Transcript

Stephen McDowell: America needs to repent for fulfilling biblical duties

>> 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. I'm glad you're joining us for this edition of America's Providential History. Today we will continue the story, of turning America around for fulfilling our biblical duties. In the last two podcasts, we looked at the need for turning the nation around. We looked at the need for America to repent and began to fulfill the calling and duties that God has given us in relation to proclaiming truth and establishing his kingdom. In particular, we began to look at three areas where we as God's people need to repent. Repent means just to turn from what we're doing and start acting the way that God wants us to act. The first area that we saw part of our mission and duty is that the church must teach that the gospel of the kingdom includes transforming the culture as well as individuals. Part of our mission is not only to go and see that individuals are converted, but we are to see that the whole nation is discipled, that we're to transform nations as well as to transform individuals. And so we need to teach what we called, or some have called the four chapter gospel, Creation, fall, redemption and restoration. Because we are God's ambassadors today that are, being used of him to bring about the restoration of all things. And then two, a second area where we need to repent and begin to fulfill our duties and responsibilities is that families must assume the responsibility for the welfare, that is the education provision and protection of their children. We must end state welfarism, especially the state monopoly of education. And we examined how it, it's the right and responsibility of parents to govern the education of their children and the importance of restoring biblical education to America because our future depends upon our children's education. And we briefly looked at that and by the way, I mentioned a new film that we've just completed called Educated for Liberty. And you can go to educatedforliberty.com and see this film, for free and share it with others because it speaks of how America's great liberty and prosperity is built upon biblical education. And as we've embraced secular education, it's led to our decline. And so in order to, turn America around and make sure that we continue to advance and honor God and all we do, we need to restore biblical education. So, Visit the website educatedforliberty.com, look at the film, share it with others. It will be A great way to begin to fulfill our duty in this area of life.

