Revolution

0:13 I am so happy to be here. I got to joke when I'm happy. I love this church. I love your pastor. It's a privilege to be here. And it really is a privilege to get to talk on Memorial Day weekend because it is sacred. It is sacred. And I was saying in the other services that really we need to observe these days. It's not just like, oh, a day I get a day off. But we need to take time to understand that people have died. Men have died for our freedom. And that's real and that's serious, you know. And we may be called upon to sacrifice or to make the ultimate sacrifice. And it's a joy to live in a country where we are free. But we have to understand that people paid a price and we need to revere them and honor them. And one of the ways that we do that, I think, is by knowing their stories, by knowing their names, by knowing who these heroes were. And in the case of the American Revolution, who are the heroes that sacrificed everything so that we could have this country?

1:20 And again, most of us, it's our inclination to take it for granted, kind of think, well, listen, I got my problems, you know, but okay, we live in America. What about it? Well, what about it is most people in the world would do anything they could to live in this country. We need to understand what we have is not normal. The liberties we have are not normal. The freedom we have is not normal. But where did these freedoms come from? What's this whole idea of freedom? We have an opportunity in this 250th, which is the supercentennial. That's the official term. I don't know if you knew that. Did you know that? People don't know that. Now you know. Now you're on the hook for that information. It's the supercentennial of America. And honestly, we need to know these stories. This is an opportunity to relearn those stories. And it's why I wrote this book, because I thought we need to know our history. And I kind of have a feeling that if you took a microphone around 1960 and just put in somebody's face in Main Street America, people kind of know this stuff.

2:19 They kind of knew these stories. But it sort of drifted out of the culture, right? We've seen this happen. Now, some of you, you know this stuff. But most of us, you know, in our busy lives, it's kind of drifted out of the culture. And we don't know the names of some of these heroes. And I wrote this book because I thought when you know who these people are, you can't help but get excited about them. you you will think like how did I not know the story of Henry Knox you know getting the cannons from Ticonderoga that's a mind-blowing crazy story what a what a hero and uh or many of the folks that you know whose names some of them you'll know some you won't so I said I need to to tell that story tell those stories in a book and it's interesting because I did not expect when I went to tell these stories. I just want to tell a straight, it's a history book. It's not a book, it's not Christian history.

3:11 It's just history, just American history. And people are saying, what's your angle on the revolution? I said, I have no angle. I just want to tell the story because I think it's exciting. I know enough to know that it's exciting and that we owe a debt to everyone who died for this country. We owe a debt to the men of the revolution who sacrificed everything, some of whom suffered and died. we owe a debt to them to know these stories and I just want to tell that story in one book they could just give to somebody go here it's all in here this is how America came into being and why it came into being so I have no angle but in the course of doing the research because I read a lot of books some information started popping out I mean go how did I not know that how did I know I've never seen that before I've never seen that before and what is the heart of my surprise in the research was that the story of the birth of this nation is outrageously Christian. It is undeniably, inescapably, outrageously Christian, wall-to-wall stories of Christian faith, animating the men of the revolution. And it was Christian theology that gave them the impetus to do what they did because they said, we believe our rights come from God. You know, that doesn't, you don't get that from the Koran. You don't get that from, you know, reading the French Enlightenment philosophers. I think a lot of people, you know, when they talk about the rules, they go, oh, it came out of the French Enlightenment and Jefferson. Baloney. That's, can I say that word?

4:50 I guess when I discover certain things, like sometimes I get angry. It's like, we've all been lied to that you could have liberty like we have. And it just kind of, oh, it just kind of happened in history. How did it happen? It happened because of Christian faith, period, end of sentence. That's it. You do not get these ideas anywhere else. It doesn't mean that you can't be a nice person who's an atheist or a nice person who's a Muslim or a nice person. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the philosophy of, you know, slavery should be abolished comes from scripture, that idea. The idea that we have liberty given to us by God. These ideas come from the Bible, and we need to be honest about this. You don't need to be a Christian, but you need to be honest about history.

