The Bill of Rights and Biblical Rights - with Dr. Kayser

So what exactly are rights and where exactly do they come from? We talk about them quite a bit as a presupposition for our second amendment rights, first amendment rights and others, but where exactly does this idea originate? Welcome back to another TRX Talk and I'm happy to have with me once again Dr. Kaiser. Dr. Kaiser, you've been on the show once before and we talked about rights as they applied pretty directly to the second amendment and there was great feedback from that show. People were extremely appreciative. Some people asked that we dig really deep into specific applications, but a number of people also wondered if we could zoom out and just say, what is a right and where does it come from? We talked quite a bit about the founders, the first amendment, the second amendment, the things that they put into the Bill of Rights, but where exactly did they get these ideas? We talked about some of the ideas at the time, but what would you like to talk about and thank you once again for another conversation? You're very welcome. I'm pleased to be with you. I have really a same approach to rights that I think the majority of our founding fathers did and that is that rights are something that comes from God. They're not just something natural in the wild. In the wild we're just a bag of chemicals if God does not exist and rights really make no sense. So I had sent you earlier a little bit more technical definition which I'll read to you. A human right is a privilege granted by God, written on the heart and codified in scripture that gives humans a lawful authority to something that cannot be taken away without God's permission and that humans have a responsibility to preserve. It's a little bit of a longer definition, but I think each part of that is important for really understanding what rights are and are not. And you have the word right in the Bible used a number of times. Paul said, don't I have the right to be married? Don't I have the right to eat and drink? He talked about various rights and he used the Greek word exusia which means a lawful authority but that implies somebody's given you that authority, that right to do something. And in Paul's case he certainly wasn't making the case that Caesar had given him these rights. This was certainly not the context of that conversation. Exactly, exactly. Especially since he on occasion ignored some of Caesar's mandates with regard to the spreading of the gospel. Yeah, so as we talk about rights, I think you did a phenomenal job. Last time we spoke in talking about the days of the Enlightenment in the 1700s, a lot of people were talking about rights and they were thinking about them in different ways. There were humanists later in the 1800s. There were a number of philosophers who believed that rights were self-evident or self-proclaimed or dispensed from the government. You had over a bunch of these different philosophies that have tried to give meaning to man or power to the government or some sense of order without acknowledging God. And I think that you did an excellent job of explaining why the founders had a more biblical basis for the rights that they wanted the United States to recognize. But let's talk a little bit more about the Bible. In addition to Paul, I think all of us are listening to this podcast, fairly familiar. God creates the world in the beginning of the Bible and then God gives glimpses and promises to different people. Then he gives the Ten Commandments. Right now my family and I are reading in First Samuel when the people ask for a king. As these different covenants, as these different responsibilities and requirements given to his people, where do we see some of those rights that people have? Again, we probably need to distinguish with different kinds of rights that are out there because there are rights that civil governments have and rights that families have, churches have and individuals have. And so when a higher government, we call it federal here, national government in the scripture, demanded things of lower governments that really exceeded their powers to do so, the lower government had the right to resist that. And so you see rights on all four governments in the scriptures, individual, family, church and state. So it depends on where you want to go with that as to where we look in the scripture. Again, we could go really deep down a bunch of these different rabbit holes. I see a desire for people who want order to give more power to the civil government than scripture does. And I also see people who look at the corruption in our existing civil government and want to go in a more anarchical direction. Believe that there are no rights or powers or responsibilities that are given to the civil government. Can you talk a little bit about the different institutions that you just mentioned, the family, the church and the state? Reform view, which was the predominant view over 80% of early America at the time of its founding, held to the regulative principle of government when it came to church and state, which was a very restrictive view on what rights they had, whereas they had a very expanded view of what the individual and the family had with regard to rights, the freedom principles, what I call that. And so if you start with Adam, that was the first government that was established, and God gave him freedom to do anything except for what God had specifically prohibited. And so Adam didn't need to ask, can I eat from a papayatry? God said, well, I said any tree. Well, what about a banana tree? No, there's only one tree I forbid you to eat from. He had the freedom principle. He could do anything that was not explicitly prohibited. Same was true of the family, but after the fall, God instituted church and state, and both of those, God wanted very, very restricted because power is like a commodity. It's in limited supply, and any time you find one government increasing its power, it's always at the expense of other powers, and it's usually the individual and families that suffer. And in the case of federal government, it's lower governments, civil governments that suffer as well. And so God instituted this regulative principle that said that church and state may only do what is explicitly authorized by God to do. And that makes for a very limited civil and state government. Now they do have rights themselves. God's granted them these rights in the Scripture, but they go beyond that. They no longer have authority to do that. The only authority they claim is the power of the sword to enforce it. So I think the freedom principle and the regulative principle of government are underlying philosophies that I think help us to interpret rights. It's kind of a grid within which we need to work. You're mentioned of civil government versus civil government. There is some of that going on in Tennessee right now. We have state law that was passed earlier this year that is being called into question by the federal government, and then there's also a whole number of smaller conflicts between Tennessee state legislature and individual cities like Nashville and Memphis, where they're grappling over the limits of their jurisdictions and so forth. So that's an interesting one that you brought up that I think that we really often take the simplistic approach that is church versus state or family versus church, and there are many levels of civil government conflicting with each other. It seems like constantly. Right. And that doesn't mean you can't use some of the laws, even if they're really not legitimate laws, that you can't use them to your own advantage when they already exist. We see that in the Bible as well. For example, when San Bolat-Tabaya and Gisham were opposed to Nehemiah's building the wall, Nehemiah had been authorized to do that by the emperor. Biblically, there should not be an empire. You know, the Persian empire was an ungodly status, centralist, collectivist organization that the Bible would be opposed to. Nevertheless, Christians were able to use some of their laws to defend themselves, and so he said that it's not lawful