Transcript

America's Providential History Podcast looks at America's decline and what to do

>> Stephen McDowell: Welcome to America's Providential History Podcast, where we talk about the real story of America and explore the hand of God in our history. Now here's your host, Stephen McDowell. Hello. glad you're joining us for this edition of America's Providential History Podcast. Today we're going to continue what we started last week, looking at America's decline in and what to do about it all. Last year, as we said, we basically looked at God's hand and the birth, growth and development of the United States and how the good seed that came forth from the Bible produced good fruit. Fruit like could not be seen in any nation, before America. Nation birthed as an exceptional nation. but then, as people often ask me, well, with that great beginning and the great seed and that which underlies the good fruit in America, how did we come to the place where we are today? So we began to take a look at the decline of America. And that came as contrary seeds began to be sown during the mid-1800s, into the 1900s and on up until today. And those bad seeds gave rise of secularism in every sphere of life. Secularism is a belief that really basically man is his own God. I am the source of right and wrong rejection of God and the truth and rejection of his good seed and embracing other ideas. And those wrong ideas are like wrong bad seeds that produce bad fruit. So we saw, we looked at the rise of secularism in education, the rise of secularism in law, the rise of secularism in science. And then there also began to be a rise of secularism in government and economics. Karl Marx wrote his book in 1844 kind of laying out that Marxist view of life. It's a man centered view where there's a clash of classes, that is governing all that had happened. That you have the ruling elite that oppress some minority group and the minority oppressed group needs to rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie and replace it with the common working man. And so this ideology, the seed was there, but of course it would take generations for it to grow and have a great impact like it did in Russia, for example, with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, they began to embrace these Marxist theories of government and economics. And so, that bad seed reflected in Karl Marx's book and others of course began to promote these ideas as well. It began to work its way into the United States of America as well as other countries. And in 1905 for example, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society formed. And this was just the formation of men Individuals with embraced this Marxist ideology, this socialist ideology that the state is really supreme and is going to solve all our political and economic problems. But the state can't be run by, you know, the bourgeoisie, but the proletariat, the common man. Of course, it's not the common man who rules socialist communist nations. It's an elite few. That's how it's practically worked out wherever it's been tried and in Russia and today in Cuba and Venezuela and North Korea. But this intercollegiate socialist society where individuals, some of you know, whom we've heard and heard of, guys like writers like Jack London and educators like John Dewey and others, began to promote these ideas and their spheres of influence. And so with the rise of secularism in economic thought and governmental thought, it gives rise to actions that have been very negative and impacting the nation today. For example, in 1913 we had the establishment of the Federal Reserve Board. The Fed is really like a central bank and it's really outside control of governments. And it's the one that will you know, helps has it huge impact on our economic system because it sets policies on interest rates and the value of loaning and what it costs to borrow money from big banks and other things. We explore this a little more in some of our books. I'd point you to my book on Steward in the biblical view of Economics to give a little bit of insight on, on the Fed and the negative impact that it has had. But, but that was established in 1913, the same year we had the establishment, of income taxes. Now before this, the federal government was basically supported by excise taxes, taxes on imports from other countries that were collected by the state. So there was no direct collection of funds by the national government. They were dependent upon the state government. And the state government would collect these taxes on imports. And this supported the federal government. Of course the federal government, national government was small, couldn't be large and taxes were small but under the guise of you know, the let's soak the rich. Because income taxes initially where it's only on the most very wealthy people, highest 1 1% of people. And then they prayed a very small percentage of, of on their taxes, 1% or something. But of course over time it's grown to a huge tax rate. It's gotten it times up on the highest tax bracket way beyond 50% of tax rates. And it's spread out to impact about any. Every productive person in America. Anybody produces anything now is negatively impacted by income taxes. But what the income taxes did, it gave the national government direct access to the pockets of the American people. And since that time it has, began to finance all kinds of things, lots of bad things and getting involved in biblical unjust wars and, many other activities the government should never be doing. and the establishment of the Fed and income tax also shifted to the national government control of the money supply. And this is important because when the federal