Latest / The Immutable Word / EP063 Why Baptist? The Biblical Case for Church-State Separation - Part 9

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EP063 Why Baptist? The Biblical Case for Church-State Separation - Part 9 · The Immutable Word

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  Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there's no power but of God.
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  So every power, whether it's the church, the state, the family,
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  its ultimate primary objective soul standard is God, right? He's the primary authority.
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  And the powers that be are ordained of God.
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  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.
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  That's what he ordained.
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  And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. Now,
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  it's not damnation of hell, but it's damnation because you broke a societal law.
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  Verse 3, for rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.
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  See that? They're not supposed to be a terror to people that are good,
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  upstanding, moral citizens.
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  They're supposed to be a terror to those that break societal law.
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  Welcome to The Immutable Word. The previous episodes of our series have laid
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  a pretty firm foundation for understanding what it truly means to be a New Testament church.
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  We began by establishing first that the King James Bible is our sole and final
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  authority, which surpasses all human tradition, reason, or ecclesiastical hierarchy.
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  So from that truth, we explored the autonomy of the local church,
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  recognizing that each assembly is a self-governing body accountable directly
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  to Christ alone, rather than some earthly headquarters or papacy.
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  And then we dug into the priesthood of the believer, which guarantees every
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  born-again Christian direct,
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  unhindered access to God through Christ alone, which negates the need for any
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  human mediator or elite priest of some kind.
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  And then building on that, we examined the two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's
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  Supper, and those were identified as symbolic memorials and pictures of doctrine
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  rather than some mechanisms for obtaining grace.
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  And then we emphasized, finally, the necessity of a saved, regenerated church
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  membership, ensuring that the local body remains a pure, unified assembly of
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  those who have personally exercised faith in Christ.
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  So now, brings us to our final episode, finally, is really the pillar of our
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  study, and this really ties into a lot of the distinctives that we've been talking
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  about in the previous episodes.
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  So, what are we talking about today? We're talking about the separation of church
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  and state, and one I've been personally looking forward to just because of the
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  history that's tied around this, and it gets pretty interesting.
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  So, if the Bibles are authority, and if every believer is a priest with direct
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  accountability to God, then it follows
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  that no government or religious institution has a right to control.
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  Coerce your conscience. So today we'll wrap it up this series by looking at
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  that line in the sand that protects these freedoms that we have,
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  and we're going to go ahead and dive into the doctrine of the separation of church and state.
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  And we'll see that this isn't about excluding religious values from the public
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  square, but about protecting the church from government tyranny and ensuring
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  that sold liberty remains an unalienable God-given right.
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  So, to help navigate us through the scriptural boundaries of civil jurisdiction
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  and the historical fight for religious freedom, I'm going to turn it over to our esteemed Dr.
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  Robert Gamis. How are you doing, man?
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  Pretty good. Do you want to say that three times fast? No, I don't.
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  I was already struggling.
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  Yeah. Man, I tell you what, it's going to be nice when, you know, we could just talk.
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  You know, there's a lot of stuff we want to stay on point, you know what I mean,
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  as far as like the outlines and things that we cover. But, you know, anyway.
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  We put guardrails. Yeah, go ahead. We put guardrails on this for a reason.
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  You know, we have to protect ourselves from ourselves.
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  So that's why we have to do it. True, true. Necessary evil.
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  But no, I mean, this is, you know, this is, you know, kind of wrapping the proverbial
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  bow on the Baptist distinctives, right? We talked about...
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  And again, we say Baptist distinctives because historically and politically,
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  you know, and as far as, you know, personal conviction, we're Baptists.
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  However, that does not mean, and I want to stress, that the Baptist church is the only true church.
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  That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is these distinctions that we're
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  talking about, Bible, soul authority, autonomy of the church, priest of the believer.
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  Two ordinances, individual, soul liberty, you know, saved, regenerated church
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  membership, two offices, and now separation church and state,
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  that these are patterns that exist in Scripture.
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  If you deductively study it, you're going to come away to the conclusion that
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  the New Testament church must possess most, if not all, of these distinctions.
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  This is what makes them legitimate New Testament churches. Now, when people ask,
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  You know, Brother Robert, Brother Allen, why are there so many denominations?
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  And, you know, there's a lot of nuances to that that we can answer,
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  like, for example, the hermeneutic, like rightly dividing and so forth and so on.
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  But when it boils down to, how do I know I'm in a good Bible-believing church
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  that is following after the New Testament pattern of the, you know,
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  of an autonomous local church?
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  How do I know? while these distinctions, that's what it boils down to, right?
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  Do they make the Bible their final authority or do they run to the Greek? Do they run to academia?
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  Do they run to scholarship? Do they run to commentaries? Does your pastor answer
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  from whatever other authority, his alma mater, maybe the school he went to?
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  So that's the question. Are you following the Bible? Are Are you following a
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  personal agenda, tradition, philosophy?
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  I mean, there's a number of things you can look at, but at the end of the day,
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  if you don't start with the Bible, you're going to get all the other distinctions wrong, right? Yeah.
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  It's like what you've been saying. Yeah, it's just like what you've been saying.
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  Like everything, all the distinctives sit on that foundation of the Bible as a sole authority.
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  Right. Because, I mean, if I said, you know, oh, well, the church has got to be autonomous.
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  And you were to say, well, Robert, by what standard?
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  Well, you know, because we look at traditionally and we look at historical narratives
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  and we see what the church fathers said and we see the structure that was generally accepted.
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  You know what I mean? I mean, what am I appealing to?
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  I'm appealing to, you know, bad theology and it's all unbiblical.
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  I'm not basing it off of what scripture says. Yeah.
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  But if we say the Bible is our final authority, then we have to establish what
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  we believe about the autonomy of the church, the priesthood, the believer,
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  you know, separation of church and state, two offices, two ordinances,
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  all that stuff must be grounded and rooted in Scripture.
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  That's why each one of these, we provided, you know, a number of arguments for
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  each distinction, okay?
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  Now, this last distinction, which is separation of church and state,
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  that's the last S. So, if you were to say Baptists, plural, that last S is going
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  to be, you know, the eighth distinction.
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  I think that's what, yeah, five, seven distinctions, eighth one,
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  yeah. I just, I always have to remember to count. I'm always messing myself
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  up because we did an introduction.
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  But anyway, but that's, you know, that last eighth distinction,
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  separation of church and state—,
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  It is a biblically-based argument, and we'll look at that, but what's important
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  to understand is that it's like a sandwich.
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  We're grounded on the foundation of the Bible, so all the other distinctions are built on that.
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  Then the final distinction, the separation of church and state,
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  is the one that protects, in a civil society, that's the one that protects the
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  church from the civil government.
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  And so, you know, one of the things that, I don't know, I can't remember if
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  I mentioned it on any of the other episodes, but if you have the church,
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  the family is the core root unit.
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  That's the first, you know, established order that God created was the family.
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  You had Adam and Eve, right?
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  But you didn't have a government and you didn't have a church yet.
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  But later on, the government was established after the Noahic covenant.
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  So after the flood, Instead, that's when God instituted the right of a government
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  to take another man's life, if he did anything evil, right?
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  If he takes another man's life, so forth and so on, now the government can step
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  in and has authority to take that man's life.
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  That was, you know, we call it the dispensation of government, for example.
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  So what happens is the government steps in, but the government does not replace the family.
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  The family is still the same core unit and the first established order that
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  God created. is the family.
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  And then later on, obviously, you had, after the nation of Israel,
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  you had the establishment of the church. So, you have the church as the other core.
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  You had the state or the government, and then you had the church as another,
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  you know, divine order that God created.
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  So, you have three essential circles in the Bible. You have the family unit,
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  you have government, and you have the church, okay?
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  And this is what you'll find true in any society. It doesn't matter whether
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  you're in America, you're overseas, no matter where you go, if the church controls
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  the family, it becomes a cult.
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  If the state controls the family, it's Marxism. It's communism.
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  If the state controls the church, then obviously that's also communism.
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  But if you have the church controlling the state, now you have a theocracy. That's Islam.
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  See how that works? So that's why it's important to understand why the doctrine
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  of the separation of church and state is so important.
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  Because historically, our Anabaptist forefathers knew that when the government
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  steps in and starts to dictate what you have to believe about God, religion,
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  how you exercise your faith, it's becoming a tyranny and it's overstepping its God-given powers.
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  So what we believe as Baptists that our rights, our rights of life,
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  liberty, pursuit of happiness, all that stuff, liberty of conscience,
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  what we believe about the Bible,
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  what we believe about other religions in light of the Bible,
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  we believe that those things are given to us as a human right.
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  It's not a government right.
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  The government did not give us these rights, okay?
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  Because if the government gave us these rights, the government has the right to take it away.
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  So, that's why when you study Baptist history, you'll find that many of our
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  Baptist brethren were beaten, they were mocked, they were jailed, they were fined.
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  Some of them were killed because they would not submit to the state.
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  And we'll look at a couple examples of that. So the doctrine of church and state,
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  separation of church and state, is simply this, that God ordained basically
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  a line of demarcation between the state and the church,
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  civil governments and the church.
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  And this line must never be crossed by either.
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  The Baptists have always believed that the church should never control the state
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  and the state should never control the church.
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  And that's why whenever we start looking at some of the examples of our Baptist
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  brethren and forefathers that have fought for this right, it's rooted and grounded
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  in this particular doctrine.
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  And so, where it starts at, if you think about it scripturally,
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  where it starts at is in where Jesus Christ in Matthew 22, verse 21.
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  What's interesting is this is where God draws a line. They come to Jesus and
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  they ask him, they say, hey, you know, they come to his disciples,
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  come to him, say, master, they want us to pay the taxes.
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  And Jesus says, hey, you know, why don't you go bring me a coin?
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  And they said, do we obey Caesar or do we obey God?
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  And this is what he says. He goes, render therefore, he says first,
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  he says on the coin, he goes, whose image and superscription is on this coin? And they go, oh, Caesar.
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  And this is how he responded. He goes, render therefore unto Caesar the things
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  which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.
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  And that's it. I mean, that statement alone establishes the entire doctrine
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  of separation between church and state.
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  Because what Jesus just admitted there in that passage, he said,
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  you give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
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  So if Caesar's, if Caesar requires taxes because you want better roads and you
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  want, you know, police force and you want a fire department and,
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  you know, things like that, then you render under Caesar the things that are
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  Caesar's. That's where you pay the tax.
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  But if you owe and have an obligation to God, you never give what's God's to Caesar's.
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  You don't cross the line.
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  And of course, what belongs to God is the conscience of man.
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  That's liberty of conscience. We talked about that.
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  And you're describing practically distinguishing between what belongs to Caesar,
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  the state, and what belongs to God.
