Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

This is Christian Foundations in the American Colonies, so it'll be a kind of early American history as the topic there, but specifically looking at Christian foundations, what was Christian, what wasn't, what exactly did take place. So anyway, we'll look at that.

First before we do that, looking at some basic teaching in the New Testament on being subject to the government. Be subject to the government and be model citizens. This would be Paul's writing in Romans 13 in Titus 3. Authority is given by God. That's something that Jesus spelled out in John 19. Pay your taxes. Matthew 17 and Romans 13. Interestingly, that Matthew 17 passage is actually paying a voluntary tax. There was no penalty if you didn't pay it. But Jesus said, let's pay it anyway. So, interesting. Setting aside government mandate is required and justified only where the mandate is in conflict with biblical church-age principles, since God is the higher authority.

One of the questions that came up earlier, and this really addresses that, is that in fact it is difficult to find true biblical justification for the Revolutionary War. Objectively, it's tough to find real biblical justification for it. Certainly more vile things were going on in the Roman Empire, right? Far more vile things were going on in the Roman Empire, and the apostles did not respond by stirring up a war against Rome, not even locally.

Now we have here the 13 original American colonies were founded for various reasons, and I think that's something curious that we'll be taking a look at here. You have a supplement, I don't recall whether it's the second to the last or the last page, I think it's the second to the last page. You have a supplement that shows this map in larger scale. that shows the original colonies. What's interesting is that what's shown there as a red line is the frontier, which later on the colonies had a different border on the western side, but this shows the frontier as it was earlier in American history. The reasons for founding the colonies were religious freedom, sometimes just economic gain. You know, we just need to justify this economically.

Dealing with overflow from debtors' prison and fleeing the Thirty Years' War in Europe. Thirty Years' War extending to 1648. And so just getting out of there, with all the death and destruction, getting out of there was a huge relief and you could go to America and get away from that. So, then some came to the colonies to escape Europe's religious persecution, only to be persecuted in the colony itself.

I'm going to leave there because I'm persecuted back where I came from, but now that we're here, we're being persecuted again also as well. And then, all colonies had a dominant religious orientation of some kind, and we're going to see it wasn't all the same. It varied, and the dominant orientation is given in your handout. We'll go through that.

This also is on page one of your handout, and we've shown this before as we've gone through church history with the different branches of Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, etc. What we did is we've noted the Plymouth Colony in 1620, and where that fits in with these group breakups.

One of the things you'll notice is Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and some others came to the colonies later. One, because when the Plymouth colony was established, it wouldn't be for a century and a half later, after America was a nation, that Methodism would break off of the Anglican Church. So you didn't have Methodist churches in the early American history. Baptists, although they broke off before the Plymouth colony was established, they were also a later occurrence. They didn't come over to the colonies until later. And then finally, the Presbyterians, although they were quite early, John Knox who founded the Presbyterian Church and knew and met with John Calvin They didn't initially send over anyone to the colonies to establish Presbyterian churches.

So, you have that. The next thing is the Anglican influence was strong because the 13 colonies were English colonies. It didn't mean that all the colonies were Anglican, but it meant that there was dominant Anglican influence in some of the colonies, and even in those where that wasn't the dominant influence, it was still strong. You have this table, and so 1620s, the Puritans land at Plymouth Rock. I went and saw Plymouth Rock. Any of you ever seen Plymouth Rock? It's not much to look at. The rock is about the size of this little piece of platform sticking out here.

Yeah, yeah And then somebody's gone engraved on it, you know 1620, you know, so sick 1689 the Puritans Charter revoked in Massachusetts Catholic dominance revoked in Maryland in that same year So some of them were established with a particular religious orientation that was then revoked partly because of that they were so picky about you know what you do and how you behave and and And you are going to go to church, by the way, all day. You will be in church all day, or else you're going to be in the stocks. 1740 was the so-called Great Awakening. In other words, there was this move among the churches that kind of brought some spiritual awareness, because otherwise things had begun to kind of go dead.

