The Only Hope for America

Known for his unique ability to simplify profound truth so that it can be applied to everyday life, Adrian Rogers was one of the most effective preachers, respected Bible teachers, and Christian leaders of our time. Thanks for joining us for this message.

Here's Adrian Rogers. Take God's Word, please, and be finding the book of Proverbs chapter 14. I'm speaking today on this subject, The Only Hope for America. And the only hope, and I want to underscore that with all of the unction and function and emotion and intellect and dynamism of my soul, the only hope for America is found in this verse. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. This is not merely what God has said. This is what God is saying to any people.

It is universal. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. I sincerely wonder what kind of a country am I leaving to my children and to my grandchildren? I wonder about our children. I wonder about the values that our leaders hold today. We're told, for example, that the great problem is economics. What is that the problem?

I've thought about it. I had much rather leave to my children and my grandchildren a godly heritage shown by a godly nation than to leave to them great wealth to be squandered by a godless society. The great need in America today is righteousness.

And America will be destroyed, not because of some enemy without, but because of debauchery within. Alexander Hamilton said, we get the kind of government we deserve. Now, something very wonderful happened on July the 4th, 1776 in Philadelphia.

A declaration was made and shortly after that a constitution was formed. In Britain they said that the British railways wanted to test the windshields on their very fast moving trains because they were afraid that birds flying into those windshields may crack them. And they found out that British Airways had the same problem and they had invented a device.

They had a cannon that would shoot a dead chicken at the windshield of their airplanes to see if indeed the windshield was constructed with enough resiliency to withstand such a blow. So the railroad asked the airline, can we borrow that implement? Can we borrow that cannon?

They said, certainly you may. So they had one of their fine locomotives lined up there. They sent someone out to buy some ammunition, a dead chicken. So they bought the ammunition, came back, loaded the cannon, aimed it, pulled the trigger and fired it. It went through the windshield, through the engineer's chair, hit the back wall and made a dent in it. So they asked the British Airways, they said, something is wrong here. What happened?

They said, nothing is wrong, but next time don't use a frozen chicken. Now what they were doing, if indeed that story has any credibility to it at all, it sounds like a made-up story, but if indeed it has any credibility, they were using the cannon to do something it was not designed to do. Now what has happened is this, that we have a constitution.

It's a very wonderful, wonderful instrument. I believe that certainly it's not inspired like the Word of God, but because of the inspired Word of God, we have the constitution because the constitution reflects in many ways the values of God's Word. But today we're shooting frozen chickens. I mean today we're doing something that our founding fathers did not intend for us to do. Now on July the 4th, 1776, there was signed in the city of Philadelphia a document that we call the Declaration of Independence. Now it was independence from Great Britain, but what many people failed to understand is that this same document was a document of dependence upon Almighty God. Now the politicos today, many of them seem to have forgotten that, but it was clearly and plainly a declaration of dependence. I want you to listen to the closing paragraph.

Well it begins, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. It begins that way, but it closes this way, with a firm reliance upon the protection of divine providence. Now what is reliance? That's dependence. With a firm reliance upon the protection of divine providence. What is divine providence? That's God. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

All of that in the context of depending upon Almighty God. It was then that the cannons fired. It was then that the fireworks went off. It was then in the old state house now called Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell began to ring out freedom. And on that bell inscribed these words from Leviticus 25 verse 10, proclaim liberty throughout all the land. And in that document they said that God created us.

Isn't it a shame we can't teach that in schools today? In that document they said that God gives us our rights, not the government. These are inalienable rights like life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These have come from the Almighty and not from government. Now there's three things I want you to see today as we look in our text in Proverbs chapter 14 and verse 34. Righteousness exalted the nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. And the very first thing I want you to see is that righteousness, which is the exaltation of a nation.

The exaltation of a nation. Righteousness exalteth a nation. Learn this, that righteousness and liberty are inextricably interwoven. You cannot separate righteousness and liberty. You see, the reason that we are in danger of losing our liberties is we are losing our righteousness. Now what is righteousness? Righteousness is responsibility assumed.

And the more responsibility that you assume, the more liberty you have. For example, a little baby doesn't have to assume any responsibilities. He doesn't have to go out and earn a living. He doesn't have to mow the grass. He doesn't have to do the laundry. He doesn't have to do the grocery shopping. The little baby assumes no responsibilities. He's fed and bathed and carried from this place to that place.

He doesn't make choices about anything. He doesn't have any liberties either because he assumes no responsibilities. But as that child continues to grow and after a while he can learn how to clean up his own room, after a while to carry out the trash, after a while to do the dishes, after a while to cut the grass, after a while to come and go on time. And the parents watch that child assume more and more responsibilities. And as that happens, the child is given more and more liberties.

