5,000 Year Leap Discussion #4

0:00 Hey everybody, if you remember a few months back I mentioned that we were going to be starting a discussion group on the book The 5000 Year Leap. Before I go into all the details here, I want to tell you what the book's about. The book goes into the principles behind our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and it really illuminates and and brings those principles to life. It was written by Kleon Skousen some number of years back, but it's still a very pertinent book to this day. If you want to understand what the original plan was for America. Now we've started holding the discussion groups. In fact, it just last night on Monday, we finished up the the 5th discussion.

0:42 Now it was suggested to me that maybe I go ahead and I post these on the podcast. And so with the help of another gentleman, we went ahead and we've cleaned it all up. It's it. And we're going to start loading those today. Now we've done 5 to this point. My plan is, is I'm going to load the 1st 4 today all the way through Friday and you'll be able to find those and just be able to listen to them and get a feel for what it's all about. Now if you decide you want to join the the discussion group live, I've tried to make that easy for you. I put a link to the Zoom discussion group that we hold every Monday night at 7:00 PM Central.

1:25 In conjunction with that, I've also uploaded the link and all the episode notes for, for kind of this discussion group where you can join on that Telegram group and kind of join in some, some extracurricular discussion if you'd like throughout the week. You'll also be able to find the slides I used for my presentations and that sort of thing there. Now this in no way effects anything I'm doing on Saturday. You're you'll still be able to get the the normal podcast as it always is on Saturday. This is just something extra that'll go till May for you. So again, I hope you guys enjoy these things. If you wish to join the discussion group and the Telegram group, you can find those links and all the discussion group episode show notes.

2:13 Anyway, I hope you enjoy this if you decide to join the discussion. Group I look. Forward to seeing you there again. That's every Monday night, 7:00 PM Central. Thanks everybody. Bye. All right. I think we can go ahead and get going. Tim, would you mind giving us an opening prayer tonight, brother? Yeah, you bet. Father in Heaven, we come before you at this time this evening and ask for your spirit to be. But this fall we study the Constitution and study the 5000 yearly. We ask that we may learn according to your will and that you'll guide the speakers tonight, and that all may be done that is pleasing to you tonight.

2:57 We thank you for this opportunity and for all that you do for us. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Thanks, Tim. All right, we'll go ahead and share my screen here and we'll just get rolling. So this is Week 4, I believe that we're starting here and we're going to go over the, the 1st and 2nd principle. So if for those who are jumping on for their first time or anything, we, we've been going out this, like I said, for about four weeks now. And the, the first week was just really kind of tackling the kind of how, how the discussion group was going to be formatted kind of what to expect that sort of thing.

3:43 There's a, there's a, a reading list kind of shows you where we're going to be at any certain week here. And that's, look, that's always about the possibility of changing a little bit. I'm going to try to stick really close, but these things have a way of, of going a little longer sometimes. And so I'll always update that going forward here if that's changed. So the first part, just kind of that the second week we really broke into kind of the structure of government a little bit. And then we finished that up last week. So we're on to the principles one and two, and that starts pretty much on page 37 of the book itself.

4:27 And I want to say this before I get started, I was talking to Amber and Tanya and they're like, oh, so, so how's the class going? I'm like, good. I'm really excited for this week, meaning today. And they said, why is that? And I said, oh, we're we're we're going to talk about a little bit about Cicero and his ideas on government. And I realized that they were looking at me probably the way I look at, I don't know, fabric in the fabric store, right? I think I think they were like, well, that's his thing and that's good. But it I think it did really drive home the fact I am a little bit of a nerd about all this stuff, but I think it's really cool. So now as we head into this part here, and this is the bulk of where we'll spend our time for the remainder of this discussion group, we're we're now going go going to go through the one through 28 principles that kind of make the constitution what it is.

5:26 And as we talk about things tonight going forward, I would encourage you that like as you hear stuff from Cicero, I'm going to ask the question every so often, what does this remind you of? And so I, I'm hoping that you're making connections between what was revealed anciently and what the founders have done in more modern times, because I think it shows a, a beautiful thread that that these truths really are and these principles really are eternal in nature. And it's important that we wrap our minds around them. So with that, let's go ahead and let's just get going here. Shrink that down, move that out of the way.

6:10 There we go. So Cicero, does anyone want to take a stab on who Cicero was? I've outlined just a couple of things here, but does anyone have it have something they'd like to add on who they who who Cicero was? OK, Cicero was a a Roman lawyer essentially, but he was more than just a lawyer. He was a deep student of both law and Rome as well as philosophy in Athens. And he was very forward thinking not only for his day.

6:53 I'd say he's probably still kind of forward thinking for today in, in how he viewed law and not only how he viewed law, but where he saw the ultimate originator of that law who that was, you know, he certainly wasn't a Jew or a Christian, but he was someone who was on to some things. And I think you'll you'll be kind of surprised to find out some of the things that he kind of wrestled out himself by these things. So again, he studies law in Rome. He's he studies philosophy in Athens during the, during his time in Rome, he actually ascends to the rank of Roman consul, which was like one of the highest positions that you could have in Rome in that day.

7:49 And he, he was a contemporary of Julius Caesar. Now, about the time things start getting dicey in Rome and Julius Caesar is assassinated, Cicero gets exiled. And then just a year after Caesar was assassinated, Cicero went the same way. But his his legacy can't be can't really be overstated here on what he did. William Ebertstein of Princeton had this to say about him. The only Roman political writer who has exercised enduring influence throughout the ages is Cicero.

8:35 We'll find that his ideas carry forward. And I would say these aren't necessarily his ideas. I think that in much the same way, all of us, no matter what church or religion we belong to, if we're honest seekers, the Spirit's going to lead us to truth. And I think Cicero was that honest seeker. And I think he did in, in the matters of law and philosophy behind the law, he was led to certain things. All right, moving on. So this sums up kind of Cicero's overall view on what law is. He says once the reality of the Creator is clearly identified in the mind, the only intelligent approach to government, justice and human relations is in terms of the laws which the Supreme Creator has already established.

9:28 The Creator's order of things is called natural law. Now we find this a lot in the American Declaration as well as well. Maybe not so much the Declaration, but definitely the the Constitution as well as the writings that went along with that. Things like The Federalist Papers, other writings of the founders where it will be called Nature's law or the law of nature's God. And I think the founders framed it the way they did pretty intentionally. I think they were trying to create a tent in which they felt like all men can can get behind if they're honest in, in in who they are. And so as we go forward here, we're going to hear the term natural law a lot.

10:22 Now I want to say this at at the outset, I don't think all of natural law as outlined by Cicero is always necessarily interchangeable here. But for what we're doing at this part in this juncture, I think you can replace the word nature for God if you would like, because I think there, there's a lot of carry over here. All right, let's move on here. Why? Why do you think it's I, I want to ask this question. I want to throw this out there. Cicero puts something very interesting.

11:03 He says once the reality of the creator is clearly identified in the mind, the only intelligent approach to government, justice and human relations is in terms of laws, which the Supreme Creator has already established. Why is it important in to to recognize the Creator before we move on to to things like laws and government? And I'll throw that out there for anyone who wants to to answer. You know, I find it kind of interesting that he speaks here on the reality of the creator. He's not speaking about the Pantheon, right? Right.