1776, the Declaration of Independence. 1787, the Constitution. 1791, the Bill of Rights. Now, the Bill of Rights, what's the first one of the Bill of Rights? Yeah, and one of the things is no establishment of an official religion. However, the states themselves continued to have an official religion for the state for decades, for many of them, on into the middle 1800s. A best-kept secret. So it wasn't to make sure that there was absolutely no religion in any of the states. It just simply said the federal government will not adopt an official religion, although the states continued to do so.

Now, think about the Declaration of Independence. Does that acknowledge God? Yes, yes. Certain inalienable rights endowed by our Creator. So it acknowledges that we are created. It acknowledges God. It isn't specifically Christian, okay? It isn't specifically Christian. The Constitution itself does acknowledge God, but no further, and every state constitution, every state constitution acknowledges God. Interesting. But if not specifically Christian, okay, the Bill of Rights was with the First Amendment The Bill of Rights simply said the federal government will not establish an official religion But left the states free to do so which they did Okay, here is the chart on page 2.

We're going to be referring to that a fair amount and kind of stepping our way through it. This is religion in the 13 colonies. The top line there lists each of the colonies. One of the things that we'll note is that some of those colonies were started in two or three parts. In other words, it wasn't originally, here's the colony and we're establishing the colony as a whole. Some of them, Virginia being one, Massachusetts particularly being one as well with three different parts. Some of them were established at different times and different areas that were then consolidated under one colony in one state.

Then we have the particular charter date, the charter recipient, who got the charter, which eventually was changed and revoked on all of the But initially that's how it happened. When was it first settled and then who was the settler? It wasn't always the British or the English. There were oftentimes other groups coming over from America and sometimes they were groups of different ethnicity and sometimes they were groups of different religious background. The main reason for coming, and some of them had just simply economic gain was the initial idea. The Virginia Company, 1607, economic gain was the goal. Nobody ever found them. Serious, I mean, they disappeared without a trace.

So anyway, and then you had the religious orientation, which we'll touch on that in a little bit, and then the established church, which is, interestingly enough, it varies, and didn't necessarily follow the religious orientation of the founders. So those are some things we'll take a look at here, and that chart is something we'll keep referring back to. Here is Virginia. What you'll notice is that Virginia on the west end, it ended at the frontier, which is not currently where Virginia ends now, but that was the frontier at the time. So you have that. With that, it was initially started off as economic gain, but then finally came back in with other establishments rather than the original one.

And the Anglican Church of England was the definite religious orientation and official religion of Virginia initially. The Virginia Company was formed with a charter from King James. By the way, that's the King James who authorized the King James Bible. And oddly enough, he was King James the 6th and the 1st. Yes, because he became King James the 6th, and then when he had additional areas over which he was made king, then he was King James the 1st in those areas. So that same guy authorized the King James Bible in 1611. He reigned for a long... No. He reigned since he was 13 months old.

Yes. Okay. At any rate, that guy, he formed as a joint stock corporation that was charged with the settlement of Virginia. The initial response was favorable as the mortality rate rose and the prospect for profit grew dim, the support waned. Leadership resorted to lotteries, searching for gold and silkworm production to increase profits. At least that's what they were hoping. It never panned out. The charter was finally revoked in 1624 and Virginia was made a crown colony, largely as a result of the Indian Massacre of 1622. That turned a corner badly. Next we find Massachusetts. Massachusetts was founded in three different sections.

And you had the pilgrims and the Puritans were two different groups. People often get those two confused, but they're actually very different groups. They were both had a certain religious orientation. They didn't necessarily get along. But so you had the pilgrims were separatists and the Puritans were congregationalists, not exactly identical.

As a matter of fact, they were so particular about how things were to be done and what wasn't to be done that that's where persecution ended up taking place. Anybody who did anything other than what their particular orientation called for was persecuted. And eventually that was one of the reasons why their authorization was pulled.

