Christians Have No Rights, Fight For Christian Rights, One Nation Under God, Christian Nationalism?

We don't have the rights that Americans have. Our rights have been stripped away by our king, who is of a different world. We're sojourners and pilgrims in this place, and we got to live by him first. And where we can follow the laws of this government, we do, as long as it's not in opposition to him.

Amen.

This message and the next message were all supposed to be one message, one complete thought from beginning to end. And I got thrown a little curveball last night, and I'm not very good at hitting the soft straight softball throws, nonetheless, and Major League Baseball curveball. So this might not be a complete thought. I did my best to try to make this first half make sense.

But what I'll go ahead and tell you is that the reason this part is here that you're about to see is not to say anything bad about the United States or any other government of the world, but it's to say that when you read the early Christians and their thoughts on non-resistance and what non-resistance meant from the apostles and Stephen and all the people who died for Christ at the beginning up to the next generation of men who the gospel was handed down to and how they treated non-resistance, it's almost impossible, if not impossible, to swallow if you don't understand this concept I'm going to teach today.

So Jesus is Lord.

So what do you think about this picture? What does that make you feel like?

And I'm glad Dan Weeks has adopted somewhat of a non-resistance spirit.

Does this make you—I don't know. I just wanted to put that up there. I'll tell you how I ran into this picture. And then this picture of Jesus as the shepherd, and he has this American flag wrapped around him in a broken world with America split in two, and he's leading Trump, who's hugging his flag, and John Wayne shooting the American flag out of his gun.

This is how America, the right at least, sees it, that we are one nation under God and that Trump was elected because it was our moral obligation to vote for him, because if we didn't, our rights wouldn't be defended, our Christian rights, what we have. But what does this make you feel like? I couldn't find this one online, so I had to make it.

Is this the truth or is the other or both?

How about this short clip? Okay. We're going to welcome Mr. President now. I want you to bless him. Speak a blessing to him. Once you do that, raise your hand and speak a blessing to him. So pray in the Spirit over him.

Here he is. He's come to visit us. Tell him, "Mr. President." "Mr. President." "One nation under God." "Mr. President." "One nation under God."

It's a little hard to swallow.

Is Jesus Lord or is Caesar Lord?

In God, we trust with a picture of Caesar next to it.

Do we trust in God? What questions do these images that I just showed you bring about? For me, is America a Christian nation? Has America ever been a Christian nation? Is there such a thing as a Christian nation?

And if I haven't already done it, I'm going to take a minute to throw myself under the bus.

This is about non-resistance, although it might not seem like it at this first half. I'll merge the next half with it later. But I was very resistant. I broke a kid's arm in elementary school. I took a kid's book bag and threw it out the bus window and made sure a mile away from his house and made sure he didn't tell anybody. I walked with a sword down my pants and walked peg leg to a kid's house to cut him up because he kissed my girlfriend that I had never went on a date with her. She was just a phone girlfriend. But she went and kissed him sometime, and I was going to chop him up.

And he didn't come home, praise God, or I wouldn't be here. And I blew snot rockets in kids' heads. I don't know if you know what a snot rocket is, but I did everything that you could think that was bad and hostile and violent, I did. And then when I became a Christian, I decided, "Well, I'll take this and I'll be a bully of bullies." And so I started beating up bullies. And this one kid was picking on another kid, and I told him, "If you keep doing it, I'm going to kick you in the teeth." And he kept doing it, and I kicked him in the teeth and made his head hit the locker.

Another guy stole a bench press from someone else, and I grabbed a two-and-a-half-pound weight and I threatened his life with the weight. And this was in my Christian days. And then I started a fight club, and I sent a kid to the hospital. And he told his parents because he was in karate that three people jumped him. And so I didn't get fined because he voluntarily joined the fight club.

And even before I moved up here, I mean, non-resistance had started becoming part of my life. And I'll get to the story of China in a second, just a little bit. But before I moved up here, I got in a—I thought it was my right to defend my wife and another loved one. I yelled at her and I beat the table. And right away, though, I knew it was wrong, but it was still in me. I didn't have victory over all these parts. And we're really going to hit that next week of how to get victory and how that non-resistance is to be incorporated in every part of our life. It's not only the big times whenever governments are drowning us, but it's when our kids are annoying us and we have to show patience.