Civil government must protect, not plunder, our property, Christian says

And then there's one more area that I want to examine today regarding the need for us to repent and to begin to fulfill our duties and responsibilities. And that is three. Civil government must protect, not plunder, our property. The purpose of government, the biblical purpose of government is stated well in our Declaration of Independence. That declaration is our founding covenant. It's the law of the land. It, it's what we need to agree to. And any new immigrant, by the way, who we allow to come into the country must understand the covenant and agree to the covenant, including the purpose of civil government. In that document it states, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now we've touched on this some, in past podcasts. In future ones, ah, we'll look in much more detail at all of the biblical ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. But what we see here is that our founders adhered to a set of truth that emanated from the Creator, the source of truth. He is truth. And that God has given us, granted us certain unalienable rights. Rights that don't originate from man or from government. They originate from the Creator. Hence they are inalienable. No one can take them from us. We can't give them up. And he summarized those rights by right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The famous phrase life, liberty and property that Locke and many others used, actually encompassed in this concept of the pursuit of happiness. And in past podcasts I've mentioned, as Blackstone stated, the pursuit of happiness means to be able to pursue the will of God. Because when we can pursue the will of God, and we do the will of God, that's what produces happiness in mankind. And that's one of those inalienable rights. We have to have the freedom and liberty and structure of government, to be able to pursue the will of God. If any man or government hinders us from pursuing the will of God, it needs to be changed and dealt with. And so, and then it goes on to say the Declaration that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. See, a primary function of government is to protect our God given rights, to protect our life, our liberty, our property. That's why man, that's why the founders came together and instituted government. In fact, that's a biblical function of government. To protect our life, liberty and property. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, our fourth president, said, government is instituted to protect property of every sort. This being the end of government, that is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizen for the service of the rats. So he pointed out that government is instituted. Why? What's the purpose of government? To protect property of every sort. And in earlier podcasts when we talked about seven foundational principles, we mentioned the principle of property. And property is both internal and external. internal properties are the right we have to worship to our ideas, the expression of our ideas, to keep a clear conscience, and other things. We have a God given right. And government exists to protect our internal property, but also it exists to protect our external property, our goods and land and material possessions and freedom to assemble as a form of property and worship really as a, a form of property. And so, that's the purpose of government. So that being the end of government, that is the purpose of government. That is not a just government, nor, is property secure under it, where the property which a man has is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. And so the governments exist to protect property of every sort, both internal and external property. Now, unfortunately, since mankind fell, government has become corrupt. And most governments of the world today are not fulfilling, well, their intended biblical function to protect property. Rather, instead of protecting our property rights, most governments are plundering our property. And they do that by taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive. Now this is what statism is. Socialism is a rise of statism. And we are seeing a great rise of socialism in the, United States. Yes, it exists all over the world. And those nations that were influenced by Christianity, who began to put off concepts of socialism, statism, and embrace the concept biblical idea of government, which is to protect our property. It's risen rapidly there, especially in Western Europe. We see that in other places there's a battle of socialistic statism against, freedom and liberty that comes from God. So a growing number of Americans are embracing socialism and socialism. It's a pagan view of government because it's a government that instead of wanting to protect your property, it will seize your property. You know, today 40% of Americans prefer socialism to capitalism. In fact, 51% of young people, millennials, don't support capitalism. Even many Christians embrace, socialism. Of course, we see the rise of socialism by electing socialist mayors like In NewSong York City declared socialists. And of course we've elected a lot of really stated socialists, but they don't claim to be that, but they act in accordance with those principles. But here we elect a guy who claims to be a socialist, and the people overwhelmingly said, yeah, let's have this, but what is socialism? Well, socialism is a form of statism. Statism is the belief where man via, government is the ultimate authority in the earth. See, every people look to someone or something to be the source of law, to be their ultimate authority. The founders of America, as we've explored, look to the God of the Bible as the source of their law, the source of the ultimate authority. But fallen man from the time of Babel onward has looked to himself via civil government. Those in civil power, civil authority as the ultimate authority, the ones who will determine right and wrong, what's good and bad, moral or immoral. And so a state is socialism, then embraces big government because, if government's your God and government's going to provide for you from cradle to grave, it needs a lot of money, needs a lot of authority. It leads to bigger and bigger government. And part of that big government means it's going to control or seek to control our own all property. And not only does it want to own and control property, it wants to be the provider of health, of education, of welfare. We briefly explored, you know, last podcast about the state taking control of education. And unfortunately many Christians kind of turning over that control of our education of our children to the state. That's one area we need to repent and take that back. And as we're exploring now, you know that state education is just one aspect of socialism or statism. This concept that government is our savior, that socialist statist, when they get into trouble or need help or assistance, their first reaction is help us government. Help us civil government. Provide this, do that, provide that. But government is not our Savior. Jesus Christ is our Savior. We need to look to him. As we've explored, government is a divine institution that God created for a legitimate purpose, but limited purpose. Civil government is to protect our property of every sorts. And life and liberty are, ah, a form of property. See, possessing property is essential for us to fulfill our mission to extend the righteous rule of Christ throughout the earth. Private property is a fundamental component of prosperous, advancing economies. Embracing private property rights is a very fundamental reason why the United States of America became and has become the most prosperous nation ever in history. Because we've embraced biblical ideas of Christian liberty, Christian self government and Private property, as well. Now, the Bible teaches the concept of private property. Many places. I explore this much more in my book Steward in the A Biblical View of Economics, which you can get a copy at our website, providencefoundation.com.

