alluded to The Law of Nature and Of Nature's God in my discussion of the Supreme Court and their decisions affecting our culture. The idea of The Law Of Nature and Of Nature's God is a philosophy born of the Reformation, and borrowed by the Founders of the United States. You see it referenced in the Prologue to the Declaration of Independence:
This week on the radio I heard a re-telling of a message by Tommy Nelson, pastor of Denton Bible Church. It was originally preached Memorial Day weekend, 2002. I would encourage you to look up Denton Bible Church online, and listen to the entire message. Here is the part that was excerpted on Focus on the Family Radio yesterday:
America is the greatest idea that was ever concocted. Isn’t the Bible? No the Bible is not an idea, it is a
Revelation of God to us. As far as the
light and salt effects of Christianity, I believe that America is the greatest
idea that anyone ever conceived.
From the late 1500’s through the 1600’s, countries
determined their religions. Except in
the case of England: England went back
and forth. They were Anglican, then
Protestant, then Catholic. ; and it
caused a great deal of strife among English Reformers, those who had the idea
of the Sovereignty of God, in Salvation, in the Authority of His Word. And many
of them wanted a Protestant Government.
Some English reformers stayed there—we all know this story, it is
precious to us—they stayed there, and sought to purify the system from
within. They were called Puritans. Others left, and we know who they were, they
were called Pilgrims. They boarded a
boat, and they came over here. They came
for the freedom from the hindrances of government, and the establishment of the
ancient medieval idea of Augustine, of the City of God, to have, not a
Church-State separation, but a state that was the church, and to have a
Christian country. That was their
idea. They sought a Theocracy—not a Democracy
or a Republic. They wanted a
Theo-Kratos, the rule of Jesus Christ through the State. And it was noble.
By the late 1600’s, to make a long story short, it had
failed. The reason it failed—and I’m not
being facetious right here—was that they had teenagers. And the faith of the parents did not show up
in the teenagers. I know you’re amazed
that it can happen, but it can. And by
the late 1600s there was what was called the Salem Witch Trials, the Mania of ’92,
and the Puritan dream became socially discredited. And the Puritan Ideal faded. But they did leave us with something: they
left us with a Christian Biblical perspective of God as outside of government,
to whom government is subservient; of God in a Biblical sense—not just a G-O-D
idea, but the God of the Jew, the infinite, personal God who has made Himself
known, and redeemed man through Jesus Christ.
And the biblical idea of Man as having “mannishness”, the glory of God
in man as distinct from nature, and having what they would call rights that
were taken from Nature’s God, of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,
that were germane to every man in the Image of God.
What they came up with was not just a Constitution; it was a
Constitution that reflected Sinai. I don’t
know if you’ve thought about it, but that’s the brilliance of the American
concept. We were governed by a
Constitution as Israel was governed by a Decalogue. And it was a government that reflected the
Biblical idea of the Fallen-ness of Man.
We had a saying that came out of that time: Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. We would not give absolute
power to humans because they were fallen. And so we had a government that was Legislative,
Judicial and Executive, that checked the others. Nobody was sovereign, all were checked by the
Constitution, that was a reflection of Right as coming from God. We would elect officials based upon what we
perceived Right in them, and that unholy men could not get in. And if they did badly, we could depose them
in four years, and we could put others in their place. And that is why I think it is a right statement
that America was a unique country. It
wasn’t just a locale, or a race of people; it was an idea that sprang out of
the Protestant Reformation concerning God and Man, and how we should live and
be governed. A country that had
problems, and our problems did not come from the inherent flaws in our
system. Our problems came because of a national
lack of courage to live out our Constitution.
The idea of racism and the Jim
Crow laws were unconstitutional—they existed, not because of our belief
system, but because of our lack of national courage to get rid of them. Some of the ways that traditionally women
were treated were not right, and that’s why our landmark decisions have been
literally acts of Constitutional repentance, to make right what should have
been right. In other words, our problems
were that we were just not American enough.
