The American Soul

The False Promise of Peaceful Coexistence

Jesse Season 5 Episode 38

What happens when civilizations abandon their moral foundations? Throughout history, totalitarian ideologies—whether religious or political—have followed a disturbing pattern. They initially advocate for "peaceful coexistence," but once they attain sufficient power, this stance proves temporary. The choice offered to dissenters becomes stark: submit or face persecution.

Fox's Book of Martyrs details how the Spanish Inquisition, operating under papal authority, turned Spain into a land of torture chambers and public executions. In just 129 years, this institution deprived Spain of three million inhabitants. Similar patterns emerge across different eras and ideologies—from medieval religious persecution to 20th-century totalitarian regimes under Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. The lesson is clear: when organizations pursuing evil gain absolute power, peaceful coexistence vanishes.

This historical perspective carries profound implications for modern America. The Medal of Honor story of Mitchell Page illustrates how our nation's strength once flowed directly from its moral and religious foundations. When asked what gave him courage to stand alone against overwhelming Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, Page credited his early education in "a little bitty country school room in Pennsylvania where they started each day with the Bible and the Pledge of Allegiance." In his darkest moment, wounded and surrounded by enemy bodies, his Bible providentially opened to Proverbs 3:5-6—his mother's favorite verse about trusting God.

America's founders understood that liberty requires moral citizens with "skin in the game"—people with property and families worth defending. When individuals feel invested in their nation's future, they willingly sacrifice for its preservation. This explains why the Founders emphasized property rights and strong families as essential foundations of the republic.

As we navigate today's cultural challenges, we face choices similar to Americans in 1774, who hoped for reconciliation while preparing to defend their freedoms. Our path forward requires both preparation and prayer—standing firm for liberty while praying for national renewal and the transformation of hearts.

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Speaker 1:

Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. Sort of appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your time, a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. I know y'all have other things pulling at you in different directions, so I appreciate you giving me some of your time For those of y'all that continue to share the podcast with others and tell others about it. Thank you For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast. Thank you very much. I'm very, very grateful for your prayers and your support.

Speaker 1:

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son Jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness of sins through the merit of your Son Jesus Christ. Forgive us our pride and our greed, our selfishness, our judgment of others, our rash words and actions, our cowardice and our unbelief. Righteousness, our judgment. Mothers, our rash words and actions, our cowardice and our unbelief. Guide us closer to you, father, and draw us close to you and your Son, jesus Christ. Help us to do your will each day. Help us to love your Son, jesus Christ, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. To love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. I love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. I love our neighbors as ourselves. Thank you for the time to record this podcast and the people that listen to it. Please be with them and their families, god. Bless them, surround them with your hands, protect us from evil of any kind. Father God, our thoughts and our words and our actions. Help us to keep our mouth shut when we need to keep it shut. Help us to keep our mouth shut when we need to keep it shut. Help us not to deny you, to acknowledge you before men. Guide us through this life, on this journey. Help us to run the race all the way to the end. Be with those who are hurting and alone and scared. Be with the widow and the race all the way to the end. Be with those who are hurting and alone and scared. Be with the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy. Help us to help them in every way that we can. Forgive us when we fail. Forgive us when we turn away from you. Show us what you want us to do each day, father, and help us to do it. Be with our military, our law enforcement, firefighters, ems. Keep them safe, protect them. Be with our educators across the nation, whether it's homeschool or public school, private school coaches, teachers, administrators, counselors. Help us to lead our children to you and your Son, jesus Christ, to teach them the principles that your Son laid out so clearly for us. Please guide my words here, father. In your Son's name, we pray Amen.

Speaker 1:

Have you made time for God and Jesus Christ? Have you made time to read His Word? Have you made time for God and Jesus Christ? Have you made time to read his word? Have you made time to pray, to talk to him each day? Is he really your top priority? Do you even claim that?

