Dr. Russell Fuller on What is a Nation?

Well, it's good to be in Wisconsin. And this is about my third time in Wisconsin.

I was always on the east side. I've been to Milwaukee. I've been to Green Bay, and even two hours north of Green Bay.

And maybe at dinner, I'll talk about that, maybe, or something. But anyway, it's cold up there. It's very cold up there.

And I was told that most of Canada's population is south of where I was, up there.

Now, it's like, all right. Well, anyway, it's good to be with you. It's very good to be with you.

And before I start, let me just say something about how I learned about John Harris.

I was teaching at Southern Seminary. And we had a faculty meeting.

And by the way, this evening, after the dinner, I'll speak about sort of my story.

Some people have asked me about that. So I will speak about that tonight. So I'm sort of giving you a little bit of what

I'll speak about in my second thing today. But we had what's called a full professor's meeting.

And in there, what you would have is, you have at a school, you're usually like an associate professor, an assistant, and then a professor.

And I was a professor. And so what you would do is, every year, we'd have to look at people, whether to promote them.

So if they were assistant, do we promote them to an associate or an associate to a professor, you see?

And so we were in a meeting. And at the very end of the meeting, one of the faculty members said, he brought up critical race theory.

And he says, I saw on YouTube where some of our professors are teaching critical race theory.

And oh, the atmosphere of the room changed quite a bit. Dr. Moeller was not pleased with that statement.

And it wasn't me, because I really didn't even know what critical race theory was at that time. I had my head buried in the sand of Old Testament or something.

And I wasn't keeping up with this stuff. And he says, yeah, he goes, this is really radical stuff that some of our faculty is teaching.

And I could tell Moeller was like, dismissed, out of here. He wanted to end that discussion very quickly.

So on the way out, I grabbed that professor and said to him, tell me what's going on.

And he goes, you've got to see these videos. And I said, OK. And I was watching the videos.

But you know how when you're looking at YouTube, you're looking at these videos. But on the side, there's these little thumbnails of other videos for you to watch.

And there's his face on one of those things.

And I didn't know who he was. And then I'm listening to my professors teaching critical race theory.

But I'm over there looking at him. And it says, like, problems at Southeastern Seminary.

And I'm like, oh. So as soon as I finish listening to our professors teach critical race theory,

I start listening to him. But yet my wife's right, hey, we've got to go to Costco. So I'm downloading it.

I'm downloading the lecture so I can hear it on the way to Costco. So I'm listening to him for five minutes.

And I stop it. And I look at my wife. And I say, no, I'm not driving at the time, hopefully. And I look at my wife.

And I say to her, this guy's telling the truth. And I haven't been to Southeastern.

And my wife's like, how do you know he's telling the truth? Because he's describing Southern Seminary as well.

What's going on at Southeastern is going on at Southern Seminary. He's not making this up.

Because I see it with my own eyes where I am right now. And so that's the first time

I saw who John Harris was. And later on, when

I signed the Dallas statement, if you know what that is, on social justice, when

I signed that, there was an email sent to me. And it was one sentence.

Thank you, Dr. Fuller, for signing the Dallas statement on social justice. John Harris.

And I wrote him back. And I said, are you the John Harris who did the video on Southeastern?

Yes, that's me. Well, thank you for making that video.

Because it convicted me. Here's a student standing up for the truth.

And here I'm a faculty member. What should I be doing? Here was a student taking a stand.

And I don't normally recommend students take stands. Because professors will ding you.

This is true. And so I usually tell students, be careful. Be careful what you do.

I don't want to see you personally affected. But yet, this guy, he stood up.

And so I appreciate John Harris very much. And I've seen him now some years.

And I really appreciate John Harris and his father, his brother. I tell you,

I thank the world of him. And so I thank the Lord for him. And again, we'll talk more about these things tonight.

What I want to talk about now, though, is we want to talk about the nation. And what

I'm going to do is a biblical study on what the Bible talks about when it talks about a nation.

Now, there's a lot of talk about Christian nationalism, for instance. If you ask 10 people, you're going to get at least 10 answers about what that is.

And I'm not going to sit here and define for you Christian nationalism. Because it would be my definition.

And when you hear somebody else use the term, they're going to mean something different by it, probably. So I'm not going to get into that, trying to define

Christian nationalism. But what I want to talk about, what's the Bible say about a nation?

And then what are our Christian responsibility in a nation? That's the type of thing

I want to discuss. And so first, I do want to try to define a nation biblically.

Now, again, the Bible doesn't say, well, a nation is, and give us a formal definition.

But if you look at different scriptures, you'll see it gives us attributes of what a nation is.

And so I want to read from Genesis chapter 10, verse 31. And of course,

Genesis 10 is the table of the nations. All nations, even the modern ones in some fashion or form, has to come from these nations.

And if you think about it, this is chapter 10. But if you go before the flood, the word nation is not used.

It looks like there are one people with one language, is what it looks like. Again, it's possible they had nations, but it doesn't look that way.

It doesn't look that way. And so you don't really get nations until after the flood.

And they break along the lines of the sons of Noah. So everyone, we all come from either

Seth, Japheth, Ham.

You see, all of us go back to Adam, but all of us also go back to Noah.

And the nations and so forth are breaking up under three different sons of Noah.

And so what I'm reading here is at the end of that chapter 10, these are the sons of Shem.

So the Semitic races is what we're talking about, who speak normally

Semitic languages. And there's a variety of those. So listen to how it says here. Here are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, according to their nations.

And so this gives us some attributes of what a nation is. First of all, notice there is sort of a founding father.