11:45 When you consider the Greek Pantheon, the Roman Pantheon, these things, they're very lawless. Really. It's really those are more of like emotions, temperaments, things that are inconsistent and there's no eternal structure to them. They're just kind of passions that rise up. You'd almost say it's lawlessness. And it seems that Cicero is completely disregarding the, the Pagan religious ideas and has a firmly fixed idea on monotheism, the saying the creator and absolutely a very clear understanding on on who the creator is not, not A and it's, that's the foundation to understanding law, at least in his mind. And I think that's a fascinating approach. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. Absolutely.

12:51 You know, I, I do want to be fair, Cicero and, and we'll get to a few parts here where he does refer to the gods. But what is interesting is, is that you can pick things like this out where it makes me wonder. And, and I don't think we'll ever know. I haven't discovered a work on Cicero that really illuminates us at all. But I almost think that sometimes Cicero is flirting with Ohio with what we might look at as Mormons as the gods, right? In terms of there's one that we deal with primarily, but there could be others. I think Cicero is definitely taking that kind of approach here.

13:32 I just, I think you're 100% right, Justin. He, he does seem to be a little bit of his ahead of his time. And this is awfully flirty with Ohio, for lack of a better term, monotheism for sure. So, Justin, can you just monitor 2 if any hands go up, I'm not sure I'll see them while I'm sharing my screen here. Yeah, yeah, All right. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to add to that before we move on? That's. Important. Just a winster, right? A few minutes. So we next go to the characteristics of natural law or law of nature's God.

14:20 One of those that he points out is that it's universally applicable. I want to throw that out to someone. What do you think it means when a law of God or law is naturally or universally applicable? That any good or just law needs to be able to apply to us as well as our neighbor equally. Absolutely. I think that's certainly part of it, that it applies to people no matter who they are, right? That the law we, we would call that justice being blind, right, being able to, to have the law dispensed regardless of your station.

15:13 Anybody else have something they'd like to add to to what you know universal application would mean in terms of law? Does it have anything to do with a timeless nature of it? That's exactly what I was thinking. Vanessa, do you, do you want to expound on that a little bit? What? Do you mean? Timeless application. Means that no matter what era we live in or what culture we live in, it should apply across the board and not be changed by whatever's happening at the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Can anybody think of an A time when an argument was used to to pass a law where it seems to contradict with this universal application premise?

16:10 Sometimes in history we can see people say, well, gosh, I mean, the founders couldn't have seen what we would be going through, right? That's kind of a common argument against the Constitution or in allowing legislative bodies to to progress past the Constitution, so to speak. I would say that a lot of gun control laws might apply that way. I think you're right. I think you're right. I think I think, you know, one of the arguments that they have made, people who are not necessarily in favor of the Second Amendment might say something like, well, gosh, the founders couldn't have seen a gun that holds 20 rounds. They wouldn't be in favor of that. That's one.

16:59 Anybody else have any other examples? Yeah, I would add to this The Patriot. Act. Go ahead, go ahead. We'll go to Corey and then we'll go back to Kim. Go ahead, Corey. Oh, I was just going to say. And yet the founders were envisioning that people could, you know, ride around in warships with and have cannons and explosives and anything like that. That was just fine. But heaven forbid you have, you know, 20 rounds with you. It's really a wild idea that the founders would not be supporting military weapons because it was absolutely about military weapons in every way possible.

17:44 It Yeah, it was about the citizens being able to, you know, go against the military with the same weapons or anything that they possibly could carry and and create. Absolutely. Tim, you were going to say something. Yeah, I just was going to add the Patriot Act to the list of laws that were made, perhaps not in conjunction with universalism, trading security for, or, excuse me, trading freedom for security. And that's, that's exactly where, where my mind went to and, and look, some of that is as I lived through it, right? And it, it absolutely was one of those times where people were, were all about lining up for that right.

18:34 And, and look, that's when we have to guard our freedoms the most and make sure that, that, you know, universal application applies. Because if you wait to get resolved until you're scared, you most likely you're going to pick wrong. You need to have that kind of resolved now. But Tim, you are 100% correct. And there's so many things we have not gotten back from that. And gosh, I remember the early arguments on that. Right. Well, I've got nothing to hide. What, what, what do I need to be worried about? Well, times are different now. And, and I think many, many, many of us realize the folly in that.

19:15 Andrew, I see you got your hand up, bro. Yeah, one of the when Obamacare was passed, the Congress actually placed in a a provision that completely exempted themselves from it. So do you. They have. The United States was required to submit to this, and yet the very people who passed it were not. 100% that was in there. We see a violation both on as was pointed out by Vanessa, I believe where where you know, she said it had to apply equally to to everybody or no she was timeless in nature and someone else saying that it applies to everybody and in that instance, yeah, Jacob, I Andrew, excuse me. I remember that that they had they violated both sides of that one.

20:07 So that's that's pretty interesting. All right, how about unchanging and everlasting? That one's pretty easy now I would ask this. What would be the equivalent of that in our Constitution? Unchanging or everlasting? I would probably say the oh, sorry. No, go ahead, Taylor.

20:50 I would probably say the Bill of Rights is the closest thing that we would have to an unchanging everlasting cause. Some of the other things were actually intended to be amended as as circumstances changed if if there was a need to do to make amendments. But the first 10 amendments, which we know is the Bill of Rights are some of the universal statements that they wanted. Like there was people that had concerns that we were that we weren't enumerating specific protected rights. And so that's what the ten amendment, the 1st 10 amendments are. Is this bill of the the people that had these concerns about the Constitution not restraining government enough and they just wanted to make sure that certain lines were absolutely clear and would never be crossed by the government?

21:40 Right, 100%. I think the other thing that can point to is those unalienable rights. I think that is is a huge part of of what what they're getting there with unchanging and everlasting. If we looked at word unalienable, we sometimes I feel like we've lost stuff out of the English language that we need to revisit. And if you break down the word, it really means you cannot lean against them, right? A lean is anything that you can put an encumbrance on, just as an example, if you're, you know, in in my profession, it's common if you have a client that has maybe been slow paying or hasn't paid at all and it's getting close to completion of the project. And so you've done all this work. You've done a plat on a bare piece of ground, you've marked out lots, you've built roads, you've got, you know, all the utilities in and you haven't been paid. You start getting kind of nervous, right? Because you're like, am I going to get paid? So often times what happens is, is that we'll put a lien on one or two parcels.

22:55 And what that does is that when that goes to closing, it creates an encumbrance in title transfer. And basically the bank says I am not lending on this piece of ground until this is cleaned up or I am not going to or the title company will say I am not transferring title on the these lots because it's got a clouded title. There's a lien against it. OK, So to our rights, what what the founders are saying there is that your rights can should not ever be leaned against. They they should not be encumbered on any at any stage. Andrew, I, I, I see your hands up. Did you have something else?

23:39 Oh yeah, so universal application. That means I think of time as well. Like 2000 years ago the natural law was the same as it is today and will be the same 2000 years from now because it's naturalized for majors. God, it doesn't change and it can't change. Absolutely. Does anyone else? Oh, go ahead. What's that? Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, interesting with what Andrew's saying there, this unchanging and everlasting concept, because there's now some very common philosophies and world views like, you know, posthumanism, humanism, essentially stuff springing out of Darwinism that denies that unchanging and everlasting exist. They deny the very premise that that can exist, and therefore they subvert.