Speaker 1:

If you don't claim that great and he's not your top priority, then you're not lying. It's not great. I can't recommend anything else be changed in your life quicker or more completely. But what do we claim? If somebody asked you what your priorities were, what would you tell them? And then, does the way that you spend your time and your energy does it line up with that? If you tell them that God is your priority. Do you follow the commands of his son, jesus Christ, each day? Do you strive to? Do you read his word? And if you're married, right, and you claim that your spouse is your next priority because it's supposed to mirror that relationship, to illustrate that relationship between Christ and the church, do you treat them like that? Do you fulfill your role? Not looking at your spouse talking about how they don't fulfill their role? Do you fulfill yours? If you're a husband, do you love, nourish and cherish your wife as your own body? Do you lay down your life for her? If you're a wife, do you respect, submit to and everything and physically satisfy your husband each day, throughout the day? You know we talk so often, folks, when I get into these conversations. You know we talk so often, folks, when I get into these conversations.

Speaker 1:

The problem that people that don't want to follow their roles and responsibilities. They try and make light of the commands of God and they say, well, I don't have time, that's a. That's not what he meant. Right, that's it, that was. That was back then. He didn't mean that today, which we've talked about that on a podcast recently. If that's true, then we can pick and choose whatever we want If we're going to go with societal norms, then, good grief, jesus Christ can't even be the son of God based on that today, because a huge chunk of society doesn't believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God. So that's a non-starter. The word of God doesn't change just because society changes folks.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that I get so often is well, I don't have time and energy. You're being ridiculous. That's way too much of a burden. Nobody can expect that. And yet we give so much time to our phones and social media and sports. You know you can sit there and watch a tennis match at Wimbledon I think right now is going on and spend five hours doing that, but you don't have time to give to your spouse. Are you kidding? You can scroll TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube videos for hours, but you don't have time to read the Bible and pray. You don't have time to do whatever your spouse wants to do, whenever, wherever, however often eagerly. You don't have time to do whatever your spouse wants to do, whenever, wherever, however often eagerly. Folks, we have time. We have time. We just choose not to give it to God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. We choose not to give it to our spouse. A little comment.

Speaker 1:

I see Elon Musk talking about population decrease often and I hear a number of Christians, rightfully so, saying be fruitful and multiply, because God tells us to do that. And I thought of a comment. A good friend of my mother-in-law's actually made this comment years and years ago and it's one of those that has just stuck with me. And she said never once have I heard a husband or a wife say I wish we hadn't had that last kid. She said I've heard a lot of husbands and wives say I wish we would have had one more kid or multiple more kids. And when you look at the Bible, folks, you know not everybody is called to get married and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going to get married and then follow the commands laid out in marriage and sex, in particularly 1 Corinthians 7, proverbs 5, 19, song of Solomon, but the rest of them too, Ephesians 5, titus 2, 1 Peter 3, hebrews 13, 4. Be fruitful and multiply, have a lot of kids.

Speaker 1:

There's a representative that used to be a Green Beret from Virginia that has made the comment. You know, as Christians, as people who truly love America, we could really solve a huge chunk of the problems in our nation today if we would simply follow scripture in marriage and sex and kids. Get married, have a bunch of kids, raise them to know God and Jesus Christ and don't let the government indoctrinate them. He's a pretty big proponent of school choice, which I'm a proponent of school choice too, as y'all know. We haven't talked about it in a while here on the podcast, but we've got to have education of the masses and publicly funded education in America as a Christian Republic. It has to be centered on the Bible. Fisher Ames told us that and he was the guy that actually worded the Establishment Clause. But the point is still valid. Whether you're homeschooling or public schooling or private school, get married, have a bunch of kids and educate them with God and Jesus Christ and the Bible at the center of their education and so many of the problems that we have across the nation. They go away. It doesn't matter. I mean, we still need to apply a rule of law and deport every single illegal, but the immigration issues become so minor because the Christian population become so minor, because the Christian population, the people that love Jesus Christ and God, are getting married and having a bunch of kids, at any rate, just some thoughts that I had getting ready for this podcast.

Speaker 1:

1 Corinthians, 4. Servants of Christ, let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy, but to me, it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even examine myself, for I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted. But the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts, and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

Speaker 1:

Now, these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos, for your sakes, so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one another against the other. For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it. You are already filled, you have already become rich. You have become kings without us, and indeed I wish that you had become kings so that we might also reign with you, for I think God has exhibited us apostles, last of all as men condemned to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools, for Christ's sake, but you are prudent in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are distinguished, but we are without honor.

