America’s Dual Form of Government – Kirk Cameron
America’s Dual Form of Government
Summary
In the third and final installment of looking at some genius ideas that made America what it is today, we are looking at America’s Dual Form of Government! How do you have a form of government where you can have unity among the people, but not have everyone be the same? The Founders discovered that again in God’s Word! The Bill of Rights was formed with the intent to preserve personal liberties along with creating unity amongst all people, and in doing so they formed a new, dual form of government, the federal and state governments who work with, and sometimes against, each other to protect those personal liberties while creating unity amongst all fifty states.
With a country divided the Republic at risk and morality being redefined.
It’s time to gather around a campfire, get back to basics and spark the revival that this country so desperately needs.
This is the American campfire revival with Cook Cameron.
We’ve been talking about the genius of the American Republic and how it’s not a democracy.
Uh We have a, you have tyrannical Greek democracies which which failed.
You also have defective Roman Republic in history.
And uh there were some good ideas but it was nothing compared to the unique virtuous Christian representative constitutional Republic of self governing members of the family of faith called the United States of America.
It was new in terms of a form of government in all of history and it required the ability to do the right thing from your heart because you feared God.
You loved the Lord and you loved your neighbor without being told to do it.
And so we looked at genius principle. Number one, we’re a virtuous Republic. Genius principle.
Number two, we uh have a separation of powers and genius principle.
Number three is that America has a dual form of government. Now, this is brilliant.
The age old question has always been, how do you have a form of government where you can have both unity among the people but not have everyone be the same.
You preserve liberty and individual freedom.
And at the same time, tie everybody together with an overriding set of principles and morals and convictions.
How do you do that? And the founders understood that there was only way, one way to accomplish it And they discovered the secret to that again in God’s word because God had this in mind for people governing themselves.
And so, um of course, it was only the balanced biblical view that would bring them the kind of unity that they were looking for and preserve individuality and unique freedoms among the people.
And they did that with this dual form of government.
Now to do that, they had to spell out individual rights of the people because it was always gonna be easy for a big government to trample over the individual rights of people.
And so they spelled it out in something called the Bill of Rights.
And here you have the freedom of speech, the freedom uh of, of religion, the freedom to assemble, the freedom of the press.
Individuals have the, the freedom to protest against the government and express their grievances.
All of the individual freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights were absolutely essential to preserving those liberties.
And then they were able to establish this 22 part form of government and the two part form was, they would have one, the federal government, the central government that would be supreme in its federal sphere of authority.
And then there would also be the state governments would be supreme in their spheres of authority.
So in essence, you have the authority over the whole country and that would provide the, the, the, the aspect of unity of all of the states.
But then you had the individual local freedoms in preserved in the state governments.
And so those individual liberties and freedoms were, were protected locally while the federal government bound everyone together with these unifying themes at the, at the federal level.
And those two things worked together in the genius of the American Republic.
And so, uh as I said, in the, in the federal sense, you’ve got the basis for uh Christian self government.
And these two forms of government were based on the two great commandments in scripture.
And what was the first and greatest commandment? Love the Lord, your God with all of your heart.
He is the the the ruler over everything.
And that was the model for the federal uh central authority.
And then the second great commandment is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
That is the basis for the local state authority.
And so those two great commandments is where they got the idea for the federal and the state government which protects both the local freedoms and binds everyone together in a, in a national sense of unity.
So if you’re a Californian, if you’re a Texan, if you’re a Floridian, if you’re a Georgian, if you’re a Washingtonian, you have the opportunity in your state to be unique and individual in the way your state runs and even within your state, you have local regions and communities and cities where you have further individuality and freedoms that are embraced and protected and celebrated.
And then all the states are brought together with this overarching theme of a love for your country and the principles that it’s based on.
You see how that works. Love for God, big picture, love for your neighbor local and that’s the form of this government.
Um And so they believe since that was God’s model for us individually as the family of faith, it should work as our model in every sphere, including government.
And the cool part is that not only are we accountable to local authorities that we elect and to the national authority that we elect and our representatives elect, but that our state governors and the, the federal government, they themselves are also subject to loving God with all of their heart and loving their neighbors, which are all of us in all of the states.
Do you see how that all works?
And there’s checks and balances and the power is separated among three different branches so that no one branch gets too much power to, to trample over the rights of other people.
This is the genius because they understood the nature of the human heart is ultimately in desperate need of God reining in the lust for power and transforming the heart to operate, to have a new operating system called love your God and love your neighbor.
This is the incredible genius and it was this form of government and this spirit of Christianity that astonished the world.
No one had ever done it before.
It was an experiment and it became the first Christian Republic in all of the world and has produced more freedom and blessing and happiness than any other form of government.
The world’s ever known. That’s why everybody wants to come here.
That’s why people break the law to get in here and they come in by the millions every single year.
And to the degree Doctor Foster says in the American covenant that we want to see liberty and happiness.
We follow those principles and we embrace that faith of our founding fathers and our forefathers.
And we will experience that liberty and happiness because that’s what they produce and to the degree that we get away from them, either through unbelief or corruption or the neglect of our families, our marriages, our churches and our civil government in the same proportion will the people notice the disappearing of those blessings.
And so our job is to rebuild those principles in the hearts of our families and in our churches, in the, in the minds of our Children by teaching them these things, the true history of America, the true greatness and genius of the ideas in God’s word of how not to only govern ourselves and our families, but also our nation.
That’s our job. We’ve got to begin colonizing these ideas everywhere that we can, we want it to spread, we want the hope virus to spread.
We want the revival spirit to come over people and infect people everywhere because it produces joy and strength and blessing and freedom.
So excited, we are now getting into the very heart of the strategy of the American covenant and how to restore that covenant all across our nation.
Uh You can get them on the website. I look forward to seeing you again. God bless you.
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