government, the national government can determine what the money supply is and can create new money by printing money or just borrowing and borrowing and borrowing money, then this is how it controls the economy and determines inflation. Now, in future podcasts, we will explore a biblical view of money and banking and biblical economic principles. We do that in my book on steward in the Earth, but don't have time to get into that right now. But when these things began to happen and this national government began to get more and more control of the economy, then that has led to all kinds of problems. Then we also have during the first part of the 20th century, we have the Franklin Delano Roosevelt's NewSong Deal, which was really a bum deal because it increased the size of the national government. Now for all the time prior to this, basically the national government was very small, taxes were very small. Federal government was very small because it had very limited authority, but gradually began to grow. During the outcome of the Civil War, there were good things. Slavery was ended and the Union was preserved, but there was bad things. The size of the national government began to increase more and more. But, especially during Roosevelt's NewSong Deal expanded massively. Now this was an attempt to deal with a problem that came about really because of government intervention in the economy. You have the crash of the stock market in 1929, and there certainly were problems. But Roosevelt solution, made the problem even worse because it centralized power in the government. And if we had implemented a biblical solution, we'd have gotten out of the Great Depression, very much, very rapidly. FDR really never got us out of that at all or his policies. We also have during this time period the beginning of the Social Security system where government says, okay, we're going to take care of you when you get old. We don't want anybody to, to not be able to provide for themselves when they're old. And so the government began to do what the Bible says the family primarily is to do. It's the families to provide health, education and welfare for its own, and did so for centuries. And if there was no family, the church was then Filled in that need and provided for those that maybe did not have the family members to be able to do that. But with the Social Security system, the government, under the guise that we're going to really help you out, we're going to, they begin to try to provide what God said the family is supposed to do and it's caused all kinds of problems. And again we might explore some of these ideas and concepts later on.

Generally we are having a rise of secularism in government and economics

Just the point is generally we are having a rise of secularism in government and economics. And to the degree that man centered ideas have taken control of these areas, it hasn't produced good fruit, it's produced all kinds of problems. Diminished our liberty, diminished our prosperity, our ability to get ideas and create wealth. The rise of government, of the global government or the size of government. So the rise of secularization, while it was taking place in these other areas of education, law, science, government, the economy, unfortunately it also began to rise in the church. That the church began to embrace false ideas or corruption, of doctrine, kind of the rise of the social gospel, where some aspects of the church, they rejected the supernatural transforming power of Christ Jesus and begin to say, well our mission and work as the church is not getting people saved because these people didn't know about salvation. But it's just to help society, to do good work in society. Now we are to do good work in society and help society, but we can't unless we first teach how the gospel transforms men. And once men are transformed then we can teach how the gospel transformed society. But the church began to embrace false ideas and we'll talk about some specific ones later on. False doctrine. And this corruption of doctrine then kind of led to a neglect of the church fulfilling its duties and responsibilities to, to help parents educate their children. To help the church is the transmitter of truth and to help prepare God's children to fulfill their calling in every sphere of life. To prepare people to govern and lead in a biblical manner, to govern society, to govern education, to govern business, and to assist the poor, but in a biblical way. And the state began doing much of what the church was to do because the church gave over its responsibilities to others, neglected many of its responsibilities, and the state began to move in and fulfill the role of family and the role of church. And the ever increasing state cannot do an effective job at either of those because as we will look at more in future podcasts, civil government is a divine institution of God and has an important function basically to protect our life, liberty and property. But it's a very limited function. And secular state always seeks to do way beyond what God has intended it to do. So we have the rise of secularism in the church, but also the rise of secularism in arts and music and the media. There's a group of Christian artists that I've mentioned in past podcasts called the Hudson River Painters or the Landscape painters who were Christian. And their desire was to reflect the beauty of the Creator in his creation. And so these kind of paintings were predominant in early America. But then as we rejected that biblical truth, it gave rise to secularism and arts like the Pop art or modern art, or art that looks like anybody could just fling some paint on a canvas and declare that to be art. But as