Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here

Where We Are & How We Got Here # 2 of 14

Transcript: AI Transcript

Professor: John Weaver

Subject: Civil Government

Genre: Sermon

Dictation Name:

Date: 1998-07-05

Synopsis: John Weaver argues that the division of major American denominations over abolitionism in the 19th century foreshadowed and precipitated the division of the nation. He contends that cultural changes are always preceded by theological changes, and that the abolitionist movement was driven by a rejection of biblical authority and a desire for power. The splits in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches severed the spiritual cords that held the Union together, leaving only force to maintain national unity.

[John Weaver] Psalm 11, look if you would please at verse 3. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? This was the text that we used for the first message, and I want to continue with this text where the question asked is exceedingly simple. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? I hope you will remember that when I began teaching on the abolitionist revolution, one of the key points that I made was this, that ideas have consequences and that you cannot have a cultural change without having a theological change.

[John Weaver] Let me say the same thing another way. You cannot have a cultural revolution without having a theological revolution. All you have to do is look at the breakdown in our country, morally speaking. Look how our culture has changed, not just in the last 50 years or in the last 20 years, but even the last five years. And the reason why you have such great cultural shifts is because you have great theological shifts. Forty years ago, most Americans would not have put up with what you and I would call open sodomy. They just simply would not have done it. But today, since there is that great cultural shift, you can look back and you can see that there has been a theological shift where the faith has been undermined and a great tolerance has been preached and taught.

[John Weaver] And therefore, we have all these changes in our cultures. Now, I pointed out last week that the abolitionists did not care for the scriptures. They denied the inspiration of the scriptures. They denied the deity of Jesus Christ. They denied the supernatural, so they did not care for the scripture. They did not care for the slaves. I gave you quote after quote demonstrating that, nor did they care for the Constitution. May I remind you that William Lloyd Garrison, who printed the Liberator, said that the Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.

[John Weaver] And of course, it was not to be obeyed. Now, the truth of the matter is the abolitionists wanted power. And they could care less about the consequences. And they could care less what happened to society or the nation. They just simply wanted power.

[John Weaver] Now, the Bible says in Amos chapter 3 and verse 3, another question, can two walk together except they be agreed? And the answer is very obviously no. You see, you cannot really have union without unity. Now, you may have union without unity, but it's not going to last long. An excellent illustration of that is what some wicked folks have done in time past. But you can take two tomcats and tie their tails together and hang them over a clothesline and you've got union. But you don't have unity because they will scratch each other to death and bite each other to death because there is absolutely no unity there. So if there is no unity, then inevitably, invariably, the union is going to tear apart.

[John Weaver] There must undoubtedly be a parting of the ways. So scripture asks, can two walk together except they be agreed? And the answer is no.

[John Weaver] Now, abolitionism spilled over into the northern churches and the consequence was absolutely devastating. And the consequence was nothing less than broken churches.

[John Weaver] Now, I want you to think back with me. After the War of Independence was ended in 1787, And after the Constitution was ratified in 1789, the churches in America had three basic goals before them. And they were simply, number one, securing full religious liberty, which they sought for.

[John Weaver] Secondly, completing the organization of their own churches and denominations. And thirdly, just simply teaching their own and evangelizing the lost.

[John Weaver] Now, let me tell you something that is exceedingly surprising to the average Christian. And that's when we learn that in the beginning of our country, there were not all of these major divisions that you have in the denominations. I don't care if you talk about the Baptist or the Methodist or the Presbyterian. There was basically just one denomination. Each of these denominations are what you and I would call national. We had a Baptist church. It was the same Baptist church in the north as it was in the south or the east or the west. Same thing with Presbyterian, same thing with Methodist. And the truth of the matter is there was a national cooperation among all of these denominations.

[John Weaver] And it's almost startling to realize that there were no southern Baptists. When our country first began, other than the fact that there were Baptists who live in the South, that would have been Southern. And there were no American Baptists. There were no Northern Baptists. There was no Presbyterian Church USA, Presbyterian Church PCA, Southern Presbyterian. There were no Southern Methodists. You were just Presbyterian. Or you were just Methodist. Now, the Methodist And the Baptists and the Presbyterian churches were the leading denominations in America.

[John Weaver] And although there were differences, doctrinally speaking, between the denominations, yet there was an excellent spirit of cooperation, and Christian charity was even exhibited between these differing denominations. Now you've got to ask yourself what happened. What severed the national ties? What severed the spirit of cooperation and brotherly love? And it may surprise you when you realize that the answer is abolitionism. Abolitionism was the fanatical desire to quote-unquote free the slaves, but the truth of the matter is, as I pointed out last week, they were not interested in the slaves, but interested in that as a means of gaining power and influence. It was abolitionism that literally forced the divisions in the major denominations.

[John Weaver] Now, what I want to do today is this. I want us to look, very quickly, at these three major denominations. And I'm going to give you some quotes. that will literally knock your socks off. You see, our church leaders, as well as our political leaders, recognize the fact that when these denominations split, because of abolitionism, it was just a foreshadowing of the split that was coming in our union and in our nation. Now, let me just begin by trying to give you an example of how abolitionism infiltrated into the denominational churches.

[John Weaver] Now very clearly, that no conservative church is not going to invite a Theodore Parker or Thomas Wentworth Higginson to come and preach on Sunday, because those men denied the deity of Christ. They denied the scriptures. And no Baptist church is going to invite those men to come in and preach on abolitionism. No. That's not going to happen. Well, how in the world did abolitionism then spread over into the northern churches?

[John Weaver] Have you ever heard of a college, and it's still in existence, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio? Now, Oberlin College was basically a hotbed of abolitionism. But there was a man by the name of Charles Branson Finney, who was an Arminian, who actually was worse than an Arminian. He was a semi-Collegian. And Arminian, his Arminian and semi-Pelagian theology led him into what was known as the revivalism of that particular day. And there had been studies done on when Finney went into towns and they would say, well, bars closed, this happened and this happened. And that's true.

[John Weaver] But when he left town, they reopened. In other words, it was not anything of a lasting impression. And so they wanted to secure Charles Gradson Finney as president of Oberlin College, and they did so. Finney became president of Oberlin College. There you have the revivalism that was being spurred by Finney. And there was a professor at Oberlin College by the name of Theodore Dwight Well. Theodore Dwight Well was a rabid abolitionist. And so literally what they did was this, they captured the revivalism of Finney and turned it into an abolitionist revival.

[John Weaver] Now, they formed an American anti-slavery society and sent out 70 paid agents for the express purpose of infiltrating these churches and to introduce abolitionism into them. Let me give you an example. There was a man by the name of James A. Tome, T-H-O-M-E. He was a senior divinity student at Oberlin College, and he was one of the original 70 sent out by the American Slavery Society in 1836.

[John Weaver] Now, on the last day of March, he wrote his professor, Theodore Dlightwell, that he had gone to Petersburg, Ohio, and had lectured five times on what he called immediate abolitionism. Now, what he called immediate abolitionism was this. You release the slaves immediately. That's it. We're not paying you. We're not recognizing any property rights. We're not even recognizing the fact that we sold them to you. You just release them and that's it. And it didn't matter that the slaves had nowhere to go. It did not matter that they were not trained in anything but agricultural pursuits. And so he was preaching immediate abolitionism. And here is what he wrote. Theodore Dwight, well, he said, quote, Citizens mostly turned out to hear. Last evening, they all voted in favor of immediatism, that is, immediate abolitionism. But they were not willing to form a society to oppose slavery immediately.

[John Weaver] The reason was they were chiefly Methodists and were afraid to move until their ministers should say move. Now, it's not that the Methodist pastor had all that power. The truth of the matter is in 1835, The Methodist Episcopal Church had unanimously adopted a resolution condemning anti-slavery agitation. And had that Methodist minister said, move, he would have been going contrary to the discipline of his denomination and would have been bringing himself under church discipline as well.

[John Weaver] And so what they were doing is they were spreading out, trying to indoctrinate the different denominations. Now there is a book, and I have it, I've read it, in fact I'm going to be quoting a great deal from it, written by C.C. Goen. And the name of his book is Broken Churches, Broken Nation. And what he does is he documents in this book that the splits in the denominations, the splits in the churches, preceded and foreshadowed the split in our nation. Now, what he does not do in that book is an excellent book, but what he does not do is he does not demonstrate that the cultural shift was preceded by a theological shift.

[John Weaver] Now, he does say it was from abolitionism and their agitation, but he does not emphasize the fact that he was their doctrine. He was their theology that was absolutely contrary to the word of God. And it was that which preceded this. cultural change in the country. Now listen, before you can have a cultural change, you have to have a theological change. That meant somebody had to change theology, and in this instance, the theological revolution was in the north.

[John Weaver] Now, southern pastors recognized the battle was basically a battle between humanism and Christianity. Let me give you what Dr. C. Greg Singer said in his book, The Theological Interpretation of American History. He said, and I quote, After 1830, there was a growing philosophical and theological cleavage between the North and the South. While the North was becoming increasingly subject to radical influences, the South was becoming increasingly conservative in its outlook. End quote. Now what he said is the North is getting more and more radical, the South is getting more and more conservative.

[John Weaver] There was a prominent Presbyterian theologian. I have all of his writings in my library. His name was John Henley Thornwell. He was born in 1812 and he died in 1862. So the war had been going on a year when he died. And here is what Dr. Thornwell said. Now listen. He said, the parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. Don't think of the war between here somebody who wants to free the slaves and here someone who wants to keep the slaves. He says the parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders.

[John Weaver] They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans and Jacobins. So he's talking about the north. on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground, Christianity and atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity is at stake. So here is a pastor of one of the leading Presbyterian churches, and he's saying the battle is not a battle between anti-slavery and slavery, it's a battle between Christianity and atheism. It's a battle between freedom and communism. So the war of 1861 to 1865 was in part sparked then by this theological revolution in the north and it had grave consequences. If there were to be broken churches, the inevitable result was there's going to be a broken nation. I'm going to give you in order the splits in the churches. First of all, there was the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian was the first to split in 1837. It then split again in 1857. There was the battle between what is known as the old lights and the new lights, or the old school and the new school.

[John Weaver] Now, it is true there were varying doctrinal differences between the new school and the old school. In fact, the new school was trying to adopt some Athenianism and some of his semi-Clasianism and some of his methods. And there were doctrinal differences there. But it is true that slavery was one of the main issues because of the abolitionists who were agitating in the Presbyterian Church and so abolitionism then figured in decisively in the split in the Presbyterian Church. Then the Methodist Episcopal Church split in 1844 and the Baptists then split in 1845. So there were no Southern Baptists until 1845. That's when the Southern Baptists actually came into existence.

[John Weaver] Now, what I want to do this morning is to take the time to demonstrate that each of these denominations ultimately split over abolitionism, and their split paved the way for the split in the nation. Let me tell you something, folks. Learn this right now. When professing Christians, and I'm not talking about the world, but when professing Christians refuse to sit down and work things out biblically and scripturally, what hope do the heathen have?

[John Weaver] The answer is absolutely none. And you did have professing Christians in the North and professing Christians in the South. And the South pleaded time after time, sit down with us. In fact, I'll give you a quote later on. They could care less what the Bible said. And those in the North said, no, we are not going to work it out. You will do what we say or else.

[John Weaver] A second truth we better learn is this. You have to learn the importance of examining everything in light of the Word of God. Listen, there are a lot of teachings. There are a lot of things that sound good. But that doesn't mean they're right. And it doesn't mean they're biblical. And just because something works does not mean that it is biblical either. So we've got to learn to examine everything in light of the Word of God. Now, Professor George A.

[John Weaver] Baxter of Union Theological Seminary, which is in Richmond, Virginia, said this back at that time, if that is the separation of the Presbyterian Church into North and South, if he said, we'll put an end to the abolition question and disturbance in the Presbyterian Church. In other words, what he is saying is the Presbyterian Church originally split now because of the agitation of the abolitionists. And he said, now, once we split in Northern and Southern, now maybe They'll leave us alone. He was willing to get rid of the new lights or the new school, because at the same time it would get rid of abolitionism.

[John Weaver] Many of you have heard of Charles Hodge. Charles Hodge is a famous Presbyterian theologian. I have his books on systematic theology. He's written other books as well. He was a staunch defender of the old school orthodoxy. And here's what he said concerning the split in the Presbyterian Church. Of course, he blamed the abolitionists and their stigmatizing of slavery as a sin and a crime, and he said this, that it must operate to produce the disunion of the states and the division of all ecclesiastical societies. Now, here's what he said. We shall become two nations in feeling which must soon render us two nations in fact. William S. Plummer, who is another Presbyterian theologian, He has a tremendous book on the law, another tremendous book on the Psalms, and here's what he said. Should the assembly, that is the Presbyterian Church, should the assembly legislate and decide that slave-holding is a sin, the southern churches would all feel themselves instructed by the Apostle Paul to withdraw from such. Thus our church would be renaissander.

[John Weaver] Then nothing is left except to rim the star-spangled banner in twain. Soon the hostile forces will be marshaled against each other, and the Potomac will be dyed with blood. Can it be that the righteous judge of all the earth has so dreadful a controversy with the Presbyterian Church of the United States as to give her up to the folly and madness of being the first to hoist the gate and let the flood of desolation roll in?

