America's laws are largely derived from English Common Law, intended to protect the rights of the individual.
Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England had a great influence on America's founders.
Published from 1765 to 1769 by Oxford's Clarendon Press, Blackstone's Commentaries were considered the definitive pre-Revolutionary source of Common Law, being used by lawyers and judges in courts throughout America.
In contrast to dictatorships, where law is simply the enforcement of a king, emperor or sultan's will; or the French Revolution's "social contract," where individuals must surrender their rights and property for the "greater good" of the collective community, Sir William Blackstone explained the purpose of English Common Law:
"The principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature."
"So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community."
Blackstone drew upon a long tradition of earlier documents highlighting Creator-given rights, which eventually crystallized into America's Declaration of Independence.
Historian Dr. Marshall Foster of the World History Institute wrote:
"The Declaration stands at the apex of the biblical freedom documents of history.
These include:
- The Torah of Moses (about 1400 BC);
- Magna Carta (1215);
- Scotland's Declaration of Arbroath (1320);
- The Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants (1572);
- Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex (1644);
- The Sanquhar Declaration in Scotland (1680); and
- The English Bill of Rights (1689) ..."
Dr. Foster continued, quoting Francis A. Shaeffer:
"There are limits to monarchies, since everyone, from kings to the common man, are subject to the rule of law — God’s law.
When a king or magistrate violates God’s law, he loses his authority, and people may then have the right to overthrow this ruler.”
Highlighting biblical law's role of protecting an individual's rights, Blackstone wrote:
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer."
Blackstone wrote:
"Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty;
for if once it were left in the power of any the highest magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper ... there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities."
Commenting on the right of self-defense, Blackstone wrote in Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book III; 1768).
"The defense of one's self, or the ... defense of ... husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant ... if the party ... be forcibly attacked in his person or property, it is lawful for him to repel force by force;
and the breach of the peace, which happens, is chargeable upon him only who began the affray."
Blackstone wrote:
"There is nothing which so generally ... engages the affections of mankind, as ... that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual."
Blackstone wrote:
"To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom;
but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government."
Blackstone explained that the God of the Bible is a God of law and order.
In Commentaries on the Laws of England, he wrote:
"When the Supreme Being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, He impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be.
... When He put the matter into motion, He established certain laws of motion, to which all movable bodies must conform.
And, to descend from the greatest operations to the smallest ... from mere inactive matter to vegetable and animal life ...
... The whole progress of plants, from the seed to the root, and from thence to the seed again; the method of animal nutrition, digestion, secretion and all the branches of vital economy; - are not left to chance, or the will of the creature itself, but are performed in a wondrous involuntary manner, and guided by unerring rules laid down by the great Creator ..."
Blackstone continued:
"Man, the noblest of all sublunary (earthly) beings, a creature endowed with both reason and free will, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of his behavior.
Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being ...
... As man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker's will ...
The Creator ... has laid down only such laws as were founded in those relations of justice ...
These are the eternal, immutable laws of good and evil, to which the Creator Himself in all his dispensations conforms; and which He has enabled human reason to discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions.
Such, among others, are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to everyone his due; to which three general precepts Justinian has reduced the whole doctrine of law."
Blackstone continued, commenting on man's pursuit of happiness:
"The Creator is a Being, not only of infinite power, and wisdom, but also of infinite goodness,
He has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former ... (a) mutual connection of justice and human felicity."
This influenced George Mason, whose Declaration of Rights was adopted by Virginia Constitutional Convention, June 12, 1776:
"All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights ... namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
This also influenced Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Blackstone explained the need for God to send the Holy Scriptures:
"This law of nature ... dictated by God Himself ... is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this ...
And if our reason were always, as in our first ancestor (Adam) before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be pleasant and easy ...
... But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience;
that his reason is corrupt, and his understanding full of ignorance and error ...
This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of Divine Providence; which, in ... the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased ... to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation.
The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures."
In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, Blackstone defined:
"Crimes against God";
"Crimes against Man"; and
"Crimes against Nature."
He wrote:
"This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.
For as God, when He created matter ... established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion;
so, when He created man, and endued him with free will to conduct himself in all parts of life, He laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that free will is in some degree regulated and restrained."
Blackstone defined the act of sodomy as a "Crime against Nature":
"It is an offense of so dark a nature ... a disgrace to human nature ... a crime not fit to be named; 'peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nomtnandum' (that horrible crime not to be named among Christians.)"
