Lesson 74 - Final Look-Back and How to Read the Bible, Especially Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy Lesson 74

Final Look-Back and How to Read the Bible, Especially Deuteronomy

Fellowship Chapel
02 February 2012
Charles Clough
© Charles A. Clough 2012
www.BibleFrameworkApplied.org

Tonight we’ll finish up the book of Deuteronomy. In doing the notes for tonight I realized we started this in September of 2009. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been going that long.

By summarizing tonight I want to go back into how to we ought to read the Word of God and do that because increasingly we’re going to come in contact with folks who walk in here perhaps or they’re parents from AWANA, or they may be in your workplace. You start discussing spiritual things and you perhaps get them to understand the gospel – or the Holy Spirit does. Then comes the issue of the Scriptures. They’ll have lots of questions because our educational system has done a disastrous work. So you almost have to back up and discuss - how do you read the Bible correctly? So that’s what I wanted to do as we finish up this book because the book itself is so important. It needs to be read, and it needs to be read properly.

So let’s look to the Lord for our time together tonight.

We go back to the slide that we started with. This is a slide I did many, many years ago when Dr. Techlemberg and I were in a debate down – where is it? Columbia I guess, at a Unitarian church. I wanted to point out the difference in worldview.

So let me review this slide again because this is the background for anything you do in the Bible. You have to conceptualize this background. The thing to remember is there are only two views of ultimate reality. That’s the big news here. There aren’t 15. There aren’t 46. There are only two. Everything else derives from one of those two worldviews. Either we have the one on the left side, which is the Scriptural idea, or the one on the right side here with the continuity of being.

So we’ve talked about the Creator/creature distinction. We’ve talked about the continuity of being which really means that there is only one level of existence. It’s one level or two levels. You can’t get much more complicated than that. It is pretty simple to me to understand. These two ideas can be traced for centuries. So it’s not like some fundamentalist made this up last Monday night. This is something that history gives a complete record of. Scholars who even are not Christian recognize this history. So, it shouldn’t be controversial. That is that there is a stream of thinking about the creator-creature distinction that starts way back in ancient monotheism.

The remnants of ancient monotheism - anthropologists have found pieces of it in Southeast Asia. There’s an Indian tribe out in northern California that have a complete idea and there are tribal traditions of ex nihilo creation – absolutely stunning to anthropologists because they had this idea before the Spanish came up the coast and they had contact with missionaries.

This was done probably, discovered and talked about in the 1800s as anthropology expanded. Prior to that they thought monotheism developed late. The primitive societies were all polytheists and they evolved upward and higher and became monotheists when actually it’s the reverse. The older and further back you get the more monotheistic you get. Later is where you have the contamination.

And you have Israel - which God sort of resurrects monotheism and invigorates it with direct revelation in Israel - comes to the Bible and comes down to fundamentalism and conservative theology in the 20^th century and the 21^st century of course.

In the right side you have ancient mythology. The Eastern religions are the best place to go to study paganism because there when you study Buddhism and you study Hinduism – those are pure paganism. It’s useful to know something about them so you can spot it in our culture. But that’s where you have the most complete exposition.

Then in the West where you have particularly in the so-called Enlightenment Period – which is a prejudicial term – makes it sound like nobody had any light before the enlightenment; and they prejudicially label everything before the Enlightenment as the Dark Ages. Those are just propaganda words. They don’t have any real meaning. They’re labels given to it because it somehow makes rationalism appear authentic and advanced. So then you have modern theology that’s not original at all. It’s just western philosophy with religious buzzwords.

The most important thing between the creator-creature distinction and the continuity of being is what it does to God, man and nature. In the Bible there’s a separation between God and creation. Within creation there’s a uniqueness to mankind. That uniqueness goes away with paganism.

So you have two views of ultimate reality - one or two levels - in your notes only two ultimate sources of ideas: creatures or the Creator. Very important! Ideas are produced by minds. If you hold to the fact that there is no creator, then all ideas come out of finite creature minds. On the Creator/creature side, that’s not so. There are ideas that come out of God’s omniscience as well as ideas that come out of creatures’ minds. This is the set up to understand revelation.

Although this sounds so simple, you cannot properly read the Bible if you aren’t clear in you head on this major point because if you hold to the idea that all ideas come out of men’s minds; then the Bible is just men’s product. You can’t have a supernatural Bible unless you have ideas and information coming out of God’s mind toward man. If that isn’t so; then this is just biography. That’s all it is. It’s just speculation. That’s why this is all interconnected.

You may have to stop people who you think are well educated when they flip off about some stupid thing in the Bible or they call it the ancient book. The question you need to ask at that point, “You mean God never spoke into history. You’re sure of that. There’s not a God and if He does exist, He’s never spoken. You’ve made two theological commitments and I’d like to know how you arrived at those theological conclusions.”

But this is the prerequisite for understanding and taking seriously the text of Scripture. So once we get down here we get into another problem. There’s a moral and ethical agenda subtext in this narrative here. This often - people either aren’t aware of it. In scholarly circles I’ve read so much criticism of Scriptures and so on. It’s like these guys never dream of the fact that behind these ideas are spiritual impulses, spiritual motives, spiritual agendas.

On the Bible side, because we have a personal Sovereign, we have ultimate responsibility to the personal Sovereign. I mean this is basic stuff here. This is not PhD stuff. These are basic ideas. If you have the God of the Scriptures, you’ve got ultimate personal responsibility to Him. It’s simple. If you don’t have Him, then you don’t have ultimate responsibility. It goes away. It only exists if there is a creator-creature distinction. So that’s why historically if you go back to the myths and the eastern religions, they look upon themselves as victims – passive victims of a fate and impersonal cosmos.

On the third blank you have on the first one there: only two bases for ethical judgments. So this is another fallout. See how all this is interconnected? These aren’t separate ideas. They’re all beads on the same necklace here. There are only two bases for ethical judgments – the creatures or the creator – because ideas are coming out of one or the other. So if you have a basis for ethical judgments as the creator, you have a transcendental ethic. If you don’t have a creator then your ethical judgments are subjectively coming out of man; and you do not have a transcendental ethic. You have a floating ethic, either floating because of cultural changes or floating because one day you have allegiance to this elite group or this group or the vote goes against you or something. So that’s the nature of what we’re dealing with.

