Foundational Faith of America

TNG Radio, where today's culture and timeless truths come together. It's reasoned relevant content apologetics, worldview, and answers to the questions that you need to know. From Alex McFarland Ministries, this is Truth for a New Generation Radio. And now the man who preached in 50 states in 50 days, speaker, writer, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. Did America's founders see the role of religion in public life? What did America's founders envision would be the presence or the influence or the role of Christianity, or shall we say religion, in the life of the America they were framing? Hi, welcome to Truth for a New Generation.

Alex McFarland here. Thank you for listening. And we're going to look at a few scripture verses. First, I want to share Leviticus 25, 10. The founders loved this verse, proclaimed liberty throughout the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof. The liberty that we've had throughout the land. And you know, Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote that famous two-volume set, Democracy in America, he once wrote that America was, quote, a nation with the soul of a church, end of quote. Think about a nation with the soul of a church.

De Tocqueville said in 1831, there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America. And when the founders framed this nation and they fought for our independence, and I write about this in my brand new book, The Assault on America, How to Defend Our Nation Before It's Too Late. The founders, they directly quote or allude to the Bible, the scriptures, some 3,154 times. So the guiding lights in the minds of our founders, the guiding light in their hearts and minds was the word of God. That was the guiding light to America's founders. Now I want to talk about the role that they envisioned morality and religion would play in American life.

And as this week has elapsed and we've watched, maybe you followed some of the hearings for the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Well, Amy Coney Barrett has been the subject of all sorts of grilling and accusations and oh my goodness, the Hollywood left has tweeted and put things in social media just denigrating her character and her life, mocking the fact that she's a wife and a mother and she is a Christian. And part of this is because they don't want there to be a God to whom people are accountable. They don't want there to be moral boundaries that we are to live within. And they don't want this generation to know that America was founded as a Christian country on biblical principles and that has been the secret of our greatness and the secret of our success and stability. And on this show, what I want to do is talk a little bit about what the founders saw religion would be in public life. And I know when I use the word religion, I understand Christianity is a relationship with Christ. It's not rituals and things that we have to slavishly do. We accept what he did on the cross, but understand that in colonial America in the 1700s, they talked about religion and they used a phrase.

You need to know this phrase. Listen, folks, they would often use the phrase, quote, revealed religion. Now, what they meant by, quote, revealed religion, they meant Christianity and that they meant the Judeo Christian moral code. In other words, it wasn't an animistic religion, a pagan religion. It wasn't voodoo and it wasn't some of the folk religion that they knew about throughout the world. And it certainly wasn't some like the Turks or as they would say, the Mohammedans that was the religion we now call Islam. No, revealed religion was what we knew was true. It was the scriptures. It was the savior.

It was the empty tomb. It was the Christian world view. Theophilus Eaton was the governor of Connecticut.

On his grave, it talks about him being the first governor of the colony of Connecticut. And here's what he said, the word of God was the only rule to be attended unto in ordering the affairs of government, end of quote. The word of God. Now, the University of Houston some years ago isolated 3,154 direct verbatim quotes from the founders and identified the sources of the quotes. Now, 34% of the founders' quotes verbatim came directly from the Bible.

Not paraphrased, but quoted from the Bible. 8.3% came from Montesquieu, Baron Charles de Montesquieu, who was a great thinker. Hugo Grotheis. By the way, one of the founders' incredible influences was sometimes pronounced Grotius or Grotheis. He was a political philosopher, a devout Christian who by the way, in addition to being a great political thinker, Grotius wrote apologetic defenses of Old and New Testaments and wrote extensively on the defense of canonicity, that Old Testament, Genesis through Malachi, was the word of God.

New Testament, Matthew through Revelation, was the word of God. And the founders were hugely influenced by Grotius. Sir William Blackstone, the great legal theorist, 7.9% of all their quotes, 2.9% from John Locke, who was a Christian thinker. You know, two political thinkers that often the founders are said to have read from, one was Thomas Hobbes and another was John Locke. And not only did Hobbes and Locke write about politics, but they wrote about economics. And they wrote about the size of government and the degree to which government was to intrude into the lives of people. And I know I'm kind of getting deep in the academic weeds a little bit, but the founders were more Lockean than Hobbesian.