for you to be intermedaling with what we're doing. So he used one status government against the other status government to try to limit what they were trying to do to persecute. And so that would be more of a pragmatic approach to using what they call civic rights. Those would be rights, civil rights that the state has granted. But ultimately, in a biblical civilization, you wouldn't be having that kind of thing. It's only what God has granted that we would consider to be a true right. Does that make sense? Yes. That does make sense. Yeah, and one of the differences between the United States Constitution and other nations Constitution is kind of this presupposition. The United States Constitution is an express powers document that describes the powers that the government has, and the assumption is that it doesn't have power beyond what is described in the Constitution. And there are other nations that make the exact opposite presupposition. I will allow you to own land, but anything that I haven't told you that I can own, I obviously own as the king. Anything that I haven't told you that you're allowed to do, you obviously come to me for provision. The implied powers, the exact opposite presupposition, all powers are implied to belong to the state unless they graciously dispense you some ability to do things on your own. But seeing people just intuitively default to this status approach to rights, what the government has given and what they enforce, but what they don't realize, if the government grants rights, the government can withhold rights. They can take them away. They're ultimately just privileges, not truly rights. And it would make no sense to of biblical disobedience that you find in the Old Testament. Over and over again, when tyrants disarm citizens in the Old Testament, you find that people ignored those laws because it was what we've become as an inalienable right. It cannot be alienated by the civil government. And so you had individuals in various periods of Old Testament history, and even Jesus himself, who authorized the use of weapons when the state had prohibited the ownership of weapons. Obviously, that can't be the case if the state is the one who grants rights. But we were just reading in for a Samuel, it mentions, Saul has just been made king and the Philistines control a huge amount of Israel and to the point where they have banished or eradicated blacksmiths. And so the Israelites have no ability to make weapons. It explicitly says that the Philistines have eradicated blacksmiths so that there won't be weapons. But then they also are charging the Israelites just to sharpen their agricultural tools and implements. But Saul and Jonathan have disobeyed this command and they do have weapons. And that's where the story kind of picks up with some of the fighting. It kind of reminds me of the beginning of Braveheart. Jonathan goes out and destroys a garrison and that just riles up the Philistines and then everything starts happening. Yeah, lots of fun adventures in the Bible circling around this issue of rights. Old Testament's not a boring, those history books are filled with very exciting stories and I think are very relevant to today's issues. Since the state has been limited by God to a certain jurisdiction, there are rights that they must recognize that individual people have and they're rights that they must not take away. What happens when the Philistines decide that people aren't allowed to have blacksmiths anymore? People aren't allowed to be blacksmiths anymore. Whose job is it to put that civil government in its place? Well, I would say people can bring individual rebuke, remonstress, appeal to the civil government. But it would have to be some other civil magistrate that would interpose and protect citizens. And actually they have the duty to do so against tyrants. This was what happened in early America. Governor Gage pretty much dismissed the provincial government of Massachusetts. And they said, you don't have the authority to dismiss us. And so they called their militias to protect. And so that was not revolution. That was one government fighting against another government. It was a lawful war. And so I would say there are many levels of interposition that lower governments can make. You know, they can drag their feet, refuse to enforce federal edicts. They can sue in court. There's a lot of creative ways in which lower governments can try to stop the tyranny of a higher government. But there does come a time, and I would say it's an absolute last resort, where a lower government seceding or fighting against a higher government is a perfectly legitimate lawful biblical option. And it's the last resort, I think, for a number of reasons. But one of them is it is extremely painful and difficult. It is a very difficult thing. And that story that we were just reading about in First Samuel, tens of thousands of Philistine chariots come into Israel to put down this rebellion. And there are not very many Israelites with not very many weapons. It is not a fun thing to try to hold a much larger, more powerful government to the standards that God is going to hold them to. Yes, and yet the lower governments, again, can be creative. There have been battles down through history that have been won with much lesser armaments against far larger armies, and yet through guerrilla warfare and through other means, the lower ones have prevailed. A lot of times, tyrants have a hard time getting loyal subjects to willingly engage in the long haul and battle. Whereas the minority who's feeling their rights are being stripped, they're the ones whose wives and children are in danger, they're fighting with a lot more passion. And so the issues that are at stake many times determine the outcomes of battles far more than the armaments themselves do. In Scripture, you get the behind the scenes look where God specifically tells his prophets that he is going to uphold this nation or that he is going to give victory this day. But there are historical examples that I can think of that are many where the righteous prevail. And this idea that existed in history that not only was battle the last resort, but it was also an appeal to heaven. That putting two forces against each other was a little bit almost like casting lots, that God would decide that they is an idea that goes back. It is not referred to as much in modern times, but it is a pretty common theme in history. Even individuals, if across the board everybody understood what their rights were and what the limits of civil government were, they ignored civil magistrates, tyrannical commands. I think many times even individuals could prevail against that. You have situations in various countries where it's illegal to preach the gospel, for example. And yet, in China that was the case, and yet look at how the gospel has spread. Where I grew up in Ethiopia, you could get in deep trouble preaching the gospel. And when I was there, it was just a handful of churches. Now the tribe that I was with is, I think, over 95% Christian. And so God can prevail just through a change in worldview, a change in beliefs. And now they're operating from a Christian perspective, even in civic. And I remember homeschooling being illegal and due to specific, this is not a large group of people, but a small group of people resisting and making the case that they should not be persecuted or prosecuted for this, they actually were able to secure the freedom to homeschool for everybody in the state. Yes, the former Soviet Union prohibited the church from picking up orphans, engaging in charity, numerous other acts of mercy. It was against the law to be giving charity to another person why they would do that. Well, they didn't want divided loyalties. But the church continued to engage in those things and had huge influences as a result. The Apostle Paul, when he was preaching, he never applied for a lisset, which was basically a license. He was more equivalent to the 501c3 status. No, the church, the state does not authorize church planting and does not authorize permission to preach. Otherwise, they can control your preaching. And so