The Alex McFarland Show-The True Meaning of Patriotism-11

The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of Scripture.

Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Hi, welcome to the program, Alex McFarland here, and we're getting very close to the 4th of July.

Maybe you're hearing this even on the 4th of July. And if you are, I want to say that we're going to talk about patriotism and why we should all truly love America. I wish you a happy Independence Day, and we say Happy Birthday America. And you know, I believe the Bible has a lot to say about citizenship, love of one's country, and I want to remind everybody that love of the Lord and fidelity to heaven is not mutually exclusive to love of the country and being a good citizen as well. And we're going to talk a little bit about the question, can you love America without compromising your love for Jesus Christ? Now, Psalm 33 says this, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen for his inheritance. From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind, from his dwelling place God watches all who live on the earth.

He who forms the hearts of all considers everything they do. And it goes on and it says, A king is not saved by his army, a horse is a vain thing for safety, but deliverance, stability, security, provision, protection, guidance is of the Lord. Now here would be a great prayer for any nation, certainly for the United States Psalm 33, 18 and following. It says, The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. We wait in hope for the Lord, for he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you. You know, I love America, I really do. And every now and then I'll get emails and correspondence from people who say, and very often from pastors, and they'll say, Well, Alex, you know, we're supposed to love Jesus, and we're supposed to love heaven.

And, you know, all this talk about patriotism, it's not right. And a couple of years ago, there was a major Baptist writer who's really gotten woke. I'm not going to name his name, but he was basically saying, you know, either you love heaven, or you love America. That's a fallacy called a false dichotomy. You see, two things can both be true at the same time.

It's not either or, but it's both and. It's not either you are true to heaven, or you're true to America, you can be both. And in fact, I want to give a little bit of history about our nation.

I mean, some history that I think we need to always be mindful of. Very quickly, those that don't love America, even some Christians, they'll throw out Philippians 3.20. Come on, Alex, and all of you patriots, Philippians 3.20 says, Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await the Savior from there, the Lord Jesus.

Well, of course, but you know, 354 to 430, Augustine said that till we're in the city of God, we have an obligation to the city of man. Now, I want to say, America, I love you. Our nation is economically resilient, stubbornly optimistic, miraculously birthed, divinely blessed, statistically exceptional America. Now, in my book, Ten Issues That Divide Christians, I talk about what we call American exceptionalism.

Also in my book, America Under Attack, what we must do to save our nation before it's too late, that we are an exceptional nation. We really are. And we are the least racist nation in world history.

Now, let that sink in for just a moment. Now, as our kids are being coached to not love America, I want to say we are the least racist nation in history. And because of the idea of self-evident truth, and all persons are created by God and are endowed by their Creator with these inalienable rights, can't legitimately be taken away. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. You know, one of our great presidents, Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln really helped people understand that the Declaration of Independence is inseparably linked with the Constitution. And in fact, the Dred Scott decision that tried to legitimize slavery by saying that, well, the slaves weren't really persons. Well, it was reversed, thank the Lord, just like we praise God that Roe vs. Wade has been reversed. Now it's thrown the issue of abortion back to the states. On the one hand, the recent reversal of Roe vs. Wade was due to the philosophy of a limited federal government, that this blanket decision where the states have to coalesce and get under the umbrella of this broad oligarchical decision by a small group of unelected lawyers, and the Supreme Court makes these decisions that just are sweeping, you know, fiats for the entire nation. In fact, one of the sad things is that a lot of people, because they really have not been taught our federal government system in school, people think, well, that's how laws are made. The Supreme Court makes a decision, and their interpretation of a legal issue becomes a law, and that's completely false.

Roe vs. Wade, regardless of what you think about the issue of human life, and I hope you do believe in the worth and the value and the sanctity of every human life, but Roe vs. Wade, at the very least, should be something to rejoice about the reversal of Roe for those that believe in our constitutional limited government representative republic of states' rights. Now, part of the work to do is not only to elect constitutionalists – sometimes you'll hear the word constructionists at the local and state levels – but also people that believe in natural law, and we're going to come back to that, but on this Fourth of July edition of the Alex McFarland Show, I want to say, first of all, if you are a Christian, it is appropriate to love America, to care about America, to pray for America, and to be patriotic. You know, the Bible says that we're to pray for kings and for those that are in authority, that we may live a peaceable life in all godliness. That's First Timothy 2, 1-3.