Anyway, we'll get to that next week or next time. So realizing you're a foreigner, a story from China. When I was in China, we moved into our first house, and this wife was getting beat by her husband every day, and the child was too. We could hear the screamings of this happening. And I told my Chinese friends, "Hey, let's go down there. Let's threaten them. Let's beat them up. Let's keep them from ever doing that again. Make them scared." And they're like, "You can't do that." And I was like, "Why?" And they're like, "Domestic violence is completely legal here. And even if he killed his kid, he probably wouldn't get in trouble for it.

And if you go touch him, they're going to sue you. You're probably going to go to jail and then kicked out of the country." And then not long after that, I was at a train station and this guy was choking this girl, and this girl was trying to defend herself and scratching his face. And I started to run after him, and my Chinese friend took off after me and grabbed me and he said, "You can't do that." And he's trying to explain to me that they're going to make up and then all their injuries they're going to blame on me and they're going to sue me and I'm going to go to jail and then get kicked out of the country.

And then suddenly all these rights that were my God-given rights were taken away. And I started to become more and more of a foreigner. I mean, I was called a foreigner everywhere I went all the time. The Chinese people, that's just what they do. They say, "Foreigner, foreigner." Every time they see a foreigner, you hear it all the time. So I was always reminded, but it became more and more a reality. I was cheated every time I got bananas from the street market because they thought, "Hey, this is a foreigner. Let's get more money from them." And I would hear the prices they would tell the other people, and I'd get double the price.

That wasn't always, and they're not like this bad people. But then we went to language school, and then the teacher, after these first two things happened, the teacher showed us this video of this Russian who put his knees up on the seat of another Chinese person's seat on a bus. It was actually a train, sorry. And the Chinese person turned around and said, "Can you get your feet off my seat?" And the guy cussed at him. The Russian guy cussed at the Chinese guy. And then he was arrested and then kicked out of the country. And I was like, "Whoa. Chinese people are sitting there strangling their wives and beating up their children. And if a foreigner puts his knees on a seat and says a bad word, we're out of here."

So not only did I no longer have the rights of America, I no longer had the rights. I didn't have any rights in China. The Chinese don't have a lot of rights. And I had less than the Chinese. I had to pay taxes. I had to obey their laws, but the laws were more stringent on foreigners. There's one more story that they copyright laws. I built a computer in China, and I needed all the software for it, and I couldn't find where you can buy legit software. And everything was pirated over there. And they told me, "There's no copyright laws. You can download this stuff and use it." And so originally, I downloaded all this really expensive software, and I was like, "Wow, this is amazing.

I can get all this stuff for free here." And I was like, "Well, my country that I'm a citizen of, would they be upset with me because I'm over here doing this?" And I started to think, "I'm still under that law, and I'm under this law. And because this law says it's okay, does that mean it's okay for me, or do I have to obey that law too?

Which one's more over me?" And so I was like, "Okay, well, I better not do that." So I deleted it, and I figured out a way to buy the real thing. But I realized I'm under another law. And that law is quite capable of prosecuting me for downloading this illegally, even though I'm in another country that supposedly you could do that.

And we'll get to why that matters later. And then our child, Keeley, was going to Chinese school, and she was being indoctrinated by the Communist Party. Everything communist is good and we're the best and showing images of Mao Zedong and talking about how heroic he was or whatever. And so I realized there's two laws, and they do all these different kinds of things to promote the Communist Party in the children's mind. And it was kind of appalling to me because I was still connected to this Christian nationalism in a way. And I was like, "How can they do this to the children?" And then I started to think that we do the same thing in America.

I grew up every day of my whole life standing up the first thing in the morning, pledging allegiance to a flag and one nation under God. And then they tell you, "This is what you're to believe," and the narrative they give you, and they make you a part of this nation. They brainwash you as a child. And indoctrination is not all bad.

And I believe we as a nation, a different nation, should be indoctrinating our children. And we shouldn't be letting strangers tell our children what they should be believing and thinking.