he never applied for a corporate charter from Rome. And failure to do so was clearly illegal. I've written the paper on church incorporation and why it really is an ungodly mixture of state and church. And yet so many churches have willingly gone along with that. So, all the churches resisted it. What would the state do? I don't think there's any way that they could close down all churches. You bring up a point that gets discussed quite a bit and misunderstood quite a bit. The separation of church and state. So, obviously, the separation of church and state is a very important foundational principle in America. And I would argue that it's a very important scriptural principle. But it is usually talked about in modern times on the internet in a presumptive sort of way. Could you describe what the separation of church and state should be as opposed to what it is? On the internet, I guess it's too hard to say what most people think that it is, because there's a million-in-one definitions. But generally it goes something like, the separation of church and state means that Christians shouldn't be in politics or they shouldn't let anything that they've read in the Bible affect the way that they vote. There shouldn't be any mixture of religion and politics. When the separation of church and state is actually something a little different. Could you explain that more clearly than I just did? Well, it's a jurisdictional separation of powers. And so, there are certain things that if church is engaged in, the state would have jurisdiction to say no to. For example, let's say that I started a cult that believed in sacrificing children on the altar of Moloch. The state actually would be obligated to come in and prosecute me and put me to death for murder. You know, for putting these babies to death. That is within the state's jurisdiction. So, it really is an issue of what is the jurisdiction that a person has. When the state tried to, for example, Herod tried to get Christ to go out of his territory. He commanded him to leave. And Jesus absolutely refused because that was not within Herod's jurisdiction to tell him when and where he could preach. And so, he said he was going to stay there another three days. Why did he disobey? It was a jurisdictional issue. Jesus told Pilate, you could have no authority at all against me. And that's the Greek word exusia, unless it had been given you from above. So, the word exusia can mean authority, can mean right. When I have a right, I have an authority to do something that's been granted by God. When the state has something granted by God, it has a right. It has an authority. Same word in the Greek. But Jesus said he could have no authority over him unless it had been granted to him from above. It's the same principle that Romans 13 talks about. People grossly misinterpret that passage to indicate we just have to submit blindly to anything that the state does. Oh, it's saying the exact opposite. It's saying the state has a responsibility to be a minister of God for justice. And the Bible defines that justice. And so we have to look to God's word really to define what the jurisdiction of the church is. It's very limited. What the jurisdiction of the family is. What the jurisdiction of individual as well as state. So, does that mean that Christians or let's make it more specific? Can pastors run for office? Yes, they could run for office. But it would be now a totally different jurisdiction that they are operating on. They would have to take off their pastor's cap and put on their civics cap once they were elected into office. You can have the same person in two different jurisdictions, but you would have to take off the cap and know when you're operating in each field. Yes. I mean, in many ways it's no different than a father who is also a pastor. You know, being the head of those two jurisdictions and not using his pastor's hat at home and not using his dad hat from the pulpit. With his children he would have the authority of, you know, the family discipline. He would not have the authority to excommunicate people. That's a church authority, right? He could not serve communion to his family. But in the church when he comes, yes, he's going to be serving to everybody, including his family as a pastor. So this is, obviously there's room for muddiness, but the separation of the jurisdictions make that clearer than we have them today. Where the state has just absorbed so many different areas of responsibility in everyday life. And I'm just talking about America. I'm not even thinking about places in Europe or former Soviet Union where it was almost all encompassing. But even here in America the state has adopted so many things just gently and slowly and benevolently swallowed up so many of the responsibilities that we have as individuals. And then they will allow me to homeschool. They will allow pastors to preach whatever they want on. But there is this element of permission that is benevolently applied as opposed to a recognition of the limitations of their own jurisdictions. The limited jurisdiction that they themselves have. Yeah. So what would you do? If you were living in a time that Revelation described where nobody was allowed to buy or sell food without government permission, then they could selectively starve certain portions of society. Well, it's clear the 144,000 there, they bought and sold without receiving the mark of the beast without his permission. In Zimbabwe there was a while there where they prohibited the use of any foreign currencies, any means of exchange other than their dollar, which was massively being inflated, which meant if people abided by that they would have ended up starving to death. And so there is nothing biblically that would prohibit you from using alternative means of bartering. But the state might outlaw that and say you can only use our rapidly inflating dollar. And if you wanted to survive you'd have to just barter with food, gold, silver, maybe even other currencies that were a little bit less inflationary than your current countries, in that case in Zimbabwe. We actually saw a little glimpse of this during 2020 and 2021. There were a number of nations that not only closed down their economies, but their lockdowns were more significant. We were talking to some friends from Africa and all road traffic was prohibited except for emergency vehicles. And so people very quickly developed a sort of a black market of Uber eats by way of ambulances. And ambulances began running 24-7 constantly just delivering food to people, ferrying people around because sort of obeying the letter of the law, just so that they wouldn't be machine-gunned on the road. But they were disobeying so that they had the ability to feed their families, keep their families alive. You know that right to travel, I've not actually thought about that a great deal, but the Bible does speak to that. If you don't have the right to travel where you want to travel, you can become a de facto prisoner. And so you see examples, like even the one I mentioned earlier, Jesus stating where he was going to travel, and Herod did not want him in his jurisdiction, did not want him traveling through there. And you see the various missionaries in Bible times going illegally into countries to preach the gospel. So the right to travel seems to be an inherent right as well. I grew up during the very end of the Cold War, the very end of the Soviet Union. So I was very aware, my parents would talk about the Berlin Wall, people who were prohibited from leaving, people who were not allowed to escape from their nations. But the freedom to travel is something that is very interesting. And we saw people talking about this, thinking about this again when it came to those lockdowns, those recent lockdowns. And now some of the conversations about 15-minute cities. You will have enough social credit score to travel 15 minutes per day. I mean this is a fascinating concept because it doesn't sound like the right of habeas corpus is being removed from you, because you still have those 15 minutes. You have 15 minutes of freedom every day. But you really are being made