Blackstone wrote that Parliament, during the reign of Edward III, heard the an accusation "that a Lombard did commit the sin 'that was not to be named.'"
He continued in Latin:
"... Where that crime is found, which it is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword, that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments."
That sodomy was a "crime against nature" deserving capital punishment, Blackstone cited Leviticus 20:13-15, and wrote:
"The voice of nature and of reason, and the express law of God, determine to be capital," as the "signal instance, long before the Jewish dispensation" of "the destruction of two cities (Sodom and Gomorrah) by fire from Heaven; so that this is an universal, not merely a provincial, precept."
This view was in the "Corpus Juris Civilis (529-534 AD) of Justinian I, the Byzantine Emperor known for building the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (537 AD).
Historian J. H. Rosser wrote:
"The Corpus Juris Civilis not only preserved Roman law but provided the basis of law for emerging European nations. Its influence on western civilization is probably greater than any other book, except, of course, the Bible."
A French translation of the Corpus Juris stated:
"'Sodomie est crime de majeste vers le Roy Celestre,' and [is] translated in a footnote as 'Sodomy is high treason against the King of Heaven.' At common law 'sodomy' and the phrase `infamous crime against nature' were often used interchangeably."
Blackstone also explained how Islamic sharia law enforced a political despotism:
"... terrible ravages committed by the Saracens in the east, to propagate the religion of Mahomet."
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the foreword of the book Law in the Middle East (1955):
"In any broad sense, Islamic law offers the American lawyer a study in dramatic contrasts ... its striking features relative to our law are not likenesses but inconsistencies, not similarities but contrarieties.
In its source, its scope and its sanctions, the law of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western law."
Modern day enforcers of Islamic sharia law include the Taliban.
In August of 2021, after 20 years of an American presence in Afghanistan, President Biden ordered a sudden withdrawal and abandonment of the country to the Taliban.
The DailyCaller reported August 16, 2021, in an article titled "‘Where Would I Go?’: Afghanistan’s First Female Mayor Says She’s Waiting For Taliban To Come And Kill Her."
Afghanistan's first female mayor, 27-year-old Zarifa Ghafari, who has already had three attempts on her life, predicted when the Taliban begin enforcing Islamic sharia law:
“I’m sitting here waiting for them to come ... There is no one to help me or my family. I’m just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me. I can’t leave my family. And anyway, where would I go?"
Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England were studied by prominent American founders:
- John Adams,
- Thomas Jefferson,
- Alexander Hamilton,
- John Marshall,
- James Wilson,
- John Jay,
- James Kent, and
- were frequently cited in Supreme Court decisions.
Blackstone's Commentaries influenced Abraham Lincoln.
While running a General Store in New Salem, Illinois, in 1831, Abraham Lincoln narrated:
"One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder.
... He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value.
I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it.
Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it ...
... Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone's 'Commentaries.'
I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between ...
... The more I read, the more intensely interested I became.
Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them."
In the early 1800s, all one had to do to become a lawyer was to study founding documents and law books, such as Blacsktone's Commentaries, apprentice with an attorney, and then sit before a bar exam.
In 1817, Harvard's Law School was founded, being the nation's oldest continuously operating law school, though it only had one professor till 1827, when Justice Joseph Story expanded it.
In 1859, Charles Darwin popularized the theory of evolution with his book The Origin of Species.
In the 1870s, Harvard Law School Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell applied evolution to the legal process with his "case precedent" method of practicing law, gradually changing the original interpretation of the law, one case at a time.
Harvard was the only law school in the country that taught law this way.
Every other law school taught law by reading Blackstone and other founding documents.
The evolutionary view of law impacted the nation when in 1902, Harvard graduate Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was put on the Supreme Court.
As described by his biographer in The Justice from Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1991), Holmes' theory of "legal realism":
"... shook the little world of lawyers and judges who had been raised on Blackstone's theory that the law, given by God Himself, was immutable and eternal and judges had only to discover its contents.
It took some years for them to come around to the view that the law was flexible, responsive to changing social and economic climates ...
Holmes had ... broken new intellectual trails ... demonstrating that the corpus of the law was neither ukase (an edict) from God nor derived from Nature, but ... was a constantly evolving thing, a response to the continually developing social and economic environment."
Holmes' infamous line, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" (Buck v. Bell, 1927) was based on the evolutionary theory that "defectives" should be eliminated from the human gene pool, therefore individuals could be forcibly sterilized against their will if someone in the government deemed them "feeble-minded."
Holmes' opinions were even quoted by Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials to justify their inhumane crimes.