Hobbes, although they wouldn't have used the term socialism or statism, Hobbes seemed to believe in big government, whereas Locke was more of a minimalist, and as the Declaration so famously says, that a government derives its powers based on the consent of the governed. Now let me add a word in there. A government derives its just powers. In other words, if it's being righteous and fair, moral, the word just, justice. Folks, there are unjust governments. I would say our government now in 2020 is bordering on being an unjust government.

In fact, I would say it is an unjust government. Now, this doesn't mean we burn down buildings, smash windows, or pull down statues. We don't burn the house down.

We get back to our founding principles, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration, the belief in morals that the founders certainly exhibited, but also, as I'm going to say when we come back after this break, we must get back to God when truth for a new generation returns. America today is like a patient struggling to live, yet is being forcibly euthanized by her, quote, doctors. The life force within the patient fighting for survival is the honest citizens like yourself.

The team of, quote, caregivers are the local and national leaders actually contributing to the demise of the patient. The economy is crashing. Crime is exploding. The Constitution is being abolished. The assault on America. How to defend our nation before it's too late by Alex McFarland has one single purpose to get you prepared. Learn the real source of America's current problems that no one else is talking about and what you can do now to face tomorrow, regardless of what tomorrow brings. The assault on America.

How to defend our nation before it's too late. Available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and local Christian bookstores. Alex has written many books to help you defend your faith. One of them answers questions from skeptics.

It's cleverly titled Ten Answers for Skeptics. Today's skeptics are looking for authenticity, integrity and straightforward truth. And in the book, Alex McFarland identifies the 10 most common types of skepticism that plague doubters' minds and offers believers proven strategies for connecting intellectually and spiritually with those who are skeptical about the claims of Christianity. Learn how to answer intimidating questions, identify the root issue behind those questions and dismantle the spiritual bombshells dropped by atheists.

Plus, find encouragement to face hostility by persevering in love. The ultimate apologetic Christians can offer as a witness to our loving God. Check out Ten Answers for Skeptics when you visit alexmcfarland.com. For apologetics resources, books by Alex McFarland and to find out where Alex is speaking, visit alexmcfarland.com.

Welcome back to the program. We just were talking about how the founders so frequently quoted the Bible. And they saw Christianity and the role of the Bible and God's truth in public life as a very significant thing. John Adams wrote, Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Now, folks, when I think about that, I did an interview a few days ago that was on Fox News with Bret Baier. And I was asked, you know, is Amy Coney Barrett fit to serve because she might bring her religion into the courtroom?

Well, listen, one thing I say this in many shows and I want to reiterate this and I talk about this in my book, The Assault on America. You've got to understand the freedom of religion that the founders talked about and the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment, that Congress will make no law regarding the establishment of religion in no way should that be construed to mean the abolition of morality. And so the phrase is natural law. I want you to learn this term, natural law. Now, Exodus 21 through 17 talks about the Ten Commandments, or it is the Ten Commandments. You should not lie, you should not murder, you should not be an adulterer. The government was predicated on the reality of the obligation to the Ten Commandments. Now, the law of God is written on the heart of all people, the psyche, the soul of all people. All people know right from wrong.

They do. But yet our culture is so averse to any mention of God or truth or moral boundaries that Amy Coney Barrett and any person, I remember Trump when he was running as a candidate. They said in the news, oh my goodness, Trump is being commandeered, he's under the influence of all these Christians, these right-wingers like Franklin Graham and David Jeremiah and Paula White and all these Christians are around him.

Oh my goodness, what does this mean? Let me say this, folks. The best thing elected officials could do for the American people is to go into their seats of leadership with a belief in God and morality.

Let me say this. The danger of America right now is not that we would get more of God. The danger is that we have far too less of God.

There was an article, my friend, scholar Jerry Newcomb, who works with D. James Kennedy Ministry, he wrote an article. He said, our primary problem, Americans have forgotten God, which is true. Now, friends, all through the election, we're hearing this phrase that's almost become a cliché. This is the most significant election of our lifetime.

This is the most consequential election of our lifetime. But do you know why people are saying that? Because it is.