5:43 And all the ideas in the revolution, when you do the research, it's just inescapable. So again, you don't need to agree with it or like it, but you need to be honest about how did this country come into being? And so it all starts, of course, you know, in the Reformation. You know, in the Reformation, suddenly all these kinds of people start putting value on the Bible, start reading the Bible for themselves. And many of those people wanted to worship God in a different way. And they decided to leave Europe because a continent had been discovered by Europeans that they could go to. And so they risked everything to come to a continent to worship God and have these Christian communities. And pretty much that's the story of the colonies, right? And the British kind of let them do their thing. They said they have a policy of salutary neglect. We just kind of let them do their thing and we trade with them and it's good for the economy.

6:37 But the British were not heavy-handed. They let the American colonists kind of do their thing. Until about 1763. What happened in 1763? And I tell that story. There's a lot of stories. But the bottom line is the British won the French and Indian War. And what that is, it's not really complicated. I mean, the British had their colonies, their empire, big empire. They had the 13 American colonies. The French had their own empire. Have you heard of the French? Good. The French had their own empire. And they had Canada. And they're kind of coming down the Ohio, starting to threaten the western border. of the 13 colonies. So the British said, you know, we need to flex our muscles and we need to get there. And, and the French and Indian war was started inadvertently by somebody history remembers as George Washington. He was 21 years old, kind of a hothead. Not really, but it's crazy. And it's one of the weird things in the beginning of this book that George Washington ends up being sent, you know, to the border of the, to confront the French at some point, where it leads to this, you know, trouble, which triggers the French and Indian War. So the French and Indian War ends in 1763. And the British have won big time, they have doubled their empire, they've trounced the French, they won Canada. So it's kind of funny, Voltaire, the philosopher Voltaire, he kind of actually got big deal. He just, he refers to Canada as a few acres of snow, which I find very funny. Remember that. So, but the bottom line is the French have lost and the British have doubled their empire.

8:27 So 1763, they've doubled their empire. They're, you know, big powerful empire, but they've also doubled their national debt. And they're thinking, well, we're a big empire. Now we need to govern, you know, we need to act like an empire. And so we need to administrate things and we need to get serious with the colonies. We've let them kind of, you know, have a good time for about 150 years. We need to get serious and get some tax from them. And so they do that. They impose what's called the sugar tax in 1764, 1765, the Stamp Act, which is a huge thing. I never thought I could get excited about the Stamp Act, but it's like one of my favorite things in the book. It's nuts. It is crazy because it was these, they imposed these taxes and the Americans were like, excuse me, we're not, we're not, we're not just going to pay because you're telling us we owe you money. You need to explain to us why are you taxing us? Do you have the right to tax us? I mean, if somebody puts a gun to your head and says, give me your money, you don't say, oh sure. You, you, you're going to instantly say, excuse me, it's not your money, right? And then you give them the money. But you know that just because they have the power to take it from you doesn't mean that it's their money. And so the British are like, well, we have the power and parliament says you owe us this money. And the Americans are naive enough to say, uh, we don't think we owe you this money or you need to explain to us, is this legitimate that we owe you the money? We've been governing ourselves over here. Yeah, we're British subjects, but we have our own assemblies. We're governing ourselves. What do you mean we owe you this money? And the British are like, shut up and pay. But the Americans were very biblically literate, very literate in terms of law. And they were not just going to do that. They didn't have like a cynical view. A lot of people have a cynical view toward government. It's all corrupt. Yeah, we got to pay the money.

10:21 No, the Americans thought, no, our rights come from God. We know this. You know, John Locke writes about it in 1688. And a lot of people wrote about it. Our rights come from God. The rights don't belong to the government. The government exists to protect our rights. And tax, we tax ourselves in our assemblies, you know, but you're just telling us we owe you. So it creates a conflict. And in that conflict now, we're now arguing about the big questions, the big questions, which for 150 years, the Americans were able free to kind of do their thing and the British kind of let him get away with it but now it's kind of come to a head and so the British are saying pay us the Americans saying no and it really it's it starts this process and when I was writing the book I never thought I'd write so much about the Stamp Act and what happens before Lexington and Concord but it is so fascinating what leads to Lexington and Concord John Adams calls it the revolution before the revolution something changed there was a dramatic Christian culture in the 13 colonies, where people really thought about what is right and what is wrong, not just sort of like, hey, what do we need to do to get ahead? I mean, they really believed in this stuff. It was a dramatically Christian culture, and that's what I also discovered. It was amazing. And so out of that Christian culture comes people that say, we believe these are our rights. Our rights come from God, and you can't just tell us what to do. And so the Stamp Act, the Americans, there are huge riots all around the 13 colonies against the Stamp Act. People are writing letters and essays and writing petitions to Congress. It becomes a thing. So in a sense, because the king and parliament are pushing the colonies, the colonies are sort of waking up and beginning to unify and saying, we need to kind of talk to each other about what do we do about this. So that's bad for the British. They had a good thing going. They should have shut up and let it go. But they insisted. And it's a funny thing too, because there's so much in here, but