The Bible teaches that God created all property and owns it all

but just very briefly, just to highlight how the Bible teaches this idea of private property. we understand that God created all things. We see that in Genesis 1, the very beginning, he created all property. And since he created it all property, he owns it all. Psalm 24:1 says, the earth is the Lord's and all it contains the world and those who dwell therein. So this world, this universe, all property belongs to Him. But we also read in Genesis in the beginning that while he created all property and owns all property, which, by the way, that includes man, we are his property. He created us. but God has given to man the stewardship of his property. Now, that includes our own person. We need to keep our conscience clear, take care of our life and our thinking and all that we do. We're to give an account to God of how we took care of our own property, our person first. But that includes everything else, everything God created. Because God gave to man and said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, take dominion, over the earth, cultivate the earth. We're to cultivate and keep this ground. And that was the mission before man fell. And God reiterated this mission again after the fall. After the fall, it just became very difficult for man to fulfill that mission. But God gave to man the stewardship of his property. Psalm 115, 16 says, the heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth he has given to the sons of man. So here we see the foundation of, of private property rights. Now, this private property is affirmed in two of the ten Commandments. The eighth commandment says, you shall not steal. Stealing, of course, implies private property rights. The 10th Commandment says, you shall not covet your neighbor's property, which also implies individual ownership of property. See, if we own no property, if it belongs to the state or all in common, then no one can very well steal it. At least, any property. But God says, you shall not steal. He talks about personal stealing of, neighbor's property. You're not talking about the government owns it all, and you can't steal it from the government. He's talking about. No individuals are given right to own property because we have to own private property property in order to be productive, as God told man to be in the very beginning, in Genesis 1. And so, you know, when God took The children of Israel out of bondage of Egypt and led them into the promised land. We see that God divided the land to every family, every individual family. The covenant family of Israel was given land. Now you can read, on that distribution of land in Joshua chapter 12 through Joshua, 31. And so they were all given property so that they could all be productive on that property in the promised land. Now, there are many individual scriptures that speak of private property rights as well. Deuteronomy 19:14, Deuteronomy 27:17 says, you shall not make move your neighbor's boundary mark or his property boundaries. Don't move it, because that's stealing, by moving them. We also see that in the scripture that the penalty for theft was restitution. So if someone stole your sheep under God's law given to the children of Israel, they had to pay back four sheep. Someone stole your cattle, you had to pay back five cattle. Why is that? Because the value of sheep is more than just the value it has for food. Because sheep grow wool. You can cut the wool and produce clothing, and it continues to grow throughout its whole life. Cattle have much more value than just cutting them up for steaks. But they were used to plow the field, to plant the crops. And so restitution took into effect the potential productivity of the property that was stolen. And so restitution had to be made for stolen property. And this is very valuable for a lot of reasons. It teaches criminals crime does not pay, because if the thief is caught and has to pay back four or five fold, he'll learn, wow, this, didn't do me very much good. And so he will recognize I might as well labor and work and keep four times, that than steal property and get caught and have to pay back. And by the way, we need to implement restitution for theft. And if we do this, we would probably get about 85% of the criminals are sitting in jail today out of jail. And help reform them, I wrote a little booklet called Crime and Punishment, an ideal, with biblical penalties for crimes. and if we implement God's way, we will be blessed. It will go well with us.