a prisoner of a smaller and smaller area all the time. Yep. I was just looking at an old, actually I got it right here, I probably recognized this citizens rule book. I think this was Ron Paul who put this one out. But anyway, I've got different scripture references all through this constitution. Some of the places in there are not so biblical and others like, yeah, they got these straight out of the Bible, including the Bill of Rights. Most of the phrases in there you can find straight in the Bible. And a lot of people don't realize that. They think this is something the government gave to us. Well even the way it's written, it's clear that the government did not give it. They recognized it. It's a fascinating thing to study. I have a proposed piece of legislation called the Restrict Act, which basically just gives the government more control over the internet. And I was going through there and trying to figure out which of the amendments to the Bill of Rights does this not violate. It kind of violates all of them. Even the third amendment that talks about quartering troops inside of your home. Technically it doesn't really do that. But if it takes control of all of your appliances, if Amazon Alexa becomes a government agent and is in your home, it does this violate the third amendment. It kind of does. Yeah, it's an invasion of privacy. So Amendment 4, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects. Hey, if they can monitor your internet searches, in effect, you're not secure in your papers, effects, unreasonable searches, seizures, et cetera. Unless it's with warrant upon probable cause supported by oath. They have got all kinds of things that have to be in place to protect your rights even as a criminal, somebody that's been charged. Yeah, I think that having a listening device in your house recording constantly, you are essentially being forced to be a witness against yourself, which is... We are told is a right. We cannot be forced to testify against ourselves. I think of my phone as just a listening device for the federal government. Who knows if they are, but I take the opportunity to preach to them anyway. So we live in very interesting times. And one of the things that I think we will see tested very soon, this idea that tyranny has always been difficult to scale in the past because you need to have a large army of people who are willing to be accomplices to tyranny. And the Soviet Union and Red China have certainly created large groups of people who are willing to participate in tyranny, be part of the iron fist, or part of the boot. But some of the technological advantages that are coming make it much easier for smaller groups of tyrants to have a larger reach. And I think that when that happens, it is incumbent upon the free people to also embrace those technologies so that they don't get outclassed in these technologies. They actually use some of the developments in publishing and gathering information and promulgating information that they stay on top of these technologies as well so that they understand them and can use them to push back. And even before you get to that last resort stage of open combat that you are pushing back against the ideas, you are fighting in the marketplace of ideas at the same time that the new ideas are being pushed out with the new technologies. Right, I think it is actually in some ways a good thing that some of the tyranny is beginning to sled downhill faster and faster because there is a lot of citizens that are just beginning to wake up and realize the state is not here as your friend and protector. And I think that the things that are actually increasingly putting a stranglehold around the economy, around people's rights and things. It's when things get super bad that people begin to read, you know, history and reread the principles of freedom that they have lost. And in a principled way begin to try to reestablish a Christian civilization. I was thinking of one, just illustration and I never verified it, but it was the, what's the guy's name, Luigi Inaudi. He was the ex president of Italy. And he said that if people actually paid for everything that was on the books for taxes, they would be paying 110% of their income, which is just ludicrous, you know, obviously nobody could do it. And so he said it just led almost everybody to survive to be tax evaders in one way or another. Well, when things get that bad people realize, well obviously nobody can pay 110% of their taxes. And they're told slaves and then they begin to give some pushback. It's not really until things get bad that people start thinking principally. What are the principles on which the freedoms we used to take for granted were based. And that's really what we're talking about in these podcasts. And that's why we have to have a passion for the podcast, for anyone that didn't hear it, an explanation of where the founders got their rights and their principles, why they found those in scripture, why they weren't being carried about by all the different, all the different conflicting and competing ideas of the Enlightenment. While there were many founders that had many different beliefs, the areas that they did have in common and they put down in the Bill of Rights are extremely, extremely scriptural. So I don't want to rehash all of that, but when you mention that the purpose that people need to get back to, when there is tyranny, when there is oppression, when the oppression starts getting worse and worse and snowballing, going back to Christian civilization is what you mentioned as the antidote. Yes, there's a book, actually a couple of books written by Vishal Mungalwadi. He was an Indian who became converted when he started studying, why did the Western civilization seem to have all of the best of everything? The best in liberties, in science, in arts, in economics, and freedom. And he began realizing it was when they followed the Bible more consistently, the West had increasing fruits of liberty benefits. So he wrote a book, the Sun Set on the West, and another one, the book that made your world, where he's basically rebuking the West and saying, what are you guys doing? You're giving up the very things that have brought you all the prosperity, all of the technological advances. And I highly recommend that the readers read this. This is an outsider looking in and saying, it really was the Bible. Another book I would recommend is John Idsmo's book. Let me see if I can think of the name of it. I can't think of the name of it off the top of my head, but Christianity of the Constitution, that's it. And he pointed out, and he's not a Calvinist, but he pointed out that it was really the Calvinistic roots of almost all of them, like John Adams, first president, almost all of the founding fathers that led them to the kind of balances in government that led to maximum freedom for citizens and maximum ability for the economy, for technology, for other things to take off. We've abandoned that to a large degree with the nanny state. And I was even reading in the epic times. I mean, it's got a lot of good things, but they keep talking about foundations of America being some of these Greek philosophers. Absolutely nonsense. If you read some of our founding fathers, they explicitly rejected some of Plato's ideas because he advocated communal property. They explicitly rejected a lot of Aristotle's natural ideas because it led to proto fascism, where he advocated that parents, the state dictate how many children that families could have, and control of education. Well, yeah, that's happened in America, hasn't it? But anyway, these people were not naive about the problems that happened in the French Revolution. Very clearly rejecting Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views of natural rights. And then Pufendorf, who was way too much of a status. So they explicitly went back to the Bible and said, if we don't have some objective standard, which defines rights and limits to jurisdiction, then it's really up to whoever is the highest power to dictate what those jurisdictional limits are. And so we've got to have an authority above the