24:39 It becomes a philosophy for subverting laws because, well, why can't humans change? Why can't we evolve? Why can't we become something entirely different, which would require a change in laws to keep up with? And I, I think it's very interesting to see how many of the elites today and, and those in power, WE the WEF things like this Bilderberg group, these people are adamant posthumanists. Absolutely. Great point. Anybody else?

25:20 OK, the next characteristic is a summons to duty by its commands that I found very interesting, as illuminated by by Cicero. What do you think it means that it summons to duty by its commands? OK, I'll, I'll open this up. This is my thoughts on it and I'm willing to, to hear other, others and, and look, I could be wrong in this, but I, I really think that maybe what it's talking about here is this idea that with every right, there is a corresponding responsibility.

26:13 It may not be enumerated, but I believe there is a responsibility for us if we're going to be responsible citizens within a Republic. So let's take the First Amendment right. We want the freedom of speech. We need the freedom of speech that is granted to us by God. I think if you are a good steward of that right, your responsibility is to become as well versed in the subject in which you are speaking as possible. Now, none of us have time to become experts in all things and certainly there is nothing wrong with expressing a, an opinion on those things, but it should be well thought out, well reasoned.

27:06 Look, I am extremely patriotic, but sometimes it frustrates me as kind of the lowest common denominator of patriotism, which which, you know, I, I often think of, you know, guys running around with mullets screaming America. Not that I don't find it a little funny at times, but I do believe that there is a better patriotism that can be exemplified by being able to talk reasonably and rationally about these things. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to add add to that about the summons to duty or have even a different idea? I'm not saying mine is the only one, Tim. Yeah, Dave, you took the words right out of my mouth about rights having responsibilities.

27:54 I was going to say almost the same thing. I just couldn't figure out how to raise my hand quick enough. But I'm going to add to that, that I also believe that on top of us needing to be responsible to be educated on the topic we're Speaking of, I think that freedom of speech comes with it a duty to speak morally, to keep, to keep a moral value to what it is that we're saying, even if it's not technically educated, but to keep, but to keep morals in our communication. Because if we lose that, we're not living up to our responsibility. And can you describe what you mean by by by morality in our speech? Yeah, and we get into that a little bit a little bit later on.

28:36 But the idea that several of the founding fathers spoke about that this nation was set up for a moral and righteous people and that the Constitution wasn't adequate for for anybody else. The idea that, you know, just because we have the right to say something or just because the law doesn't ban us from saying something, that that means it's OK to say, you know, anything that springs into our minds. If people do that too much, it's going to cause a knee jerk reaction where where all the sudden the government will have, will will come down on your right of free speech because of how you're abusing the right. 100% I, I, I tend to look at this a lot with AI, right?

29:19 Just because we can do it doesn't necessarily mean we should do it. And, and I, I, I think this is true in science. I think it's probably true with our rights and our responsibilities. Justin, I see your hand up and then we'll go to Taylor. Yeah, so in the Bible, we have King David who gets it'll does some terrible things, right? And the prophet Nathan goes to him and he's and the Nathan's like, hey, I know what you did. You did this, this and this. And King David gets really defensive. And that actually doesn't happen, right. Instead, Nathan gives a parable and he's like, let me tell you a story about this poor guy who had all this terrible stuff happen to him.

30:01 And in the telling of the story, David was moved to want to seek justice for that situation. And then Nathan kind of turns it on his head and says, you're the villain in this story. And I think the summons to do you by its command. That's kind of what that is. Thou shalt not kill. But what happens if somebody's running around killing if the in the violation of this law, there's a natural desire that we have as human beings to want to go in there and protect it, to preserve what it is that this laws is intended to be preserving, right? Whether it be life or whether it be property. And so the summoning to duty by its command is that I think when, if you take your personal interest out of the situation, there's a universal desire, like nobody's watching Disney movies being like, man, I sure hope Cruella Deville wins and slaughters all those puppies, right? That's just kind of there's a natural inclination to want to root for the good guys.

31:05 And no matter how debase somebody is, that's generally, I mean, I'm not, I don't, I'm not aware of any cases where that's not true, where there's not an inherent instinctual desire for right. And we and we know it when we see it, especially in a Disney film, right? Absolutely, Taylor. I saw you had your hand up. Yeah. So I think that sometimes when we study philosophy, we tend to kind of get intellectual, right. And I think that the Cicero or Kickero is a very practical philosopher. You know, sometimes things are kind of abstract, but he's always looking to see how it applies in three dimensions, you know, in the real world.

31:50 And I think that that's what he's some he's summing up it by that point that he articulates the summons to duty by its command. And going back to what Tim was sharing, Speaking of like intellectualism is not a bad thing inherently, but it's incomplete without action, right? You know, faith, you have to be aware of something to be able to exercise faith. But if you don't do anything about it, what good is it? It's worth a hill of beans, right? But Isaac Asimov had a quote that I think Tim will particularly enjoy. This is Isaac Asimov was a fictional writer of one of the early sci-fi writers, and he said this. And this was 100 years ago.

32:36 There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been. The strain of anti intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. And with, with the advent of woke ISM and, and the, the, the extreme reaction by the right, it's, it is so anti intellectual. It is a, it is a cult of ignorance on both sides. And I think that true patriots, you know, true Americans need to combat against the human inclination to just, you know, because like Justin was saying, everybody has kind of an inherent sense of right and wrong.

33:25 Well, we should. We have the light of Christ, you know, from the restoration lens and, and we have the ability to discern truth from error. But if we get super emotionally charged, that vision clouds very quickly and suddenly we just become warring factions. And that's something that the founders were very acutely aware of and tried to prevent and and control and manage as much as possible. Yeah, absolutely, 100% good stuff. Anybody else have anything they'd like to add to that?

34:06 Oh, I have one other quote from Plato to share on that similar subject. He says wise, wise men speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something. There's there's truth to that too. Yes, 100% Kim Oh, that's just clapping, all right. Yeah, that wasn't a hand raised. I was just celebrating. All right. No, that's good stuff. All right, we'll go ahead. And, and there there's one other place I want to take this summons to the duty by its command. And that is something that is never popular to say, but nonetheless, it is truth. And I can't remember if it was Madison or Adams, may even have been Franklin.

34:55 I can't remember off the top of my head. But one of them had said something to the effect of the most important speech you need to protect is the one that you disagree with. And that is because right now, the shoe might be on your, you know, the, the, the political winds might be in your favor. But in a country where you can essentially have a bloodless coup every 4-2 to four years and power can change drastically, it's important to remember that that if you, if we're in the the mode of silencing someone's speech, we could have that same club used on us next.

35:45 And so it's, it's got to have, it's got to cut both ways kind of, right. If we want our speech protected, then we might have to even protect the speech of those that we disagree with within reason, right? Obviously, if someone's making death threats, that's something different. Or you know, as the the famous Supreme Court case was, someone stands up in a theater and he else fire, then you're encroaching on somebody else's. But by and large, I think if it's purely discourse and well defined discourse without threat, I think we have to be willing to stand by those who we even disagree with so that they can allow their opinions. The other thing I'll say on that is I think it's healthy when a population can divulge that sort of thing through, through honest dialogue.