Now, in our country, we say Washington is the founding father. But that's in a figurative sense.

But for like the nation of Israel, who's the founding father? There is a real genetic founding father.

His name is Abraham. He's going to be a father of many nations, Abraham.

Again, he's the father of a multitude of nations. OK? But especially, we think of Israel as the main one.

But there's others as well that come from Abraham personally. Here, it's talking about Shem.

So all these go back to Shem. And then it says, according to their families. Or you could also translate this clans.

And by clans, what we mean is a bunch of families, OK? Not just you and your relatives, let's say.

But a bunch of a clan, so a much larger group of people,

OK? So again, you have families. Then languages. Languages are something, again, that is important in defining a nation,

OK? So we know there are Semitic languages. We know there's Indo -European languages,

Hemitic languages. And these things are related. That all goes back to one proto -language,

OK? Most, if not all, linguists will tell you today, yes, all human language goes back to one language.

But if you really break them down, it breaks into three different categories. Again, going right with the sons of Noah, OK?

So languages. And language is very important for a nation and for the culture of a nation and so forth. And then it talks about lands,

OK? They have lands. Now, the lands can get bigger, smaller. They can move from one place to the other.

But they have a land, you see, as well. And then they say, according to nations, because there were different Semitic languages.

And excuse me, nations, different Semitic kingdoms, you see. And so the

Bible gives those as certain attributes in that verse. But there's one more attribute that it gives.

I think it's very important. And we overlook this one quite a bit. And we see it in Micah chapter 4, verse 5, and in some other places as well.

So Micah 4, 5. Listen to this. Though all the peoples walk each in the name of his

God, as for us, we walk in the name of the Lord, our God, forever and ever.

And let me read you another verse that's similar to this. Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 11. Has a nation changed gods when they were not gods?

But my people have changed their glory, meaning their God, really, for that which does not profit.

In other words, the nations were all distinguished by the God that they worship. That was also really a very important part of what a nation was, especially in biblical times.

So basically, you have some type of real founding father. You have families or clans.

And you have languages, lands. But you also have a religion. You have a

God or gods, you see. And so again, this is what shaped the culture of a nation.

What do I mean by culture? Culture is shared beliefs, values, or if you want to call them virtues, and practices of a group of people.

It's very important. It's a shared thing. The word culture has the idea of to cultivate. And so there's certain things that a group of people, whether it's a small group of people or a whole nation, they want to cultivate, you see.

There's certain shared views about beliefs, values, practices, and so forth, and especially in religion.

That's going to be very important in the unity, the harmony of a people.

And so we overlook this. I know in our country, we think we're neutral. And in some ways, it looks that way.

But when you go to a public school, you'll say, OK, we're not going to have religion taught here.

What happens when you go to biology class? You're going to have to make a statement about origins on some level.

Where is the neutrality going to be now? And let me tell you, if you get up there and try to teach, you know, creation and so forth, uh -uh, that's disqualified.

If you want to get up and teach evolution, if you want to get up and teach, you know, that there's 50 different genders, that's acceptable.

This is not neutrality. We can talk as if we can have a religious neutrality, but there is no such thing.

Humanism is a religion. And let us not be fooled in this way.

Let us not be fooled. So those are the real, let's say, attributes. If we were going to give a formal definition, we have to have those things.

So again, just one more time, sort of, it goes back to some kind of founding father. We don't always know for sure on these things.

In the Bible, they can tell us for sure. But again, families, languages, lands, religion, you see?

Those things right there. Now, if you look at the terms that the

Old Testament, I'm going to use the Old Testament right now, the terms they use for peoples, nations, and so forth, we would start with what we'd call the family.

And they would use the word house. When they say what a family, they talk about a family unit, let's say.

They're going to use the word house. And of course, in their house would be father, mother, children, but they might even have the grandparents there.

So what they would see as a house might be a little bit broader than us, but not that much more,

OK? So that was a house to them. The next level is like, they would say, like a clan or families.

So it gets a little bit larger, OK? Then you get to tribes.

And then finally, you get peoples or nations, OK? That's sort of the,

I'm being very general here in this. So if you look at Israel, I mean, you had one person. You had

Abraham, right? Then you have Jacob. He has a much larger family.

When they go down to Egypt, they're about 70. So they're like a small clan, shall we say,

OK? They go down 70. If you add Jacob and so forth, you're getting closer, like 75, somewhere in that range. And so you're looking at a clan.

But if you look at a few more verses down in the book of Exodus, there's a bunch of years that have passed through there from the time.

If you go to the end of Genesis, you have Joseph. And then when you get to the first few, after the introduction to Exodus, it will call

Israel there a people or a nation. So they become a nation within a nation when they're in Egypt, you see.

So at that point, now they're a nation, OK, with full tribes. And those tribes are almost like many nations at some times.

You can tell by the problems they have and so forth. So again, in general, those are the terms.

In the New Testament, there's basically two terms. One, I'll say the word like ethnos. And you can hear the word ethnic there,

OK? And that simply means, again, a multitude. And it can mean like a troop. It can mean a band of people.

But if you get enough of that, it's a nation. And normally in the New Testament, I'm adding that back up every time, it's translated, almost every time, it's translated as nation.

And then there's one other word that's called genos, which if we get our word kin from that,

OK? So gin, kin, it's really pretty much the same word. And again, it means kind of like type, kind.

We all come from the same kind. We all come from shem or something like that. We all come from the same stock of people,

OK? So these are the terms. Even if you think of our word nation, it's related to the word like natal, as in prenatal birth or something like this.