Speaker 1:

To this present hour, we are both hungry and thirsty and are poorly clothed and are roughly treated and are homeless, and we toil, working with our own hands. When we are reviled, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure. When we are slandered, we try to conciliate. We have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now. I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children, for if you were to have countless tutors in Christ yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I exhort you be imitators of me. For this reason, I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways, which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere, in every church. Now some have become arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills, and I shall find out.

Speaker 1:

Not the's this idea verse 20, for the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power that in order to be Christian you have to be weak, and you don't see that at all. You look at both in the Old and New Testament. The men and women that followed God and Jesus Christ were not weak individuals. They might be quiet, peaceful, calm. I heard someone within the past few years talk about the fact that in the Beatitudes, when Jesus Christ uses the word meek that the better description of the original word used there was somebody that had the ability to use a sword to be violent, but chose not to be right. And and obviously we have a responsibility God clearly tells us to care for the widow and the orphan, and sometimes that requires violence. You look at David, a man after God's own heart. Definitely not what we would consider weak by any means, and so that just kind of struck me when we read verse 20 there. The kingdom of God does not consist in words. It doesn't really matter what we say, folks, it matters what we do.

Speaker 1:

A couple things farther back up near the top, let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Is that how we want people to recognize us Really in your heart of hearts? If somebody asked you, how do you want people to see you, to view you, would that be your answer? Servants of Christ. That's what we're supposed to identify with. That's supposed to be our top calling as Christians. Do we really see it that way? Do we want to be viewed as a Christian, as a servant of Christ, as a steward of the mysteries of God? And if not, how do we want to be viewed? And we probably have our priorities out of order then, and we either need to change our priorities or we need to change what we claim our priorities are.

Speaker 1:

Verse 5,. Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will both bring light to the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts, and then each man's praise will come to him from God. Again, just so often, folks, John Quincy Adams, duty is ours, results are God's. I struggle with this I'm sure a lot of y'all probably do too being still before God, waiting on God's timing, trusting him. I was talking to a very good friend of mine recently and we were talking about that that waiting on God's timing.

Speaker 1:

When you are looking for a spouse, when you are looking for a job, when you just lost your old job, when you're waiting for children, when you're whatever it is, folks, when you're waiting on your spouse to pull their head out of the sand and figure out that the marriage ought to be a priority, when you're waiting on your kid to mature, when you're waiting on a parent to actually figure out that you are more important as a kid than their job is Like all of these things, folks are so hard. When you're waiting on that opportunity, you know, as a kid, on a team and you want that opportunity to play, you want that chance. When you're waiting on that so often, all of these things in life, god says, hey, just keep doing what I'm telling you to and I'll worry about the results. And golly, that's hard, isn't it? Waiting on that job application, waiting on that college application to come back, waiting to see if you got in, waiting to know the results of the test. Oh, this one, verse seven, and then we'll move on.

Speaker 1:

For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? So much of the time, folks, we like to talk about how great we are academically, athletically, whatever you know how strong. Look at how strong I am. Look at how smart I am. Look at how fast I am. Look at how pretty I am. Look at how strong I am. Look at how smart I am, look at how fast I am. Look at how pretty I am. Look at whatever.

Speaker 1:

God gave us all those things. Why do we act? Why do we boast as if we haven't been given those things? As a nation, america, god gave us all these blessings. We go back so often to Lincoln, talk about in the vanity of our own hearts, we imagine that we did this, we didn't need God. We go back so often to Lincoln, talk about in the vanity of our own hearts, we imagine that we did this, we didn't need God. We don't need God, we don't need you. God, that's exactly who we need To act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly before the Lord.

Speaker 1:

If you're really bright, thank God. If you're really fast, thank God. If you're really strong, thank God. If you're really fast, thank God. If you're really strong, thank God. If you're really pretty, thank God. If you have a ton of money, thank God. If you have the work ethic that has gotten you success in academics or professionally, athletically, thank God. Maybe thank your parents too, or that teacher or pastor or friend or whoever helped you along that path to learn Work ethic. But thank God. If you look around and see the greatness, the potential that the United States has, thank God. The blessings come from God. We need to remember that and act like it and not be so arrogant as to assume that we created our own strength or speed, or looks, or intelligence, or fame or fortune. Or fame or fortune. A lot of people perhaps right now you're thinking well, those people that work really hard, those professional athletes, those businessmen they do make their own fame and fortune and they work really hard and they do work hard and that's a great trait to have work ethic. But do you think that they got there without God allowing them to? They didn't, and sometimes that's hard to figure out too Some of the people that aren't very good that seem to have so much success. But almost inevitably the truth comes out in the end Right, and it always will in the very end.