Now, Mayflower, 1620, 102 passengers spent 66 days in an area about the size of a volleyball court. Oh yeah, thank you. An area the size of a volleyball court, almost one half did not survive the trip in the winter. So you can imagine, I went on a replica of the Mayflower and I was astounded. Basically, you got to live in an area about the size of a sleeping bag for the whole trip. Plus the whole first winter. Yes. You stayed on. Yes. This was miserable. Yes, this was miserable. If it's raining, well, I guess it rains. So anyway, it is astounding that they lived through it. But anyway, that's what they did.

Here's the Plymouth Rock. It is not that big. I'd say it's about the size of this little wooden pedestal that's sticking out up here. It's not that big. I was almost disappointed. There's Plymouth Rock, that's it. So the Puritans were at Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was off to the north part. The Pilgrims at the southern part that included Cape Cod Bay, and this little place right here is where the rock is, and as you can see, it's right next to the water. Yeah, I don't recall.

Was this the first trip that Columbus made? I mean, or was it like the second? Because when he came across, they didn't even know much about. OK, here's 1620, right? Yeah, let's let's go back. Right there. America discovered 1492 and they went farther to the south in the Caribbean than the Caribbean there and as a matter of fact the founding of the Puritan and Pilgrim groups was about a hundred years after America was discovered.

And that was pushed by Spain. And this trip was basically coming from England? Yeah, this trip was coming from England, going farther to north, and Columbus went rather from Spain and stayed to the south. Did the Mayflower actually come from Holland? Was he in Holland for a while? There was a group of people, including one of my ancestors, that went first from England and then to Holland, and then across. And that was a major migration. Yes, they fled for the sake of... Yeah, and they found Holland wasn't all that much better. Yeah, we got to get out of here.

And on my mom's side, the Jennison family line came from there into Watertown, Massachusetts. Yeah, a relative that was on the Mayflower. Mine was a few ships after that. But at any rate, this is, I think, something important to get that things initially didn't start all with one group and all one big happy family. There was division and quite a bit of conflict between the various groups that were started here, even so much as to drive people to establish another colony or get established in another colony. Here's the first Thanksgiving, October 1621, 52 surviving pilgrims, remember we said 102 started, 52 survived, joined in with over 90 Wampanoag Indians for a three-day feast.

Yay, we made it. The English served wild turkeys, geese, and ducks. The Wampanoag brought five deer along with lobsters, clams, oysters, and fish. The feast included cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, turnips, radishes, onions, beets, corn, and wild fruits and wild Indians. What's that? It's exactly like my Thanksgiving. Yeah, there we go. There's no green beans on that though. No green beans, yeah. Where's the mashed potatoes, you know? Okay. At any rate, that's what they did.

Next one is New Hampshire, and with New Hampshire you also had Puritan and Congregational So, the interesting thing is that you have that group in more than one colony. And the original founding of New Hampshire was Puritan. New York was a Dutch establishment.

And with that, you've got the Dutch Reformed Church. So you've got a different church background than the usual Anglican or some other separatist or Puritan group coming from there. You have the Dutch Reformed Church. And Dutch Reformed has its background with ultimately John Calvin's influence. So we've got that. Maryland, different one altogether. Now that one is Roman Catholic in background. So here is another group, and it's not something Protestant, but rather Roman Catholic.

Yes? So the establishers, that is what they established when they got here? Yes. So that's why you can have so many different religious orientations. Well, what you'll have is England had as their established church, the Anglican, or Church of England, as their established religion, but they authorized different colonies to have their own religion, and in the case of Maryland, it was Roman Catholic. So they actually authorized different groups, even groups that were not even of similar character, gave them the permission to authorize that religion to be established in that area. That's right. So they had to contact them to get... Yeah, notice that all this was with authorization from England, so the British Crown said you can establish this with, you know, this religious orientation and that one, etc. Before they left, they had this written charter that says, you're going to go over there, this guy or this group is responsible, and this is what you're called upon to do, and this is the religious orientation that you're going to go over there with.

