Why A Nation Rises Or Falls With Marriage

A single image can cut through your excuses. I start with a photo tied to the Holodomor, the Stalin-era famine that shows what happens when evil ideologies like communism are tolerated and truth is traded for comfort. It’s a sobering reminder that there are things worse than war and death, and it forces a personal question: if others endured horrors beyond imagining, what am I doing with the blessings God has given me?

From there, I pivot to the backbone of a healthy country and a healthy home. Ronald Reagan called the family the cornerstone of American society, and I unpack why that still holds up today, especially if you’ve seen what broken homes do to kids and classrooms. Then we go one layer deeper: marriage is the cornerstone of the family, and a shared foundation is non-negotiable when hard times hit. I argue plainly that the only lasting foundation is Jesus Christ, even when people don’t want to hear it.

We walk through key Bible passages on biblical marriage and Christian family values, including 1 Corinthians 7 on marital intimacy and temptation, Titus 2 on character and self-control across generations, Proverbs on the damage of constant contention, Hebrews 13:4 on honoring marriage and keeping it pure, and Ephesians 5 on love, respect, and sacrificial leadership. Along the way, I ask direct questions about pornography, infidelity, priorities, and whether we’re actually living in a way that makes the gospel attractive rather than easy to dismiss.

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Transcript

Patience For The Lord’s Return

SPEAKER_01 0:01

James five, starting with verse seven. Dear brothers and sisters, be patient as you wait for the Lord's return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen. You too must be patient. Take courage, for the coming of the Lord is near.

Welcome And Gratitude To Listeners

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of America's Christian Heritage Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well. Wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in, sure to appreciate you joining me here, uh giving me some of your day today. I will try and use it wisely. I appreciate it. Uh, for those of y'all that continue to uh join us here every couple weeks, and then also uh each day over on America's America Sold, American Soul Podcast, uh thank you. For those of y'all that continue to share them and tell others about them and leave reviews, thank you. I'm very grateful for that. Also for those of y'all that have checked out the countryside book series. Uh thank you for that. Hope you're enjoying it. Or your kids or your grandkids are, or you if you're the one reading it. Uh for those of y'all that have left reviews there, thank you too. And most of all, though, for those who continue to pray for me in the podcast, the writing, thank you very much. Very, very grateful for your prayers.

Prayer For Peace And Strength

SPEAKER_01 1:37

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. Thank you for all the blessings, Father, that you bestow upon us health, family, friends, jobs, income, day sea and the summer and heat and the winter, food to eat, clean water to drink, a million other things, Lord. Most of all for your son Jesus Christ. Be with those listening to the podcast wherever they are. Bless them. Bless their marriages, children, families, comfort them, Lord. Give them peace, those who are hurting, who are brokenhearted, who are worried, fearful, anxious, depressed, suicidal, those who are afraid of what's coming. Help us to remember, Father, that you have everything well in hand. Even when the tough times come, when we don't understand the suffering, when we don't understand the pain, or when we don't understand how people who do evil seem to succeed so often. Help us to remember the prophets, to remember those who have gone before us, and to trust you, Father, and your Son Jesus Christ, and to lean on you and not our own understanding. Be with our leaders in the pulpit and in the state. Be with those who go out and defend us, military law enforcement, firefighters. EMS, please be with their families, wives, and their children. Comfort them. And God, my words here, Father, please. Your son's name we pray. Amen.