[John Weaver] Now listen to what he said. He said, if this happens, soon the Potomac will be dyed with blood. He knew what was going to happen. James Henley Thornwell, whom I've already quoted, by the way, he was often referred to as the Calhoun of the South. You remember John C. Calhoun, the leading Southern politician and a tremendous author and speaker. But Thornwell was called the Calhoun of the South.

[John Weaver] He said in 1851, of course he said, the fault of this division lay with the agitators, that is, the abolitionists alone. He said, and I quote, we are solemn and earnest, not only because we deplore a schism in the body of Christ, but because we deplore a schism among the confederated states of this union. We declare our deliberate conviction that the continued agitation of slavery must sooner or later shiver this government into atoms. If slavery be indeed consistent with the Bible, their responsibility is tremendous, who in obedience to blind impulses and visionary theories pull down the fairest fabric of government the world has ever seen, rim the body of Christ in sunder, and dethrone the Savior in his own kingdom.

[John Weaver] Are our country, our Bible, our interest on earth, and our hopes for heaven to be sacrificed on the altars of a fierce fanaticism? Slavery is implicated in every fiber of Southern society. It is with us a vital question. It is because we know that interference with it cannot and will not be much longer endured. We raise our warning voice. We would save the country if we could.

[John Weaver] Now there's another Presbyterian theologian in 1851 saying, look, Northern abolitionists, you're destroying our country. Just leave us alone, just shut up. You do your thing, we'll do our thing. Just don't force this schism in our church and upon this country. See, the new school in the Presbyterian Church was demanding that slavery not only be declared a sin, but that all slaveholders then who were Christians and members of the Presbyterian Church would then be subject to church discipline. And so they were forcing this division in the Presbyterian Church.

[John Weaver] Now the Methodists and the Baptists soon followed. By the way, let me tell you what John Wesley said in 1785. John Wesley denounced slavery as that extra wholesome of all villainies. And then he said that American slavery was the vilest that ever the sun saw.

[John Weaver] Now, with the founder of Methodism coming out and making statements like that, invariably there's going to be someone who's going to pick up on it. Peter Cartwright was a Methodist circuit riding minister, and there are many great things about Peter Cartwright. He certainly was not right in this area, but some of my favorite stories that are humorous and good relate to Peter Cartwright. One of them was the fact he stopped at an inn for the night and of course there was always taverns in the inn and here were some people drinking and there was a beautiful young woman there who was dancing and wanting everybody to dance with her and so Peter Cartwright was just sitting there resting And this young woman came over and took him by the hand and said, come and dance with me. And Peter Cartwright, of course, refused.

[John Weaver] He said, no, he said, I had rather not. And she insisted. She continued to pull him by the hand. He said, no, I had rather not. And she pulled him literally out onto the dance floor. And Peter Cartwright said, very well, if you insist that I dance with you, I shall. But I always make a habit of asking the Lord's blessing upon everything that I do. And he smashed her down to the floor. He said, let's pray.

[John Weaver] And of course, he prayed. And after he got through praying that putting into her dancing and to the drinking as well. So Peter Cartwright had a lot of things in a lot of areas. But he was from Illinois and he attended the General Conference in 1844. when it split, and here is his reflection 12 years later after the split in the Methodist Church. He said this, all the time of the protracted debates, I knew if the Southern preachers failed to carry the point they had fixed, namely the tolerance of slaveholding in the Episcopacy, that they would fly the track and set up for themselves.

[John Weaver] And in that event, war and strife would prevail among brethren that once were united as a brotherly band, and that they must of necessity become a slavery church. And I the more deeply regretted it because any abomination sanctioned by the priesthood would take a firmer hold on the country, and that this very circumstance would no longer perpetuate the evil of slavery, and perhaps would be the entering wedge in the dissolution of our glorious union and perhaps the downfall of this great republic.

[John Weaver] Now, I certainly disagree with Peter Cartwright when he calls slavery an evil, because I'm going to deal with slavery from the Bible a little bit later. Let me make this clarification. It is true. It is true that slavery is attended with many evils. But you cannot say that slavery itself is evil because God even instituted slavery. And I can show you that from the Bible. So I certainly disagree with him when he talks about the evil of slavery and it being abomination. There is a biblical slavery and there's a heathen slavery. I'm not getting into that right now. But slavery is not evil in and of itself.

[John Weaver] But what Kurt Wright did see, and he saw correctly, That the division between the North and the South and the Methodist Church was going to literally destroy the Republic. Now, in 1837, at the Georgia Methodist annual conference, they passed a resolution unanimously. And here's what the resolution said. That slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil. It was Bishop Beverly Waugh who was presiding at the New England Annual Conference when he refused to entertain any abolitionist petitions and he said this, he warned them, he asked them, are you willing to hazard the unity of the Methodist Episcopal Church by agitating those fearfully exciting topics? in opposition to the deliberate decision of the last general conference.

[John Weaver] He goes on, are you willing to contribute to the destruction of our beautiful and our excellent form of civil and political government after it has cost the labor, treasure, and blood of our fathers to establish it? So here he is a year later saying, look, you might as well cease giving me these petitions. I'm not going to rule over them because all it's going to ultimately do is destroy our nation.

[John Weaver] The Southern Christian advocate, which was a Christian newspaper, wrote in December the 1837. In the present state of the country, we believe it to be the utmost importance to the country itself that the churches be kept together. Now, listen to what it wrote. Let the bonds be once severed, which hold the churches of the north and south together. And the union of these states will be more than endangered.

[John Weaver] It will presently be renaissance under. So the author said, once these churches divide, the nation is gone. Elias Bowden, who was a New Yorker of the Oneida Methodist Conference, said this, we deprecate the idea of division, sir. We know that our great republic is connected together by the twofold tithes of civil and ecclesiastical union. We are aware that to dissolve the one of these tithes would weaken the union of the whole, and viewed under a civil aspect exclusively. We start back from the very idea. And then he goes on to say, but sir, it must be allowed that secession is preferable to schism. In other words, he said, I'd rather us divide than continue to fight, but I want you to understand something. Once we divide, that's it.

[John Weaver] It's going to cause more and more problems. See, William A. Smith of Virginia continued and contended that by permitting the anti-slavery activity within the Church of the General Conference, all it was doing was allowing the abolitionists to undermine the Union. And certainly, you're going to see that more and more as I continue.

[John Weaver] Now, William Caper wrote in the Southern Christian Advocate, he said, listen carefully, the prospect for peace and amicable relations is infinitely better with a separation than under a forced and nominal union. And if so, the safety of the country is to a much greater extent bound up with the division of the Church than a continued union. The division of the Methodist Church will demonstrate this fact to the country that Southern forbearance has its limits.

[John Weaver] and that a vigorous and united resistance will be made at all costs to the spread of this pseudo-religious frenzy called abolitionism. Thus a check will be put upon a movement which, more than all others, causes discord and threatens the political union. So once again, Capers wrote, if we have to divide, we're going to have to divide rather than fighting all the time, but if we do divide, mark it down, it will be the destruction of our political union as well as our civil union.

[John Weaver] Peter Cartwright, quoting him again in 1856, and I want you to listen carefully to what he says. You remember I told you the abolitionists were after power, and that is true. They were after power. Listen to what he said. He said, this dreadful rupture in the Methodist Church spread terror almost over every other branch of the Church of Christ, and really, disguise it as we may, it shook the pillars of our American government to the center.

[John Weaver] And many of our ablest statesmen were alarmed, and looked upon it as the entering wedge to political disunion, and a fearful step toward the downfall of our happy republic. And it is greatly to be feared that the constitutional agitation and unscrupulous anathemas indulged in by the frenzied preachers and unprincipled demagogues that seek more for the spoils of office than the freedom of the slave or the good of the country will so burst the bonds of brotherly love and real love of country.

[John Weaver] that all the horrors of civil war will break upon us shortly, and firebrands, arrows, and death be thrown broadcast over the land, and anarchy, mobs, and lawless desperadoes reign triumphant, and then the fair fabric of our happy republic will be tumbled into ruins, and the liberties our fathers fought for, and the cost of the blood and treasure of the best patriots that ever lived, will be lost forever. Do you hear what he said? This was in 1856.

[John Weaver] In five years, what he said was going to come true. Did you hear what he said? That the politicians, these unprincipled demagogues, were taking advantage of the situation. What? Trying to get the spoils of office. Trying to heap for themselves, not only money, but power as well. But they all viewed it as the entering wedge that's going to destroy this union. The division that came about in the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church paved the way for the division in the Baptist Church.

[John Weaver] These were the three leading denominations in our country. There were other denominations, but these were the leading ones. The abolitionists organized the American Baptist anti-slavery convention in New York City in 1840. And once they did, they immediately issued an address to Southern Baptists denying the biblical justification for slavery. In other words, it didn't matter what the Bible said. They were denying the biblical justification for slavery and exhorting the Southerners to confess the sinfulness of holding slaves and urging them to initiate immediate steps for legal emancipation. And then they went ahead and said, if the Southerners refused, they declared, we cannot and we dare not recognize you as consistent brethren in Christ. And we cannot, at the Lord's table, cordially take that as a brother's hand, listen to what they said now, which piles the scourge on the woman's naked flesh, which thrusts a gag into the mouth of a man, which rivets fetters on the innocent, and which shuts up the Bible from human eyes.

[John Weaver] Now, let me tell you something. Do you realize most abolitionists Had never ever been down south. They had never seen a slave. They had never seen a slave plantation. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, had never been to the south, had never been around slavery, knew nothing, wrote it from the accounts that the abolitionists themselves were setting forth. I told you that I have in my possession the slave narratives for Georgia.

[John Weaver] I lack just a few pages finishing the entire book, but so far, out of all the slaves that were interviewed, out of all of them, only one has reported anything derogatory. And then you can tell by the way this slave is presenting it that all she is reporting is hearsay that went on, or at least she says went on, on a regular basis, all the other slaves. In fact, most of them, after the war was over, just stayed on with their masters. They had no other place to go.

[John Weaver] And so here they're saying, well, here's what you southerners do. You beat the women, and you stick rags down their mouths, and that's not true. Most, I do know that there was some abuse. I understand that. Because there's the depravity of man. But most men took care of their slaves. Shutting the Bible to them? What do you mean shutting the Bible to them? Stonewall Jackson had a black Sunday school class that numbered in the hundreds that he taught every week.

[John Weaver] When Robert Louis Dabney was asked to go northward and become president of a theological seminary, he said, I can't go because of my children. What he was referring to was his slaves. He stayed in the South and taught his slaves the Word of God. So the point I'm trying to make is this. Here they're making this up, but they're saying, well, if you don't immediately denounce it because we say it's wrong and we deny the Bible justification for it, then we can't recognize you as brother and we're going to cut you off. You know what the South said? Go ahead and cut us off. And by the way, we're not sending any more money to any more missionary organizations or any other organization that you have up north. We're going to cut our money off. You can't recognize us. We're not going to send you any more money.

[John Weaver] Pastor Richard Fuller, a pastor from South Carolina, in 1844 spoke on the impending division of the Southern Baptists, and he says this, a separation or rupture in the Baptist denomination would not only be disastrous to the church, but also to the nation. The Christian Reflector, which he wrote in, he wrote this article, he said, My chief hope for the Union is in the conservative power of religion. And the day is not far when that power will be required in all of its stringency.

[John Weaver] Look at the distracted condition of this land. Reflect on the appalling character of a civil war. And if you love the country or the slave, do not sever the bands which unite the Baptist churches." He said, if you love the country, if you love the slave, don't sever the bands that's going to destroy this country. A little bit later, the same pastor said that when the division did take place between the North and South, he said this division must act as the entering wedge to dissolution of our political bonds.

[John Weaver] The writer went on and said, The Methodist Church will be divided into two great parties with mutual jealousy and antagonistic measures. The Presbyterians are in danger of the same evil, and if the Baptists, unmindful of their duty to Christ and their country, shall bite and devour one another and array themselves into two great parties, the Northern and the Southern, what conservative principles, what salt of the earth will be left to restrain and modulate the madness of political strife and ambition and save our Republic from ruin. What's he saying?

[John Weaver] If the Christians can't get along, don't look for the wicked to get along. If the Christians are not going to do what's right, don't look for the ungodly to do what's right. They're not. A week before the Southern Baptists met in Augusta, Georgia and formed the Southern Baptist Convention, the Baptist banner and pioneer of Louisville warned about what they call state line division, that is, dividing between the states. They went on to say that if there was a division between the Northern and Southern Baptists, it will not only separate those brethren, churches, and associations that now hold sweet intercourse and fellowship across these lines, but it will tender gender-sectional stripes and divisions. It will produce alienation of heart and lead to contentious turmoil and warfare along the lines of division. Then the Kentucky editor went on to say, let the three great denominations of Christians be divided by state lines upon the subject of abolitionism.

[John Weaver] And who does not see that all social intercourse between the parties will be sundered and the parts continually recede? And then he continues. Listen, the policy of a northern manufacturers. Remember, I told you last time that the big industrials had a hand in this. They wanted it. because they were going to make more money and grab more power. The policy of the northern manufacturers and that of the southern planters are antipodes, that is, they're against each other, a positive and a negative.

