Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon scripture is 1 Samuel chapter 8. 1 Samuel chapter 8. 1 Samuel the 8th chapter. And it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of the second Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre and took bribes and perverted judgment.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people, and all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.

Now therefore, hearken unto their voice. Howbeit, yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that should reign over them. And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king. He said, This will be the manner of the king that will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots and to be his horsemen. And some shall run before his chariots.

And he will appoint him captains over thousands and captains over fifties. And will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he’ll take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he’ll take your fields and your vineyards and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

And he’ll take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He’ll take the tenth of your sheep. Ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king, which ye shall have chosen you, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.

Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “Nay, but we’ll have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, “Hearken unto their voice, make them a king.” And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, “Go ye every man unto his city.”

The young children may be dismissed now to go to their Sabbath schools. Their parents desire that next week I’ll be up in Seattle, Lord willing, preaching and Dave H. will be here preaching in this church. And the following week, we’ll begin to get into the book of First Thessalonians. We’re going to get into it a little out of order with the first Sunday emphasizing thanksgiving in the book according to the providence of God and bringing that Sunday just before Thanksgiving day and then we’ll go back and do an overview of the book the following Sunday.

Now what I want to do today is have an election day sermon. Election day sermons were quite popular in the colonial period and leading up to the Revolutionary War or the War of American independence. They were very important for that beginning period of civil government in America to instruct the population in civil magistrates and in government generally speaking.

I read some of the election day sermons of the past, at least excerpts of them that I have in my library, and I thought it was kind of interesting to just read one of them to you and then contrast it with a quote by Gary North out of one of his more recent books, Political Polytheism. And this particular quote I’ve got is by a preacher named Pac, Philip Pac. He preached this before the Honorable Council in the Honorable House of Representatives of the state of Massachusetts Bay in New England in 1778, two years after the war for independence began in 1776.

And this is part of his election sermon. He said, “Every kind of useful knowledge will be carefully encouraged and promoted by the rulers of a free state, unless they should be men of ignorance themselves, in which case they and the community will be in danger of sharing the fate of blind guides and their followers. The education of youth by instructors properly qualified, the establishment of societies for useful arts and sciences, the encouragement of persons of superior abilities will always command the attention of wise rulers.”

Now to read a quote from Gary North’s book, Political Polytheism:

A state’s influence is to be minimal. It should only impose negative sanctions. It is not to remain a modern welfare state. Family life, business, education, the arts, leisure, and just about everything else should be removed from state financing and therefore from direct state control. It is the humanist who believes in salvation by law, not the Christian. The humanist believes in the messianic state, not the Christian.

The only reason that the theocracy appears today to be primarily a political issue is that the biblical theocrat wants to shrink the state drastically. This is an affront to the modern humanist who equates politics with religion.

Now, I just read you those two quotes to sort of make sure we don’t fall into some sort of sentimentalization of this country’s past, of election day sermons of the past. It’s interesting that the two things specifically that Reverend Pac said the state should be encouraging and supporting was the education of youth by instructors properly qualified and the establishment of societies for useful arts and sciences—National Endowment for the Arts. So, let’s not get too messed up in our thinking about history. History is not static. We are not conservatives. We don’t want to go back to 1778 and repeat the mistakes of Pac in his sermon. We want to be bibliocrats. We want to think things through a little deeper than apparently Mr. Pac did at that particular time.

Psalm 119:99 and 100 read the following: “I have more understanding than all my teachers for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts.”

God wants us to keep, to obey his laws. And as we do that, he guarantees cultural and historical progress in understanding of those laws and their application to society. So we’re not wanting to go back to some kind of golden age. There never was a golden age. There’s a golden age that lies in the future and the years get more and more golden, gilded with gold as it were, as we go along, as we grow along in obedience to God and understanding of his word.

Historical progress is pointed at by Psalm 119. As man progresses in his knowledge—and primarily the emphasis is upon his obedience to the word—his knowledge comes as a result of obeying that word.

I’d like to take this opportunity then just to make sure again that we understand this point. We are not conservative. Conservatives err in their goal according to Psalm 119. Conservatives want to go back to some past age that was good or at least preserve what they have now. But the scriptures call for a going forward, an advance in historical progress and understanding and obedience to God’s word.