36:40 I remember I was, I was having a debate with somebody who said, well, that guy's a Nazi. Why should he be allowed to speak? And I'm like, and I said, well, if that guy's a Nazi, I want to know he's a Nazi. Let's not, let's not let him sit in the shadows too long. And so only good things can come if if we are willing to stand for, for, for someone else's right to speech even when we disagree with it. So, all right. Anyone else here? Oh, Taylor, go ahead. Yeah, so you bring up a a really interesting point here. The, the founders were, you know, they, they acknowledged the Creator, they acknowledged divine Providence, they acknowledged God, but nowhere did they set up, you know, there's this modern rise of Christian nationalism on the right. And there's a big push for in, in in various circles, some of whom I, the people that used to be very constitutionalist types of people, you know, that I thought would be interested in liberty and justice, are just interested in. And, and I get it because the, the woke left has pushed so many ungodly laws into society, into our culture. And so it's kind of like this, but it's an extreme overreaction.

38:03 And what the founders did is they wanted to protect the right to believe freely and to respect conscience, because that is between an individual and his God. And, and so even though they didn't set up a Christian nationalist type of government, they set up the a far more Christian form of government, which because God doesn't force anybody to believe in him or to believe in Christ or to, you know, do any, you know, And so like in, in the city of Zion, which we hope to one day be involved in building up, it will have freedom of conscience and the laws will be of, of God. You know, we weren't, we, we're going to be very vigilant to protect against ungodly laws creeping in and corrupting the society and the, you know, the, the legal structure.

38:54 But it's not going to be a, a force, coercive type of situation where you have to believe in, in a specific, you know, theology or you're not you're or you're, you know, killed or, or driven out of the society. I think we need to understand that the founders set up the most Christian form of government ever, even though Christ is not ever mentioned in the founding documents directly by name. And you know, but but it's these principles of freedom of its agency, it's allowing freedom. And that is the most godly and Christian form of government that exists. So, so far, you know, hopefully Zion can even build on that. Absolutely good stuff.

39:40 OK, Anybody else? All right, we'll move on to this last point here and then we'll change slides. It says we don't have One of the other characteristics is that we don't have to look outside of ourselves for explanation. What does that mean? I'll take a stab here. So when I went to college the last time when I tore my ACL. And the boss just wanted to Get Me Out of his hair because I was used to doing field work and office work and all I had was office work and I was burning through it.

40:25 So he just basically goes, you know what, just go to school. I'll pay you to go to school, take whatever class you want. Just leave me alone so I can get some work done. And so I just, I took a hodgepodge of courses on history and political science and US constitutional law and just kind of really went after anything that looked interesting to me. And an interesting thing I noticed was, is that in many of these courses, it dealt with the Constitution specifically. We didn't spend much time actually analyzing the text of the, the, the founding documents themselves.

41:09 Instead, we focused on what quote the the the scholars had to say about the founding documents. And what surprised me was is that the constitution, which if you were to chop it up really small, I think we've all seen the pocket size constitutions, right? Tops 10 pages without any commentary, 10 pages. Easy. But if we look at where we're at today as a society in relation to what the original intent was as outlined by the founders, it gets pretty apparent that scholars have had to do some mental gymnastics to get us to a point to where they can say, well, we think the Constitution really says this. Now.

42:07 The Constitution was written in such a way that in its time, the plowboy could understand it, the farmer could understand it, the merchant could understand it. You didn't have to be an attorney, a clergyman or any of those other things. It, it was self apparent, right? Or as, as as the founders would say, they were self-evident. They didn't need could be explained. It was natural. You could look at it and say, oh, there it is. Does anyone have anything they want to add?

42:49 OK, we'll go ahead and move on. Natural law can work because of our shared some of our shared characteristics with the creator. And does anyone have their book handy that they could read? M it's it's page 41 under the the divine gift of reason and it is everything that's quoted there which starts out the animal which we call man.

43:32 OK, the animal which we call man, endowed with foresight and quick intelligence, complex, keen, possessing memory, full of reason and prudence, has been given a certain distinguished status by the Supreme God who created him. For He is the only one among so many different kinds and varieties of living beings who has a share in reason and thought, while all the rest are deprived of it. But what is more divine, I will not say in man only, but in all heaven and earth, than reason. And reason, when it is full grown and perfected, is rightly called wisdom. Therefore, since there is nothing better than reason, and since it exists both in man and God, the first common possession of man and God is reason. But those who have reason in common must also have right reason in common.

44:18 And since right reasoning is law, we must believe that men have law also in common with the gods. Further, those who share law must also share justice, and those who share these are to be regarded as members of the same Commonwealth, if indeed they obey the same authorities and powers. This is true in a far greater degree, but as a matter of fact, they do obey this celestial, this celestial system, the divine mind, and the God of transcendent power. Hence we must now conceive of this whole universe is 1 Commonwealth, of which both gods and men are members. Hey, so Tim, what's that saying?

45:03 That we have a spark of the divine within us to sum it up in a single sentence. Absolutely. And, and what are what are some of those shared qualities that we share with, with the supreme Creator, as Cicero put it, anybody? What? Since I'm unmuted, I'll just go ahead and say what was on my mind real quick. It's really short. It's just that scripture tells us that we are born with the ability to distinguish good from evil, and that that is really what this boils down to, is that that's it's within us to see right from wrong. Absolutely 100% Anybody else? You know, I, I think this is Cicero saying he believes in the Mormon God. Kind of, huh.

45:48 Because I mean, like, it's a it's, it's nuts, right? Yeah, the suggestion is, is that God is bound by the same laws that we are. And that's a that's a very heretical view of God and and standard Christianity where God is above all law. And here Cicero's like by by obvious reason, our creator as his children, you've inherited this this ability to reason and we understanding of law. Therefore, clearly our Creator or God is also bound by these laws and and and possesses this quality of reason. 100% I, I was astounded when I, when I read that out of there because I was like you, Justin, like I can't, again, I can't prove it, but there's times that I think Cicero writes the gods just so that the Hellenistic mind won't think he's heretical at some level and espousing some form of, of monotheism.

46:57 But this idea that, that we can reason that we can, can seek for, for the better is something that's very unique to this type of natural law that Cicero was talking about. And it's unique to Mormonism as well, I would say, right. Certainly there's other religions that believe in free will, however, not as much emphasis is put on it as in, say, the restored gospel. And so there's there's a lot there to be unpacked and digested. But the reason that this law can work is because we share a common spark with the creator. And that common spark is reason and intellect. And these principles are are simple and self-evident enough that I think almost all of us can can pick it up here. So anybody else have anything they want to add to that before we move on and change slides?

48:02 OK, Perfect natural law can work well with God's revealed truth. In his treatise on justice, Cicero says the following. For these virtues originate in our natural inclination to love our fellow man, and this is the foundation of justice. OK, The book pointed this out, and I found it really interesting. OK. So again, I think we're making a pretty good case here that Cicero probably has some monotheistic leanings, right? Again, not saying he's Jewish, not obviously, he's not Christian. Christ hasn't come yet.

48:47 But there's a recognition here that we're seeing from him. And so I don't think it's a far stretch to say the word nature, nature or natural can also mean from God. And with that, if if we look at Matthew 2236 through 38, can I get someone to read that? Andrew? Would you be willing to pull that up real quick and read that? Andrew still with us? Oh, he may have logged off. OK, you know what I'll read that. Let me pull that back up here real quick. So starting in Matthew 22, verse 36 and here the the the lawyers ask in Jesus master, which is the great command, great commandment in the law.