Then finally there are only two religious classes. That is pagan or biblical. There aren’t 18 different classes of religion - only two. The definition of a pagan in Webster’s Dictionary is, anyone who does not believe in the biblical view of God – Old Testament and New Testament. So we would include 3 basic Semitic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Christian cults: what do we do about all those? We know they’re not biblical. So what was happening? That’s why I have a parenthesis there. “Genuine biblical are those that ate the Bible.” Those that are trying to add themselves to the Bible. Mormonism does this. It gets back to Kaufmann. Remember the Kaufmann quote?

Only Israel has a contract with God. Only Israel has centuries and millennia of a sequence of prophets that are self-consistent.

Mormonism, Islam are religions with one prophet who claims he stands in the continuity of Scripture. So the apologetic discussion, the polemics around the fact, is that claimed continuity true or is it false? You can show easily that the theological ideas of Islam and the theological ideas of Mormonism are not consistent logically with Mosaic theology and therefore fall under the condemnation of Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 22.

So that’s the start and it’s important that we remember this because I think in coming - the way the society is falling out, it’s almost like before you hand the Bible to somebody you have to explain this to them or they’re not going to get it. They’re going to read it like it’s an interesting old book. That’s all.

Now we come to the next point. That is, the sections of Scripture; whatever section you may be reading. Sections of Scripture must be interpreted within the overall biblical network of beliefs. Now here is where I think in our own evangelical circles we drop the ball. I have observed this for years and years. That’s why I started the idea of the Framework because I was working with college students and I knew very well from working with college students they had not a clue how to put sections of the Bible together even though they had grown up in what we would call conservative evangelical churches.

The first thing that happens the first 5 days on campus they get wiped out by a professor because they just can’t come to grips with the big idea of what’s going on here. There is a game being played. You’ve got to learn to play the game.

I have at least four reasons. We have to watch them in our circles.

1. Number one is hopscotch Bible exposure – a fragment here and a fragment there. Unfortunately you see a lot of this in our own evangelical circles where people pick up this and they have a book on Jonah. Then we’re going to deal with some other theme and so forth. There’s just not a systematic approach to Scripture. That may be fine for Aunt Mable who lives inside her house and makes cookies. But somebody that’s outside that’s actually in the workplace discussing issues or in the classroom, that is not sufficient. It is not going to cut the stuff here. There is no sword here. There’s no weapon here. You can’t take fragments of the Bible and hope to have any kind of a coherent worldview.
2. The second thing is category 2 illiteracy. Category 1 illiteracy is you literally can’t get meaning out of the physical words. Category 2 illiteracy those who work in this area are saying this is increasing in our society. It is the inability to sit and read and think about what you are reading such that you can actually talk to people about it.

What passes for conversation particularly in the media is rhetoric. Rhetoric is 2 or 3 second sound bites. Rhetoric is being cute with words.

Sometimes it can be very skillful. You can take the great orations of history: Washington’s farewell speech. There is rhetoric there. They were taught rhetoric and how to speak, but it was rhetoric that was subservient to the content. Today we have very little content, and we have lot of rhetoric. There is increasing concern about this. We have a population that cannot spot logical fallacies in rhetoric and the fallacies are all over the place. One fallacy that is happening this week right in front of our faces is the conflict between the White House and the Roman Catholic Church. You have the politicians that favor the administration talking. “Oh, this is something about conception.

This is just birth control. That’s all it is.”

No, it isn’t. If you know the United States Constitution and you understand the issue; this is a Constitutional issue. Yes, it happens to be about abortion. Today it is that and tomorrow it will be something else. So if you don’t deal with the substantive issue, the constitutionality that’s involved here, then you’re going to be like the 1930’s with the Protestants in Germany. First Hitler did this and then he did this. Three weeks later he’s doing something else. It’s always relabeled so you don’t see the real issue

So the second thing is category 2: illiteracy, the inability to understand what one reads enough to be able to discuss and contrast ideas of the Bible with pagan conceptions.

When we were working in the prisons in Pennsylvania with the Warners up there one of the things that Lynn Warner did that was so good for those inmates. We’re talking 40-year-old men here who for the first time in their life could sit down after Lynn taught them how to read the Bible and spent 6 to 8 weeks doing that to the point where they all of a sudden realized, “I can discuss these things. I don’t have to get mad and punch the wall. I can control my anger because I can think through my problem.” All of a sudden they come alive. Here is this 60- or 65-year-old lady in there telling these big brutes how to read. They got all excited. They loved her because for the first time in their life they could do something like this. It was dominion that they had. So that’s category 2 illiteracy.

See the problem now is we have a lot of video. The media is very visual. That’s fine up to a point. But Marshall McLuhan said this decades ago - hot and cool medium. What he said was, “When you go visual, you will destroy literacy.”

Literacy and visualization are not the same thing.

3. Finally top down approaches begin with ones’ favorite theological concepts. Favorite theological concepts are nice; but the problem is if they are not anchored to the Scripture, concrete events of Scripture, it becomes an engine of in itself.
4. Simple mental laziness due to distractions of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Those are the enemies of reading the Bible and reading the Bible correctly. We all face them. We have to deal with this. We have to deal with it particularly with our children and the upcoming generation.

Then we want to spend a little time tonight about how do we view Deuteronomy. We talked about the Scriptures in general. What we want to do here is do the same kind of analysis which we’ve just done except it’s going to be specific to Deuteronomy.

We want to think. Here’s the Bible. Here is a book of the Bible. Let’s see how can we read this book with understanding and set it and be conscious while we’re reading this book about how the world views it and how the Scripture views itself. We want to look at those two

1. The first point A is the pagan worldview. If we start with the pagan worldview, then what happens? Well, we’re going to look at it as university classroom. Most cases unless it was a Christian university we would be looking at this book through the eyes of higher criticism. The enlightenment idea which goes back all the way up to the top of your handout - keep in mind here is how all this is cemented together. What did we say? How many views of reality? One or two? Enlightenment says one.
2. Only two ultimate sources of ideas - creatures or the Creator. They say all ideas come out of the creature.

Okay, let’s take those two. One level – all ideas come out of man’s mind and drop down now to Roman II, point A and let’s apply that to the book of Deuteronomy and try to read it as though we are pagans. Well if we’re pagans, we don’t believe that God is really there – at least the God of the Scriptures, not the Creator God. So we’re all in the same universe together where there may be gods and goddesses floating around the galaxy some place. But, this is just the universe as it is; and all ideas come out of the creatures.