Two distinct categories developed among Supreme Court Justices:
- the first generally held to the views of the founders, respecting commentaries such as Blackstone's; and
- the second care little for the views of the founders, opting to "evolve" the law in order to advance a political agenda.
In 1821, a 29-year-old attorney named Charles Finney was influenced by Blackstone's Commentaries.
He later wrote to William Cox Cochran, January 16, 1872:
"You say nothing of Blackstone.
I read him through seven or eight times during my law studies.
After reading other works for several months I would reread Blackstone.
I found that he contained in the briefest form all, or nearly all that I found spread out on the multitudinous pages of all the writers on Common Law.
The more I read him ... the more I was amazed at the extent of his legal erudition.
One does not at first nor until repeated reading realize the compactness of his thoughts, nor how much he has crowded into his four volumes. I should like to read it again.
It sounds strange to me to hear of a law student being examined for admission to the bar after one or two years study ... The young lawyers in this country ... know but little of law."
Charles Finney saw so many references to Bible verses in Blackstone's Law Commentaries that he bought a Bible.
He began reading it.
On October 10, 1821, Finney decided to head into the woods near his home and pray to the God of the Bible, saying:
"I will give my heart to God, or I never will come down from there."
After several hours, he returned to his office, dramatically touched.
He later wrote:
"The Holy Spirit ... seemed to go through me, body and soul ...
Indeed it seemed to come in waves of liquid love, for I could not express it in any other way."
He went back to his law office, closed the door, knelt down and prayed all night.
He was startled when someone opened the door in the morning and entered his law office.
It was a church deacon suing a fellow-church member.
He asked Finney how his case was coming along.
Without hesitating, Finney replied:
"I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause, and cannot plead yours."
Finney immediately began to preach, presenting the Gospel with the manner of a convincing lawyer's argument.
Charles Finney began the tradition praying in common, colloquial language rather than in the formal King's English.
He began what became known as an "altar call" in his 1830 revival in Rochester, New York, stating:
"I had found, that with the higher classes especially, the greatest obstacle to be overcome was their fear of being known as anxious inquirers.
They were too proud ...
... Something was needed, to make the impression on them that they were expected at once to give up their hearts;
something that would call them to act, and act as publicly before the world, as they had in their sins;
something that would commit them publicly to the service of Christ ...
I had called them simply to stand up in the public congregations ... to bring them out from among the mass of the ungodly, to a public renunciation of their sinful ways, and a public committal of themselves to God."
Finney's revival preaching paved the way for evangelists:
- Henry Ward Beecher,
- Dwight L. Moody,
- Billy Sunday,
- Jack Coe,
- A.A. Allen,
- Aimee Semple McPherson,
- Kathryn Kuhlman,
- TL Osborn,
- Oral Roberts,
- Jimmy Swaggart,
- Luis Palau,
- Reinhard Bonnke.
- T.L. Osborn,
- Robert Schuller,
- Pat Robertson,
- Billy Graham, and many others.
Finney organized the Broadway Tabernacle in New York in 1831.
A person who was converted in 1842 at Finney's Broadway Tabernacle in New York City was Jeremiah Lamphier, who began the Layman's Prayer Revival in 1857.
Finney served as the President of Oberlin College, 1851-1866, during which time the school served as a station on the Underground Railroad, smuggling slaves to freedom.
Under Finney's leadership, Oberlin College granted the first college degree in the United States to a black woman, Mary Jane Patterson.
His preaching fueled the abolitionist movement.
Charles Finney's 1835 Revival Lectures inspired George Williams to found the YMCA-Young Men's Christian Association in 1844.
Finney's sermons inspired William and Catherine Booth to found what would be called The Salvation Army in 1865.
Charles Finney formed the Benevolent Empire, a network of volunteer organizations to aid poor and aged with healthcare and social needs, which in 1834 had a budget rivaling the Federal Government.
Back then, there was no government run welfare programs.
It was churches, ministries, and volunteer organizations that took care of the sick and poor.
In the Scriptures, commands are given to 5 main groups:
- individuals
- families
- business: employer-employees
- church
- government.
• INDIVIDUALS are instructed, among other things, to be charitable to the poor, visit the sick and imprisoned, and act like the good Samaritan.
• FAMILIES are given relational commands, such as husbands love your wives, children submit to your parents, provide for those of your own household, etc., though there is the command to provide for your family members or you are "worse than an infidel." (ITimothy 5:8)
• BUSINESS: employers are told not to hold back wages; and employees are told to give an honest day's work. though there is the command to leave the corners of your fields for the poor to glean. (Leviticus 23:22)
• CHURCHES are told, among other things, to be charitable, feed the hungry, visit the sick and the imprisoned, take care of the poor, infirm, widows, orphans, maimed soldiers, unwed mothers, shut-ins, homeless, juvenile delinquents, and immigrants, etc.