one gentleman wrote the title of his book, art needs no Justification. And so there is beauty, inherent beauty. This is the biblical view. And, and in future podcasts we'll actually talk about a biblical view, view of art. So the rise of modern humanistic art began to occur as well as more and more Americans embraced a secular worldview. and we see that when different media like movies and television and Hollywood, initially they were governed by biblical morality and biblical ideas. You can see it in the early movies like Sergeant York and the Ten Commandments and San Francisco and so many others. But as the secularism and secular thought began to increase and influence the media and arts, more and more and more you get movies that reflect that secular worldview. And so we have all kinds of rotten ideas and filth and where evil is presented as the hero and so many other things. And so today we see a bias in the major modern in the media as well. That major media, whether that be abc, cbs, NBC, cnn, BBC, all of these, they certainly don't reflect a biblical Christian view of life and society, but embrace a humanistic view, man centered view. And that's becoming more and more evident to more and more people by the way. But in times past we, when they first began to embrace that, it wasn't so evident. Especially if you hadn't taught how to think biblically and have access to the truth of things that were going on. So here we have a rise of secularism and arts, music and the media. And all of these are accompanied by a rise of global government. Now of course, man, since the Tower of Babel, is sought to centralize power and set up, if you will, global governments or centralized, government. And this was the state of really most every nation until the birth of the United States. But gradually America began to slip back into how a lot. Most of the world had been governed by centralized government that has more and more power. And this various global government organizations began to increase during the 1900s with the league of nations and the United nations and the European Union and world courts. And what we see is a rise and a dominance of statism. And statism is the belief that the ultimate authority in the earth is man, man via, the state. And this is what stated Socialism, communism, democratic socialism, Marxism. These are forms of statism. And statism is really seen in the same philosophy of the builders of Babel. Those people where God said, go out, fill the earth, multiply. They gathered together and built a tower to reach to heaven. They were going to build for themselves, you know, a ideal, a utopia, a civil society that can meet all its needs and solve all its problems and bring peace on earth and utopia to earth. But, Jesus declared that we're to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. Gods. And so unfortunately, we've been giving to Caesar the things that belong to God, turning over to him the education of our children, turning over to him, the control of, to the state, control of property. And of course centralized, state leaders have been stealing that from us as well. And so as in one booklet I wrote, it's called Rendering to Caesar. Rendering undeceived the things that are God's or socialism. It's the golden calf of America and the modern world. And so as we have the rise of secularism and government and economics and others, we see, statism growing in America and other nations. Now while all this is going on, there's still a lot of good fruit coming forth. Because the gospel is so powerful and the foundation of American society, which was built in Christian truth and faith, it was still producing good fruit. And still today there's great good fruit coming forth from the original seeds that were planted in the original form of government and economic systems and others. And of course, there are many people today who are fighting to, promote, and sustain and put forth the principles and ideals upon which the nation was founded. And so there's still a lot of good fruit.

There was a continued battle against evil during the 20th century

And there was a continued battle against evil was taking place during all of these things as well. We see in the 20th century, we, see very significant events, world wars that took place. World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. but, since man is sinful and fallen and we have the rise of other power hungry individuals like Hitler and rise of Nazism in World War II and through all of this battle against evil. And of course the great battle we fought against evil in the 20th century was communism with Lenin and Stalin applying these principles of Marx that he had put forth in the mid-1800s. that we see great oppression in those nations. But there's many providential figures that we can see working during this time as well. Because, for example, During World War I we could look just one man that might epitomize that which is good standing against the evil that was occurring in the war is a man by the name of Sergeant Alvin York. And you may seen movies, the movie Sergeant York, one of my favorite movies and many books written about Alvin York. But he's the most decorated soldier of World War I. And he's an example of how he learned, at first he wasn't sure after he was drafted to go fight because he had just become a new believer. He's simple in his faith and, and he wasn't sure if he could go and fight because he thought that wars, in his words, war is killing. And the book is against killing. So the book is against war. So he didn't know if he could go and take the life of another. But he began to learn through studying the Bible and the study of history, that the righteous must