So Marilyn was Roman Catholic. So you may have people that say, you know, I came over here with this, but it's not working for me, so I'm going to move to a different colony. Yeah, Tom? still had to pay taxes to be established. Yeah, and that was a real problem because while you might get authorization for a different religion, you're still having to deal with the Anglican influence, and that was actually, towards the Revolutionary War, something that stirred Those who wanted to have revolution was the fact that the Angleton Church enforced you have a permit to preach and things like that. And it was death penalty if you did not have a permit. You were whipped to death basically.

So, Lord Baltimore, and I put a question mark there, is because several people took on the title. So we have the city of Baltimore, named after Lord Baltimore, which wasn't one person, but several people. So the first of several to carry the title was Cecilius Calvert. He was given a charter for a largely Jesuit settlement in Maryland in 1632.

Jesuit being a group within the Roman Catholic Church. Next, Connecticut. It looks like Connecticut. Connecticut was congregational, a religious grouping that we see several different places above. Next is Rhode Island. Rhode Island was though largely congregational, They were more hands-off in terms of what's the official religion. And so that was one of the reasons why people who didn't like what was going on in Massachusetts and were persecuted would then escape to Rhode Island. And that's where we talked about people going from one colony to another if they didn't like it. That was one of the places to go because they were more open in terms of what they allowed in religious expression. Next one. England in the charter allowed different religious expressions and establishments with different colonies. They sometimes designated something and sometimes they did not.

That's why you see on the far right, you'll see none. You'll see none. And so Rhode Island and New Jersey were a couple of them where it was more hands off in terms of what's the official religion. Is that because it was started by people fleeing the other colonies?

In some cases that was true. In other words, hey come here because we're not going to do this because the persecution If you don't do things exactly our way, the persecution gets pretty miserable. So let's go to another place where we can be free and we're not going to go and require people to attend a certain church and do things a certain way.

Well, it was most liberal. So anyway, here's New Jersey. Interesting, the influences were Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, and Quaker. Now you have on your handout, I think it's on the last page, a kind of a map of different religious groups. You'll find Lutheran and Reformed. We don't have specifically Dutch Reformed, but we have a general bracket for Reformed in that kind of mapping of different religions there on the last page. So at any rate, then for Delaware, you had Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, and Anglican, differing from Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, and Quaker.

So those were significant influences. Why would there be Lutheran churches established in the United States? One, you get German influence. And one of the things you're going to get is people escaping the Thirty Years' War, right? My grandfather was a Lutheran.

Yeah, that's right. Yes? To a greater or lesser degree, there was also active persecution Yeah, so you had not only you had persecution and wars to leave as well as what was seen as economic opportunity. Yes. Okay, so the ultimate authority here is the British throne. Yes. Okay, but now you're saying Was there an authority figure, one authority figure in that column? Yes. That they answered to as well? Yeah, no, they would have a, the charter would say here's who's in charge.

So like the William Penn thing it says in here. Right. So he got a charter. He got a charter. So it would have been the BMAC. Yeah, except that William Penn, being Quaker, had an approach that was very much, you know, not heavy handed. But the throne held him or them accountable. It held them accountable and gave them initial responsibility. Here's what you are allowed to do. Here's who's in charge. Here's how you're going to do things. So biblically then, they had the responsibility to do as the throne said. That's correct. And the throne could revoke any of these as well, which ultimately they all did.

Then we have North Carolina, and you'll notice just like Virginia above, North Carolina ended at the frontier, not where it currently does. North Carolina was Anglican Church of England, just very similar to Virginia, the next colony to the north. And then you also had here South Carolina.

