Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with guest Greg Hamilton,
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we were riffing about...
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Through the
constitution what caused it,
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what was the origins
of the break with England
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and, of course,
religion played a big role,
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Can I read you something from
a book you gave me years ago?
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Yes. Yes.
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This will put the
cat among the pigeons.
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In religious liberty,
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we're always talking
about the constitution,
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as we should,
in a civil context,
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especially with liberty,
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we're sending it to
people who make no...
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That we know of
particular religious profession,
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we want them to
see the legal basis
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for what amounts to
a spiritual concept.
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But here's a
very interesting quote
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that I had read years ago,
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but I hadn't realized
that it informed comments
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that I'd be making,
especially to Adventists,
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who sometimes get
political loyalties mixed up
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with civil constructs.
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And this is what Jefferson
said about the Constitution.
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He says, "Some men
look at constitutions
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with sanctimonious reverence
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and deem them like
the Ark of the Covenant,
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too sacred to be touched.
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They ascribe to the
men of the preceding age
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a wisdom more than human,
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and suppose what they
did to be beyond amendment.
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I knew that age well.
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I belong to it,
and labored with it.
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It deserved well of its country.
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It was very like the present,
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but without the
experience of the present,
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and 40 years of
experience in government
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is worth a
century of book reading,
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and this they
would say themselves,
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were they to
rise from the dead."
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And then he says,
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"I know also, that
laws and institutions
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must go hand in hand with
the progress of the human mind.
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As that becomes more developed,
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more enlightened, as
new discoveries are made,
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new truths disclosed,
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and manners and opinions change
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with the change
of circumstances,
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institutions must advance also,
and keep pace with the times.
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We might as well require
a man to wear still the coat
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which fitted him when a boy,
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as civilized society to remain
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ever under the regimen of
their barbarous ancestors."
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Food for thought, right?
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Well, the problem
is there wasn't much
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constitution writing
before the American experiment.
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So the problem with
Jefferson statement,
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I understand what he's saying,
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but really what he was dealing
with was our own constitution,
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and he...
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This is what's
fascinating about his statement.
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I don't want to get too far off.
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It seems to me that
that's the death knell
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to the big argument between
the living constitutionalists
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and the originalists.
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Well, yes, I would say
that both have an argument.
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I would say that that
both are right, both are wrong,
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taken to their
extremes as with any argument.
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But let's...
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But let me rephrase
what I take from that.
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Yes.
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You and I
believe in biblical truth
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and absolute moral principles.
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I think to a greater degree
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than any constitution I know of,
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they are embedded
in the US Constitution,
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but we must never
confuse the secular construct
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with the great moral truth
that might be embedded in it.
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And there are many
people that are so in love
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with the constitution believing
if it's correctly explicated,
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it will always up
hold absolute truth.
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That can't be true
of any human device.
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I don't think original intent
can be thoroughly discovered
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or nailed down.
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In that sense, I believe
in a living constitution.
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However, I believe that people
like Madison and Jefferson
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when they are at
a point in history
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where they're not
only tired of the control
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of the Church of England,
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and the so-called
divine right of kings
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to tell them what
to do, and how to live,
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and actually how to be saved,
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in a spiritual sense,
they broke free from that,
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and right when Thomas Jefferson
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was writing the
Declaration of Independence,
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James Madison was writing
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the Virginia's
Declaration of Rights
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which was adopted
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by Virginia's General
Assembly that same year.
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And he wrote this
declaration, he says,
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"All men are entitled to
the free exercise of religion,
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according to the
dictates of conscience."
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And then shortly, thereafter,
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in just literally over
a couple months in 1777,
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Jefferson drafted
Virginia's Statute
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to Religious Freedom.
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Those weren't any
coincidence, okay?
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The Declaration of Independence,
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the Virginia's
Declaration of Rights,
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the Virginia's
Statute of Religious Freedom,
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which all became foundational
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to establishing not only
our constitutional system
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but the first
amendment to the constitution
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which was drafted in 1789
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by the first
Congress in New York City.
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So I think that when
you look at all of this,
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the foundation was being
laid over religious freedom
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in the separation
of church and state.