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  So I find and observed, and I know you have too, where there are people in our
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  circles like, I'm not going to pay taxes and pay stuff to the government.
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  It's like, well, I mean, I'm violating scripture.
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  And the question is, does that belong to Caesar or does it belong to God?
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  That's what you have to ask yourself, right? But the point is,
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  is in Matthew 22, 21, Jesus Christ draws the line. That's the biggest piece.
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  So, you know, again, you know, God created civil government.
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  There's a reason why civil government exists. We'll get that to that in just a second.
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  But I just want people to kind of like digest this thought that Jesus basically
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  said, look, your individual worship, because remember Jesus said in John 4, 24,
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  he says that they that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth.
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  Worship belongs to God. Worship doesn't belong to Caesar.
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  So again, this is where that distortion happens. Once you blur that line between
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  the church and the state, which many of our Protestant brethren do, by the way,
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  especially people that reject the distinction between Israel and the church,
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  and they think that they're the same, they start to adopt the Old Testament
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  covenants that belong to Israel, and they try to make a theocratic society.
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  They basically try to make a Christian Islam, that the state is now Christian,
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  and if you're a Muslim, for example, they can drive you out of the country.
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  Is this where our Christian nationalism is? That's exactly where it comes from.
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  They blur the lines between this separation of church and state.
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  Many of them will argue for it, but it's a weird, distorted argument because
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  they'll say, you know, hey, you know, there's a separation between church and state.
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  I can run for government despite whatever my religious beliefs are, which is true.
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  But then one of the, David Barton, he wrote a series of books and he does a
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  great job in talking about the government and the God given rights we have.
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  But he wrote a book and what he did is he was talking about how this,
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  you know, our original 13 colonies were very religious.
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  You couldn't run for state office without an open confession to believing in
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  Christ. You could not be a mayor.
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  You couldn't be a governor, you couldn't be a police officer without some verbal
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  confession that you believe in the death, burial, and resurrection.
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  Now, he looked at it as a good thing.
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  And this is where you get the idea where people go, oh, we were a Christian
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  nation, we were a Christian nation. No, we were never a Christian nation.
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  There's no such thing as a Christian nation. The only thing that should be distinctly
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  Christian in this age is the church, not the state.
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  So that's why it's important to understand this simple, and this is,
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  by the way, a truncated syllogism. It's an anthem meme.
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  He's arguing, he says, render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,
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  and unto God the things that are God's.
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  The unstated premise is that God controls the atmosphere and the sphere of worship
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  and the conscience of man. That's the unstated premise here.
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  So, Jesus Christ is basically, again, he's drawn a line in the sand.
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  He goes, listen, your worship belongs to God. It never belongs to Caesar.
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  And the things that you give Caesar are, those are civil, those are political,
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  They're tied to, you know, a physical kingdom, not a spiritual kingdom.
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  So there's a distinction between the two.
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  So he draws that line in the sand. And if you look at the sphere of the state,
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  Paul outlines that in Romans chapter 13.
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  You read verses 1 through 7. He starts talking about that, you know,
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  he that is a minister of God holds the sword, but he doesn't bear the sword in vain.
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  And he says that a government, you know, he says that it's supposed to,
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  he goes, that civil servant.
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  Holds that sword. Why? So that he can punish the evil and the wicked.
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  So the whole purpose of the state is to punish moral wrong, civil moral wrongs.
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  So the idea is the state is supposed to protect me from my neighbor, okay?
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  From my neighbor coming and trying to harm me and protects my neighbor from
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  me trying to go and harm him.
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  So the civil government, its legitimate power, you know, is restricted to enforcing
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  civil duties and punishing over acts that cause injury to, or,
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  you know, disrupt the peace or disrupt the neighborhood or your neighbor.
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  So again, Romans 13 verses 1 through 7 outlines the state's jurisdiction,
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  recognizing its authority to wield the sword for civil justice, not spiritual matters.
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  I remember one brother who said one time that the state or the minister that's
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  part, you know, like the police officer, the judge, the prison,
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  you know, authority and things like that,
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  the punitive government where they would punish you for whatever act,
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  that they usually are ministers that will punish, you know, you after you sin.
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  And then the religious minister, the pastor or, you know, anybody that's in
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  leadership in the church function, you know, they are a minister of God to keep you from sinning.
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  So the idea is that the religious minister keeps you from sinning or tries to
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  attempt to keep you from sinning.
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  And then the civil minister is there to punish you after you sin.
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  And that's the balance that God created between the two. It's kind of an interesting dichotomy. Yeah.
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  I've always actually often wondered about the naming in some of the civil governments.
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  Not here, but in the UK, you'll find you have the ministry of such and such.
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  And often think about the naming conventions behind that.
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  And I suppose those are the connections.
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  Yeah, it's directly, if you look at it, it's directly from Romans 13.
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  Like, say, for example, verse 1 says, Let every soul be subject unto the higher
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  powers, for there's no power but of God.
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  So every power, whether it's the church, the state, the family,
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  its ultimate primary objective soul standard is God, right? He's the primary authority.
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  And the powers that be are ordained of God.
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  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.
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  That's what he ordained.
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  And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. Now,
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  it's not damnation of hell, but it's damnation because you broke a societal law.
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  So he says, verse 3, for rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.
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  See that? They're not supposed to be a terror to people that are good,
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  upstanding, moral citizens.
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  But there's supposed to be a terror to those that break societal law.
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  And he says this, he goes, For will thou then not be afraid of the power?
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  What power? The civil power they have.
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  He says, do that which is good, and thou shalt receive praise of the same.
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  For he is a minister of God, the civil servant, not the pastor.
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  The governor, the police officer, the sheriff, the constable.
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  He is a minister of God to thee for good.
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  But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain.
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  For he is the minister of God to do what?
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  A revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
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  Wherefore, ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience
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  sake, because you're supposed to obey God.
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  And if God says you follow a given authority, and that authority is doing what
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  it's supposed to do and not crossing that line, that line of demarcation.
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  So if the government tells you, hey, you need to drive 55 in this area,
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  and you drive over 55, you're breaking the law.
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  Therefore, not only are you breaking a civil law, you're also breaking the ordinance of God.
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  Isn't that something? Yep. So that's why, you know, even though Baptists are
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  known for separation of church and state, Baptists were law-abiding citizens.
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  That's the demand of the Christian. So that's what I'm saying is that whenever,
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  when Jesus Christ drew that line in the sand, he says, render therefore unto
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  Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
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  If Caesar requires you to pay, you know, a state tax and a real estate tax and
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  property tax and a school tax and a tax on your loaf of bread and a tax on oil
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  and, you know what I mean?
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  If that's what the government requires, you pay that period.
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  But if the state comes in and says, you know what, we need to start collecting
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  taxes, the Jizya tax for the Islamic, you know, brotherhood.
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  Well, that's a different situation altogether. Now you're telling,
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  you're saying, basically the state is now stepping into the sphere of the church, the conscience.
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  And that is what our Baptist brethren fought against.
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  Okay? So the exception is, what's the exception of the rule?
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  You know, we're supposed to obey these authorities that God has set in place.
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  Otherwise, we're violating by conscience the ordinance of God.
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  Right? If I disobey my civil rulers?
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  I mean, that's why Baptists should be legal upstanding citizens.
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  That means if we see somebody breaking the law, we're supposed to report it.
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  And if we're brought to court and we're supposed to swear as a witness and eyewitness
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  to a crime, we're supposed to be honest in the sight of God because we're supposed
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  to be aiding and abetting justice within the legal system.
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  But what's the exception? Do I follow the, you know, do I follow the government
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  no matter what, because it's ordained of God?
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  You know, because God's authority supersedes even human government,
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  that means civil laws that force believers to violate clear biblical commands must be resisted.
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  Now, peacefully, it doesn't mean we rise up in arms against our government,
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  but we have to operate within the laws that our government, like we have a right to petition it.
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  You know, if a police officer stops me from preaching on the street and says, he's going to arrest me.
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  I have a right to, to sue that municipality and jurisdiction.
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  I have a right to bring it because they're violating the civil law that we have
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  in place, which is called the first amendment freedom of speech.
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  So the exception to doing what, you know, obeying the laws that be and the powers
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  that be is, conscience of man, because we have to, by our conscience, obey God.
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  So in Acts 5, verse 29, they tried to prohibit the apostles from preaching.
• 24:23
  They said, hey, we don't want you preaching no more in this name of Jesus.
• 24:26
  And they basically said, we ought to obey God rather than men. That's the exception.
• 24:32
  So if the state is trying to force you to do something where it violates that demarcation,
• 24:38
  that line of demarcation that Christ set and Caesar is trying to force you to
• 24:43
  take what was supposed to be God's and give it to Caesar, then you resist.
• 24:49
  If that means you got to go to jail, you go to jail. I mean,
• 24:52
  there's going to come a day, you know, there may come a day where if I'm preaching
• 24:55
  on the street and the police officer says, look, if you keep preaching on the
• 24:58
  street, I'm going to arrest you.
• 24:59
  And I've exhausted all my means to petition and sue the government and try to,
• 25:04
  you know, obtain freedom to do it. And they say, look, we're going to go ahead.
• 25:08
  If you go out there and preach again on the street and you preach in the name
• 25:11
  of Jesus Christ, because you're offending everybody, we're going to arrest you.
• 25:14
  Then guess what? I'm going to have to go out on the street and I'm going to have to preach.
• 25:17
  So that's what our Baptist forefathers did.
• 25:20
  That's what got them into so much trouble because they knew that this line was
• 25:24
  being crossed and the state had no right to dictate what a man should believe
• 25:30
  according to his conscience.
• 25:32
  So not only, you know, so you had the line of demarcation that Christ set, Matthew 22, 21.
• 25:38
  Then we see what the responsibility of the state is, Romans 13,
• 25:42
  1-7, and it's supposed to enforce civil laws.
• 25:46
  It's supposed to enforce the moral law in a society. That's what it's there for.
• 25:50
  It's not supposed to enforce religious conscious worship. And the exception
• 25:56
  to following the state is when it violates my conscience and violates my ability
• 26:02
  to give to God the things that are God's.
• 26:06
  But another reason why this is important to understand the separation of church
• 26:09
  and state is that as a whole, this doctrine rejects replacement theology or
• 26:15
  supersessionism, right?
• 26:17
  That marriage of the state, it's a theological error because they're blending
• 26:21
  the kingdom of heaven with the kingdom of God.
• 26:23
  Now, when you look in scripture, you look at the kingdom of heaven,
• 26:26
  Matthew, I think it's Matthew chapter 10.
• 26:28
  Let me pull it up real quick just for making sure I'm on the right page.