[John Weaver] They have been the fruitful cause of half the strife and debates in Congress for the last 15 years, so that we can hope for but little resistance to a separation from the mercantile interests by which the North and South are bound. Who does not see, therefore, that if the religious and, consequently, the social interests of the country are divided by state lines, that more than half the bonds which hold the political compact in harmony are dissolved, and that the groundwork is laid for the ultimate dissolution of the Union and the destruction of the fairest fabric of civil and religious liberty the world ever saw?"

[John Weaver] So they said, it's very simple. Once the churches divide, the country is gone.

[John Weaver] Now, the Presbyterian The Watchman of the South, which was published in Richmond, said this,"...the Church is once divided, North and South. Demigods will have but little more to do to dissolve the Union of the States." We shall see war and horrible contests. Brother will slay brother. The father and the son will stand in opposing battle lines, and tyrants and demons will clap their hands at the blighting of the last hopes of man for a fair fabric of well-established liberty for a scale of imposing magnitude."

[John Weaver] Don't tell me those men did not know what was about to come down in this country. They knew, not only the problems in the churches, but they knew the source of those problems. And they knew why those problems were there. Because someone wanted power and someone wanted money. I got tickled when I read that I raised the other's name as Randall Waller. But in 1848, John Lightfoot Waller, I don't know why they called him Lightfoot, in relief, but that was light horses to the light foot, I don't know. But Lightfoot Waller of Kentucky said this, Who can expect that our country will remain united when the bonds of religious concord are broken?

[John Weaver] If the ties of Christian love are sundered, what bands can bind this nation together? He, therefore, that encourages religious strife and division between the northern and the southern sectors of the United States is contributing to the disruption of our union. There were newspaper correspondents at the convention in 1845 When the Southern Baptists left and separated from the Northern Baptists, and one of those correspondents wrote this, from all appearance, the separation of the Church is inevitable.

[John Weaver] We could hope otherwise, but so it is, and we must admit it. When we are forced out of the Church by Northern fanatics, we shall next be forced out of the Union by the same nefarious acts.

[John Weaver] Now this was a correspondent for the Charleston Mercury out of Charleston, South Carolina. And he said, when the Southerners are forced out of their churches, the next step is they will be forced out of the Union. Then he continued to write, in this contest of religions, we have an entire and remedialist severance of the union, a division that henceforth creates into the two most numerous denominations of the country, a northern and a southern religion.

[John Weaver] At this separation brought about by no accident, It was planned, nor heeded the moment, but after much deliberation and unwearied efforts to reconcile the dissension, efforts that yielded only to a settled conviction that reconciliation was impossible, Mr. Clay sees it in the true light, a dissension that turns one of the strongest bands of the political union into a destroying sword." Now, I only have just a couple more quotes. John C.

[John Weaver] Calhoun was a United States Senator. He is referred to as the cast-iron Southerner. And Calhoun was a tremendous representative for states' rights and personal liberty and freedom.

[John Weaver] Now this quote that I'm going to give you is four or five paragraphs, but I want you to listen to this. This is so revealing. If you want to know what happened in our country, I want you to listen. In fact, I am going to read this entire quote just to emphasize the two last words. Listen to what John C. Calhoun said. The chords that bind the states together are not only manly, but various in character.

[John Weaver] Some are spiritual or ecclesiastical, some political, others social. The strongest of those of a spiritual and ecclesiastical nature consisted in the unity of the great religious denominations, all of which originally embraced the whole union. All of these denominations, with the exception perhaps of the Catholics, were organized very much upon the principle of our political institutions. Beginning with smaller meetings, corresponding with the political divisions of the country, their organizations terminated in one great central assemblage, corresponding very much with the character of Congress. At these meetings, the principal clergymen and lay members of their respective denominations from all parts of the union met to transact business relating to their common concerns. It was not confined to what appertained to the doctrines and discipline of the respective denominations, but extended to plans for disseminating the Bible, establishing missions, distributing tracts, and of the establishing of presses for the publication of tracts, newspapers, and periodicals with a view of diffusing religious information, and for the support of their respective doctrines and creeds. All of this combined contributed greatly to strengthen the bonds of the Union.

[John Weaver] The ties which had held each denomination together formed a strong cord to hold the whole union together. But powerful as they were, they have not been able to resist the explosive effect of slavery agitation. The first of these cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church. The numerous and strong ties which held it together are all broken and its unity gone. They now form separate churches, and instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the interest of the whole church, which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed in two hostile bodies, engaged in litigation about what was formerly their common property. The next cord that snap was that of the Baptist, one of the largest and most respectable of the denominations. That of the Presbyterians has not entirely snapped, but some of its strands have given way. That of the Episcopal Church is only one of the four great denominations which remain unbroken and entire. If the agitation goes on, the same force acting with increased intensity as had been shown will finally snap every cord when nothing will be left to hold the states together except force.

[John Weaver] Accept force. That was in 1850. March the 4th, 1850. What was he saying? He was saying the same thing that all these pastors have said, when the churches will not resolve their problems biblically, and they sever and they divide, Then the nation is inevitably going to divide and the only thing that's going to hold it together is force. Why do you think Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to force the South? Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was the man who began executive orders? Abraham Lincoln was the man who began martial law. Abraham Lincoln was the man who suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Abraham Lincoln was the man who arrested the legislatures of Maryland and Kentucky so they would not secede with the southern states. Abraham Lincoln is the man who imprisoned over 28,000 Northerners who disagreed with him without trial and without charge.

[John Weaver] And what does Calhoun say? Once the Christian cords have been snapped and sundered, the only thing that's going to hold these states together is force. And may I remind you, since 1865, that which has basically held this country together is force of one form or the other. Henry Clay, A few weeks before his death in 1852, he was interviewed by the Presbyterian Herald, and here is what he said. I tell you this sundering of religious ties which have hitherto bound our people together, I consider the greatest source of danger in our country. If our religious men cannot live together in peace, what can be expected of us politicians, very few of whom profess to be governed by the great principles of love? If all the churches divide on the subject of slavery, there will be nothing left to bind our people together but trade and commerce. That is a very powerful bond, I admit, but when the people of these states become thoroughly alienated from each other and get their passions aroused, they are not apt to stop and consider what is in their interest.

[John Weaver] Following the secession of South Carolina on December the 20th in 1860, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, remember the Cleveland Plain Dealer is out of Cleveland, Ohio, so it's a northern paper. The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote, for years the Union has in fact been dissolving. Political parties first divided, the Union Whig party was first went asunder, then the churches North and South divided, then our Bible-tracking missionary societies, and finally the social relations to an alarming extent. Listen, the secession of South Carolina yesterday was but the culmination of events which have been progressing for years. So here's a Northerner admitting that when South Carolina, the first state to secede, On December 20, 1860, when that happened, they said, it is just the progression or the culmination of events that have been going on for years.

[John Weaver] Now, let me make a couple of applications. Please learn this. Please learn this. This is true individually. It is true familially, that is as a family. It is true ecclesiastically, that is as a church. It is true nationally. No problem will ever be resolved until all the parties are willing to submit to the Word of God and do what God requires to work it out. I've had couples come to me for marital counseling.

[John Weaver] You know what I tell them? They come to me with their problems. I say, I have no problem with problems. I can work a problem out just like that. Problems are not the problem. I never have a problem with problems. All problems have answers. I never have problems with problems. I have problems with people. Getting people to do what's necessary to work out the problem. If the people do what's right, it will work out. If they do what's wrong, it will never work out.

[John Weaver] Here's a man and woman. One wants to divorce, one wants to save the marriage. Can I help them? No. Why? Because one wants what's wrong, the other one wants what's right. I can't do that. But if both of them want to do what's right and are willing to confess their sins and repent of them and change their lives, it can be worked out just like that. May take a little time, but it can be worked out.

[John Weaver] But the point I'm making is this, folks. If what happened in 1860 was the result of Christians dividing, and it did, basically, what do you think is going to continue to happen in this country? Everything is going to continue to deteriorate. until we can come back and say, we're going to submit to the Word of God.

[John Weaver] Now, that doesn't mean that we've got to all have one church, one denomination, everybody believe exactly the same. It doesn't mean that. I can agree to disagree with someone who is right on what you and I would call the fundamentals of the faith. There are probably no two men in this room that agree on everything. But we do agree that the Bible is the Word of God. We do agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We do agree that salvation is by grace through faith. We do agree that unless God saves you, you're not saved. We do agree on a lot of those fundamentals. But there may be some things we disagree on. We may disagree on eschatology, when Christ is coming back. We may disagree on the mode of baptism.

[John Weaver] I hope not, but I'm just saying that's certainly that is true between Presbyterians and Baptists. I disagree with him on baptism. That's why I'm a Baptist, not a Presbyterian. But the point I'm making is I can go along and work with a Presbyterian, although I disagree with him on ecclesiology and disagree with him on baptism, I can work with him as long as he believes all the other great fundamentals of the faith. We might have our differences, but at least we're going to need to sit down and work them out according to the Word of God. And you've got to learn, folks, if you maintain what you think and what you want and what you desire and what your will is, irrespective of the Word of God and what God's Word and God's will is, you're headed for trouble. You're headed for heartache. Individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally.

[John Weaver] Now, let me end with what I began with. Ideas have consequences. You cannot have a cultural change without having a theological change. And what is happening in our country is that Christians are constantly and continually either denying or refusing to study and apply the Word of God to their lives. And when you don't know truth, you can't stand for truth. When you don't know truth, you can't fight for truth. I want to tell you, if God allows to happen, what will probably happen within the next year and a half, You better know truth. And you better know how to stand for it. Because you're going to need all of the truth and all the character that you can get. You better learn this. If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right. If you don't believe right, you can't live right. All cultural changes, individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally, are preceded by theological change. And you better know where you do not ever, ever need to change based upon the Word of God.

[John Weaver] A broken church, a broken nation. Let's pray. Father, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ for your love, for your grace, for your mercy. Help us to see, Lord, and understand what has happened in our country, where we are, and how we got here. And the force that exists today that tries to pin us together with bayonets is there because we've left the Word of God. And we've left the principles that you've given to direct our lives. Enable us, Father, to honor Thee and to love Thee, and to stand for what's right. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

Where We Are & How We Got Here # 2 of 14

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	12004171056
Subject	Civil Government
Course	Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here
Genre	Sermon
Date	1998-07-05
Dictation Name
Book	Book 119: Where We Are & How We Got Here — Chapter 2
Source Timed Segments	85

Formatted Transcript

Introduction: Ideas Have Consequences

Weaver reiterates that cultural revolutions require theological revolutions, using the shift in moral standards regarding sodomy as an example.

Psalm 11, look if you would please at verse 3.

Scripture Reading — Psalm 11:3

"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

This was the text that we used for the first message, and I want to continue with this text where the question asked is exceedingly simple. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? I hope you will remember that when I began teaching on the abolitionist revolution, one of the key points that I made was this, that ideas have consequences and that you cannot have a cultural change without having a theological change. Let me say the same thing another way. You cannot have a cultural revolution without having a theological revolution. All you have to do is look at the breakdown in our country, morally speaking. Look how our culture has changed, not just in the last 50 years or in the last 20 years, but even the last five years. And the reason why you have such great cultural shifts is because you have great theological shifts. Forty years ago, most Americans would not have put up with what you and I would call open sodomy. They just simply would not have done it. But today, since there is that great cultural shift, you can look back and you can see that there has been a theological shift where the faith has been undermined and a great tolerance has been preached and taught.

The Abolitionists' Rejection of Scripture and the Constitution

Abolitionists denied the inspiration of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and the supernatural; they also despised the Constitution, calling it a covenant with death.

And therefore, we have all these changes in our cultures. Now, I pointed out last week that the abolitionists did not care for the scriptures. They denied the inspiration of the scriptures. They denied the deity of Jesus Christ. They denied the supernatural, so they did not care for the scripture. They did not care for the slaves. I gave you quote after quote demonstrating that, nor did they care for the Constitution. May I remind you that William Lloyd Garrison, who printed the Liberator, said that the Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.

And of course, it was not to be obeyed. Now, the truth of the matter is the abolitionists wanted power. And they could care less about the consequences. And they could care less what happened to society or the nation. They just simply wanted power.

Union Requires Unity

Using Amos 3:3, Weaver explains that union without unity cannot last, and abolitionism forced a parting of ways in the churches.

Now, the Bible says in Amos chapter 3 and verse 3, another question,

Scripture Reading — Amos 3:3

"Can two walk together except they be agreed?"

And the answer is very obviously no. You see, you cannot really have union without unity. Now, you may have union without unity, but it's not going to last long. An excellent illustration of that is what some wicked folks have done in time past. But you can take two tomcats and tie their tails together and hang them over a clothesline and you've got union. But you don't have unity because they will scratch each other to death and bite each other to death because there is absolutely no unity there. So if there is no unity, then inevitably, invariably, the union is going to tear apart.