The word nation has the idea of birth. So almost every term that you see that relates to nations and so forth, these are terms of relationships, kin terms.

You see, that's what they are. Whether, again, in English, whether it's in Greek, or whether it's in Hebrew, that's the terms,

OK? That's the terms that are used. OK. Let me just say,

Israel was not, yes, it comes, they have Jacob. They all come from Jacob.

And if you look at Abraham, for instance, when his son was to have a wife, he did not want to get a wife from the

Canaanites. He was to be a separated people.

He was supposed to be a sojourner in the land. He was an alien in the land of promise, remember?

And he had to go back home, as it were, to find the wife for his son.

And because, again, when Isaac comes, Isaac is to be the same way.

And he's going to go, again, he really encourages his children. Now, Esau doesn't marry the right people, to be quite frank.

But Jacob will go back, again, home for his bride as well, because they're supposed to be sojourners in the land,

OK? Just like we, as Christians, are to be sojourners in this land that we live in, wherever we are.

Whether it's America or whatever, we're not to, we don't put, we can put some stakes down.

But we don't, this is not all there is. There's a heavenly land.

That's where our real citizenship is. And if you've ever traveled to another country, and I bet most of you have, you know you feel a little uncomfortable.

And I've been to some countries, very uncomfortable. I knew I had no rights whatsoever, and I could end up in a very bad place.

To be honest with you, the place I worried about the most, when I was, I've been in some rough places. What I worried about is waking up for like a car accident with a used needle in my arm in a hospital somewhere.

That's what I feared. When I would go to some of these other, it's like, oh, please. It's almost like,

I'll take needles with me. If I'm a drug dealer, they'll put me in jail for drugs or something. But you know, that was what

I was fearing, you see, these places. But again, it's, there were to be sojourners.

And boy, you're on, when you feel like you're a foreigner in a land, you want to be careful you don't break any law and end up in the prison place, or worse than that, the hospital.

You just don't wanna go there, you see. So you live a different type of lifestyle.

And that's the mindset we have to have in our Christian walk. You know, we have to truly have a mindset in that way.

So it's very important that we understand what was going on.

Now, as you get to the 12 tribes, you can already see it's not pure Israelite stock, shall we say.

You can already see some intermingling. For instance, if you go to Genesis 38, you see where Judah has children through a

Canaanite woman. Then later on, he marries Tamar. And from all indications, and the

Bible doesn't say it point blank, but it looks like she's also a Canaanite. So you've also, you've got

Canaanite blood right there, you see, in the land of them. If you think of Ephraim and Manasseh, they're children of Joseph.

But if you remember at the end of Genesis, Jacob says, no, they're my children. And they become tribes in Israel.

So he takes them, and he goes, now the other children that are born to you, Joseph, those are yours.

But Ephraim, Manasseh, they're mine. And so actually,

Joseph gets a double portion. He gets two tribes, you see.

But the thing about Joseph, who's his wife? She's an Egyptian.

And so you can see all through Israelite history, it's not as if there's not some mixing going on.

I mean, there's no, you're gonna have that. It's just simply going to happen, okay?

And again, as you read through, you see a guy like Uriah, the Hittite, very close to David.

He's married to Bathsheba, and from all indications, she's pure Jewish stock, you see. And so you have that.

So what I wanted to say is, Israel was not a completely homogeneous genetically, you know, group or something like this.

There were many different ones. As you know, Rahab, Ruth, we can go through many names in the

Old Testament that show you these things, okay? And there was a way in the Old Testament that you could convert to Judaism, okay?

So you could convert. And so if you read a passage like in Exodus 12, 48, but if a stranger sojourns with you and celebrates the

Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. There was a price to pay if you wanted to convert, you see?

And then let him come near to celebrate it, and he will be like a native in the land, you see?

Now, later on in New Testament times, you get what the New Testament calls God -fearers.

These are converts, but they don't get circumcised.

They come older, and they're called God -fearers. They would go to synagogue and all these things, but they were not full converts.

They did not go through circumcision, okay? So you'll see those folks in the New Testament as well.

And then here's the key principle. The same law shall apply to the native as the stranger who sojourns among you.

If you become part of Israel, you become part of Israel. You assimilate into Israel.

That's a very important principle. And so whether you are, even if you're just a sojourner, and you're passing through Israel, you are to obey the

Israelite laws. And Israel also had strict laws against really abusing the sojourner, because you could take advantage of him.

You know, maybe he didn't know the language very well. He doesn't know the customs very well. You can take advantage of people like this.

And the scriptures were very strict about you don't take advantage of sojourners.

You were a sojourner in Egypt. Remember how they took advantage of you? You're not to take advantage of other folks, you see.

And so again, there was conversion and so forth. But there was another group mentioned in Israel.

It's called the mixed multitude, okay? And you see that in Exodus 12, 38.

A mixed multitude also went up with them along with their flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock.

So when they went out of Egypt, there's a group called the mixed multitude.

The Bible doesn't go into detail about these people, but it looks like they're Israelites of mixed marriages, especially with Egyptians, is what it looks like.

And they're also associated with Numbers 11, verse four. They're called the rabble there.

The rabble who were among them had greedy desires. And also the sons of Israel went again and said, who will give us meat to drink, or to eat?

And so again, there was a mixed multitude. Now how large that group was, we don't know, okay?

But again, that existed in Israel as well. In Nehemiah and Ezra, now this is after the exile, they're starting to intermarry with the heathens.

And if you remember, Ezra is going to enforce divorce on this. And again, you normally don't get that in scripture.