So when we pick up the book of Deuteronomy we are looking at a book the ideas out of which came out of various editors, various Jewish guys that wrote it and so forth. So we have now under point A we have three points – 3 sub points there.

1. Starting with the agenda of trying to avoid the consequences of rebellion against the Creator and Judge because remember going back to our diagram up here; what did we say? There’s an ultimate agenda working here to get rid of ultimate responsibility. So therefore in my scholarly pursuits the agenda still functions because I’m a sinner. I have not a finite mind but also a fallen finite mind. And it flees just like Adam and Eve fled to the bushes. “I don’t want to know God.” So starting with the agenda of trying to avoid the consequences of rebellion against the Creator and judge.
2. Then we have a denial of genuine verbal revelation. Why? Because we bought into a one level view of reality where all ideas come only out of the creature. No ideas come from the Creator. So that cuts off the idea of verbal revelation.

This is the set up now of how to misread Deuteronomy. Then the basic idea that Deuteronomy must have originated out of the minds of the ancient Jewish community - that is ultimately it’s merely Jewish autobiography. There you have it. I saved your whole tuition for a religion course in university. That’s the whole structure of the course. The rest of it is all detail.

Now we have to say, “Alright, we’re regenerate Christians. We’re born again. We know the Lord. How do we read this?” We have to consciously think this through. We don’t read it this way. If I am in a class like Sharia was at Towson State and I have to deal with a professor, I’ve got to decide – what am I going to do when I write my paper? Yeah, what’s my grade going to be now? So this is the tactical issue that Christian students have to face when they’re dealing with this. But outside of the classroom, the issue is our neighbors or our friends.

So biblical worldviews starting with the agenda – see moral agenda. We’re fallen, finite minds. There is a spiritual warfare going on. Starting with the agenda of seeking reconciliation with a Creator and Judge, I’m looking for Him now as my Savior. If I understand I am seeking and I want to know the Lord, Jeremiah says, “Seek Him with all your heart and you’ll find Him.”

^NKJ Jeremiah 29:13, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” But if I’m seeking God yet I know I’m a sinner what I want to hear from Him is a word of grace. “Will you accept me, Lord?” I’m looking for Him as a Savior, so not just a Creator and Judge but also the Savior. See how the gospel works its way in here into the very starting point of reading. Once that occurs and I have that thirst and hunger to know Him, then a recognition that Deuteronomy is His self-revelation – that is it’s not Moses pulling truth out of God’s mind. It’s God pushing truth to Moses’ mind.

We speak of that in data transfer. Are we pushing the data or are we pulling it? Self-revelation means God is pushing the data.

A recognition that Deuteronomy is His self revelation that resonates with a heart created for it.

How do we recognize God’s Word? In one sense there is a mystical dimension to this. It’s just the note. It resonates with a regenerate heart with a spirit of truth. We’re built for this. This is sort of a verbal, literary version of Augustine’s famous statement – there is a god shaped vacuum (and I think Pascal also said this) – there is a God shaped vacuum in every human heart that can only be filled with Jesus Christ. So that’s what we mean by resonation.

3. The third point there is then the basic idea that the book of Deuteronomy must have ultimately originated out of God’s mind and then communicated to Israel by historical actions and by prophetic revelation.

Contrast this last point we just covered with the last point under A and there you have the two different ways of reading the Bible. Under A the bottom line was, it is Jewish autobiography. “Gee, I’m interested in history. I like to read the Bible because it’s so interesting. It’s Jewish history.” Yeah, but it’s more than Jewish history. Do you hear the Word of God in this Bible? Does it resonate with your spirit? These are ideas not just coming from Moses; they’re ideas that come from God.

Then we go to Roman numeral III and we zoom in a little closer – that is the historic context and the effects of Deuteronomy. So we want to look at history since history now - now we’re all on the same wavelength. We’re all reading it in a biblical worldview. History from our point of view in the Scriptures is His story. Since history is His story, Deuteronomy must be connected with its contemporary setting as well as its subsequent history all the way to our day.

So we spent time in the – I should have covered these other slides here. You guys have seen this – the ameba slide. What I wanted to show with the ameba slide was there’s what happens when you read the Bible in terms of paganism. You take fragments of the Bible and it gets eaten up by the pagan worldview; whereas if you look at it from the biblical point of view there is a solid frame of reference with many truths that are all interconnected. There is not an isolated truth here and an isolated truth here. This is a network of truths.

So now what we want to do is look at how Deuteronomy fits into history. This is another example of early higher critics. They universally have the assured results of higher criticism and all college students and university students were told that Deuteronomy is so advanced in its idea of social justice that it could never have been written as early as it claims. It had to have been written later in time because only later do we have this social evolution of higher values of social justice.

“So back in Moses’ days – oh, they couldn’t write back then. They couldn’t think in terms of social justice.” So it was late-dated.

Deuteronomy was considered a fiction that was retro-projected back into ancient history. It was written late, but it was written as though it happened early. Well, the death knell for this approach happened because as archeologists discovered various documents under A, the historical context, you’ll see that as more ancient Near Eastern artifacts became known the old higher critical model that Deuteronomy was late of an evolved social justice had been refuted.

Remember we started the book I showed you – that’s why we through the suzerain vassal treaties because here’s a literary format that is second millennium BC – not first, second millennium BC. Oh, that must show that a document like this exist in the second millennium BC. “Well gosh. What happened? Gee, social justice must have evolved faster than we thought.”

So here the historical context of the book fits now that we have the facts. It’s typical second millennium. It’s not first millennium. We went through the things. What we have to be careful of here as I point out is the strong parallel structure. There is a clause in here. Watch it.

There is a strong parallel.

And this is how you want to think when somebody comes up with an archeological reference to the Bible, be careful. Don’t let the archeology dictate your view of the Bible. Let the Bible analyze and interpret the fragment of archeology.

Strong parallel structured international treaties now are known although ...

Remember these are the differences.

... although major conceptual differences exist between their view of the source of justice and historical teleology.

What we mean by that is that these treaties as we said in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy, there is no provision of grace. The suzerain king says, “I’m coming. I’m going to clobber you. I’m going to destroy you because you violated my love. You don’t love me in the sense of loyalty. So I’m going to go out and mess you up. I’m going to destroy you.” “Okay.” That’s the treaty. That’s how it was. Is this how this treaty reads? Is that what we read in Deuteronomy 32? No.