Speaker 1:

So All right, medal of Honor, we're going to go out of order. Today there's a story that I wanted to go through. If I can find it, mitchell Page was a Medal of Honor recipient from the Battle of Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands On October 26, 1942, all the other Marines in his particular platoon so platoon is 40-odd men give or take were killed or wounded, and for multiple hours Page operated machine guns, fought single-handedly against a Japanese regiment, and if that would have fallen it would have been really bad, and someday I really should have pulled this up. I don't actually have his Medal of Honor citation in front of me. We'll get to it someday as we read through all the different Medal of Honors.

Speaker 1:

But he was asked you know what made you give so much and risk your life? Because he managed to survive that, but what made you stay there and fight. And he said everything went back to this little bitty school country school room in Pennsylvania where they started each day with the Bible and the Pledge of Allegiance and they memorized all of the founding documents that made this country great. All the things that we go over, folks, on this podcast, that we've gone over over the years from Thanksgiving proclamations, days of fasting and prayer, the sermon that we're going through with Stiles from Yale these are the things that we need to be teaching our children.

Speaker 1:

This is a quote from Page. My undying love of country and my strong loyalty to the Marines fighting by my side gave me no choice but to fight on unswervingly throughout my battles, utilizing my God-given ability to make use of what I had been taught and learned. To make use of what I had been taught and learned. There was a verse that his mother gave to him when he left to first enlist Trust in the Lord, son, and he will always guide you. He will guide you always. She put a little note in a lunch that she packed him, and this is one more I will never forget sitting in a foxhole, bloody, burned and injured.

Speaker 1:

The morning after our all-night fierce hand-to-hand battle against an overwhelming Japanese force on Guadalcanal. I was alone, except for hundreds of dead bodies of the enemy surrounding me. I emptied my pack, looking for something to stop the bleeding from a bayonet wound, and out fell my small Bible, picking it up in my dirty, bloody hands. I could scarcely believe it when, providentially, it opened at Proverbs 3, and there were my mother's words Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.

Speaker 1:

A great little insert in the American Patriots Bible edited by Dr Richard Lee, about Mitchell Page. If you get a chance, if you have a copy of that, I would go through and read it. What makes a great American? It's Theodore Roosevelt right. The true American, the true citizen, is the true Christian. The true Christian is the true citizen. You can't love a country if you don't love her founding, faith and principles. Any nation, any company, any organization, and in America that means if you're going to truly love America, you have to truly love the general principles of Jesus Christ. All right, we're going to get back into this election sermon by Ezra Stiles and we'll pick up where we left off here.

Speaker 1:

But a multitude of people event, the 200 million of the Chinese empire cannot subsist without civil government. There's a little comment here about this. To elucidate the chinese population, it may be considered that in the reign of kong he, who died in ad 1722, there were found 11 million 52 872 families and 59 million 788 364 men able to arms, exclusive of a million of Bonzas and 100,000 Mandarins and Litterati, the army of near a million and young people under 20 years of age and the multitudes living on the water. So the total of men in the empire above 60 millions, implying 250 million of souls. Tribute is paid by all the males between the ages of 20 and 60. The poll tax revenue is 50 million sterling, 58 million once paid this tribute. Europeans consider this the number of souls and not of adult males. All the brothers and sisters, while they live, constitute one family, according to the custom in China, whether the ancestor be living or dead. So the 11 million families would be equal to 50 or 60 million of European families. I think that was all for that. Yeah, civil. So here we go Of.

Speaker 1:

Chinese empire cannot subsist without civil government. All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America. Most of the estates of all ages, and their originals, both as to the policy and property, have been founded in rapacity, usurpation and injustice, so that, in the contests recorded in history, the public right is a dubious question, it being rather certain that it belongs to neither of the controlling or contending parties. The military history of all nations being but a description of the wars and invasions of the mutual robbers and devastators of the human race the invasion of the lawless Macedonian who affected the dissolution of the Medo-Persian Empire, the widespread Roman conquests, the inundation of the Goths and Vandals, the descendants or the descents of the Tartars on China, the triumphs of Tamerlane, ulgbeg and Arringzabab in the widespread domination of the imposter of Mecca with his successors, the Caliphs and Mamelukes, down to Kolkhan, who dethroned his prince and plundered India of 200 million sterling. These, I say with the new distribution of property and the new erected policies, were all founded in unrighteousness and tyrannical usurpation. There's more down here about the number of people living in China.