We are the one country that has had great problems with immigration. Everybody wanted to come to America, and we
would greet them in the harbor with a Lady of Light bestowed upon us as a
present by France, a country that attempted fraternity and brotherhood and liberty,
but you could not find that in Voltaire’s humanism. You find it in the infinite person of
God. And they bestowed upon us a gift:
that Lady of Light and glory that awaits you in the harbor. How many of you know the words on the Statue
of Liberty? “Give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your
teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,
tempest tossed, to me. I lift my lamp
beside the golden door.” I’ve always
been amazed that the woman who wrote that was named Emma Lazarus, whose name
comes from the Hebrew derivation of the name Eliazar that means “God is my
help.” That’s why the fellow in the New
Testament who knew the grace of God as no other was the man that had been dead
for four days named Lazarus. And so here
this woman whose name is the very idea of life from the dead, greets the masses
come to us.
We are a country whose chief export and commodity has been freedom. You can be and aspire and dream,
hypothetically, for anything that you would like to be, You want to be a Senator? You want to be
anything. Maybe you will make it and
maybe you won’t, but our system will give you a shot. Anything you want to be, you’re free. We are a country that because of the freedoms
that we’ve granted to Christianity, allowed it to proliferate. And the greatest number of literature,
Bibles, seminaries, churches and missionaries in the history of man have come
out of this country. It has literally
been a fountain of truth.
Our country, from the outset, had a biblical framework of
Nature. And our view of Nature was that man
should subdue Nature, he was to harness it, and to gain dominion over it. And that gave rise to study, because we saw
it coming as from the very creativity of God, but there were logical answers to
physics and chemistry. There was trigonometry;
there was geometry that we could gain because it came from a Mind, that minds
could discover it. So science, the
subduing of nature, and technology, the learning of it, education became
proliferated throughout our culture. And
we became a technologically advanced people.
Our view of history is not that it was just “winter, spring, summer,
fall, winter, spring, summer, fall”—cyclical, life and death. No, we felt that we had a view of history
from the Bible’s idea of what is called Chiliasm, that history is moving to an
Omega point. And we even became
arrogant, in a sense, and called it our Manifest Destiny, and we felt that we
were in a sense the redeemer. But nonetheless, we had a great sense of progress,
that the Jew had; that we could take bad to make good, and good to make better,
and better to make best. And we had a
sense of progress. And the idea of
American ingenuity came out of that theology.
Our view of evil was that bad is bad, because God is good, and He doesn’t
like that, and that’s why it’s bad. And
those are things that came out of the womb of the Reformation. And we became the most advanced, educated,
healthy, technologically advanced people by the late 1800s that had ever
lived. And it all came as endemic and
instinctive to the Judeo Christian roots.
So when I say that America is not merely a people or a
locale, I mean that. That’s not a
romantic concept. I say that historically. America was an idea, a great idea of
the reformers.
Well, you’re thinking to yourself, what happened? What happened is that we forgot the words of
our National Hymn, America the Beautiful where we sing, “Confirm Thy soul with
self control, and Thy liberty in law.”
Moral creatures cannot have liberty without law, or you have
anarchy. Intelligent creatures know that
you cannot have law without an absolute, and that is God. We rid ourselves of God, then we rid
ourselves of law, until where law and right and morality became semantically
mystic terms with no logical basis. And
we have imploded. Here’s how it
happened. The Achilles Heel of atheism was always Creation. No effect is greater than the cause. There was something that was there with order
and morality. Hence, an eternal Cause:
God. Evolution offered a
hypothesis that we embraced as a fact, and now atheism had credibility (so it
was thought). And so science removed
from us the notion of the necessary existence of the Prime Mover, the Uncaused
Cause; of God. The Bible, that was the
basis of our knowing God, that we felt was supernaturally revealed, that it was
this document that talked about science, history, and archeology and historical
events, but in its viscera was the supernatural of the infinite personal God
who made Himself known in Divine, Inerrant Revelation, with the Virgin-born
Divine Person of His Son who died upon the cross as a substitute, and rose from
the dead. And the Holy Spirit of God
converted and maintained us. And He
would return and bring about the interposing of His will upon history and His
Kingdom. Well, that supernatural viscera
of the Bible was removed by the late 1800s by what was called Higher Criticism
that, to make a long story short, de-mythologized the Bible. Not because they proved
it, but because they came at it with that rationalistic premise, and they
literarily would find what they felt were things that showed that Moses didn’t
write this, and the Gospels weren’t written here, and Paul was this, and we
basically did a taxidermist’s job on the Bible, and we took out all of the
guts. And it became a dead shell of a
guy named Jesus that said good things, that you could be better off doing them
than not. And that’s all that we
became.