I mean, it really is. Do you realize, my dear friends, and again, when I name names and I say all these things, I wish no ill to anyone. Pray for people. Listen, I love people. I would, as Augustine said, love is to seek the highest good of another. Any name I'm about to name, I would do whatever I could to see them know Christ, be saved, have, you know, a roof over their head.

I would do what I could. No malice against anyone. But do you realize, folks, that a socialist, Bernie Sanders, came just within a striking distance of having the Democrat nomination for president? A known socialist, Kamala Harris, is the VP candidate. Nancy Pelosi right now is so just really obsessed. I mean, just listen to her. Look at her.

Almost to the point of just losing all grasp of rational truth. Nancy Pelosi is so obsessed with getting rid of President Trump that in most interviews, she barely makes sense. And is talking about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Folks, listen, this is not about Trump. This is about removing Joe Biden if he were to win.

And you need to understand and you need to pray, because if Biden wins the election, what this means is we just elected President Kamala Harris, who has aided and abetted the Black Lives Matter Marxist, the vandals, the statue destroyers, the rewriters of our history. This is consequential because our future absolutely does hang in the balance. Benjamin Franklin said this. He said, everybody loves the fruits of freedom, but few people are willing to tend the tree that bears the fruits of freedom. What are the fruits of freedom?

Well, Jefferson wrote it well. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all are endowed by their creator, capital C. So there is a God. There is a creation, not evolution. And there are objective moral truths. When he said we hold these truths to be self-evident and our rights are therefore inalienable. That means they're tied to the nature of God.

It's not subjective. Listen, when we say the abortion of a baby is wrong, that's not some preacher's opinion. That is moral truth. And the sanctity of human life is as true as the existence and nature of God. Now, Founding Father Patrick Henry said this. Patrick Henry warned, it is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a friend of Reagan, and he wrote about the failure of the USSR. Remember, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union. And Solzhenitsyn said this, and he was a Nobel Prize winning author, and he had been in prison for more than a decade. He said this, quote, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that befell Russia. Men have forgotten God.

That's why all this happened, end of quote. Heaven forbid, may God forbid, that the time comes when people say America lost her constitution, Christianity became illegal. The socialist, Marxist, statist, free tuition, free income for all, free everything, pro-gay, anti-marriage, anti-family. Parents can't raise their own kids at home. Parents can't educate their kids in the ways and the knowledge of God. We become the chaotic, relativistic, transgender, homosexual hellscape that once was America.

Why? Because we forgot God. And we're going to come back, and we're going to kind of wrap up and talk about more what the founders saw as the role of religion in public life would be, and what might be the perils if we forget that theistic, spiritual foundation. Stay tuned.

We're back after this. America today is like a patient struggling to live, yet is being forcibly euthanized by her, quote, doctors. The life force within the patient fighting for survival is the honest citizens like yourself. The team of, quote, caregivers are the local and national leaders actually contributing to the demise of the patient. The economy is crashing.

Crime is exploding. The Constitution is being abolished. The assault on America, how to defend our nation before it's too late by Alex McFarland, has one single purpose.

To get you prepared. Learn the real source of America's current problems that no one else is talking about, and what you can do now to face tomorrow, regardless of what tomorrow brings. The assault on America, how to defend our nation before it's too late, available now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and local Christian bookstores. Christians don't necessarily agree with one another when it comes to questions of religious pluralism, homosexuality, the role of government, abortion and war. Too often we manage these disagreements by ignoring them. Yet we're called to engage the world for the sake of Christ.

How can we be effective if we avoid society's most pressing questions? In 10 issues that divide Christians, Alex McFarland challenges us to drill down to the biblical core of 10 current issues, such as social justice, evil and suffering, pornography and environmentalism, as he echoes the biblical invitation, Come, let us reason together. Only by engaging the scriptures deeply, thinking clearly and speaking truthfully, can we and God's family address our differences and discover the peace that comes with unity of purpose.

10 issues that divide Christians. Find this book and many others at AlexMcFarland.com In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex McFarland is a voice you can trust to speak the timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. You're listening to Truth for a New Generation Radio. Welcome back to Truth for a New Generation.

Alex McFarland here. You know, the importance of voting, I talk about in the book The Assault on America. I want to thank everybody who's been reading that book. By the way, for the record, I have no financial stake in this book.