You don't see a leader saying, you must divorce your wife. I mean, that's, no, that's not the way it usually works.

But the fear was that if we have this, we're gonna have another round of idolatry and the wrath of God will fall on us like it did when we went into the exile.

And so really, it was a brave, courageous move to save Israel from the wrath of God in the sense of going back into idolatry, okay?

And so in Nehemiah 13 .3, so when they heard the law, they excluded the mixed multitude from Israel, okay?

They excluded it from Israel. Now obviously, this is to preserve that unique covenant relationship that God had with Israel.

That was the purpose of these things. Intermarriage was seen not as an evil within itself, but as something that will bring idolatry.

Now, Solomon married 700 women. Now, a lot of that is what you saw, let's say, before World War I.

If you remember, you had these different royal houses in Europe, and what you wanted to do is marry your daughter to the king, to the

Kaiser, and so forth. What was the purpose of this? Well, one thing, first of all, you need to marry in your social class, of course.

But the real purpose is to try to keep war away and to have good relations.

If you marry your daughter to Kaiser Wilhelm, there's a good chance you can stay away from war.

At least, that's the theory. It doesn't work that way, but that's the way it was. If you remember,

I think it was in World War, it was World War I, the leader, the kings changed their names in England to the

Windsors because they had a German name, and so they had to become the

House of Windsor. It had to sound more British, but they were actually Germans, you see.

They were Germans, and they wanted to look, look, we're loyal to England, not to the

Kaiser, you see. And so, a lot of the, everybody, look, if Solomon was the most powerful man on Earth during his time, any ruler wants his daughter married to Solomon, you see.

So that's part of what was going on there, as you know. So anyway, it's important that Israel was a mono -religious society, okay?

Very important. Not, and I'll use our term now, multiculturalism, okay?

Multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equally valued, that all people have the right to maintain their own cultural identity.

Now, are all cultures equally valuable? I don't think so.

I think if you read the Bible, and you look at the Canaanite culture, for instance, God does not see that as an equal culture with the culture, let's say, even of Israel, okay?

No, no, there's not an equal culture there. It was a very sinful culture, one that deserved

God's wrath and curse upon it, you see. And so to me, culture, I would judge every culture by how well it conforms with either biblical law, or I'll even say this, even the natural law that has been mentioned by John and by Stephen.

But what do I mean by that natural law? Paul talks about that in Romans chapter two, that God has written his law in our hearts, in our consciences, bearing testimony together, either excusing us or accusing us.

The Gentiles did not have Moses's law, but what the Gentiles had was, it's just like we had, even for Christians, it doesn't matter, there is a law written within us, okay?

And God put something else in there. God put his agent in us. And as I like to say, to me, one of the things why

I believe in God is because of the conscience. That conscience is not something that animals have.

It's something we have. And what's interesting, and I'm getting way off my topic, if you look at how atheists view the conscience,

I was looking up Bertrand Russell, famous skeptic atheist back in the last century.

He says, it's just a little voice within us that tells us what other people think is right or wrong.

That's all it is. The problem with that is this.

The other day, I saw a lady talking.

Her name was Susan Atkins. I don't know if that name rings a bell with you. What Susan Atkins says, she goes, every night when

I go to bed, I think about it. And she goes, it's a fact.

It's always with me. And then she says, every day

I live with it. And what she's describing is she's describing what's called the pains of conscience.

Susan Adams, her name became well -known in America in 1969, the summer of 69.

She belonged to a family, a clan, if you please, for Charles Manson's family.

And she butchered a lady named Sharon Tate. Miss Tate was two weeks away from having a baby.

And she was butchered by this woman. And so she would constantly say, every night when

I go to bed, it's there. She couldn't sleep without thinking about Sharon Tate every night.

Finally, of course, she was sent to prison. Finally, in 1994, she asked the state of California to execute her.

Why do you want to be executed? I'll tell you why, the conscience.

Now, if Bertrand Russell could talk to, and again, I'm way off. If Bertrand Russell could talk to her, don't worry. Your conscience is telling you what everybody thinks right and wrong.

Don't worry about what other people think. Oh, no, no, the conscience is not that way.

How about a state like Nazi Germany that thought it was righteous to just put a gun in the back of people's head?

And they thought that was right. But guess what?

Those cold -blooded killers started having drinking problems. You know why so many people sometimes drink in this country and have drug problems?

That conscience is killing them. I worked one time for Georgia Pacific Corporation in Atlanta and the guys one time, they knew

I was a Christian, and the guy says, hey, say hello to, it was a female colleague, say hello to her today, and they laughed.

And I knew they were up to something. You know, I'm like, okay. And so I saw her and it was almost like she had no blood in her, just pure white.

I knew something was wrong. So I go back to the guys and I go, okay, what's going on?

They said, did you see her? I said, yeah, I sure did, and what's the problem? There's something wrong with her. And they go, yeah, this is her first payback to work after her abortion, see?

She has to live with that the rest of her life. And that conscience is

God's agent. And you and I, we all know this, because that agent has hit us as well.

There's no escaping the conscience. There's just no escaping it. You might be the greatest debater in the world, but there's one debate you'll never win.

God has his agent within us. It tells us we're accountable, and it tells us there's a day of judgment coming.

And it's telling us an eternal judgment is coming our way. The pains of conscience, very, very important.

And so it's very important that we understand not all cultures are equal.

Nazi Germany's culture is not equal to the culture of America, at least years ago.

No, those are different cultures. And how would I judge those things? I would judge that, again, by the law of God either written upon our hearts and enforced by that conscience, or by the very laws of God, you see.