Speaker 1:

As a footnote, let me go back. The real interest of mankind and the public good has been generally overlooked. It has really been very indifferent to the great cause of right and liberty. Which of the belligerent powers prevailed? A Tengrilepix or a Muhammad, an Augustus or an Antony, a Scipio or a Hannibal, a Brennnus or an Antiochus? Tyranny being the sure portion of the plebeians, be the victory. As it should happen. These things have led some very enlightened as well as serious minds to a fixed conclusion and judgment against the right and legality of all wars. In the simplicity of my judgment, I have for years been of this opinion, except as to the offensive wars of Israel and the defensive war of America. War, in some instances, especially defensive, has been authorized by heaven. The blessing given by Melchizedek to Abraham upon his return from the slaughter of Selda, lamor and the kings of the east justified that holy patriarch. The war with Amalek and the extirpation of the Canaanites by Joshua were of God.

Speaker 1:

The location of the respective territories to the first nations was so of God as to give them a divine right defensively to resist the Nimrods and Ninases, the first invading tyrants of the ancient ages. The originally free and glorious republics of Greece had a right from God to withstand the haughty claims of the Assyrian empire, which they successfully resisted for ages till the Roman power arose behind them and at length prostrated their liberties. But after the spirit of conquest had changed the first governments, all the succeeding ones have in general proved one continued series of injustice which has reigned in all countries for almost four thousand years. These have so changed property laws, rights and liberties that it has become impossible for the most sagacious civilians to decide whose is the abstract political right in national controversies. Rather, we know that none of them have any right. All original right is confounded and lost. We can only say that there still remains in the body of the people at large, the body of mankind of any and every generation, a power with which they are invested by the author of their being, to wrest government out of the hands of reigning tyrants and originate new policies adapted to the conservation of liberty and promoting public welfare. But what is the happiest form of civil government is the great question. Almost all the polytes may be reduced to hereditary dominion in either a monarchy or aristocracy, and these supported by a standing army. The Roman and Venetian senates were but a hereditary aristocracy with an elective head. The senatorial succession is preserved, independent of the people. True liberty is preserved in the Belgic and Alvedic republics be beyond the control of those for whose end God instituted government but a democratical polity for millions standing upon the broad bases of the people at large, amply charged with property, has not hitherto been exhibited.

Speaker 1:

And I think we will stop there. It's interesting again the comment about property and play charge with property. If you don't have people that feel like they have skin in the game, that feel like they have some control there, some little piece of their own property worth fighting for, the idea of voting, well, you get that. Just what difference does it make? Attitude? You know this isn't my land anyway. I'm just renting it from the government. They can come, kick me off whenever they want, so why would I fight for this nation? Why would I struggle to preserve it if they're just going to take away whenever they want the property anyway? It's again the same analogy.

Speaker 1:

I remember an author talking about George Washington and how he just couldn't understand why slaves didn't do a better job. He wrote something down in one of his journals. This was earlier on in his life and you know the author said at this point in Washington's life it just never dawned on him that why would the slaves work hard when they didn't own any of the property? You know, none of that was there, none of the produce was theirs If he had given them just a little property, given them a little bit so that what they were working for was their own right, it changes for was their own right. It changes when a man has a little bit of property, a wife, children. It changes how willing he is to sacrifice for that wife, those children, that nation. All right, we'll move on.

Speaker 1:

We're going to get back into Fox's Book of the Martyrs. We just finished with the story of Mr Lithgow and now we're going to read the section titled Crowley on the Inquisition. I hope that's how you pronounce that we shall conclude this chapter with the subjoined extract from the New Interpretation of the Apocalypse by the Reverend George Crowley In our fortunate country, the power of the Romish church has so long perished that we find some difficulty in conceiving the nature and still more in believing the tyranny of its dominion. I think, folks, that we have a real problem in America today understanding that, not just about the Roman Catholic Church at this time period, but about Islam, leftism, socialism, communism, nazism, fascism, any of those ideologies, when you look back at history, when they gained total power, there was no liberty freedom for others. There was no liberty freedom. For others, it was either submission or rape, pillage, plunder, imprisonment, torture, death. Those were your two options. There was peaceful coexistence. There was no third option. When you get one of those, those evil ideologies, that gets total power, there is no option for peaceful coexistence. You either submit to them or you will face.