49:41 And Jesus said unto him, thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first great command. OK, So I think when, when Cicero says, for these futures virtues originate in our natural inclination, what I think he's saying is this is kind of that reason. Again, this is kind of a loving God because we, we get these things from him and they, they are a part of us. And then likewise he goes on to say inclination to love our fellow man. And this is the foundation of justice. And then if we read in 39, Jesus says, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

50:29 So let me ask this question. Why is love of our fellow man the foundation of justice? Is that a true principle illuminated by Cicero? And if it is, why him? It's because, as we've kind of stated at the beginning of this meeting tonight, is that justice has to be blind and justice has to be universal, and that if there isn't love amongst common men, well, then it will inevitably lead to rules for me but not for thee or vice versa.

51:19 Absolutely. I think also it it stands to reason that if we love our fellow men, we would want our fellow men dealt with justly. We don't want anybody skating by when when maybe there should be in a fixed penalty. Likewise, if someone's been offended, we want to see them restored as much as we can. And so I found it really interesting that we can say this, this idea of natural law or God's law really still centers around God's main operation, which is love. And that if, if, if this law is applied, that the founders kind of discovered in Cicero again and, and other places, love should still be at the basis of this right. And I think if we look at many of the writings of the early founders, Washington had some great things to say about this. We see that American, the American system as illuminated in the Declaration, the, the, the, the, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

52:33 It really is about loving man enough to give him the space to let him choose for himself what he could be. Anyone else have anything they'd like to add to that? All right. Legislation and violation of God's natural law. This one should fire some folks up. I'm just going to read this here real quick and then we'll we'll go from there. So it says. But the most foolish notion of all, and again, this is Cicero, the most foolish notion of all, is the belief that everything is just, which is found in the customs or laws of nations. What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which nations put in force?

53:33 There is no more. There are no more. Deserve to be called. Excuse me, That's supposed to be there. They or they, they no more deserve to be called laws than the rules of robbers might pass in their assemblies. For if ignorant and unskillful men have prescribed deadly potions instead of healing drugs, these cannot be called physicians prescriptions. Neither in a nation can a statue of any sort be called the law, even though the nation, in spite of being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it. OK, so what's, what's the idea on legislation that's passed that doesn't necessarily sync up with God's natural law? I think we can actually tie this back to a Supreme Court ruling from shortly after America's founding here. But I'm, I'm curious to get your guys's guys's opinion on on how we should view a law that is in violation of of God's natural law.

54:51 I would say I think this is a bit of the problem here because I mean, he's using these extreme examples of robbers scooting together in assemblies, conspiring together to make their own making to, to decide what the laws should be. And he's talking about people are supposed to be healers that are instead doling out poisons as these extreme examples. And I just think I look around and I'm like, oh, those are the extreme cases, huh? Man, what is going on? Yeah, yeah, in this, in this one, I had to say Cicero might be just a touch prophetic as well as discovering monotheism from a Hellenistic point of view.

55:37 This also. Predicted 2020. Right. Exactly. Excuse me? Oh, there was so much here to unpack on this one. First off, I think this has some very interesting ties to a Supreme Court. And I'm blanking on the Justice's name, but it was early after the American founding and a case was brought before the Supreme Court and the judge basically said, look, anything that violates the spirit of the Constitution should be nullified immediately. And I'm paraphrasing there.

56:18 And I think Cicero was saying the same thing here, right? Doesn't matter if you if you accept it or not, the outcome is the same. It's in violation of God's law. And at some point, this is bound to failure the the law that you passed that goes against that. Likewise, there's also something in here I found really interesting. And it's this line here where it says is just in which are found in the customs of the laws of nations. To me, this is kind of Cicero saying, look, not all law is created equal. And likewise, not every, not every system of law and every custom is going to be in keeping with this law and that there might be differences in civilizations. And so I found it to be a very interesting acknowledgement on his part of that.

57:27 You know, I'd say this is also, this is essentially an attack on the idea of populism, right? Yep. Where? Hey, you know what, if we get enough people to buy in on it, then then this is what the law should be. If we get a consensus, if we get a majority consensus and everybody, everybody who's in favor say aye, right, then that this is what should be the standard for law. And he's he's saying here. And the beautiful description here with this medicine that kills instead of heels is you can see it by its fruit. Absolutely. And you can call, you can call poison medicine all day until you're blue in the face, and we can all vote on it. And celebrities can say that they approve and it it doesn't matter.

58:12 It's still poison A. 100% And this is so important, like this is where liberty becomes super important when you're trying to protect the rights of mankind. I remember I was a young man when I read the quote. Everything Hitler did in Germany was legal in that he said it was legal. It was passed in some form, whether that was through the Reichstag or him as the chancellor.

58:53 It was made legal, but it didn't necessarily make it right. Vanessa, I saw your hand go up. Yeah, I was just going to make a point similar to what you just said, and it's just something that I was teaching my kids this week as we were reading was that just because something is legal and on the books does not necessarily have any reflection of its morality. There's plenty of things that are really illegal that shouldn't be and plenty of things that are legal that should not be. And I even a couple months ago, I sat down with AI, had a conversation with a lawyer and she was showing me kind of how the law worked and how how to look up different laws. And we were looking at Utah laws and she was showing me some of the recent laws that had been changed. And it was very interesting because they were specific to some child abuse punishments.

59:50 And it was really strange that they had reduced the punishments for very, very specific types of child abuse. And I was asking her why that was. And she was just saying how it was very common for people to change laws to help a brother out, so to speak. Like, they know that something's going to happen. So they temporarily lessen the the severity of the punishments until it's blown over with somebody they know. And you know, it's just disgusting and sad to see that. But that's that's just an example of our, it's not true justice according to what he's describing, Cicero's describing here, because they shouldn't be able to be changed by the customs of the nation or, you know, Willy nilly like they are.

1:00:43 So anyway, that's just my comment. No, I think that's perfect. That's awesome. Thanks, Vanessa. Anybody else? OK, let me ask this question. What's going to be easier, catching something that's going to become a bad law before it gets voted on and becomes law, or trying to remove it after it's already become law? Where's our best shot at at winning, so to speak, on making sure bad laws don't get passed?

1:01:24 Anybody. You know, I, I think I get where you're going with that. I can see another side to this as well though. So I think obviously it it think before things get bad, it's easier to fix. However, sometimes, sometimes people need pain to recognize that there's a problem. The only problem with that is often times it's an overreaction and we lose yet again because the real issue is people don't believe this anymore. Americans as a people don't believe this. They think that law is whatever the lawyer says, whatever the legislator says, that man is, is in control of these things.

1:02:13 And if and if the government says that this is how it's going to be, then that's OK. And that's, that is how it needs to be and it'll work. And then when it, when it doesn't and these things fail, there's often an overreaction the other direction. But ideally it's, it's a lot easier to preserve liberty than to, than to attain liberty as the founding fathers. So showed us by example. Absolutely. You know, I'm like you, Justin. I see two sides of this, right? One is yeah, if you can avoid a train wreck early, better off. However, the one place that I think some constitutional scholars have it right is when they call the constitutional living document, but not in the sense of the way say a more progressive or left-leaning attorney or judge would say. Right.

1:03:20 When they say that the Constitution is a living document, what they're saying is, is that the founders original intent does not matter, that the intention of the document is to try to make it fit what we feel is right based on the times we live. I tend to take a more literal approach to the Constitution. I think that by and large they, the principles that they illuminated are going to, once again, as we talked about being unchangeable and eternal, they're going to span the test of time. And so with that said, the way that the Constitution becomes a living document, we'll just take Prohibition as an example.