Also, Anglican in the Church of England with one difference, Huguenots. Also in my background, because I had on my mom's side, Robert Jenison that came over after the Mayflower to Watertown, Massachusetts. He had been a vicar in the Anglican Church. Then he fled to Holland, as you had mentioned, and then came over and settled in Massachusetts. The Huguenots were French Calvinists, and of course France was not officially allowing that even, and there were even large slaughters of Huguenots, French Calvinists. So many of them would come to the US as a place to escape from the persecution that they were receiving. So anyway, Anglican and the Huguenot influence there in South Carolina.

Then Pennsylvania, that's the one you brought up about William Penn. Now in his case, he was Quaker. There were also Lutherans. And you'll notice several other groups that sometimes show up only Here we got Quaker and Lutheran, but Mennonite brethren, then the Amish. And you'll find it continued a lot of influence of Mennonite and Amish. There's also a couple other groups including the Moravians there as well. But he established no official religion for the colony of Pennsylvania. Yeah, what you have is several different groups that weren't Lutheran and they weren't Calvinist, but they were often times of German background.

And they came over and established themselves here. And the original group oftentimes disappeared in England and exists and continues only here in the United States. And the Amish is one of those that just completely moved over here. Simon Minow was the fellow who, during the Reformation period, established what's now known as the Mennonite Church. but they were not affiliated.

These were not affiliated with some political and military groups. So the best thing you could do was get out of Europe, right? Because you'd have some other political and military group attacking you and that would be, you know, not survivable over the long run. So you had all these different groups.

Now the Quakers, and you'll see them on that chart, the Quakers were pacifists. And so a lot of other pacifist-type groups moved in with them, which is in great part some of these other groups. The Lutherans were one that was not pacifist, but many of the others are, including the Quakers.

So at any rate, and no establishment of an official religion there in Pennsylvania. So here's William Penn. William Penn's father had been owed money by the English Crown. In other words, his father had loaned money by the English Crown. The English Crown says, hey, here's how we can get this debt off of our back. We will instead give William Penn a charter in 1681 by King Charles as a debt repayment. We'll give you a charter if you'll make the debt go away, right? So that was the deal.

So this William Penn is pictured here after a signing of a treaty with the Delaware Indians, a part of what is now called Philadelphia. And so anyway, he established treaties with the Indians. He kept his word. He was pacifist, so he wasn't going to attack them. Part of the treaty was he paid In other words, it was a peaceful deal as opposed to driving them off.

Now, then you finally have Georgia, the one at the end, and again this doesn't fit the current configuration of Georgia on the west side because the frontier was what defined the western end. That was Anglican, and again another European group Moravian was another secondary influence there.

The Church of England, the Anglican Church, was the official religion in Georgia. So now here are the 13 colonies and their background. Real interesting to see, and it's quite a bit of variety. Now, religion. Notice here's the pattern of the Anglican churches. significant Anglican influence elsewhere just because you have, you know, Britain is the one establishing all these and giving charters for these, but these were substantially Anglican as we've identified here. So here's Anglican on your chart there on the last page.

The Anglican Church, as we brought up before, was a breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church. Originally it had been Roman Catholic, broke away when King Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. And so he told the Roman Catholic Church, you're gone, and we've got an English channel here between you and us, and so you're not going to come and change that. So he established the Anglican Church on that basis so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. So anyway, that remained. It had Catholic and some Reformed influence. Catholic and some Reformed. Continued on with infant baptism, for example.

The Separatists and Congregationalists are here identified as well as the Quakers here in this next chart. The Quakers are a Pietist group. they're much more into this inner light and inner revelation and expression in a quiet way, not quite like the charismatic folks are. But in other words, it bypasses scripture as an exclusive special revelation. And that's a key characteristic. Nancy and I actually attended a Quaker service just to kind of see what it was like. It was weird.

United Church of Christ pilgrims, United Church of Christ, and there's one over on Hampden in Colorado. That is, and by the way, that's not anything to do with the Church of Christ. So don't get confused, even though you're very easily confused by names like that. That was the Pilgrim's Father's Church. That's the closest thing we have is something that's descended from what was originally the Pilgrims, that's identified there.