The Bible affirms private property, but we also see the free market transaction

So again, the Bible affirms private property. Many places we read in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 32, that Jeremiah, bought a field from his cousin. He signed the deed with witnesses after paying money for it. So here we see private ownership of property, but we also see the free market transaction at work. So Jeremiah bought a piece of property from his cousin, paid for it with money. There was a Transfer of property with both parties agreeing to the transfer. And importantly, they signed a deed. They had a written record. So, so you can clearly, know who owns the property. They signed a deed with witnesses. When you have private property rights, then individuals have the freedom to do with their property what they will. Of course, not criminal behavior as defined by the Bible with it, but do what they want to with it, to be productive or to sell it if they wish, as we see, here. But there needs to be a very clear, recognition of how to transfer the property, as well as making that transfer. So the Bible affirms private property in this incident. In the book of Jeremiah, we see in the parable of the laborers in the Vineyard, Matthew 21:16. This parable teaches that the landowner could do what he wished with his own things. Matthew 20:15 asks, Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Yes, that's the whole idea of private property. This affirms private property. I have things, and if it's my property, I can, use those things as I deem most valuable. Now, some people say, well, yeah, but didn't the early church live under socialism? Didn't they have all things in common and sell everything they had and live together in a big commune, as some people have tried to promote over the years? Well, you don't have to read the Bible too deeply to understand. They did not live in socialism. They did not live in a big commune. The early church in Jerusalem voluntarily sold their property, or at least excess property by some of them, because they didn't all sell all their property to help those in need. It was voluntary. They chose, chose to take some of their property. Some may have taken all their property, at least land. they didn't take their clothes and everything else and sell them, but, to sell to meet the specific need at that time, as I said, some of them still own property. Like In Acts chapter 1212, it mentions that they went and met in the house of Mary. And this was, well, after this, the Acts 5, when it talked about selling property and dealing with Ananias and Sapphira. So they voluntarily sold property, but evidently they still own some property. In fact, with the incident of Ananias and Sapphira, the judgment of God didn't come because they didn't want to live under socialism. But Peter, affirmed the ownership and individual control of the property of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:4. Scripture says, While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold. Was it not in your own control? So Peter affirmed ownership. Look, it was your own. It's under your own control. Their sin was not living under, failing to live under socialism, but it was lying to the Holy Spirit. So he actually affirmed private property rights. And by the way, this excess selling or lots of selling of land, excess land only as far as we know, took place in Jerusalem. Not in any other cities or places where the gospel went and spread, over the years, but in Jerusalem. And one reason that was perhaps God knew what was going to take place there within a generation. Because in 70 AD the Romans surrounded Jerusalem and, and completely wiped it out, killing one and a half million people, destroying everything, making all property worthless. And so God knowing this is perhaps put it on the heart of his people to say, look, there's a great need we have now with all these people in Jerusalem at this time, and it would be wise and you get the most use out of your property by selling excess property property or selling property to help meet these needs. Because in the near future this property isn't going to be worth anything. And those that actually heeded the words of Jesus, when you see certain signs take place, flee, get out of Jerusalem quick, because the end is coming for coming that those that they would have fled and of course, had no use for that property at all. And that property would have been worthless. And so the Bible doesn't teach, the NewSong Testament doesn't teach that we're to live under socialism, at all. So the Bible teaches this idea of private property rights in the Old Testament, in the NewSong Testament it directly teaches it and it flows out of an understanding of our mission to be fruitful, multiply, take dominion over and cultivate the land and the nature of how God made man. Man will labor hard when he benefits from the fruit of his labor. So who is the primary manager of God's property? He's given it to the sons of men. But remember when God created mankind, he created Adam and Eve. He created the family. It was God's divine creation. It was his creation, institution that we read about because the family is, was given, the primary was given the mission to take dominion over the earth. Adam and Eve and their offspring to cultivate, take dominion, rule over the earth. And in order to fulfill that creation commission cultural mandate, then family must own land, own and control property. See, owning property gives us power to fulfill our mission to take dominion and extend his kingdom in the earth. This is one reason that demonic ideas, socialism, all forms of Statism arise is because Satan, an evil man, want to thwart God from fulfilling his purpose and mission in the earth, to extend his righteous rule, over the earth. And to do that, God's people need to have private property. Noah Webster, of course, he's one of my heroes who wrote about all kinds of things. He was the great father of Christian education and scholarship, but wrote about every area of life, including property. He wrote that let the people have property and they will have power. A power that will forever be exerted to prevent a restriction of the press, an abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgment of any other privilege. Now we have God given rights and liberties. Our Constitution secures many God given rights and liberties like freedom of the press, trial by jury, many other privileges as Noah Webster mentions here. But in particular he says let the people have property and they will have power. Owning property will give us the ability to secure all of our other God given rights and liberties. It's of utmost importance. It will enable us, it will give us power to be able to freely worship God and proclaim truth and carry the good news throughout the land. It will give us power to make sure government doesn't abuse us and falsely charge us with committing crimes and other things like this. So if you take away the people's property, then you can take away all their God given rights and liberties. and evil or pagan leaders have done this throughout history. So humans have a right to own property. A God given rights. Property rights are human rights, one of the most fundamental human rights. You know, the amount of liberty in a nation is directly proportional to the amount of private property rights. The more private property rights that exist in a nation, the more liberty exists in a nation. So they're intimately, connected together. If you were to look at or explore, look at each nation and their maps, you can go and see these maps, search out maps or other things. The International Private Property Rights Index, map, for example, it graphically displays the amount of property rights that exist in all the nations of the world. And these property rights include not only physical property, but intellectual, property rights as well. And so those nations that have the greatest amount of property rights are also those nations that have the greatest amount of liberty, freedom, civil liberty, economic liberty or religious liberty. The more property rights, the more liberty, the less property rights, the less liberty. Now this is obvious if you look at socialist nations like North Korea and Venezuela, hopefully there'll be changes going on there in Venezuela, you could take a look at even many of the Muslim nations, they're little property rights. People have a little right to own and possess property. It's very difficult at all. And there's no freedom, There are little freedom. So each of God's three divine institutions, family and church and state, have some authority in the field of economics. The church needs some property to fulfill its mission of administering the sacraments of God, of encouraging the Christians to fulfill their duties, to keep truth and proclaim truth. It needs some buildings and other things.

