Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. Sure do appreciate y'all joining me and giving me a little bit of your time and energy, a little piece of your day. I hope you get to listen to it with somebody else Spouse, parent, child, friend, co-worker. Hopefully it gives you some extra tools for your toolbox. Hopefully it helps our country, even if just a little bit, turn back to God and Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 0:48

A whole lot on the homestead Got a little bit more work done recovering the garden from the weed infestation we've been dealing with because of all the rain, which I'm grateful for Lord we've been dealing with because of all the rain, which I'm grateful for Lord. Managed to get the blueberry plants and the grapevines at least some of the grapevines out of the forest. We'll see Chicks are still alive. Did find a snake in the coop last night eating eggs. Had to dispatch of that. Never like doing that. They're useful creatures, but not when they're eating our eggs.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love, mercy, grace, forgiveness. Thank you for your Son, jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Thank you for the people that listen to this podcast. Thank you for the time to record it. Surround us with your angels, father. Guide us, bless us, protect us, help us to keep our priorities in the right order, to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Calm us, lord, from our fear and worry and anxiety. Help us to turn to you, to put on your yoke, which is light, as opposed to the yoke of the worries and desires of this world. Give us strength to survive whatever trials and tribulations come our way and keep our souls safe all the way home to you. Father, Please and please again, forgive us. Forgive us our multitude of sins, help us to turn from them. And God, my words here Father, please, in your son's name, we pray Amen.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Have you made time for God today? Are we just talking about priorities or are we actually doing them? Have you made time for God today? Are we just talking about priorities or are we actually doing them? Have you made time to read your Bible a little bit? Have you made time to pray. I've seen this multiple times. We actually were driving down the road recently, driving down the road recently, and in a little bitty one horse town, there was a church that had a billboard you know a little, where they put all the letters up and it was talking about the fact that the only way to counteract the lies of the devil, the lies of the world, is to keep ourselves reading God's Word, reading the truth.

Speaker 1: 4:11

That quote from Horace Greeley again and again it's impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people. The reason that we're having so many troubles today, folks, is because we don't read God's word, and what I'm guilty of so often when we do read it, it's far, far too often a check in the box, something we're just going through the motions, we're not really digging into it, we're not applying it to our lives, but really just the first step, we're just not reading it. If you're looking for a way to get back into it and it's just a few minutes a day come back, join us on the podcast each day, listen to it in the afternoon, three or four minutes, as long as you can stand the sound of my voice and we've gone through almost through all the Gospels, proverbs, is a great place to start. We recorded that a few months ago. Go back and read or listen to a proverb each day. It's a great place to start, I found. But we've got to get back into the Word.

Speaker 1: 5:27

And if you're married folks, does your spouse know that they're your second priority each day, second only to God? Do they know that? Do they wonder? Do they know that they're not a priority to you? Do you tell them that you're just too tired, too worn out, it's too much of a burden to spend time loving them each day? And then you still manage to get up and work out every morning. You still manage to scroll your phone every evening. You manage to watch hours of sports each week or go shopping with your friends or go visit your friends, or you have time for your parents or your kids or whatever your hobby is. But then every day you tell your spouse it's just too much. Folks, nothing else. You're not going to hear this. A whole lot of places.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Today, I'm afraid there's some places that'll tell you this, but nothing else should even hold a candle to your relationship with your spouse except God. They ought to be your first priority after God, every single day, way before anything else. That should be the way you're planning your day. How do I please my spouse today? What do we need to do? Whatever it is? How do I look? How do I dress? How do I look? How do I dress? How do I act? What do I need to do to fulfill my role as either a husband or a wife in our marriage?

Speaker 1: 6:54

And no, it's not always going to be Hollywood romance and twinkly stars and everything. Some days it's going to be hard, but it's the same choice that God asks us to make with his son, jesus Christ, and that's the choice of our will. Are we going to follow Christ and his commands even on the days when we really don't feel like it? To follow Christ and his commands even on the days when we really don't feel like it, not because that earns us salvation because it doesn't there is nothing else that earns salvation besides Christ but because we actually love Christ and want to follow his commands and fear God. And are we actually going to love our spouse each day or not? We've got a couple things we're going to try and get through today. One is a song and the other is a State of the Union address. We'll get through the song. We may not get through the State of the Union. We may have to come back and do a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 8:02

This is in again, both the America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, I believe, and the Patriots Bible, and it might be in the Founders Bible too. This is a phenomenal little story, irving Berlin, who probably quite a few of you all know, pretty famous songwriter, american songwriter, perhaps one of the most famous, and one of the songs he wrote is kind of considered the unofficial national anthem, which, by the way, is a whole lot different than trying to have a national anthem which, by the way, is a whole lot different than trying to have a national anthem based on skin color, which is pathetic and repulsive. So, but this Irving, if you don't know much about him, there's a little blip in here in the founders not the founders the Patriots Bible by, edited by Dr Richard Lee. He was a Russian immigrant, really poor, settled in New York's Lower East Side, and he wrote the song originally in 1918, but it didn't work out at that point. It didn't feel right. But didn't work out at that point didn't feel right, and so he revised it in 1938 as we were going into World War II and things were looking really dark and dreary.