• 26:33
  So Matthew 10, so Matthew 11, I'm sorry, not 10, 11, 12, the Bible says this,
• 26:38
  and from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven...
• 26:45
  The kingdom of heaven suffer the violence and the violent take it by force.
• 26:49
  So guess what you compare that with? So in one passage, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence.
• 26:57
  So people go, oh, it's a spiritual kingdom. Well, how does the spiritual kingdom
• 27:01
  suffer violence and the violent take that spiritual kingdom by force?
• 27:05
  How's that possible? It can't be.
• 27:08
  It's got to be a physical. Well, what's the contrast? Well, Romans chapter 16,
• 27:12
  the Bible tells us in Romans chapter 16, let me just pull it up,
• 27:16
  is the kingdom of God. It's the contrast, is the kingdom of God.
• 27:20
  And it is Romans 14.
• 27:23
  Man, I don't know why I'm getting these chapters off. Romans 14, 17.
• 27:27
  So if you take that Matthew 11, verse 12, where the kingdom of heaven suffers
• 27:31
  violence, Romans 14, 17 says this, for the kingdom of God.
• 27:36
  Well, Brother Gammus, you know, the kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven are
• 27:39
  the same thing. Well, they're not even spelt the same, right?
• 27:42
  Are you a pantheist? You think God is heaven? No, they're two different things.
• 27:46
  Heaven is the physical creation. God is the creator.
• 27:50
  He's separate from heaven. You can't conflate the two. So the kingdom of heaven suffers violence.
• 27:57
  But in Romans 14, 17, for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink,
• 28:01
  not carnal, it's not physical, but righteousness and peace and joy and the Holy Ghost.
• 28:08
  So if you took those two verses and you were to put them side by side,
• 28:12
  you cannot logically come to the conclusion they're the same kingdom. They're not.
• 28:18
  Kingdom of heaven is not the kingdom of God. Two different things.
• 28:22
  So the problem with violating the doctrine of separation of church and state
• 28:27
  is when you conflate the church with the state,
• 28:32
  then what you are doing is you're marrying the kingdom of heaven with the kingdom
• 28:37
  of God, and you're making them the same thing. You know who does that?
• 28:40
  The Roman Catholic Church. church the roman catholic church
• 28:43
  believes its job is to spread the
• 28:46
  kingdom of god throughout all of the earth and
• 28:50
  if that means taking over governments if that means shedding blood with the
• 28:54
  sword like the crusades if that means fighting for the kingdom of god physically
• 28:59
  then that's exactly what they're going to do it's a physical theocracy and what
• 29:05
  they do is they take the old Testament promises where,
• 29:07
  you know, God tells, you know, the Jews,
• 29:10
  hey, I want you to go into the land of Canaan. I want you to destroy your enemies.
• 29:13
  I want you to, you know, kill man, woman, and sword. I want you to kill their
• 29:17
  animals. I want you to take, you know, spoils of war.
• 29:21
  The Roman Catholic Church reads that and say, see, that's within the church's jurisdiction.
• 29:25
  The church has a right to do all that. That's why we always say,
• 29:28
  you know, kingdom builders are bloody killers, because that's exactly what they are.
• 29:34
  So, then, you know, and again, we kind of already talked about the two kingdoms, but again,
• 29:39
  that boundary between the kingdom of heaven, which would be the civil government,
• 29:44
  in this case, in the New Testament, you don't have the nation of Israel as far
• 29:48
  as being a dominant ruling body anymore.
• 29:52
  They basically lost their government and their right to the kingdom of David and all that stuff.
• 29:58
  All of that stuff went out the window until Christ returns.
• 30:02
  So now the new kingdom of heaven is going to
• 30:05
  be the kingdom of caesar and we see that in luke 4 which
• 30:08
  is a you know a very interesting exchange between jesus christ and
• 30:11
  the devil you remember when he's being he's being tempted right and the devil
• 30:16
  shows him all the kingdoms of the earth right and he says look these are all
• 30:19
  my kingdoms i can give them to whosoever i will just bow down and worship me
• 30:23
  and jesus never corrected him now he never said oh no no no no you know devil
• 30:27
  you got it wrong. This is my kingdom. I'm the king.
• 30:30
  Jesus Christ is king, which is what all of our Protestant brethren say.
• 30:34
  Christ is king. Christ is king. Why? Because they're trying to build a kingdom here on earth.
• 30:39
  That's not what we're supposed to be doing as far as the church is concerned.
• 30:42
  We're supposed to be propagating a spiritual message, the gospel.
• 30:46
  We're supposed to be building a spiritual kingdom.
• 30:48
  And the only physical form that that kingdom would ever, you know,
• 30:52
  manifest in is a local church. Never a state government.
• 30:56
  But Jesus Christ is tempted by the
• 30:59
  devil. The devil shows him all these kingdoms. He said, these are mine.
• 31:01
  Well, you know what Paul does? Paul corroborates that in 2 Corinthians 4.4.
• 31:05
  He says, if our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are blind,
• 31:10
  in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which obey not the gospel.
• 31:17
  So that the God of this world is not Jesus Christ.
• 31:21
  It's a lowercase g in 2 Corinthians 4.4. Now, there's some of our brethren that
• 31:26
  like to correct the King James Bible, like James White, for example,
• 31:29
  he argues that that's actually a mistranslation and that the God of this world
• 31:34
  in 2 Corinthians 4.4 is actually God,
• 31:38
  Jehovah God, Jesus Christ.
• 31:41
  And you know why he does that? Because he's also a Calvinist,
• 31:44
  because God intentionally blinds those that are not part of the elect.
• 31:49
  This is how you just completely destroy your own theology.
• 31:54
  Just become a Calvinist and just throw out the King James Bible.
• 31:57
  That's the easiest way to get involved in false doctrine. But that's exactly what happens.
• 32:02
  James White, you know, he's a moron, basically, because he doesn't know how to read his Bible.
• 32:06
  Because the Bible doesn't fit his theology, he changes the Bible. So, my point is this.
• 32:11
  The kingdom of heaven today is actually controlled by the God of this world, Satan.
• 32:19
  So, that means these kingdoms of the earth and stuff, they're going to tend
• 32:23
  towards the spirit of Antichrist. And that's exactly what happens.
• 32:28
  So again, we're not trying to say that we should not have any civil government.
• 32:34
  We do, as Baptists, believe in a civil government, but we also believe in the
• 32:39
  church, and that's the realm of responsibility and sphere of authority that belongs to God.
• 32:46
  And the state should have no part in trying to violate that demarcation.
• 32:51
  Anyway, does that make sense?
• 32:54
  Yeah, there's a lot there, but yeah, that does make a lot of sense.
• 32:57
  And if you can get this right, this will help clear up some confusion between the two.
• 33:01
  This is obviously not in scope for discussion today, the kingdom of heaven versus
• 33:07
  the kingdom of God, but that's probably something we ought to cover at some
• 33:09
  point. And, you know, there's a lot there to cover, especially when we,
• 33:14
  you know, get into dispensations and things like that.
• 33:16
  But what's the antithesis to the doctrine of church and state?
• 33:22
  And that's the magisterial church.
• 33:23
  And when we say the magisterial versus ministerial, ministerial church is a servant church.
• 33:30
  Magisterial church is a ruling church. That's the difference.
• 33:34
  So historically, the most severe violation of the doctrine of church and state
• 33:39
  has always been part of and, you know, integrated into the Roman Catholic Church tradition.
• 33:45
  The Roman Catholic Church has always utilized some form of state power to enforce
• 33:53
  religious conformity, you know, execute dissenters and collect compulsory ecclesiastical taxes.
• 34:00
  They've done this for at least 1,500 years.
• 34:03
  And surprisingly enough, Muslims do the same exact thing.
• 34:07
  So, well, how did this all start? Well, historically, we would go back to the
• 34:12
  Roman Emperor Constantine.
• 34:14
  And he basically married the church and the state, and he created kind of a
• 34:20
  political religious hierarchy that would end up dominating Western civilization
• 34:24
  for over a thousand years.
• 34:26
  So it started in that fourth century where, and Constantine made a false profession of faith.
• 34:32
  What happened was, I think it was at the bridge of Milan, he saw a vision of
• 34:36
  the cross and he thought, or in his mind, he believed that,
• 34:42
  God told him to conquer in this sign.
• 34:46
  So physically conquer your enemies, destroy your political enemies in,
• 34:52
  you know, under this sign of the cross.
• 34:54
  So he believed, so what he ended up doing, because a lot of the known Christians
• 34:58
  at the time, you know, they were being persecuted by the Roman,
• 35:02
  you know, the Roman government.
• 35:03
  So the Roman emperor, so the Roman empire, you know, persecuted these believers.
• 35:08
  And what happened when Constantine made, and it was a deathbed confession, by the way.
• 35:13
  He confessed that he was now a Christian. He was baptized.
• 35:16
  It had nothing to do with believing in Christ. He just saw a sign of the cross
• 35:20
  that told him to kill his enemies in that sign.
• 35:23
  And so he therefore became a Christian. And guess what he did?
• 35:26
  He made Christianity the legal religion in Rome.
• 35:30
  So he married the church and state. And there's a doctrine, it's called the two swords doctrine.
• 35:37
  Historically, the church taught that both spiritual and temporal power come
• 35:42
  from God, but the state, the temporal sword, should work in harmony with the
• 35:47
  church, the spiritual sword.
• 35:49
  Often the state would support the church's mission, and that was the idea.
• 35:54
  So it's a two-swords doctrine.
• 35:56
  So the church believes, whenever it was executing unbelievers,
• 36:01
  as far as heresy is concerned, that they were exercising state-given church power.
• 36:09
  That's how they would murder people. You know, when you look at the Inquisition,
• 36:12
  they thought they were doing a work for God.
• 36:15
  And even Jesus Christ says, man, one day people are going to kill you and they
• 36:19
  think they're doing God a service.
• 36:22
  You know, so it's prophetic. But here's a couple quotes. So Pope Leo the 18th, I'm sorry, the 8th.
• 36:29
  I can't read Roman New Zealand. It's the 13th, my bad.
• 36:32
  Pope Leo the 13th, in a writing called the Immortal Dei, or Immortal God,
• 36:40
  he emphasized that the states must recognize the Catholic faith.
• 36:46
  And states, this means every state in the world. emphasized that states must
• 36:51
  recognize the Catholic faith as the state religion and that rulers must protect the church.
• 36:58
  He taught, this is what he said, quote, it is then right to look on religion
• 37:03
  as belonging to a higher order.
• 37:06
  In the state, the Catholic religion should be preserved in all its integrity.
• 37:13
  So he basically was saying it is the responsibility of the state to support
• 37:19
  the Catholic religion, not just the church in general, or to protect conscientious belief,
• 37:26
  but specifically Catholic doctrine.