There must undoubtedly be a parting of the ways. So scripture asks, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" And the answer is no. Now, abolitionism spilled over into the northern churches and the consequence was absolutely devastating. And the consequence was nothing less than broken churches.

The Original Unity of American Denominations

After the Revolution, churches were nationally unified; there were no separate Northern and Southern Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian denominations.

Now, I want you to think back with me. After the War of Independence was ended in 1787, and after the Constitution was ratified in 1789, the churches in America had three basic goals before them. And they were simply, number one, securing full religious liberty, which they sought for. Secondly, completing the organization of their own churches and denominations. And thirdly, just simply teaching their own and evangelizing the lost.

Now, let me tell you something that is exceedingly surprising to the average Christian. And that's when we learn that in the beginning of our country, there were not all of these major divisions that you have in the denominations. I don't care if you talk about the Baptist or the Methodist or the Presbyterian. There was basically just one denomination. Each of these denominations are what you and I would call national. We had a Baptist church. It was the same Baptist church in the north as it was in the south or the east or the west. Same thing with Presbyterian, same thing with Methodist. And the truth of the matter is there was a national cooperation among all of these denominations.

And it's almost startling to realize that there were no Southern Baptists. When our country first began, other than the fact that there were Baptists who live in the South, that would have been Southern. And there were no American Baptists. There were no Northern Baptists. There was no Presbyterian Church USA, Presbyterian Church PCA, Southern Presbyterian. There were no Southern Methodists. You were just Presbyterian. Or you were just Methodist. Now, the Methodist and the Baptists and the Presbyterian churches were the leading denominations in America.

Abolitionism as the Cause of Denominational Splits

Abolitionist agitation, not doctrinal differences, forced the divisions in the major denominations, foreshadowing the national split.

And although there were differences, doctrinally speaking, between the denominations, yet there was an excellent spirit of cooperation, and Christian charity was even exhibited between these differing denominations. Now you've got to ask yourself what happened. What severed the national ties? What severed the spirit of cooperation and brotherly love? And it may surprise you when you realize that the answer is abolitionism. Abolitionism was the fanatical desire to quote-unquote free the slaves, but the truth of the matter is, as I pointed out last week, they were not interested in the slaves, but interested in that as a means of gaining power and influence. It was abolitionism that literally forced the divisions in the major denominations.

Now, what I want to do today is this. I want us to look, very quickly, at these three major denominations. And I'm going to give you some quotes that will literally knock your socks off. You see, our church leaders, as well as our political leaders, recognize the fact that when these denominations split, because of abolitionism, it was just a foreshadowing of the split that was coming in our union and in our nation. Now, let me just begin by trying to give you an example of how abolitionism infiltrated into the denominational churches.

Infiltration Through Oberlin College and Revivalism

Charles Finney's revivalism at Oberlin College was co-opted by abolitionists like Theodore Dwight Weld, who sent agents to infiltrate churches with immediate abolitionism.

Now very clearly, no conservative church is going to invite a Theodore Parker or Thomas Wentworth Higginson to come and preach on Sunday, because those men denied the deity of Christ. They denied the scriptures. And no Baptist church is going to invite those men to come in and preach on abolitionism. No. That's not going to happen. Well, how in the world did abolitionism then spread over into the northern churches? Have you ever heard of a college, and it's still in existence, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio? Now, Oberlin College was basically a hotbed of abolitionism. But there was a man by the name of Charles Grandison Finney, who was an Arminian, who actually was worse than an Arminian. He was a semi-Pelagian. And his Arminian and semi-Pelagian theology led him into what was known as the revivalism of that particular day. And there had been studies done on when Finney went into towns and they would say, well, bars closed, this happened and this happened. And that's true.

But when he left town, they reopened. In other words, it was not anything of a lasting impression. And so they wanted to secure Charles Grandison Finney as president of Oberlin College, and they did so. Finney became president of Oberlin College. There you have the revivalism that was being spurred by Finney. And there was a professor at Oberlin College by the name of Theodore Dwight Weld. Theodore Dwight Weld was a rabid abolitionist. And so literally what they did was this, they captured the revivalism of Finney and turned it into an abolitionist revival.

Now, they formed an American Anti-Slavery Society and sent out 70 paid agents for the express purpose of infiltrating these churches and to introduce abolitionism into them. Let me give you an example. There was a man by the name of James A. Thome, T-H-O-M-E. He was a senior divinity student at Oberlin College, and he was one of the original 70 sent out by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836.

Now, on the last day of March, he wrote his professor, Theodore Dwight Weld, that he had gone to Petersburg, Ohio, and had lectured five times on what he called immediate abolitionism. Now, what he called immediate abolitionism was this. You release the slaves immediately. That's it. We're not paying you. We're not recognizing any property rights. We're not even recognizing the fact that we sold them to you. You just release them and that's it. And it didn't matter that the slaves had nowhere to go. It did not matter that they were not trained in anything but agricultural pursuits. And so he was preaching immediate abolitionism. And here is what he wrote. Theodore Dwight Weld, he said, quote, "Citizens mostly turned out to hear. Last evening, they all voted in favor of immediatism, that is, immediate abolitionism. But they were not willing to form a society to oppose slavery immediately."

The Splits in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist Churches

The Presbyterian Church split first in 1837, followed by the Methodists in 1844 and the Baptists in 1845, each over the slavery agitation.

Now, it is true there were varying doctrinal differences between the new school and the old school. In fact, the new school was trying to adopt some Arminianism and some of his semi-Pelagianism and some of his methods. And there were doctrinal differences there. But it is true that slavery was one of the main issues because of the abolitionists who were agitating in the Presbyterian Church and so abolitionism then figured in decisively in the split in the Presbyterian Church. Then the Methodist Episcopal Church split in 1844 and the Baptists then split in 1845. So there were no Southern Baptists until 1845. That's when the Southern Baptists actually came into existence.

Now, what I want to do this morning is to take the time to demonstrate that each of these denominations ultimately split over abolitionism, and their split paved the way for the split in the nation. Let me tell you something, folks. Learn this right now. When professing Christians, and I'm not talking about the world, but when professing Christians refuse to sit down and work things out biblically and scripturally, what hope do the heathen have?

Contemporary Warnings That Church Division Would Destroy the Union

Leaders like Charles Hodge, John C. Calhoun, and others predicted that the severing of religious ties would lead to civil war and the dissolution of the republic.

Many of you have heard of Charles Hodge. Charles Hodge is a famous Presbyterian theologian. I have his books on systematic theology. He's written other books as well. He was a staunch defender of the old school orthodoxy. And here's what he said concerning the split in the Presbyterian Church. Of course, he blamed the abolitionists and their stigmatizing of slavery as a sin and a crime, and he said this, that it must operate to produce the disunion of the states and the division of all ecclesiastical societies. Now, here's what he said. "We shall become two nations in feeling which must soon render us two nations in fact." William S. Plumer, who is another Presbyterian theologian, he has a tremendous book on the law, another tremendous book on the Psalms, and here's what he said. "Should the assembly, that is the Presbyterian Church, should the assembly legislate and decide that slave-holding is a sin, the southern churches would all feel themselves instructed by the Apostle Paul to withdraw from such. Thus our church would be rent asunder."

"Then nothing is left except to rend the star-spangled banner in twain. Soon the hostile forces will be marshaled against each other, and the Potomac will be dyed with blood. Can it be that the righteous judge of all the earth has so dreadful a controversy with the Presbyterian Church of the United States as to give her up to the folly and madness of being the first to hoist the gate and let the flood of desolation roll in?" Now listen to what he said. He said, if this happens, soon the Potomac will be dyed with blood. He knew what was going to happen. James Henley Thornwell, whom I've already quoted, by the way, he was often referred to as the Calhoun of the South. You remember John C. Calhoun, the leading Southern politician and a tremendous author and speaker. But Thornwell was called the Calhoun of the South.

He said in 1851, of course he said, the fault of this division lay with the agitators, that is, the abolitionists alone. He said, and I quote, "We are solemn and earnest, not only because we deplore a schism in the body of Christ, but because we deplore a schism among the confederated states of this union. We declare our deliberate conviction that the continued agitation of slavery must sooner or later shiver this government into atoms. If slavery be indeed consistent with the Bible, their responsibility is tremendous, who in obedience to blind impulses and visionary theories pull down the fairest fabric of government the world has ever seen, rend the body of Christ in sunder, and dethrone the Savior in his own kingdom."

The Role of Force After the Cords of Union Snapped

Calhoun warned that once the religious cords were broken, only force would hold the states together, a reality Weaver sees continuing since 1865.

"Some are spiritual or ecclesiastical, some political, others social. The strongest of those of a spiritual and ecclesiastical nature consisted in the unity of the great religious denominations, all of which originally embraced the whole union. All of these denominations, with the exception perhaps of the Catholics, were organized very much upon the principle of our political institutions. Beginning with smaller meetings, corresponding with the political divisions of the country, their organizations terminated in one great central assemblage, corresponding very much with the character of Congress. At these meetings, the principal clergymen and lay members of their respective denominations from all parts of the union met to transact business relating to their common concerns. It was not confined to what appertained to the doctrines and discipline of the respective denominations, but extended to plans for disseminating the Bible, establishing missions, distributing tracts, and of the establishing of presses for the publication of tracts, newspapers, and periodicals with a view of diffusing religious information, and for the support of their respective doctrines and creeds. All of this combined contributed greatly to strengthen the bonds of the Union."

"The ties which had held each denomination together formed a strong cord to hold the whole union together. But powerful as they were, they have not been able to resist the explosive effect of slavery agitation. The first of these cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church. The numerous and strong ties which held it together are all broken and its unity gone. They now form separate churches, and instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the interest of the whole church, which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed in two hostile bodies, engaged in litigation about what was formerly their common property. The next cord that snap was that of the Baptist, one of the largest and most respectable of the denominations. That of the Presbyterians has not entirely snapped, but some of its strands have given way. That of the Episcopal Church is only one of the four great denominations which remain unbroken and entire. If the agitation goes on, the same force acting with increased intensity as had been shown will finally snap every cord when nothing will be left to hold the states together except force."

Except force. That was in 1850. March the 4th, 1850. What was he saying? He was saying the same thing that all these pastors have said, when the churches will not resolve their problems biblically, and they sever and they divide, then the nation is inevitably going to divide and the only thing that's going to hold it together is force. Why do you think Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to force the South? Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was the man who began executive orders? Abraham Lincoln was the man who began martial law. Abraham Lincoln was the man who suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Abraham Lincoln was the man who arrested the legislatures of Maryland and Kentucky so they would not secede with the southern states. Abraham Lincoln is the man who imprisoned over 28,000 Northerners who disagreed with him without trial and without charge.

And what does Calhoun say? Once the Christian cords have been snapped and sundered, the only thing that's going to hold these states together is force. And may I remind you, since 1865, that which has basically held this country together is force of one form or the other. Henry Clay, a few weeks before his death in 1852, he was interviewed by the Presbyterian Herald, and here is what he said. "I tell you this sundering of religious ties which have hitherto bound our people together, I consider the greatest source of danger in our country. If our religious men cannot live together in peace, what can be expected of us politicians, very few of whom profess to be governed by the great principles of love? If all the churches divide on the subject of slavery, there will be nothing left to bind our people together but trade and commerce. That is a very powerful bond, I admit, but when the people of these states become thoroughly alienated from each other and get their passions aroused, they are not apt to stop and consider what is in their interest."

Applications: The Necessity of Submitting to God's Word

Weaver applies the lesson that problems are never resolved until all parties submit to Scripture, whether in marriage, church, or nation.

Now, let me make a couple of applications. Please learn this. Please learn this. This is true individually. It is true familially, that is as a family. It is true ecclesiastically, that is as a church. It is true nationally. No problem will ever be resolved until all the parties are willing to submit to the Word of God and do what God requires to work it out. I've had couples come to me for marital counseling.

You know what I tell them? They come to me with their problems. I say, I have no problem with problems. I can work a problem out just like that. Problems are not the problem. I never have a problem with problems. All problems have answers. I never have problems with problems. I have problems with people. Getting people to do what's necessary to work out the problem. If the people do what's right, it will work out. If they do what's wrong, it will never work out.

Here's a man and woman. One wants to divorce, one wants to save the marriage. Can I help them? No. Why? Because one wants what's wrong, the other one wants what's right. I can't do that. But if both of them want to do what's right and are willing to confess their sins and repent of them and change their lives, it can be worked out just like that. May take a little time, but it can be worked out.

But the point I'm making is this, folks. If what happened in 1860 was the result of Christians dividing, and it did, basically, what do you think is going to continue to happen in this country? Everything is going to continue to deteriorate until we can come back and say, we're going to submit to the Word of God. Now, that doesn't mean that we've got to all have one church, one denomination, everybody believe exactly the same. It doesn't mean that. I can agree to disagree with someone who is right on what you and I would call the fundamentals of the faith. There are probably no two men in this room that agree on everything. But we do agree that the Bible is the Word of God. We do agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We do agree that salvation is by grace through faith. We do agree that unless God saves you, you're not saved. We do agree on a lot of those fundamentals. But there may be some things we disagree on. We may disagree on eschatology, when Christ is coming back. We may disagree on the mode of baptism.