authorities by which those authorities are limited. And there really is no logical one if there is no God, and if there is no Bible that actually dictates these limited jurisdictions. And history is very clear. It's obvious that Greek philosophy did not create a system that limited Greek tyranny. Roman philosophers were not capable of reigning in the might and terror of Rome. And the founders had a really unique, I think, went from a colonial power to a number of free states. They had the opportunity to look back over history and see the way that England had placed the king over the church. You have a national church, the head of which is the king, and we have a new king as of last week. That'll be interesting to watch. But they'd also seen prior to that the church over the state, the Roman Catholic tradition placed the pope over a number of kings. So they had seen different attempts relatively recently and many of them relatively first-hand. At this point, some of them were the grandchildren of the Huguenos who had seen this side of tyranny or that side of tyranny. And so they're their desire to place all of these institutions equally under the jurisdiction of Christ. And with limited jurisdictions that were limited by the scriptural standard is, I think, very clear because they had seen fairly recently all the different attempts, all the different sides. And you know, I shouldn't make it look like everything started with Founding Fathers of America. They were just going back to English common law and to the Magna Carta and to a long history. These fights for freedom that have happened before, I think it was nine out of twenty-six of the provisions in our Bill of Rights, the first ten of the amendments, come straight out of the Magna Carta. And there's a document that came out shortly after that 1774, the proceedings of the Continental Congress, the cover facsimile. If you take a look at that, it shows a kind of an image of twelve arms grasping a column on whose base is written the Magna Carta. They saw themselves as upholding English common law, which was Christian biblical law applied to culture over thousands of years because it went be appreciated even the English. Yes, and they saw George III as abandoning that. They were not the rebels in one sense. They saw him as breaking tradition, breaking outside of his jurisdiction and violating the restrictions that had been placed on the ground. And the regulations that had been placed on him by the Magna Carta in previous legal traditions and councils. Absolutely. In the 1950s, I forget which year it was, the Congress did a massive study of the history of the relationship of the state to Christianity. And they came out saying, we've always been a Christian nation. We've kind of abandoned that idea to some degree, but we've always been a Christian nation under biblical law. Supreme Court's number of decisions, Justice Story, has said that First Amendment in the Bill of Rights was just prohibiting the federal government from establishing one of the Christian denominations. That's what they meant by religion. And then also prohibiting the federal government from dis-establishing state churches, because long after this amendment was ratified, various states had their own established churches. It was a Christian nation. And that's why our constitution is dated in the year of our Lord, declaring Jesus to be the Lord of the nation, dates it in the 12th year of the country, not the first year, which means the Declaration of Independence is the first legal document of our country, which explicitly gives this idea of rights that they are given to us by our Creator God. And this is the sort of thing that you do lose track of pretty easily if you let the state educate your children for a few generations. I was reminded, there's a dumb old Norm McDonald joke where he says, I was reading a history book and it turns out the good guys have always won every war. What are the odds? And you could update that joke. I was reading a textbook, turns out people who are ideologically aligned with the teachers unions were the good guys all along. Yeah, Christians have not been very involved. It's really their fault that we have lost so many freedoms because we have not been salt and light. And the other side of the thing, we've got all kinds of radicals in the LGBTQ plus the trans surgery, if you want to call it surgery, I call it a mutilation of children. They're getting into every state government trying to influence. So now in Oregon, you cannot adopt children unless you agree with the LGBTQ viewpoints. Anyway, what's happened is that as Christians have left their influence and are no longer salt and light, there's others who are filling the vacuum. And so we have only ourselves to blame, I think. It's easy to be lazy and to say, you know, teaching children is hard. The government is willing to do it for free. And taking care of the homeless people is hard. The government's willing to do it for free. Taking care of my neighbor is hard. The government's willing to do it for free. And the next thing you know, you're paying 110% taxes. And these people are actually not being cared for very well. Yeah, let's call it what it is. It's government propaganda center is not a public education. The right that we have as say the family institution has the right to educate their children and the responsibility to actually do it. And it's when you abdicate that responsibility that you have. These children are your responsibility. The people in your church who are orphans and widows are your responsibility, not the government. When you abdicate these responsibilities, that's when you really lose the ability to talk about those rights. Yes, responsibilities and freedoms go hand in hand. When we give up our responsibilities to defend not only our own rights, but the rights of others, then there's going to be something that will fill that void and take away some of those liberties. So, responsibility, liberty, go and tandem with each other. At some point it would be fun probably to just go through each of the articles in the first, you know, in the Bill of Rights. And talk about the biblical basis, you know, that some of the founding fathers explicitly gave to these. There's a lot of commentaries, early commentaries on this that discuss the biblical basis for it. So, we do that. Just run through those lists. Do you have time? Let me begin with Article 1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the right of people, peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. You look at some of the early commentaries on this, people say, well it's obvious. Where can you find in the scripture that the government's ever been granted any right to take away freedom of press, freedom of speech? They were really appealing to the legislative principle of government. If this meant that you can't have any expression of God being over the country, then we would be contradicting thousands of federal and state edicts. Our money says, you know, in God we trust, which we don't anymore. You know, the Pledge of Allegiance, One Nation under God, there are so many expressions that God was over this nation. Psalm 3312 says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. So, what our Founding Fathers said was this was saying the federal government had no authority to disestablish state churches, which continue to exist, you know, for a long period of time, and it had no ability to establish its own, because we're not a bunch of provinces, we're a confederation of states. And so there's a big distinction between Canada, which is a bunch of provinces and United States of America, where the federal government has very limited, limited power. So that's where that one really came from. Second Amendment, well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. We actually talked about that, you know, a good deal last time, Luke 22, what Jesus said there, Luke 11, Jesus said, you know, when I, well, I better look it up exactly. But a person, when he's fully armed, is able to, let me look it up, Luke 11, verse 21 says, when a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. You