That's how I would judge a good culture from a bad culture. I would look at Uganda, and I would say their culture is superior to our culture in many ways.

I think you know what I'm talking about. They have laws against sodomy. We used to have laws against sodomy.

They're more of a Christian nation than we are. I applaud them. I think it's a wonderful thing.

Now, we can debate, you know, what punishment you want. Fine. But they're moving in the right direction, you see.

That's, they're becoming more godly, and that's a wonderful thing. But this is true, basically, also of empires and multicultural societies.

Let me read to you Daniel. Daniel's talking here about the Roman Empire in chapter two, verse 42.

As for the toes and the feet, as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong, and part of it will be brittle.

Literally, it'll be breakable. So Rome is gonna be very powerful, very strong, but at the same time, it's gonna be very breakable, very brittle, you see, you can break it.

What does it mean by that? The next verse explains. Verse 43. In that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men, but they will not adhere one to another even as iron does not combine with pottery.

Anytime you have an empire, you're basically getting a bunch of different cultures, different groups together, ruling over them.

It makes for an unstable situation. And sooner or later, obviously, empires collapse.

Usually from internally having internal problems, internal strife against different people, groups, and so forth.

Even places today that want a multicultural society, they find out it's very, very difficult.

For instance, Germany has tried this. Angela Merkel was a chancellor of Germany for many years, and in a speech she gave in the year 2010, she says that the multicultural experiment they've been doing with all the

Islamic culture, or immigrants coming to Germany, I'll quote her exactly.

Utter failure was the term she used. Because she goes, they're not becoming German, you see.

And so what you're having is these cultures in conflict. Now, as human beings, and I'm gonna brag right now for a second, my daughter just gave birth to twins.

Wonderful. Even though my wife is worn out, my daughter's worn out. But let me tell you, even with twins, they're gonna have trouble getting along.

It's the human condition. But every difference we have because of our sinfulness, the more tensions, the more stress we're going to have.

I'm not saying we can't have immigration in America or anything like that, but what I'm saying is, we'll be healthy with a, instead of a multicultural society, a monocultural society.

And by that I don't mean, okay, look, I'm from, let's say

I'm from Ireland, and I wanna fly the Irish Flyer. Okay, okay. But we've gotta see ourselves ultimately as Americans.

And I'm thinking of a person named Smokey Robinson. How's that?

And I know how old, I shouldn't say this. When I say that, if you know what I'm talking about, you're from my generation.

And so the Motown Sound. Did you hear the quote he gave the other day? They asked him, they said, do you wanna be known as an

African American? And he goes, no, I wanna be known as an American American. And I went, there you go.

Now, I'm not against saying that to African, fine, fine. But you see what he said there?

I wanna be an American American. That's a multicultural, not a multicultural, but we gotta have a uniting culture.

In other words, shared beliefs. Stuff like that, you see.

If one side of our society says abortion is a good thing, and another side says it's an evil thing, how can that society be stable, you see?

And I could keep on going with different issues. How can a society be stable when one person thinks it's murder, and the other person thinks it's not just a neutral thing, but it's a good thing?

How can you have a stable society when some people think that we should take young children and basically destroy their bodies to change their sex?

I was a seven -year -old boy, and I can tell you right now, I wasn't thinking about becoming a seven -year -old girl.

I mean, that's just not the way it is. It has to be the parents corrupting their children and destroying their children.

How can we have a stable society like that? We can't, you see. The society will fling apart.

And so it's important that we be able to adhere one to another.

Now again, it's not just multicultural societies that have problems with unity, okay?

Israel had plenty of problems with unity as you read the Old Testament. Here is

Psalm 60. Listen to this. Psalm 60, verse one and two. Oh God, you have rejected us.

You've broken us. You have been angry. Oh, restore us. You've made the land quake.

You have split it open. Heal its breaches. That's what we have in America today.

We have very deep breaches, you see. It's as if our country has split open, you see.

It's a very difficult situation. It's a very difficult situation. And so again, there's all sorts.

Even in America, there's no question. I think we would all agree that we were more of a Christian nation in the 1800s than we are today.

When did we have our Civil War? In the 1800s. So you can see, the human problem is very simple.

Sin, you see, there's sin. And I don't have the solution that's gonna solve all human problems, okay?

If I did, I wouldn't drive the cheap car I drive. I'm telling you, I don't have the solutions to those things, you know?

But we know what the solution is, at least humanly speaking, okay? As much as possible, okay?

Let me say a couple of other things real quick here. God is sovereign over the nations. Acts 17, 26, he's made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and boundaries of their habitation, and so forth.

Deuteronomy 32, eight, when the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the sons of Israel.

Okay, and then in Acts, well, I'll wait on that. Of course, nations come and go.

But the Lord talks about Babylon, in Jeremiah 51, 37,

Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and hissing without inhabitants, and so it is.

Now, again, Babylon is mentioned, again, in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps that's referring to the world systems and so forth, as opposed to a restoration of Babylon, but we'll see, we'll see.

Let's talk about our duty as Christians to the nation, okay? What is our duty as Christians to a nation, whether it's

America or whatever nation we are involved with? Obviously, we're to pray for our country and we're to look out for the welfare of our country.

I'm gonna read from Jeremiah 29. And what's interesting about Jeremiah 29 is this is

Jeremiah writing to the exiles, the Jewish exiles, and they're not living in Israel, they're living in Babylon.

So really, he's talking to Jews who are living in Babylon and they're only gonna be there a short time.