I hope not, but I'm just saying that's certainly that is true between Presbyterians and Baptists. I disagree with him on baptism. That's why I'm a Baptist, not a Presbyterian. But the point I'm making is I can go along and work with a Presbyterian, although I disagree with him on ecclesiology and disagree with him on baptism, I can work with him as long as he believes all the other great fundamentals of the faith. We might have our differences, but at least we're going to need to sit down and work them out according to the Word of God. And you've got to learn, folks, if you maintain what you think and what you want and what you desire and what your will is, irrespective of the Word of God and what God's Word and God's will is, you're headed for trouble. You're headed for heartache. Individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally.

Conclusion: Know and Stand for Truth

Because cultural changes follow theological changes, believers must know and stand on biblical truth to face coming challenges.

Now, let me end with what I began with. Ideas have consequences. You cannot have a cultural change without having a theological change. And what is happening in our country is that Christians are constantly and continually either denying or refusing to study and apply the Word of God to their lives. And when you don't know truth, you can't stand for truth. When you don't know truth, you can't fight for truth. I want to tell you, if God allows to happen, what will probably happen within the next year and a half, you better know truth. And you better know how to stand for it. Because you're going to need all of the truth and all the character that you can get. You better learn this. If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right. If you don't believe right, you can't live right. All cultural changes, individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally, are preceded by theological change. And you better know where you do not ever, ever need to change based upon the Word of God.

A broken church, a broken nation. Let's pray. Father, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ for your love, for your grace, for your mercy. Help us to see, Lord, and understand what has happened in our country, where we are, and how we got here. And the force that exists today that tries to pin us together with bayonets is there because we've left the Word of God. And we've left the principles that you've given to direct our lives. Enable us, Father, to honor Thee and to love Thee, and to stand for what's right. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

Study Guide

Major Themes

Theological Change Precedes Cultural Change

Summary: Weaver asserts that every cultural shift is rooted in a prior theological shift, and the moral decline in America is due to the abandonment of biblical authority.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'You cannot have a cultural revolution without having a theological revolution.'

Abolitionism as a Destructive, Power-Seeking Movement

Summary: The abolitionists are portrayed as denying Scripture and the Constitution, seeking power rather than the welfare of slaves or the nation.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'The truth of the matter is the abolitionists wanted power.'

The Necessity of Unity for Lasting Union

Summary: Drawing from Amos 3:3, Weaver argues that true union requires unity, and forced union without agreement leads to conflict and separation.

Evidence: Weaver explains, 'You cannot really have union without unity.'

Denominational Splits as Harbingers of National Division

Summary: The splits in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches over slavery were seen by contemporaries as the entering wedge for the dissolution of the United States.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Charles Hodge: 'We shall become two nations in feeling which must soon render us two nations in fact.'

The Sufficiency and Authority of Scripture in Resolving Conflict

Summary: Weaver insists that all problems, from personal to national, can only be resolved when parties submit to the Word of God and do what it requires.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'No problem will ever be resolved until all the parties are willing to submit to the Word of God and do what God requires to work it out.'

The Danger of Ignoring Biblical Truth

Summary: Believers must know and stand for truth because cultural and national deterioration follows when Christians neglect or deny Scripture.

Evidence: Weaver warns, 'When you don't know truth, you can't stand for truth.'

Key Arguments

Abolitionism was a theological revolution that rejected biblical authority.

Summary: Weaver argues that the abolitionist movement was fundamentally a theological departure from orthodox Christianity, denying inspiration, deity, and the supernatural.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'The abolitionists did not care for the scriptures. They denied the inspiration of the scriptures. They denied the deity of Jesus Christ.'

The abolitionists sought power, not the welfare of slaves.

Summary: Weaver contends that the abolitionists used the slavery issue as a means to gain power and influence, not out of genuine concern for slaves.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'They were not interested in the slaves, but interested in that as a means of gaining power and influence.'

Church divisions over slavery directly led to national division.

Summary: Weaver presents extensive historical testimony that the splits in the major denominations were seen as the precursor and cause of the Civil War.

Evidence: Weaver quotes John C. Calhoun: 'The first of these cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church.'

When Christians cannot resolve conflicts biblically, the nation suffers.

Summary: Weaver argues that the failure of professing Christians to work out differences according to Scripture leaves no hope for the heathen and leads to national ruin.

Evidence: Weaver asks, 'When professing Christians refuse to sit down and work things out biblically and scripturally, what hope do the heathen have?'

Force becomes the only bond when spiritual cords are severed.

Summary: Weaver highlights Calhoun's warning that once religious ties are broken, only force remains to hold the Union together, a condition he sees persisting.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Calhoun: 'Nothing will be left to hold the states together except force.'

Right belief is necessary for right action.

Summary: Weaver asserts that theological error inevitably leads to moral and cultural decay, and that correct doctrine is essential for godly living.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right.'

Scripture References

Psalm 11:3

Context: Weaver uses this verse as the foundational text for the series, asking what the righteous can do when foundations are destroyed.

Amos 3:3

Context: Weaver cites this verse to illustrate that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed, applying it to the necessity of unity in the church and nation.

Historical References

William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

Context: Weaver mentions Garrison's statement that the Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell, illustrating abolitionist contempt for the Constitution.

Oberlin College and Charles Grandison Finney

Context: Weaver describes how Finney's revivalism at Oberlin was co-opted by abolitionists like Theodore Dwight Weld to spread immediate abolitionism.

Theodore Dwight Weld and the American Anti-Slavery Society

Context: Weaver explains that Weld and 70 agents were sent to infiltrate churches with abolitionist doctrine.

John Henley Thornwell

Context: Weaver quotes Thornwell, a Southern Presbyterian theologian, who framed the conflict as Christianity versus atheism, not merely slavery versus abolition.

Charles Hodge

Context: Weaver cites Hodge's warning that the division of the Presbyterian Church would lead to the disunion of the states.

John C. Calhoun

Context: Weaver extensively quotes Calhoun's 1850 speech describing how the snapping of religious cords would leave only force to hold the Union together.

Peter Cartwright

Context: Weaver quotes the Methodist circuit rider's reflections on the 1844 split and his prediction that it would lead to civil war and the downfall of the republic.

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin

Context: Weaver notes that Stowe had never been to the South and wrote her novel based on abolitionist accounts, not personal experience.

Stonewall Jackson's black Sunday school class

Context: Weaver uses Jackson as an example of a Southerner who taught his slaves the Bible, countering the abolitionist claim that slaves were denied Scripture.

Abraham Lincoln's use of executive power

Context: Weaver lists Lincoln's actions—executive orders, martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, arrests—as examples of force holding the Union together.

Important Quotes

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Significance: This is the central text of the series, framing the question of how the righteous should respond when foundational truths are undermined.

You cannot have a cultural revolution without having a theological revolution.

Significance: This statement encapsulates Weaver's thesis that all cultural changes are rooted in prior theological shifts.

The truth of the matter is the abolitionists wanted power.

Significance: Weaver asserts that the abolitionist movement was motivated by a lust for power rather than genuine concern for slaves.

Can two walk together except they be agreed?

Significance: Weaver uses this biblical question to argue that true union requires unity, and forced union without agreement leads to conflict.

We shall become two nations in feeling which must soon render us two nations in fact.

Significance: Charles Hodge's prediction that the division of the Presbyterian Church would inevitably lead to the division of the nation.

Nothing will be left to hold the states together except force.

Significance: Calhoun's warning that once religious ties are severed, only coercive force can maintain the Union, a condition Weaver sees as ongoing.

If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right.

Significance: Weaver's concluding application that right doctrine is essential for right living and cultural stability.

Discussion Questions

How does the principle that 'ideas have consequences' apply to current cultural shifts in our society?

Context: Weaver opens the message by stating that cultural changes are always preceded by theological changes.

In what ways might a desire for power disguise itself as a noble cause, as Weaver claims happened with abolitionism?

Context: Weaver argues that the abolitionists were primarily motivated by a quest for power rather than genuine concern for slaves.

What are the dangers of forced union without genuine unity, and how does Amos 3:3 speak to this?

Context: Weaver uses the illustration of two tomcats tied together to show that union without unity leads to conflict.

How should Christians today handle disagreements over secondary doctrines while maintaining unity on the fundamentals of the faith?

Context: Weaver acknowledges that believers can disagree on issues like eschatology or baptism while still cooperating on the essentials.

What lessons can we learn from the 19th-century church splits about the relationship between ecclesiastical unity and national stability?

Context: Weaver presents extensive historical testimony that the denominational divisions were seen as the entering wedge for the Civil War.

Why is submission to the Word of God essential for resolving conflicts, and what happens when parties refuse to do so?

Context: Weaver applies the historical lesson to personal, familial, and ecclesiastical conflicts, insisting that only biblical submission can bring resolution.

How can believers prepare themselves to stand for truth in a culture that increasingly rejects biblical authority?

Context: Weaver warns that Christians must know and stand for truth because cultural deterioration follows theological compromise.

Applications

Examine everything in light of Scripture

Summary: Weaver urges believers to test all teachings and ideas by the Word of God, not by whether they sound good or seem to work.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'You have to learn the importance of examining everything in light of the Word of God.'

Submit to God's Word to resolve conflicts

Summary: Weaver applies the historical lesson to personal relationships, insisting that problems are only resolved when all parties submit to what God requires.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'No problem will ever be resolved until all the parties are willing to submit to the Word of God and do what God requires to work it out.'

Know and stand for biblical truth

Summary: Weaver warns that believers must be grounded in truth to withstand cultural pressures and coming challenges.

Evidence: Weaver exhorts, 'When you don't know truth, you can't stand for truth.'

Recognize the link between doctrine and practice

Summary: Weaver emphasizes that right belief is essential for right living, and theological error leads to moral decay.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right.'

Maintain unity on fundamentals while allowing diversity on secondary matters

Summary: Weaver acknowledges that believers can disagree on non-essential doctrines while still cooperating on the core truths of the faith.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'I can agree to disagree with someone who is right on what you and I would call the fundamentals of the faith.'

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-05T21:46:37Z

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T13:37:39Z

Clean Transcript

Where We Are & How We Got Here # 2 of 14

Clean readable transcript. This view follows the Commentary.net cleaned segment text while preserving timestamps for audio follow-along.