You also had the phenomena of philosophy. Up until the early 1900s philosophy was an
optimistic science whereby taking reason, that you sought to find a
rationalistic system that gave a basis for existence: Man, right, dignity, and all of those
things. That ended in Nihilism. Nihilism means nil, nothing. And the conclusions of what began with
Rationalism by the end of the 1800s was that Man was merely a part of Nature,
and as such his mind was acted upon by Natural forces; therefore you could not
trust his mind to stand outside of data, and come up with an absolute truth,
because his mind was merely part of data.
Thus he didn’t even know that he existed. You didn’t know whether, as they would say in
Philosophy, that you were there, or that you were the daydream in the mind of
an iguana. That was Nihilism. And it brought such despair, it brought such
horror to the thinking man that out of it came the idea that no, we are the
animal that can choose. Thus there is no
absolute, but I as an intelligent ape, I can come up with decisions and I
exist. And thus Existentialism
came. That I determine truth,
subjectively upon what I think I want to do.
That I am the master of my fate.
And that became the pop psychology that runs totally counter-purpose to
the idea of Man in the image of God with reason standing outside of Nature,
drawing rational conclusions and moral critiques. It ran counter-culture. The arts always are the pulpit of philosophy,
and they became the pulpit of this, both in music and in art and in the
phenomena of the 20th century known as the movie. And they perpetrated reality. And when you put those together, I mean it
was a philosophic earthquake.
Where was the Church? Here’s what the Church did in the
1900s: we put our finger to the wind.
Science feels, Higher Criticism feels, therefore we will change our
belief system to fit. And we made the
golden calf of Christianity. It was a
secular, social gospel at best. And
Christianity basically became a liberally tainted thing at the seminary
denominational level, of using Christ because it simply was a hygienic, safe
way to live. The 60’s hit. And in the 60s a generation arose, and they
saw problems. They just didn’t have
solutions. There were seemingly in the
50s rules that had no philosophic, theological base, and the 60s challenged
them. Why should I do this? Why should I not have sex whenever I want
it? And that’s where we had—morals can’t
stand where you have no theological base, and you have that phenomenon of the
60s revolution. Because they lived out
what they were taught about philosophy, evolution and the like, and the
literary dissecting of the Bible. The 60s kids lived it out. The problem was the 60s had no form to reform
to. They had no vive whereby they could
be revived.
The Renaissance made it in Europe when it broke away from
some of the stuff of the Middle Ages, because the Renaissance was followed by
the Reformation that picked it up with a theological base. Freedom could be met with responsibility, law
and truth. The 60s was a renaissance
with no theological base. And into that vacuum
we saw immorality, we saw drugs, we saw despair and hypocrisy, and the
spiritual needs of a generation, we looked to the East. And eastern mysticism, reincarnation,
transcendental meditation, astral projection, even some of the residual stuff
of that—yoga, and the martial arts became commonplace. We looked to the East. Were we free? What we ended up with was the
despair that came in the 70s—the breakdown, continually, of society. The home, institutions—the church, the home,
government, military, police, teachers—had no theological and logical base, and
they broke down. Rebellion became the
logical response: uneducated kids, lack of morality, abortion, venereal disease,
divorce. We’ve gotten this reaping of
our theological sowing.
Here’s where we’ve arrived to. When you shake it down, here’s the logical
place that we’ve come to. The only wrong
in our country is to be right. And the
greatest Right is the assent that there is none. Intelligence is ignorance. Ignorance is wisdom. Is there a devil, or what? Only a devil could bring that about. Our country got philosophically hi-jacked in
this century. And it happened so slowly,
so smoothly, so slickly that I mean we took of the fruit and ate and gave to
the husband and he ate. And we saw that
we were naked and we hid, frightened.
And we were cast east of Eden.
That’s this century. Not just in
our country; I think Europe arrived at it a little bit earlier. But that’s where we are.
When I was in Russia, I heard a great commentary on the
United States from a Russian Christian.
He said, “we are a country in
darkness and we are looking for light.