There are congregational churches. I couldn't find it on this chart. If you can find it, that'd be great, but I couldn't find it on the chart. Congregational churches now. The idea with the congregational churches is it's a congregational form of government where you get people voting and that kind of thing.

So that was one of the things that was represented here. You also have the Quakers or Friends. A key point there is mystic, the inner light. At the Quaker meeting that Nancy and I attended, just to kind of see what it was like, they would just sit there with, here's one group and there's another group, and their chairs were facing each other, and no matter what the age, they had the kids sitting there, and the kids were quiet. They were made to be very quiet. And then they would share, you know, I thought this, and I felt that, and they would talk about that. No clergy, no liturgy, no sacraments, pacifist social ministry is a big thing.

So then you have the Dutch Reformed influence in several different ones and then I have Huguenots marked in the same group because the Dutch Reformed is essentially Calvinist with the Dutch flavor to it and then you have the Huguenots who are French Calvinists. So different ethnicity, but both of a Calvinist background. So here's the Reformed Church identified here. And so some of the key points there are noted. Infant baptism is a part of it. And also a Presbyterian form of government, that is a governing by elders. Yes.

Yes, the tulip is the acronym that's used among the Calvinists for total depravity and unconditional election and limited atonement, all those words. So anyway, that's the group. And a part of that would be the Dutch Reformed, and another part would be the Huguenots, the French Calvinists. Can you just explain the limited atonement for a second? Yeah, let me go quickly through it.

Total depravity means you're spiritually out on a slab, cold, dead. And because God elects you sovereignly, God then gives you life, gives you the gift of faith, so that you can believe. You believe and then you're saved. Total depravity says God has to elect me and make me alive because I couldn't believe otherwise and give me the gift of faith. So the U is unconditional election, that is, God does the electing, you didn't have anything to do with it.

You got chosen to go to heaven and you didn't. The L in TULIP is limited atonement, Christ died only for the elect and no others. So that would say, here's John 3.16 with the tulip, for God so loved the world of the elect that he sent his only begotten son to die only for the elect that whosoever believes which will only be the elect will have everlasting life because they're elect.

That's John 3.16 in the reformed version. So you've got the limited atonement, what's the I?

Irresistible grace. That is, grace is something God forces on you. It's irresistible. And then finally, P, the perseverance of the saints. Now actually it says eternal security. It's more than that because it's not just eternal security. It's those who are truly saved will persevere. And so someone who falls and lapses into significant sin never was saved, right? So it's not the same as we teach here at Holly Hills, once saved, always saved. So that you will persevere.

So then you've got Lutherans identified several places. Again, many of those coming over to get out of the Thirty Years' War and all the conflict there. So you have Martin Luther establishing that, Reformation theology, you know, Sola Scriptura and all that. Creeds, infant baptism, as was typical there, and very liturgical worship. Interestingly enough, this last Sunday, my brother, who is a Bible church pastor, was invited to teach at a Lutheran church in Fort Bragg, California. And that was a real tap dance.

Now, the founding of the colonies, the universe is fundamentally rational, is the European Enlightenment era philosophy that started to overtake. The universe is fundamentally rational, that is, it can be understood through the use of reason alone. This is Rene Descartes as the exemplary mindset there.

Focus on empirical observation and the use of reason and systematic doubt. We will doubt anything unless we can confirm it. We will doubt everything unless we can confirm it. Human experience is the foundation of human understanding of truth. Authority is not to be preferred over experience.

So this skepticism began to also have its influence in the American colonies as well. So, were America's founding fathers Christians? Ah, the big question. You will get people who try to convince you they were all Christians and we're a Christian nation and all that. First of all, you see a variety of religious groups, right? And we saw that in the chart.

