15 Minute Speech Delivered by Rev. Gordon at the Iowa State Capitol
Iowa Capitol – West Steps
March 15th, 2011
Watch the Video of the Speech Here!
Read the Unabridged Text of the Speech Below:
It is time for the church to ACKNOWLEDGE the corruption around us – corruption which now threatens to dismember a nation – once upon a time – whose judicial branch, in particular, was built upon the knowledge of the irrefutable existence of Divine Law! Gravity cannot be voted against! There are no judges (who possess any real humility in this world) who could suggest otherwise! It is a Divine Law which exists outside the scope of human authority, like the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics, the laws of chemistry, and the laws that govern the orbits of our planets!
Divine Law is “binding over all the globe” and “no human laws are of any validity if they are contrary to this.” So said Blackstone, author of one of America’s first highly regarded legal books, quoted often by Alexander Hamilton. Our modern judges should get back to their own roots and read more Blackstone!
Citizens of Iowa…listen carefully! There is another law men DID NOT MAKE, and only fools pretend the power to change… It is the Divine Law of procreation! It takes one man and one woman to create a new eternal life made in the image and likeness of God! It is the unbending, unchangeable law of God that forms the basis of what SHALL be defined as a “FAMILY” in the great state of Iowa!
Neither our courts, nor our legislators, nor our citizens should have ever meddled with the institution of marriage, any more than they would entertain the laughable notion of attempting to outlaw gravity! Yet here we stand, and I am embarrassed in the presence of God, that I must demand to vote on something no vote should have ever been necessary to protect!
In 1876, Marie Herbert warned that “pure intellect, however highly cultivated, untempered with Christian philosophy, is inclined to inordinate self-devotion or to [class snobbery], and is, therefore, instinctively antagonistic to [the belief that the final authority of government rests with the people].”[i] (Emphasis added.) We have certainly seen this brand of class snobbery demonstrated by the judges of our own Iowa Supreme Court. Despite the verdict of the people during the last election, that same class-snobbery continues, particularly demonstrated by Chief Justice Cady, who was summoned to replace one the three judges you recently fired!
I am just an agent of the church – one voice among many important voices, standing on the steps of a poorly maintained civil authority. I am here, because, like you… I am AWAKE! But it is not enough for the church to merely AWAKEN…we must RESPOND to the threat against our families through PRAYER, LEGAL and POLITICAL ACTION!
As I said, I am a simple agent of the church – standing on the steps of a poorly maintained civil authority. I am also here because I have a message for Senator Gronstal, who recently lamented to a reporter that he might not retain his job beneath this gold-gilded roof. As an agent of the church, I have come to remind Mr. Gronstal that he hath need of repentance! And his GREATEST concern should NOT be whether or not his future holds the pleasure of standing beneath this golden roof, but whether or not his future holds the privilege of standing upon heaven’s golden streets!
135 years ago, Herbert said it this way: “It is time for the Christian pastor to throw off the robes of ease and comfort and, through repentance, make himself worthy again to put on the forgotten mantle worn long ago by the likes of John Knox, Martin Luther, Edwards, Wesley, Asbury, McKendree, and others of great apostolic line, with whom self-denial, toil, suffering and even death were welcome, if for the glory of the cross” [ii] (Emphasis added.)
If the unchurched believe that American secularism is a success, then let them PROVE IT with practical evidence! Are our families safer to walk the sidewalk today than even one century ago? Speak to your local police officer…and then answer! Are our schools bastions of success and ingenuity? Compare our current literacy rate with that of the one-room school house of colonial America, which exceeded the literacy rates of the Roman Empire…and then answer! Are our prisons shrinking in size as the alleged “virtues of secularism” and “ethical creativity” of the humanist spread in our universities? Speak with your local county prosecutor…and then answer! Is the ratio between those who humbly attend an orthodox Christian church, and those who do not, evolving in the favor of successful evangelism? Consult with the census bureau…and then answer!
This afternoon, you and I face the same three options our founding fathers faced in 1776…
1) Will we have “State-Sanctioned Religion”?
The American founders said “No” when they wrote the Declaration to reject the false Anglican doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings!
2) Will we have a so-called “Secular-State” and jettison the acknowledgment of God from all three branches, as well as the public square?
The makers of the French revolution thought-so… and they have enjoyed 15 failed constitutions ever since. In defiance to the language of the preamble of our own Iowa constitution and national history…our current hubris-filled courts, in partnership with Democratic Senate leadership, would attempt to force those same failed principles of secular France upon us all!
3) Or will we maintain, in contrast to the “State-Sanctioned Religion” the founders fled, a “Religion-Sanctioned State”, like that form of government finally determined by the outcome of the American Revolution?!
There are only 3 options we have, and only 1 choice has produced the most powerful nation of history! The other two… miserable failures! And yet here we are…confronted by a predominant worldview antagonistic to our own foundation…one that promotes secularism as the “new State-sanctioned religion!”