You are a county in the light, and you are searching for the dark.” That was the commentary or the observations
of a Russian Christian. Jeremiah said in
his day, “Your sins have withheld good from you.” And they have been. Our sins have been the rod for our back. Our cities, our violence, our youth, our
pregnancy, our divorce, our violence, our corruption, the breakdown of the
family. Well, I know what you’re
thinking. “Boy, thanks Tom for the encouragement this morning. I’m really blessed.” Is there hope? Some guys, say “No. There is no hope.” I know this: if there is hope, I’ll assure
you where it’s going to come from, and you don’t have to be this brilliant to
figure out. What we’re going to have to
do is to re-form, to have re-vive, to re-turn, and once again sorrow, and that
is called re-penitence. It’s going to
start in the church. Historically, trust
me: this always happens. The times get so bad that Christians have to resort to
God. Isn’t that brilliant? That’s a
fact. That’s what precipitates repentant people: when they have to resort to
God. We’ve tried our education, our
medicine, our government, our technology, and nothing’s worked. Like Mary and Joseph, they turn to each other
and say, “Is Jesus with you? He’s not
with me. Let’s go back where we left
him.” And you go back to the Temple
where you found Him. That’s what’s got
to happen. And historically, a people, a
Church, has to return to the sovereignty of the Bible. Secondly, there’s got to be the return to the
Gospel. The Gospel in our country is
merely the means by which you are successful.
There’s lots of pagans that are more successful than Christians, in a
lot if ideas. The Gospel is not the
means to success; it is the means by which sinners are forgiven and declared
righteous by a holy God. There’s got to
be a return to the gospel . Thirdly,
there’s got to be a return to the living out of it in true righteousness. That particularly fathers quit being rogue
males. And the males of our country
submit themselves, as Adam, to the one who made them. Then they know how to respond to creation, to
their job, and to Eve. And Eve
recognizes the sovereignty of God and that husband, and there becomes order in
the home. And children then become
relatively somewhat to a degree “normal.”
There has to be a return to righteousness, to the seeking of the will of
God. And fourthly, there has to be a
return to the purpose of the Church, to herald the knowledge of this: that men
and women might be delivered from the darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear
Son. What will happen if we don’t? Romans
1, where you have the recognition of God in Nature, the rejection of it,
reasoning within yourself, and the replacement of God by a false system. The reprobation of God, where He gives us
over to our own sins, and the ruination of society. Romans 1.
And we can, I think, hit a place that our corruptions are so great that
we will give up our liberties for government to parent us, not to rule us but
to parent us. And when you have flawed
people that take that kind of control, you’re going to have at some point
corruptions. And I think it is possible for
God as in the Old Testament to raise up a horn to get our attention. Can that happen? In a heartbeat that horror
hits a nation? Do you think that we are
a breath away from Armageddon? Don’t
think that we can’t be just a breath away from Armageddon. That’s where our world teeters. And if it comes to that spot, I’ll tell you
what will happen. There will be another
group of Christians that finds so much contradiction in this society and so
many hindrances that another group with their Bibles in another day on another
Mayflower will leave. It’s not that they
will leave America; it’s America will have left them. And they will find another shore someplace,
and America will live again. If we drop
the ball, somebody on this planet has to be America. Because America is bigger than a people or a
locale—it is an idea. It is a great
idea. And when they do, they may have another name, they may have another flag,
but I will assure you if God is the one that is exalted, long will that flag
wave over a land of the free and the home of the brave. Somewhere.
Because that’s what America is.
The references to philosophical changes that have influenced our culture is telling. Some today follow Eastern Mysticism. Some hold to Existentialist beliefs, some even to Nihilism. They don't know that when you ask them what their world view is, but that is how they live. And his reference to the nanny state was prescient--eleven years ago he foresaw our national call for a government not to rule over us, but to parent us, to see to our every need. They don't realize that when the government falls, they will be crushed.
But the most important part of his sermon is the reference to Romans 1, when Pastor Nelson summed up Romans 1:18-32 by saying there is Recognition of God in nature, the Rejection of that God, Reasoning withing yourself, Replacing God with a false system, and finally the Reprobation of God, when He gives us over to our own sins, leading to the Ruination of a society. Six easy steps, and an overview of history. Every nation has seen it, every empire has known it, every era in history has lived it in their time. Now that America is in decline, God appears to be moving in Asia as never before.
This is the day that we celebrate our Independence from the tyrannical rule of England. This also could be the day that we mourn our Independence from the God of our Fathers.