Historically, churches have fulfilled this command, starting hospitals, orphanages, missions, schools, universities, and other Christian aid organizations, with some even vowing to give their lives in such service.
• GOVERNMENT has the shortest command, namely, protect the innocent and punish the guilty.
There is no Biblical command for government to help the poor, take care of the sick, dispense healthcare, operate schools, provide jobs, or other entitlements.
Naive voters, politicians, and church leaders get these five categories mixed up.
Many churches have neglected responsibilities only to have government usurp them.
Just because something needs to be done does not mean it is the governments job to do it.
President Coolidge stated May 15, 1926:
"The Federal Government ought to resist the tendency to be loaded up with duties ...
It does not follow that because something ought to be done the national government ought to do it."
James Madison explained to Congress, 1794:
"The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects …
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
Davy Crockett served 3 terms in the U.S. Congress between 1827 and 1835, before dying at the Texas Alamo.
When Congress was debating whether to use taxes collected from citizens to redistribute to someone in need, Davy Crockett gave a speech “Not Yours to Give”:
"Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity.
Every member on this floor knows it.
We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity;
but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money … as charity ...
The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man ...
Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please.
I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."
President Grover Cleveland opposed Federal welfare, vetoing of the Texas Seed Bill in 1887:
"I do not believe that the power ... of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering ...
Tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power ... should ... be steadfastly resisted ...
Charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune.
This has been repeatedly demonstrated ...
Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character,
while it prevents ... among our people of that kindly sentiment ... which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."
Finney's preaching during the Second Great Awakening Revival motivated Christians to show the love of Christ to the world through actions, such as founding:
- hospitals,
- orphanages,
- schools,
- homes for the aged,
- missionary societies,
- caring for the poor, and
- forming abolitionist societies to end slavery.
Finney died August 16, 1875.
Concerning the Kingdom of God, he wrote:
"Every member must work or quit. No honorary members."
After his death, some took the misguided step and began preaching a "social gospel" which emphasized only works, and left out the vital message of salvation through the shed blood of Christ.
This movement advocated progressive change but neglected to evangelize through the Gospel.
At length, it became completely divorced from the motivation to bring people to a saving faith in Jesus.
This offshoot morphed into "liberation theology" and "social justice" groups.
II Corinthians 11:4 "For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it!"
Galatians 1:8 "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed."
An incident of this came to Oklahoma in the early 1900s.
Territory controlled by cotton landowners was rented to tenant farmers who arrived from southern states in search of opportunity.
Rents and interest became exorbitant, compounded by poor soil and boll weevil pestilence.
The Smithsonian Magazine, "When Socialism Came to Oklahoma" (Oct. 2019) described how in 1907, German-born socialist Oscar Ameringer arrived and began agitating with a version of liberation theology and social justice.
He attracted Christian tenant farmers by portraying Jesus as a carpenter throwing money changers out of the temple.
He quoted scriptures, saying that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven.
Ameringer imitated revival meetings, with thousands attending his week long camps to hear him promise a socialist utopian paradise on earth – a Cooperative Commonwealth.
He eventually organized 20,000 followers by telling them they would own all the land, all the while hiding from them socialism's goal of eliminating all private property.
Ameringer's followers robbed banks, burned barns, dynamited farm equipment, cut telegraph lines, set fire to bridges, and threatened to murder snitches.
In 1917, the same year of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, Ameringer's Green Corn Rebellion took place.
Dodging the World War I draft and armed with Winchesters, shotguns and squirrel-guns, they hatched a delusional plot to march toward Washington and overthrow the capitalist government.
In response, the local sheriff recruited a posse of 1,000 Oklahomans to pursue and surround them on Spears Mountain, where they surrendered.
Another instance of believing "another gospel" was that of of Manning Johnson, a black man who lost faith in America and joined the socialist-- communist movement.
In 1935, he ran as the Communist Party USA's candidate for the U.S. Congress in New York's 22nd District.
After ten years, Johnson came to realize that communists cared little for the plight of the black community but were simply using them to bring political division.
He wrote:
"Thoroughly disillusioned, I abandoned communism. The experiences of those years in 'outer darkness' are like a horrible nightmare."
He testified in 1947 before Congress on the subversive plots of deep-state communist operatives.