• 37:29
  So, everything the Catholic church believed, and this was in 1885,
• 37:33
  so that means the worship of Mary, the worship of saints,
• 37:36
  the belief in purgatory, the belief in baptismal regeneration,
• 37:40
  all those false doctrines had to be reinforced by the state.
• 37:47
  And this is why our Baptist brethren bled and were persecuted and were arrested
• 37:53
  and were fined and were driven out of their homes because of this type of belief,
• 37:58
  that the marriage of the church and state was a thing that God ordained.
• 38:04
  Pope Pius IX, in his syllabus of errors in 1864, so right before the Civil War,
• 38:10
  he officially condemned the idea, he condemned this idea that the church ought
• 38:14
  to be separated from the state and the state from the church.
• 38:19
  So, according to Pope Pius IX, it was a damnable heresy to believe that there
• 38:25
  should be any separation of church and state. So, you know what I would do?
• 38:29
  Remind our listeners, go back to Matthew chapter 22. What did Jesus Christ say?
• 38:34
  Render therefore the things, you know, unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's
• 38:38
  and the things that are God unto God.
• 38:41
  Jesus never said, and he never said, render therefore the things unto Caesar
• 38:47
  and God or God and Caesar.
• 38:49
  There was a two in there and it's separated by a semicolon that Jesus Christ basically said,
• 38:55
  render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's separate independent
• 38:59
  thought and unto God, the things that are God's two lines of demarcation.
• 39:06
  That's what Jesus Christ made.
• 39:08
  So, the Pope basically violated that and said, if you believe that to be true,
• 39:12
  you've been condemned by the Catholic Church.
• 39:16
  That means the Catholic Church just condemned Paul, just condemned Peter,
• 39:20
  James, John, and Jesus Christ.
• 39:23
  So, the Roman Catholic doctrine historically dictated the Pope held supreme
• 39:27
  authority over all earthly powers.
• 39:29
  So, what's interesting about this, okay, is,
• 39:33
  What's interesting is that the reason why we have a King James Bible today is
• 39:37
  because of the providential timeline that occurred.
• 39:39
  The Kingdom of England under Henry VIII was controlled by the Roman Catholic Church.
• 39:47
  Well, guess what? So was the King of Spain.
• 39:50
  The King of Spain was under Roman Catholic control.
• 39:54
  But I think it was, I want to say King Henry VIII's wife was the niece.
• 40:01
  She was related to the King of Spain or the Queen of Spain. I can't remember the two, one of the two.
• 40:06
  And guess what happened? He wanted to divorce her and the Roman Catholic Church
• 40:10
  wouldn't allow a divorce.
• 40:12
  And of course, if he divorced the King of Spain's niece, then that would create a political divide.
• 40:19
  And so King Henry VIII went to the Pope and said, hey, I want you to issue a
• 40:24
  divorce. And they said, we can't do that.
• 40:27
  So you know what Henry VIII did? Said, fine, then I'll start my own church.
• 40:30
  And that's where the Church of England was born.
• 40:32
  And of course, what eventually happened is it started a divide between the Protestants
• 40:38
  and the Church of England and
• 40:40
  established a kingdom of England that was against the kingdom of Spain.
• 40:45
  Spain had the Spanish Armada and it could decimate the English Armada if it wanted to.
• 40:50
  But a series of providential events started happening and God started planting,
• 40:55
  you know, the seed in the right soil. he started making the soil the right kind
• 40:59
  of seed for the King James Bible to eventually come to pass.
• 41:03
  Because you had William Tyndale came out of it, you know, King Henry VIII said,
• 41:06
  well, you know what, we're not going to use a Catholic Bible anymore.
• 41:09
  We're going to come up with our own Bible, you know.
• 41:11
  And anyway, so an English Bible started being produced, like Tyndale's Bible,
• 41:16
  Matthew Henry's Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and so forth and so
• 41:20
  on, in contrast to the Latin Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.
• 41:25
  And of course, during the time of Henry VIII, leading all the way up to King
• 41:30
  James through the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the English language was being perfected.
• 41:36
  So, anyway, it's, you know, it's a fascinating history. Maybe one day we'll
• 41:39
  go through the history of the development of the King James Bible.
• 41:42
  But the point being here is that the Roman Catholic Church held power over all
• 41:46
  these earthly powers up until that point.
• 41:49
  And so when that divide started happening, God slowly started bringing in,
• 41:53
  you know, this situation where we would see the American Revolution,
• 41:58
  the Protestant Reformation, and things like that.
• 42:00
  Now, we're not Protestants, but as a result of all that, our Baptist brethren
• 42:05
  would finally start to see some relief in the form of, you know,
• 42:09
  religious liberty and things like that.
• 42:11
  And that wouldn't come to pass completely until, you know, the First Amendment was established.
• 42:17
  So the problem is that, okay, the Roman Catholic Church, we know they're the enemy.
• 42:22
  Well, you know, we keep mentioning that the Protestants, and what were Protestants?
• 42:26
  The Protestants were enemies of the Baptists as well.
• 42:29
  The Protestants themselves, for example, would say, okay, well,
• 42:34
  you know, the duty, like, for example, here's John Calvin in Geneva in Switzerland.
• 42:38
  So he was a Calvin, obviously he's the one that developed Calvinism,
• 42:41
  but he wrote the Institute for Christian Religion. That's what a lot of Calvinists
• 42:45
  follow after. And this is what he said.
• 42:47
  Now, remember, we believe in separation of church and state, right?
• 42:50
  We don't believe that the church has any control over the state and over the church.
• 42:55
  This is what John Calvin said in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
• 42:59
  The duty of magistrates, okay?
• 43:02
  So magistrates are civil officers. Those are judges.
• 43:06
  Those are senators. Those are police officers. Those are sheriffs, right?
• 43:11
  The duty of magistrates is to cherish and protect the outward worship of God.
• 43:17
  Okay, great. That sounds great, right?
• 43:20
  But that's not where they stop to defend sound
• 43:25
  doctrine wait a minute that's not
• 43:29
  the job of the state the state's job is not to defend
• 43:32
  sound doctrine titus in the book of titus paul tells titus that hey the way
• 43:37
  you convince the gainsayers is through sound doctrine that's the job of the
• 43:42
  church that's the job of the individual christian that's the job of the pastor
• 43:47
  and the teacher is to to defend in the faith.
• 43:51
  Conscientiously, not through the sword.
• 43:55
  But John Calvin said, nope, that's the duty of the magistrates.
• 43:58
  The duty of the civil government is to defend sound doctrine and to promote
• 44:03
  general peace and tranquility. Here's a question.
• 44:06
  What if you defied their version of sound doctrine?
• 44:11
  What if you weren't a Calvinist? What if you rejected it?
• 44:15
  Well, according to the Institute's Christian Religion, it's a responsibility
• 44:18
  of the magistrates to defend sound doctrine.
• 44:21
  That sounds an awful lot like punitive measures being taken if you reject their version, right?
• 44:29
  Guess what? It happened. The consistory, it was a body of pastors and elders
• 44:35
  that oversaw morals and reported offenders for punishment, including execution,
• 44:42
  under Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland.
• 44:45
  And his friend, Michael Servetus, actually rejected his tenets of Calvinism,
• 44:53
  and they were supposed to have an open debate.
• 44:56
  John Calvin sentenced his friend, Michael Servetus, to death and killed him
• 45:01
  because he didn't believe what he believed.
• 45:05
  And because John Calvin was in charge of Geneva, he was often called the Protestant
• 45:10
  Pope, he controlled the government.
• 45:13
  And they believed, the Protestants believed it was the government's job to enforce
• 45:17
  religious doctrine, just like the Roman Catholic Church.
• 45:21
  Now, Protestants protested. They were part of the Catholic Church and broke away from it.
• 45:27
  So then you had Haldrich Zwingli in Zurich, and he advocated for a near complete
• 45:34
  merger of church and city government, the Christian state.
• 45:37
  He believed that the church was the state in its spiritual aspect and that the
• 45:43
  state was the church in its external aspect. So he didn't see any difference
• 45:47
  between the state and the church. As far as he was concerned, they're one in the same.
• 45:52
  So, for example, he convinced the Zurich Council to declare the city a Christian state.
• 46:01
  Sound familiar? Christian, oh, we were a Christian government.
• 46:05
  We're a Christian country. No, we're not. We've never been a Christian country.
• 46:10
  We've never believed in a Christian government or a Christian nation.
• 46:17
  So, but he declared, so he convinced the Zurich Council, the political entity
• 46:23
  there, to declare the city as a Christian state with authority over both civil
• 46:29
  matters and church discipline.
• 46:31
  Can you imagine if your pastor, you know, said, hey, we've been checking the
• 46:36
  tithing books and we noticed you haven't tithed in the last six months.
• 46:39
  We're going to go ahead and arrest you and put you in prison for that.
• 46:43
  And auto debit back tithe. Right.
• 46:46
  Could you imagine? I mean, police officers showing up and arresting you,
• 46:50
  putting you in the back of the squad car, and then you had to stand before,
• 46:53
  you know, a judge in that county, a county judge, and a county judge, well, you know what?
• 46:58
  You violated the religious laws of this city.
• 47:01
  They're going to prison. We laugh about it now. This is what really happened.
• 47:05
  But that's exactly what happened.
• 47:07
  It's happened in this country. And so guess what? That extended into New England.
• 47:13
  So you had the New England Puritans. So like, for example, Massachusetts was
• 47:16
  horrible about this, but they were run by the Puritans.
• 47:19
  Everybody remembers the Puritans. You know, I like going on the street and when
• 47:24
  I'm preaching, people go, oh, you guys burned witches to death.
• 47:27
  I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no.
• 47:28
  You mean my Protestant brothers burned witches? We didn't. We didn't believe in that.
• 47:34
  As far as we were concerned, we don't care if you believe in the devil.
• 47:36
  You believed in Allah, you can worship whoever you wanted as a Baptist.
• 47:41
  We believe that if we wanted to try to, you know, defend the faith,
• 47:44
  we would do it using sound doctrine and arguments and biblical logic.
• 47:50
  That's what we believe. We believe in debating ideas, not in killing people
• 47:54
  over ideas. Those are our Protestant brethren.
• 47:57
  So, there was a Bible commonwealth. So, it was a covenanted society,
• 48:02
  this is what Puritans believed, where citizenship was tied to church membership
• 48:06
  and civil laws were aligned with divine law.
• 48:10
  John Winthrop, famous Puritan, he said, for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
• 48:17
  So he's talking about their civil government.
• 48:20
  So only church, so for example, strict enforcement, only church members could vote.
• 48:25
  That means if you are not a member of the Puritan church in Massachusetts,
• 48:28
  you're not allowed to vote. Think about that.