The conservative also fails according to this text because he doesn’t use God’s precepts, his statutes, his laws and his testimonies as the basis for rightly ordering a society. The conservative movement today relies upon natural law, things that are observable in nature as opposed to God’s revealed law. So, we’re not conservatives in that sense. They have the wrong ethical standard.

Finally, the conservative mindset also errs in its diagnosis of the problem. The conservative thinks that people are basically good and the problem is a few rascals who get up to the top who end up being tyrants over people. The scriptures don’t tell us that man is basically good. They say that man is fallen and depraved and needs to be converted before he’ll come to obedience to God’s law and rightly order every aspect of his society.

So, the first point I want to emphasize in our election day sermon today is that we’ve got to learn from the mistakes of past election day sermons as well and think through biblical approaches to civil government a little more clearly than they did and reject conservatism.

Now, this is very relevant to our consideration of the election to be held on Tuesday of this week because that’s really all we have running today—conservatives and liberals. And we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. Before I pass up critiquing conservatives, one other aspect that’s very important to critique of them is that conservatives tend to not emphasize compassion for people and for people in problems and needs.

You remember that the three-fold thing—you I’m sure you’ve memorized it by now from Micah—the three requirements of man are to walk humbly with God, to do justice and to love compassion or mercy, extending grace to people. If we wanted to critique modern-day conservatism and liberalism according to these standards, we’d say that conservatism usually ends up supporting more biblical programs for justice. Their law comes closer to ours than the liberals do, but they reject the need for compassion.

Whereas liberals, on the other hand, may have and very honestly do in many cases have a great deal of compassion for people who are in need of very things, but they deny justice. And so their compassion turns out to be no compassion at all. I think that both conservatives and liberals who reject God’s standard for rightly ordering a civil government both flunk the test of humility and walking humbly before God because they reject his word.

So conservatism is no place for the Christian to take his abode politically speaking. In 48 hours we’re going to be participating in an election. Somebody said to me coming in this morning, I think it was someone, “Well, we’re two days away from it.” And I said, “Yeah, but two days away from what?” That’s the question of the hour right now, I suppose. What are we two days away from? Well, I think that we’re two days away from a great many disappointments.

I think we’re two days away from initiatives that we all probably hoped would have passed, reflecting more of God’s justice and his standards, but which will fail. Now, in terms of the initiatives, I think that one of the things that is very clear has happened over the last few weeks—as happens every two years or every four years in this state—is that as dollars are pumped into these initiative campaigns, people’s minds are changed. But that isn’t because a great deal more information gets out about the initiatives. It’s because people are watching ads on TV. Whoever buys the most ads can make the most persuasive ads; usually ends up winning the initiative campaign.

Along this regard, it probably would be good to point out that as of a couple weeks ago, the OEA had contributed 1.2 million to various causes and candidates in this state. And they’re going to probably double that before the election is over. The estimates for how much the OEA will pump into the campaign against Measure 5 alone—Measure 5 is the property tax limitation measure—they will probably pump up to $900,000 or almost a million dollars against one single initiative.

Now, that buys a lot of TV ads. And as we said, as these ads hit, the polls reflect those ads hitting. Ads coming in the last couple weeks to campaign and support for things erode rapidly once the ads come on. And so it seems kind of unfair. It seems like it appears that the media and money are dictating the results of initiative campaigns. Many times these ads, of course, are not true.

Couple of days ago one of the candidates for governor, Barbara Roberts, ran an ad about Dave Frommyer that said that he stopped the export of logs. All he did was give an attorney general’s ruling that reflected the Supreme Court of the United States and federal court ruling, and yet for that he was mischaracterized as stopping the export of logs.

Well, the ads have become more and more negative every year I’ve watched the political campaign, and as a result—and also not just more and more negative, more and more completely dishonest in terms of what they present. Measure 10, for instance, the parental notification initiative, was linked and said in various TV ads that it would result in back alley abortions and it would get rid of all abortions effectively in the state. That’s ludicrous. All it calls for is that a parent be notified—not even request permission, simply notified—two days before an abortion is performed.

