The American Soul
The American Soul
Biblical Wisdom for America's Soul: Scripture's Role in Liberty
We explore the crucial relationship between biblical principles and American liberty through scripture readings and historical quotes that highlight Christianity's role in our nation's founding.
• Scripture readings from 2 Corinthians 6-7, Psalm 47, and Proverbs 22 provide foundational insights
• Teaching our children about the importance of marrying believers is crucial for their future
• Historical quotes from Lord Acton, Theodore Frelinghuysen, and Noah Webster connect Christianity to liberty
• "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Lord Acton, 1881
• Noah Webster taught that "genuine source of correct Republican principles is the Bible"
• The spread of scripture, not denominational doctrine, is essential for preserving liberty
• Our responsibilities include reading the Bible daily and sharing its principles within our sphere of influence
God bless you, your families, your marriages, America, and your nation wherever you are in the world.
The American Soul Podcast
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Hey folks, this is Jesse Koeff, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. I'm going to try something a little different for a day or a few days and shorten the podcast up a little bit. We'll see how that goes. As always, for those of y'all who continue to support the podcast, tell others about it and to pray for me and for the podcast. Thank you so much, 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, for all your many blessings, father, the ones we admit, the ones we don't, for whatever reason. Thank you for the things that we take for granted, like clean water to drink, food, to eat, clothes to wear a roof over our heads when it's cold and rainy, or air conditioning that works when it's hot. Thank you for your word to read. Thank you for the people that have come before us, that have sacrificed so much in order for us to have that liberty, that luxury. Help us to never take it for granted. Help us to spread the gospel of your Son, jesus Christ. Help us to practice virtue, to follow the commands of your Son, jesus Christ, in all that we do to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Give us humility, father. Forgive us our pride, our arrogance. Forgive us all our sins. Forgive us the ones we go back to time and time again. Father, whatever that is for each of us sexual immorality, alcohol, drugs, lust, covetousness, adultery, greed Help us to truly repent. Give us the strength and courage and wisdom that we don't have on our own, father, to repent of these sins and turn away from them. And please guide my words here and be with all those who are listening, father. Be with their families, bless their marriages and help us all draw back to you and your Son, jesus Christ. Draw our nation here in America back to you and your Son and the nations of those listening around the world, wherever they are. Back to you and your son. In his name. We pray amen. So we're going to go into a little bit of the Bible. We're going to kind of change how we do that too, and we'll see how this goes. This is out of 2 Corinthians 6, verse 14, through chapter 7, verse 7.
Speaker 1:Don't team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God's temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will live in them and walk among them, I will be their God and they will be my people. Therefore, come out from among unbelievers and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord. Don't touch their filthy things and I will welcome you and I will be your father and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Because we have these promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit and let us work toward complete holiness, because we fear God. Please open your hearts to us. Please open your hearts to us. We have not done wrong to anyone, nor led anyone astray, nor taken advantage of anyone. I'm not saying this to condemn you. I said before that you are in our hearts and we live or die together with you. I have the highest confidence in you and I take great pride in you. You have greatly encouraged me and made me happy, despite all our troubles, when we arrived in Macedonia, there was no rest for us. We faced conflict from every direction, with battles on the outside and fear on the inside. But God, who encourages those who are discouraged, encouraged us by the arrival of Titus. His presence was a joy, but so was the news he brought, the encouragement he received from you. When he told us how much you longed to see me and how sorry you are for what happened and how loyal you are to me, I was filled with joy. Psalm 47, verses 1-9 Come everyone, clap your hands, shout to God with a joyful noise, for the Lord Most High is awesome. He is the great King of all the earth. He subdues the nations before us, putting our enemies beneath our feet. He chose the promised land as our inheritance, the proud possession of Jacob's descendants whom he loves. God has ascended with a mighty shout. The Lord has ascended with trumpets blaring. Sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises to our King. Sing praises, for God is the King over all the earth. Praise Him with a psalm. God reigns above the nations, sitting on His holy throne. The rulers of the world have gathered together with the people of the God of Abraham, for all the kings of the earth belong to God. He is highly honored everywhere Proverbs 22, 16. A person who gets ahead by oppressing the poor or by showering gifts on the rich will end in poverty. A couple things just quickly from 2 Corinthians. Don't team up with those who are unbelievers. Or how can righteousness partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can believer partner with an unbeliever?
Speaker 1:I don't think we talk to our children enough today folks especially inside the church about the importance of this scripture. We need to make sure that we're teaching our children how hard it makes life when you pair with an unbeliever and how much better it makes life when you marry a believer. It's the second most important decision they'll make in all their lives and we need to really treat it as such and teach our children that, just how important it is to marry someone who also has God and the Bible as their foundation, someone who also has God and the Bible as their foundation, so that when you have storms in marriage, you're both coming back to the same foundation. There was some good stuff in Psalm and Proverbs too, but we'll move on. So we're going to switch over and just read some quotes for the last little bit of the podcast from different places. Some of the sources for sure that I highly recommend are America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, american Patriots Bible and the Founders Bible. This is a couple quotes actually from Lord Acton Given name was John Emmerich Edward Dahlberg Acton.
Speaker 1:English historian, served as Regis Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Editor of Cambridge Modern History. This is from 1877. The great political idea sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men to treasure the liberties of others as their own and to defend them for the love of justice and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of what is great and good in the progress of the last 200 years. Also, l'adrien will recognize this quote. He wrote a letter to Bishop Mandel Crichton April 5th 1881.
Speaker 1:All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have definitely seen that throughout the 20th century and socialism, communism, nazism, fascism and beyond that with Islam folks, and you go back into earlier centuries with the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church in Europe. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a quote by a man who was a US Senator and President of Rutgers College, theodore Strangling. I know I murdered that and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Let the Bible find its way into every cottage. Until the whole mass of our population shall yield to its elevating power, the last hope of liberty will rest on foundations against which the winds and waves shall beat in vain. That's a huge point. Today, folks, we need to be doing everything we can, at every step within our sphere of influence, to encourage the spread of the Bible, of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we need to remember, as so many of that have said before, that we really are in America, the last, best hope for liberty on earth, for liberty on earth. And then you see that one of the reasons we need to read the Bible every day and help it to spread is we look back at these quotes from the earlier parts of our nation and we see these references to the Bible. We'll rest on foundations against which the winds and waves shall beat in vain. So many of our founders and early leaders put references to the Bible in their quotes and it gives you a stronger understanding of that connection between God and Jesus Christ in America when you know those quotes. And it's easier to deceive and manipulate people into believing that we were not born a Christian republic when you don't know those biblical references from the Bible? Obviously, noah Webster we've talked about him a number of times often called the father of American scholarship and education. This is out of his textbook History of the United States, which was published back in 1832. So quite a bit closer to our founding than we are today.
Speaker 1:Right, almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the Christian religion. It is the sincere desire of the writer that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct Republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion. The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety and benevolence, which acknowledges in every person brother or sister and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government. The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
Speaker 1:Again, folks, we see how important it is to read the Bible constantly how important it is for us to share it every chance we get, and not a particular denomination, not Baptist or Methodist or Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox or Church of Christ or anything else but Scripture. And if a denomination isn't basing their sharing the gospel on Scripture, if they're basing it on their doctrine above Scripture, they're not really spreading the gospel, they're just spreading their own particular church and that's not the same thing at all. But if we really want liberty, folks, we have to turn to those principles of Jesus Christ. We have to spread the Bible, spread the gospel of Christ. God bless y'all. God bless your families. God bless your marriages. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, we'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks, looking forward to it.