Holodomor And The Cost Of Evil

SPEAKER_01 3:44

So I read an article. Uh this was not originally part of the podcast. And I'll probably do a little bit more over on the American Soul podcast if you're over there listening. But there's an article within the last week or two out of the Epic Times. Great newspaper, by the way. If you haven't subscribed to it, I highly recommend you do. They print a hard copy once a week. It's great. It's just got a lot of wonderful information in it. And they had an article about communism in this latest edition or two back. And there was a picture in it that just really pulled at me. It was a group of five children sitting on top of chairs or some kind of bench. And it was during the Stalin era famine known as the Holodomor, if I said that right. Kind of like the Holocaust with the Jews, except the Holodomor. Took place between 1932 and 33, so just a decade, a little less than a decade before the uh Nazi socialist Holocaust. And these five children are. There are absolutely worse things out there than war and death. If you are fighting to defend the widow and the orphan, fighting for righteousness. And this is just one example of that. The Holocaust, the Hall of the Moor here, things like this are what happen when you think that you can pacify or appease evil, and they are far worse. Far worse than death and war. And this this is this is all that communism, socialism, leftism, Nazism, fascism, Islam, which always goes hand in glove with all of the others, that's all they have to offer us, folks, is horror far beyond war and death. The second thing that this picture elicited from me looking at these five children, skin and bones, you can see every single rib clearly, is that my life is not near as bad and hard as I like to pretend it is sometimes. And maybe that sounds really naive to some of y'all. Maybe it sounds self-evident to some of y'all. Maybe it sounds callous. Maybe it is a little bit of all. But I've been looking at this picture, and it's a really good reminder of the need for good men to stand up against evil, and it's a really good reminder of the need for me to be so grateful for the blessings that God has bestowed upon me and to do the best I can. To share those blessings with others, to ensure those blessings get passed on, etc. So that really was not part of the podcast, but as happens so often, I I think, I hope, praying for God's guidance on each episode, that the Holy Spirit steps in and says, Hey, this is this is something I want you to talk about today. A great article again. It was by the editorial board uh world about communism. It's uh it's in one of the last two editions, weekly editions of the Epic Times, at least the American edition of the Epic Times. I know they have other editions around the world.

Why Marriage Holds Society Together

SPEAKER_01 8:52

So what what the purpose, at least what I thought the purpose was going to be today, was to spend the next episode or two on America's Christian heritage talking about marriage versus and biblical marriage. So we'll just kind of jump in. Uh Reagan gave a or made a proclamation 4999 during National Family Week, November the 12th, 1982. The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms. The family is the cornerstone of American society, right? You can see that clearly if you've been in education at all. You you know that 99.9% of the problems that we see in education, you can trace directly back to the family life. That doesn't mean that's the only factor when you when you run into problems, but it is a factor 99.9% of the time. Whether the family is broken or dysfunctional, or there's abuse, or whatever it is at home, when you run into problems in education, that is almost universally, without exception, one of the factors, if not the main factor for why that problem has developed in the kid. Okay. So if the family is the cornerstone of American society, of the United States of America, well what's what's the cornerstone of the family? Marriage. Right? It has to be that. And that's not the way that we have presented it in academia for the last several decades, uh, and in society and culture for the last several decades, because we want to pretend, everybody today wants to pretend that the end-all-be-all is the kids once you have kids, right? That the marriage becomes almost irrelevant. Certainly uh secondary at best. And that's just simply not true. It's not biblical to begin with, which tells you that it's not true. But you see the problems that that causes. For example, if you've been in education for any length of time, you've seen this. You'll take a kid that comes from a family that on the outside looks a marriage that looks really functional, but it's not. The kids have become the center of the family. They're more important than the spouse, to at least one spouse, and they're more important than the marriage. And so what happens is all of that pressure to be the center of the family, the important part of the family, the the cornerstone of the family falls on that kid. Well, that kid's not prepared to bear that weight. They're not an adult. And even if they were an adult child, they're not able to carry the weight of the family when it should be the marriage. So the marriage is the cornerstone of the family, right? Well, what's the cornerstone of the marriage? Regardless of what your ideological background is, the cornerstone of the marriage has to be shared. Whatever you two decide the cornerstone is when you get married, it better be the same thing because the hard times when they come and they are gonna come. If you don't have the same foundation to go back to, it's like two people in a rowboat, each trying to row different directions. I'm gonna tell you right now that the cornerstone of the marriage is God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And it doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim or Buddhist or atheist, communist, socialist, pick your poison. The only foundation for a marriage is God and Jesus Christ. And even if you're in one of those other false ideologies, which that probably irritated a few people there, however you want to take it, though, the strong, if you see a strong marriage in one of those other um faiths or ideologies, it's only as strong as that couple is following the principles of Christ. Whether they know it or not, whether they admit it or not, is irrelevant, that marriage is only as strong as them following those principles, right? So we talk about at least one principle on every episode of the American Soul Podcast. So, what I wanted to do for the next two episodes here on America's Christian heritage, because the family is the cornerstone of American society. The marriage is the cornerstone of the family, and God is the cornerstone of the marriage. So we're gonna read through these verses and talk a little bit uh about each one, perhaps, but we're really just gonna make sure that we get through these.