Speaker 1:

Look at the incidents that we've read through this Fox's Book of the Martyrs the harem that the monks, that the priests kept. Of the Martyrs, the harem that the monks that the priests kept. Of the Inquisition the torture just unbelievable cruelty. And you could read the same about history of Islam. You could read the same through the 20th century when you look at socialism, communism, stalin, mao, hitler, nazism, fascism, mussolini, pol Pot. We need to remind ourselves, we need to teach history. The influence of the monks and the murders of the Inquisition have passed into a nursery tale and we turn with a generous yet rash and non and most unjustifiable skepticism from the history of the Romish authority.

Speaker 1:

Through almost the entire of Italy, through the Flemish dominions of Germany, through a large portion of France and through the entirety of Spain, a great monastic body was established which, professing a secondary and trivial obedience to the sovereign, gave its first and real obedience to the Pope and that's the key folks right there, anybody that claims to be Christian for any denomination but that gives more loyalty to their denomination or the leaders of that denomination than they do. Jesus Christ that when you hear somebody constantly talking that claims to be a Christian and they're constantly talking about their denomination right or somebody other than Jesus Christ, whether it's Mary or Joseph or Pope or priest or whatever it is, you should have some major red flags there, some major concerns. Christ alone and Christ crucified, the name of spiritual homage, cloaked the high treason of an oath of allegiance to a foreign monarch and whoever might be king of France or Spain, the Pope was king of the Dominicans. All the other monastic orders were so mainly papal outposts. But the great Dominican order, immensely opulent in its pretended poverty, formidably powerful in its hypocritical disdain of earthly influence and remorselessly ambitious, turbulent and cruel in its primitive zeal, was an actual lodgment and province of the papacy, an inferior Rome in the chief European kingdoms. That's another example of the fallacy of claiming infallibility for the church as a whole or the Pope in particular, because if they're truly infallible, if that position is truly infallible, then all of these blatant evils committed at the behest of the Pope were also right and just, and of course they weren't In the closest imitation of Rome.

Speaker 1:

The spiritual power had fiercely assumed the temporal sword. The Inquisition was army revenues and throne in one, with the racks and fires of a tribunal worthy of the gulf of darkness and guilt from which it rose. The Dominicans bore potpourri and triumph through Christendom, crushing every vestige of religion under the wheels of its colossal idol. The subjugation of the Albignies in 1229 had scattered the church. The shock of the great military masses was past. A settler and more active force was required to destroy the wandering people of God, and the Inquisition multiplied itself.

Speaker 1:

For the work of death, this terrible tribunal set every principle and even every form of justice at defiance. Set every principle and even every form of justice at defiance. Secrecy that confounds innocence with guilt was the spirit of its whole proceeding. All its steps were in darkness. The suspected revolter from potpourri was seized in secret, tried in secret, never suffered to see the face of accuser, witness, advocate or friend, was kept unacquainted with the charge and was urged to criminate himself. If tardy was compelled to this self-murder by the rack, if terrified was only the more speedily murdered for the sport of the multitude. From the hour of his seizure he never saw the face of day until he was brought out as a public show, a loyal and festal sacrifice to do honor to the entrance of some traveling Viceroy, some new married princess or, on more fortunate occasions, the presence of the Sovereign of the body for the good of the soul.

Speaker 1:

In the original establishment of the Inquisition in 1198, it had raged against the Vidoys and their converts, but the victims were exhausted or not worth the pursuit of a tribunal which looked to the wealth as keenly as to the faith of the persecuted. Opulence and heresy were at length to be found only in Spain, and there the Inquisition, armed with a gigantic turned, with a gigantic step in the early disturbances of the peninsula, the Jews, by those habits of trade and mutual communion which still make them the lords of commerce, had acquired the chief wealth of the country. The close of the Moorish war in the 15th century had left the Spanish monarch at leisure for extortion, and he grasped at the Jewish gains in the spirit of a robber as he pursued his plunder with the cruelty of a barbarian. The Inquisition was the great machine, the comprehensive torturer, ready to squeeze out alike, the heart and the gold. In 1481, an edict was issued against the Jews. Before the end of the year, in a single diocese of Cadiz, 2,000 Jews were burnt alive. The fall of the kingdom of Granada in 1492 threw the whole of the Spanish Moors into the hands of the king. They were cast into the same furnace of plunder and torture. Desperate rebellions followed. They were defeated and in 1609, were finally exiled. In the space of 129 years, the Inquisition deprived Spain of 3 million of inhabitants.