So after 10 years, I came back to America and discovered a very offended people. Before I left, when I was in high school and college, I had all kinds of friends from all different nations: Koreans, Africans, you name it. I probably had friends from those nations. And I played football with these guys. I didn't see racists. I didn't know anybody. I only knew one person who claimed to be racist, but I think he just did it to get attention. And I didn't really understand racism, and I didn't see it existing anymore. And right before I go to China that January, Obama gets elected. And I was like, "That's awesome. We're not going to have to worry about racism anymore.

Our president of our country is a black gentleman. And so it's over." And when we get to China, we don't watch the news. And we're secluded from it. And one day, I'm teaching in school, and one of the students told me that homosexuals can be married. And I was like, "No way." I was like, "When I left America, those Americans would have taken up arms to defend that from happening." I called someone, and they were like, "No, we knew this was going to happen." And I was sure he would be one of the people going after him. Things had changed.

The politics had influenced people, and everybody was offended. When we got back to America, there were riots from racism. There was everybody fighting for their rights, men wanting to be women and women wanting to be men. And these people want to use this bathroom. And I don't even know. It was just nuts. Everything was crazy. It was not the place that I had left. And I had already learned when I was in China that I'm a sojourner. I'm a foreigner in this land. I have no rights. I have less rights. I have to obey, or I'm going to be punished and kicked out. But one thing was true that I did not obey when they said, "You can't preach the gospel."

I preached the gospel. I went around to everybody telling them about God, and I did it in the classroom where I wasn't allowed to disobey my king, Jesus. I didn't. I could not obey this government of the world to disobey my king.

And when I got back to the States, that seemed so true. Look at all these people thinking they have rights to disobey, and they're calling themselves one nation under God. And America had changed. It was offended people, a hurt people, an unforgiving people. And so I looked up God-given rights because I started hearing it everywhere.

And I looked at the definition, and this was the first one I found: the right to do something without asking anyone else's opinion. And then I looked up, "What are these God-given rights?" The right to life, the right to vote, the right to liberty, the right to property, the right for freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right for a man to be a woman, the right for a woman to be a man, the right for men to marry women and women to marry men, and the right for women to kill their unborn babies, and the right for gays to adopt, and the right to use illegal drugs, which were once illegal, and the right to riot, and the right to self-defense.

And I started to think, "Are any of these or which one of these are actually rights that we have with God?" And when I was looking that up is when I found this image, which was a thumbnail. I typed in Christian rights on YouTube, and I was looking for Christians who were saying what their rights were. And I found this guy.

And this guy is an atheist, most likely Democrat. I don't know. And his whole message I didn't really care a whole lot about, but I was on a walk, and I didn't feel like getting my phone out and switching it. But the last things he said rang so true, and I'm going to play that for you. For 40 years, America's evangelical Christians have tightly interwoven themselves with the Republican Party. This has given them unprecedented power and influence, but has also made it increasingly difficult to separate their religious identity from their political identity. The question becomes, to what extent are the political opinions of evangelical Christians motivated by their faith versus to what degree has their faith merely become an expression of their politics?

What degree of their faith has become an expression of their politics? And that kind of plagued me. I mean, I see it everywhere in loved ones and all over the web that the expression of their faith has become an expression of their politics. And they don't realize that they've been so connected with the world, they don't even know what Jesus said about things anymore.

I'm going to show you another clip real quick. I don't know if you remember this guy. The right to bear arms is a biblical right, a God-given right. It's something that God says you have a right to do: defend yourself.

So before I go any further with this video, the sword over here on the left is the sword in front of the Garden of Eden. And he refers to an Old Testament passage where it says, "Take up arms." And he says, "Well, those arms are swords." And in the Garden of Eden, there is fire around a sword, and the fire around the sword is a firearm. And then Jesus told us that we can sell our garments and buy a sword. And they said, "No, we have two swords." He says, "That's enough." And so now we have the right to bear firearms. We can have firearms. It's our God-given right to defend ourselves.

Sadly, many governments, and even this one in America, are trying to take away that right. And if they do, you've got to decide, "Okay, who am I going to follow? Rome or God? Mystery Babylon or the Lord Jesus Christ?"