In 1958, Manning Johnson wrote an exposé titled Color, Communism and Common Sense, with the Foreword written by Lt. Col. Archibald B. Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Less than a year after publishing his tell-all book, Johnson was killed in a suspicious automobile accident – "a veil of mystery obscures the true circumstances of Manning Johnson’s death."
Johnson explained how communists manipulated liberal churches to de-emphasize forgiveness of sins through faith in the shed blood of Christ and replace it with a "social justice" message of Jesus being a Palestinian activist:
"The new line went like this: Jesus, the carpenter, was a worker like the communists. He was against the 'money changers,' the 'capitalists,' the 'exploiters' of that day.
That is why he drove them from the temple. The communists are the modern day fighters against the capitalists or money changers. If Jesus were living today, he would be persecuted like the communists."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent 11 year in gulags, said in 1975:
“I ... call upon America to be more careful ... Prevent those ... from falsely using the struggle for social justice to lead you down a false road.”
Some of these social justice groups use tactics of agitation, division, community organizing, and violence to achieve their goals.
Community organizer Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals:
"Disruption ... is the first step ...
The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community;
fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression ...
Search out controversy ...
Create the issues or problems ...
Stir up dissatisfaction and discontent ...
The organizer ... polarizes the issue ... to lead his forces into conflict ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody."
This movement sows discord in a way which Jesus would have condemned.
Proverbs 6:
"These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him ...
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."
Charles Finney insisted the Christians not neglect the main purpose of the Gospel, namely, reconciling men and women to God through the cross of Jesus.
He wrote in his article, "The Decay of Conscience" (The Independenct of New York, December 4, 1873):
"Christ crucified for the sins of the world is the Christ that the people need.
Let us rid ourselves ... of neglecting to preach the law of God until the consciences of men are asleep.
Such a collapse of conscience in this land could never have existed if the Puritan element in our preaching had not in great measure fallen out."
What Finney was saying was that the Law shows us our need for the Lamb.
If God's law is not preached, people will not know that they have broken it, and will not see their need for a Savior to save them from judgement.
Jesus did not erase God's law, instead He paid the penalty for us breaking it.
The more we are aware of how we have sinned, the more we appreciate Jesus, the Lamb of God, taking the punishment for all our sins upon Himself.
Isaiah 53:
"The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all ...
My righteous Servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities ... He bore the sin of many."
Charles Finney warned:
"If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree.
If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it.
... If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.
Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation."
Finney's insistence on leaders having virtue and courageous backbone was an effort to counteract weak-willed politicians who were easily compromised by intimidation and manipulation.
A common way politicians are manipulated is:
1) Use monetary and sex bribery to put politicians into compromised situations;
2) Once they have fallen for the temptations, they can be controlled by threats of public exposure, blackmail, political and financial ruin, physical harm, and even death to them and their loved ones.
Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan uncovered that politicians and deep-state government bureaucrats act in their own self-interest when making policy decisions.
James Buchanan's economic insight, summarized by Matt Schudel of Boston.com (Jan. 10, 2013), was that politicians have a tendency to vote for programs which benefit their elections:
"Since the policy makers' goal was to be reelected or to maintain power, they did not always act in the best interest of the public, or at least of public finances.
Lawmakers routinely voted for programs popular with their constituents, but they were reluctant to ask for corresponding tax increases.
... 'There's a natural proclivity for them to create deficits unless they are constrained by some moral rule or some constitutional rule,' James Buchanan told the Washington Post in 1986."
Charles Finney gave the antidote to the selfish motivations of corrupt politicians in Lecture XV "Hindrances to Revival" (Revival Lectures, 1855):
"The church must take right ground in regard to politics.
Do not suppose, now, that I am going to preach a political sermon, or that I wish to have you join and get up a Christian party in politics.
No, I do not believe in that.
But the time has come that Christians must vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics, or the Lord will curse them ..."
Finney continued:
"They must be honest men themselves, and instead of voting for a man because he belongs to their party, Bank or Anti-Bank, Jackson, or Anti-Jackson, they must find out whether he is honest and upright, and fit to be trusted ...
Every man can know for whom he gives his vote. And if he will give his vote only for honest men, the country will be obliged to have upright rulers ..."
Finney stated further:
"The church must act right or the country will be ruined.
God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the church will take right ground.
Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God.
... It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation were becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics.
But I tell you, He does see it, and He will bless or curse this nation, according to the course they take."
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Such an important message! We need to return to the truths in Blackstone and teach our fellow citizens about this!