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Right. One thing
follows after the other.
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Yes.
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We're not too far on depending
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when this is shown from the 2017
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500th anniversary remembrance
of the Lutheran's Reformation.
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And I did something...
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Because my memory
was failing a bit,
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and I did
something that I don't think
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anyone much is done
during that anniversary,
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I went back and
read the 95 Theses.
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And every last one of
them deals with authority
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or the lack of what authority
did the pope have to tell you
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to believe or you
couldn't go through God.
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Yes.
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And I believe this
is the outgrowth of,
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even though Jefferson was
not a classic religionist.
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The view had taken
root that Luther started.
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No human being can tell another
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how to worship and what to do.
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So that's the
outgrowth of the Reformation.
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Let me put into...
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And clearly a puritanism.
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There are God
inspired revolutions
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and then there are
ungodly revolutions,
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we know that.
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We know that there is disaster
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evil types of revolution
only seeks to serve self,
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and then there
are other revolutions
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that actually
seek to better mankind
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and for the greater good.
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And I think that
the American Revolution
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was one of those that
sought the better good.
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And it's been a
model for generations
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for every nation
throughout the world.
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And so I cannot say...
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I mean, I agree with Jefferson,
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you cannot
worship the constitution
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neither can you
worship the founders per se.
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And in this
Jefferson was saying,
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"We cannot do that," all right?
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Another words,
"Don't worship us,
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don't worship the constitution
because it's always amendable,"
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which is the
essence of what you read,
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and I appreciate that.
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But when we look at
just the foundational premise
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of our constitutional founding,
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to me, without the
emphasis on religious freedom,
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we really don't have a
righteous cause as a nation
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when our nation was founded.
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If religious freedom was
not part of that package,
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where would our nation be today?
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We'd be just like any other
barbarous nation on the planet.
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Does that make our
nation righteous now?
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No, we've gone far afield
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from the intent of
what the founders saw.
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I mean, whether we
like to admit it or not,
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even the puritans had
some conscionable good things
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to render to our founders
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in terms of
righteousness and holiness,
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so we can agree to that.
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Yeah.
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Well, was it
Shakespeare that said, think,
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"Doth protest too much."
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Yes.
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I don't believe
it's necessary to prove
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that at the time of
the War of Independence
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that it was 100% righteous
cause from beginning to end.
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Oh, absolutely, I feel that.
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You know, the history of it.
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I mean, it's the hidden
history as there was agitation,
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it's read all
the different towns'
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government agents
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who many were the
part of the citizenry
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but, you know, there are
magistrates representative,
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they would tad
unfair that and...
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And that sounds nice tad unfair
like sort of in a Disney movie,
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one guy that they
punctured his intestines
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through the nails on the
road and he died grotesquely.
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It was not totally unlike
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some of the elements of
the French Revolution...
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Not sure I can get that
out of my head there, Lincoln.
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No. Yeah.
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I read a long
book on this recently,
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and that tells that...
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Yeah, that's pretty bad.
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A quite bad.
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It was butchery.
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I don't think
anyone could condemn that
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that was a society
somewhat running amok
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at root there were good ideas,
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and that's what I
think we need to cherish
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what came out
of this experience.
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You can see the
thread from the Reformation,
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you can see people of
high-moral intent as Jefferson,
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personal failings on the side,
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but I think the end of it
was we've put down in writing,
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and your book is
featuring this big time.
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In writing, we have a
wonderful idealistic statement
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to try to prove that
the US has kept that ever.
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Oh, no. Yeah. No.
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It's the ultimate last cause.
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No, we're going on
the road of failure now.
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Right.
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But it might have followed
them better than most countries,
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and I think
that's easily proven.
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It's a guiding light,
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and the constitution
shouldn't be thrown away.
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As you and I know,
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writing to
Seventh-day Adventists,
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and we believe with
some divine inspiration,
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Ellen White said
that the time will come
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when this
country will actually...
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The word she uses is repudiate
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every principle
of the constitution.
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But that will be a
sad day when that comes.
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But both Jefferson
and Benjamin Franklin
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and others didn't believe
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that the constitution
was last 19 or even 50 years.