America was founded on God and the Bible, and they chose that Old Testament law. It says, "That's a good law for society. We're going to follow that." And so the people that lived in the colonies at that time said, "This is horrible. This is unbearable. Every right that the Bible says we have, this tyrant, King George, is taking away from us." And the last straw was when he said, "Nope, you have to surrender all your arms and give us all your power." They said, "We can't do that." They said, "We have to resist the devil." He starts off with, "This nation was founded on biblical principles in the Bible and God himself." And then there was this time where we were being—the colonists were being taxed too much by the British, or they felt like it was taxed too much.

And some people went and did a violent act of throwing tea into the ocean. And then after that, this arms thing came about where they were trying to take away their weapons, and a whole fight came about. So in our kingdom, in the nation of God, do we pay taxes? Are we supposed to pay taxes? We're supposed to pay taxes. There's no ifs, ands, or buts around it. And we're supposed to obey the government. And if the government wants to take our guns, I don't know of any right that the Bible says that we could have guns. If they take them, they take them.

I'm getting to a point here. Because as we're going to see in a minute, the Bible tells us to resist the devil. It's a command that if someone tries to harm you, if someone tries to hurt you, you have a right to resist and not allow them to do that to you. It is righteous. It is just for a man to defend himself and to keep himself from being killed.

To tell someone otherwise is to be aiding and abetting a crime. To tell someone you have no right to defend yourself when someone attacks you is to be on the side of the attacker. And actually, that's a really good point, and that we are on the side of the attacker. When we read the early Christians next time, we'll see that they all were willingly to be beat up, even to death, so they can be on the side of the attacker so that that attacker may have an opportunity to know God, to give their life to God, and to repent. And we are to be, when we're beaten, on the side of the attacker. One last one.

Okay, well, either way, you have a right to carry that. But the license, really, according to the Bible, is the word of God because the word of God is the license to have a sword or a firearm with you. So according to the Bible, there is a right for self-defense.

All I'm saying is this message is a biblical teaching that God says we that are Christians have a right to own something as a weapon to defend ourselves from those that want to do us harm. And we don't have to allow it. We resist it. We fight against it. Isaiah 2:4 says, "And he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people." Now, this is talking about Jesus Christ in the millennium. "He shall judge among the nations, rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

Someday, there'll be no need for a sword. And that's when Jesus Christ rules and reigns. And that's the day that I look for. And Jesus Christ rules and reigns today. And it is true that we beat our swords into plowshares. And the first three centuries of Christianity completely, 100%, saw that was for today, that we do not fight anymore, that our weapons are weapons of peace and gentleness. These are what I call God's taken rights. These all come from the next message, but I decided to put them in here or this doesn't make a lot of sense, what I'm trying to get to. We'll find out that God takes our right to self-defense and to kill, and we don't have the right to riot or the right to be bitter or hurt.

We don't have the right to complain or argue or gossip or boast or be rude. We've lost our right to be sexual immoral and impure and have impure thoughts and lustful pleasures and anger and drunkenness and orgies are all not of us. We can't accept same-sex marriage. Women don't have the right to kill their unborn babies. We can't sue others. We don't have the right to use illegal drugs. We don't have the right to keep records of wrongs. We don't have the right for women to teach in the church. We don't have the right to call someone to stumble. And the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

And then God's given commands, the right to do something because our king said we must. We must be gentle and turn the other cheek and love our enemies and bless those who persecute us and pay our taxes and be kind and forgive all. We must be patient and be good and have self-control and encourage others and obey the government and disobey the government when the government's commands are in opposition to the commands of Christ, our king.

And we have the right to die. Before I go on to this guy real quick, this guy, he has a whole video on pacifist, and he talks about why the pacifist position is wrong. And then he talks about extreme pacifism and some other different types of pacifism. And a lot of them are where we stand.

And in the next message, I'll go through some very short clips of his and explain the fallacies and why what he's saying is actually not true. On this one, I'm only going to hit one. All murder is wrong. Not all killing is wrong, but all murder is wrong. Murder is—Hold on. I do have to pause it. So he believes that we're all under one law. And if it's right for a non-believer to do something, it's right for a believer to do it. And if it's not right for a believer—if it's not right for a believer to do it, it's not right for an unbeliever to do it. And his message in a circle, they're thinking it makes a lot of sense, but it actually isn't.