He's prophesied you're only gonna be there for 70 years. It's not gonna be that long, okay?

And so he writes them and here's what he says to them. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom

I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This is 29 .4,

that's where I'm reading from. Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce.

Take wives, become the fathers of sons and daughters and take wives for your sons, give daughters to husbands.

Now, this would be, of course, Jewish wives and husbands, obviously, okay?

That they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there, do not decrease.

Very important, do not decrease. If you look at the old rabbis, okay, the rabbis during the time of Christ and later on, let me just say this, they were all against abortion.

And they said, no, no, we don't do abortion. That's what Gentiles do. And that was true, that was true.

And they go, the reason we're against abortion is the first commandment in the Bible. And what's the first commandment in the

Bible? Be fruitful and multiply, you see? And so they look to that and they're correct.

Do not diminish. If you look at Europe, if you look at America, we are diminishing in many ways.

And so it's a problem, it's a problem.

But notice what's being said here. Listen to this. Seek the welfare of the city where I sent you into exile.

Pray to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare, you will have welfare.

Now that doesn't mean public assistance, okay? But you will, in other words, if we're in a society that is prospering, and notice, pray for them.

When a society is prospering, our families are gonna prosper too. It's like, you know,

I'm just gonna, I'll tell you. If today you say, okay, you can be younger or you can be older,

I would take older. I fear what I see coming.

As I told you, I got grandchildren. I could talk about that the rest of the time, but I'm not going to. But I look at my grandchildren and I wanna spoil them.

I wanna look at my children and I wanna spoil them. Why? They're not gonna grow up in the same country

I grew up in. And I fear for what's gonna happen. The persecution that's gonna come, if they're truly

Christian people, I think it's gonna be very bad in this country. And I look at my grandchildren and I'm like, look,

I grew up in America. It wasn't perfect, not even close. But what's coming down the road, it looks like perfection now.

Now we gotta be careful, because we always look back and we have a tendency just to see the good stuff. So I lived in the golden age, you know?

Yeah, but you see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? I want the welfare of this country, especially spiritually more than anything else.

It's the spiritual welfare of the country that's gonna help our country. Yeah, do

I want us to have a good economy? Do I want poverty? No. But more than I want material prosperity,

I want our souls to prosper. You see, as John talks about, we want our souls to prosper is what we have to have.

And so that's why it's very important. And again, Jeremiah here, he's not talking about Israel, Israel.

He's talking about them in Babylon. Pray for Babylon, that Babylon will do well.

Pray for them, for in its welfare, you will have welfare. That's what

I want to see in America. That's what I want to see in every country. I would love to see our enemies become

Christian -type countries because they wouldn't be our enemies anymore, you know? I would love that.

I fear China. But would I love to see the gospel spread there?

Absolutely. Russia? You betcha. You name the country. America?

Oh, absolutely. The problem here is we're gospel -hardened. The problem here is that, and that's a terrible thing.

What destroys a nation? It's sin, okay? Righteousness exalts a people.

Sin is a disgrace. Sin is a reproach to any people.

Sin brings us down. You can't just sin in a closet and it won't affect someone else.

That's why I'm not a libertarian. They don't understand the power of sin, how it hardens the heart, how it blinds us to spiritual things and so forth.

Sin is a terrible thing, and we have to understand that. Even the land will vomit us out if we let sin go.

Listen to these verses. Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot so that the land will fall, fall to harlotry.

The land can fall to harlotry, you see, and the land becomes full of lewdness.

For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, and the land has spewed out its inhabitants.

For the men of the land," talking about Canaan, the Canaanites, who have been before you have done all these abominations, and you can read this, including things like bestiality, homosexuality, all of these things,

God's judgment. Another big sin that the Bible talks about was the sacrifice of the children.

The children were sacrificed to the gods. Of course, we're not so crude to do that, but we'll sacrifice it to the

God of pleasure. You have children, you can't do the same things you used to do.

You know, you gotta take care of those children, you see. Well, you abort those children so you can keep your sinful lifestyle going.

You know what I'm talking about, you see. And what the Bible says is the land is full of blood, and God says,

I'm gonna destroy you for this, and God's gonna destroy us for the over 60 million lives that's already been destroyed in this country through abortion.

God's judgment will be upon us, we will decrease and not increase, the land will spew us out.

Let us not deceive ourselves. You are there for to keep all my statutes and my ordinances to do them, so that the land to which

I am bringing you to live will not spew you out. If we'll live according to God's law, the land will indeed be a great blessing to us, and it will not spew us out.

You shall not defile the land of which you live in the midst of which I dwell, for I am the Lord that lives in the midst of the sons of Israel.

The son of man, this is Ezekiel, when the house of Israel was living in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds.

Their way before me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her purity. Therefore, I've poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they have shed on the land, because they've defiled it with their idols.

That's the sacrifice of the children, you see. Listen to Ezra.

You have, which you have commanded by your servants the prophets saying, the land of which you are entering to possess is an unclean land.

With the uncleanness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which they've filled it from one end with their iniquity to the other.

And then finally, listen to this verse here. This is out of Psalm 7420.

Consider the covenant. For the dark places of the land, and by dark places it's referring to spiritually dark places.

For the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.

Where you see a society where crime and sin is out of control, it's the dark places.

You see. Remember in Genesis 20, Abraham journeys to a place called

Gerar. And he looks at their society, he looks at their culture, and then he says to Sarah, say you're my sister, brother, because they'll kill me to get to you.