12:26 part of it has to do with pride. It was their pride more than principles. They were like, what do you mean you don't have to pay us? We're parliament. We can tell you what to do. And, you know, the Americans were like, yeah, we know you can tell us what to do. We know you have the power to tell us what to do, but the right, we don't think you have the right. And the Americans were dramatically Christian. Most of them were very Christian and they had this idea that we answer to God. We don't answer to man. And so just because you tell us, we're not going to do it. So that conflict escalates. So the Stamp Act is repealed. Finally, you know, Parliament says, okay, we'll back off. We know it's not going well and we know whatever. But they refused to acknowledge that they didn't have the right to tax the colonies. Their attitude was like, we still say, you know, your rights come from us, not from God. They didn't say that explicitly, but that's clearly what they believed. So it leads to more and more conflict. Eventually, it leads to the Boston Massacre. Some of you know that story, an amazing story. And the whole story of the revolution, it's an epic story of many stories. And I really do feel it is our job as Americans to know these stories, to teach these stories to our kids, what happened at the Boston massacre. I don't have time to tell you now, but it's an amazing story. What actually happened.

13:44 What happened at the Boston Tea Party? The Boston Tea Party is another crazy story. 1773, where the British, they keep trying to kind of figure out, they kind of have this attitude. British elite culture was pretty irreligious. Very sharp contrast with American culture. American culture was pretty Christian. The cultural elites are Christian. John Adams, dramatically Christian. Samuel Adams, dramatically Christian. The Sons of Liberty, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, they were dramatically Christian. George Washington, dramatically Christian. Don't let anybody ever tell you he was a deist or a deist. Baloney. Can I say that? Good. In a way, these are vile lies because they're not only not true, but they're leading you in a false direction, to think that these men were not Christians and that this country was not born because of Christian values. It's just not escapable. You do not need to be a Christian to see that. And I think we used to teach that, but I think, again, we've kind of drifted away from that idea. But part of what I learned in studying this is not only is our founding dramatically Christian, but the cultures, as I mentioned, of Great Britain, the elites in Britain were decidedly unchristian. And when you get to the war, the way they fought the war, they were barbaric. And you get letters from John Adams, letters from George Washington, talking about the barbarity of the British, raping, pillaging, murdering, things that you can't, you know, they hired the Hessians. Some of you know the Hessians were German mercenaries.

15:28 They hired them deliberately to terrorize the Americans because they knew the Hessians aren't going to play by Marcus of Queensbury rules. Neither were the British very much. But they also hired the Native Americans. Why? Because they knew that the Native Americans of that day would terrorize the civilian population. That's why they brought them in. so in other words that's called doing anything to win how can we terrorize you into submission so you'll shut up and pay your tax and be good colonists it's a brutal history it's a brutal history and so i was amazed to see that the british would do anything to to win that when the americans many times when they said okay we surrender the british would bayonet them to death you think you know this thing calling for quarter you say we surrender and normally in warfare they'd be like okay you know but they they allowed their soldiers and the soldiers that they hired to brutalize their enemies um i never really heard that in school but it's true it's dramatically true i mean there's so many examples of this i had to prevent myself from writing too much about it but the British would do anything to win, and they had a cynical attitude toward the Christians in America, but the Americans, and again, this is just, it was shocking to me, over and over again, George Washington and John Adams and others say, we must honor God in how we fight.

17:04 Who talks like that? We must honor God in how we fight. We will not stoop to what the British are doing. The British will do every barbarous thing to win. We will not stoop to that because we actually believe that if we honor God, he will honor us. Who talks like that? Crazy people or people who actually believe God actually exists and God actually sees us and operates in history. And if you believe that about God, you're not a deist. So when people say the men of the river, they were deists. No, no, deists don't believe in any of this stuff. And almost everybody involved in the revolution believed in this, that if we fight in a way that honors God, God will honor us. That's a covenantal idea, right? And that goes all the way back, and as all of this does, goes all the way back to Sinai, that if we honor God, God will honor us. You know, blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord.