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No, that's why I quoted that.
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And so for our constitution
to last as long as it has...
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It's been pretty good.
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Is really pretty
amazing when you think about it.
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Absolutely.
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Now it's pretty difficult to
get started on another subject,
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but I will say this,
00:10:00.56\00:10:01.90
when it comes to America's
constitutional founding,
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I believe we have to understand
00:10:05.03\00:10:07.04
that when people say,
"Well, it wasn't God-ordained
00:10:07.07\00:10:10.11
or that God had
nothing to do with it."
00:10:10.14\00:10:11.94
I disagree with that,
00:10:11.97\00:10:13.31
I believe that was God-ordained,
00:10:13.34\00:10:14.78
I believe that God had
everything to do with it
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in terms of
directing the minds of men
00:10:17.68\00:10:20.78
to not only seek freedom
00:10:20.82\00:10:22.48
but to be a beacon
of light and freedom
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to all other
nations around the world.
00:10:24.82\00:10:26.96
Well, it's the
catch-22 between foreknowledge
00:10:26.99\00:10:28.72
and predestination.
00:10:28.76\00:10:30.09
Yes, that's true.
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I'm sure that...
00:10:31.49\00:10:32.83
I referred it this
way, as it exemplified,
00:10:32.86\00:10:35.06
the movement exemplified
these principles of freedom,
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and religious
liberty, and so on,
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it was fulfilling
God's design for mankind.
00:10:38.90\00:10:41.67
Yes.
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And so in the history
of truth through the ages,
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I think this country
will have a bright spot,
00:10:45.74\00:10:48.38
there's no question.
00:10:48.41\00:10:49.84
Absolutely.
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And when you really think about
00:10:51.25\00:10:52.61
America's Constitution founding,
00:10:52.65\00:10:54.12
we have to look
at it, in my opinion,
00:10:54.15\00:10:56.28
from a religious
liberty's perspective
00:10:56.32\00:10:58.95
because it is
America's first freedom.
00:10:58.99\00:11:01.26
Without religious freedom,
we have no true freedom.
00:11:01.29\00:11:05.06
I mean, if we only
had secular freedom alone,
00:11:05.09\00:11:08.10
where would we be as a country?
00:11:08.13\00:11:09.76
And I really
believe we have to consider
00:11:09.80\00:11:12.33
that point as foundational.
00:11:12.37\00:11:14.87
And so thank God for
people like Jefferson,
00:11:14.90\00:11:17.57
and James Madison,
and George Washington,
00:11:17.61\00:11:19.31
and Alexander Hamilton.
00:11:19.34\00:11:20.68
Soul Liberty is more than just
a good title for a good book,
00:11:24.11\00:11:28.02
and I can recommend
that you do what you can
00:11:28.05\00:11:30.49
to get a copy of Greg Hamilton's
00:11:30.52\00:11:33.09
wonderful, think, table book.
00:11:33.12\00:11:39.03
Small joke there.
00:11:39.06\00:11:40.40
But Soul Liberty
goes to the very root
00:11:40.43\00:11:43.73
of what I think
the religion clauses
00:11:43.77\00:11:46.47
or clause was
designed to accomplish,
00:11:46.50\00:11:48.54
not underscore the
authority of a secular state,
00:11:48.57\00:11:53.11
but as Thomas Jefferson said
00:11:53.14\00:11:54.68
in the Declaration of
Independence to recognize
00:11:54.71\00:11:57.71
that we have inherent rights,
00:11:57.75\00:12:00.08
nature and nature's God,
00:12:00.12\00:12:01.85
yeah, that sounds
sort of paganistic
00:12:01.88\00:12:04.35
but in reality, of course, God,
00:12:04.39\00:12:06.15
the Creator God is nature's God.
00:12:06.19\00:12:08.92
Freedom, true liberty,
soul liberty must come from God
00:12:08.96\00:12:14.96
and any state that
recognizes that will be secure,
00:12:15.00\00:12:18.93
and the freedom that's advancing
00:12:18.97\00:12:20.54
will remain sure.
00:12:20.57\00:12:22.80
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:22.84\00:12:25.91