Remember that? And then later on, the king gets on him, and the pagan king rebukes

Abraham, how have you brought such an evil upon us? And what did

Abraham say? He said, when

I came here, I saw that there was no fear of God in this place, therefore they'll kill me to get to my wife.

Where there is no fear of God, it's the dark places of the land spiritually, and you're gonna have crime.

I don't care what people say about our country, all you need to do is see the sin, the violence in our streets, there's no fear of God before our eyes.

There's no fear of God, you see. So consider the covenant. Perhaps that's what we should do too.

Consider the covenant. Obviously God judges the nations. Isaiah, for the nation and the kingdom which will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be utterly ruined.

Listen to this one. 2 Peter 2 .6, and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, listen to this, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter.

God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is like a monument, and when you see that monument, what it's saying is every nation that goes the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah, they're gonna be destroyed.

They're gonna be destroyed. I have a feeling in this country, we look back at Sodom and Gomorrah in the sense of almost like our rear view mirror.

We're in big trouble, we're in big, big trouble. Okay, righteousness exalts a people.

Just a few verses on this that I wanna give you, but here's the important thing. I don't think we can do righteousness by simply passing laws.

We can pass laws all day, but if people don't wanna obey the laws, they're not gonna obey the laws.

It's just that simple. I mean, we can pass all kinds of things. People have to want to obey the law, and what we need is true, genuine conversion.

If we talk about, think about the hospitals, for instance. The hospitals, almost everywhere, they're changing their names, as you know, but if you go back to the original names of most of the hospitals in this country, it's either

Baptist Hospital, it's Methodist Hospital, Jewish Hospital, it's all these names, because it was really

Christians that invented the hospital and these things, but you have to have the true preaching of the gospel, and the hospitals and these things are a byproduct.

If you make that the main thing, you destroy the gospel. You turn it into a social gospel.

It's not a social gospel that we need. We need the real gospel, and then the social aspects will flow from it.

If we get that wrong, we're going to end up in a terrible ditch.

We must preach the pure gospel. Souls must be saved. Then can flow some of those social things, those social benefits which flow from it, but we can't reverse that.

If we reverse it, we're going to destroy the gospel, and we're still going to destroy the society, too, you see, so we can't do that.

We have to preach the gospel. Now, we don't preach the gospel, again, simply to save our nation.

We save the gospel, we preach the gospel, again, because this is what

God has commanded us to do, because we need to be made right with God.

We're in our sins. We need salvation from our sins. We need the

Lord to save us from ourselves, from our sins. That's what we need, you see, and so, again, it's not let's do this for our country.

No, no, let's do what the Lord has commanded us to do. Let's preach the gospel that, indeed, we might have peace with God, and that we might spend all eternity with Christ in God.

That's what it's about. The other things flow from that, okay? They flow from that, so, again, that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Listen to this in Isaiah 52, 15. This is the verse right before 53. Listen to this.

Thus He will sprinkle many nations. Talking about the Messiah. The Messiah will sprinkle many nations.

Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him, for what had not been told them, they will see, and what they had not heard, they will understand.

What we want the Lord to do is sprinkle our nation. What was sprinkling?

They sprinkled in the Old Testament as part of purification rites. When the gospel is preached and spreads in nations, it's as if the nations are being purified by Christ.

You see? And then notice this. For what had not been told them, they will see.

The prophets were not sent to the Gentiles. They were sent to Israel.

They did not hear about a Messiah, but when the Gentiles will hear about the

Messiah, they will see. They had not heard, they will understand.

But what's the next verse? But who has believed our report? In other words, the

Jews will reject Him. You see? The Gentiles will receive Him. He's going to sprinkle the nations during the times of the

Gentiles. You see? And then when the times of the Gentiles are over, then all Israel will be saved.

Okay? And so forth. But notice, that's what He's doing today, through the preaching of the gospel.

He is sprinkling the nations. Okay. And, hold on just a second.

Let me just finish up. Listen to this. In that day, the nations will resort to the root of Jesse, who will stand as a signal for the people and His resting place will be glorious.

Then He will lift up a standard for the nations. It's like a military terminology. You put up this banner and the troops are going to go to that banner.

When Messiah comes, He's going to be like a rallying banner. And it's not the troops that are going to go around Him, but it's the nations, the

Gentiles, you see, are going to go. And that's what we obviously want to see. Listen to this in Psalm 33, 12.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. There it is.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Or listen to this one from Psalm 72.

May His name endure forever. May His name increase as long as the sun shines and let men bless themselves by Him.

Let all nations call Him blessed. And therefore,

I think for all nations, if they're going to have righteous and just laws by which we govern ourselves, there's no better place to look than Scripture.

And so listen to this passage in Deuteronomy 4, 6. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is wise and understanding people.

That's what we want. We want a wise and understanding people. We want the basis of our legislation to be

God's word. And that's what it is. If you look, I mean, if you go to the Supreme Court even, you'll see like Moses up there.

You see, he's the basis of American Judas prudence and really

England as well. The common law, again, comes right out of Christian principles and so forth.

And again, so something like even as simple as... I know we can say, look, it says in the

Old Testament, you're to build a rail around your roof. Now, normally up north, we have pretty sloping roofs.

We don't live up there. And we need it kind of steep because we want the snow to come off, right?

We don't want flat stuff. We want the stuff where the snow will come off and all that. But the principle is what we're looking for here.

I'm not talking about the moral law here. I'm talking about just the civic law of Israel is what

I'm dealing with. But there's a principle there, just like building a fence around your pool, you see?

Yeah, because we don't want some child walking in there and drowning or an animal getting in there.