So, it appears that media and money are the villains in the initiative races. What about the candidate races? We’ll probably end up here in Oregon with the most liberal, self-conscious statist governor the state has ever known. And the truly ironic part of this scenario is that we’ll have this candidate largely as the result of a Christian group, a group populated mostly by Christians, Oregon Citizens Alliance. We’ll have OCA to thank for Barbara Roberts’ election. OCA’s independent candidate will usher in Barbara Roberts probably.

And the bad news for candidates doesn’t stop there either. The independent candidacy of Al Moyle and the initiative measure that the OCA also ran has funneled off great amounts of dollars and labor from candidate races, and so many Christians and good pro-family candidates will probably lose also come Tuesday. Largely as a result of an effort that has funneled off money and support.

So it seems like in terms of the candidate races, if we want a villain come Tuesday, it’d be OCA—the way that money and media are the villain in terms of the initiative races. Seems that way. But what’s really going on here? Why do we have such a gloomy picture being portrayed, and are the answers really as simple as I just pointed them out to be?

Well, I don’t think so. And I’m going to turn to several biblical texts now to help us understand what’s going on here. And the first is 1 Samuel 8, which we just read. I think on your outline, I’ve titled this “An Ancient Anti-Incumbency Movement.” I don’t know if it was the first one or not. I suppose the first anti-incumbency movement was Adam and Eve rejecting the King of creation in the garden. But here we see an anti-incumbency situation. Samuel’s getting older. He’s got two sons who are judging, but they’re not doing a good job. They’re taking bribes and they’re not doing a good job. And so there’s a movement on the part of the people to throw the rascals out, throw the rascals out and bring in somebody else. Bring in a king now instead of these two lousy sons of Samuel who are judging the people not in a correct way.

So the people want to reject the judges rather and get a king appointed. Now the king is not necessarily a bad thing to have in terms of a civil government. We know that in Deuteronomy 17, in God’s law issued long before this occurred, there were provisions for kings and what kings should and shouldn’t do. Kings are specifically forbidden to have multiple wives. And so there are various rules in Deuteronomy, I believe it’s 17, that tell us that God eventually planned for the people of Israel to have a king.

So it wasn’t the fact that they were asking for a king that is pointed out in 1 Samuel 8 as being bad necessarily, but two very important points to notice in the wording of what they request here. They request a king like unto the nations—to judge us like all the nations around us—in verse 5. Then again after Samuel instructs them in terms of God’s instructions about what they’re going to have, then in verse 19 and 20, they say, “Nay, but we’ll have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

The people wanted a king not of God’s choosing. They wanted a king like the nations around them. And God tells us in his commentary of what the people were actually doing in verse 7 rather, he tells Samuel, “Go ahead and do what they tell you to do, for they’ve not rejected you, but they’ve rejected me from being king over them.”

So, at the heart of the call for a new king was the people’s rejection of God as being their king. What we see here then is God’s telling those people what’s going to happen to them as a consequence of their rejecting him as their king and instead turning to some other king. And Samuel tells them, or rather, in verses 12 and following, that it’s going to have an effect on their children, their sons and their daughters. He’s going to take of them to develop and use for his purposes. He’s going to develop his own army. In verse 12 he’s going to take the produce of the land in verses 14 and 15. He’s going to use your servants for his purposes, and over and over again—he’s going to take your servants, your sons, your daughters, your produce for his purposes, to grow things for him, for his army to do his bidding.

And so, this king is going to reign over them in a tyrannical sort of way. That’s what Samuel tells them. And the people say, “Well, that’s okay. We want it anyway.” Why? Because the people have rejected God. When people are bad, they end up with bad rulers. When the people reject God, that’s when they end up with rulers who do not, who will not walk in obedience to God and as a result be cursed like Saul was cursed.

Now it’s interesting that when King Saul is given by God to the people, he is portrayed in the first few chapters of the book of Samuel as a real good guy. Now we know the end of Saul—consorting with spirits, trying to kill David, a whole realm of rebellions against God and great falls. But it’s important to notice along the way that God mercifully gave them a king who was the best of all men, so to speak.