resist evil. That since man has fallen, there's evil in his heart. And that evil in his heart, as the Bible tells us, the book of James tells us, results in wars and all kinds of evil things and we must stand up against it. In fact, that's one purpose of civil government, to protect the righteous and punish the evildoer. That evildoer within our own societies from criminal behavior, but also evil from other nations. And that's why the founders of America believe that a just war and a defensive cause is sinless before God. Because this is why Paul tells us in Romans 13 that he created civil government to protect us and wield the sword to fight against the evildoer. And Sergeant York learned that. And this fight against evil was taking place during some of the major conflicts in the 20th century. Conflicts resulting in wars like War I and World War II, but also conflicts with Communism, that dominated many nations during the 20th century. But, but, people stood up and fought against that. And you know, Sergeant York learned that if he did nothing, there'd be many, many innocent lives would be killed. Because as he got into this battle which made him, famous and the reason he got so many medals in this one conflict that he was in, he killed 26 Germans single handedly, captured about 125 on his own, took out six machine gun nests. And later when a superior asked him, well, you know, he knew he registered as a conscientious objector because he didn't know if he could take the, the life of another. And he was asking him, well, how did all this come about? And he said, well, when I was looking around and saw my friends being killed by the enemy, I recognized I could save more lives by taking out a few bad guys and doing nothing. And so Sergeant York is just an example of how good can fight against evil. And this was going on during the many things in the 20th century and during World War II. Franklin Roosevelt, who was not a paragon of virtue by any means and didn't have a biblical philosophy of government in many ways, but he still was impacted by that Christian ethos that shaped the American culture for centuries and centuries, still impacts it today. But he, an address he gave on November 1, 1940, reflected this battle of good and evil. He said those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy. See, he understood, as did the founders of America, that Christianity is the source of liberty. He uses the word democracy, but what he's meaning is a free nation, free republic, liberty. Christianity is that which produces liberty in the world. Not just personal liberty, but civil liberty and economic liberty and political liberty and religious liberty. And that those people who oppose liberty oppose Christianity. And if you oppose Christianity, then you're really opposing liberty because Christianity not only preaches liberty, it produces liberty. And so we were in a battle against the forces that did not like freedom, did not like liberty, did not like Christianity. We are fighting those battles during the 20th century, and rightly so, we need to fight those battles. And Ronald Reagan was instrumental in defeating the evil empire. That's what he rightfully called Communism. And as it was expressed in the USSR and he consciously working with others, saw we need to battle against it because it's false and it has no leg to stand upon and it will crumble, in, in its current form. And he saw that, realized it came to pass because of his work as well. And so another battle against evil that we saw raise its head in recent times is the battle against Muslim terrorists. And that's something we must battle against because Islam, is a great threat to liberty and Christianity. I wrote a little book on the Threat of liberty to Christianity, the threat of Islam to liberty and Christianity that tells this story. And in future podcasts we'll, look at that and cover that. But you can go to our website, providencefoundation.com and get that book and read about that struggle. And so during this time period, during the 20th century in particular, there a battle against evil. And that America was involved mostly for the good in this battle against evil. And we saw the good triumph over evil. And God used godly men like Sergeant York, who was a Christian man, and he used even the non Christian man like FD Franklin Roosevelt, who was, ah, instrument to battle against evil. And he used other godly men like Ronald Reagan, who certainly professed faith in God to battle against that. And so overall we see there's much godly fruit came forth in the American republic. In our early centuries when we first were birthed as a nation, we the good fruit of that was great freedom and liberty. Prosperity, advancement, spreading of liberty and aid to others began to flow forth. As I mentioned, Christianity produced great liberty of all kinds. Personal liberty, civil liberty, religious liberty, economic liberty. It was this personal religious and civil liberty that made economic liberty possible. As we talked a little bit about about and we'll explore more in future podcasts as well. because in America with this great Christian liberty, there's freedom to work, freedom to invent, freedom to benefit from the fruit of your labor. This encouraged advancements or advances in many different, areas, of life. And so this was there was much good fruit that came forth in early America. But unfortunately we also have many bad seeds began to be planted which led to the rise of secularism. In many ways, evil began to raise its head in, new and larger ways than it had even before. And so America began to turn away from its Christian foundations and as it did, it began to decline. So we might summarize.