take away arms, your goods are not going to be in peace. Article 3, no soldier in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. And by the way, I should go back to the militia thing. You've probably heard this, haven't you, that people say militia. Doesn't that mean if you're in the military, you can own a weapon? Yes, yeah. And that's not at all what they meant by militia. And in times of war, the militia gets together into a proper fighting force under the direction of the government. This is one of the, one of the responsibilities the government has is the prosecution of warfare. But you, you have to have your militia ahead of time because states that control large standing armies have some significant, uh, temptations. Absolutely. You know, judges five, verse eight, it was a massive rebuke from God that there was not a shield or sword to be seen among 40,000 in Israel as the way it's framed. God expected every, um, uh, April-bodied man, which it defined as 20 years and above, uh, to have, have weapons, be trained in how to use them, and be willing to fight, to join together with others, uh, to defend, um, from invasion. Uh, that's what a militia was. But, um, anyway, I already read, I think, uh, uh, number three, uh, it's just establishing the idea that there really are, uh, four separate governments and jurisdictions that we dealt with earlier. And just as Isaiah, uh, violated God's law by forcing himself into the temple, uh, Pharaoh was violating the jurisdiction of the family when he ordered the killing of male babies. Uh, officers would be violating the jurisdiction of a home if they lodged there without permission. It's a jurisdiction, uh, it'd be around 24, uh, verses, um, 10 and 11 says that you can't even so much as go into somebody's home to get something, even if you've lent it to them. You have to stand outside and ask, can I have that thing back? Uh, the home was inviolable. The only time that, um, a home could be searched was when there was a court that was involved, there were witnesses, and, uh, it was proven that this person had, um, uh, taken your property. And so you're just recovering what has already been stolen. Right. With significant, significant due process. Yes, absolutely. I think due to, due to, Deuteronomy 24 supports both, uh, articles, um, three and four, uh, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. And no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Uh, it's, it's a fantastic. Uh, there's a whole bunch of principles in there. You know, Job 31, 35 says, let my accuser put his indictment in writing. It had to be something that was in writing so that the accuser could be prosecuted for what he's accusing the person of if it's a false testimony. They would be held liable and it kept people from having trivial lawsuits against individuals just to harass them, which is happening more and more nowadays because there's no penalty for people to bring these frivolous lawsuits against politicians, for example. Uh, it's pretty horrible. Um, I have several passages, um, that indicate the right to remain silent. Uh, you know, in the face of law, Jesus remained silent. They really frustrated, uh, the authorities because they, it came to root court. He just, he felt no need to answer any questions by the authorities. You have that right to be silent. And, um, I think Paul, uh, the Apostle Paul's a perfect illustration. Uh, you know, they had beaten Paul without a trial, arrested him, and, uh, he just said, what you've done is illegal. I'm going to, um, hold you accountable for it, and suddenly they're terrified. The authorities are. And so he's pressing Roman law against these, these officials who have broken the Roman law. Uh, anyway, there, there are lots of scriptures that I pulled, uh, each one of these articles. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't bore you with all of these, but... It's really neat to go through and to think about, and, and to go back and make, you know, either a direct, um, the direct verse reference, or, or, uh, or kind of a larger argument that happened. Um, I was just thinking about, um, there's, uh, a principle, a government limiting principle of Deuteronomy 17, says that this king, uh, and this is, again, this is before a king has been given to Israel, but there's specific instructions on what kings and can and cannot do, even before Israel has a king. It says he shall not multiply horses for himself nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses. So there is a limit to, there's not a number attached, but the king is not supposed to have too many horses, and he's not supposed to be allied with other nations for the purpose of strengthening his military. The king is not supposed to have more power than the people in this, this way. And there's just so many similar, um, similar principles that come out, and from that, you know, that obviously applies to the second and the third very clearly. Um, yeah, so many of these, these, these principles come from scripture and that are upheld by great historical traditions. And a lot of them are born out of mistakes, where we had a king who had a professional standing army and was stationing those Redcoes directly in people's homes. And so from that lesson, we wrote the Third Amendment a lot more specifically and clearly, uh, maybe former, uh, former regulations had been, but it came from the same principles that, uh, that we can see throughout, you know, thousands of years of human history. It's, I think that amendment, uh, overturns the whole idea of sting operations, you know, that are routinely done by, by police and others, as well as the kind of torture to extract information that was routinely done overseas. Uh, scripture required that citizens bring charges before a person could even be prosecuted. And so you've got, you know, Solomon who's giving justice to these two harlots. And it was a, it was a criminal offense to be a harlot, but nobody had brought any accusations against them. And so there was no jurisdiction that Solomon had. He gives them justice, you know, as he, uh, talks to these people against sting operations, uh, the government initiating, uh, the searches, that's all unbiblical. It required citizens to be responsible to bring charges. It's a fascinating thing, um, to consider to go back on some of these things and question a lot of the assumptions that we have today. When you live in a large, uh, even a very free nation like the United States that has a very large and powerful government and educates its people on the necessity of that large and powerful government, you get a lot of presumptions and presuppositions just kind of baked into your culture. And, uh, there's a lot, uh, a lot to unwind. Absolutely. Um, you know, Ezekiel 46 18 talks about, uh, princes shall not take any of the people's inheritance by evicting them from their property. That's eminent domain. Uh, there are a lot of scriptures that are against eminent domain, which is amendment five, at least one of the principles in amendment five. Um, I really encourage readers to look at the comments that, uh, you know, John Adams and many of these others gave concerning declaration of independence, constitution, bill of rights, what it meant. Oh, by the way, did I mention last time that one of the sets that's really helpful along these lines if you want everything amalgamated into one place is the one who wonders constitution. Uh, it's a four or five volume. Uh, it's, it's a great resource. There's a ton of written correspondence. This is one of the things that's kind of funny to me is people occasionally will make the argument like, well, we're not really sure what they meant by this because it's only two sentences long. And it's like, well, sure, but they, they had long conversations about this second amendment and they wrote letters and they had debates about that were recorded and then they passed subsequent case laws that were referring to it. Uh, there's, there's a lot of context. It's really easy to look at in the vast sweep of history that we know about the American founders were almost yesterday. We have so much