There is a plan that is bigger than this treaty. The whole Abrahamic promise is here. The sovereign election of Israel to be the blessing to the world is here. That ain’t in suzerain vassal treaties. That is unique to the Scriptures. That shows you that the Scriptures didn’t borrow suzerain vassal treaty. If they did, they wouldn’t look like this. The point is that there is a uniqueness to the Scriptures.

Here is another point under that same thing if you follow.

Ancient Near East pagan judges consistently omitted references to law codes in their decisions; whereas Deuteronomy informed Israel’s elders and judges.

In other words they took this law seriously. We know they took it seriously because you can read the later prophets who took it seriously. The later prophets have citations. They have parallels. They get their whole idea out of the Mosaic Law which tells you they’re applying the Law. That’s not true in the pagan world.

Also ancient treaties failed to show any awareness in historical progress toward an ethical goal or any concept of divine grace.

Totally missing!

Whereas there are styles of writing that show that the Bible is what it says it is; the Bible has this uniqueness to it not found in pagan literature.

So what’s the source of that? Jewish genius?

The conservative view of Deuteronomy has been vindicated. It pictures the unique historical situation when God actually ruled a nation.

Which now leads us to why we have part B, the historical affects of the book of Deuteronomy. It wouldn’t have had these affects if it wasn’t so special and so full of wisdom principles. You just wouldn’t have had this. It had this because these principles aren’t anywhere else.

That’s why in Deuteronomy ^NKJ Deuteronomy 4:7, “For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the LORD our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him?” There is a uniqueness to Israel, and it’s been recognized.

So summarizing for a moment here. The conclusions - it’s a coherent exposition of the Yahweh-Israel personal relationship. I italicize personal relationship. Why did I do that? Because ancient Near Eastern law code don’t describe a personal relationship. There is no god to have a personal relationship with. It’s just dry, impersonal. Do this, don’t do this. You do this, you’re going to get fined. You don’t do this, you’re a good boy. That’s the law code. Is that what we read here? No.

There is a uniqueness here because there’s a personal relationship between Israel and Yahweh. And, you understand why. Why is it that this is unique? Why is it that there’s not a personal relationship anywhere else? What did we start with tonight? One level or two levels? If you have one level you don’t have a personal relationship. You can only get a personal relationship with God if you have a two-level reality. That’s why it’s missing in pagan literature.

Revelation of Israel’s special place in history.

Now you have braggadocio in pagan literature that – “We think we’re so great.” But, why do you know that when it says revelation of Israel’s special place in history that’s not braggadocio? Because, it depicts Israel’s sin. You don’t find that in pagan literature.

Revelation of God’s condescension to enter into a personal relationship with His creatures.

You wouldn’t find that anywhere else. Muslim theologians will tell you Allah would never, never have a treaty with man - to lower himself and tie himself down to an agreement with man. “Ah. That’s demeaning to a sovereign god.” Yet the Bible says God condescends to enter into a relationship. And that’s just the first of many condescensions. What else does He do by the time we get to the New Testament?

^NKJ John 1:14, “And the Word …” What? “… became flesh”. Talk about condescension. This the Creator condescending to walk around as a creature.

Unilateral …

So it’s not a parity. Therefore the idea there is a lord-servant relationship throughout the book of Deuteronomy.

The kingdom culture …

So now here we have material for thinking about society.

The kingdom culture was constructed by divine providence and revelation not from random social dynamics.

This utterly refutes the idea that you can bring in the kingdom by government policies. Marxism for instance thinks precisely this.

Example of how the Word of God was taught to laypeople.

That’s particularly true of Deuteronomy. When you read Deuteronomy, you are reading what it sounded like when people were taught the Bible because Deuteronomy is the speech of the ideal teacher, Moses.

So when you want to know how much you should teach the Word of God or how do you teach the Word of God – the whole Book, it’s a good example of that.

Now it had a massive effect on Western law in several areas. The inclusion of civil rulers -one of the most profound impacts of this book on world history was this point – that civil rulers are under law. And you by now should be able to go back in your notes and figure what chapter of Deuteronomy that came out of. It’s Deuteronomy 17. The reformers in Europe cited that chapter as well as well as 1 Samuel 8.

The second idea – and there are many ideas. We have covered them before, but this is just review. Social justice in the Bible equals equal treatment under the law based upon divine image-hood. You treat the poor and the wealthy person the same way because they are both made in God’s image. It is not favoring the wealthy; it is not favoring the poor. That is explicitly stated – explicitly stated in the Deuteronomic law code.

What we hear – the idea of social justice today is a term of manipulation to make you and me feel guilty because we’re not backing some inefficient unelected unaccountable unqualified government program rather than if you are concerned with the poor – go help the poor.

“Don’t confiscate my money for your inefficient government program and call it charity and to try to make me feel guilty because I didn’t vote for it.” The only thing liberals are liberal with is other people’s money – certainly not their own. So we’ve got to watch this business of being manipulated. And we resist this. That is phony rhetoric, and we ought to call them out on it. “What percent of your income are you giving to the poor? You answer that one before you come and want my vote.”

That’s what real charity looks like. So this is how we’re being manipulated. Social justice in the Bible – and this is Deuteronomy – so remember we’re saying these ideas come out of God’s mind, not Moses mind. So this is social justice of Jewish autobiography. This is social justice as God Himself defines it - equal treatment under the law. It doesn’t have anything to do with where you and I reach economically in society. Not at all! Absolutely not related whatsoever to that.

Forthcoming work on the role of the Ten Commandments in the Western world by Dr. John Eidsmoe is supposed to be printed this year. It will be a three-volume work. It’s taken ten to 15 years to produce. It is entitled Historical and Theological Foundations of Law. It takes a lot of money to publish a three-volume text but Eidsmoe has already told a close friend of mine that his search of legal literature he’s found over 1,000 references by the courts in jurisprudence and in writing up the cases that reference as the authority of the judicial statement the Ten Commandments.

So much for the jazz that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in the classroom or in the courts. It’s bologna. People who say that kind of thing are stupid. They haven’t done their homework. Well, Eidsmoe has taken ten to 15 years to do his homework. Wait till this three-volume set gets out there. It takes away another block of this manipulation.