Civil government is a divine institution to protect our property of every sort

Civil government is a divine institution to protect our property of every sort. So it needs some property, police stations and things like this in order to fulfill its mission. So each of the divine institutions have some authority, but the family is the primary agency who is to own and control most all the property in the world. Because it's the primary agency, see that God is commissioned to take dominion over the earth, to cultivate the earth, to be fruitful, to multiply, to rule over the earth. As we said, governments exist to protect property of every sort. Now what is property? Well a person's property is whatever he has exclusive right to possess and control. Property is first internal, as I said early on and as we've looked at in earlier podcasts, so see, we have a God given right to external property, land, money, freedom of speech, possessions, bodily health, freedom of assembly. But we also have a right to internal property. Our thoughts, our opinions, our talents, our conscience, our ideas, our mind, our affection. Governments exist to protect property of all sorts, internal and external. But pagan civil governments are statist civil governments where statism is the belief that man is the ultimate authority. Socialism, communism, Marxism, democratic socialism, these are different forms of statism. But in these nations, those in charge and the practical way they function is that civil governments will, more so seek to control our own property instead of protecting property rights. Instead of protecting them, they plunder property that leads to loss of liberty, decline economically and decline of ability to worship God and fulfill our mission. And so this is the philosophy behind communism. Karl Marx said the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence abolition of private property. So communism may seek to own all property. Socialism, you might say the government seeks to control all property. But the end result is the same, maybe different forms of, of it, controlling property or owning property. The result is loss of liberty. And this is what the Bible says. In 1st Samuel 8, 10, 18 we learn that tyrannical governments will take from man what God wants man to have. Remember in 1st Samuel 8 Samuel was a Judge in the land, they didn't have kings. God never wanted them to have a top down form of government. But the people came and demanded, we want a king to rule over us. The reason they did is because they were tired of fighting their own battles. It says they were tired of being self governed and fulfilling their duties and responsibilities that God had given to them. That is one reason. Also Samuel's sons who are going to become judges in his prison place were worthless men. So Samuel was a great prophet, but he failed to train his children well, failed to educate them well, and that helped contribute to the children of Israel rejecting God's form of government for them and embracing a pagan form, a top down form. They wanted kings like all the other nations. And that's what they said, we want to be like all the other nations who had a top down, down form of government. And God through Samuel said, go tell them, no, I don't want to give them a king. Because as he writes in verse 10:18, this will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons. Then it goes on to say, he will take your daughters, he will take the best of your fields, he will take a tenth of your seed. He will also take your best young men for his work, he will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. So see, tyrannical governments will take, take, take, take, take, take, take from you, take your property, take your freedom, take your liberty, take your children, take your ability to effectively fulfill your mission in God. And with all this taking, as God warned the children of Israel, you yourselves will become his servants. And so the consequence of a nation that abandons private property rights and embraces statism is enslavement of all the people. In essence, a nation will be turned into a giant prison. Now we see that overtly in North Korea, and it was that way in Venezuela and Cuba and the communist nations of the 20th century, so many other nations throughout history. The nation in essence becomes a giant prison where the people, don't have property, can't get out and escape easily out of their country or anything else. So see, God wants us to live in liberty, and living in liberty means we have a civil government that performs its legitimate but limited mission of protecting our property and not plundering it and not providing for us from cradle to grave. Now, of course, most nations of the world today aren't like North Korea, so overtly a prisoner and so overtly controlling property, all property, internal and external, but democratic, Socialist nations like Western Europe, America's becoming that m more and more and so many other nations of the world, they will seek to control, maybe not directly confiscate property and things, but indirectly through unjust, unbiblical taxes. Property taxes, inheritance taxes, graduated income taxes. These are unbiblical taxes that empower the government to control more and more of your property. And then government welfare states ideas of sharing the wealth by taking from the productive, giving to the less productive. We see the great damage of that today. Just recently with all the fraud that has been exposed in our welfare sharing of all these Somalis who've opened up education centers that all they do is just launder money and then ship by the tens of millions of money back into other countries. So these sharing the wealth plans are and that's certainly taking place, but we shouldn't even do that in the first place. It's not the role of the government to provide stuff, it's to provide an atmosphere of freedom and peace so everybody can get an idea and be productive. And that the government doesn't take 50% or more of your hard earned money and squander it away with these welfare schemes that are taking place. God's way is much better. God's way works. If we follow God's way we're going to be blessed. But if we follow man's way, it's going to lead to loss of liberty and decline going backwards.