18:01 The Puritan theology that you have in most of America, especially in Boston where it all started, they believe this firmly, not a little bit, firmly. They had a covenant idea that we must honor God. If we honor God, he will honor us. Now, if God doesn't exist, you're a fool. But if God does exist, that's wisdom. Well, the British didn't believe that. They thought that's a joke. Of course, we're going to crush them. We have the power to crush the most powerful army, most powerful Navy. They have no Navy. The Americans have no Navy. We're going to crush them. so that's kind of the background and I was really astonished to see that this is like a battle between good and evil if you are listening to stories of where you're like who are the good guys who are the bad guys in this movie you'd be like well there's no question these are the good guys and these are the bad guys I don't know who's gonna win but I'll tell you these are bad guys now this is not true in every case not every American not every British but mostly yes and one of the the telling things when you're kind of getting the flavor of what you're dealing with George Washington was tremendously upright, very virtuous and very willing to submit to Congress and play by the rules.

19:09 And he was very strong in speaking to his officers about how they would fight, that we will not stoop to what the British will stoop to. Don't you dare. We will treat our prisoners the way we want to be treated if we're prisoners. These are Christian values. And he's being very clear that, you know, make sure your men attend services on Sunday, if not every morning. And don't gamble and don't swear.

19:37 Because we believe God sees our behavior and we want God to honor us. They believe this is a sacred cause. This is not just a battle for power. We believe we're standing up for God's values. I never heard that growing up. And you don't hear much of that in the culture, but it's inescapable. I read a lot of books and I thought, this is everywhere. How come we don't all know this? We need to know this. so I put it in the book obviously but it is an astonishing thing one example of the decadence of the British I mean the decadence of the British it all it becomes funny there's a few points in the book where you're gonna have to laugh like you just can't believe how decadent they were um there was uh one example to me is that when I think of George Washington George Washington was known to be a faithful husband and a good man and and on and on and on I mean, he was known for that. His counterpart on the British side, General Howe, was known by everybody to have a mistress.

20:37 Everybody knew that. So it's not bad enough that he had a mistress with a wife back in London, but everybody knew he had a mistress. Everybody's like, well, of course, what do you expect? The decadence was part of that culture. Decadence, political corruption, everybody shrugged at it. And at one point, that's kind of what turned Benjamin Franklin to become such a staunch patriot because he was really hoping to reconcile things. Franklin lived in London for 18 years. I was amazed when I was like, 18 years? Wow. He lived there for 18 years and he saw himself as sort of this embodiment of, you know, the new British citizen, American, British, we're going to reconcile. And at some point he sees the level of corruption in British politics and the, it can't work. And he knew I need to stand for independence at some point. So it's kind of amazing. There's so much that I'm leaving out, but I just wanted to tell the story of the revolution. But, but as I say, the Christian character, it became clearer and clearer to me. And so as the story goes, you know, there are these conflicts after the French and Indian war over taxes, so on and so forth. You get the, you You get the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

21:50 And that, it's a funny story because I don't know if this ever happens to you, but you're reading a history book and you're sort of not getting it, right? Like I'm doing the research on the Boston Tea Party. I'm like, I still don't understand why did they throw the tea in the harbor? You know, you read about it, but you feel like I'm missing something. So I really had to read a lot to get it. And really what it boiled down to, it's kind of amazing. the British government was in bed with the East India Company, a gigantic powerful company that starts to go wobbly. They may go bankrupt. And everybody in parliament is making big money off the East India Company. Have you heard of corruption in government where people, we don't have that here. But in those days they had it. And so, so parliament votes, they try to figure we got to bail out the East India Company. If they go down, we go down. I don't want to give up my third home.

22:43 So they make a cynical deal where they basically say, listen, we'll pass a law because we can. We'll pass a law that cuts out the middleman in selling East India tea to the Americans. Because the Americans were opting for the cheaper Dutch tea. They don't have to pay the British taxes or the duties or whatever. And they said, you know, because the Americans had a principal problem. Their problem is like, we don't believe we should pay British taxes. We don't like this idea. They're forcing us to do that. So we're going to get the tea from the Dutch. We don't have to pay tax. And the British thought, well, we'll pass a law so that we will make the tea so cheap. We'll keep the tax on there, but we'll make the tea so cheap that we will force them to buy it. And they'll put aside their precious Christian principles if the price is right. But that's when the British discovered, yeah, the Americans have this weird thing called actual principles.