“Oh we can’t have the Ten Commandments in the courtroom.” We’ve had it there for over a thousand cases. What do you mean we can’t have it in the courtroom? So once again we have to be careful of this rhetoric – pagan rhetoric.

Now the structure of Deuteronomy – we’ve been over this time and time again. This chart about Roman IV summarizes the highlights of the book breaking it down into those four expositions.

So for the rest of the time we have I’m going to skip through this. If you’ll turn the book to Deuteronomy 1, we’ll just dip in from here to there. We’ve gone through it thoroughly before but just to get the flow of Moses discussion here. Let’s go back to the first chapter of Deuteronomy. One of the many truths that we see in the book of Deuteronomy comes up again and again and again is Deuteronomy 1:6 where Moses is talking about: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 1:6, “The LORD our God spoke to us in Horeb, saying: ‘You have dwelt long enough at this mountain. ⁷ ‘Turn and take your journey, and go to the mountains of the Amorites, ⁸ ‘See, I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers – to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – to give to them and their descendants after them.’ ”

See the whole Book of Deuteronomy presupposes the Book of Genesis. See what happens when you start unraveling the Bible. “I don’t believe in Genesis.” Then you can’t believe in Deuteronomy. It’s all part of the same thing. It’s all part of God’s coherent revelation. It’s evidence of the Abrahamic fulfillment. If you’ll follow the notes here, we’ll stop. We don’t have time to go into all these verses but see the sequence of ideas.

Verses 29 to 46, the wasted years. Remember what we said? It only takes 11 days to go from Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land – 11 days. They took 40 years. Something went wrong.

Then in chapter 2 remember they went up to TransJordan skirting around the Edom’s land, skirting around the other grants that God had given to Abraham’s progeny. There were very careful and so on. They wanted to go to TransJordan to get across to Jericho. All of a sudden they get clobbered by a pagan king (bully boy) one of whom was 14 feet tall. He decided he could throw his weight around and stop the Jews from coming through even though they were not there to militarily challenge them. They just wanted free passage to get over to their land. Then God said, “Okay, take them out.” So in that little maneuver God graciously expanded the land. So now they conquered TransJordan - which is the other side of the Jordan River, the east side.

Now in Deuteronomy 4:1-8, if you’ll turn to chapter 4. This is that section of Deuteronomy that speaks to its uniqueness (Israel’s uniqueness) and why revelation of social justice would be recognized for what it is.

Moses says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 4:5, “Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. ⁶ “Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ ” So there’s a testimony. There’s the center of the Book of Deuteronomy’s expectation and Moses’ expectation that this isn’t any law code. This is a law code that inculcates justice far beyond any pagan law code such that other pagans would look up to this code.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 4:7, “For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the LORD our God is to us …” Remember what Albright said? How many nations in world history had a contract with their god? Moses was conscious of that. “No nation has a relationship with God like we do.” [8] “And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law …”

So that chapter 4 passage is really critical. People who were astute and literate and read the book of Deuteronomy over the centuries - that’s why they pulled legal concepts out of this. I remember talking to a lawyer, one of the top ten lawyers in Florida – well trained man, very famous there on television and so on. We were discussing Deuteronomy. He was saying, “Yes, the passage in Deuteronomy about mercy and relieving debts, historically that’s where we got bankruptcy laws from. It came out of Deuteronomy.” Here’s a guy who is a specialist in bankruptcy law, one of the top ten lawyers in Florida. This is the affect that this book has had on the thinking inside the legal community. That’s the first exposition. That’s the background.

Then we go to the second exposition. Remember we talked about the word love as it’s used there. I showed this slide many moons ago. Remember the big idea here is that to love pharaoh is to serve him and remain faithful to the status of vassal. That in context is what l-o-v-e meant in this sort of literary document. It’s not foreign because Jesus uses it the same way in John 14. ^NKJ John 14:15, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” It’s not a romantic element of l-o-v-e here. It’s a loyalty issue. That’s how then we should read

^NKJ Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul …”

Now we move on to that loving the Lord with all the heart. Remember it was loving the Lord with all your heart then with all your soul. There was a whole long exposition from chapter 5 all the way down to chapter 11 that dealt with just loving the Lord your God with all your heart.

Now let’s think about that for a minute. In the little box there I have Deuteronomy makes clear the primary role of the heart versus traditional emphasis on external force of law. See that? Now that’s not true in paganism, folks. Go to the library and pullout the code of Hammurabi. Go read it and come back to Deuteronomy and you’ll see the difference. Moses spends half of his time before he even gets to the case laws. He doesn’t even get to case laws. He’s dealing with the attitude of the heart because this is where the battle is.

This is why when our republic was founded one of the Founding Fathers (I think it was John Adams) – I’ve seen this statement. You’ve seen it too where we’ve given you a Constitution but it’s only going to work for a moral and righteous people. That’s why you could say that because these men (most of them at least) knew enough about the Scriptures to realize it’s got to come from the heart or it ain’t coming. The only way you can force things like that is to have a totalitarian state. That’s why whenever you have anarchy and riots, you always have totalitarianism because it’s the only way you can control the chaos. Because people aren’t self-controlled, they have to be controlled from outside.

So then we went to Mt. Sinai. Of course, this is the most important event as far as law and society goes in all of history. But how many of us sitting here tonight ever took in any social studies course or history course you took in school was Mt. Sinai an event studied. Now isn’t this interesting? The whole basis of Western law comes from the Ten Commandments and what don’t we study in our wonderful, secular million-dollar classrooms? Then we wonder what is wrong with our culture.

So here we have the great thing. We’ve gone through the chiasm several times. It’s obviously the structure to this. Then we have the design of society that flows out of that. Again we see here why heart allegiance is so important. It’s stressed over and over and over again not just in Deuteronomy but the prophets. When they have to deal with the garbage of rebellion against Yahweh and the disaster that has happened in the country; yeah they deal with case laws here and there. But they’re saying, “Guys, you’ve got it wrong. Your heart’s in the wrong place.” So we have this sequence that we’ve endlessly talked about.

Then if you’ll look in your outline in your handout, you’ll see chapter 6. Remember that one? The idea that how does the Word of God gets into the hearts of the people? It gets in because parents, not the state - parents are given the responsibility to put them into the heart of their children. It goes in some children harder than it goes in other children, as every parent knows.