1 Corinthians On Marital Intimacy

SPEAKER_01 14:21

So we're gonna start with 1 Corinthians 7, 3 through 6. And these aren't really in any particular order, folks. They're all extremely important for a correct functioning of the marriage. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. The author there was saying, You don't have to abstain. That's not a command to abstain for certain periods of time. It's it's a concession if you both agree to, you're allowed to, right? I always say that because so many people today, even in itside the church, try and twist it to mean something that it doesn't. You go back and you look at the older commentaries pre-feminism, uh, and you'll see that almost universally, the fact that they talk that this is a concession that you can abstain if you want to, you don't have to, right? So I think the best way to kind of get through these, perhaps, uh, without getting too bulked down, is to just go through and ask some questions after each verse, right? How many marriages across the country do you think the husband and wife fulfill their marital, sexual, physical duties to each other on a day-to-day basis? How many marriages across the nation, and and really talking specifically to Christians inside the church, how many marriages do you think where the wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife? I would submit here as a side note that if you have a husband that's going out and working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, coming home exhausted, that's exactly what he's doing. Is giving authority to his wife and provision and protection, right? But again, how many marriages do you think that that accurately describes? How many marriages do you think don't deprive each other of sex, of physical intimacy, unless both husband and wife agree, and even then only for a short period of time, and even then, moreover, only to devote themselves to prayer, and some translations also say fasting. How many marriages do you know, or do you think you know, where the only time that the husband and wife, and I'm not talking about when you can't physically be intimate, folks, but how many, how many marriages do you know where the husband and wife only are not physically intimate when they both agree for a short period of time and they're doing it so that they can pray and fast more uh intensely? And then the last one, how many marriages do you know, uh particularly inside the church, where they acknowledge that not physically satisfying your spouse opens the door to Satan? You know, we hear all this talk of uh pornography and infidelity even inside the church. You have to wonder how many of those marriages, where that's a factor, and that's a huge percentage, folks, how many of those spouses would acknowledge that part of the problem that opened the door for Satan, for temptation, was that they refused to physically, eagerly, physically satisfy their spouse always and at all times, which comes straight out of Proverbs, by the way, we'll get there in a minute.

Titus 2 And Character In The Home

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Titus 2, 1 through 8. You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-control, and sound in faith and love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything, set them an example by doing what is good. In your teachings, show integrity, seriousness, soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. Titus 2 is kind of rough. Corinthians was kind of rough already, right? But this one's kind of rough. How many older men do you think how many how many older men would you consider to be temperate and worthy of respect and self-control? How many older men in your life does that describe? Or if you're an older man, do you think that describes you? How many how many are sound in faith, in love, and in endurance? When you're talking about the older women, how many of the older women do you see again, all of these, particularly to Christians inside the church, but just in general, folks, in American society, because again, as Reagan said, the family is the cornerstone. Marriage is the cornerstone, right? God's the cornerstone. So how many older women do you think are reverent in the way that they live? How many would you say are not slanders? Another translation, a couple translations, I think, so say gossips or addicted to much wine? How many older women do you know that are addicted to wine that do gossip all the time? How many older women teach what is good, specifically? How many teach the younger women? And how many younger women would you say that you have seen who love their husbands first and their children, who are self-controlled and pure? Oh, this one's rough, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:59

How many would you say are busy at home? Keepers of the home kind?