After a while, he can walk to school by himself or herself. Then comes that day, Daddy, can I use the car? Well, you've shown yourself to be a responsible child and you give to this teenager the keys to that automobile, which in today's age is the symbol of almost total liberty. I've got the car now.

Mama's not driving me anymore. I can go where I wish within the rules that my mom and dad have set down for me because I have shown myself to be a responsible person. Now, learn this about government.

And this is taught in the Word of God. The more responsibility we assume, that's righteousness, the more liberty we're given. The less responsibility we're willing to assume, the less liberty we will have. We have more or less liberty, therefore, according to our character or according to our righteousness. When we abuse responsibility, we lose liberty. And when there is a demise in character, there's always a growth in government.

Did that sink in? When there is a demise in character, there's always a growth in government. You cannot be irresponsible as an individual or as a society and at the same time expect to remain free. Now, our government began with a dependence upon almighty God. And the constitution was written by people of character, for people of character, and it will work for no other people. If we lose our character in the United States, our constitution will not work.

We'll be shooting frozen chickens. It wasn't made for that kind of a society. You see, this nation was born in the white heat of revival. From 1740 to 1770, Jonathan Edwards and other preachers were preaching up and down the seaboard of America. And America was aflame with revival. And as a result, churches were built, institutions were formed, character was placed in the heart and mind and the bosom of our founding fathers. And study the writings of our founding fathers, and you will see that they were tinctured and died and imbued with a great belief in God, in the Judeo-Christian ethic. And out of the fires of that revival, out of that character came the constitution of the United States. And to our founding fathers, they believed in self-reliance, they believed in responsible lives, they believed in righteousness, and therefore they believed that the best government was the smallest government. The smaller government was, the better they believed it would be. And so our founding fathers formed a republic. We pledge allegiance to the republic for which it stands, which is a government of law with representative leadership. And these representatives represent us, but they govern only with the consent of the governed. And it will not work.

Listen, folks, it will not work apart from character. Righteousness exalteth the nation. You say, well, what do you know about it?

You're a Baptist preacher. What do you know about civics? What do you know about government?

Well, let me tell you what someone who did know said about it. His name was James Madison. He was the architect, the architect of the federal constitution, the fourth president of the United States of America. Let me give you a direct quote from James Madison. He said, we have staked the whole future of American civilization, not on the power of government.

Far from it. We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves to sustain ourselves according to the 10 commandments of God. That's what Madison said. He said, we staked everything on this. What he is saying is this. It's not that government is going to do it. We must govern ourselves. There must be this inward character. And we must govern ourselves.

And what was the basis of that character? Not morality by majority, but the 10 commandments of God. Which 10 commandments our leadership in this nation says must come down from the classrooms in America? Because if they were to see those 10 commandments, they might begin to venerate them and obey them. So the 10 commandments are out and x-rated and secure is in. But Madison said, we have staked the whole future upon the ability of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the 10 commandments of God. What Madison, the architect of the constitution was saying is, it will not work.

It will not work unless you use it the way it was intended to be used. Don't fire frozen chickens. That's not the way we built this cannon. We built it. It was made for people of character, by people of character and it will work no other way. What is Liberty? Liberty is responsibility assumed. Liberty is responsibility assumed. License is not assuming responsibility, is doing your thing. Now we think we can have license and we cannot. Liberty is responsibility assumed and real Liberty therefore always comes from within.

You have to take the policeman off the street corner and put him in your heart. The less God rules in your heart, the more control you're going to have from without. Now let's go back to the little baby we were talking about. He has no responsibilities, but he has no liberties. As he grows more and more, he gets more and more responsible. He's given more and more liberty, but let's say he gets to be an adult and as an adult, he ceases to act responsible and becomes a criminal.

Then what happens? He's put in jail. He has no character, therefore his liberties are taken away.

Now he has no responsibilities. He doesn't have to turn out the lights, but he has no liberties. He can't unlock the door because when he ceased to act responsibly, then his liberty diminishes.

It follows as night follows day. The difference between slavery and freedom is simply this. Where are the laws? In slavery, the law is from the outside and we'll make you do this. In liberty, the law is in the heart. It is righteousness that exalteth a nation. Now when our founding fathers understood this and they said with a firm reliance upon divine providence, we'll build this nation. We built a constitution, as Madison says, that will not work apart from each of us governing ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. When we believe this, when we came as a nation out of the womb of a revival, what happened?

Well, friend, we had an industrial revolution and great wealth was produced. Why is that? Because Americans are bigger, brighter, smarter. No, we're human homo sapiens like other people in the face of the earth.