He was more handsome, the scriptures tell us, and more good-looking in appearance and taller than everybody else. Now, that isn’t—you know, we know that beauty is only skin deep and that God looks at the heart. But God does talk in the scriptures about physical beauty as a thing that’s good, that represents a wholeness to a person. And so, when the scriptures tell us that about Saul, it’s not being sarcastic about him. It’s telling us this was a good man.

Saul is doing what? When he comes across Samuel, he’s taking care of his father’s flocks. He’s looking for his father’s flocks. Remember, just like good King David later on takes care of his father’s flocks. Saul’s a good guy. He’s doing a good job in terms of his vocational calling. When Samuel talks to Saul about becoming king and being anointed by him, Saul is humble. He says, “Hey, who am I? I’m from a little tribe. I’m nobody, you know. Who am I to get this good office?” And so Saul has a true humility before God.

We could go on, but the point is that God gives the people really a good king. But the king turns out to fall from God and to reject God because God is giving them a king according to the description here that Samuel gives them—a tyrannical king. And he does end up being a tyrant. Because God is using the king to judge the people.

Well, let’s look at another example. Jeremiah 5:30 and 31. Let me read it for you.

“A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so. And what will you do in the end thereof?”

So in the book of Jeremiah, this is describing, of course, the apostasy of the people that leads to the Babylonian captivity. And he’s saying that the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests bear rule by their means. They try to bear rule just for their own sake, not God’s sake, and they enrich their own persons. Again, it looks there like it’s the rulers that are the problem. But it doesn’t say that. It goes on to say, “And my people love to have it.”

So bad rulers are given by God to bad people. When people forsake God, he raises up prophets and priests over them who will be tyrants over them, as it were. Matthew Henry commenting on this text says, “The people were well enough pleased to be so misled. They are my people, says God, and they should have stood up by me or for me and borne their testimony against the wickedness of their priests and prophets, but they love to have it so. If the priests and prophets will let them alone in their sins, they will give them no disturbance in theirs. They love to be ridden with a loose rein. And like those rulers very well that will not restrain their lusts, and those teachers that will not reprove them.”

The people like a loose rein. They see God’s reign as too restrictive, and so God gives them over to false prophets and improper teachers as well.

Richard Lovelace in his book, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, makes the same comments about how most modern churches in America—there’s kind of an unholy alliance between the people and the pastor. The people agree to keep the pastor fairly well paid and to respect him a lot and pay him a lot of obedience and whatnot as long as he doesn’t step on their toes too much. He agrees not to trouble them in their personal lives too much, to give them an occasional sermon or give a sermon every week that has some relevance to their prayer life or something, but not to trouble them too much in the rest of their lives.

And so that unholy alliance is worked out because we have people and rulers in rebellion against God.

One more passage. We looked at this the other night—2 Samuel 24. We looked at this at Reformation night, but it’s important here to recognize that not only will God give bad kings to bad people, he will turn good kings into bad kings if the people have fallen away from him.

2 Samuel 24, and this is the end of the whole book of Samuel. And so the Samuel book kind of begins where we were looking at—with the establishment of the first king, the people’s rejection of God as king. You get a bad king then. Then they get a good king. But look what happens to the good king David as well in verse one of chapter 24.

“Now again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and it incited David against them, against Israel, to say, ‘Go number Israel and Judah.’”

Joab objects. Now, we don’t know. It wasn’t always wrong to take a census of the people. So, the taking of the census itself wasn’t the sin here. What was the sin? Well, it seems like from the account in Chronicles that there was pride involved. This was, it seems apparent from the language used, a military numbering. And it seems that David was doing this and relying upon horses and numbers of men for his sake of security—sense of security rather—than upon the God who was to protect them and keep them.

We don’t know specifically the sin, but the sin was obvious enough to where Joab, and you remember Joab was not a particularly spiritual man. Remember Joab was the one who had no self-control, who engaged himself in pride, envy, and anger and proved a thorn in David’s side all of his life. Joab even says, “Oh, don’t do this thing. This is wrong and wicked. God will judge us for this.” Joab tries to stop him, but David is blind.