23:39 We don't have that over here. You know, we're kind of cynical. But they're religious and they believe in this stuff and they believe that it's wrong to do it. And so the bottom line is the Americans said we will never, you know, we'll die before we buy that tea. And that leads to the Boston Tea Party, which I won't go into. But it's amazing when you understand the roots of how this all happened. and how principled the men were standing up for liberty and saying, we're not just gonna do whatever we need to do to get by. We're gonna stand by our principles. In short, we're gonna trust God. They actually believed that they could do that, that they could trust the Lord. And so, of course, it all leads to Lexington and Concord. My wife and I were just in Lexington and Concord for a Socrates in the City retreat. and it is very moving to be in these places where this actually happened. You know, if you read those chapters in my book and then you go there and you think, wow, it happened right here.

24:38 And what happened? What happened was, you know, the British, in a sense, they start sending troops to the colonies because, you know, we're getting real uppity and they don't like the fact that we dare to tell them we're not going to pay our taxes. So they send troops. They make it worse and worse and worse. and the Americans thought, well, we're not going to, we're not going to fire first because we have Christian values, but if you attack us, we will fight. So don't attack us because we will fight. And so at Lexington on the green, the British, you know, something kind of happens. It's kind of like the Boston massacre. We don't know who fired the shot. We don't know what happened, But a shot is fired and suddenly all hell breaks loose and people are murdered, shot in the back. It's a gruesome story, actually. But at that moment, the Americans, you know, Emerson famously called it the shot heard around the world.

25:35 The shot heard around the world. When the American farmers and simple people said, we're not going to lie down. If you're going to kill us, we're going to fight back. and that day I tell you it's it's a day April 19th 1775 it's an amazing moment that these people said we are are are men and women of principle and we will fight back we believe we have our rights and we're not going to go to war over it but if you fire on us we will fire back and that's when the war begins and so shortly thereafter you have the battle of Bunker Hill and again I'm going to tell you the details here. It's all in the book, but I got to tell you, these are amazing stories and every American should know these stories. Whether you get it from my book or you get it someplace else, we're responsible for this information. In our 250th year, every American needs to know these stories. We need to know the names of Israel Putnam and Dr. Joseph Warren.

26:31 These are heroes. We owe a lot to these heroes. We owe a lot to these heroes and we need to know their stories. If you're talking about 1775, so now the British are bottled up after Lexington and Concord. They're on the Boston Peninsula, which in those days was a peninsula. It was before they did all this landfill. So they're kind of bottled up on this peninsula. And it's a stalemate with the American militia. They've come from all over New England. They're ready. And there's this stalemate and it goes on for months and George Washington uh he was really you know wanting to fight he's a very brave man but they have very little gunpowder and they have no cannon and so he sends somebody some of you know the story Henry Knox what a hero what an amazing hero profound Christian. He goes 300 miles from Boston up to Fort Ticonderoga, which is at the base of Lake Champlain and Lake George. It was a very strategic fort. And he goes 300 miles, gets 120,000 pounds of cannon and hauls them with oxen and horses, 300 miles over frozen rivers, over the Berkshire mountains, 300 miles to Boston. It's one of the greatest feats in military history. It's insane. And every one of us should know that story. And that's why I wrote about it. And the only reason I even knew about it myself was because when I was in fifth grade,

28:17 my history teacher in fifth grade, who was teaching all these nine and 10 year olds about the American Revolution, he magically brought this to life so that it haunted me for 50 years. And I said, well, if I'm writing about the revolution, I got to write about Henry Knox going up in the ice and snow to Ticonderoga. It's one of these great stories. It's amazing. So he succeeds. He brings the cannon to Boston and they put them up on Dorchester Heights, overlooking the Boston Peninsula, overlooking Boston Harbor. And, you know, they do this undercover of darkness. It's the whole, every detail is crazy and amazing. And you know, one morning general Howe wakes up and he looks up and there are cannons on Dorchester Heights. And he's thinking, Oh, we got some problems here. How did that happen? How did that happen? Well, I'll spare you the details, but it's an insane moment. And he basically knows we're done. We cannot, you know, they've outgunned us. Literally, we got to get out of here. So he makes a deal with Washington, if you let us leave Boston, we won't burn the town. So they let them leave. They skedaddle over the horizon. They go up to Halifax to kind of, you know, lick their wounds, but they'll be back. They'll be back. Now, this happened on May 17th, 1776. Huge victory for Washington and the Americans. They've chased the British out. And Washington and Congress, to celebrate this huge victory, Congress calls for a national day of prayer and fasting for May 17th, 1776.