When you see—he sees this one kingdom, it's all mixed. It's hard to separate. But when you see the two kingdoms, the world does what the world does, and we do what Christ says. We're all going to be judged about what Christ said. Anyway, let's watch this real quick. All murder is wrong. Not all killing is wrong, but all murder is wrong. Murder is the unlawful, unauthorized taking of human life. Now, that definition is important. In the past, I have defined murder as the unlawful taking of innocent human life. But now I've tweaked that because I've omitted the part about innocent human life because I believe there could be a situation, and I think there regularly are situations where innocent life might be taken and it not be murder.

Let me give you an example of this. Consider when the United States dropped the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Thousands of innocent people died. But I would contend that that was not murder. It was an action authorized by Romans 13. The government had the right to take such an action. So murder is the unauthorized taking of human life. Now, capital punishment is killing, but it is not murder.

So I don't know if you followed his logic, but the Chinese Communist Party is a minister of God. And just like the American, whatever government governs America is a minister of God. And the Chinese Communist Party had this one-child policy. And for many years, if they saw a woman and found out that a woman had a second child and she was pregnant with that woman, they would take her and drag her into these abortion buses. And by the authority of Rome or of the Communist Party, they would kill those babies. So that was right.

They're the ministers of God. They're doing right. No. They're part of another kingdom, and they're doing something wrong. They're murdering. What does this say, my German speakers? Can you read that? I'm pretty sure it's German. God with us. Yeah. And God with us, or what it said everywhere is, "God in God we trust." Same difference. And then you see what's below it there, a schwastiker. This is a belt from the day of the Nazis. And the Nazis were a democracy. They were voted in.

They were voted in by Mennonites and evangelicals, unfortunately. And I mean, Hitler was. And we know what Hitler did. And this is a church that Luther translated the Bible into German. And it might seem shocking at first that during the Nazi regime, this is what the church became. But if you remember Luther's quote, and I'm not going to quote it here, it might be in the video later, but that Luther really hated the Jews. He wanted the Jews to be burned and their stuff to be taken away and have absolutely no rights and basically be slaves. And he had tons of influence on the state at that time. And it poured down into Hitler's life, I believe.

And Hitler ran with it. Hitler seemed to do what Luther preached. Luther penned a work entitled The Jews and Their Lies. And he addressed the work to the German princes, urging them to take violent measure against the Jews. And this is what he wrote, "What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? We dare not tolerate their conduct now that we are aware of their lying and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. I shall give you my sincere advice. First, set fire to their synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.

This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom so that God might see that we are Christians. Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. This will bring home to them the fact that they are not masters in our country as they boast. Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings be taken from them.

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and lamb. Fifth, I advise that safe conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews, for they have no business in the countryside since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home, for you must not and cannot protect them unless you wish to become participants in their abominations in the sight of God.

Sixth, I advise that charging interest be prohibited to them and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. Through usury, they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess.

Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an axe, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewishes and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. For it is not fitting that they should let us, accursed Gentiles, toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the "holy people," idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and passing gas. He used a little bit stronger word there. And on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, we should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."

This idea that we can merge church and state, this is what it can come to. The Mennonites didn't know, and the evangelicals didn't know. And what's even crazier is that all those soldiers, almost all of them were claimed Christians, the people doing all those horrific things.

This is what you get. This is what happened with Constantine. When the church first merged with the state, the church had some influence and did some good things. But eventually, their faith became a part of their politics, and the church almost dissolved to nothing. I'm going to talk a little bit about the historic faith for a minute. There are more than 45,000 denominations globally. Some people even say as many as 100,000. And when you're a Christian, you grow up and you learn about Christ and you believe them and you want to follow them. But then you hear all these conflicting ideas and all these different theologies, and you're so confused. My glasses don't look like this.

This is what Bill put up last time, ready for my unbiased exegesis or interpretation of the Bible. And he's looking through the Bible through all these different teachers of the past, and all these are Calvinists. Mine might have had some of these people, definitely had some of these people as my influence, but had a lot more people on it, a lot different people, people all over the world. And I was so confused, like, how can there be so much conflicting thoughts about Christianity? And then when I discovered that the first 200 years, I mean, I didn't know the exact dates then, but the first 200 years of Christianity, there were no splits.