But these types of laws are very important. Let me give you, for instance, the difference of biblical law versus ancient

Near Eastern law. Because there was laws back during that time. So for instance, in the Code of Hammurabi, and he was a

Babylonian king, had a very famous law code. Suppose you were a builder and you built a terrible house and it collapses, it kills your son.

What happens? Is the builder put to death? No, the builder's son is put to death because it was a son who got killed, see?

Where if you look at biblical jurisprudence, you're responsible for your actions.

Your son is not punished for what you do, you see? You're punished for, see, that's just revolutionary.

But if you look back at the old legal codes, that's the way it was. There was even laws about miscarriage.

And you see those miscarriage laws, some of the miscarriage laws are in the Bible as well. But back in, again,

Babylonian days, the, if you, this is gonna sound very strange.

If you caused a miscarriage, if you caused a woman to have a miscarriage, it's according to the rank of the woman what your punishment would be.

And it wasn't your punishment, it would happen to your wife, you see? Guess what?

The person that you killed that would cause capital punishment for you, if all people were the prostitutes, and you go, wait a minute, wouldn't she be on the lowest part of society?

Why would you make killing her? Obviously, people were killing them because they didn't want to see the baby and say, well, boy, that looks a whole lot like you, you see?

And so they had very strict laws about killing prostitutes because that's exactly what they would do.

They would kill them so that evidence of their misdeeds wouldn't come out. But it was according to your legal status.

But if you look at Scripture, oh, no, no, no. Oh, no. You do it, you're responsible, and so forth.

And so, again, there's a big difference in laws between what you see in the Bible and what you saw in the cultures of that day.

Okay, great differences. Wonderful ones. And so, again, let me read you one more verse.

This is from Isaiah 2, 3. And many peoples will come and say, come, let us go to the mountain of the

Lord, to the house of God of Jacob, that he might teach us concerning his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.

For the law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And therefore, what we need to do, again, is pray for our nation and its repentance.

Listen to Jeremiah. At one moment, I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy.

If that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity

I plan to bring on it. Or at another moment, I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it.

And so it's very important that we pray for our nation, that, again, the wrath of God will not fall, and so forth.

I meant to say one other thing. I went to Jewish schools for some of my training, and I went to the most liberal of the

Jewish schools in America. And it's called

Reform Judaism, but that's not Reform Christianity. Reform Judaism, very, very liberal, very liberal.

And they, as a matter of fact, they signed something the other day that even if you wanted to be the janitor, you had to sign a statement saying that you agree with the

LBGT, all the letters and all this, transgender. Or you couldn't even be the janitor, you see.

I mean, that's how far they've gone. But I remember when I was a student there back in the 80s, and they would tell you, oh, we reject the

Old Testament. They rejected it all. That was just Jewish culture that they were trying to keep up.

But yet there was one thing, there was one old Jewish law that they wanted to try to enforce, but they had to be careful about it.

And you know which one it was? Don't marry Gentiles. And the reason was the

Reform Jews were intermarrying so much with Gentiles, the

Jewish community was vanishing in this country. And so they were trying to say, well, there is one commandment we need to do or we're gonna lose our

Jewish identity, you see. But what do you do when all the other commandments are thrown out?

You go, but daddy, I love that Gentile. I mean, what are you gonna do to say to her? Well, no, this time we're gonna apply the laws.

No, you see. So they're having a real problem because there's so much, their whole culture is vanishing.

And this is a big trouble in Israel. Netanyahu, the current prime minister, if you look at his ruling coalition, it's made up a lot of the ultra -Orthodox.

And in order to get their vote, what they want is control of Israel. Religiously.

And they've already declared reform rabbis are not real rabbis. And they're almost like it's civil war over this, you see.

And so again, these cultural things can be really a dangerous thing for a society.

Very dangerous. I'm gonna end with a prayer. And it's a prayer by a man named Matthew Henry. He was a

Puritan Bible commentary. If you ever wanna read something good on the Bible, really good on the

Bible, Matthew Henry is still, in my opinion, the best of the best.

Love Matthew Henry. This is a book, he stopped writing his commentary to write a book on prayer.

And I highly suggest you get this book. And here, he groups prayers according to different topics.

And here, he wants to pray for his nation. And that's what we're gonna do. And he's gonna use the biblical language.

So don't take all the verses and, well, wait a minute, he's misinterpreting this. He's using the language in his prayer.

He's not saying this is the real interpretation of all the verses, okay? So he's gonna pray for this.

For the continuance of the gospel among us, and the means of grace, and a national profession of Christ, holy religion.

He's talking about England here, of course. So let's pray that together. I'll pray on this. Oh, let the throne of Christ endure forever among us.

Even the place of thy sanctuary, that glorious high throne from the beginning.

Let our candlestick never be removed out of its place, though we have deserved it should, because we have left our first love.

Never do to us as thou didst to thy place, which was in Shiloh, where thou didst set thy name at first.

Let us never know what a famine of the word means, nor ever be put to wander from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, to seek the word of God.

Let wisdom and knowledge be the stability of our times, and strength of salvation.

Let the fear of the Lord be our treasure. Let the righteous flourish among us.

And let there be those that shall fear thee in our land, as long as the sun and the moon endure throughout all generations.

That there may be abundance of peace, and the children which shall be created, may praise the

Lord. Lord, please be with our nation, and be with these Christian brothers and sisters here this day.

Lord, we just pray for your Holy Spirit to work within us. We just pray that the power of the gospel would be at work through us and in us.

We pray this in the name of Christ Jesus. Amen. Amen.