29:57 That was 250 years ago last week. And on the 250th anniversary on the mall in Washington, D.C., we officially rededicated the nation to God to mark that day. and I had the privilege of speaking there and and when I spoke there I talked about the miracles that God did in the revolution because the men of the revolution knew that without God they could not succeed so they humbled themselves before God they called for national days of prayer and fasting to acknowledge God to thank God they believed in this this Puritan idea of covenantal theology, that we're going to covenant with God. They were really looking back to the Sinai covenant to say, we're going back to where we look directly to God and God will bless us if we look to him. And so on May 17th, recently, I spoke about the miracles that God did, one of which was a few months later in 1776, the Americans were trapped in New York.

31:06 they should have been wiped out and again if you know the details some of you know the story they should have been wiped out but God did a miraculous thing a fog comes that makes them basically invisible and they're able to retreat across the east river to Manhattan to fight another day anybody was there knew this is insane this is a miracle of God we should be dead but there are Innumerable examples of that. When I spoke about this on the mall in D.C. last week, after I made these comments about these miracles, I had to kind of pivot to introduce the young woman to sing the national anthem. So I had to say something about the War of 1812. And I mentioned that in 1812, the British burned the White House. And I had to crack a stupid joke. And I said, and if you can believe it, ladies and gentlemen, in those days, the White House had no ballroom. and it got a cheap laugh and i said but finally 200 years later god raised up a man to give us the ballroom that we need you know what i was a stupid joke right so the press just to show you what were times we're living in cnn people magazine everybody reported it like i actually said it's god's will that we build the ballroom it said something like maga pastor i don't know was a pastor, somebody should tell my wife, MAGA pastor says it's God's will to build a ball. I just had to throw that in. Like we're living in insane times. Like, you know, it's like you got to laugh and cry and laugh and cry. So, but the point of that is that on May 17th of 1776, Congress called for a national day of fasting and prayer to acknowledge God because they knew that either we're on God's side or we're dead. Either the Lord is with us or we're dead. So we bow before him because we know he's real. We will fight his way. We will not stoop to do what the British will do.

33:07 We will not hire anybody who wants to terrorize our enemies. We're not going to win anyway. We're going to win God's way or we don't want to win. Folks, that's the only way to live. If you're not living that way, God wants you to live that way. He wants you to obey him. Is there anything in your life where you're not obeying God, don't ask him to help you with your problems because you don't really believe in him if you're not obeying him in everything. Now I know we're all fallen, but the point is that we know when we give our lives to God and we know when we're holding something back. And if you're holding something back, God cannot bless you even though he wants to bless you. And so we have to be honest with ourselves. Are we being obedient to what God is saying in our lives? Are we saying, yeah, sort of. Well, God cannot bless you if you have a sort of faith. You either trust him or you don't. And the Americans, the American leaders knew that we want to trust God. And if we trust God, we believe he's with us. And I'll tell you, there's so much of that.

34:12 There's a passage in 1 Samuel 12, 12, where the Israelites, now this is so, what's so interesting to me is that all of the founders understood that we're looking back to the Sinai covenant. Now you don't hear about this, but this is, again, if you read my book, you'll see it. And if you do your own research, you'll see it. But a lot of people, they don't want to talk about that, that they were all looking back, the founders, the revolutionary era, they were looking back to the Sinai covenant and saying, we're going to get rid of this King, King George III, and we're going to replace him with the king of kings. We're going to look directly to God. We're going to get out from under Pharaoh and we're going to get free, but we're not just going to get free to kind of do our own thing. We're going to be free so that we can now worship God. And the revolutionary era understood this idea and they're explicit about it. Samuel Adams actually preaches a sermon right before they signed the Declaration of Independence. He preaches on the steps of Independence Hall to everybody in Congress and says, we have this day restored the sovereign, capital S.