Why is David blind to the counsel of Joab, who’s supposed to be his helper in this situation? David’s blind because God has blinded him. God wants David to number the people and wants to judge that numbering and so demonstrate the people’s rebellion against God. And that’s what happens. David numbers the people and as soon as he gets done numbering, then God reveals it to him and then David is sorry. And God comes to him through the prophet and says, “You can pick three things here. Three days of pestilence or a couple of other punishments.” He takes the three days of pestilence. God’s angel breaks out with pestilence against the people and 70,000 die.

God not only gives bad people bad rulers, bad prophets, bad priests, and bad kings. But if the people are apostate and turn their back on God, he deludes even those good rulers that he has provided for them when they were good.

James B. Jordan in a recent tape pointed out that it might be wise for us to consider the possibility that when we meet Ever Cowpens in heaven—if he’s a believer, and he probably is—this may well have been what has happened to him. The nation didn’t deserve a servant general at this point in time that would be righteous. And maybe God gave Sierra Coopa a spirit of delusion because God’s wrath is burning against the people of this country for forsaking him.

The scriptures are clear from these three examples that the real lesson in civil politics is the culpability of the people. The culpability of the people.

Calvin, quoting on the Jeremiah 5 passage—but applicable to the whole scenario of these passages—says, “Doubtless we shall find that to be ever true, which is said in Deuteronomy 13:3, that when false prophets come, it is for the purpose of trying God’s people whether they from the heart love God. It is then his object to try our religion whenever he gives loose reins to imposters and false prophets. For everyone who truly loves God will be preserved by his spirit from being led away by such deceivers.

When therefore ignorant men are deluded, it is certain that they are justly punished for their neglect and contempt of God because they have not been sufficiently attentive to his service. Yea, because they have wished for impostors. For the world is never deceived, except with its own consent and willingly. For those who are the most ignorant close their eyes against clear light, and shun God as much as they can, and seek to hide themselves in darkness according to what Christ says, ‘Whosoever committeth sin hateth the light.’”

So very important though to grasp these words that Calvin is saying here. He says that God sends false prophets to test his people according to Deuteronomy 13:3. And if his people are righteous, they’ll reject the false prophet. But if his people are in disobedience to him, then they will love it so, and they will give themselves up to the delusion.

“For the world,” he said, “is never deceived except with its own consent and willingly. For those who are the most ignorant close their eyes against clear light and shun God as much as they can and seek to hide themselves in darkness.”

The world is never deceived except willingly. If it was, then we’d have a real problem because then it’s our environment again that’s our problem instead of our ethical rebellion to God. God gives us the wherewithal according to First Corinthians to avoid the temptations that are common to men. And one of those temptations is to listen to false rulers and false prophets and false counsel.

What does this mean in terms of the election day coming Tuesday? It means that money and media are not the problem with the initiatives in the state. They may appear to be the problem, but they are not the problem. The television ads that the money buys and the media presents would be ineffectual against a population that were informed on the basic issues which are decided by initiatives. If a population was obedient to God and were given the light of knowledge by him about initiative measures, if they simply exercise their God-given faculties of reason to read the initiative measures and so make the determination apart from ads about rats escaping from a cage and all kinds of other terrible calamities—having chainsaws going through professor’s hats—who do those ads appeal to?

I’ll bet you there’s not a person in this room who watched the ridiculous ad about Measure 5—chainsawing a professor’s hat—and was moved against it. Why? Because you’ve trained your minds. These hour-long sermons on Sunday and you have to figure out what I’m saying every week. You read your scriptures and you learn how to think from point A to point B to point C—to use the God-given faculties God gives you.

Now, that’s important. What it tells us is these ads are effectual, not because they’re so great and so deceptive, but because the people want to be misled. They’ve rejected the rationality that God has given to them.

How many people can understand how to apply case law principles to laws today that we’re voting on? As an example, the attempt to shut down Trojan. You start thinking about the health hazards, etc. You start getting in a lot of heavy duty thinking upstairs. But if you remember the basic principle—we’re talking about a private enterprise here and whether or not the majority population of the state of Oregon should be able to tell somebody running a business to close that business down because we think it might not be good for us—then the whole issue takes on a slightly different tinge.