In other words, that we are to pray for, work for, desire, intercede for, a nation most conducive for the spread of the gospel. But the other thing is, we praise God for the answering of a 49-year-old prayer request. Roe vs. Wade has been overturned. The rights of states are being restored in the rights of individuals.

Now, maybe the next decision, and it might be released even before this airs, maybe now they'll strike down Obamacare that the Supreme Court said, well, you have to buy a product that is insurance. That's not part of our constitutional republic. You want to buy insurance? Great. You don't want to buy insurance?

You can do that too. Just for the record, I think it's good to buy health insurance. But at any rate, God is at work, and our constitutional Judeo-Christian representative moral republic is being restored. Now stay tuned. We're going to come back, and we're going to talk about some history, I think some very inspirational reality and truth about why we do love our country, and in fact, we should.

Don't go away. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Christian author and speaker Alex McFarland is an advocate for Christian apologetics. Teaching in more than 2,200 churches around the world, schools, and college campuses, Fox is driven by a desire to help people grow in relationship with God. He arms his audiences with the tools they need to defend their faith, while also empowering the unchurched to find out the truth for themselves. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex is a sound voice who speaks timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. With 18 published books to his name, it's no surprise that CNN, Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets have described Alex as a religion and culture expert. To learn more about Alex and to book him as a speaker at your next event, visit alexmcfarland.com, or you can contact us directly by emailing booking at alexmcfarland.com. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show.

Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. I'm so honored that you're with us. I want to say happy Independence Day.

And I want to talk a little bit about why we should love America. I want to recount a story. When I was a youth pastor in North Carolina in the mid to late 90s, I did a lot with the senior adults, even though I was a youth pastor, and I'll never forget a woman. I'll call her Marta. That's not her real name. She now is in her 90s, if she's still living. And she was telling a story of growing up in Germany under the Third Reich. And she was in the minority. Her family, they were Christians. And her father was doing something illegal. He owned a tube radio. And under the Nazi occupation, it was illegal to have a radio.

It was hidden in a compartment in the wall. And I'll never forget the first time she ever told me this story. And two or three times when I would go back to this particular church, I would have her recount the details. She talked about how there was just this occupation where the Nazis could literally kick the door in, come in, eat the food.

They had no recourse, no say about it. She talked about one time, frightened, tearful. She and a sister were hiding under a bed for their life when a Nazi soldiers raped her sister. And they were under this bed while that was going on.

Just horrible, unspeakable evil. And one day, they got home from school and the wall had been torn apart, the tube radio was gone, and her father was gone. And she never saw her father again. But she said that they would gather around at night and listen to the tube radio, the volume so low it was barely audible. And they would find hope listening to the BBC and a gravelly British voice, Winston Churchill, who spoke about freedom, and said her dad said, listen to Churchill. But her dad, you know, the radio was confiscated.

Her father was abducted, presumably never saw him again. But she said, I remember being outside one day, and in the distance, we saw soldiers and the adults of the village said, hide, hide, everybody hide. She said, but eventually, the grown ups were jumping up and down jubilantly crying. And they said, we're saved. We're saved. The Americans are here. Isn't that something?

Now part of the reason I tell that story, and I've heard traveling to 2000 churches, all 50 states, I've heard so many stories like this. She said, when we saw the soldiers coming, and the American flag, we knew we were safe. And America has meant freedom. Look, we're not perfect.

We're flawed. What country isn't? But I love America, and so should you.

And a story like this could be recounted thousands of times around the globe. I love American values, and what's represented by an account like that. Now, whenever I say something like this, people counter back with various historical references to America's failures. Slavery, racism, Jim Crow, you know, wars. And it kind of boils down to this dismissive sentiment that America has made this or that mistake, therefore it is unforgivable. Now as a Christian, I believe that the highest form of the Christian faith is forgiveness.

Jesus demonstrated this from the cross, when he said, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. So I forgive America's missteps and failures, because I love this country. And we don't sweep them under the rug, but we forgive them. And we do what we can to improve the country and keep America from falling again. And you know, part of patriotism, I think about, you know, Mark Twain, one of my favorite authors. And Mark Twain said, we should always have loyalty to the country. Loyalty to the country always, said Mark Twain. Loyalty to the government, well, when it deserves it. And you know, when I write about American exceptionalism, you know, it really does speak to the fact that we are a different nation. And regarding our missteps, we are able to correct, because of the woven into our national DNA, our governmental DNA, is natural law, the Ten Commandments.