Psalm 11, look if you would please at verse 3. "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" This was the text that we used for the first message, and I want to continue with this text where the question asked is exceedingly simple. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? I hope you will remember that when I began teaching on the abolitionist revolution, one of the key points that I made was this, that ideas have consequences and that you cannot have a cultural change without having a theological change.
#1 | 0:00 to 0:38 | cleaned
Let me say the same thing another way. You cannot have a cultural revolution without having a theological revolution. All you have to do is look at the breakdown in our country, morally speaking. Look how our culture has changed, not just in the last 50 years or in the last 20 years, but even the last five years. And the reason why you have such great cultural shifts is because you have great theological shifts. Forty years ago, most Americans would not have put up with what you and I would call open sodomy. They just simply would not have done it. But today, since there is that great cultural shift, you can look back and you can see that there has been a theological shift where the faith has been undermined and a great tolerance has been preached and taught.
#2 | 0:39 to 1:30 | cleaned
And therefore, we have all these changes in our cultures. Now, I pointed out last week that the abolitionists did not care for the scriptures. They denied the inspiration of the scriptures. They denied the deity of Jesus Christ. They denied the supernatural, so they did not care for the scripture. They did not care for the slaves. I gave you quote after quote demonstrating that, nor did they care for the Constitution. May I remind you that William Lloyd Garrison, who printed the Liberator, said that the Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
#3 | 1:31 to 2:06 | cleaned
And of course, it was not to be obeyed. Now, the truth of the matter is the abolitionists wanted power. And they could care less about the consequences. And they could care less what happened to society or the nation. They just simply wanted power.
#4 | 2:06 to 2:23 | cleaned
Now, the Bible says in Amos chapter 3 and verse 3, another question, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" And the answer is very obviously no. You see, you cannot really have union without unity. Now, you may have union without unity, but it's not going to last long. An excellent illustration of that is what some wicked folks have done in time past. But you can take two tomcats and tie their tails together and hang them over a clothesline and you've got union. But you don't have unity because they will scratch each other to death and bite each other to death because there is absolutely no unity there. So if there is no unity, then inevitably, invariably, the union is going to tear apart.
#5 | 2:23 to 3:14 | cleaned
There must undoubtedly be a parting of the ways. So scripture asks, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" And the answer is no.
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Now, abolitionism spilled over into the northern churches and the consequence was absolutely devastating. And the consequence was nothing less than broken churches.
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Now, I want you to think back with me. After the War of Independence was ended in 1787, and after the Constitution was ratified in 1789, the churches in America had three basic goals before them. And they were simply, number one, securing full religious liberty, which they sought for.
#8 | 3:35 to 3:59 | cleaned
Secondly, completing the organization of their own churches and denominations. And thirdly, just simply teaching their own and evangelizing the lost.
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Now, let me tell you something that is exceedingly surprising to the average Christian. And that's when we learn that in the beginning of our country, there were not all of these major divisions that you have in the denominations. I don't care if you talk about the Baptist or the Methodist or the Presbyterian. There was basically just one denomination. Each of these denominations are what you and I would call national. We had a Baptist church. It was the same Baptist church in the north as it was in the south or the east or the west. Same thing with Presbyterian, same thing with Methodist. And the truth of the matter is there was a national cooperation among all of these denominations.
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And it's almost startling to realize that there were no Southern Baptists. When our country first began, other than the fact that there were Baptists who live in the South, that would have been Southern. And there were no American Baptists. There were no Northern Baptists. There was no Presbyterian Church USA, Presbyterian Church PCA, Southern Presbyterian. There were no Southern Methodists. You were just Presbyterian. Or you were just Methodist. Now, the Methodist and the Baptists and the Presbyterian churches were the leading denominations in America.
#11 | 4:57 to 5:39 | cleaned
And although there were differences, doctrinally speaking, between the denominations, yet there was an excellent spirit of cooperation, and Christian charity was even exhibited between these differing denominations. Now you've got to ask yourself what happened. What severed the national ties? What severed the spirit of cooperation and brotherly love? And it may surprise you when you realize that the answer is abolitionism. Abolitionism was the fanatical desire to quote-unquote free the slaves, but the truth of the matter is, as I pointed out last week, they were not interested in the slaves, but interested in that as a means of gaining power and influence. It was abolitionism that literally forced the divisions in the major denominations.
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Now, what I want to do today is this. I want us to look, very quickly, at these three major denominations. And I'm going to give you some quotes that will literally knock your socks off. You see, our church leaders, as well as our political leaders, recognize the fact that when these denominations split, because of abolitionism, it was just a foreshadowing of the split that was coming in our union and in our nation. Now, let me just begin by trying to give you an example of how abolitionism infiltrated into the denominational churches.
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Now very clearly, no conservative church is going to invite a Theodore Parker or Thomas Wentworth Higginson to come and preach on Sunday, because those men denied the deity of Christ. They denied the scriptures. And no Baptist church is going to invite those men to come in and preach on abolitionism. No. That's not going to happen. Well, how in the world did abolitionism then spread over into the northern churches?
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Have you ever heard of a college, and it's still in existence, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio? Now, Oberlin College was basically a hotbed of abolitionism. But there was a man by the name of Charles Grandison Finney, who was an Arminian, who actually was worse than an Arminian. He was a semi-Pelagian. And his Arminian and semi-Pelagian theology led him into what was known as the revivalism of that particular day. And there had been studies done on when Finney went into towns and they would say, well, bars closed, this happened and this happened. And that's true.
#15 | 7:41 to 8:21 | cleaned
But when he left town, they reopened. In other words, it was not anything of a lasting impression. And so they wanted to secure Charles Grandison Finney as president of Oberlin College, and they did so. Finney became president of Oberlin College. There you have the revivalism that was being spurred by Finney. And there was a professor at Oberlin College by the name of Theodore Dwight Weld. Theodore Dwight Weld was a rabid abolitionist. And so literally what they did was this, they captured the revivalism of Finney and turned it into an abolitionist revival.
#16 | 8:22 to 9:03 | cleaned
Now, they formed an American Anti-Slavery Society and sent out 70 paid agents for the express purpose of infiltrating these churches and to introduce abolitionism into them. Let me give you an example. There was a man by the name of James A. Thome, T-H-O-M-E. He was a senior divinity student at Oberlin College, and he was one of the original 70 sent out by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836.
#17 | 9:06 to 9:42 | cleaned
Now, on the last day of March, he wrote his professor, Theodore Dwight Weld, that he had gone to Petersburg, Ohio, and had lectured five times on what he called immediate abolitionism. Now, what he called immediate abolitionism was this. You release the slaves immediately. That's it. We're not paying you. We're not recognizing any property rights. We're not even recognizing the fact that we sold them to you. You just release them and that's it. And it didn't matter that the slaves had nowhere to go. It did not matter that they were not trained in anything but agricultural pursuits. And so he was preaching immediate abolitionism. And here is what he wrote. Theodore Dwight Weld, he said, quote, "Citizens mostly turned out to hear. Last evening, they all voted in favor of immediatism, that is, immediate abolitionism. But they were not willing to form a society to oppose slavery immediately."
#18 | 9:44 to 10:43 | cleaned
The reason was they were chiefly Methodists and were afraid to move until their ministers should say move. Now, it's not that the Methodist pastor had all that power. The truth of the matter is in 1835, the Methodist Episcopal Church had unanimously adopted a resolution condemning anti-slavery agitation. And had that Methodist minister said, move, he would have been going contrary to the discipline of his denomination and would have been bringing himself under church discipline as well.
#19 | 10:44 to 11:24 | cleaned
And so what they were doing is they were spreading out, trying to indoctrinate the different denominations. Now there is a book, and I have it, I've read it, in fact I'm going to be quoting a great deal from it, written by C.C. Goen. And the name of his book is Broken Churches, Broken Nation. And what he does is he documents in this book that the splits in the denominations, the splits in the churches, preceded and foreshadowed the split in our nation. Now, what he does not do in that book is an excellent book, but what he does not do is he does not demonstrate that the cultural shift was preceded by a theological shift.
#20 | 11:24 to 12:12 | cleaned
Now, he does say it was from abolitionism and their agitation, but he does not emphasize the fact that it was their doctrine. It was their theology that was absolutely contrary to the word of God. And it was that which preceded this cultural change in the country. Now listen, before you can have a cultural change, you have to have a theological change. That meant somebody had to change theology, and in this instance, the theological revolution was in the north.
#21 | 12:12 to 12:44 | cleaned
Now, southern pastors recognized the battle was basically a battle between humanism and Christianity. Let me give you what Dr. C. Greg Singer said in his book, The Theological Interpretation of American History. He said, and I quote, "After 1830, there was a growing philosophical and theological cleavage between the North and the South. While the North was becoming increasingly subject to radical influences, the South was becoming increasingly conservative in its outlook." End quote. Now what he said is the North is getting more and more radical, the South is getting more and more conservative.
#22 | 12:45 to 13:23 | cleaned
There was a prominent Presbyterian theologian. I have all of his writings in my library. His name was John Henley Thornwell. He was born in 1812 and he died in 1862. So the war had been going on a year when he died. And here is what Dr. Thornwell said. Now listen. He said, "The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders." Don't think of the war between here somebody who wants to free the slaves and here someone who wants to keep the slaves. He says the parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders.
#23 | 13:25 to 14:03 | cleaned
"They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans and Jacobins." So he's talking about the north. "On the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground, Christianity and atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity is at stake." So here is a pastor of one of the leading Presbyterian churches, and he's saying the battle is not a battle between anti-slavery and slavery, it's a battle between Christianity and atheism. It's a battle between freedom and communism. So the war of 1861 to 1865 was in part sparked then by this theological revolution in the north and it had grave consequences. If there were to be broken churches, the inevitable result was there's going to be a broken nation. I'm going to give you in order the splits in the churches. First of all, there was the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian was the first to split in 1837. It then split again in 1857. There was the battle between what is known as the old lights and the new lights, or the old school and the new school.
#24 | 14:03 to 15:21 | cleaned
Now, it is true there were varying doctrinal differences between the new school and the old school. In fact, the new school was trying to adopt some Arminianism and some of his semi-Pelagianism and some of his methods. And there were doctrinal differences there. But it is true that slavery was one of the main issues because of the abolitionists who were agitating in the Presbyterian Church and so abolitionism then figured in decisively in the split in the Presbyterian Church. Then the Methodist Episcopal Church split in 1844 and the Baptists then split in 1845. So there were no Southern Baptists until 1845. That's when the Southern Baptists actually came into existence.
#25 | 15:21 to 16:11 | cleaned
Now, what I want to do this morning is to take the time to demonstrate that each of these denominations ultimately split over abolitionism, and their split paved the way for the split in the nation. Let me tell you something, folks. Learn this right now. When professing Christians, and I'm not talking about the world, but when professing Christians refuse to sit down and work things out biblically and scripturally, what hope do the heathen have?
#26 | 16:11 to 16:54 | cleaned
The answer is absolutely none. And you did have professing Christians in the North and professing Christians in the South. And the South pleaded time after time, sit down with us. In fact, I'll give you a quote later on. They could care less what the Bible said. And those in the North said, no, we are not going to work it out. You will do what we say or else.
#27 | 16:56 to 17:20 | cleaned
A second truth we better learn is this. You have to learn the importance of examining everything in light of the Word of God. Listen, there are a lot of teachings. There are a lot of things that sound good. But that doesn't mean they're right. And it doesn't mean they're biblical. And just because something works does not mean that it is biblical either. So we've got to learn to examine everything in light of the Word of God. Now, Professor George A.
#28 | 17:21 to 17:49 | cleaned
Baxter of Union Theological Seminary, which is in Richmond, Virginia, said this back at that time, if that is the separation of the Presbyterian Church into North and South, if he said, "We'll put an end to the abolition question and disturbance in the Presbyterian Church." In other words, what he is saying is the Presbyterian Church originally split now because of the agitation of the abolitionists. And he said, now, once we split in Northern and Southern, now maybe they'll leave us alone. He was willing to get rid of the new lights or the new school, because at the same time it would get rid of abolitionism.
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Many of you have heard of Charles Hodge. Charles Hodge is a famous Presbyterian theologian. I have his books on systematic theology. He's written other books as well. He was a staunch defender of the old school orthodoxy. And here's what he said concerning the split in the Presbyterian Church. Of course, he blamed the abolitionists and their stigmatizing of slavery as a sin and a crime, and he said this, that it must operate to produce the disunion of the states and the division of all ecclesiastical societies. Now, here's what he said. "We shall become two nations in feeling which must soon render us two nations in fact." William S. Plumer, who is another Presbyterian theologian, he has a tremendous book on the law, another tremendous book on the Psalms, and here's what he said. "Should the assembly, that is the Presbyterian Church, should the assembly legislate and decide that slave-holding is a sin, the southern churches would all feel themselves instructed by the Apostle Paul to withdraw from such. Thus our church would be rent asunder."
#30 | 18:30 to 19:39 | cleaned
"Then nothing is left except to rend the star-spangled banner in twain. Soon the hostile forces will be marshaled against each other, and the Potomac will be dyed with blood. Can it be that the righteous judge of all the earth has so dreadful a controversy with the Presbyterian Church of the United States as to give her up to the folly and madness of being the first to hoist the gate and let the flood of desolation roll in?"
#31 | 19:39 to 20:08 | cleaned
Now listen to what he said. He said, if this happens, soon the Potomac will be dyed with blood. He knew what was going to happen. James Henley Thornwell, whom I've already quoted, by the way, he was often referred to as the Calhoun of the South. You remember John C. Calhoun, the leading Southern politician and a tremendous author and speaker. But Thornwell was called the Calhoun of the South.
#32 | 20:10 to 20:37 | cleaned
He said in 1851, of course he said, the fault of this division lay with the agitators, that is, the abolitionists alone. He said, and I quote, "We are solemn and earnest, not only because we deplore a schism in the body of Christ, but because we deplore a schism among the confederated states of this union. We declare our deliberate conviction that the continued agitation of slavery must sooner or later shiver this government into atoms. If slavery be indeed consistent with the Bible, their responsibility is tremendous, who in obedience to blind impulses and visionary theories pull down the fairest fabric of government the world has ever seen, rend the body of Christ in sunder, and dethrone the Savior in his own kingdom."
#33 | 20:38 to 21:27 | cleaned
"Are our country, our Bible, our interest on earth, and our hopes for heaven to be sacrificed on the altars of a fierce fanaticism? Slavery is implicated in every fiber of Southern society. It is with us a vital question. It is because we know that interference with it cannot and will not be much longer endured. We raise our warning voice. We would save the country if we could."
#34 | 21:27 to 21:54 | cleaned
Now there's another Presbyterian theologian in 1851 saying, look, Northern abolitionists, you're destroying our country. Just leave us alone, just shut up. You do your thing, we'll do our thing. Just don't force this schism in our church and upon this country. See, the new school in the Presbyterian Church was demanding that slavery not only be declared a sin, but that all slaveholders then who were Christians and members of the Presbyterian Church would then be subject to church discipline. And so they were forcing this division in the Presbyterian Church.
#35 | 21:56 to 22:32 | cleaned
Now the Methodists and the Baptists soon followed. By the way, let me tell you what John Wesley said in 1785. John Wesley denounced slavery as "that execrable sum of all villainies." And then he said that American slavery was "the vilest that ever the sun saw."
#36 | 22:33 to 23:00 | cleaned
Now, with the founder of Methodism coming out and making statements like that, invariably there's going to be someone who's going to pick up on it. Peter Cartwright was a Methodist circuit riding minister, and there are many great things about Peter Cartwright. He certainly was not right in this area, but some of my favorite stories that are humorous and good relate to Peter Cartwright. One of them was the fact he stopped at an inn for the night and of course there was always taverns in the inn and here were some people drinking and there was a beautiful young woman there who was dancing and wanting everybody to dance with her and so Peter Cartwright was just sitting there resting. And this young woman came over and took him by the hand and said, come and dance with me. And Peter Cartwright, of course, refused.
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He said, no, he said, I had rather not. And she insisted. She continued to pull him by the hand. He said, no, I had rather not. And she pulled him literally out onto the dance floor. And Peter Cartwright said, very well, if you insist that I dance with you, I shall. But I always make a habit of asking the Lord's blessing upon everything that I do. And he smashed her down to the floor. He said, let's pray.
#38 | 24:06 to 24:35 | cleaned
And of course, he prayed. And after he got through praying that putting into her dancing and to the drinking as well. So Peter Cartwright had a lot of things in a lot of areas. But he was from Illinois and he attended the General Conference in 1844 when it split, and here is his reflection 12 years later after the split in the Methodist Church. He said this, "All the time of the protracted debates, I knew if the Southern preachers failed to carry the point they had fixed, namely the tolerance of slaveholding in the Episcopacy, that they would fly the track and set up for themselves."
#39 | 24:35 to 25:15 | cleaned
"And in that event, war and strife would prevail among brethren that once were united as a brotherly band, and that they must of necessity become a slavery church. And I the more deeply regretted it because any abomination sanctioned by the priesthood would take a firmer hold on the country, and that this very circumstance would no longer perpetuate the evil of slavery, and perhaps would be the entering wedge in the dissolution of our glorious union and perhaps the downfall of this great republic."
#40 | 25:16 to 25:48 | cleaned
Now, I certainly disagree with Peter Cartwright when he calls slavery an evil, because I'm going to deal with slavery from the Bible a little bit later. Let me make this clarification. It is true. It is true that slavery is attended with many evils. But you cannot say that slavery itself is evil because God even instituted slavery. And I can show you that from the Bible. So I certainly disagree with him when he talks about the evil of slavery and it being abomination. There is a biblical slavery and there's a heathen slavery. I'm not getting into that right now. But slavery is not evil in and of itself.
#41 | 25:48 to 26:30 | cleaned
But what Cartwright did see, and he saw correctly, that the division between the North and the South and the Methodist Church was going to literally destroy the Republic. Now, in 1837, at the Georgia Methodist annual conference, they passed a resolution unanimously. And here's what the resolution said. That slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil. It was Bishop Beverly Waugh who was presiding at the New England Annual Conference when he refused to entertain any abolitionist petitions and he said this, he warned them, he asked them, "Are you willing to hazard the unity of the Methodist Episcopal Church by agitating those fearfully exciting topics in opposition to the deliberate decision of the last general conference?"
#42 | 26:31 to 27:34 | cleaned
He goes on, "Are you willing to contribute to the destruction of our beautiful and our excellent form of civil and political government after it has cost the labor, treasure, and blood of our fathers to establish it?" So here he is a year later saying, look, you might as well cease giving me these petitions. I'm not going to rule over them because all it's going to ultimately do is destroy our nation.
#43 | 27:34 to 27:57 | cleaned
The Southern Christian Advocate, which was a Christian newspaper, wrote in December 1837. "In the present state of the country, we believe it to be the utmost importance to the country itself that the churches be kept together." Now, listen to what it wrote. "Let the bonds be once severed, which hold the churches of the north and south together. And the union of these states will be more than endangered."
#44 | 27:58 to 28:24 | cleaned