Some of them had an official religion at the outset, others did not. Most of the early settlers were basically Bible-believing, but often of a Calvinistic, Lutheran, Amillennial, and law-oriented background, many being Anglo-Catholic, or of a mystical, pietistic persuasion. Later settlers were more closely controlled by the British government. And then settlers were also increasingly influenced by the humanistic philosophies of the Enlightenment era.

The skepticism. Its authority is whatever I can think about or empirically confirm. The human being becomes the center of authority and what is truth. As opposed to, you know, here's the king and he's got his church and, you know, this truth is dictated. Yes? I do recall that a large number of people at the time of the revolution were really taking up the battle cry, no king but King Jesus. Yes, and that's something that's important to look at here.

By the time you get to the time of the American Revolution, round numbers here, this is an interesting comparison. About 3 million colonists, about the same number of people as live in the greater Denver area. About 3 million colonists, and again in round numbers, about a third of them were loyal to the British Crown, about a third of them wanted to be involved in revolution, and about a third didn't care. So the Americans fought and won the revolution with only a third in support.

This is very approximate numbers. The leaders were increasingly deistic. Deism says that there is a God, however he's not particularly involved in things. He just sort of wound up the clock and started everything up and then walked away. So, deists accept the natural revelation, that is the heavens revealing things about God, but then the rest of the special revelation of the Bible they disclaim. They believe that the human mind can arrive at all the truth about God and the universe by observation and human reason.

Therefore, they would write into things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution about God and the Creator. No problem. They didn't mean by that the God of the Bible, who continues to be involved, as scripture lays out, continues to be involved with this creation. Thomas Jefferson would be one who would fit into that description.

Deists believe there is a God based on natural revelation, but reject the Bible as the authoritative special revelation from God, because why? According to the Enlightenment teaching, it's what I can rationally arrive at and empirically confirm. And I am the determiner of what is true. That's the approach that was put forth. Deists do not believe so as to be saved. Deists do not believe so as to be saved.

So when you talk about, well, we're a Christian nation. Sorry, were there a lot of Christians? Yes. Were we a Christian nation? They can't really claim that. Yes? I know a number of us have heard of the Thomas Jefferson Bible, where he basically incorporated theism and decided to throw out the Rasputins. Yeah.

No growth teachings. And this is key. Even those who were Bible-believing, there was not much to grow on because everything was law-based. The colonists who were basically Bible-believing, being law-based, had no teachings to grow on. They had no identification truths.

Instead, often teaching that the church replaced Israel and seeing America as the new promised land. Often those who try to vigorously show that America was founded as a Christian nation are motivated by a belief that we should be building a theocracy here in America as God had with Israel under Moses. America replaces Israel. America replaces Israel. So the people you get, you know, boy, they're urging you to get in there and get control of government and get Christians in there.

That's this philosophy. Now let's look at this, this is one that is often quoted in 2 Chronicles, and it's quoted this way, If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face, you hear that? You hear that? Look at the context, and you've got this on a slide on page 4, look at the context and answer the question, is this about Israel or America? I think it's Israel.

It talks about David. It talks about the temple. Statutes and ordinances. I will establish your royal throne as I covenanted with your father David. You shall not like a man to be ruler in Israel. This is about Israel. It's not about America. But this is what gets quoted like on the National Day of Prayer and things of that sort. Wrong answer. Wrong answer. It's taking it out of context. There's no justification for going and claiming this in some absolute sense. America does not replace Israel.

And we're finding that out, yes. So, that makes sense then, why Joseph Smith would think that Jesus would come back to Utah. Oh yeah, because Jesus is going to come back to Utah and they even got a temple lot. There are temple lot Mormons, different from the ones in the LDS church. Here's the temple, here's the place. He's going to come back here for that group. And that's why Jesus would have come over here to witness to the Canadians. Yes, that's right. Everything gets transferred. America is the new promised land. Now, are we an earthly people or a heavenly people?