Now, I know it’s a public utility, but essentially we’re talking about taking over private property and telling people they can’t do what they’re supposed to be doing. Apart from the elected representative—the people saying this is harmful to the people, you’re an evildoer for hurting people, close this thing down—we’re talking about majority mobocracy rule that can shut down a business if it so desires.

Again, in Gary North’s book, he had an excellent quote by Karl Marx, and it sort of applies here, so I’m going to read it.

Carl Marx declared in 1843 that once a society has accepted the political principle that the franchise—that is the voting privilege—need not be restricted to property owners and taxpayers, it has in principle already accepted the abolition of private property.

And now to quote from Marx: “The state as a state announces, for instance, private property. Man declares by political means, excuse me. Man declares by political means that private property is abolished as soon as the property qualification for the right to elect or be elected is abolished, as has occurred in many states of North America. Is not private property abolished in idea if the nonproperty owner has become the legislator for the property owner? The property qualification for the suffrage is the last political form of giving recognition to private property.”

End quote. So said Karl Marx. And so when nonproperty owners can in mass vote to take away property from property owners, you have essentially given them control through the franchise over property, and you’ve gotten rid of private property altogether.

But how many people can think through things that clearly today? Well, unfortunately, not too many. How many people are willing to diligently read arguments such as this in terms of initiatives? Not very many. And so the problem is not the media, it’s not the money. It’s the population that has forsaken God and the rationality he’s given them.

But what about the candidates? I think the same thing is true there. OCA is not the villain. There are always going to be people around who do things that OCA has done during this election cycle. The problem isn’t OCA. The problem is the Christian community. The Christian community that is ignorant, including of some of the basic elements of the political process.

I saw a pastor on TV this last week talking about why he was going to vote for Al Moyle, and he said, “Well, we’ve got to tell the Republican party they’ve got to give us a better candidate next time around.” Well, who’s he talking to? He apparently believes that some big bosses in the Republican party decided to run Dave Frommyer for governor. But that’s not how it happened.

What happened was back in May there was a primary held, and at that primary the Republican voters decided as a block—a majority of them decided—to have Dave Frommyer as their candidate. You can’t just tell people to run a different candidate next time because we don’t have party bosses who do these things. The population votes on them. This pastor seemed deluded over the basic principles of how political action happens in this state. And yet he’s quoted on TV, undoubtedly, you know, failing to instruct his congregation in basic government.

Oregon Citizen Alliance has run a candidate who has engaged himself in misrepresentation. He’s not an engineer. Never has been. You probably didn’t know that. You probably heard that he once was. Apparently, according to a report released at the end of last week, the largest budget he oversaw was $250,000. And in spite of him saying he managed a huge complex business operation, apparently his direct span of management was five people. Five people at the most. Five or six.

Now, it’s not hard to find these things out. All you got to do is ask some questions. But people don’t ask questions anymore. You know, we kind of walk lockstep and we hear “we got a good Christian candidate” and we don’t even know if the guy is a Christian candidate. Yet the population again has walked lockstep. The Christian community has gotten behind a man who they know little or nothing about.

It’s very interesting. Again, the last I saw—one of the televised debates—and on that debate, a four-way debate, Mr. Moyle refused to use the platform provided for him to discuss biblical solutions. He just discussed how bad everything else was. It was all negation. No attempt to provide positive solutions. And by the way, what happened to abortion? It wasn’t raised once by Mr. Moyle in the context of that debate.

This shouldn’t surprise us though because if you ask OCA, they’ll be the first ones to tell you, “We don’t have a biblical candidate. We’ve got a Christian candidate.” What does that mean? A Christian candidate, not a biblical candidate.

Well, you see, the men that run OCA don’t believe that you should have a biblical candidate. You might have a candidate who happens to be a Christian, but what they have—and I was told this again just last week by these people, and they’ll tell you, I’m not making this up—they’ll tell you, “We’ve got a conservative candidate.” Horror. Should we ever think that we should look to the scriptures for its principles on how government should run? No. No. That’s not what we’re doing here. This is not a biblical candidate. This is a man who happens to be a Christian, but he’s really a conservative candidate.