35:23 So we have independence from Great Britain and King George, but we have dependence on the King of Kings. We're looking to the Lord of hosts. We're covenanting with him. He is the one that we look to. This had never been done in human history since Sinai. And so you have this example, actually Thomas Paine writes about this in Common Sense. He's telling the Americans, you know, you need to break away from Great Britain. The idea of monarchy is a bad idea. And where does Thomas Paine look to make this case? He looks to the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. In the passage in 1 Samuel 12, 12 is Samuel saying, when you saw that Nahash, king of the Ammonites, came against you, you said to me, no, but a king shall reign over us. It's like, okay, we're losing, but give us a king like the other nations. And he continues. He says, when the Lord, your God was your king, that you wanted an earthly king, the Lord, your God was your king. Now, therefore here is the king whom you have chosen. It's like, this is what you want.

36:25 This is like when Jesus says that Moses gave you divorce because of the hardness of your hearts. Is that what you want here? It's not going to go well for you, but I'll give it to you if you insist. that's what the revolutionaries understood that we are going to reject the idea of an earthly king king george iii but we're not going to replace him with nothing we're this is not the french revolution where we throw off the shackles and we're free no no we throw off the shackles and we're bound by the lord we look to the lord directly we covenant with the lord that's what the founders understood and that what i'm telling you is true that's been wiped from history you barely hear that. And so I discovered it everywhere. And I thought, I got to put this in the book. I got to tell my fellow Americans, this is our history. This is not Christian history. This is American history. You don't need to like it. You don't need to be a Christian, but this is American history. This is how we got the liberties we did. And the only reason our revolution was successful is because we did not say, you know, we're free, we're free. We said we're free because we get our liberties from the Lord. And unless we obey the Lord, we have no liberties. And unless we love the Lord, unless we serve the Lord, we can't be free. The reason I titled my book Revolution and not the American Revolution is because it's the only real revolution that ever succeeded.

37:50 When people say the French Revolution, the French Revolution is a joke, folks. The French Revolution failed. Why? Because they wanted all that stuff, freedom, liberty, egalité, fraternity. They wanted that, but they didn't acknowledge God. They didn't understand that unless we obey God, how are we going to govern ourselves? Okay, so the king's not going to govern us. Okay, the nobles aren't going to govern us. Okay, who's going to govern us? Oh, we're going to govern ourselves. How are you going to do that? Why are you going to govern yourselves? All of our founders understood that unless the people govern themselves, it can't work, but the only way they can govern themselves is if they bow to God. And so this is, John Adams famously said, you know, our constitution is made for a moral and religious populace. It's wholly inadequate to the government of any other. All the founders understood that if we're not people of virtue, if we're not people looking directly to the Lord, to our king, who is the Lord, we're not gonna govern ourselves.

38:51 It'll be chaotic. And whoever emerges as the strong man, he'll govern. So you don't like that strong man? Okay, great, get rid of him. another one will replace him. They got rid of, you know, King Louis the 16th, and then they get Napoleon. That's the story, folks. This happens over and over in history. There's only one time it didn't happen, and that's in the American Revolution. And so the reason America is the greatest nation in the history of the world is not because we're better. We are no better. It's because of the Lord and because this form of government that allows us to look directly to the Lord. But if we don't look to the Lord, our liberties go away. We can become like French, the French nation after the revolution became a bloodbath. It became anarchy. That's what happens if you turn away from God. And so we need to know that the founders of this nation understood this concept and they directly looked to the Lord. Samuel Adams, he i mentioned he he gave that speech we have this day restored the sovereign but a year later when congress was uh scared because the british had taken over philadelphia because you know the war went on just because you cleared independence it doesn't mean everything's over you're still in a war we're in a spiritual war you've got to fight the war but you continue to look to god and you know that if the lord is with you you'll win eventually and by the way in case you don't know how it turns out. Spoiler alert, we won the revolution. Yes, thank you.

40:24 And so if you look to the Lord, but there's a dark moment where Congress is really scared in 1777. And once again, Samuel Adams preaching to Congress. Now think about this. He's not preaching to, in a church. He's preaching to Congress. And he says to them, as they're fearing that it looks like it's over. Philadelphia has been taken. It's not looking good. We have no money. We have no arms. Washington's army is weakened. What do we do? What do we do? Samuel Adams speaks to them and he says to them, we have appealed to heaven for the justice of our cause and in heaven we have placed our trust can you imagine a member of congress saying that to congress i mean if the fact that we laugh you realize that's not good that's this is congress this is the congress that gave us the United States of America.