How did the influence of Christianity erode in America

Well then, how did the influence of Christianity erode in America? Here's America built as a Christian republic. Christianity was central to the birth, growth and development of the nation. What are some general factors that led to its decline? Well, Jedediah Morris, who is the father of geography in America, he was a pastor, a minister who preached a sermon in 1799. He, by the way, is also the father of Samuel F.B. morse, the inventor of the telegraph. But he preached a sermon on how the influence of Christianity diminishes in a nation. And he gives three factors. One is unbelief. And we can understand if unbelief rises among a population, then Christianity is Going to have less and less impact as more and more people disbelieve the Christian faith. That's why we need revival. That's why we need to preach truth and see people converted and teach them truth. to combat unbelief. A second point in the, diminishing influence of Christianity in America was corruption of doctrine. And this corruption of doctrine. Yes, if the basic doctrines of the faith of, the atoning work of Christ Jesus on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, these are certainly, if these are, are not believed, it's going to have a negative impact. But more so, the general doctrines, four general doctrines of creation, lordship, providence and sovereignty. As the church, rejected those or had a corrupt image of those or began to diminish those teachings, they began to see, not teach God as creator. And as that wasn't taught, then evolution could rise. They failed to teach of the lordship of Christ, that he is king, he is Lord, that gave rise to the lordship of man. When they failed to teach the providence of God that God not only created everything, he sustains it, that he provides for his people. M. When we neglect that, then we begin to look to the state to provide for us. And if we fail to teach the sovereignty of God, then we will. That leads to the sovereignty of man. Man is his own God. And so those general corruption of understanding of those major doctrines led to a diminishing influence of truth within society. and then the third area. Why, third point of why the influence of Christianity has been eroded in the nation is neglect of institutions. The church, Christianity gave birth to the institutions of life in our nation. Educational institutions, governmental institutions, institution of the family and the church. But as God's people began to neglect those institutions, when a false idea, false doctrine began to be taught and embraced by many in the late 1800s, that, well, God, all he's concerned about is getting men to heaven. And that this world is dirty, especially government. It's dirty. So we shouldn't be involved in government. Government. All we need to do is get involved in converting some people to man and getting them to heaven. So here, when that concept began to be embraced by people, people the Christians began to retreat from society. And they began to remove themselves from government, from education, from economics. And the ungodly flooded in and began to take control of those spheres. Here it was, the church gave birth to our educational institutions. The church gave birth, God's people to our governmental institutions and governed how the family was viewed and other things. But when they began to neglect those and retreat from those the ungodly came in. They began to then, not govern and rule those things based upon biblical ideas, but upon pagan humanistic ideas. And that's the main way that the evil has gotten control of our nation is because God's people, abandoned, these areas and gave it up without a fight. And so, so what then is the remedy for unbelief, corruption of doctrine and neglect of institutions? Well, the remedy for unbelief is revival. So how do we get more people to believe? We proclaim truth, we cry out to God and let God come down supernaturally, invade the lives of many people, revive, bring life out of death. I've wrote a booklet on the biblical revival and the transformation of nations. And you can go and get a copy of [email protected] and read how mercifully God has sent revivals, dead sin revivals to revive many people. Well, we need that today. And, in some way, in many ways there we are experiencing revival today in America, but many nations especially are experiencing unprecedented revival, which we'll look at in future, podcasts. So we need revival. That's how we combat unbelief. Well, how about corruption of doctrine? Well, what we need is the restoration of the NewSong Testament Church in biblical truth. We need to restore an understanding of the lordship of Christ, the sovereignty of God, the providence of God, God is creator. These fundamental basic doctrines and truths and overarching truths need to be taught and the implications of them taught within, our churches. That's going to deal with the corruption of doctrine. And finally then how do we deal with neglect of institutions? Well, we need reformation of all society. We need to understand that the truth of the gospel, biblical truth, addresses every sphere of life that God teaches about education, government, the family, economics, the media arts. And it's our duty to learn what does God say and to implement that truth that we disciple nations by teaching all that Jesus commanded. So the solution to, to the things that have eroded the influence of Christianity are we could call them the three Rs. Revival, Restoration and Reformation. These three Rs we need to implement in order to deal with unbelief, corruption of doctrine and neglect of institutions. And so this is part of our work today to turn, America around. And in fact, in the next couple of podcasts, I'm going to look more deeply at turning America around. How can we turn America around? How do we implement these three Rs? Revival, Restoration and reformation. And not only then how can we turn America around? But how can we take part in the great growth of the Christian faith all over the world? Because God is doing something miraculous, unprecedented in the nations of the world, that he's birthing hundreds of millions of people into the kingdom of God. But he is also bringing about the restoration of all things, impacting all spheres of life, and bringing universal flourishing to many, many nations. That has just begun. And we're going to take a look at that, as well. So I hope you can come and join us. Come back and join us next week because we'll begin to look in more depth at how do we turn America around? How do we deal with the rise of secularism in these, so many areas? How can we deal with the current problems that we face within our nation today? I invite you and Visit our website, providencefoundation.com you can look at many of our books. There's lots of articles and videos and other things that can help, equip you as well. And if we can ever be of assistance, feel free to contact us, send us an email@infoprovidence foundation.com and we will, be glad to try to help you in any way that, we can. So God bless you. Glad you joined us this week and, hope to have you back with us next week.