One does not need to be a prophet to hear the thunderous sounds of a coming national storm! Paul Revere need not ride through our streets in the cold night, reminding us that “the British are coming”, because tyranny isn’t coming to America. Without a holy interruption from wholesome and God-fearing people like you, America is returning to tyranny!
It’s not enough to stamp the knowledge of Divine Law upon our coins! It was not enough to enshrine our Declaration of Independence with the sacred Name of our “Creator”. It was not enough to speckle the land of our state and nation with steeples and church bells in every town, city and village! It was not enough that we assumed ourselves to be a Christian nation! It was not enough to establish the hospitals of our nation – many of which still maintain the historic branding of all our Christian denominations! It is NOT ENOUGH to have built thousands of Christian schools! It is NOT ENOUGH that we celebrate Christian holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter! It is NOT ENOUGH that we honor most of our dead loved-ones with granite grave-markers carved with Bible verses, though the person buried likely never attended church nor obeyed the authentic teachings of Jesus Christ!
Apparently, it is NOT ENOUGH to retreat into the cold four walls of our ostentatious cathedrals, satisfied to merely treat the spiritual and emotional casualties of our dangerous society… as they limp, hobble and drag into church every Sunday morning, wounded by the mine-field of a corrupt sin-celebrating culture!
Apparently, it is NOT ENOUGH to turn up our religious noses at the “unwashed” masses who now corrupt and exploit the privilege of civic power in all three branches of our Republic! The Apostle Paul was correct, when he penned Romans 13, to remind us that the government must be the steward of the God-fearing! And those modern ministers – the curious teachers of civic abandonment – are dreadfully wrong!
It is time for the allegedly powerful bishops of the church, in harmony with the humble pastors who reside across the patchwork quilt of “small-town Iowa,” to throw-off the pious velvet robes of spiritual obesity and lethargy…robes that adorn church leaders who have now enjoyed decades of material prosperity combined with ease, comfort and peace!
And WHY have we enjoyed such blessings? Because a long time ago… another breed of American bishop shed his own blood in the fields that today produce fruit and wealth for the American farmer. The sacrificial bodies of colonial pastors, representing most every brand of Christian denominations, were counted among the dead on the battlefields of our Revolution, dismembered by the 40 caliber lead balls of flint-lock muskets!
It is not right that modern pastors rest upon the long-forgotten sacrifices of America’s black-robed regiments and allow the very Christ-centered government they fought to create to be plundered by those hedonistic persons Jesus called the “children of the Father of lies.”
Not unlike the name of God on our coinage…Constantine and his armies once brandished the empty symbols of a Christian faith upon their armor, swords, shields and banners…but symbols and ceremonial deism is NOT ENOUGH! His empire disappeared from the face of the earth, crushed by barbarians from the North.
If we do not quickly change our state and national attitude about God’s authority over pathetic human government and protect the virtue of true Americanism from our own “mental barbarians” who attack our minds with the God-hating secularism of Europe, we, too, will be extinguished from the earth…doomed to close the final chapter of a once great nation and enter the tomb of lost empires.
Consider, today, the irony of the haunting voice of Deist Napoleon Bonaparte, from beyond his own grave. He said, “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself have founded empires; but upon what does the creation of our genius rest? Upon force! Christ founded His empire upon love, and millions at this hour would die for Him. I see kings, potentates, and armies arrayed against Him; but with Him I see no army – none but a mysterious force – peaceful men, scattered here and there, having no rallying point but a common faith in the mysteries of the Cross. I die before my time, and my empire expires with me; but the Kingdom of Christ survived the Crucifixion, still lives, extending its scepter over the earth!”[iii]
How SAD that on July 4th of 1776, Napoleon was too distracted to see America for what it was…an extension of Christian principles applied to civil governance! How POIGNANT that on June 29th and 30th of 2010, statisticians from the company of “Opinion Dynamics” conducted a scientific national poll, just in time for national headlines on the fourth of July. [iv] It revealed that 78% of Americans believe the founding fathers would be unhappy with our condition as a nation today.
We only have three options to choose from as we steer ourselves into the future of Iowa and America. Together, let us continually rise up from our remnant churches, relentlessly return to the ballot-boxes, and faithfully choose the same religion-sanctioned state our insufferable political enemies refuse to acknowledge, though it is printed in plain English, in our own 1857 preamble of Iowa, saying: “We, the people of the State of Iowa, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings, do ordain and establish a free and independent government, by the name of the State of Iowa…”
God Save the Great State of Iowa!
God Save the Courts!
And May God Bless You and Your Children’s Children!
[i] “The Bible and the Republic”, Marie Herbert, Cubery and Company Publishers, San Francisco, Copyright 1876.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/070210_patriotism_web.pdf