And here's where we go, Ephesians 2.6, "...and He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 3.20, "...for our citizenship is in heaven." Where's our citizenship? In heaven, right? Not New York or Baltimore or any of those places. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th heaven.

Colossians 3.1, Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Seated at the right hand of God.

Okay, I think basically what this does is give us some kind of a background for saying, did we have a significant Christian influence in our founding? Yes, we did. Did we start off with a Christian nation? No, we did not. References to God would be signed off by the deists only because they do believe in a God, and even a God who's a creator. But that's as far as they will go, right? That's as far as they will go. And the imperative, there's no command for Christians to take control of the government and start living out the law of Moses or anything of the sort. Yes?

I think we have to keep in contact because there's a lot of people there that probably couldn't read They couldn't write. They were very busy. They were trying to build a new land. There was a lot of difficulty that was going on. But particularly the education level. I mean, Scripture is not the easiest thing in the world to sit down and read. So when you say that they didn't have, they weren't biblical-based, I can understand that.

Here's King James, the one who gave out the first charter, right? Here's King James. I have a replica, 1611. And every place where it talks about Israel, the top line there where they have some kind of headers, it calls it the church. So that assumption is being built into, here's how we do things, so it's the church. Well, we're going to a new land here, so the church is in a new land. So now America replaces Israel. It gets to be the mindset. And, of course, you have Christians that go, you know, trying to pull other Christians and, hey, you've got to do this and do that. No, I don't. Show me here in the Bible. And he was educated, so you would look toward what he says as being authoritative. Yeah, it's the King James, 1611. was written by guys who they knew some Hebrew, they knew some Greek, they really knew their Latin.

Because why? Because they were a break-off from the Catholic Church. Which is why when they come across the Greek monokeros in the Old Testament, what did they do? They put it in a Latin form, a unicornus. Because they didn't know what it was. It was an extinct species of wild ox. And so they didn't know what it was, and it looked to them, you carried it over from the Greek into Latin, and so that's why the 1611 Bible has a unicorn. More than once.

And it's because of that kind of influence coming from the Roman Catholic Church, which had for centuries adopted the Latin scriptures as the official scriptures. And so you have that strong Catholic and Latin background influencing the Anglican Church. Okay, next week we're going to take a look at the Roman Catholic Catechism, what's in it, and why. I've spent a fair amount of time studying through it, and what we're going to do is pick selected sections. The current Catechism was edited by the current Pope before he was the Pope, and there's some just mind-boggling stuff in it. Mind-boggling stuff. I think you'll be astounded. what's in it and what's not in it. Comments? Questions? Inspirations? It's amazing to me with all the different views that we have the Bible.

You know, people say, you know, I want, in fact, Randy used to work at a Christian bookstore, and people say, I want the original 1611. And he'd grin, and he'd say, OK, is that what you want? You know? It's not, I mean, you can hardly read it. And it's Jesus, not Jesus. you know, and then it's got funny things like the unicorn in there and things like that. Well, and only God can keep the Bible whole. Yes, yeah. All the crazy stuff going on, yes. We're seeing ads now on TV for the Geneva Bible. Yes, yeah.

And notice the Geneva Bible is the one that it had actual verse numbers broken down, so that's one thing, and its notes are Calvinistic coming out of Geneva, John Calvin was able to kind of get isolated and militarily established and protected there in Geneva. So anyway, that's the influence and you'll see a lot of call for the Geneva Bible, and it's out of this Reformed background, but it's also some of the same errors we just talked about.

There's nothing to grow on because it's law-based. As we saw in our study of Romans 5-8, All you need is one law to get the sin nature all stirred up. Just one. That's all it takes. One law to get the sin nature all stirred up. But the Geneva Bible is very law-based.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that there have in fact been quite a few Christian influences in our country's founding. Nonetheless, there is no basis for many of the claims being made by some Christians and we're thankful that we have our citizenship ultimately in heaven and we can count upon that. We are blessed in you and seated with you and we give you thanks for that in Jesus name. Amen.