I took no money for writing this book, and that's why I don't mind brazenly promoting this book. I beg of you, read it. It's on Amazon. You can find it online.

It's at the afastore.net, as in American Family Association store. There's an audiobook, seven hours of content. I read the book. I would love for you to listen to the audiobook.

It's on Kindle, and it is also in all the Barnes and Noble across the country. So please read, and I think you'll learn a lot of things about our history. And, you know, Samuel Adams, the cousin of John Adams, Samuel Adams was called the father of the American Revolution. He organized the Boston Tea Party. He was the signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he was a member of Congress until 1781. But Samuel Adams wrote, The rights of the colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great lawgiver and head of the Christian church, Jesus, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament. So he said the rights of the colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading and studying the head of the church, Jesus. Now, this is the father of the American Revolution. Now, can you imagine if Amy Coney Barrett said that?

The best way I can understand or be a Supreme Court justice is by studying Jesus. Oh, my goodness, Nancy Pelosi would have a dozen aneurysms all at once. AOC and Kamala Harris and Biden and all the left.

Right now, there's an absolute meltdown going on in the Twitterverse. Do you understand that in this day and age, look, if a person who believes in moral truth is unfit for public office, then you've got to also throw out Washington Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay, the greatest sacrificial leaders and the people that wisely, presciently framed the greatest nation in world history, second only to Israel under King Solomon. There's a reason they want history rewritten. There's a reason they're tearing down statues.

And there's a reason that we are witnessing a coup attempt in process. It's because I believe that the liberal secularists, they hate God. They reject morality.

They chant. Folks, do you understand those of you that maybe think you don't want to vote for Trump because he's just he's not polite. And so you're you're thinking about not voting or voting for Biden. Let me say this, folks. Do you understand Kamala Harris has defended, paid bail and bought hotel rooms for mobs that have been shouting blank Jesus? I'm not even going to say the word.

I don't want to give any airtime to this. But with the money of George Soros and other progressive Marxists, there have been riots for months on end in many American cities, looting criminals on the streets and mobs chanting curse words about Jesus. So if you name the name of Christ, if you're a believer, if you love God and country, then I would think that we would rouse ourselves and say our prayers and get out and vote and influence others to do the same. You know, Noah Webster, who lived 1758 to 1843, he was talking about voting.

And I begin to conclude with this. But Noah Webster said, when you become entitled to exercise the right of voting, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for your rulers, quote, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.

This is Noah Webster. If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted. Laws will be made not for the public good so much as for selfish purposes. Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute laws. Public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men and causes. The rights of citizens will be violated or disregarded.

Now, look, we're living it, friends. Webster said, if a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine command and elect bad men to make and administer the laws. End of quote. John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was a Presbyterian clergyman. By the way, when the left has such meltdowns about religious people. Look, half of the signers of the Declaration and a majority of leaders of the American Revolution not only were Christians, but many were ordained ministers. Witherspoon said this, the people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority, either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches. That's saying we need people who believe in morals and God. We are suffering today because we have, to such a great degree, forgotten or maybe have even disregarded God. Now, Harry Truman, one of our great presidents, really, and what an amazing thing, that he recognized the nation of Israel in May of 48 when they were first constituted. President Harry Truman, with the National Day of Prayer being made an annual event, in June of 52, he said, from the earliest days of our history, our people have been accustomed to turn to Almighty God for help and guidance.

Friends, this is one of those hours that we must turn to Almighty God for help and guidance. I hope you're praying for this country. I hope you're participating in influencing folks for the election, for the good. And I would encourage you to please read my book, The Assault on America. And hey, even if you disagree, write me, let me know.

You can go to my website, Alex McFarland. I would love to hear from you. I would very respectfully love to dialogue with any listeners, pro and con. But stand strong for truth, stay tuned to our programming, and let's pray, and let's be salt and light. And hopefully, with God's help and for God's glory, we'll keep our nation on track, and even bring it back to some foundations that are just about forgotten. Stand strong for truth, my friends. and the number one, or give online at AlexMcFarland.com. While you're there, listen to program archives, read Alex's blog, invite Alex to speak at your event, or contact Alex with a question or comment, AlexMcFarland.com. Thanks for listening today, and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG Radio.