See, that means he cuts out his own ability to think things through biblically and present a good, biblically rational position on the basic issues. This candidate ingratiated himself to Barbara Roberts and attacked Attorney General Frommyer repeatedly through the debate process, and Christians put up with this kind of stuff. This candidate, as far as I know, doesn’t have the basic qualification for office.

What’s the basic qualification? If you’re going to have a church officer—we’re going to, you know, probably vote here in the next couple of months on Richard Aharr. What are you going to look for in Richard? What do you look for in Doug or Kent or Roy or myself? Well, the basic thing you look for is: is this guy serving? Well, that’s great. He’s got all these qualifications or has these positions or something, but what’s been his record of service? The scriptures want to know. “Choose out from you men who are known to be servants. Choose out, Moses, God told Moses, 70 men who are the leaders, who are already serving the people, and make them take your heads, make them heads.”

What’s Mr. Moyle’s qualifications relative to service? I don’t know of one. Not one. And I’ve tried to find out, probably unlike most Christians in this state. Why vote for this man whose only candidacy will only result in the election of an ultra-liberal Barbara Roberts?

Are Christians born again? Or were they born yesterday? Or is the problem a bit deeper than just simple ignorance and stupidity? You remember? It’s like, what was David’s problem for not knowing he wasn’t supposed to engage in the prideful act of numbering the people? Was it stupidity and ignorance? Oh no, it was the blinding of God because God was mad at the people. He was irritated. His wrath was kindled against them because they had rejected him.

Isn’t what we have in the Christian community today a lack of submission to the word of their creator King Jesus Christ? It’s not a lack of intelligence. These are intelligent men, many of them. I think the problem is a lack of submission to the God of the word whose word is to be and is the only standard for biblical government and blessed government.

Whether it comes to a person individually, a family, a church, or a state, it’s the rebellion of people against God’s statutes that make them more foolish than the ancients of old. There’s an incredible naivete which has nothing to do with obedience to scripture but in fact results from rebellion against scripture. There’s a rebellion against the very teachings of scripture itself.

For instance, the rejection of providence by so many supporters of not just Mr. Moyle but other Christian candidates across this nation. You’d almost think from some Christian people that elections are a matter like kind of like a lottery. You know, you spin the wheel—Wheel of Fortune or something—you spin the wheel and hope that maybe your candidate just might be miraculously elected by God to office.

Now, why is that wrong? Because we believe in rationality instead of the God of scriptures? Well, no. But God is a God of providence. In his providence, he uses secondary means. And God says we’re supposed to understand those and obey those. To reject the secondary means that God has established and to just close your eyes and wish upon a star somehow is not biblical faith. Biblical faith says we have a God who has ruled in every area of life.

But see, to know that means you’ve got to acknowledge the sovereignty of God in all areas. And we’ve got a Christian population that is essentially Arminian and rejects that sovereignty, and so doesn’t see everything working out as the hand of God in history. So first, they’re ignorant of the God of scripture. They’re rebellious against the God who is sovereign and whose providence brings all things to pass.

And secondly, they reject the biblical notion of gradualism, which I’ve tried to get across month after month. And the result from the Oregon Citizen Alliance has been attack on gradualism—speeches about the error of the gradualist. At first they said well, we’re gradualists too. Then they started saying well, we’re not gradualists. We don’t like gradualism. We want to change things overnight. And they started saying that very self-consciously.

The scriptures teach: first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. God’s progress in history, historically, is normatively slow and gradual. Why? Because the problem is not that guy at the top. The problem is the people down here. And if all you do is elect a theocratic president to the White House, you haven’t done anything. We’re the ones who are always accused of believing that. But now it’s clear that’s what the evangelical community thinks, not what the reconstructionist community thinks. We believe in long, slow historical growth.

It’s interesting. I mentioned that book, The Destructive Generation, that I’ve been reading about the ’60s. I wanted to read a paragraph out of this and show its relevance to what’s happening on Tuesday today. They’re talking about the riots in Chicago in 1968 at the Democratic convention.