1:04:08 It took writing another, you know, an amendment to the Constitution to say that alcohol was outlawed. It took another amendment to undo that. Now, let me ask you the question, why is it better that if we have a bad law, we have to go through the entire amendment process to get it removed from the Constitution? What is advantageous about that? Because I think the the natural man, the inclination is it's a bad law, just get rid of it however we can. Why is going through the process so important for constitute for the Constitution?

1:04:59 You know, isn't this kind of like the fall? Isn't this kind of what Eve has to say about the fall and that, hey, you know what, it's better that we go through some suffering and some sorrow so that we can know good from evil. Absolutely. So the Constitution is interesting because it look, I'm not a guy who says that it can't be changed. I believe it can be through the right processes. I believe that that the amendment process is there for a reason. There there is a great, great line from from Joe Rogan on one of his stand up specials. And he was talking about this idea of amending the Constitution.

1:05:44 And he said he often wonders if when you know, if he could speak to Thomas Jefferson and and show him where we are, if he wouldn't have been like, wait, you guys haven't wrote any new stuff. I wrote that with a feather now. Not quite that that lambastic about it, so to speak, or that that over the top, but I do believe that there is an amendment process that was illuminated for a reason. And I think that reason is, is for our posterity, right? Like the scriptures show us like if we look at the scriptures, a lot of the scriptures just show us man's foibles and man's shortcomings all over the place, especially the Old Testament. We see it in the Book of Mormon.

1:06:29 We even see it in the New Testament some, but definitely in the Old Testament where man keeps screwing up and he's got to go back and fix things and try to make progress. Likewise, I think that amendment process is there on the Constitution so that it has scars so that as our posterity comes behind us, they can look and go, you know, we should just get rid of booze. If we just get rid of booze, everything is good. And then they can look at the Constitution and go, oh, wait, look, they they tried this and they actually had to reverse it. And it shows the scars, right? It shows the learning that was done by our forebears so we don't make the same mistake. Does anyone have any other thoughts on that? It, it kind of reminds me in the Book of Mormon where the where the Nephites say that they remember the captivity of their fathers and for a generation, right, they had that grounding because of the of those bad things they went through. But I mean, honestly, this is kind of one of the things that my biggest critique on on conservative takes on the law is the focus on original intent.

1:07:37 Personally, because I think original intent is a complete nothing burger. We should be able to argue the original tent the way the founding fathers did it was they're not gods that had an original attempt and was it was always perfect either. We had things like slavery that were that it was part of the original intent and it needed to go. They wanted it to go, but they weren't able to at the time. They wanted it to be improved. They wanted it. They they didn't see themselves as these perfect men who had all the answers to everything. They expected us to continue that legacy, not squander it. Absolutely good stuff. We see your hand up.

1:08:29 You're on mute, Lee Lee, you're on mute when you it should be down on the lower left. If you're oh, there you go. You know you're off can. You hear me now? Yep, can hear you now. Yeah, I'm I'm completely new to all this, so bear with me. Hey, I, I just, I attended a, a class quite a, quite a bunch of years ago and it was on justice. And I, and, you know, you guys were talking about, you know, making amendments to the Constitution. And he made the comment about how, you know, you think it's OK in certain situations.

1:09:19 But so in this class, I just wanted to share, they went over these eight things that had to be in place for you to have justice in this class. And I thought I'd just go through them real quick if, if you don't mind me bringing them up, please do. So if you think about chaos, the first thing you have to start with to have any justices, you got to start with personal boundaries or boundaries, period. You know, there's got to be, there's got to be these lines, these boundaries to even start with, right? And so as I go through these, think about the things that the government has been trying to do away with in the past recent years and you'll see that they're taking, they're taking a dig at all of these things.

1:10:12 But after personal boundaries, you've got to have, you know, think of personal boundaries as being your body and your your agency and these kinds of things. So you have to have also have property rights, which is an extension of you. OK, so those are the first. Those are the first two things. The third one is you've got to have no trespassing. The 4th 1 is called access through covenant. These are things that just stack up from the bottom. You start with boundaries and you got, you know, personal rights, property rights, no trespassing, access through covenant.

1:10:53 Then you've got to have due process investigation before judgment, before you make a determination. There has to be an investigation. You know the the 6th 1 is no partiality, no respecter of persons. The 7th is there must be a just penalty of fixed. So you know, for instance, you can't take the cat as nine tails on the whip to a young infant child that has made almost an innocent mistake, right? That's that idea. There has to be a just consequence of fixed. And once you have all these seven, the very capping and crowning 1 is your reap what you sow. And these are the 8 things that have basically have to be in place or at least the seven or you don't have justice at all. So any amendments, what I was trying to get out here is any amendments that you make to the Constitution cannot violate any of these things or you no longer have justice. You have an injustice in some form. The interesting, yeah, the an interesting thing here is once you have all of these in place and you think of Christ fulfilling the fulfilling the law and taking care of our justices through the atonement,

1:12:29 what he did is he opened up because he satisfied the demands of justice. Now mercy and kindness and generosity and forgiveness and all these things can be extended to whatever level he wants to sew at that point, right? Without. And he will not, it will not rob justice in any degree. Anyway, this was a pretty cool thing to me and I just thought it's just a good time to share this. You know, if you're going to, if you're going to make amendments they need, nothing you do can violate these these 8 principles. You no longer have justice. You know, and what's interesting, Lee, is thanks for sharing that, Lee, as you are going through that, I was just thinking as you were going through those, all of those things become pretty, pretty spelled out in our founding documents.

1:13:21 And I, I don't think that is happenstance. I think it's just showing this natural connection between what the founders were trying to do and trying to make it sync up with God's law or natural law, depending on how you want to put it. Does anyone else have anything else they want to add before we move on here? All right again, this is kind of going along with what what Lee just talked about that all law should be measured against God's law. Cicero says therefore law and I put in parentheses here of the creator is the distinction between things just and unjust. Lee there there's another nod back to to having justice made an agreement with that primal and most ancient of all things nature.

1:14:16 Again, I put in parentheses God and in conformity to nature's standards are framed those human laws which inflict punishment upon the wicked and protect the good. Lee, I think your your 8 principles there that you illuminated. I'll kind of tie right in with this. Does anyone have anything else that they would like to add to this portion here? Any thoughts or comments? Questions. OK, so here's Cicero's conclusion. As one in the same nature or God holds together and supports the universe of all, of all of whose parts are in harmony with one another, so men are united in nature or God.

1:15:12 But by reason of the depravity, they quarrel, not realizing that they are of one blood and subject to 1 and the same protecting power. If this fact were understood, surely men would live, live the life of the gods. So Cicero's basically saying, look, if we would just recognize this and, and here I think, well, let me ask this question before I just spouted the lip. What do you think Cicero was pointing to here when he says they quarrel, not realizing that they are of one blood and subject to 1 and the same protecting power. How would we phrase that today?

1:15:57 Or how would the founders have framed that in our founding documents? I think there's a direct parallel here to A, to a line that we hear out of the Declaration and Constitution. I think it's this. Are you alluding? I just think you might be alluding to the unalienable rights that we have been endowed with by our Creator. Is that where you're where you're going? That's definitely part of it. The other part of it where I'm. Going. You do have a hand, Dave. Oh, Justin.