Then in chapter 7, we’re introduced to the fact because this is an abnormal world, a fallen world, fallen universe; we have to deal with evil. You have a good-evil boundary that always causes war. Now people get tired of war. Everybody gets tired of war. Do you think that the soldiers who did ten tours of Iraq aren’t tired of war? You bet they are. But, they are realistic. They realize it’s a sinful world and there’s going to be war. People who are tired of war say, “I not going to have any war. I’m a pacifist.” Then you are ignoring good and evil. What are you going to do about evil? It’s always going to be with us. Remember the answer to holy war because here’s another vulnerability if you haven’t thought it through. What are you going to do when somebody nails you some day because the Bible has holy war in it? Sure it does. Then you can pull a shocker on them. “Christ is going to carry out a holy war on a global scale when He returns.”

That should introduce the conversation to what is just. How do you get rid of evil permanently? By violence.

So then we have chapters 8 through 10 that dealt with the adversity trials, the prosperity test. Then it’s self-righteousness, which is in all of our hearts. Moses says God blesses you. It’s not because you’re good boys and girls. It’s because you’re gracious.

Then part two loving the Lord with the nephesh. We said this is all the details of life. Once the heart straightened out we go into these other areas. We won’t go through all of them; but you remember them. Chapter 12, chapter 13 start out enforcing the first and second commandments. You can’t have that unity of the nation if you have polytheism and religious diversity.

Then chapters 14 through 16 we have the economic policies, which I’m sure - I was surprised this time as I went through the text to see how much the structure that God was building had economic implications. I listed five of them that are contemporary wisdom. This is wisdom for our own time. The flat tax is considered the just tax. I hear all the stuff today. It’s another case of empty rhetoric. People can’t spot the logical fallacy in this. “We’re going to make the wealthy pay more.”

You know back in 5^th grade I think it was – maybe Mike can tell us when they teach multiplication. When do you teach it now? Third grade – okay, in third grade we learned about multiplication. If you have a flat tax of 10 % and you multiply it by a big number, do you a bigger number than when you multiply by a smaller number by 10%? So don’t the rich pay more? It’s just stupid stuff today. Flat tax rate - God said that’s the proper way to go.

Second, the tax is on income. It is not on property. There’s a reason for that because you take a widow who’s got a farm or she’s got her property. You keep taxing that property and she has no income, she loses her property. That’s unjust. That property was gathered. She paid for it. People worked hard to get that property; and it shouldn’t be yanked out from under her because of some silly property tax. So there was no property tax. There was no sales tax either. Sales tax biases against the poor because everybody has to buy groceries. Everybody has to buy basics. So that’s another system we haven’t thought through.

Three, standards of measurement and money - gold and silver were jealously guarded so you did not have debasement of the currency like the dollar has collapsed in the last 20 or 30 years.

Then you have charitable loans were managed without loss of dignity of the recipient - very careful. Remember? They could not take a millstone for a deposit at night. The poor people that were given charitable loans were protected. Their dignity was protected. Why? Because they are made in God’s image.

Finally the economic policy worked only if the ethical policies worked. That’s why the heart is so important.

Then we have in chapters 16 to 18 we have standards of behavior for all the leaders of society – judges, kings, priests and prophets. That was very important in western civilization.

Chapters 19 through 21—we have protocols for maintaining social justice and judicial and military procedures including capital punishment.

Capital punishment, by the way, is socially just.

In chapters 22 to 23 we have protocols to protect social boundaries so property for example in chapter 22. The 8^th commandment isn’t narrowly confined to seizing someone else’s property. The spirit of the 8^th commandment, the spirit of the 8^th commandment, includes taking care of other people’s property. Remember the lost donkey? If your neighbor lost his donkey, not taking care of that was a form of theft. See that’s a bigger, bigger picture of theft than what a narrow view would have.

Then we’ve gone through all the other principles here. Our time is growing to a close so I hope that this book will be a source document in the future for you in your thinking to read through this again and read it over and maybe look at some of the outlines and some of the notes you’ve taken when you hear discussions about how - what’s the wise thing to do here? We’re citizens. We’re part of our society. How do we make our decisions about what’s the wisest policy?

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Well, we have a few minutes here. We can chew over a few things if you have questions.

Question

The idea – the difference between conservative thinking people and liberal thinking people when it comes to charity has been documented. I don’t know the name of the book; but there’s a book that studied that very issue. They went back and interviewed a lot of people so it’s not just something contemporary and political. It was just a statement. It’s the way they think.

I was kind of forcibly reminded of this last summer because when I spoke at the summer camp in Denver on my way back before I went to see Carol, I had to stay overnight in this home. A Christian couple had me over that night. The man was a World War II vet – no, he was a Cold War vet. He, while on duty in Germany, married a German gal. We were sitting there talking. I was asking the German lady about her peers back in Germany. She was telling me about her sister back there and so forth. She’s a Christian. She became a Christian though through her husband. She’s solid in the Word of God now. She realizes what a difference the Bible has made in her thinking from the way she was brought up in Germany. This is not an indictment of Germany. It’s her family in Germany. However she told me this interesting story.

She said, “I went back to see my cousins and so on. We were talking about Katrina.”

They were saying – they got the typical media that we didn’t care for anybody; Katrina was a disaster and nobody cared. You know the whole story. FEMA was late to respond.

She said, “They were asking me about it. You’ve got it wrong because people in the United States gave millions of dollars to charities to help those people in Katrina. There was … You know the Red Cross was there. The Southern Baptists had a big kitchen, soup kitchen thing.”

She was going on about the charity in the country. She gets this blank look from her cousin.

“Huh? What are you doing that for? The government is supposed to do that.”

See what happens? No concept of personal charity - absolutely been lost. It’s not charity. Socialism is not charity. Charity comes from the heart. You give. Charity that way is a lot more efficient.

That’s why for years I encouraged Erin Wilson to give that paper she gave at the missions conference two years ago - or a year ago, when Erin pointed out that all the aid to Africa only 20 cents out of every dollar ever got to the people. That’s what happens when you have government programs. You’ve got too many hands involved. It’s too inefficient. It doesn’t work. You have to do it on a personal basis. So that’s the difference in charity and this phony stuff that goes for charity in the name of charity. Anyhow that’s the affect of thinking that way.