41:33 The only reason they have a Congress today is because of this Congress. He says, numerous have been the manifestations of God's providence in sustaining us. He knew the miracles, the miracle of crossing the East River, the miracle of the crossing of the Delaware and defeating the British at Trenton. Miracle after miracle. Nobody wrote about miracles more than George Washington who saw over and over God's hand intervening.

41:59 And he says, in the gloomy period of adversity we have had our cloud by day and pillar of fire by night i i say in my book he knew he was not talking to a room of deists these were christian men who needed a little encouragement and he says to them we've been reduced to distress and the arm of omnipotence has raised us up let us still rely in humble confidence on him who is mighty to save. Good tidings will soon arrive. How did he know that? Is he speaking prophetically? Do you believe in the prophetic?

42:42 When you're speaking according to God's principles, you're speaking prophetically. He's saying that if we honor God, God will honor us. We don't know how, but we know God will honor us. He says, good tidings will soon arrive. we shall never be abandoned by heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection good tidings will soon arrive he's saying this in this bleak moment to congress this is like september 30th i think of 1777 about two weeks later north in saratoga new york burgoyne's army is wiped out by horatio gates and benedict arnold It's the greatest victory. The entire war shifts in the direction of the Americans at that moment. He's preaching good tidings will soon arrive. Have faith, my brothers, because we are looking to the Lord. We can trust the Lord.

43:36 And the Lord comes through so dramatically in the Battle of Saratoga. Everything changes. Everything changes. Now the French come in and the French are going to help us. Now the British are really worried. Oh, we've got a world war now. We've got the French involved. The French, oh yeah, they have a Navy. It's gonna be tough. That is called trusting God. And that's all of Congress, trusting in God. That's not just one. I mean, I have innumerable quotes from people. It was the normal thing in colonial America to look to God. And most of the men of the revolution did look to God. And I say this because there is no other way, ladies and gentlemen, There's no other way. We have to acknowledge God. We have to acknowledge the Christian roots of our founding. We have to acknowledge that the phrase in the Declaration that says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

44:32 Where does that idea come from? Where does the idea come from that all men are created equal? Well, how is that self-evident? What is that? That idea comes from the Bible. And everyone in the revolutionary era, all the men that signed the Declaration of Independence understood this is God's idea. And we're going to stand on this. This is the first time in world history since Sinai, since the Israelites 3,000 years before turned to the Lord, that we get as a nation to turn to the Lord. We hold these truths to be self-evident that we are endowed by our creator. God created us, and he endowed us with certain inalienable rights. this is as Christian as it gets. You can't get this from the French Enlightenment writers. You don't get this from atheist thinking.

45:27 You don't get this from the Quran. These are Bible ideas. Our founding, our declaration, this is biblical. And again, you don't need to be a Christian, but you gotta be honest about the truth. You gotta be honest about history. You gotta say, well, yeah, you got me there. There is no other way for us to have the liberties we have apart from understanding God gave us these liberties and that is our founding. And that is true in our lives. If we want to be free, the only way you can be truly free is by submitting to Jesus. You want freedom apart from that? The French wanted liberty, egalite, fraternity. It's like, I want the resurrection, but not the cross. Can we skip to Sunday? No, you can't. the Lord says, this is what I've ordained for you. Either you trust me or you don't. And if you trust me, you will see how much I love you and I will bless you.

46:22 I may not bless you in the timing or in the way that you want, but I'm God, I made you. I will bless you and you will know that I have blessed you. But you have to submit to me, you have to honor me. If our founders understood this and this nation came into being as a result of that, first of all, we have to thank God for that generation of leaders. We've got to thank God because they sacrificed and they suffered. If you read the book, you'll see they suffered. Washington suffered, but God gave them the victory. And the Lord wants to give us the victory. The Lord wants us to trust him and to know we cannot go wrong trusting God. So if there's anything in your life where you're not trusting God, or you have said, I haven't really committed my life to Jesus. I sort of, I'm sort of in. God didn't die on the cross for you to be sort of in. He wants to bless you outrageously. He wants you to live in the fullness of what he has called you to. He made you for beautiful things, but he will not force them on you. You have to look to him directly and say, Lord, whatever you have, I'm yours. That's the only way to live. God bless you and God bless America.