• 48:31
  We have people arguing and debating over whether or not you should have a voter
• 48:36
  ID or be able to vote with a voter ID or be a citizen of America, right?
• 48:41
  Back then, if you were not a member of the Puritan church, you couldn't vote.
• 48:46
  I mean, it's just, it blows my mind thinking about that because we've lived,
• 48:49
  you know, in 250 years of freedom and we don't understand that.
• 48:53
  But that's exactly what our Baptist brethren had to deal with.
• 48:56
  So only church members could vote. The state enforced attendance.
• 49:01
  Now think about that. You're at home on a Sunday because, you know,
• 49:05
  you feel sick or you just don't feel like going in and the police show up and
• 49:08
  arrest you for not attending church that Sunday.
• 49:11
  Your state taxes, let's just say you're running a business, okay, in Massachusetts.
• 49:17
  It's a deli. You're serving food. Your taxes for that business had to go to
• 49:23
  the salaries of the clergy of the Puritan church.
• 49:27
  It's almost ridiculous thinking about it, isn't it? I mean, just thinking about that today.
• 49:32
  Yeah, I know. It's hard to wrap your mind around that this is something that
• 49:35
  had happened and an extensive part of human history. In America,
• 49:42
  and this was early America before, pre-Constitution America.
• 49:45
  And so, historically speaking, I mean, if you think about it,
• 49:50
  the last 250 years isn't that much of a long time considering 500,000,
• 49:57
  2,000 years of history when the stuff was in play.
• 50:01
  Right. Where you had the marriage of religious institutions and government,
• 50:05
  which is really a demonic marriage.
• 50:09
  I mean, the whole thing is completely demonic. Remember in the introduction
• 50:12
  we talked about to this whole Baptist series, we were talking about when they
• 50:15
  landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620.
• 50:18
  So, nine years after the publication of the King James Bible.
• 50:22
  1620 to, what did we say, 1780-something for the Constitution?
• 50:27
  You know. 1780. 82? I can't remember the exact date. My bad.
• 50:33
  Go back and listen to the episode, yeah. But either way, here's the point.
• 50:36
  That's 160 years where there was no religious freedom in this country.
• 50:41
  That's 160 years where our Baptist brethren were being, for example,
• 50:46
  if they didn't pay the state tax to pay for the clergy's salaries of a particular
• 50:51
  church, they were arrested and fined.
• 50:54
  And if you were a Baptist, you were banned from exercising your religious liberty
• 51:00
  and freedom in that particular state. So Massachusetts, it was illegal to be a Baptist.
• 51:05
  If you tried to administer, like for example, Puritans, they all believed in
• 51:11
  baptismal regeneration, infant baptism.
• 51:14
  If you led somebody to the Lord as a Baptist in Massachusetts,
• 51:17
  and then you were to have them re-baptized in their faith, you could be arrested and fined.
• 51:22
  And that's exactly what happened. There was some men that were arrested and fined,
• 51:27
  and John Clark and some other men, they basically were holding Baptist services
• 51:33
  at one of their members' houses in their house, in their living room,
• 51:37
  and it was in the state of Massachusetts, right over the border from Rhode Island.
• 51:42
  And so the problem was that they were caught and arrested, and then somebody
• 51:47
  paid John Clark's fee, and Obadiah Holmes, he was another man,
• 51:52
  his fee wasn't paid, so he refused it. He says, I don't want somebody to pay my fee.
• 51:56
  He goes, if they're going to punish me, let them punish me. And they openly
• 52:00
  whipped him at Boston Square.
• 52:03
  The commons. Yeah, the commons. And so openly whipped a Baptist believer because
• 52:10
  he refused to be part of the Puritan church. Now think about that.
• 52:15
  I just think, you know, it's a fascinating history, but when you understand
• 52:18
  our Baptist brethren politically, what they went through, I mean,
• 52:22
  the kind of persecution, you have to understand they were very skeptical of
• 52:26
  the formation of the American Union.
• 52:28
  As far as they were concerned, they were like, oh, wait a minute,
• 52:31
  you know, we have 13 colonies and 12 tyrants, and you're going to tell us to
• 52:36
  go under one giant tyrant? That's what they looked at it that way.
• 52:40
  And that's why, you know, James Madison had to convince John Leland,
• 52:43
  because they were part of the largest voting body in Virginia.
• 52:47
  And they had, in order to get James Madison to represent the state of Virginia, he needed their votes.
• 52:53
  And John Leland, and he asked John Leland, what is it going to take?
• 52:56
  Because John Leland was a very prominent, influential Baptist in Virginia.
• 53:00
  And of course, Virginia is where some of the worst persecution and arrests and
• 53:04
  fines that our Baptist brethren went through.
• 53:07
  And James Madison was like, man, what is it going to take? How can I get the
• 53:10
  Baptist to vote me as a representative for Virginia?
• 53:13
  And he says, you need to make an amendment in the Constitution.
• 53:16
  There needs to be something that guarantees our right for freedom of speech
• 53:20
  and freedom of religion. and James Madison agreed.
• 53:24
  And remember, who wrote the Constitution? James Madison.
• 53:27
  He agreed to put in the First Amendment, which is that the state would not have
• 53:34
  the right to establish any religious body.
• 53:37
  It's separation of church and state. Why? Because that's a Baptist distinctive.
• 53:42
  That is a New Testament doctrinal distinction, that the church should never
• 53:46
  be part of the state and the state should never be part of the church.
• 53:49
  Now, our Protestant brethren didn't know that. And so I bring all that to say,
• 53:52
  the Bible says in Revelation 17, we know it's talking about the Roman Catholic Church.
• 53:56
  And he calls her the mother of harlots, plural.
• 54:02
  Well, you know what a mother has? Children.
• 54:07
  So what are these children of the harlot? Oh, it's our Protestant brethren.
• 54:13
  And they came out of the Catholic Church. Out of the Catholic Church.
• 54:15
  And they're going back in.
• 54:16
  So the historical models of Calvin, Zwingli, the Puritans, it illustrates that
• 54:22
  magisterial, not the ministerial, where the church is the servant of the believer,
• 54:28
  but the magisterial where the church is in charge of the state.
• 54:31
  And where they function as a unified compulsory partnership.
• 54:35
  And so, you know, what that led to is over 1,500.
• 54:39
  Now, from the time of Constantine all the way up to colonial America,
• 54:44
  you had 1,500 years of Baptist distinctions and persecution from Constantine
• 54:50
  to the state church systems, the Catholic and Protestants.
• 54:55
  You know, Rome admits 1,200-year heritage.
• 54:58
  1524, Cardinal Hoisys acknowledged Anabaptists. This is what he said. And this is in 1524.
• 55:05
  The reason why that's so funny is because, you know, whenever we say we're Baptists,
• 55:10
  they go, oh, you're founders, John Smith.
• 55:12
  He founded you guys in the 1600s. Well, that's a problem because here's Cardinal Hoisys,
• 55:19
  and he says in 1524, before 1600,
• 55:23
  he acknowledged that the Anabaptists tormented, they were beaten and persecuted
• 55:29
  and tormented for 1,200 years prior to the Reformation.
• 55:35
  Uh-oh, somebody doesn't have their facts right. It's like, hey man,
• 55:39
  you can have your own opinions, but you can't have your own facts.
• 55:42
  The Anabaptists have been around since the time of Christ.
• 55:47
  They just didn't go by the name man of baptists and
• 55:51
  of course you had the reformation area so the 1527 from zwingli to luther to
• 55:56
  you know to calvin like for example zwingli he drowned felix manns felix manns
• 56:04
  ended up getting re-baptized because he believed that infant baptism was unscriptural,
• 56:10
  And they drowned him. And by the way, you were talking about the Anabaptists.
• 56:15
  So that was a Catholic term for— Against baptism.
• 56:20
  In their mind, they were re-baptizers. Because if you were already baptized
• 56:23
  in the infant, why are you going to be baptized again?
• 56:26
  Yeah. So they were often called re-baptizers or Anabaptists or the root of that
• 56:31
  is anti-Baptists or anti-Baptists.
• 56:34
  Or baptized again is what it is.
• 56:36
  Yeah. And so, you know, we call it credo baptism, meaning that you had to confess belief in Christ.
• 56:42
  Well, baby can't confess. You know, we covered that in baptism, right? The ordinance.
• 56:46
  But the point is, is that these, you know, they weren't, they were,
• 56:50
  sometimes they were called Waldensians. Sometimes they were called Paulicians.
• 56:54
  You know, sometimes they were called Anabaptists. You know, there's different,
• 56:57
  the Lollards, there's all kinds of names.
• 56:59
  And if you go back into Catholic history and you were to look up all the heresies.
• 57:05
  You know, they called them heresies, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lollard
• 57:09
  heresy, the Waldenzen heresy, and so forth and so on.
• 57:12
  Those were our Anabaptist brethren that rejected the papal system and the church
• 57:18
  system and infant baptism.
• 57:21
  Those are usually the three key distinctions if you want to trace back,
• 57:25
  you know, Baptist history.
• 57:27
  Why is that? And the distinction is that they had the Bible as the sole authority,
• 57:30
  not papacy. That's right.
• 57:32
  They were the dissenters. So 1527 and to 1529, you know, leading up to the early
• 57:39
  1600s, you had the Reformation era.
• 57:42
  Protestants decreed death for Baptists at the second Deut of Spear. Okay.
• 57:46
  This is a document. They defined Protestantism, mandated death penalty for all Anabaptists.
• 57:54
  Those were Protestants. That's a Protestant declaration. That second deity of
• 57:58
  spirit is a written document that legalized the killing and the death penalty for Anabaptists.
• 58:07
  And that's not the Catholic Church. That's the Protestants.
• 58:10
  And so, like we said, you know, in Massachusetts, Virginia, and in the colonies,
• 58:14
  the Protestant states whipped, fined, and imprisoned Baptists for preaching
• 58:18
  without a state license.
• 58:19
  As a matter of fact, it was—so you had Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry,
• 58:22
  James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, they were all lawyers, right?
• 58:26
  And guess what they ended up doing? They spent a lot of their time defending
• 58:29
  these Baptists that were being persecuted by the Protestants.
• 58:34
  Matter of fact i think it i can't remember if it was the trial
• 58:37
  of if obadiah holmes or
• 58:40
  john clark was involved in this but there was three baptist preachers
• 58:43
  that were being held in court one day and patrick henry i believe was supposed
• 58:48
  to be representing them and there's a judge and here's the you know the local
• 58:52
  magistrate here's the judge here's you know all the citizens of that that city
• 58:56
  and they're an uproar because how dare these baptists preach without a license from the state.
• 59:02
  That's basically what they were on fine for.