State seeks to control property through various means, including excessive regulations

And so state seeks, in the US and democratic socialist states and so many others, the state seeks to control property through these means and also through excessive regulations of property and telling you all you got to do this and that, jump through these hoops to use your property, you can't use it for that. So regulating your business, land use, personal behavior, concepts of imminent domain, that we're going to take your property because we declare that we need it. And so this is today the, the enemy we face in the United States, this kind of control of our property. So see, pagan civil governments will seek to control property of all sorts, not just external property, through those means I've just mentioned, but they will also seek to control your internal property. They'll try to tell you how to think what ideas. And there are many laws that we've enacted, different states and localities that decree you must think this way or you will be punished. You must think this way about marriage, that you must think this way about transgender issues, you must think this way about homosexuality, because if you don't, we will punish you in one way or another. So we see that when bakers refuse to bake cakes for homosexual weddings or take photographs, pictures of these weddings and so many other things, civil government has come in and fined them and punished them and forced them to go to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the justice, system to try to preserve their God given rights and liberties and their constitutional rights. And so that's because pagan civil governments want to control what you think, your ideas, what you do, internal property as well as external property. And so this is a third area where we need to repent, turn around and begin to work to establish civil government and civil leaders who understand the important but limited role of civil government to protect your property of every sorts, not to plunder it, and not to be our provider. You know, whoever controls the property controls the present. God has given that responsibility primarily to the family, not civil government. The family is the one who's to take dominion, so the family is the one who needs to control property. Whoever controls the property controls the present. Whoever controls the children controls the future. As we talked about before, our film, Educated for Liberty speaks about how America's future depends upon your children's education. And parents have the right and responsibility to govern the education of their children. But pagan governments will seek to control both the education of children and property, and this, we must recognize, is contrary to God's plan and purpose and hinders us from fulfilling the mission that he's given to us to convert individuals and to transform nations. So we must repent. We must turn around and begin to seek to educate our children. We need to seek to govern and use our property rightly to be productive. Because, governing the education of our children, owning property is essential for us to fulfill our mission, the family's mission to extend the righteous rule of Jesus Christ over the whole earth. And so to turn America around, we need to repent and perform our duty. With the failure of the church to teach the complete Gospel, parents have not understood their mission. We covered that in two podcasts ago. And since parents have transformed authority to the state to provide education and welfare, the state has become the acting parent, which we talked about more last week in the podcast. And so for us to fulfill our role, well for the, in order, the state, since it becomes the acting parent, you know, to do that, to be the acting parent and really to try to be God himself, they need a lot of power. They lead them out of money, so they're taking control of property and so that they are doing what they think is compassionate. We're going to provide all things to our citizens. And by the way, that's how socialists get elected. Vote for me and I'll give you free stuff. I'll provide for you. I'll give you whatever you want to give. And fallen man is prone to accept such an offer. Yeah, I'd like to have stuff for free. But of course there's no such thing as free stuff. And the price of having big government as is too much to bear. And so we need to repent. We need to turn around. We need to begin to assume our responsibilities, especially in those three general areas of life. As we talked about. We need to begin to work to see that the church teach that the gospel of the kingdom includes transforming the culture as well as individuals. It needs to perform all of its duties. Then families need to begin to assume the responsibility for the health, education and welfare of their children. So we need to end state welfarism, especially that monopoly of education. And we must work to assure that civil government protects our property and not plunders our property. So these are three areas where we need to repent.

Next podcast will talk about fulfilling our duties in these three general areas

Now in the next podcast, I actually wanted to talk more about fulfilling our duties, the importance of fulfilling our biblical duties in these three general areas. And they embrace many other kind of specific duties that we have as well. But duty is a concept that we don't talk too much about today. People don't want to hear I want to perform my duties and responsibilities rather. They'd rather hear what are you going to give me and provide for me. But we have God given duties. We have responsibilities, that we need to embrace. And so I want to take that up and talk about that. So I hope you can join us next week. Well learn more. I would point you to our website, providencefoundation.com we have lots of books and materials that will assist you, giving you the ideas and insight you need to fulfill these duties. I'll point you to our new film Educated for Liberty and to learn how biblical education produced this free nation of America and how secular education has caused a decline and how we need to turn around and restore biblical education. This is certainly part of our mission. So I'll point you to that website, educatedforliberty.com as well. Well, enjoyed having you with us today. Look forward to picking up this story, continuing how to turn America around. after repentance. We need to fulfill our duty because repentance means having a change, acting differently. And so we're going to talk about fulfilling our duties next time, so God bless you.