Why is it? Are there more minerals in our soil? Does it rain more on America?

No. Other nations are beautiful. Travel and see. What makes America different? God has blessed America. God has blessed America.

That's what makes America different. We have been the recipients of the beneficent blessings of Almighty God and God gave us wealth and God gave us military strength. Protect us by thy might, great God our King. We have the technology, but do we have the will?

Do we have the manpower? But what's happened? We had a time when we as Americans were respected around the world and we were people of culture and a people of respect. Today we're laughed at even by those nations where we have pumped money trying to buy respect that cannot be bought with the Yankee dollar. Let this fasten itself upon your mind. Righteousness is the exaltation of a nation. Now here's the second thing I want you to learn. Reproach is the humiliation of a nation.

God says sin is a reproach to any people. America today is living in reproach. Now the American dream has begun to dissolve.

What happened is this. We came through an agonizing civil war. We got ourselves back together and turned to God and then we had World War I. And God gave us victory in World War I.

But rather than giving God the praise, we wanted liberty without responsibility. The flapper age came. The Roaring Twenties came. The Great Depression came.

And we failed to understand that these blessings have come from Almighty God. And when the Great Depression came as a result of our debauchery, as a result of our loss of character, then we began to turn to the government to ask the government to help us out. And great social programs began to come in America. Governmental programs.

And everybody said, this is wonderful. Look what the government is going to give us. But the government can't give us anything it doesn't take from us. And so what the government began to do was to begin to grow and redistribute the wealth and take theirs off the top. You know, the government always assumes more and more authority when the people lose more and more character. And as character goes down, control goes up and government begins to grow. And the government began to provide for people.

But when the government provides, the government must control. I've told you before about a man who had some wild pigs who were rooting up his farm, and he tried to capture them, but he couldn't. And a man said, I can capture those pigs for you. And he went out and he put some food on the ground and withdrew. The pigs came out of the woods and ate the food. He did that several days. And then he put a fence post up and the pigs came and ate the food. That fence post didn't bother them.

And then he put another and another and another. The pigs didn't like it necessarily, but no harm done. They were getting fat and sleek, being fed by someone else.

No longer did they root in the woods for their own acorns. Somebody would there feed them. And then after a while the corral was built and the wire was strung and only a narrow gate and the pigs learned to go in and out of that gate to get their food. And then the bar was dropped, the trap set, the pigs captured. And the man said, that's simple.

Anything that depends upon me for its food, I can control. Now, when the government gets people to depend upon them, the government says, I will be your subsidy. It follows as night follows day when we lose character. At the same time, we lose freedom. And we have watched in America as one fence post after another has been set around us. And we're still eating out of the government trough. And yet the government is only giving to us what it is first taken from us. And now folks, we turned into a welfare state. Now, not only does the government then begin to provide and the government begins to control, but if you're not careful, the government can begin then to oppress. You see, the government grows as strong as the weak character of people will allow it to grow. And that's what has happened in America today. Remember what Alexander Hamilton said, people get the kind of government they deserve. Now, you say, but Pastor Rogers, we still have a lot of freedoms in America.

That's true. But we're living in the shadow of a constitutional government that was founded by our fathers and forefathers. And that shadow is quickly receding over the horizon. Now, if we don't do something, if we don't have a spiritual awakening in America, if we don't have a spiritual awakening in America, if there's not a return to the first principles, which is really return to the God that made us a nation, if we don't return, here's what's going to happen. There will be the disappearance of the middle class. And you'll have two classes in America, the very rich and the very poor.

Travel around, go to third world countries and you'll know what I'm talking about. You'll have the very rich and the very poor. The very rich will be by and large those who are in government or those who have governmental connections and the rest will make up the masses that keep it all going. As character diminishes, government grows. As this continues, the middle class goes.

They're the very rich and the very rich and the very poor. What is the purpose of government? Read Romans 13. Government is here for protection, to punish evildoers, to defend the land. He beareth not the sword in vain. But when you get the idea that government is not here to protect but to provide, then you're in difficulty. Our founding fathers knew this. Our founding fathers said that government is to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare. Not provide the general welfare. Provide the common defense.

You and I can't raise an army. We shouldn't. We become vigilantes.

We're here to protect one another. That's what the purpose of government is, to provide the common defense, to promote the general welfare. The Bible says if a man will not work, neither should he eat. We're not talking about people who cannot work or people who are fairly out of work. They ought to be helped.