• 59:05
  And John or Patrick Henry walks in and he hears the verdict,
• 59:10
  like, hey, you know, you guys are being held in contempt of court and,
• 59:14
  you know, and being, you know, sued by the city of Boston, whatever it was,
• 59:18
  you know, for preaching without a license, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ without a license.
• 59:23
  And Patrick Henry walks in, he goes, did my ears deceive me?
• 59:27
  And everybody turns around and he starts like in a speech, He says,
• 59:31
  he goes, are these men being held for preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?
• 59:39
  And then he says it again, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He does it three times.
• 59:44
  And everybody is like, you can tell people start hanging their head in shame.
• 59:48
  And then finally the judge smacks his gavel and says the issue was dismissed.
• 59:55
  Embarrassing. But that's what James Madison, Thomas Jefferson,
• 59:59
  Patrick Henry, that's what they witnessed.
• 1:00:02
  They weren't Baptists themselves, but they respected their Baptist brethren
• 1:00:07
  because they saw that same spirit of religious liberty and liberty of conscience
• 1:00:15
  and freely worshiping and serving God of your own cognizance.
• 1:00:18
  That was what became part of the American spirit.
• 1:00:23
  It wasn't a Christian nation. That's not what our Baptist brethren wanted.
• 1:00:27
  So, you know, a lot of our, and so what they would end up, you know,
• 1:00:30
  because here's the thing, if you didn't give them full freedom and what they
• 1:00:34
  believed, then guess what you had to do? You had to tolerate them.
• 1:00:37
  And the Baptist forefathers hated that word toleration.
• 1:00:41
  Because if you say, well, we'll tolerate the Baptist religion,
• 1:00:44
  what you're implying is that the government still has the power to grant or
• 1:00:49
  revoke religious freedom.
• 1:00:50
  They wanted absolute separation as an unalienable God-given right.
• 1:00:58
  And the distinction, again, it's not a semantic distinction because the difference
• 1:01:02
  is that it's between a right that can be taken away and one that can't.
• 1:01:07
  The Baptists stake their lives and their liberty on this principle.
• 1:01:10
  Because if you say, look, we will tolerate your religion, that means at some
• 1:01:15
  point we may not tolerate it and we're going to take away your right to be a Baptist.
• 1:01:19
  That's why they despised it. To them, toleration was something to be completely, totally rejected.
• 1:01:26
  So we talked about, you know, there was men like John Leland,
• 1:01:29
  but there was other men like Isaac Bacchus.
• 1:01:32
  He lived in, you know, between 1724 and 1806.
• 1:01:35
  He rejected spiritual tyranny. This is how he interpreted it.
• 1:01:39
  He said religious matters are to be separated from the jurisdiction of the state,
• 1:01:43
  not because they're beneath the interest of the state, but quite contrary,
• 1:01:48
  because they're too high and holy and thus are beyond the competence of the state.
• 1:01:55
  And he also said this, when church and state are separate, the effects are happy
• 1:01:59
  and they do not at all interfere with each other.
• 1:02:03
  But where they have been confounded together, he said this, no tongue nor pen
• 1:02:08
  can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.
• 1:02:12
  So Isaac Bacchus, and the thing what's interesting about Isaac Bacchus,
• 1:02:16
  as he was one of the most influential Baptist ministers in colonial America at his time,
• 1:02:21
  I think he was almost annually, multi-times a year, he would petition the Massachusetts
• 1:02:28
  government against compulsory church taxes, advocating for the complete independence
• 1:02:33
  of the church from state control.
• 1:02:34
  Matter of fact, Isaac Backus had several public debates with a man by the name of John Adams.
• 1:02:41
  Interesting. Second president of the United States. I know that guy.
• 1:02:46
  And John Adams was wholly, completely on board with persecuting and arresting Baptists.
• 1:02:54
  For violating Massachusetts religious law.
• 1:02:56
  Yeah, that's interesting. That's their forefathers of this nation.
• 1:03:00
  And as far as Isaac Bacchus was concerned, he said it was not the right of the
• 1:03:07
  government to force us to pay taxes for a religious hierarchy.
• 1:03:12
  And that's what he argued and debated against John Adams with.
• 1:03:15
  And apparently Isaac Bacchus was a master at debating, and he was very good
• 1:03:21
  at holding public debates and arguing.
• 1:03:24
  And anyway, they were, as far as political enemies concerned,
• 1:03:27
  both John Adams and Isaac Backus were sworn political enemies, obviously.
• 1:03:32
  Then, of course, we talked about John Leland. So John Leland,
• 1:03:35
  you know, he came a little bit after, they overlapped Isaac Backus and John
• 1:03:40
  Leland, but John Leland was against what he called the Christian Commonwealth,
• 1:03:44
  meaning he was against a Christian nation.
• 1:03:47
  Against it. Like, if you were to tell him, oh, you know what,
• 1:03:49
  we need to vote in Trump because he believes in Christ and, you know,
• 1:03:52
  he's going to reinstate, you know, prayer in school and we're going to drive
• 1:03:55
  out the Muslims out of our country, John Leland would have spat at your feet.
• 1:04:01
  He would have said, are you kidding me? That's a violation of the scriptures.
• 1:04:05
  Yeah. And think about the.
• 1:04:10
  Terminology and the theming today around Christian nation by our own officials.
• 1:04:14
  This is, you know, I guarantee you this July 4th, all we're going to hear is
• 1:04:19
  a Christian nation, Christian nation, Christian nation.
• 1:04:22
  If my people will humble themselves and pray, you know, you're not God's people.
• 1:04:26
  And this guy, John, yeah, and this guy, John Leland, remember,
• 1:04:31
  that he was solely responsible for influencing the whole reason why we have
• 1:04:38
  the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights.
• 1:04:40
  Right. A Baptist preacher, liberty of conscience, and this whole terminology
• 1:04:46
  around this Christian nation stuff, he would be rolling in his grave today.
• 1:04:50
  He'd be hearing about it. This is everything he believed against and was not
• 1:04:56
  a proponent of. All right.
• 1:04:59
  I mean, like I said, he was a fierce opponent of established religion.
• 1:05:03
  This is what he said. He said on the Christian Commonwealth,
• 1:05:06
  the Christian nation, he said the notion, watch what he says,
• 1:05:08
  the notion of a Christian Commonwealth should be exploded forever.
• 1:05:13
  However, government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely
• 1:05:20
  and see that one does not abuse the other. He said that's the only role of the government.
• 1:05:26
  The only role, the only reason the government exists is to protect my right
• 1:05:30
  to think and speak freely.
• 1:05:33
  Period. It's not supposed to dictate how I'm supposed to worship God.
• 1:05:37
  He said this on spiritual tyranny. He says, never promote men who seek after
• 1:05:43
  a state-established religion.
• 1:05:45
  It is a spiritual tyranny. He says it's the worst of despotism.
• 1:05:51
  It is turnpiking the way of heaven by human law in order to establish the ministerial
• 1:05:58
  gates to collect the toll.
• 1:06:00
  So he basically says, basically, when you're saying that you marry the church
• 1:06:06
  and state, you're basically saying the only way to heaven is through a state commonwealth.
• 1:06:12
  If you want to go to heaven, you have to agree with the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
• 1:06:18
  That's tyranny. That's a violation of individual soul liberty.
• 1:06:22
  That's a violation of the priesthood of the believer.
• 1:06:26
  So that's a violation of the autonomy of the church.
• 1:06:29
  Again, this is why the separation church and state, this doctrine is so crucial
• 1:06:33
  and vital in how it basically closes the loop on these Baptist distinctives we've been studying.
• 1:06:39
  And this is what he said on the limits of government. He said,
• 1:06:41
  the legitimate powers of government extend only, watch, this is their power.
• 1:06:46
  This is their responsibility.
• 1:06:47
  They extend only to punish men for working ill to their neighbors and no way
• 1:06:55
  affect the rights of conscience.
• 1:06:58
  I mean, I would encourage, I don't know how many of our listeners can get some
• 1:07:02
  of the writings and read up on John Leland, Isaac Backus, John Clark, many of these men.
• 1:07:08
  I mean, these were great men of God that did their best to fight for and defend
• 1:07:16
  the comment that the faith that was once delivered to the saints and that no
• 1:07:20
  man has any right to obstruct your free decision to worship God as you see fit.
• 1:07:28
  So, they were against it. And so, this is what, this is because of the Baptists, right?
• 1:07:35
  The theological lobbying of these Baptists, the Baptists working with people
• 1:07:38
  like, you know, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Jefferson.
• 1:07:42
  Here's some of the things these men believed. And I believe that because of
• 1:07:46
  their interaction with the Baptists, it largely influenced, you know,
• 1:07:52
  their ideas of freedom and religious freedom and things like that.
• 1:07:57
  It shaped, obviously, the First Amendment of the U.S.
• 1:08:00
  Constitution, and it also safeguarded the New Republic from a national denomination
• 1:08:05
  because that's what they were trying to prevent.
• 1:08:07
  So if you go to Thomas Jefferson's grave today,
• 1:08:11
  there's two documents he wanted inscribed on his grave because those two documents,
• 1:08:18
  to him, were the culmination of his life, two most important documents.
• 1:08:23
  One of them is the, obviously, the independence, right?
• 1:08:30
  Declaration of Independence. You know what the other one is?
• 1:08:32
  It's the Virginia Rights of Religious Liberty.
• 1:08:37
  When he wrote that, the Virginia law, you know, the Virginia rights of religious
• 1:08:43
  liberty, he was basically defending the Baptist's idea that a man should have
• 1:08:47
  the free will conscience to worship God as he please.
• 1:08:50
  That no state, no church, no other human interdiction is allowed to control how you worship God.
• 1:08:59
  So, this is what he said, and this is notes on the state of Virginia. This is what he says.
• 1:09:03
  The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
• 1:09:09
  to others. That's exactly what John Leland said.
• 1:09:12
  But it does mean no injury. Watch what he says.
• 1:09:15
  But it does mean no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no gods.
• 1:09:22
  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
• 1:09:26
  That's why you can, this is, you know, people often say, you know,
• 1:09:30
  Brother Robert, what do we do about all these Muslims that are taking over,
• 1:09:34
  you know, Richardson, Texas, and, you know, going into Dearborn, Michigan?
• 1:09:38
  You know what the government should do? It should extend our right to be able to openly,
• 1:09:44
  publicly preach in those areas and proselyte as many people as we can for the
• 1:09:52
  gospel openly, that we can openly condemn Islam.
• 1:09:56
  We can openly preach against Islam about its destructive nature, its false doctrine,
• 1:10:03
  its false God, and not protect Islam from Christianity and Christianity from
• 1:10:11
  Islam, so forth and so on.