Speaker 1:

On the death of Leo X in 1521, adrian the Inquisitor General was elected Pope. In 1521, adrian the Inquisitor General was elected Pope. He had laid the foundation of his papal celebrity in Spain. It appears, according to the most moderate calculation, that during the five years of the ministry of Adrian, 24,025 persons were condemned by the Inquisition, of whom 1,620 were burned alive. It is the constant sophism of those who would cast Christianity, bound hand and foot, at the mercy of her enemies that the Pope desires to exercise no interference in the internal concerns of kingdoms, that if he had the desire, he is not the power. And that if he possessed the power, he would be resisted by the whole body of the national clergy For the exposure of this traitorous delusion. We are to look at the times when it was the will of potpourri to put forth its strength, not to the present, when it is its will to lull us into a belief of its consistency with the Constitution, in defiance of common sense, common experience and the spirit of British law and the loud warnings of insulted and hazarded religion.

Speaker 1:

Of the multitudes who perished by the Inquisition throughout the world, no authentic record is now discoverable, but wherever Popery had power there was the tribunal. It had been planted even in the East, and the Portuguese Inquisition of Goa was till, within these few years, fed with many an agony and agony. South America was partitioned into provinces of the Inquisition and, with a ghastly mimicry of the crimes of the Mother State, the arrivals of viceroys and the other popular celebrations were thought imperfect without an auto-defe. The Netherlands were one scene of slaughter from the time of the decree which planted the Inquisition among them. In Spain the calculation is more attainable. Each of the 17 tribunals during a long period burned annually on an average 10 miserable beings. We are to recollect that this number was in a country where persecution had for ages abolished all religious differences. And we're into a nursery tale and we turn with a generous. I went the wrong way. Let me try this again. We are to recollect that the number was in a country where persecution had for ages abolished all religious differences and where the difficulty was not to find the stake but the offering.

Speaker 1:

Yet even in Spain, thus gleaned of all heresy, the Inquisition Could still swell its list of murders To 32,000. The numbers burned in effigy or condemned to penance Punishments generally equivalent To exile, constrication Can't see that word and taint of blood To all ruin. But the mere loss of worthless life amounted to three hundred and nine thousand. But the crowds who perished in dungeons of the torture, of confinement and of broken hearts, the millions of dependent lives made utterly helpless or hurried to the grave by the death of the victims, are beyond all register or recorded only before him. Who has sworn that he who leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity and he that killeth with the sword shall be killed by the sword. Such was the Inquisition, declared by the Spirit of God to be at once the offspring and the image of the Popedom. To feel the force of the parentage we must look to the time.

Speaker 1:

In the 13th century, the Popedom was at the summit of mortal dominion. It was independent of all kingdoms. It ruled with a rank of influence never before or since. Possessed by a human scepter, it was the acknowledged sovereign of body and soul. With all earthly intents, its power was immeasurable for good or evil. It might have spread literature, peace, freedom and Christianity to the ends of Europe or the world, but its nature was hostile. Its fuller triumph only disclosed its fuller evil, and to the shame of human reason and the terror and suffering of human virtue, rome in the hour of its consummate grandeur teemed with the monstrous and horrid birth of the Inquisition.