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Another big one, how many would you say are subject to their husbands? Subject in everything, we'll see in another verse in a little bit. And why why do we need all these things, right? What's the end here so that they don't malign the word of God? This is directed toward the younger women here, but I would argue, I think it's it's safe to say that it really applies across the board. When we don't follow God's commands for us as men and women, as husbands and wives, then when the rest of the world sees us, they either view us as hypocrites because we're saying one thing and doing something different, or they go, Well, why you know why would I be interested in the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ? Because they're just acting exactly the same as the world. So, I mean, there's No difference. There's no reason for me to go into a church and discover this Jesus. The young men down here at the end, how many young men would you consider to be self-controlled? I think probably a lot of you when I say young men think high school, college age kids, and and that's one whole uh demographic, but I would offer up uh go to a Friday night football game in the fall or basketball games in the winter and spring or baseball or volleyball or it doesn't matter what it is, go to a sporting event and watch the men in the stands and see how many of them you think would qualify as self-controlled. How many would you say are have integrity? Have seriousness and soundness of speech? I'll tell you what right now, um I'm gonna throw my beloved Marine Corps under the bus, but it's really my own fault. Uh there are a number of times where my soundness of speech has been uh questionable at best. And again, why? Why all these things? Directed to the young men, but I would argue again across the board, so that you can't be condemned so that those who oppose us may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. Every time we go against God, we offer up something bad for those people who reject God and Jesus Christ to say about us. And really, you know, if Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, God's my master, my God, when I'm doing this stuff and they're maligning me, they're saying something bad about me, it reflects on from a human point of view, it reflects on my God and Jesus Christ. That one hurts me a little bit.

Proverbs On Conflict And Contention

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Proverbs 21-9. Uh, and we're gonna go ahead and throw Proverbs 25-24 in here also. 21-9 is better to live on the edge of a roof than with a contentious woman in a large house. Better to live on the edge of a roof than to share a house with a contentious woman. How many women inside the church would you say are contentious or not contentious? Quarrelsome in some translations, I believe. Uh how many men do you know that would rather live on the edge of a roof than share a house with their wives because of that? How many men do you know that work extraordinarily long hours not because they need the money to provide correctly for their family, uh, but because it allows them to escape from their life? I've got a story from a gentleman. I I have so many of these stories uh just from watching over the years, but there was a man that told me this story a couple times over the last few years. He works in a really large office building, uh, but it it's kind of a small community, you know, inside that office building. Everybody kind of knows everybody to a certain extent. And the office building wanted to release a certain part of the building. And there was a older gentleman that had rented out, leased out part of that floor, of that particular floor for years and years, but he had retired. And so the the building approached him and said, Hey, can we really like to lease this out to somebody that's gonna actively use it? Um we can make more money, and you know, it'll bring in more business and et cetera, et cetera. And the old man uh told him, said, No, you can't you can't take this away. I've gotta have this, I've gotta have someplace to come. It was so bad at home that he was even willing to admit that. And I don't I can't remember this part of the story or not, so don't hold me to this. But I I think he even offered to pay whatever the next rate was. But the bottom line was he needed someplace to come because home with a contentious wife was so bad. Hebrews 13, 4. We'll come back to it in a minute. I want to go back real quick to

Feminism And The Power Of Home

SPEAKER_01 26:51

those two verses. One of the things that we don't understand, there's a proverb, and I think we'll get to it either on this podcast or the next one that talks about uh the wise woman builds her house up and the foolish one tears it down. Feminism has sold the lie to women for so long that in order to be worth anything, they have to be just like a man, which is ironic because the more like a man they become, the less valuable functional is a better word than valuable, right? Because they're still valuable to God, but the less functional they are as wives and mothers. And it's ironic because women have so much power to determine the quality of life within the four walls of their home because they have so much power to control the quality of the marriage and therefore the environment which the children are raised in. Feminism had said, hey, if you really want to have power, you've got to go out and be a boss babe, you've got to get after it academically, athletically, professionally. Those are the things that matter. And in reality, God says it's the home. And women already have an immense amount of influence and power. Over the next generation, folks, there's no way. There's a great quote from Mother Teresa. I'm going to paraphrase here where she said, if you really want to change the world, uh go home and start with your family, right? Go home and love your family, something like that. At any rate, women have so much power already in the home, and they give so much of it up when they follow the world and feminism and leave the home. Hebrews 13, 4.