“Chicago became the crystal knock to the new left. Jerry Rubin was there talking about putting LSD in the water supply. Hayden had the shrewd intention of provoking the cops, knowing that Mayor Richard Daly had already threatened to shoot looters. If one intention was to inspire a police riot while the whole world was watching, the other was to deliver a final death blow to the centrists of the Democratic Party, the Cold War liberals, which we so hated. The new left went to Chicago to have some fun, trash the liberals, and elect Nixon. We believe that what transpired there would maximize the contradictions and drive the country more swiftly and effectively toward fascism, where we believed it was ineluctibly headed in any case.”

So the point of all this is that the reason why the demonstrations happened at the Democratic convention, not the Republican convention, was because the far left, the radical left, the revolutionaries were interested in revolution and not slow progress. And so they wanted to knock out, give a black eye to any Democratic candidate that came out of that convention and get Nixon elected and as a result press the antithesis that way.

Well, what we have today? We’ve got Christians who are saying the same thing. It’s better if Barbara Roberts gets elected. Let’s get things real bad in a hurry and wake people up, and then we’ll have a revolution. You see, there’s a rejection of biblical gradualism and instead an apprehension of revolution instead of government.

Third, there’s a tremendous problem in the Christian community today with the correct prioritization of issues in the political arena. I do not believe that abortion is the number one issue that should guide how we vote today. I do not believe that abortion is the great social issue that God has given us above all other social issues on which we’re going to be judged. I don’t believe that.

Now, I believe we will be judged on abortion. Next January, I think it’s the third or fourth Sunday of the month, we’ll have Human Life Sunday. We’ll perform a service of malediction—calling for God’s curses upon abortionists and upon politicians who support them. You know, to become a member of this church, you have to actively oppose—pledged to actively oppose the sin of abortion. But I don’t believe that abortion is the final ultimate goal of all our political action, nor even the first goal.

Should it be outlawed? Yes. Will it be anytime in the near future? No. If massive numbers of mothers refuse or will not protect their own babies in their own wombs, how can the state protect those children? Ultimately, you see, the problem is a long-term one, and the problem requires a regeneration, and it requires the growth of a new Christian moral order, and it requires moral persuasion on these women not to abort their babies. You can’t simply pass a law and change the murder in the heart of the abortionist or the mother who refuses to protect her own child.

Used to be if a man said he was a Christian, the Christian community could depend on to vote for him, such as President Carter, in spite of his politics. Now, if a man says he’s anti-abortion, then that’s the only issue some people make up their minds on according to some people.

I believe that abortion is a tremendous diversion from where the central point of attack is. I think the central point of attack on the state—on the Christian community—and remember that behind all this there is spiritual warfare. There is an attack on the Christian community. History moves that way. Where is it today? It’s over your children. It’s coming to the family.

As we’re out there trying to rush down the street to help some mother who if you do help her today will in more cases than not will only abort again tomorrow—and I’m sorry for that and I know it’s murder. I know we should try to do whatever we can against it. But to get diverted off there where they’re busting in the back door of your house is no solution, and in fact it is a guarantee that we will not get rid of abortion for another generation.

Why? Because your children are going to be voting in 10 to 15 years, and your children are going to have moral persuasion over other people. And the Christian community is the only basis that’s going to stop abortion in this land. And if that Christian community is successfully attacked by the enemy because we’re not protecting our families, then we’ve gotten rid of the very base of operation that’s going to be necessary to eliminate abortion in this country.

Tremendous problem with priorities. We’ll look in a couple of minutes what I think the biblical priorities should be from the scriptures.

Part of the problem here, of course, is Dr. Dobson. He’s done a lot of good things, but his quote about abortion—I may not know how he intended it, but his people near up here seem to think that OCA is using it just correctly. I’m very interested in a new mailing I just got a couple of days ago from Dr. Dobson. Listen to this. This is real interesting to me. He’s talking about a new book he wrote.

“I use some of the days spent recuperating at home after his heart attack to complete a book I’ve been writing with Gary Bower entitled Children at Risk. It deals with the great struggle occurring now for control of the next generation of Americans.”