1:16:38 I'm not Justin. Sorry, that was Lee. I think he still he never got it down. Oh, there we go. OK, cool. All right. Did you have something, Taylor? OK. This, this phrase, all men are created equal, like Tim alluded, but I think it's the one right after that that yeah, and are endowed with quite are created with unalienable rights, but all men are created equal. I think that's exactly what it is. I think what he's saying is like, look, we, we are all of one blood, all are equal before the law and we all reside on the same protecting power. It's definitely got shades of of, you know, reliance on, on divine Providence, you know, that protecting power. I find it very interesting that that's all there. Anybody else have anything they'd like to add to this before we move on to the second chapter, which is pretty short that we will go over tonight?

1:17:48 OK, perfect. So the, the title of this section was the that a virtuous and moral people is is what's required here. And this was really the big question of, of the revolution in the reading it, it makes it pretty clear that the question is, is man sufficiently virtuous and moral to govern himself? And what I find really interesting about this, and it it's something I have believed for a long time, is that whether it's religion or politics, I think we're still fighting the original fight.

1:18:33 And the question is, is can man, if we're looking at it from a Mormon point of view, the question is, can man govern himself to the point that he can get back to where God is and become like God? And that was really the the question of the revolution, can man govern himself? That is the question that I think we're still at today. And unfortunately, one of the things I'm seeing is rise in kind of almost a pining for monarchy. I was talking to one young man here a few weeks back and he had said, you know, Dave, I, I really feel like what the founders given us has failed and that they failed us in some ways and that I think we would be better suited with a monarch now from a Mormon point of view. Council 50 sort of a thing.

1:19:35 I think you can make some some arguments for it, but that role of king and priest is not going to be kingly in the sense that maybe we saw in medieval Europe. It would be a different thing. But nonetheless, I wanted to to bring this out because I do think that it's important that we're reaching out to our young people on this. Because they are growing disillusioned every day more and more with the state things are. And look, I want to say this, they have valid points. They are not without veracity in some of the charges that they're leveling to us or at us. I would say that, you know, my response to this young man was we haven't really lived the Constitution in over 100 years where it would, it would be like saying, well, working out's not working for me, but you're not really going to the gym. Of course it's not working for you. You have to do more than put on your shoes and sit on the bench at the gym.

1:20:46 You got to go do some stuff. And so I I bring this point up because this is the original argument and our young people are being faced with this today. Does anybody have anything that they'd like to add to this part before we move on? I'd love to hear any of your thoughts or impressions here. I. I see your hand up again, Lee. You're on mute, brother. There you go. OK. OK, Dave, I want to just share something, if I can, out of the teachings of the prophet on this this subject here. So in here he's talking about the the failed attempts at govern of man trying to govern him, govern himself, you know, the government governments of the world, you know, failing. Anyway, I want to just just a little bit here. This is the only thing that can bring about the restitution of all things spoken of by the Holy Prophet, since the world was the dispensation of fullness of times when God shall gather together all things in one.

1:22:08 Their attempts to promote promote universal peace and happiness in the human family have proved abortive. Character has failed every planet and I have fallen to the grown. It's the wisdom of God, the intelligence of God, and the power of God to accomplish this. The world has had a fair trial for 6000 years. The Lord will try the 7000 himself. He whose right it is will possess the King. We lost him. We lost Lee.

1:22:50 I think I oh, you're back all right. We kind of lost you there for a. Second, I lost you there for a minute. OK, I don't know where I left off, but Joseph was saying the world has had a fair Isle for 6000 years. He says the Lord will try the 7000 himself. He whose right it is will possess the Kingdom and reign until he has put all things under his feet. Iniquity will hide its horny head, Satan will be bound in the works of darkness destroyed righteousness will be put to the line, and judgment to the plummet, and he that fears the Lord will alone be exalted in that day. To bring about this state of things there must of necessity be great confusion among the nations of the earth, distress of nations, and perplexity.

1:23:47 Am I asked what is the cause of the present distress? I would answer, Shall there be evil in a city? And the Lord hath not done it. The grunt. The earth is groaning under corruption, oppression, tyranny, and bloodshed, and God is coming out of His hiding place, as He said He would do to vex the nations of the earth. Anyway, he goes on, but he's he's basically the point he's making is man has had all this time to prove whether they will govern themselves and and they have not done it. They've only produced injustice as far as of man made governments. And you know, it's the government of God that will prevail when he comes out of his hiding place and establishes his ways.

1:24:41 So anyway, I thought I'd read that little part there. It's just, it's just interesting, you know, we seem to fail and fail and fail at trying to govern ourselves. But you know, we must somehow by doing it the words way. That's all I had. It's Steph. Does anyone have anything they'd like to say in response or about this this particular portion here? I was going to just share, you know, an example in the Book of Mormon where you have Alma, who's basically, he's the president, he's the chief judge and things aren't going good in Nephite society. And you would think that this is the time where we need a great leader in the in the judgement seat, right? And Alma steps down and instead he preaches the gospel 'cause he understands the real fight is literally this. It's the virtuous and moral people. And he knew that the Word of God is the only thing that could actually produce real change.

1:25:44 Having a even having a righteous leader and in a government system at the top can't bring about the change necessary when the people desire immorality, when the people don't want to live according to natural law, they don't want to live according to truth. And so, you know, to anybody who's out there is disillusioned with the way things are. I get it. I'm I'm pretty black billed in a lot of ways myself when it comes to politics. But there is a solution and it's, it's, it's this, it's, it's preaching the word. And there's nothing else that can save this nation, this country, the world other than a return to morality and and virtue.

1:26:30 No form of government, no politician, no camp political campaign, no political agenda, no law to get past. Nothing can save us other than a moral and virtuous people. Justin, 100% I can agree with you more. And I think it also also Harkins back to that for one of the first slides we had on here as we opened this discussion group up where John Taylor basically says the day is going to come when the elders are going to and and I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially preach liberty at the same time, preaching the Constitution. And and that is a great segue into where we're going to go next.

1:27:12 And so when, when the people were ready for liberty. And this is on page 52 and I'm going to read this and I'm going to roll right into something else. So forgive me here, but I, I really feel like this, this ties in well with what Justin just says. So in 52, it says, and this comes from a periodical of the times when, when, when the when the revolution first gets started. There's a very real sense even amongst the colonists themselves, like can we do this? Every other attempt hadn't gone so well, right.

1:27:53 I mean, Rome lasts for a long time, but it doesn't necessarily stay liberty minded for very long before the Caesar comes in to to exercise dominion there becoming an emperor. And so this is what one thing said one periodical of the time it said. In the eyes of the Whigs, the two or three years before the Declaration of Independence always appears to be a great period of the Revolution. The time of greatest denial and cohesion, when men ceased to exhort and abuse one another, when families and communities seemed, I can never say that word, peculiarly, peculiarly united when the courts were wonderfully free of that constant bickering over the land and credit that had dominated their colonial life. OK, so it says they do get to a .2 or three years before the declaration.

1:28:54 And so my question was, how'd the colonists get there? And now I got a little bit of a pop quiz for you guys. Bear with me. Who's that guy? Does anyone want to take a guess? Oh, this is one of my favorite guys. OK, this is going to tie right in with Alma and what Justin said. That man's name is George Whitfield. Now, Whitfield is an interesting character. He's an Anglican minister in England. And he's he's kind of like got rock star status, right? He was a guy whose oration would evoke emotion. It would evoke reason.