I was just telling Gary before class. By e-mail I happen to know one of Dr. Ice’s sons that’s studying at The Master’s Seminary out with John MacArthur. He was sitting in class there. Next to him in class there was an Australian fellow that lived in Denmark for five years. They were talking about things and got to talking about Euro-socialism because they’re studying Jeremiah in the class – social justice.

The guys said, “You know, Daniel, when I lived in Europe I noticed that Euro-socialism is hurting the gospel. It’s hindering our ability to make clear the grace of God.”

Daniel turns to him and says, “What? How does Euro-socialism impact the gospel?”

He said, “This way. In Europe everyone considers himself or herself entitled to this benefit, this benefit, this benefit, and this benefit. So we’re trying to explain the gospel. We talk about the fact that we’re all sinners. We talk about the fact that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We talk about the fact that we need salvation.”

Then they go, “Oh, I don’t have to do anything. You know, I am entitled to salvation. You know that’s my right before God.”

I sit there then in the middle of an evangelistic situation or conversation. Now I have to back up and point out that – no, you are not entitled to salvation. It’s not an automatic benny because you breathe. You have to respond to this. See what’s happening? Now our theology is getting screwed up because of these ideas and how they all intertwine.

Question

That’s a particular thing homosexuals are using very much – great leverage now - God made me this way. What he was talking about a mentality that was easily identifiable for economic policy.

Question

Adam and Eve found the bushes.

Question

You are right. It’s going back to the basic agenda that we are trying to flee our ultimate responsibility before God because it’s terrifying if you think about it - if you’re not a Christian, you’re not aware of God’s grace.

You think, “Man, you know, I’m a sinner.”

Carole and I just got through viewing how many cases – five cases of Muslims becoming Christians. What was amazing to us - these are Muslims who became Christians some of whom before 9/11 so we’re not talking about all the political stuff. What we noticed was a common thread. Every one of these five cases of Muslims finding Christ is they sought God. They weren’t just religious Muslims. They were people who are passionate to know God because they knew that they didn’t know Him. They were seeking Him. It reminds of the Jeremiah passage.

“You will find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

These five people, as many Muslim converts will tell you, had a vision in which a man and wife some cases identifying himself as Jesus spoke to them and told them to go to the believers and find out how to know Him. Just encouraging that the Lord rewards people who seek Him.

Question

She asked an interesting question about the founding of our country. When religious freedom was spoken of was it really religious freedom within a Protestant context? You had Maryland. Maryland is Catholic. So Catholicism would have been part of the thing.

By the way if you haven’t – you don’t know this and you’re interested - here’s something – a little piece of news. Hillsdale College campus is an independent campus. They refuse to accept any money from the federal government. They’ve been very articulate in their view of the Constitution. Some of you get their little subscription to Imprimis. On February 22 coming up, you can go on the Web and enroll for nothing in Constitution 101 which is their required course for every student has to take this course. They are going to put it on for free on the Net. The professors that teach the course at Hillsdale will be the ones that are teaching this on the Internet. It is a thorough going through of the Constitution and the Declaration. So that would be great background. Hillsdale is selling a book. It cost about $30. I bought one because I think it’s worth it. It’s a reader. What this book is – it’s all source material. It’s not somebody’s interpretation. It’s the federal papers. It’s the discussions. There are even letters that Jefferson wrote while he was writing the Constitution. You can actually see his letters. So going through this provides you a wealth of primary source material for nothing. You’d never get this at a university for less that a couple of thousand dollars. It’s very useful.

But to get back to her question on religious freedom - the problem that the Founding Fathers had and which led to the First Amendment – and by the way it’s interesting that religious freedom is the first of the ten Bill of Rights. That’s because it was considered primary. It’s very interesting that those bills, those amendments are in sort of an order.

Here’s the situation which is not taught in schools either today. Every one of the states was a republic-basically a functioning republic. The reason we can say that is each state - most of the states (I won’t say every state.) had an established church – Maryland, Catholicism; Virginia, Anglicanism; Massachusetts, Congregationalism. You had established churches established by the civil powers of those states. So when the federal union happened, they wanted to be sure that the Feds weren’t going to change their established churches. So the churches were through all the states structures. This business about the separation of church and state is a bunch of bologna. They were protecting their own established churches from federal interference. That whole first amendment thing is much more involved than we think it is.

Question

Jim asked a good question people get confused about. Periodically through the Scripture there is a statement - don’t add or subtract from Scripture. In Deuteronomy 4, as well as at the end, that restriction against tampering with the text is no different than today when you make a contract whether it’s with a bank, whether it’s with the state. You are not to tamper with the words of that contract. It’s contract integrity. So Deuteronomy 4 is addressed not to Job. It’s not addressed to the canon of Scripture. It’s addressed to that book. It’s very similar to restrictions we have legally. You can’t go in and make a will. It’s on file. You can’t go in there and change it. If you do you get hauled into court for messing with it. It’s to protect the integrity of the text. You can’t add or subtract.

Question

The revelation the Book of Revelation’s admonition against tampering with the text is the same as Deuteronomy 4 – don’t tamper with this text. Remember when Revelation was written the canon was in existence. That’s the point.

In application it applies to the canon because anybody that adds a book a non-canonical book to the Scriptures will doctrinally conflict with the canonical books. So when you try to add – this is why the book of Mormon for example – when Carole and I were out in Oregon in the Air Force there was a very articulate Mormon just besieged us with all kinds of stuff. It forced me to have to read through the book of Mormon. You don’t have to read but three chapters and you know you’re in another world than the book of the Bible. The words are used like the person who wrote them didn’t know what the words meant. There is not a continuity.

Question

Mike asked a good question about the extent of the freedom in the first amendment – just what it included – did it include for instance Indian religions. I think the data is that no, it didn’t because Congress published a Bible to help convert the Indians. Clearly there was a government favoring of the Christian position. The reason why – it goes back to Deuteronomy as the reason. It wasn’t that our country was trying to jam the gospel down anybody’s throat because there were unbelievers in colonial times, articulate unbelievers. There was no compulsion on them to forsake their unbelief. The point was that in designing the republic they realized there had to be self-government or you couldn’t have a free society. They were perceptive enough to see that it was Christianity that provided the moral impetus for self-government; but they were unwilling to elevate any particular version or denomination of Christianity for the reason that they had all left Europe because of what reason? Because in Europe you had religious wars; and they didn’t want a religious war in America.