Natural law. Now I want to give a little bit of historical backdrop. Do you know one of the backers of the Mayflower, you remember the pilgrims came here, there was a businessman named Robert Cushman. And he wrote that England at the time of the Mayflower, was not a place, listen to this, quote, not a place for an honest man to raise a family. He said that the towns were crowded with unemployed workers, the hospitals were full of elderly people. And listen, quote, the ale houses are filled with old and unemployed laborers. Many who are in the land, listen to this, they get their means by prating, that's P-R-A-T-I-N-G.

In other words, ranting, just ranting, talking, debating. And Cushman, who helped financially back the Mayflower, he said, multitudes get their means by living, and others by begging. And he talked about the fact that a skilled young man in England had a poor economic future, no status at all, and would be dependent on farming and the land, but there was no hope of acquiring land. So why did people flock to America? And even though, you know, it's been 400 years, really, since 1621, all that I'm about to tell you is still possible. He said America meant hope, land, raw materials, opportunity, higher wages, and a strong likelihood for success. 400 years have gone by and that is still true. And it says there was no shortage of craftsmen in the colonies.

Carpenters were especially fortunate. So people came here from Britain, from Europe, from all over. And let me say this, though, it was not just liberty with no responsibility. It wasn't just this place where there were no rules. You see, nowadays, so many people have this idea of like a militant autonomy.

You know, I don't have to answer to anybody. Freedom, but really it was liberty within the boundaries of moral truth. Now, there was a man in Connecticut named John Davenport, and he understood that we were a Puritan culture and that all people were to live by light and the law of nature. Now light, that was the scripture, that was revealed religion. In other words, Christianity. When we come back, we're going to talk more about what they meant by God and each one of us governing ourselves according to the laws of God written on the page of the Bible, but also written on each and every heart. Stay tuned. We're going to come back after this brief break and thank God for our nation. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert.

Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. We live in a country where we have a lot of luxuries. We have a lot of things that we can get pretty easily. How convenience and comfort can be obstacles. An article by Will Addison. If we allow those things to be a priority in our lives, we'll find it hard to do the things that really matter, like preaching the gospel. We need to be careful that it don't stop us from fulfilling the great commission, which is making disciples.

To read this article, visit afa.net forward slash the stand. Are you tired of liberal agendas ruining our country, but you don't know what to do about it? That's why Truth and Liberty Coalition was founded. We want to equip you to take back our country and impact the world. Here's how we do it. We educate through broadcasts, conferences, and our website with resources that inform, equip, and motivate. We unify by collaborating with like-minded organizations like the Family Research Council, the Family Policy Alliance, and My Faith Votes. We mobilize by providing practical tools you can use to impact your local community.

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He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program. Happy birthday, America.

I hope you're having a good holiday and I hope you're pausing to pray and intercede and thank God for our nation. By the way, a lot of what I'm telling you comes from my book, The Assault on America, published by Harrison House Publishers in Pennsylvania. Then I've also got another book I would urge you to check out, Ten Issues That Divide Christians, where I write at length about what we call American exceptionalism. Now, people oftentimes will get angry with me. They'll say, let me tell you, America is not better than other nations. Yes, it is. It is better for those that don't realize how blessed we are.

Oh, my goodness. You don't see people flocking to North Korea or China or the Middle East, but the whole wide world still wants to come to America. Let's go on, though, and talk about why we are exceptional and why we've been so blessed. You've got to understand that this nation, as Benjamin Franklin said once when he was walking through Boston, he said, it seemed like that the whole world had been taken into religion. Now, he wasn't saying that disparagingly.

He was really happy about it. By religion, they meant Christianity. He said, after the sun goes down and the houses grow quiet with candlelight, he said, walk down any street and you will hear the scriptures being read, fathers and wives to families or psalms being sung.

It seemed like the presence of God had just enveloped the whole world. Well, what did you have there in colonial America? Well, it was, as one historian said, quote, the world center of Quaker influence, Presbyterians, you had Baptists, Catholics felt at home in the colonies too, Anglicanism, you had German Lutherans, you had the German Reformed Church, you had Dutch Reformed, you had Moravians, Mennonites, and within colonial America, you begin to have the first black churches and ultimately would emerge the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AME Church, and then in the early America, the first black denomination and printing largely was centered in Philadelphia. And what did they print? Bibles. Schools were started.