All the church was unified. And the next 100 years, there were only two divisions. And it was the Montanists and Novatianists. Is that right? And these divisions, if we look back at them, they're basically the same thing. I mean, they're not like a huge difference like we have today where we're on opposite poles and they both call themselves a church. And so this is the new glasses to put on. I'll zoom in so you can see it.

At first, we look at the Bible, and we look at the Bible with our biases. We look at it with everything we've learned in the past, and we say, "Well, that means this and this means that. I have no idea what that means. This seems to mean this. I've heard this means that."

And then we wonder if any of it's true. What is true? How do we know this? And then we go and we look at how did the early Christian, the United Church, who had nothing, they all believed the same thing, basically. I mean, they had a little bit of differences, but nothing to divide them. What did they think about it? How did they see it? And then that wipes away all of our biases. I was definitely wrong about that, and now I know what that means. And you could just look at the Bible and start to figure it out at this moment. Then you look at all the Bible and all of the modern Christianity through the lens that we now have of then when you go back to the Bible, you see, wow, this actually says something very different.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I'm going to, I have been and I will be quoting a lot of the early Christians in the next while. So we're going to read some, open your Bibles to John 8:33. You don't really have to. It's right there. Then Pilate entered the governor's headquarters again, called Jesus and said to him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning me?"

Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and your chief priest has delivered you to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here."

Pilate therefore said to him, "Are you a king then?" Jesus answered, "You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." And 1 Peter 1:1, Peter an apostle to the sojourners scattered throughout Pontius Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

And skipping to 1 Peter 2:4-12, coming to him as a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. You also, as living stones, are being built a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer your spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Therefore, it is also contained in the scriptures, "Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame." Therefore, to you who believe, he is precious. But to those who are disobedient, the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. And before I continue, always pay attention when the Bible contrasts believe with disobedience because disobedience is unbelief.

And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, the stone that they stumbled because being disobedient to the word to which they also were appointed. But you, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. He's talking to a bunch of people in a bunch of different places that are sojourners, and he's saying, "You're a holy nation, a royal priesthood, who once were not a people but are now a people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.

For this you are called because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in his footsteps." He suffered, leaving us an example. Who committed no sin, we shouldn't, we should do our best not to sin, nor deceit was found in his mouth, and we shouldn't lie. We don't have that right anymore. Who when he was reviled did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed.

For you were like sheep going astray, but now have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls, like tanches. For how can a man be just who injures, who hates, who robs, who puts to death, and they who strive to be serviceable to their country do all these things?

Celsus, a pagan critic, origin quotes Celsus saying, "Celsus urges us to take office in the government of the country if that is required for the maintenance of laws and the support of religion." So this is kind of like today, they're like, "We must, it's a moral, we must vote, we must be a part of this so that we can support our religion." And origin says this, "But we recognize in each state existence of another national organization founded by the word of God, and we exhort those who are mighty in word and of blameless life to rule over churches.

And those who rule over us well are under the constraining influence of the great king, whom we believe to be the Son of God, God the Word. And if those who govern and the church and are called rulers of a divine nation, that is, the church, rule well, they rule in accordance with the divine commands and never allow themselves to be led astray by worldly policy. And it is not for the purpose of escaping public duties that Christians decline public offices, but that they may reserve themselves for a diviner and more necessary service in the church of God for the salvation of men."

I don't know if I need to explain any of that, but we are a divine nation. All the Christians in the world who they put Jesus as their leader and they follow him and they seek first his kingdom and they obey his commands are a nation of God.

We're a royal priesthood. For says the scriptures, "Blessed are those undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Now the way is unerring, namely Jesus Christ, for says he, 'I am the way and the life, and this way leads to the Father.' For no man says, 'He cometh to the Father but by me.' Blessed then are ye who are God-bearers, spirit-bearers, temple-bearers, bearers of holiness, adorned in all respects with the commandments of Jesus Christ, being a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people." I think that defines America, right?