• 1:10:12
  We should be able to openly debate the ideas and win people over by convincing
• 1:10:18
  them of the truth by defense of the faith. That's why apologetics is so important.
• 1:10:23
  A spiritual sword that we carry, not a physical sword. That's what the Bible
• 1:10:27
  tells in 2 Corinthians 10.5, right?
• 1:10:30
  The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. So, as far as jurisdiction is concerned,
• 1:10:36
  that's what Thomas Jefferson, he said, look, if my neighbor wants to believe
• 1:10:40
  in 20 gods or no god, that's his business.
• 1:10:42
  That doesn't pick my pocket. The government shouldn't hold me accountable,
• 1:10:46
  you know, for me not accepting what my neighbor believes.
• 1:10:50
  I mean, think about that concept today with the whole LGBTQIA stuff, right?
• 1:10:55
  That, you know, the fact that you can't worship God freely in public because
• 1:10:59
  you're offending somebody, you know, in a civil matter or a matter of sexuality or sexual preference.
• 1:11:05
  You can't hold your religious conscientious belief. Like what the things that
• 1:11:09
  our Baptist brethren fought for, we're starting to see that stuff resurge in this generation.
• 1:11:15
  They don't want men believing what they want. They don't want you conscientiously
• 1:11:18
  thinking for yourself, basically.
• 1:11:22
  Now, what's interesting is Jefferson is the one that wrote the statement.
• 1:11:26
  He was writing to the Danbury Baptists, and he coined the phrase,
• 1:11:30
  wall of separation of church and state.
• 1:11:32
  Now, I'm going to ask you, Alan, how many times have you heard the secular public, atheists, LGBTQ.
• 1:11:39
  You know, the Marxists, how many times have you heard them cry separation of
• 1:11:44
  church and state in matters of praying in school, praying at a football game,
• 1:11:49
  bringing a Bible to school, teaching the Bible? as a textbook in school?
• 1:11:53
  Like how many times have you heard, you know, they weaponize that phrase wall
• 1:11:57
  of separation of church and state against the church?
• 1:12:01
  You don't have to dig very deeply to find that statement all over the place.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah, go ahead. You know what I was going to say? They equivocate. They do weaponize that.
• 1:12:11
  And that wasn't even the intent behind that statement.
• 1:12:15
  That's exactly right. And that's the point I was going to make is that Jefferson
• 1:12:18
  is writing to the Danbury Baptist Association and the Danbury Baptists in Virginia.
• 1:12:23
  So they were worried, again, about a state religion being set up and the state
• 1:12:30
  tyranny over their religious beliefs.
• 1:12:33
  And Jefferson was trying to tell them and assure them, look,
• 1:12:37
  look, he goes, the state's never going to be able to dictate to you how to worship God.
• 1:12:41
  And he used the phrase wall of separation of church and state because it was
• 1:12:45
  something that in those days, the Baptists were very familiar with that phrase.
• 1:12:50
  Okay because there was before then and
• 1:12:54
  roger williams almost almost you know
• 1:12:57
  about 80 years before that roger williams was
• 1:13:00
  a fierce you know proponent of religious liberty now he
• 1:13:03
  he professed to be a baptist and he was a baptist for a short while changed
• 1:13:07
  his beliefs but he was a fierce proponent of religious liberty and he wrote
• 1:13:12
  that there was a garden of the
• 1:13:15
  church and it was protected by a wall of separation from the government.
• 1:13:21
  The government should never be able to cross that boundary and harm the garden of the church.
• 1:13:26
  It was never meant to be a reversal of the logic.
• 1:13:30
  It was never supposed to be that, oh, the government is protected from the church.
• 1:13:35
  It's that the church is protected from the government. That was the idea behind the phrase.
• 1:13:40
  So when Jefferson coined that phrase to the Danbury Baptists,
• 1:13:44
  he's basically telling them, look, The government will never be in power in
• 1:13:50
  a way that they could tyrannize your religious values and your beliefs.
• 1:13:54
  The reason why he said it. Now, today, people think the wall of separation is
• 1:13:58
  that you're going to protect the government and the rest of society from the church.
• 1:14:01
  That's the exact opposite of the historical context. When people say that,
• 1:14:06
  you immediately can come to
• 1:14:07
  the conclusion that these people are morons when it comes to our history.
• 1:14:11
  They have no clue what that means.
• 1:14:14
  So that was John Jefferson on jurisdiction, right, and wall of separation.
• 1:14:18
  Then you had James Madison.
• 1:14:20
  And this is what he wrote on Soul Liberty. He says, conscience,
• 1:14:24
  now listen, conscience is the most sacred of all property.
• 1:14:30
  So that's more important. That's more sacred than your private property,
• 1:14:34
  your own home being invaded by strangers, right?
• 1:14:37
  We think about that. Well, I'm going to protect my home. My home is my castle.
• 1:14:40
  If somebody tries to harm my family, you know, I'm going to do everything I
• 1:14:43
  can to protect my family, if that means taking another person's life.
• 1:14:46
  And people have a very strong conviction about that, right?
• 1:14:49
  But what is James Madison saying here? He says, conscience is more sacred than
• 1:14:54
  your own private property in your family.
• 1:14:57
  That means what you believe in your heart to be true should be protected at all costs.
• 1:15:02
  So Madison's obviously, he's the father of the constitution,
• 1:15:05
  but he recognized that the life of faith is beyond the reach of any civil authority.
• 1:15:11
  As far as he's concerned, if conscience is the most sacred of all of property,
• 1:15:16
  violating the conscience is the most tyrannical form of despotism,
• 1:15:22
  just like John Leland preached.
• 1:15:25
  And of course, if we were to come a little bit closer to our generation,
• 1:15:28
  Ronald Reagan, so, you know, I think I was in, I can't remember,
• 1:15:31
  second grade when he was president.
• 1:15:34
  But Ronald Reagan, this is what he said on the First Amendment.
• 1:15:36
  He says, the First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect
• 1:15:39
  the people of this country from religious values.
• 1:15:42
  It was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.
• 1:15:47
  I mean, he understood. He understood exactly what it meant.
• 1:15:50
  Of course, today, you know, your Marxists trained children that come out of
• 1:15:54
  the public school indoctrination system, they don't know the difference.
• 1:15:58
  I mean, as far as they're concerned, they're Marxists, they're cultural Marxists,
• 1:16:02
  they're communists at heart, they're secular humanists.
• 1:16:05
  I mean, you know, we're basically, we've been training, you know,
• 1:16:08
  a generation of, you know, people that deny the faith, that deny the word of
• 1:16:13
  God, that deny logical, objective truth and morality. I mean, they complete that.
• 1:16:18
  I mean, that's another, you know, let's talk about the American education system one day.
• 1:16:24
  Yeah, that would be a, man, I tell you what, you want to get me heated. Anyway.
• 1:16:28
  That's it. So, so, so we talked about them weaponizing the phrase,
• 1:16:32
  you know, separation church state.
• 1:16:34
  Here's some of the ways that they've abused that phrase.
• 1:16:38
  Institutions often mistake government neutrality for mandated secularism, right?
• 1:16:43
  Creating a naked public square that's hostile towards religious expression rather
• 1:16:48
  than indifferent to it, because that's exactly what they go.
• 1:16:51
  Oh, well, a government institution is neutral.
• 1:16:54
  You can't preach God here, but they can preach a godless, natural philosophy.
• 1:17:01
  They can preach evolution.
• 1:17:05
  That's just as much of a religious faith as Islam is.
• 1:17:08
  And man, that's another episode we need to do is on evolution and natural selection
• 1:17:12
  and, well, specifically philosophical naturalism.
• 1:17:16
  That's really what evolution is rooted in.
• 1:17:18
  But anyway, the point is, is they, they, they use separation of church and state
• 1:17:23
  to try to preach that, oh, well, you know, you know,
• 1:17:26
  institutions of government, like the school district, you know,
• 1:17:29
  those are government institutions and those are protected as the,
• 1:17:34
  you know, it protects, uh, you know, the, the public from the hostile,
• 1:17:37
  the hostile religious expression.
• 1:17:40
  And you know what I mean? So they try to pretend it's supposed to be neutral.
• 1:17:43
  You know, we don't preach God here and we don't attack God here.
• 1:17:46
  Well, that's not true. We all know that they attack God.
• 1:17:48
  They do it on a regular basis. If there's anything a good secular school is
• 1:17:52
  good at, it's destroying the faith of believers.
• 1:17:54
  So that's one way they use separation church and state, is to create this false
• 1:18:01
  neutrality that doesn't exist.
• 1:18:04
  Not only that, they suppress private religious speech, so silencing students
• 1:18:08
  or citizens in public settings.
• 1:18:10
  So for example, they don't want to have the 10...
• 1:18:16
  I wanted to say the Ten Amendments. It's not the Ten Amendments. The Mosaic Law.
• 1:18:21
  Ten Commandments. Yeah, Commandments, yeah. Hello, man. The Ten Commandments, right?
• 1:18:25
  So, for example, you can't post the Ten Commandments at a courthouse,
• 1:18:30
  right? Because, you know, well, this is a public government office.
• 1:18:33
  So you can't have, you know, or like if you, you know, post,
• 1:18:37
  you know, like some people, they put the Christmas decorations,
• 1:18:40
  you know, with the manger scene and all that stuff like that.
• 1:18:44
  And, you know, if like say an HOA says, well, you can't do that because you're
• 1:18:48
  violating separation of church and state.
• 1:18:51
  You know, that's private religious expression. You're supposed to keep that
• 1:18:53
  inside the four walls of your home. You can't do that in the open public square.
• 1:18:57
  And what do they use? They use separation of church and state to try to weaponize
• 1:19:01
  that, you know, that tactic.
• 1:19:04
  Then of course, they, you know, the wall metaphor, they treat Jefferson's wall
• 1:19:07
  as a text to strip religious influence from any society, right?
• 1:19:12
  So where the historical intent was to protect the church from the state interference,
• 1:19:15
  they use it the other way around.
• 1:19:17
  Private faith only, misconception that believers must check their values at
• 1:19:21
  the door of public service.
• 1:19:23
  Doctrine only bars state dog, not citizens being guided by faith.
• 1:19:29
  So, for example, if you were running for political office, you couldn't say
• 1:19:33
  something in Jesus' name, you couldn't quote scripture, because then all of
• 1:19:37
  a sudden it's like, oh, well, your religious beliefs are going to influence your political career.
• 1:19:42
  Man, everybody's religious beliefs influences their political career.
• 1:19:47
  You can call the religion whatever you want.
• 1:19:50
  Philosophical naturalism, Marxism, you know, Islam, you name it.
• 1:19:55
  Your philosophical belief will influence your political decisions.