"It will presently be rent asunder." So the author said, once these churches divide, the nation is gone. Elias Bowden, who was a New Yorker of the Oneida Methodist Conference, said this, "We deprecate the idea of division, sir. We know that our great republic is connected together by the twofold ties of civil and ecclesiastical union. We are aware that to dissolve the one of these ties would weaken the union of the whole, and viewed under a civil aspect exclusively. We start back from the very idea." And then he goes on to say, "But sir, it must be allowed that secession is preferable to schism." In other words, he said, I'd rather us divide than continue to fight, but I want you to understand something. Once we divide, that's it.
#45 | 28:25 to 29:15 | cleaned
It's going to cause more and more problems. See, William A. Smith of Virginia continued and contended that by permitting the anti-slavery activity within the Church of the General Conference, all it was doing was allowing the abolitionists to undermine the Union. And certainly, you're going to see that more and more as I continue.
#46 | 29:15 to 29:37 | cleaned
Now, William Capers wrote in the Southern Christian Advocate, he said, listen carefully, "The prospect for peace and amicable relations is infinitely better with a separation than under a forced and nominal union. And if so, the safety of the country is to a much greater extent bound up with the division of the Church than a continued union. The division of the Methodist Church will demonstrate this fact to the country that Southern forbearance has its limits."
#47 | 29:37 to 30:09 | cleaned
"And that a vigorous and united resistance will be made at all costs to the spread of this pseudo-religious frenzy called abolitionism. Thus a check will be put upon a movement which, more than all others, causes discord and threatens the political union." So once again, Capers wrote, if we have to divide, we're going to have to divide rather than fighting all the time, but if we do divide, mark it down, it will be the destruction of our political union as well as our civil union.
#48 | 30:10 to 30:41 | cleaned
Peter Cartwright, quoting him again in 1856, and I want you to listen carefully to what he says. You remember I told you the abolitionists were after power, and that is true. They were after power. Listen to what he said. He said, "This dreadful rupture in the Methodist Church spread terror almost over every other branch of the Church of Christ, and really, disguise it as we may, it shook the pillars of our American government to the center."
#49 | 30:42 to 31:14 | cleaned
"And many of our ablest statesmen were alarmed, and looked upon it as the entering wedge to political disunion, and a fearful step toward the downfall of our happy republic. And it is greatly to be feared that the constitutional agitation and unscrupulous anathemas indulged in by the frenzied preachers and unprincipled demagogues that seek more for the spoils of office than the freedom of the slave or the good of the country will so burst the bonds of brotherly love and real love of country."
#50 | 31:15 to 31:51 | cleaned
"That all the horrors of civil war will break upon us shortly, and firebrands, arrows, and death be thrown broadcast over the land, and anarchy, mobs, and lawless desperadoes reign triumphant, and then the fair fabric of our happy republic will be tumbled into ruins, and the liberties our fathers fought for, and the cost of the blood and treasure of the best patriots that ever lived, will be lost forever." Do you hear what he said? This was in 1856.
#51 | 31:52 to 32:18 | cleaned
In five years, what he said was going to come true. Did you hear what he said? That the politicians, these unprincipled demagogues, were taking advantage of the situation. What? Trying to get the spoils of office. Trying to heap for themselves, not only money, but power as well. But they all viewed it as the entering wedge that's going to destroy this union. The division that came about in the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church paved the way for the division in the Baptist Church.
#52 | 32:21 to 33:00 | cleaned
These were the three leading denominations in our country. There were other denominations, but these were the leading ones. The abolitionists organized the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention in New York City in 1840. And once they did, they immediately issued an address to Southern Baptists denying the biblical justification for slavery. In other words, it didn't matter what the Bible said. They were denying the biblical justification for slavery and exhorting the Southerners to confess the sinfulness of holding slaves and urging them to initiate immediate steps for legal emancipation. And then they went ahead and said, if the Southerners refused, they declared, "We cannot and we dare not recognize you as consistent brethren in Christ. And we cannot, at the Lord's table, cordially take that as a brother's hand," listen to what they said now, "which piles the scourge on the woman's naked flesh, which thrusts a gag into the mouth of a man, which rivets fetters on the innocent, and which shuts up the Bible from human eyes."
#53 | 33:03 to 34:17 | cleaned
Now, let me tell you something. Do you realize most abolitionists had never ever been down south. They had never seen a slave. They had never seen a slave plantation. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, had never been to the south, had never been around slavery, knew nothing, wrote it from the accounts that the abolitionists themselves were setting forth. I told you that I have in my possession the slave narratives for Georgia.
#54 | 34:20 to 35:03 | cleaned
I lack just a few pages finishing the entire book, but so far, out of all the slaves that were interviewed, out of all of them, only one has reported anything derogatory. And then you can tell by the way this slave is presenting it that all she is reporting is hearsay that went on, or at least she says went on, on a regular basis, all the other slaves. In fact, most of them, after the war was over, just stayed on with their masters. They had no other place to go.
#55 | 35:04 to 35:37 | cleaned
And so here they're saying, well, here's what you southerners do. You beat the women, and you stick rags down their mouths, and that's not true. Most, I do know that there was some abuse. I understand that. Because there's the depravity of man. But most men took care of their slaves. Shutting the Bible to them? What do you mean shutting the Bible to them? Stonewall Jackson had a black Sunday school class that numbered in the hundreds that he taught every week.
#56 | 35:41 to 36:14 | cleaned
When Robert Lewis Dabney was asked to go northward and become president of a theological seminary, he said, I can't go because of my children. What he was referring to was his slaves. He stayed in the South and taught his slaves the Word of God. So the point I'm trying to make is this. Here they're making this up, but they're saying, well, if you don't immediately denounce it because we say it's wrong and we deny the Bible justification for it, then we can't recognize you as brother and we're going to cut you off. You know what the South said? Go ahead and cut us off. And by the way, we're not sending any more money to any more missionary organizations or any other organization that you have up north. We're going to cut our money off. You can't recognize us. We're not going to send you any more money.
#57 | 36:20 to 37:12 | cleaned
Pastor Richard Fuller, a pastor from South Carolina, in 1844 spoke on the impending division of the Southern Baptists, and he says this, "A separation or rupture in the Baptist denomination would not only be disastrous to the church, but also to the nation." The Christian Reflector, which he wrote in, he wrote this article, he said, "My chief hope for the Union is in the conservative power of religion. And the day is not far when that power will be required in all of its stringency."
#58 | 37:12 to 37:45 | cleaned
"Look at the distracted condition of this land. Reflect on the appalling character of a civil war. And if you love the country or the slave, do not sever the bands which unite the Baptist churches." He said, if you love the country, if you love the slave, don't sever the bands that's going to destroy this country. A little bit later, the same pastor said that when the division did take place between the North and South, he said this division must act as the entering wedge to dissolution of our political bonds.
#59 | 37:46 to 38:28 | cleaned
The writer went on and said, "The Methodist Church will be divided into two great parties with mutual jealousy and antagonistic measures. The Presbyterians are in danger of the same evil, and if the Baptists, unmindful of their duty to Christ and their country, shall bite and devour one another and array themselves into two great parties, the Northern and the Southern, what conservative principles, what salt of the earth will be left to restrain and modulate the madness of political strife and ambition and save our Republic from ruin." What's he saying?
#60 | 38:31 to 39:04 | cleaned
If the Christians can't get along, don't look for the wicked to get along. If the Christians are not going to do what's right, don't look for the ungodly to do what's right. They're not. A week before the Southern Baptists met in Augusta, Georgia and formed the Southern Baptist Convention, the Baptist Banner and Pioneer of Louisville warned about what they call state line division, that is, dividing between the states. They went on to say that if there was a division between the Northern and Southern Baptists, it will not only separate those brethren, churches, and associations that now hold sweet intercourse and fellowship across these lines, but it will tender gender-sectional stripes and divisions. It will produce alienation of heart and lead to contentious turmoil and warfare along the lines of division. Then the Kentucky editor went on to say, "Let the three great denominations of Christians be divided by state lines upon the subject of abolitionism."
#61 | 39:04 to 40:03 | cleaned
"And who does not see that all social intercourse between the parties will be sundered and the parts continually recede?" And then he continues. Listen, the policy of a northern manufacturers. Remember, I told you last time that the big industrials had a hand in this. They wanted it because they were going to make more money and grab more power. "The policy of the northern manufacturers and that of the southern planters are antipodes, that is, they're against each other, a positive and a negative."
#62 | 40:03 to 40:34 | cleaned
"They have been the fruitful cause of half the strife and debates in Congress for the last 15 years, so that we can hope for but little resistance to a separation from the mercantile interests by which the North and South are bound. Who does not see, therefore, that if the religious and, consequently, the social interests of the country are divided by state lines, that more than half the bonds which hold the political compact in harmony are dissolved, and that the groundwork is laid for the ultimate dissolution of the Union and the destruction of the fairest fabric of civil and religious liberty the world ever saw?"
#63 | 40:35 to 41:11 | cleaned
So they said, it's very simple. Once the churches divide, the country is gone.
#64 | 41:11 to 41:16 | cleaned
Now, the Presbyterian Watchman of the South, which was published in Richmond, said this, "...the Church is once divided, North and South. Demigods will have but little more to do to dissolve the Union of the States. We shall see war and horrible contests. Brother will slay brother. The father and the son will stand in opposing battle lines, and tyrants and demons will clap their hands at the blighting of the last hopes of man for a fair fabric of well-established liberty for a scale of imposing magnitude."
#65 | 41:17 to 41:54 | cleaned
Don't tell me those men did not know what was about to come down in this country. They knew, not only the problems in the churches, but they knew the source of those problems. And they knew why those problems were there. Because someone wanted power and someone wanted money. I got tickled when I read that I raised the other's name as Randall Waller. But in 1848, John Lightfoot Waller, I don't know why they called him Lightfoot, in relief, but that was light horses to the light foot, I don't know. But Lightfoot Waller of Kentucky said this, "Who can expect that our country will remain united when the bonds of religious concord are broken?"
#66 | 41:56 to 42:47 | cleaned
"If the ties of Christian love are sundered, what bands can bind this nation together? He, therefore, that encourages religious strife and division between the northern and the southern sectors of the United States is contributing to the disruption of our union." There were newspaper correspondents at the convention in 1845 when the Southern Baptists left and separated from the Northern Baptists, and one of those correspondents wrote this, "From all appearance, the separation of the Church is inevitable."
#67 | 42:48 to 43:23 | cleaned
"We could hope otherwise, but so it is, and we must admit it. When we are forced out of the Church by Northern fanatics, we shall next be forced out of the Union by the same nefarious acts."
#68 | 43:23 to 43:38 | cleaned
Now this was a correspondent for the Charleston Mercury out of Charleston, South Carolina. And he said, when the Southerners are forced out of their churches, the next step is they will be forced out of the Union. Then he continued to write, "In this contest of religions, we have an entire and remedialist severance of the union, a division that henceforth creates into the two most numerous denominations of the country, a northern and a southern religion."
#69 | 43:40 to 44:12 | cleaned
"At this separation brought about by no accident, it was planned, nor heeded the moment, but after much deliberation and unwearied efforts to reconcile the dissension, efforts that yielded only to a settled conviction that reconciliation was impossible, Mr. Clay sees it in the true light, a dissension that turns one of the strongest bands of the political union into a destroying sword." Now, I only have just a couple more quotes. John C.
#70 | 44:12 to 44:45 | cleaned
Calhoun was a United States Senator. He is referred to as the cast-iron Southerner. And Calhoun was a tremendous representative for states' rights and personal liberty and freedom.
#71 | 44:45 to 45:06 | cleaned
Now this quote that I'm going to give you is four or five paragraphs, but I want you to listen to this. This is so revealing. If you want to know what happened in our country, I want you to listen. In fact, I am going to read this entire quote just to emphasize the two last words. Listen to what John C. Calhoun said. "The chords that bind the states together are not only manly, but various in character."
#72 | 45:07 to 45:49 | cleaned
"Some are spiritual or ecclesiastical, some political, others social. The strongest of those of a spiritual and ecclesiastical nature consisted in the unity of the great religious denominations, all of which originally embraced the whole union. All of these denominations, with the exception perhaps of the Catholics, were organized very much upon the principle of our political institutions. Beginning with smaller meetings, corresponding with the political divisions of the country, their organizations terminated in one great central assemblage, corresponding very much with the character of Congress. At these meetings, the principal clergymen and lay members of their respective denominations from all parts of the union met to transact business relating to their common concerns. It was not confined to what appertained to the doctrines and discipline of the respective denominations, but extended to plans for disseminating the Bible, establishing missions, distributing tracts, and of the establishing of presses for the publication of tracts, newspapers, and periodicals with a view of diffusing religious information, and for the support of their respective doctrines and creeds. All of this combined contributed greatly to strengthen the bonds of the Union."
#73 | 45:50 to 47:06 | cleaned
"The ties which had held each denomination together formed a strong cord to hold the whole union together. But powerful as they were, they have not been able to resist the explosive effect of slavery agitation. The first of these cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church. The numerous and strong ties which held it together are all broken and its unity gone. They now form separate churches, and instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the interest of the whole church, which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed in two hostile bodies, engaged in litigation about what was formerly their common property. The next cord that snap was that of the Baptist, one of the largest and most respectable of the denominations. That of the Presbyterians has not entirely snapped, but some of its strands have given way. That of the Episcopal Church is only one of the four great denominations which remain unbroken and entire. If the agitation goes on, the same force acting with increased intensity as had been shown will finally snap every cord when nothing will be left to hold the states together except force."
#74 | 47:06 to 48:26 | cleaned
Except force. That was in 1850. March the 4th, 1850. What was he saying? He was saying the same thing that all these pastors have said, when the churches will not resolve their problems biblically, and they sever and they divide, then the nation is inevitably going to divide and the only thing that's going to hold it together is force. Why do you think Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to force the South? Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was the man who began executive orders? Abraham Lincoln was the man who began martial law. Abraham Lincoln was the man who suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Abraham Lincoln was the man who arrested the legislatures of Maryland and Kentucky so they would not secede with the southern states. Abraham Lincoln is the man who imprisoned over 28,000 Northerners who disagreed with him without trial and without charge.
#75 | 48:31 to 49:56 | cleaned
And what does Calhoun say? Once the Christian cords have been snapped and sundered, the only thing that's going to hold these states together is force. And may I remind you, since 1865, that which has basically held this country together is force of one form or the other. Henry Clay, a few weeks before his death in 1852, he was interviewed by the Presbyterian Herald, and here is what he said. "I tell you this sundering of religious ties which have hitherto bound our people together, I consider the greatest source of danger in our country. If our religious men cannot live together in peace, what can be expected of us politicians, very few of whom profess to be governed by the great principles of love? If all the churches divide on the subject of slavery, there will be nothing left to bind our people together but trade and commerce. That is a very powerful bond, I admit, but when the people of these states become thoroughly alienated from each other and get their passions aroused, they are not apt to stop and consider what is in their interest."
#76 | 49:59 to 51:17 | cleaned
Following the secession of South Carolina on December the 20th in 1860, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, remember the Cleveland Plain Dealer is out of Cleveland, Ohio, so it's a northern paper. The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote, "For years the Union has in fact been dissolving. Political parties first divided, the Union Whig party was first went asunder, then the churches North and South divided, then our Bible-tracking missionary societies, and finally the social relations to an alarming extent." Listen, "The secession of South Carolina yesterday was but the culmination of events which have been progressing for years." So here's a Northerner admitting that when South Carolina, the first state to secede, on December 20, 1860, when that happened, they said, it is just the progression or the culmination of events that have been going on for years.
#77 | 51:19 to 52:21 | cleaned
Now, let me make a couple of applications. Please learn this. Please learn this. This is true individually. It is true familially, that is as a family. It is true ecclesiastically, that is as a church. It is true nationally. No problem will ever be resolved until all the parties are willing to submit to the Word of God and do what God requires to work it out. I've had couples come to me for marital counseling.
#78 | 52:22 to 53:05 | cleaned
You know what I tell them? They come to me with their problems. I say, I have no problem with problems. I can work a problem out just like that. Problems are not the problem. I never have a problem with problems. All problems have answers. I never have problems with problems. I have problems with people. Getting people to do what's necessary to work out the problem. If the people do what's right, it will work out. If they do what's wrong, it will never work out.
#79 | 53:08 to 53:40 | cleaned
Here's a man and woman. One wants to divorce, one wants to save the marriage. Can I help them? No. Why? Because one wants what's wrong, the other one wants what's right. I can't do that. But if both of them want to do what's right and are willing to confess their sins and repent of them and change their lives, it can be worked out just like that. May take a little time, but it can be worked out.
#80 | 53:41 to 54:08 | cleaned
But the point I'm making is this, folks. If what happened in 1860 was the result of Christians dividing, and it did, basically, what do you think is going to continue to happen in this country? Everything is going to continue to deteriorate until we can come back and say, we're going to submit to the Word of God.
#81 | 54:10 to 54:39 | cleaned
Now, that doesn't mean that we've got to all have one church, one denomination, everybody believe exactly the same. It doesn't mean that. I can agree to disagree with someone who is right on what you and I would call the fundamentals of the faith. There are probably no two men in this room that agree on everything. But we do agree that the Bible is the Word of God. We do agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We do agree that salvation is by grace through faith. We do agree that unless God saves you, you're not saved. We do agree on a lot of those fundamentals. But there may be some things we disagree on. We may disagree on eschatology, when Christ is coming back. We may disagree on the mode of baptism.
#82 | 54:39 to 55:34 | cleaned
I hope not, but I'm just saying that's certainly that is true between Presbyterians and Baptists. I disagree with him on baptism. That's why I'm a Baptist, not a Presbyterian. But the point I'm making is I can go along and work with a Presbyterian, although I disagree with him on ecclesiology and disagree with him on baptism, I can work with him as long as he believes all the other great fundamentals of the faith. We might have our differences, but at least we're going to need to sit down and work them out according to the Word of God. And you've got to learn, folks, if you maintain what you think and what you want and what you desire and what your will is, irrespective of the Word of God and what God's Word and God's will is, you're headed for trouble. You're headed for heartache. Individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally.
#83 | 55:36 to 56:30 | cleaned
Now, let me end with what I began with. Ideas have consequences. You cannot have a cultural change without having a theological change. And what is happening in our country is that Christians are constantly and continually either denying or refusing to study and apply the Word of God to their lives. And when you don't know truth, you can't stand for truth. When you don't know truth, you can't fight for truth. I want to tell you, if God allows to happen, what will probably happen within the next year and a half, you better know truth. And you better know how to stand for it. Because you're going to need all of the truth and all the character that you can get. You better learn this. If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right. If you don't believe right, you can't live right. All cultural changes, individually, familially, ecclesiastically, nationally, are preceded by theological change. And you better know where you do not ever, ever need to change based upon the Word of God.
#84 | 56:31 to 58:21 | cleaned
A broken church, a broken nation. Let's pray. Father, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ for your love, for your grace, for your mercy. Help us to see, Lord, and understand what has happened in our country, where we are, and how we got here. And the force that exists today that tries to pin us together with bayonets is there because we've left the Word of God. And we've left the principles that you've given to direct our lives. Enable us, Father, to honor Thee and to love Thee, and to stand for what's right. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.
#85 | 58:22 to 59:15 | cleaned