Indeed, they should. But when we have a welfare type of state, a form of socialism, then we have gotten away from the teachings, I believe, of the Word of God. One person has wisely said we are in deep trouble when we look upon our government as a cow to be milked rather than a watchdog to be fed. Our government is here to protect us. Once the government begins to provide, then the government begins to control. They say if you're getting government subsidy, you're going to do as we do. Then the government wants to begin to oppress sometimes.

The government wants the minds of its adherents to keep the rank and file to do what Big Daddy government wants it to do. So now the government has to control the minds. How do you start with the minds? Well, you start with the children.

So what do you do? You get a National Education Association and a Department of Education and you begin to take little children. You take the Ten Commandments down and you put values clarification in and say, remember, there are no fixed rules of right and wrong. We can't say there's a fixed rule of right and wrong. That's mixing religion and politics. So we take that down, we put values clarification in, and then we begin to talk about the glories of the welfare state. Then we begin to talk about a one world government and a new world order and the little children grow up in a nation that our founding fathers did not know. Adolf Hitler said in 1920, give me the minds of the children and in one generation, I will give you the fascist super state.

And he did it. Stalin in Soviet Russia did the same thing. You see, out of our educational system and with compulsory education, the Bible is out, prayer is out, Ten Commandments out, creation out, humanism and its X-rated textbooks is in. Here's an excerpt from an address given at a childhood educational seminar by a professor of educational psychiatry at Harvard University.

Listen to this. Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill. Because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. Little children are sick because they believe in America first, because they believe in God, because they have an allegiance to their parents, that's sick. And then this professor from Harvard went on to say, quote, it's up to you teachers to make all these sick children well by creating the international child of the future.

Now, the humanist organization is very small but very active and very powerful in the United States. Here is an excerpt from an article taken from a magazine called The Humanist, January, February issue 1983 on page 26. Quote, the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith. The classroom must and will become the arena of conflict between the old and the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity and the faith of humanism.

They say, we've got our Sunday school classes five days a week. And what we're going to do is we're going to bring in a new society. The government provides, the government controls, the government oppresses.

Why? Because of a lack of character on the part of people. Righteousness exalteth the nation but sin is a reproach to any people. Now, the truth of the matter is that God holds us as individuals, as parents responsible to teach our children. We need to teach our children our heritage, we need to teach them our history. It is to go from God to grandfather to father to children. It's to be passed down that way.

Now, here's the third and final thing. Righteousness is not righteousness, righteousness is the exaltation of a nation. Reproach is the humiliation of a nation. Revival is the restoration of a nation. Now, the Bible says, blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord. The Bible says, when the righteous bear rule, the people rejoice. America needs a new birth of freedom, but America will never have a new birth of freedom until America has a revival of righteousness. And therefore, the key to America is not in the state house or the white house or in the Pentagon, but in the church house and in your home. I hope you believe that.

I hope you believe that is not mere rhetoric. You see, ladies and gentlemen, we are the salt and the light. Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. And what does salt do? Salt cleanses, salt purifies, salt preserves, salt penetrates. We don't have to be a majority.

We are salt. People say, we believe in the separation of church and state. Well, number one, that phrase is not found anywhere in the Constitution. The First Amendment teaches that there should be no state church, no national denomination, and all of us would say amen. We don't want our tax money subsidizing religion. We don't want the national church to be a Baptist church or any other kind of church. As freeborn Americans, we believe in freedom to worship God as we desire without it being subsidized by the government. We believe that, but our founding fathers never, for a skinny minute, believed in the separation of God and government.

If you think that they did, you better go back and do some historical study. Friend, we believed in the birth of this nation that there must be righteousness. You don't put the fish in one barrel and the salt in the other. We are the salt of the earth, not the pepper, not the sugar, the salt. And Jesus said, and he's talking to this generation as well as to his, if the salt loses its savor, it is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under the feet of men. Do you know why the church is being trampled today? Do you know why we're the butt of so many jokes, and the situational comedians laugh and talk about the church being trampled today? The comedians laugh and talk about us, and they make jokes about us because we're salt without savor. They don't respect us. We're cast out and trampled under the feet of men. I think it's time to let the salt work.

I think it's time to let the light shine. I'm not talking about arrogance. I am talking about righteousness. Righteousness exalted the sin as a reproach to any people. Righteousness is the exaltation of a nation. Revival is the restoration of a nation, and it can happen.

It can happen in the darkest of days. In Romania, there was a megalomaniac, a communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Ceaușescu was a tyrant. Going through the city of Oradea, he saw a little building there. He asked one of his leaders, what is that building over there? They said, sire, that's a Baptist church.

He said, a what? It's a Baptist church. Ceaușescu said, destroy that nest of insects. They started to destroy the church and persecute the people, but then they came back. They said, sire, these people are known in this community. If we destroy this church, word may get to the West. We may lose some of our benefits from the West. Ceaușescu said, then hide it.