1:29:43 He had it all when it came to being able to preach sermon. But to George Whitfield's chagrin, well, let me rephrase that. To the crown's chagrin, Whitfield discovers something in the Scriptures. And that is, why does man have to go to a priest? Why can't man just go to God himself? Now, that is a dangerous question to be asking in in England at the time where monarchs are in control and the divine right of kings is a thing in which the government is administered. And basically, the divine right of kings says, look, there's God and then there's the king, and then there's the church. And it's in that order.

1:30:37 And so anything the king does that's sanctioned by God, now that's dangerous. I never want to see that in the hands of a politician. Whitfield stands against that. He says, no, you know what? If you don't have to go to a priest, then is the divine right of kings really a thing? Do we need that? And he starts preaching this in England, but yet he's making a lot of money for the Anglican Church because he is. He is putting butts in seats in the pews. But the people who really like the king, they don't like him too much.

1:31:21 So the Anglican Church tries to censure him. They say, you know what? You can't preach anymore inside the churches. You're going to have to go outside and preach. So he starts preaching in like local parks and the people who are in favor of the monarchy, they do some horrific things to this man. They toss feces at him. They pelt him with with vegetables. They try to tar and feather him at one point. And finally the king hears about this and he's like, OK, it's, it's enough. And there's actually some reports that say that that the Anglican Church was like, can we have him killed? Can we just shut him up? And the king was like, no, I don't want to do that because he does have kind of this following. And I'm worried about insurrection. And so they're kind of putting their heads together and they go, I got a great idea.

1:32:12 Let's send them to the new world. Let's send them to the colonies. Now you want to talk about something that backfires? This might be the most epic backfire in all of history. Because what they do is they send Whitfield to America, where there's already beginning to be some some anti monarch feelings fomenting in the area. Now Franklin, Ben Franklin, who's perhaps our most skeptical founder. I make the the case that he definitely believes in God, even though he's flawed a little bit and a little bit eccentric. He he he writes in his journal.

1:32:56 I'm going to hear Whitfield preached this day. And that's his. That's his entry. And he comes back and he makes another entry. And he said, when I went to hear George Whitfield preach, I had determined that he would not get any money from me. But about a half past the hour I found myself emptying all my copper into his plate. And by the next stroke of his oration I emptied all my silver. And then by the close of his sermons I had given him 8 pistolas, which would have been Spanish gold coins. But Franklin was moved by Whitfield's preaching because Whitfield was saying the things that the colonists, some of them, were already starting to feel. Why do we have to go through a king? Is he really appointed by God?

1:33:56 Do I need to go to a priest to talk to my God? Can I do that on my own? And so his message fits beautifully inside colonial America during this time. Through Whitfield's actions, we actually see during the Revolution that the British put a hit out on what they termed the Black Robe Regiment and they understood that much of the fervor for independence and liberty were coming from the pulpits. And so people get ready for liberty and they become ready for self governance once they seek God firmly in his throne in their own minds and decide to live by his dictates and precepts.

1:34:51 And Whitfield becomes, in my opinion, the most unsung of the founding members of of the American experiment. His name doesn't go on any documents, but his impact is felt throughout that revolutionary period. Does anyone else have anything they'd like to add here? This is my last slide for the night so if anyone's got anything to add on this or any other slide, the floor is yours. Kim. Yeah, I just over the course of the last several minutes, I've had a couple of quotes come to mind about personal, about virtue and personal accountability. And one of them is actually from the text from the 5000 year leap that I think we may have skipped over. It's on page 44 and I just really kind of liked it. It's of course Cicero speaking.

1:35:50 And he says, however we may define man, a single definition will apply to all. This is a sufficient proof that there is no difference in kind between men and men. In fact, there is no human being of any race who, if he finds a guide, cannot attain to virtue. And I I like that. I like that the idea that that our young nation needed a virtuous people really put the responsibility on each individual's shoulders. And then the second quote that I just wanted to share with the group is actually from a movie. And it's pretty astounding that Hollywood came up with anything like this. But I like it anyway.

1:36:30 And the quote is a king may move a man, a father may claim a son. But remember that even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God, you cannot say, but I was told by others to do thus or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. True. What movie is that from Tim? From Kingdom of Heaven back in the early 2000s. Nice. OK, No good one. Thanks, Tim. Anybody else have anything you'd like to add?

1:37:11 OK. I'm just real quick. So Justin, Justin mentioned it, but I just think it's probably worth reading real quick because when Alma, when he stepped down from the the chief judge seat, Let's see if I can find it. I thought it was Alma 30, but maybe it's 30. But he he says, Oh yeah, here it is Alma chapter 31, verse 5. And now is the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just. Yeah. It had a more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword or anything else which had happened to unto them. Therefore, Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the Word of God.

1:38:00 Nice. Anybody else have anything they'd like to say in the response or? I guess I'll add one other quote. I can't remember who said this. It was in the Preach My Gospel manual when I was a missionary, but it says true doctrine understood changes behavior far faster than a study of behavior changes behavior. And I think that that's this Whitfield. You know, when people, when you can activate the light of Christ within individuals and you can help them obtain at least a portion of the Spirit of God, they become patriots rather than animals.

1:38:42 Absolutely. You know, I want to say one other thing in regards to Whitfield here and this is where I'll wrap up for the night and just turn it over to you guys. But I think all of us, if we're sitting here in this class, we know things aren't what they're supposed to be. Because let's face it, there's a ton of other things we could do on a Monday night other than jump online and talk about a book that tries to illuminate the principles of the Constitution. And I'm guessing that at one point or another, all of us have said the words, Can we just clone George Washington or Thomas Jefferson to see if we can't get this thing right? We keep looking for guys who were the founders, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams.

1:39:35 Go down the list. Madison. The problem is, and it took me years to realize this, the reason we don't have that guys is because we're not George Whitfield. Whitfield has to come before Washington now. If we have that recognition, we now have to look at our children and say, OK, it's going to have to be them, but what does that mean for us? That means we have to be Whitfield to our children. We have to be the ones to to evangelize them, so to speak, and not only the Gospel. But how the gospel then should inform how it is. We should both govern and be governed. But we will not get to the point of seeing an army of Washington's and an army of Jefferson's and an army of Franklin's and an army of Madison's. Because I really do believe it will be a lot of people this time around instead of just a few. But in order to have those kind of people, it's going to require us to be Whitfield for them right now. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to add before we wrap up for the night?

1:41:02 Perfect. All right then, with that, let's see Corey, can I get you to give us a closing prayer, brother? Yeah, one second there. All right, dear Father in heaven, we're grateful unto thee today for this time to gather together and just have a little conversation about the history of our country and the principles that have brought us religious freedom and the freedom to kind of express ourselves and develop into a prosperous country.

1:41:48 Pray that we'll be able to understand these principles better and uphold them better than we have. And I ask a special blessing on everyone here that's attending that we will all feel the guidance as we try to make sense of these principles. And that will be effective in sharing them with our family and friends and be able to develop these into things that will help create more of a Zion community and protect us more in our in creating justice for ourselves and for others moving forward. Just ask for those blessings to be with us here tonight and over the next while as we ponder and we learn these topics. And we say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.