Speaker 1: 9:31

And I want you to think about, as I read these lyrics, the difference in the sentiment in these lyrics by a poor Russian immigrant 100 years ago, excuse me, and what we see today from the almost universal illegal immigrant population and even a lot of the quote-unquote legal immigrants who come from Muslim countries. I want you to think about those in particular versus the feelings and the sentiments expressed by this really poor Russian immigrant who became one of the most famous songwriters our country's ever had. Immigrant who became one of the most famous songwriters our country has ever had. While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, let us swear allegiance to a land that's free. Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above, From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam. God bless America, my home, sweet home. God bless America, my home, sweet home. Do you think that the vast, vast majority of illegal immigrants or supposedly legal immigrants, from either any Muslim country today that we see, recognize God, the Father of Jesus Christ, as the God we need to turn to for blessings in America? And do you think that they love this land and that their allegiance is truly with this land and the chase for liberty? And that their allegiance is truly with this land and the chase for liberty? I'm going to let y'all think about that. I would just offer the comment that the sentiment of Irving Berlin in this song was vastly different than pretty much all that we see today coming in. And well, I think I'll just leave it at that. And well, I think I'll just leave it at that. So we're going to go into a State of the Union address.

Speaker 1: 12:47

This is by FDR. Interestingly enough, this is just a year after Berlin released his song in 1938. So this is the annual message to Congress. Released his song in 1938. So this is the annual message to Congress. This is Roosevelt's message in January of 1939. And there's a lot to it. I don't know how long we're going to stay in it. Often we'll spend a little time in January on some of these annual messages to Congress, and so we may just kind of pass through this one, but at the beginning of this for the first, I don't know seven or eight lines, or at least seven or eight of the first few lines, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 13:41

Roosevelt is talking about the dangers from Nazi Germany and war, and he's talking about what's really important to a country, what they have to have. And I want you to think about this and realize that every time he says religious, he's talking about Christianity folks. And I want you to think about the fact that this is 1939 and the Supreme Court decision of separation of church and state is another decade off. Still. Almost. Think about the fact that we're going into some really tough times. We've been through the Depression to some really tough times. We've been through the Depression, and then counter that with what you see today from our nation as a whole, our political leaders, yes, but remember that they're just a representation of us, the people.

Speaker 1: 14:52

Storms from abroad Isn't that interesting? Just right off the bat, right, what did we just read in Irving Berlin While the storm clouds gather far across the sea? Right, and now this is a year later FDRs Storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to Americans, now as always. The first is religion. It is the source of the other two democracy and international good faith. You can already start to see some of the misconceptions here in the American people. We're not a democracy, we've never been a democracy and our founders specifically warned us against a democracy. The Constitution specifically guarantees a Republican form of government. You have to wonder just a little bit, considering that FDR was a Democrat, whether that wasn't trying to make some association between democracy and the Democrats. I don't know, it's just a thought that popped in my head.

Speaker 1: 16:02

But he said the first is religion, christianity, the very first, and the other two come from that. So you can't have, he says, democracy, you can't have a Republican form of government without Christianity. And I know that there's people out there right now that are gnashing their teeth when they listen to this and they're saying that's not what he said. He said religion, right, but the country was still overwhelmingly Christian and, much like we've talked about so often on this podcast, like Justice Joseph's story of the Supreme Court said, the country was almost universally Christian.

Speaker 1: 16:44

So when they were talking about religion, that's what they were talking about. They weren't talking about Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or Mother Nature-ism or even Judaism. They were talking about Christianity and the worship of God, the Father, jesus Christ, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So he says we have to have religion. Jesus Christ, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so he says we have to have religion. It's the source of our republican form of government and international good faith. Right, the second principle that Christ talked love your neighbor as yourself. We've got to have Christianity in order to have those. Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors. Again, love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus Christ, the second greatest commandment. We've got to have that or we can't have a republican form of government because we won't care about our neighbors. All we'll care about is ourselves and what we can get, which is exactly what you see today.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows. International good faith, a sister of democracy, springs from the will of civilized nations of men to respect the rights and liberties of other nations of men. By the way, respecting the liberties of others doesn't mean we have to pretend that we're not a Christian nation. It doesn't mean that we have to not be a Christian nation. You know Roosevelt, theodore Roosevelt said that we weren't a polyglot boarding house right. Multiculturalism doesn't work. We've been a light to the world because we have followed Christ and no other reason. It's not the Second Amendment. It's not the First Amendment. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, it all springs from God and Jesus Christ and following them springs from God and Jesus Christ and following them In a modern civilization, all three religion, democracy and international good faith complement and support each other.

Speaker 1: 18:58

Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared, and where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force. Talking about Nazi Germany, right Horse. Talking about Nazi Germany right. An ordering of society which relegates religion, democracy and good faith among nations to the background can find no place within it for the ideals of the Prince of Peace right, jesus Christ. The United States rejects such an ordering and retains its ancient faith Christianity, faith in Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 19:47

There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight To save one. We must now make up our minds to save all. You can't have a republican form of government without Christianity. You can't have international goodwill without Christianity. It doesn't work, it's not working. It's never worked. It's not working, it's never worked. That's why we're failing today. We used to understand this. Roosevelt certainly makes it clear, and he told us as a nation, that we rejected those countries which rejected those principles of Christ, those principles, teachings of the Prince of Peace, and we're going to have to get ready again to make a very tough decision. God bless y'all. God bless your families, your marriages. God bless America. We'll talk to y'all again real soon. Folks Looking forward to it.