information about them. It's pretty recent. You can read the sermons that their, their pastors were preaching on prior to when they did these things. Absolutely. We've got even some of the hand written drafts, like we've got three drafts of the Declaration of Independence. The first one was written by John Adams. And then, you know, you've got Thomas Jefferson and then you've got John Adams again and there was a committee that was working on these things and everybody gives Thomas Jefferson all the credit. But no, there were, there were other fantastic people that were involved in these and we've got their own, in their own handwriting. Uh, I hear arguments sometimes like, well, it would be impossible to know what these people were thinking when I wrote this. I was like, I've been in his library and looked at the books that he had on his wall. That maybe that would tell us where he got some of these ideas. Yep. Thankfully, there have been a lot of good researchers that have been digging into the, the background resources to a lot of the founders' writings. Um, I was speaking to a gentleman, um, the Second Amendment Foundation is, uh, is a, it's a legal group, but they also do a fair amount of scholarship. And when that was founded in the 70s, I forget the name of the gentleman that founded it, but he started doing scholarship specifically on laws pertaining to firearms and historical firearms research. And it had been an area of legal study that was just kind of forgotten and abandoned. And a lot of the Second Amendment, um, well, a lot of the recent judicial rulings that we've gotten, I believe, and other guys at the Second Amendment Foundation believe are a result of people doing careful historical academic study of some of these different documents. It is now a well established and understood thing where in the 70s and 80s, it just wasn't nobody had nobody had taken the time to make this a particular area of study. And now we have relatively solid rulings coming from the Supreme Court on these issues because they are established at this point. So, but sorry, I cut you off. Just very briefly on Sixth Amendment says, in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy trial, speedy and public trial. And the speedy part, I think, uh, uh, it has become a farce recently, but by an impartial jury of the state and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously a certain by law and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation to be confronted with the witnesses against him to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. You look at countries that don't have that and wow, can you get railroaded through the courts? Ezra 726 says, let judgment be executed speedily. And Ecclesiastes 811 says, when there aren't any speedy trials, it actually encourages more evil. It's when bureaucracy happens and trials drag on year after year, it encourages evil. And as to public trials, if you don't have a public trial where people can witness the tyranny that's happening against you, it's easy for tyranny to grow worse and worse. And there's numerous scriptures that indicate these private, like they had Star Chamber trials is what they were really upset about when they wrote this. Everything was secret. And so you could be judged guilty and, uh, propagandized as to all of the faults that you had and there was no fair trial. Star Chamber in England. I'm hoping that people are beginning to see a little bit more because there have been some recent examples of secret, not only secret courts doing more of the, it's more of the wiretapping stuff secret, uh, FISA courts that, that, um, I think there's been more reporting on those recently, but even things like the intelligence community, and I'm putting that in quotes, but, but very politicized people inside of intelligence agencies having really blatantly obvious, uh, political agendas that they are pushing with some of their public, uh, statements. And I think that this is so obvious now. Uh, more people are seeing it and are more sensitive or suspicious of it than, uh, even just a few years ago. It's, uh, there's also that nexus between some of the major media that, uh, well, you know, spread the disinformation that the government wants them to spread. That's complicated things as well, but, uh, yeah, in that amendment, I won't get into all of the things, but, um, uh, a little bit of guess five. Uh, I think it is. Um, says the person who has witnessed a crime, but refuses to testify, he's held responsible. And so again, citizen involvement, citizen responsibility is absolutely essential if we're going to regain the liberties that we've needed in America. It's the passivity of the public in large part that's resulted in tyranny tyranny never arises except in a vacuum. Once again, rights and responsibilities, freedoms and responsibilities going together. Tyrants always appear to be really good opportunists. Yes. Very much so. Article seven and suits that common law where the value and controversy shall exceed $20. The right of trial by jury shall be preserved and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of common law. And, uh, you know, a lot of scriptures that deal with trial by jury. You know, it's really hard to calculate inflation, but in terms of how much gold $20 could buy in 1776. And how much you could buy today. Um, I think it would probably be anything that's, uh, what would you say? $1,000 to $2,000? I actually am not sure what a $20 gold piece would have been and ounces back then, but we're at a pretty high level of inflation with our federal reserve notes today. Yeah, for sure. I don't even know that the Bible would require a jury except for serious crimes that required, for example, the death penalty. Um, a citizen could just say, fine, I will be quite happy to argue my case before a judge. There was always the right to appeal. Um, but I, I think this opportunity to demand a jury trial by your peers is a, is a good protection and you do see juries who rescued people in the old test. Um, but anyway, what's common law? Um, it's the West's attempt to apply biblical principles of justice. So I think mostly it's biblical. You might have a hard time arguing that anything over $20. Could require a trial by jury, but I'm sure that there were, um, you know, recent occurrences, possibly abuses. They were trying to address with that particular limit. Yes. Yeah. And I actually did not look up the historical debate on that, that figure. There probably was some very good logical reasons for that. Um, we need to interpret it within the cultural context and which it was written. Well, might as well finish them. Article eight, excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Okay. Well, that takes a lot of interpretation. How do you define excessive? Well, one of the, one of the things that I immediately think of is, um, the National Firearms Act that was passed in 1934 put a $200 tax stamp on certain types of firearms and suppressors things that weren't even firearms. That, uh, going back to our inflation conversation was an awful lot of money back in 1934. That was a very excessive fine. But of course it wasn't defined because it was a tax. So they, they tried to dodge that by making it a tax, but essentially it is a fine. If you own this device, you pay a $200 tax stamp. And this is a, at that time, there were a lot of rifles and shotguns that were $12 to $18. So a $200 tax stamp to own something is very prohibitive. Ironically, the only people that it wouldn't have affected were al Capone's goons. The people that they claimed that this law was, was going to stop. But, but this kind of really prohibitive fine, this, that is really disproportionate and ruinous. That's what I think of when I think of excessive. It's a kind of a licensing, isn't it? Because if the government says you can have this right, if you pay such and such a number of dollars and we approve you, then it's no longer right. It's a privilege granted by the state or actually it's not even a privilege. It's something you've paid for, which is really ridiculous. This conversation is recorded between legislators of the time