Speaker 1:

Again, folks, again folks. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about a Roman Catholic Church, as we see from history, or whether you're talking about Islam, or whether you're talking about socialism, communism, nazism, fascism, leftism, history, or whether you're talking about Islam or whether you're talking about socialism, communism, nazism, fascism, leftism. Those organizations that pursue evil and almost all of them claim to be pursuing good and right and justice under the pretense of pursuing evil, or they claim the pretense of pursuing good while they're really pursuing evil when, given total power, there's no peaceful coexistence possible. Right, the peaceful coexistence, is only used by any of those that are pursuing evil to buy time to gain power and then, once they gain enough power, there's no more option of peaceful coexistence. It's either submit or you're going to face torture, rape, pillage, plunder, imprisonment, death. That's still true today, folks. That hasn't changed the idea that you can sit there and peacefully coexist today in America and maintain liberty with people that outright reject God and Jesus Christ. It isn't possible, it's not going to happen and we should be doing everything that we can to increase, build up the church, build up those people and organizations and institutions that defend liberty, that stand for liberty. One of those ways, as a reminder, is to get married, have a bunch of kids and teach those kids God and Jesus Christ. We'll read just a little bit today from Mercy Otis Warren History of the Rise, progress and Termination of the American Revolution.

Speaker 1:

All the old colonies, except Georgia, readily acceded to the proposal of calling a general congress. They made immediate exertions that there might be no discord in the councils of the several provinces and that their opinions should be consistent, spirited and systematical. Most of them had previously laid aside many of their local prejudices and, by public resolves and various other modes, had expressed their disgust at the summary proceedings of Parliament against Massachusetts. They reprobated the port bill in terms of detestation, raised liberal contributions for the suffering inhabitants of Boston and continued their determinations to support that province at every hazard through the conflict in which they were involved. In conformity to the coercive system, the governors of all the colonies frowned on the sympathetic part of the several legislative bodies that had been disposed to take with turbulent descendants, as they were pleased to stile the Massachusetts of Puritans, republicans and regicides, republicans and regicides. Thus, most of the colonial assemblies had been petulantly dissolved. Nor could any applications from the people prevail on the Supreme Magistrate to suffer, the representatives and burgesses to meet and, in a legal capacity, to liberate on measures most consistent with loyalty and freedom. But this persevering obstinacy of the governors did not retard the resolutions of the people. They met in parishes and selected persons from almost every town to meet in provincial conventions and there to make choice of suitable delegates to meet in provincial conventions and there to make choice of suitable delegates to meet in General Congress. The beginning of autumn 1774, was the time appointed and the city of Philadelphia chosen as the most central and convenient place for this body to meet and deliberate at so critical a conjunction to meet and deliberate at so critical a conjunction Yet, such as the attachment to Britain, the strength of habit and the influence of ancient forms, such the reluctant dread of spilling human blood which at that period was universally felt in America, that there were few who did not ardently wish some friendly intervention, might yet prevent a rupture which probably might shake the empire of Britain and waste the inhabitants on both sides of the Atlantic.

Speaker 1:

That's the mentality, folks. The idea of peaceful coexistence is completely illogical. The idea of peaceful coexistence is completely illogical. And yet we have to cling to the hope that our fellow citizens here in America, and just the people in general because we have so many illegal immigrants that they too will wake up and change their hearts and minds and will acknowledge the evil path that we have been on as a nation and help turn together in unity toward truth, toward reconciliation, toward liberty. And that's got to be part of our prayer life. And I haven't been doing a very good job of that. Probably a number of y'all have been doing a much better job than I. But we have to prepare for the worst right, but we have to hope and pray for the best.

Speaker 1:

There was. In the Marine Corps, when I was overseas, there was a saying let me see if I can remember it. It was something along the lines of treat every person with respect, or treat every person even maybe as a friend I can't remember the exact. Some of y'all that serve probably remember this but treat every person with respect but have a plan to kill everyone. And that probably sounds a little dramatic to some of y'all, but when you went into a village you really had no idea often who the good guys and the bad guys were until you had a little more experience right, and even then it can be very tricky. But that's kind of the mentality that we need. We need to be preparing for a fight, but we need to be respectful and praying and hoping that God will give us grace and mercy to avoid that by changing the hearts and minds of those who currently pursue evil, whether you're talking about leftism, socialism, communism, nazism, fascism or Islam. And you see that here At this point in 1774, there were a ton of people who desperately wanted to reconcile.

Speaker 1:

Still, they didn't want the bloodshed, rightly so. They wanted to be citizens of the king, subjects of the king and Britain, but they weren't willing to give up liberty. And that's really where we are again today, although the situation is a little different. All right, god bless y'all folks. God bless you and your families. God bless your marriage. If you're married, god bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world listening. We'll talk to y'all again real soon, looking forward to it.