© 2026 Don Pinson | (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

While in Washington, D.C., I heard alarming statistics about our nation.  But the most alarming stats were not about government:  They were about churches, and particularly Pastors.  According to a Barna survey conducted in connection with Wallbuilders ministry, only twenty-eight percent of the churches now believe that the Bible is absolutely true.  Ninety percent of the Pastors in those Bible-believing churches say they believe the Bible speaks to current issues.  But get this:  Ninety percent of those Pastors have never preached from the pulpit what the Bible says about the issues of our land!

Pastors’ AWOL attitude concerning civil government is the reason God’s people don’t know that they must be the ones to watch over civil government, in order to protect the right of the truth to flow to the next generation.  Thus, we’re having trouble deciding if marriage is between a man and a woman only; and if it should be protected by government.  We’re having trouble deciding if homosexuality is a choice or a trait, when we used to be convinced that it was a crime.  We’re even wondering if boys in school should get to use the girls’ bathroom!!

Pastors, if civil government is God’s institution—and Romans 13:1 makes it plain that it is—then should not those of us called to teach the Bible be the ones to reveal the Biblical Structure and Spirit by which government must operate?  Is that not logical?  Is that not right?

America became the greatest nation on earth because pastors led the battle to keep the truth in our culture.  And that started with them speaking to the issues from their pulpits.  Pastors not only spoke to the issues of their day; it was Pastors who taught how government was to be structured and the Morality in which it must operate. The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts spoke in 1774 of the Pastoral leadership in the American Colonies as they approached a war with their Mother Country of England:

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

The many educational elitists in our land would have us believe that our Founding Fathers were people who had no faith in God; or, at best, were skeptics.  They often point to Ben Franklin as proof of that, quoting some wrong things that Franklin said in his early life.  However, they will almost never quote from his speech at the Constitutional Convention in May of 1787 when he was eighty-one years of age.  But I want to quote, at length, from his speech that most surely saved that Convention from breaking up from selfish interests, and thus brought about the writing of our Constitution; which has produced the greatest amount of liberty for the greatest number of people in all of world history.  Consider Franklin’s faith in God when he stated:

“Mr. President:

“The small progress we have made after 4 or 5 weeks…is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding.

“We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it.  We have gone back to ancient history for models of Government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which, having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist.  And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.

“In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding?

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

In the hot summer of 1776, a group of 56 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to discuss their differences with the British Crown and Parliament.  The most important question to be decided was:  Who was the source of their rights of life, liberty, and property?  Was the source God or government?  England thought the colonies existed for the good of the Mother country.  Thus, they thought the rights of the colonists were “government granted”.  The people in America thought they existed for the “glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith”, as the Pilgrims had stated.  Thus, Americans believed that their rights were “God given”.  What had to be decided was:  Is Parliament and the English King the highest authority, or is there a higher law in place?  If there was a higher law, did the colonists have to submit to laws that disagreed with that higher law?

The Americans did believe there was a higher law, which was the Law of God written in the Bible.  The ministers of this time period in America were remarkably agreed on this position.  They quoted over and over the passage in Romans 13:1-2 that states:

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

Who were the thinkers behind the American Revolution which would give birth to the greatest Republic the world had ever seen? Actually, men like Washington, Jefferson, or even Samuel Adams, were not the “root” thinkers of that Revolution. You may be surprised, but the truth is: It was the Pastors who inspired the thinking that brought about the American Revolution. They taught it in the churches! The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts stated in 1774:

“…we cannot but acknowledge the goodness of Heaven in constantly supplying us with preachers of the Gospel whose concern has been the temporal and spiritual happiness of this people…and do therefore recommend…that they assist us in avoiding that dreadful slavery with which we are now threatened…”

(Christian History of the American Revolution, V. Hall (F.A.C.E. pub.), p.402)

The inspiration for the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolutionary War, was none other than Jonas Clark, Pastor of the Church in Lexington for twenty years before the Revolution. It was he who authored almost every state paper written to record the town’s position on liberty. Without him, there may have been no “shot heard round the world!”

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about government and the money it takes to operate it.  And all this has produced is just more debt, more tax, and more destruction of our nation—While the government gets larger and larger.  And if we don’t quickly return to the Founding principle of America we will shortly live under a dictator.

Our Founders taught a principle to their children which summed up all the Biblical teaching about government.  It was this:

“The more internal self-government you have, the less external civil government you need.  But the less internal self-government you have, the more external civil government you need.”

America was built on this principle.  The Pilgrims learned to walk in the internal self-government which the Holy Spirit produces when a life is surrendered to Christ.  This started when they received Christ as their Lord and Deliverer and thus, were born again.  But the earliest among them had learned something about this internal self-government that would profoundly affect the birthing and the growth of America.  In the mid-1500s they had gone to Geneva, Switzerland to learn from a scholar by the name of John Calvin.  Calvin taught a simple principle which would change the course of the Western world.  He called it “renovation”.  The word renovation means to make new.  This is what Christ does when He enters a life that has just surrendered to Him as Master.  He changes that life by flowing with His life from that person’s spirit, into his soul, and out through the actions of his body.  That is what the Bible means when it says,

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

In declaring our Independence from England, were our Founders rebels, pushing against God-ordered government? Or were they revolutionaries, re-establishing God-ordered civil government? It’s way past time we again considered the twenty-seven reasons they listed for declaring Independence. They stated:

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

“He has refused his Assent to Laws…wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance…

“He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature…

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual…for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.