One of the books that we've recommended is by a guy named Thomas Hagedorn in Ohio. You ought to check out his book, Founding Zealots. And he doesn't use the word zealot in a negative way, but the people were desirous that literacy spread throughout the colonies.

Why? So people could read, so people could understand the word of God. And you look, Google this search, how Christianity started the Ivy League. Now I realize the American secular college landscape is just this train wreck of nonsensical denial of reality so often.

But the colleges of America, like the elementary schools, were started by Christians. Now before the break, I mentioned John Davenport who was trying to explain the Puritan culture. And Puritan, I don't mean that word in a negative way, but they were serious about their relationship with Christ.

That's what it was. They weren't these dour, unhappy, mean, cruel, judgmental people. They were just simply people very serious about their walk with the Lord. And he said this, Davenport from Connecticut said, the power of civil rule by men orderly chosen makes up this government. And it says, they govern like the citizens live from light and the law of nature, because the law of nature is God's law.

Now I'm going to continue in a moment but here's the thing. Light, that's why in the 18th and 19th centuries they talked about revealed religion, they were talking about Christianity. Scripture, the overt gospel, be born again. But then the law of nature, the moral code written on every heart. That's why, listen, whenever somebody says, well, you know, about abortion, you're pro-life, don't impose your religion on me. Well, no, that's not a religious precept. The idea that we should not murder babies is not a religious precept. It's common sense, moral knowledge that every civilized human being would know. And so the first amendment that prohibits the establishment of a national denomination, it does not mean the abolition of moral boundaries.

But in the late 1600s, there was a group that was very critical of the government in Massachusetts. And they were trying to teach what they call, quote, the tolerant spirit. All right, the tolerant spirit.

Do you know what? This idea of no rules, no boundaries, many of the colonists, they had their antennas up. And when they heard people saying, we need to have a tolerant spirit, people knew what that meant was, we're not going to talk about rules.

We're not going to talk about moral truth. And they didn't want their kids. And this is nearly 400 years ago.

This is really about 1681. There was, um, Increase Mather, which was a Christian leader wrote this. Increase Mather said, regarding those that are pro-tolerant, he knew this would descend into anarchy. Increase Mather wrote, quote, I perceive they are mistaken in the design of our first planters. In other words, the farmers that founded this nation so far. They are mistaken in the design of our first planters, whose business was not toleration, but were professed enemies of it, and could leave the world professing that they had died, not libertines. All right, a libertine is no rules, just do whatever you want to do. All right, Mather went on and said the founders, quote, their business was to settle, and as much as in them lay, secure religion to their posterity, their children, according to the ways of God, end of quote. Isn't that something?

I think we need to revisit this. Look, you can believe whatever you want to believe. If you don't want to be a Christian, you don't have to be a Christian.

Be an atheist, go to hell, that's your choice. But what we can't let people do, and I say this as we close, as I hope you pray for America, we can't let people tear down and demolish the foundation that gives them the freedom to safely, prosperously walk around as an unbeliever, whatever. And that is our Judeo-Christian, moral, natural law, constitutional republic. I love America.

We must now, because of our declining values and bad choices. We should love America, we should love our neighbors, we should love our families, we should love God. America is exceptional. I believe God was actively involved in America's founding, and America was founded on principles quoted by Jesus, the apostles, Abraham, Moses, and others. Love your neighbor as yourself, obey the law, care for the poor, defend human life. Our constitution speaks of quote, the laws of nature and nature's God. Now in 1954, very famously, SCOTUS Chief Justice Earl Warren said, no one can read the history of our country without realizing the good book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding genius.

He said in Time magazine, 1954, I believe as long as we do not deviate from these, no great harm can come to us. America is unique because we were based on the Bible and we've believed in God as our constant guiding source. Let's gratefully love and pray for this, our country, America. May God bless you and may God help our nation. Alex McFarland Ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmcfarland.com. You may also reach us at Alex McFarland, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404, or by calling 1-877-YES-GOD and the number 1. That's 1-877-YES-GOD-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of The Alex McFarland Show.