• 1:19:59
  I don't care, you know, and that's a worldview issue.
• 1:20:02
  But so the separation church of state is used to try to force,
• 1:20:07
  you know, government politicians to shut their mouth when it comes to their individual beliefs.
• 1:20:11
  You know that whenever, you know, it's funny, you know, when John,
• 1:20:15
  I'm sorry, Thomas Jefferson when Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist
• 1:20:19
  Association about the wall of separation church and state you know what he did
• 1:20:23
  after he finished writing that letter he went to Congress to hear John Leland
• 1:20:27
  preach a sermon to Congress interesting.
• 1:20:31
  Interesting you can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts right,
• 1:20:35
  So unconstitutional exclusion from benefits.
• 1:20:39
  So denying religious groups accessing general public grants,
• 1:20:43
  which the Supreme Court has identified as discriminatory violation, free exercise clause.
• 1:20:48
  So, for example, if you were a religious group and you were seeking public grants
• 1:20:53
  to, you know, build a school, you know, they would say, oh, that's violation of church and state.
• 1:20:59
  We can't give you a public. But they'll give public grants and money to groups
• 1:21:03
  that'll teach pedophilia, that'll teach, you know, I mean, just pornography.
• 1:21:08
  You know what I mean? They will use government money, tax money to fund stuff
• 1:21:14
  like, you know, Planned Parenthood, perfect example, right?
• 1:21:19
  Murder of millions of children. So they'll sit there and support it with tax money.
• 1:21:25
  But you can't support, you know, a school that's trying to fund the blind,
• 1:21:30
  but it happens to be a religious school.
• 1:21:33
  What do they use? Separation of church and state. So they view the phrase,
• 1:21:37
  again, they believe it's a legal mandate rather than a descriptive metaphor
• 1:21:42
  for the establishment, the actual establishment of free exercise clauses.
• 1:21:47
  So the whole point of it was, is that government cannot establish a religious entity.
• 1:21:53
  It can't establish a church, essentially.
• 1:21:56
  So anyway, that's how the separation of church and state phrase has been abused.
• 1:22:01
  But the point is, again, it was meant to be a wall of separation to protect
• 1:22:05
  the church from the state, not the other way around.
• 1:22:08
  So here's five arguments for separation, okay?
• 1:22:12
  And this is grounded in the things that we covered.
• 1:22:15
  So the doctrine, it doesn't rest not just in scripture and history,
• 1:22:18
  which is what we've seen, but it's also, it's in a coherent set of logical arguments
• 1:22:23
  that, again, form a cumulative case for the separation of church and state.
• 1:22:29
  So number one is the argument from divine jurisdiction.
• 1:22:32
  Jesus said, give Caesar what's Caesar's and give God what's God's.
• 1:22:36
  The civil state possesses no scriptural jurisdiction to govern,
• 1:22:40
  regulate, or tax the spiritual affairs of the local church.
• 1:22:43
  So that's distinct divine jurisdictions in the Bible. So that's the first argument.
• 1:22:48
  The second argument is from soul liberty because the true Christian faith demands
• 1:22:53
  a voluntary obedience and individual accountability before God,
• 1:22:58
  the use of state power to coerce religious compliance fundamentally destroys
• 1:23:03
  the nature of that genuine personal belief, right? Faith requires voluntary choice.
• 1:23:08
  You can't force somebody to believe in God. Can't force somebody not to believe in God.
• 1:23:14
  That's the argument of soul liberty. Third argument, the argument against replacement
• 1:23:18
  theology, because the New Testament church is a spiritual body, right?
• 1:23:22
  Distinct from a physical theocratic nation of Israel.
• 1:23:27
  It's distinct from Israel. Attempting to establish a modern Christian nation
• 1:23:31
  through civil legislation is a severe misapplication of biblical covenants.
• 1:23:39
  That's when you're taking the old Mosaic covenant and you're trying to apply
• 1:23:42
  it to the New Testament church. So a spiritual body is not a theocracy.
• 1:23:46
  That's the third argument. The fourth argument for separation church and state
• 1:23:50
  is apostolic precedent, because the apostles explicitly established in Acts
• 1:23:56
  5 that we ought to obey God rather than men.
• 1:23:59
  When civil law contradicts and violates that line of conscience and that responsibility
• 1:24:06
  to God and falls over that line of jurisdiction that Jesus Christ mandated,
• 1:24:13
  the church must remain autonomous and separate.
• 1:24:16
  And so the only way that it can be faithful to scripture is to peacefully resist.
• 1:24:20
  So obey God, not men. So that's the fourth argument is apostolic precedent.
• 1:24:24
  And then the fifth argument is historical consequence. Okay.
• 1:24:29
  Because the historical, you know, marriage of the church and state inevitably
• 1:24:33
  resulted in violent persecution of dissenting believers in the corruption of
• 1:24:38
  biblical doctrine, a strict separation is required.
• 1:24:42
  Why? To preserve human life in the gospel. So separation preserves the purity of the church.
• 1:24:50
  The church can't function the way it should if you sit there and violate that.
• 1:24:55
  So there's five arguments.
• 1:24:57
  The argument from divine jurisdiction. There's a divine distinct line of delineation
• 1:25:03
  between church and state. The argument from soul liberty.
• 1:25:06
  Faith requires voluntary choice. The argument against replacement theology.
• 1:25:10
  Spiritual body doesn't equal theocracy.
• 1:25:12
  Argument from apostolic precedent, obey God, not men, and argument from historical
• 1:25:17
  consequence, separation preserves the purity of the church.
• 1:25:22
  So, here's the conclusion. So, the separation church, it's not a secular invention,
• 1:25:26
  right? It's not just some preference that these Baptists came up with.
• 1:25:29
  It's biblical doctrine.
• 1:25:31
  And our Baptist forebears, they championed it, they enshrined it within the
• 1:25:36
  American culture leading up to the Revolution and the Constitution.
• 1:25:40
  And it was essential to preserve both the genuine religion and an ordered society.
• 1:25:46
  Because again, once you mix the two, you're going to come up with a perversion.
• 1:25:49
  So for the church, separation preserves the church autonomy,
• 1:25:53
  doctrinal purity, ultimate fidelity to scripture, right?
• 1:25:57
  Bible is our sole authority, free from political corruption or coercion or influence.
• 1:26:02
  And for the state, the separation keeps civil government within its God-ordained
• 1:26:07
  sphere, preventing the abuse of power that inevitably falls when rulers claim
• 1:26:13
  divine sanctions for political ends, like the Roman Catholic Church,
• 1:26:16
  like John Calvin, Zwingli, and so forth.
• 1:26:18
  And then for the believer, separation protects them, separates,
• 1:26:22
  it protects soul liberty, the God-given right of individual liberty to answer
• 1:26:26
  to God alone in matters of conscience, faith, and worship.
• 1:26:30
  So, here's an article, a guy by the name of Rodney Kennedy, he was writing on,
• 1:26:34
  you know, historical separation of church and state. And this is a very interesting statement.
• 1:26:40
  He says this, From the Anabaptists to our current amalgamation of all kinds
• 1:26:44
  of Mennonites, Anabaptists, and Baptists, there is a trail of blood.
• 1:26:50
  Martyrs of our faith, notice what he says here, the martyrs of our faith will
• 1:26:55
  have died in vain if the separation of church and state were to depart these shores of democracy.
• 1:27:02
  Now, I don't believe in a democratic or constitutional republic,
• 1:27:06
  but the point is, again, if the separation of church and state were to depart
• 1:27:11
  America, then those martyrs, our Baptist forebearers, would have died in vain.
• 1:27:17
  So, the doctrine stands, two kingdoms, two jurisdictions, one God.
• 1:27:21
  He ordained both of them for his glory, and each of them have their own separate
• 1:27:27
  distinct sphere and role and responsibility.
• 1:27:29
  That is the separation church and state, and that closes out the Baptist distinctives.
• 1:27:36
  The grand finale of, yeah, the acrostic. So, there's a lot of material covered in this one.
• 1:27:42
  There's obviously a lot to covering when it comes to covering our history,
• 1:27:48
  when I say our history, our Baptist history in general.
• 1:27:52
  And there's really a lot of area, there's really a lot of ground that we can
• 1:27:56
  cover here and this can be its own series. And it's a very fascinating series.
• 1:27:59
  And you can see that our Baptist history is weaved into our recent history here
• 1:28:07
  in America and how that's played a huge role and influence.
• 1:28:11
  And the First Amendment and the Liberty of Conscience movement and that it's new.
• 1:28:19
  And a lot of people don't know this. I'm just sort of just going back a little bit.
• 1:28:23
  That this is history that most people don't even know or are not familiar with.
• 1:28:27
  And that goes for our own brethren as well.
• 1:28:30
  So anyways, I'm not going to be too duplicative of what was just covered.
• 1:28:35
  We covered a lot, or you covered a lot.
• 1:28:37
  But if anybody has any questions, you know where to reach us.
• 1:28:40
  Anything in terms of questions around what was covered in the content today.
• 1:28:46
  And I know we've got some collateral, as they call it, in marketing.
• 1:28:50
  That is some material and infographics that we might be able to share out there.
• 1:28:55
  So we have an acrostic infographic, right? So people can just reach out to us and email us.
• 1:29:00
  Yeah, there's a, as a matter of fact, I think somebody had already asked one,
• 1:29:03
  you know, they pinged me the other day on Messenger and I sent it.
• 1:29:07
  So we do have the, you know, we have the assets saved, but we have the quick
• 1:29:12
  reference guide that we can send out.
• 1:29:15
  So it's eight pillars of biblical conviction and just a description of each
• 1:29:19
  and then a reference in the scripture, a quote, you know, and then,
• 1:29:23
  of course, what the counter to that belief was.
• 1:29:27
  And it's always going to be Catholic-Protestant counter or rebuttal. Perfect.
• 1:29:32
  All right. Well, we're going to close this one out. As I said,
• 1:29:36
  I thought this was a great finale to the Baptist series.
• 1:29:40
  We're going to get this organized in a YouTube playlist and make sure it's easily
• 1:29:45
  accessible and things like that, check out our site too, the mutable word.
• 1:29:50
  We're getting that built out and it's starting to come together.
• 1:29:54
  So we'll start adding some of our resources there. So with that,
• 1:29:59
  we'll go ahead and close out this series formally.
• 1:30:02
  I hope that people have been edified and been encouraged by listening to these
• 1:30:06
  episodes that we've been covering for the last several weeks.
• 1:30:09
  And we're excited to start moving on to another one, another series, another episode.
• 1:30:15
  So we still have yet to actually plan that out.
• 1:30:19
  But we appreciate everybody listening and supporting.
• 1:30:22
  And again, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us.
• 1:30:26
  And we'll see everybody on the next one.