Hebrews 13 And Honoring Marriage

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Marriage should be honored by all in the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. There's two ways to look at this, folks. One is the simple, I think, the face value way. If you're going to look at pornography, if you're going to cheat on your spouse physically, that's just a really bad line to walk. There's forgiveness for it, right? Jesus Christ forgave, didn't condemn the woman that was caught in the very act of adultery, but man, it's not good. It is not good. And there's going to be problems even with that forgiveness, there's going to be earthly consequences, right? Eternal forgiveness doesn't mean escape from earthly consequences. I think we confuse those two things inside the church too often. But the other part of this is when you're talking about marriage being honored by all, are you really if if I go out, right? I used to love to watch college football. I could watch hours and hours on end. I've mentioned this on American Soul podcast a number of times. If I sit there and watch 10 or 12 hours of college football on a Saturday, but then I tell my wife I don't have time for her the rest of the week.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

I don't have time to spend with you doing what you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Am I really honoring marriage? Am I really being faithful, loyal? And you can flip that. You can pick on women here too. You know, if if a wife is not uh, for example, physically satisfying her husband always and at all times, again, Proverbs 5, but she's spending hours working out, playing sports, watching TV, social media, whatever, you know, pick your poison. Is she really honoring marriage? Is she really being faithful, loyal? All of these things, uh, folks, again, you know, how many marriages do you know where you would describe the couple as honoring marriage? How much do we all, whether we're married or not, honor marriage inside the church? How many marriages are pure? How many would you describe that you know as pure? I wish I had the quote. It was John Robinson, I believe, who was the pastor for the pilgrims. He actually didn't get to go on the trip. I'll see if I can find it. But he made the quote in his farewell address to them that they should only follow him as far as he was following Christ and no farther. So all of this commentary that I'm giving you here, the bottom line, folks, is your marriage advice has to come from these scriptures. And anybody that you're listening to, if they go astray from Scripture, you need to quit listening to them at that point. Let me see. I think we'll do one more on this podcast, and then we'll come back to it in a couple weeks on the next uh podcast. I hope you can join us then. Let's go through Ephesians.

Ephesians 5 On Love And Respect

SPEAKER_01 31:48

This is Ephesians 5, 22 through 33. For example, wives should submit to their husbands as if to the Lord. A husband is the head of his wife, like Christ is the head of the church, that is the savior of the body. So wives submit to their husbands in everything like the church submits to Christ. As for husbands, love your wives just like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. He did this to make her holy by washing her in a bath of water with the word. He did this to present himself with a splendid church, one without any sort of stain or wrinkle on her clothes, but rather one that is holy and blameless. That's how husbands ought to love their wives in the same way as they do their own bodies. Anyone who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hates his own body, but feeds it and takes care of it just like Christ does for the church, because we are all parts of his body. This is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two of them will become one body, will be one body. Marriage is a significant allegory, and I'm applying it to Christ and the church. In any case, as for you individually, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and wives should respect their husbands. I just realized where we were time-wise, so we're going to come back and we'll hit this again on the next episode of America's Christian Heritage.

Reagan’s Family Warning And Closing

SPEAKER_01 33:17

But again, folks, remember Reagan, his quote here: the family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms. From November 12th, 1982. If we want a strong nation, we have to have strong families. There is no other way. And if you're going to have a strong family, you've got to have a strong marriage. You cannot have a strong family with a weak marriage, with a broken, dysfunctional marriage. You can't. You're not going to have a strong family with a broken marriage. And you cannot have a strong marriage if that marriage doesn't have the principles of Jesus Christ at the foundation. Again, regardless of if those people are Christian or Muslim or leftist, socialist, communist, atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever it is, mother naturist, regardless if they come from Asia or Africa or Europe or Australia or the moon, you're not going to have a strong marriage if the principles of Christ, if these verses that we're reading through, are not the cornerstone of that merit. And that feeds everything else all the way up to our government and our national life in the United States. And wherever you're listening around the world, it's true. If you're listening in the UK, Germany, France, Colombia, Vietnam, Austria, Japan, it doesn't matter where you're listening to. South Africa. This applies across the board.

The Lord’s Prayer And Benediction

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Sure do appreciate y'all joining me. We'll come back to it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom of the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families, your marriages, if you're married, your children, if you have them, your nation, wherever you are around the world, listening. God bless America. We'll talk to you all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.