Let's read it again. Let's see if it does. Spirit-bearers, God-bearers, temple-bearers, bearers of holiness, adorned in all respects to the commandments of Jesus, being a royal priesthood and a holy nation. It is not. This is talking about, this is a letter to a church in Ephesus, and he's talking to the people there saying that we're a royal nation. The people who follow the commandments of Christ are a holy nation.

Tertullian. But how will a Christian man war rather? How will he serve even in peace without a sword? Which the Lord has taken away, for albeit soldiers have come to John and have received a formula of their rule, albeit likewise a centurion had believed, still the Lord afterwards in disarming Peter disarmed every soldier.

No dress is lawful among us if assigned to any lawful action. That was actually supposed to be in the next one. Justin Martyr. We who formerly used to murder one another do not only not refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willingly die confessing Christ. But if the soldiers enrolled by you who have taken the military oath preferred their allegiance to their own life and their own parents and their country and all the kindred, though you can offer them nothing incorruptible, it were verily ridiculous if we who earnestly long for incorruption should not endure all things in order to obtain what we desire from him who is able to grant it.

I'm going to read one more scripture in closing.

And I might mention something right after, but these show that the early Christians, I did not look for where the early Christians believed were a new nation. This was just looking at passages where they believed and turned another cheek and to beat our swords into plowshares. I haven't even looked to see where they see the two kingdoms, but they mention it in a lot of their writings.

John 17:14-19. I have given them your word. This is Jesus talking to God. And the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

So we're not going to go to that one. So we are not of this world. And Jesus said that right the chapter before that he says it to Pilate, that his kingdom is not of that world. Our kingdom is not of this world. We are not of this world. What kingdom are you a part of? Are you a people of this world and the kingdoms of this world? You only have two options: God or the world.

And it's your choice. We choose to either be a part of God and his kingdom and his all of our rights are in contrast to the rights of the world. If the Caesar of America says that we have the right to bear arms and defend ourselves and Jesus says something different, I'm not saying we can't have guns. That's not what I'm saying.

But we can't use our guns to defend ourselves and to kill people. I don't have any guns, so I shouldn't say our guns, but you can't use your guns to defend yourself or kill people. And so we don't have the rights that Americans have. Our rights have been stripped away by our king who is of a different world. We're sojourners and pilgrims in this place, and we got to live by him first. And where we can follow the laws of this government, we do, as long as it's not in opposition to him. And that's it.

And that's going to bring us to our next message, which if you can put on those glasses, that what if America is not a kingdom? What if, I mean, the kingdom of God? What if Hitler was not the kingdom of God? What if the Communist Party is not the kingdom of God? And all the different kingdoms of the world are not the kingdom of God. And we are to only be looking at the king as our lawgiver, as our government. It's much easier to swallow what they say that we must do, but it's very difficult. The second I looked at the early Christians a long time ago, I was like, "No way. That's like against my rights.

Throw them out." But we don't have those rights. We're of a different nation. Okay. Any comments or corrections? Are you? The idea of a Christian country sounds great, but that's exactly what our forefathers were dealing with in Switzerland. They wanted a Christian country and to do everything right. But then that meant other Christians who had a different view, yeah, they end up torturing them, killing them, and all of that, committing all kinds of wickedness. I was thinking in your message, the contrast between the Waldensians and the Anabaptists, that their paths cross. At one time, the Waldensians were non-resistant. And then when they met the reformers, the reformers convinced them, "Hey, it's okay to take up arms."

And so that's what they did. The rest of their history was fighting their persecutors. They lived in northern Italy, and Deborah and I visited their museum. And the showcase is full of all these weapons and these war heroes of theirs. And of course, in the end, they lost everything. I mean, they're still around today, but Waldensian stands for nothing anymore.

So yeah, even though it looks odd to turn the other cheek, our forefathers definitely did the right thing. They're following the example of Christ. And what they stood for back then, they still stand for today by trusting in Christ's means instead of human means to bring about what we want.

A big comment there, Daniel, that William Law said, one of my favorite writers, that he made the comment in the book A Series Called a Devoutly Life. If the pagan government in Rome would have told the Christians to go kill somebody like the army, they wouldn't do it. But when Constantine said, "It's okay," they did it. Who are we following? Christ or the government? That when they united them, it just took away the whole thing. Oh, the government says do it, we can do it.