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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathon Cherne

Erosion of the Separation of Church and State

Blessing to be here before I get started.

So I recently took over or am heading out American Christian Ministries.

It used to be American cassette ministries.

Anyone heard of American cassette ministries?

Okay, so we took all those old cassettes that my wife's grandpa started the ministry back in the 70s when no 1 was recording our Adventist speakers.

And so he went around with his big old reel-to-reel and went to Camp Mead and started recording Adventist speakers, our modern-day pioneers, and so we digitized all those and put them on an app.

So we're kind of, I like to say we're the sister company of Audioverse, but there's some great presentations on there.

So these app cards are in the back when you walk out if you want, or you can just search the Google Play Store or App Store for American Christian Ministries and check it out, and there's some good stuff on there to listen to.

I went to Pepperdine Law School, not too far from here.

And then I've been working in doing religious liberty work and some estate planning work since then, and so this morning I'm going to talk about what I've seen as some of the erosion of the separation of church and state, especially there were a lot of interesting Supreme Court decisions in this term, and so we're going to talk about some of those as well in light of Bible prophecy.

So if anyone has political glasses on, can you just take them off?

We're gonna take off our political glasses, all right?

We're just talking from a prophetic glasses.

So just grab those out of your bag, put on your prophetic glasses, and we'll all be okay, all right?

So I'm not gonna be talking about anything political, okay?

Father in heaven, Lord, what a joy it is to be alive, Father, and alive in this time in Earth's history, Father.

Lord, we know that you have a work for us to do.

Father, may we be faithful in doing that work.

Lord, but we can't do that work on our own, Father.

Lord, we know that we need your Spirit to power us, to guide us.

And so, Father, please pour out your Holy Spirit upon us and bless us now as we look at some things in the Bible, the spirit of prophecy, and that's happening in the world, Father, and Lord, may our faith be strengthened.

Lord, may we know that You know and knew all these things that were going to happen before they did happen, and you told them to us, Father, so that when we see it we might believe even the more." Thank you, Father.

Okay, my title this morning is The Erosion of the Separation of church and state.

Erosion of the separation of church and state.

All right, So Thomas Jefferson, he stood there in a black suit, there on the White House steps, and he was watching a bizarre spectacle.

It was New Year's Day, 1802, and 2 horses came pulling a wagon carrying a 1, 235 pound cheese.

It measured 4 feet in diameter and 17 feet thick.

It took 900 Baptist cows to make this cheese.

And painted on the red crust was the inscription, rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

The cheese was a gift from the Baptist Church who had been persecuted up to that point where President Jefferson had stood up for religious liberty for even minority religions.

And so they thought to give him this gift and to congratulate him on his obtaining the presidency, and also to seek assurance that there would be no retreat from his ideas." Quite the gift for the sitting president, wouldn't you say?

Now Jefferson felt bad about accepting such a large gift, and so he paid them, I think, $200 or something for it, ended up paying them for it.

And it said that Jefferson served that gift to the White House guests up until 1805 when it said it smelled so bad that they threw it into the river nearby.

And so this cheese represented that notion of the separation of church and state.

Now that same day after Jefferson received this gift, he penned a letter to the Danbury Baptists, and he said, "...believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislator should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." Now this was the first recorded use of the term church-state, the use of a wall of separation between church and state.

But this principle, as Jefferson noted, was rooted in the First Amendment of our country's Constitution.

Our First Amendment says, at least the Religion Clause of it says, that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

We have the Establishment Clause, where Congress will not establish a religion, they'll not promote a certain religious belief or value or system, and then we have its sister clause, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, so that anybody can exercise any religion, whatever it is." Now, this amendment wasn't always part of our Constitution, which is why it's called an amendment, right?

It was later added as part of the Bill of Rights.

But when our Constitution was originally passed, or was originally coming forth, and they were discussing it and trying to get it ratified, James Madison and other prominent founding fathers were opposed to a Bill of Rights.

Madison thought that if you added this Bill of Rights, it would limit the rights of the people to only those rights so enumerated.

And so he said if you mention some rights, it leaves the rights that you don't mention more vulnerable.

And so he said maybe it's better that we leave out all rights altogether.

And so then the federal government would have no right to tread on any right.

Now, Others thought it's very important to secure a bill of fundamental rights, and that we need these rights because if we don't mention them, then the government will tread on our rights and will encroach on our rights.

So we had these 2 schools of thought going.

1 delegate mocked the idea of having a Bill of Rights.

Noah Webster, I believe he was from Pennsylvania, he said if we're going to add rights they better be thorough.

So he sarcastically suggested amending the Constitution to declare Congress shall never restrain any inhabitant of America from eating and drinking.

That sounds like, you know, a pretty absurd thing for Congress to do that.

Now, when we read the Bible, we know that eventually Congress will keep us from buying or selling, right?

And so while it seemed absurd at the time, you know, maybe we don't get too far from that in the end.

But so people mocked this idea of a bill of rights, but George Mason and others, he was from Virginia, feared that without the stated rights there would be no limit to the government's power.

And so as a result, Mason and others who agreed with him, they went around the few states that were there were and tried to get the states not to ratify the Constitution without a Bill of Rights.

And in fact, our Constitution almost failed in Virginia, New Hampshire, New York.

Rhode Island did refuse to pass it, and North Carolina said, we'll only pass it if you put in a Bill of Rights.

Now, although the Constitution was eventually ratified in 1788, a clear message was sent that the people want a bill of rights.

And so eventually, after much debate, we got the Bill of Rights, which included there as the very first thing upon people's mind was freedom of religion, religious freedom.

James Madison, he switched views after talking to Thomas Jefferson, and it was also politically, because he wanted to get re-elected, and so he agreed that yes, a Bill of rights should be added.

But he had a very strong stance on the separation of church and state.

It says, "...the purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." Now we all know European history and the battles that were fought there, and pretty much all of them were over religion.

Whether it was the Church of England, or the Catholic Church, or other Protestant churches, they all believed in religious liberty for themselves.

But they didn't believe in religious liberty for all.

So Madison, they weren't too far removed from all that bloodshed.

"'Practical distinction between religion "'and civil government is essential to the purity of both and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States." So here, James Madison is saying that this separation of church and state is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

Saying we're teaching the world the great truth that governments do better without kings and nobles than with them.

The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that religion flourishes in greater purity without than with the aid of government." And so Madison is noting that for religion to flourish, it does so by the power of God, right?

The Bible says, not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord." And so it's only by the power of the Holy Spirit can Christianity flourish, because for Christianity to flourish, it's not by legislature, it's not by laws or judicial decrees, it's by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the people.

And so religion can't flourish if it's forced.

How can you force the Holy Spirit on somebody, right?

Religion can only flourish if the Holy Spirit is working in their lives.

The Bible says, choose ye this day whom you will serve.

You know, God is all-powerful, yet He doesn't say, force ye this day to serve me, right?

And that's the beauty of God, is that we all get to make the choice.

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Erosion of the Separation of Church and State

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