So therefore they said, “Feds, stay out of it. We in our local states have done our thing. Just mind your business; and we’ll mind ours.”

That was the way they set it up. There was to be no interference in the states.

Question

She’s bringing up the case of Muslim killing. What do you call it? Honor killing. That’s murder. They don’t consider it murder or they wouldn’t have done it. This is the problem we face as a nation right now. You can’t have a polytheistic society without fragmentation. It just won’t work. It can’t work because you’ve got different ultimate standards. Sooner or later there’s got to be one ultimate standard that prevails. The issue then becomes is it going to be a transcendental standard or is it going to be a human engineering standard? The Founding Fathers were wise enough and influenced by Christianity enough to realize the broad Judeo-Christian tradition provided that transcendental standard. But, they were not going to anchor it to the congregational church, the Roman Catholic Church or any other churches. They were basically taking a generic view of Christianity and Judaism. The Jews were free in our country. They could have synagogues. Washington wrote letters to encourage the rabbis. You didn’t have to believe in Jesus Christ to be acceptable in colonial America.

Question

At the pastors’ conference, Dr. Eidsmoe is going to brief us on what’s going on.

The point here gets back to the first section in our review tonight – one level or two levels of reality. If you’re going to have one level of reality you’re going to destroy divine revelation. Andy Wood’s paper – and I’ll have to get it to you. I can email it to you. Andy Woods is a PhD, graduate of Dallas Seminary. He’s also a J. D. He’s a lawyer. He’s the one I told you about before. His father spent 30 years in the California Court of Appeals or whatever.

Andy wrote a tremendous paper in which he traced this whole thing in the law schools. What he found was that when you go back before 1860 (keep in mind the date) and you look at Story and some of the other men that taught at Yale Law School and so on.

They explicitly say for their law students, “Thou shall not make law. Your job as a judge is to apply the law – not make the law. Your job is to exegete the constitutional text for the intent of the Constitutional writers.”

That held up to about 1860. After 1860 you take the same schools (Yale, Harvard) and you read what’s coming out of those schools. Everything is evolving. Society is. What happened in 1859? Exactly. Ever since everything is evolving.

So not just Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but there have been others who argue that we can’t be enslaved to the white slave owning Christians that wrote the Constitution because that was a static moment in an ongoing evolution of society.

Andy Woods points out the way of phrasing this and quotes the legal authority - the ongoing meetings of the U. S. Supreme Court are a constitutional convention.

Question

If you trace the thinking in the journals as Andy Woods has done, it’s clearly dogma.

Question

He’s asking a question. It will have to be the last one because of our time. As the society becomes more hostile to the Christian faith is there a point where we draw a line in the sand? Yes, there is. In fact that’s the theme of the pastors’ conference I’m taking Mike to next month. That’s what Dr. Eidsmoe; Jeffrey Addicott, the head of the Terror Law School in Texas, a specialist in our security and law - that’s what we’re all dealing with. I’ve been assigned the development the function of government from the Old Testament. Then there’s another paper to be given on Romans 13 and civil disobedience. These are questions we have to think about doing that now so that we will be better prepared if and when the situation arises.

The Catholic Church is already at that point. We’re silly if we think that we’re not because it’s not an issue – like I said it’s not an issue of.

Think of a bunch of spheres occupying a volume, a solid volume. Think of balls in that volume. Think of those as spheres of authority. If you are going to take the sphere of state authority like this and then a sphere of federal authority and you expand the federal authority’s a balloon; it’s going to bump into the other balloons. So you are going to have this. This was bound to happen whether it’s abortion or something else. It’s just bound to happen because you have a bloated bureaucracy that wants more and more and more power. As man concentrates power they become less intelligent.

I frankly don’t even think the present administration – I think they were caught off guard. I honestly think in their arrogance they never even dreamed someone would fuss about it. I think this has been a shock. It’s certainly a shock to many Catholics who will not go along with their own church. They are just culture Catholics who show up on Easter and Christmas and kiss it off the rest of the year. For the dedicated Catholics, this is a problem.

What I don’t hear even the Catholics saying is - I did hear one Catholic spokesman make this point but I haven’t heard anybody else make the point. That is - just a minute here. Who started the hospitals? Who started the universities? Was it the state or was it the church? Historically first it was the church. So if the state wants to – and this is the way they did it in Massachusetts.

“If the state wants to take over we’ll just shut down. Then we can shut all the Catholic hospitals down. We’ll shut down the orphanages. We’ll shut down the services that we’ve provided.”

That’s what I would do if I were the Catholics.

“You want your cake then you’re going to eat it.”

My mother used to say, “You made your bed, now sleep in it.”

Question

It will be on the West Houston Bible Church website.

That’s why we’re having this discussion because we see the handwriting on the wall.

One parting comment here I will make which I’m going to make when I’m on a panel there; we have people particularly in the Midwest who are the guns crowd who say, “We’re getting ready for an insurrection.”

Now wait a minute. Hold it. Let’s go to the middle of Daniel. You don’t have to have an armed insurrection here. What you have to have is individual believers who have the courage to stand wherever they are in their society when these issues come up.

Earlier in the Deuteronomy series I gave the illustration of Sharon (whatever her name was) – you’ve heard this before – the lady that ran the accounting for Enron. She went to a Presbyterian church. She realized that things were smelling and she went to her Bible study that she had in some Houston suburb. She didn’t tell the people for security reasons and privacy.

“I can’t tell you why, but I want you to pray for me. I’m under pressure.”

Nobody knew what the Sharon lady was doing; but she had gone to Ken Lay, the president of the institution and said, “We’ve got cooked books and this is wrong.”

He said, “If you want your job, you’re going to stay here.”

Remember the movie Courageous and the story of the Hispanic man having to be – remember that movie? That’s integrity. That’s where we stop.

Sharia went to her classroom at Towson State - one girl out of 29 girls in the class. It took Sharia, one out of 29, to stand up and look what happened. It got the person fired.

It doesn’t take that many people. It just takes some people that have courage to stand and deal with the fear. It’s scary to stand up when you think your job is dependent upon it. It’s not an easy thing to do. This gets back to personal faith rest and being able to handle it so you don’t go for your guns. You go for your integrity. That’s all it takes.

Well folks, our time is up. I hope that this will be useful for you.