I don't want to see it. And so they said, how can we hide a church? Well, we'll build apartment buildings all around it. So they built apartment buildings all around it and brought the people right to the church. The church began to grow magnificently.

Ceaușescu was brutal. He began to repress pastors. There was a pastor in Temușoara. His name was Laszlo Tokiș. And he pastored, he was a Hungarian pastoring there in Temușoara. And he dared to ask, can we just have some more hymnals, please?

We don't have any hymnals. They saw that as his being too uppity, demanding things of the government. They said, Tokiș is a problem.

Let's move him out. We'll send the Securitate there to take Tokiș out of the way. Laszlo got word of the idea, the notion they were coming for him. He told his people, they're coming for me.

I want you to be here when they come. His people surrounded the little church and began to pray for the pastor. When the people came for Laszlo Tokiș, they said, well, we'll wait till the people go away. But the next day, rather than hundreds, there were thousands. The crowds grew and Ceaușescu said, well, it's getting out of hand. Now I'll send my men with their guns and I'll send the water cannon.

I'll disperse the crowd and take this renegade preacher. And when they came with their guns and they began to move on that crowd with the water cannon, somebody in that crowd who'd had it up to here with totalitarianism said, there is a God and shouted it to the top of his voice. And other people around began to take up the chant.

There is a God, there is a God, there is a God. And they turned on that water cannon and with their bare hands, they destroyed that water cannon. With this, the police began to shoot and the military men to shoot these individuals there in Temerșoara. And men who'd had enough began to unbutton their coat, unbutton their shirt, and stand in front of a man with a rifle and say, shoot me. And they shot them in cold blood. Began to shoot little children from the rooftop. They were shooting into the crowds. But the people began to shout all the more, there is a God, there is a God, there is a God. Ceausescu knew he was in trouble. He called for a great crowd there and got out on a platform up on a balcony. He's going to make an oration, a speech, to tell them how wonderful he is. And out in the crowd, somebody shouted, murderer!

You're a murderer! And others began to shout. And he knew his day was done. Ceausescu fled back into his apartment up on the roof, got in the helicopter and took off, had it land by an armored vehicle, got in the vehicle to take him to safety. But he had told all of his people, you can't have more than 10 liters of fuel in any military vehicle.

He was afraid they would try to escape themselves. And so here he is trying to escape and he runs out of gas. And this great vaunted dictator, he has to get out and catch a taxi. Humiliated, they take him, they arrest him. On Christmas day, this madman is put up against the wall and a firing squad of 10 put 160 bullets in Nicolae Ceausescu. That church that he said, destroy that nest of insects, is now the largest evangelical church in all of Europe. They have a beautiful 3,000 seat auditorium. Souls are coming to Christ.

Why? Because the people said, there's a God. There's a God that rules in the affairs of men and live or die. We're going to stand up for what we believe. And it's time for every red-blooded American citizen to say, there is a God. And righteousness exalteth the nation.

Sin is a reproach to any people. The righteousness that is the exaltation of a nation. The reproach that is the humiliation of a nation. The revival that is the restoration of a nation. I want to leave to my grandkids a godly nation. Isn't that what you want? God grant it. God grant it. God bless America. Land that we love.

May I ask you a personal question? Are you saved? Sooner or later, America and all the nations will join the graveyard of the nations. But there's a kingdom that endures forever. And that's the kingdom of God. Do you know Jesus Christ is your personal savior? If you were to die right now, are you absolutely certain that you'd go straight to heaven? If you would like to receive Jesus, I want to help you to do that right now.

Would you pray a prayer like this in your heart? Dear God, I'm a sinner. And my sins deserve judgment. But Lord, I want to be saved. I need to be forgiven. Lord Jesus, I want you to be my Lord and my savior.

Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. Cleanse me. Save me, Lord Jesus. Would you pray that prayer? Cleanse me and save me, Lord Jesus.

Pray it and mean it. Save me, Lord Jesus. If you prayed that prayer, I'd like you to pray a prayer for me, Lord Jesus. If you prayed that prayer, then pray this.

Thank you for saving me. I receive it by faith. I don't ask for a feeling.

I don't look for a sign. I stand on your word. You're now my Lord and my savior and begin now to make me the person you want me to be. And Lord Jesus, because you died for me, I will live for you. In your holy name I pray. Amen. If you would like to learn more about how you can know Jesus or deepen your relationship with Him, simply click the Discover Jesus link on our website, lwf.org. For a copy of this message or additional resources, visit our online store at lwf.org or call 1-800-274-5683. Thank you.