and actually members of the NRA. The minutes of all those meetings are still available and it's fascinating to hear because some of the guys are like, well, this sounds great, but isn't it going to run afoul of the Second Amendment? And he's like, no, we have this brilliant idea. A tax is allowed. I'm, I'm, you know, adding the voices. I'm sure they didn't say it with quite that much glee, but it's really interesting to see them like, well, there's some limitations here. How do we get around that pesky Second Amendment? Well, the beautiful thing about the scripture is Bible only allowed one tax and it was one silver coin per year per male 20 years old and above. I think I could go along with that. It's a silver coin. I'm just thinking about my own tax burden and most of the people listening to this podcast are probably people who have jobs, which means that they pay taxes, which means that they pay taxes. Which means that they probably work three days a week for themselves and two days a week for the government. Yeah, could you imagine having those other two days to work for yourself? Can you imagine what you could get done? When you've got the kind of limited government the Bible calls for that silver dime, well, one of the dime, it was a silver coin. I forget the name of it, but it would pay for everything. No problems. It was easy. Now, in terms of restitution, excessive is clearly defined by the Bible as well. If a person stole something and he immediately repented and returned it, he only owed an extra 20%. And if he has to be taken to court and he pleads guilty, he owes 200%. So you add the original plus another, you're doubling what was stolen. If he pleads not guilty and he's proven to be guilty, then he has to pay 400%. And so there is an incentive to confess much earlier in the process of the biblical system, whereas in our system, there's really no incentive to plead guilty. You try to get out of as long as you can. I hear people often complain about how onerous it would be to follow the civil code that is in Scripture. And the tax burden would be low. The penalties for certain things would be higher, but the penalties for a lot of other things would be far, far less. The benefit to every person in society would be tremendous. And even if we took the entire Bible and just put that into law, it would be hundreds of thousands of pages less legal code than we have now. Even the state of Tennessee has about 2 million lines of legal code by my rough, rough, guesstimate counting the pages. There would be hardly any things that would be crimes. The Bible makes a huge distinction between sin and crime. And so the number of crimes that the Bible would allow city, state, or federal government to prosecute would be hugely, hugely reduced. But we would have certain responsibilities that we would need to pick up. We would need to do a lot of extra work. We would have to educate our own children or organize friends and neighbors and set up our own schools to do that. We couldn't give it to the government. We would have to be taking care of orphans and widows. We would have to be doing all of these things. We'd have to pick up all these responsibilities in order to regain those freedoms. Yes. Instead of expecting the police and the sheriffs to constantly be monitoring your neighborhoods, you would have an armed neighborhood watch. And very friendly neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. There is responsibility that absolutely essential. And the last two are pretty obvious. Amendment 9 simply states that citizens have more rights than what the Constitution outlines. The Bible gives a ton of rights to citizens that cannot be removed. Article 10, wonderful limitation of the federal government, which it has ignored left and right. We have such massive federal government that our founding fathers would probably want to have another secession of states and the establishment of another country. Obviously, there was some unpleasantness in the 1860s that is historically relevant to this conversation. But I don't think that I have heard about the 10th Amendment talked about that much. You know, reading history books from the 80s, from listening to political debates in the 90s. I don't remember people bringing the 10th Amendment up very much. I hear a lot of people talking about the 10th Amendment today. And so that is another very interesting cultural shift. People are better educated on the full scope of the Second Amendment. And I hear a lot more conversation about the 10th Amendment. And that is a very interesting development. Almost everybody I talk to says, oh, yeah, the war. Well, I call it the war between the states, but they call it the Civil War. I think, what are you talking about? Read our founding fathers. The foundation of our nation was built on secession. And it's a biblical doctrine. You know, even cities were able to secede like the city of Libna in 1 Chronicles 6. And they seceded from Judah because it says that the king had forsaken God. He had become tyrannical. And they said, no, we're going to have our own little country. So, secession was something that all of our founding fathers believed in, or we would not have, the United States of America, would still be under Britain. Yeah. They were able to say, look, we really appreciate this English common law, what's been built on the Magna Carta. And we're going to continue on that direction, regardless of what King George and the parliamentarians say. We're going to stick to this track. You go do your own thing. We'll do our own thing. Yeah. I think the 10th Amendment was basically what I articulated at the beginning, the Regulative Principle of Government that's established in the Old Testament. And that various levels of government have their own jurisdiction. And that each of those civic officers is accountable to God, responsible to God, to be ministers of what God has said is just. They can't just do anything that they've popped up in their head that seems like a nice idea. And so, it makes for a somewhat libertarian forum of civil government, not quite. I'm not a libertarian because there are some laws that libertarians would disagree with, but it's about as close as you would get and not being a libertarian. It's very small government. The different conversations that are going on at the moment about some of these issues, the anarchists, the libertarians, the small government conservatives, the medium government conservatives, the neocons, the war hawks, all of the different groups that see really similar issues, but have totally different worldviews and totally different applications of force to deal with those things is really interesting to look at. Yeah, big topic. It's going to be hard to cover everything. One session adequately is going to be disagreements. People have with individual things and they say, what about this? What about that? I think we do need to get back to reading more of what our founding fathers were pretty wise people, very, very well read, and reading what they thought about these subjects. I think it'd be an eye-opener for people to read a few of their commentaries. Well, thank you so much for your time. And I really appreciate the work that you're doing, the books that you have written on this subject and other subjects. So, I'm going to make sure that we have links to those in the show notes so people can follow those up. And I will link to some of these, some of these different commentaries on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. It is a fascinating thing to study. And it isn't even, I don't believe, a really exhaustive study that is necessary. We have so forgotten some of the basics that even a really cursory read-through of what some of the founders wrote about, whether they wrote it down in their argumentation or letters to other people or speeches that they gave, it is not that hard to see what they were talking about. And again, this is our great, great, great grandparents. So, they speak the same English that we do. It's incredibly readable. So, I think that all of us need to be more versed in this. I'm gonna go back to the end.