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-05T21:46:37Z

Where We Are & How We Got Here # 2 of 14

John Weaver | Freedom Ministries

John Weaver argues that the division of major American denominations over abolitionism in the 19th century foreshadowed and precipitated the division of the nation. He contends that cultural changes are always preceded by theological changes, and that the abolitionist movement was driven by a rejection of biblical authority and a desire for power. The splits in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches severed the spiritual cords that held the Union together, leaving only force to maintain national unity.

Introduction: Ideas Have Consequences

Weaver reiterates that cultural revolutions require theological revolutions, using the shift in moral standards regarding sodomy as an example.

Psalm 11, look if you would please at verse 3.

Scripture Reading — Psalm 11:3

"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

The Abolitionists' Rejection of Scripture and the Constitution

Abolitionists denied the inspiration of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and the supernatural; they also despised the Constitution, calling it a covenant with death.

Union Requires Unity

Using Amos 3:3, Weaver explains that union without unity cannot last, and abolitionism forced a parting of ways in the churches.

Now, the Bible says in Amos chapter 3 and verse 3, another question,

Scripture Reading — Amos 3:3

"Can two walk together except they be agreed?"

The Original Unity of American Denominations

After the Revolution, churches were nationally unified; there were no separate Northern and Southern Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian denominations.

Abolitionism as the Cause of Denominational Splits

Abolitionist agitation, not doctrinal differences, forced the divisions in the major denominations, foreshadowing the national split.

Infiltration Through Oberlin College and Revivalism

Charles Finney's revivalism at Oberlin College was co-opted by abolitionists like Theodore Dwight Weld, who sent agents to infiltrate churches with immediate abolitionism.

The Splits in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist Churches

The Presbyterian Church split first in 1837, followed by the Methodists in 1844 and the Baptists in 1845, each over the slavery agitation.

Contemporary Warnings That Church Division Would Destroy the Union

Leaders like Charles Hodge, John C. Calhoun, and others predicted that the severing of religious ties would lead to civil war and the dissolution of the republic.

The Role of Force After the Cords of Union Snapped

Calhoun warned that once the religious cords were broken, only force would hold the states together, a reality Weaver sees continuing since 1865.

Applications: The Necessity of Submitting to God's Word

Weaver applies the lesson that problems are never resolved until all parties submit to Scripture, whether in marriage, church, or nation.

Conclusion: Know and Stand for Truth

Because cultural changes follow theological changes, believers must know and stand on biblical truth to face coming challenges.

Where We Are & How We Got Here # 2 of 14

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	12004171056
Subject	Civil Government
Course	Civil Government: Power, Nations, and Constitutional Order: Where We Are & How We Got Here
Genre	Sermon
Date	1998-07-05
Dictation Name
Book	Book 119: Where We Are & How We Got Here — Chapter 2
Source Timed Segments	85

Lecture Guide

Outline

Introduction: Ideas Have Consequences: Weaver reiterates that cultural revolutions require theological revolutions, using the shift in moral standards regarding sodomy as an example.
The Abolitionists' Rejection of Scripture and the Constitution: Abolitionists denied the inspiration of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and the supernatural; they also despised the Constitution, calling it a covenant with death.
Union Requires Unity: Using Amos 3:3, Weaver explains that union without unity cannot last, and abolitionism forced a parting of ways in the churches.
The Original Unity of American Denominations: After the Revolution, churches were nationally unified; there were no separate Northern and Southern Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian denominations.
Abolitionism as the Cause of Denominational Splits: Abolitionist agitation, not doctrinal differences, forced the divisions in the major denominations, foreshadowing the national split.
Infiltration Through Oberlin College and Revivalism: Charles Finney's revivalism at Oberlin College was co-opted by abolitionists like Theodore Dwight Weld, who sent agents to infiltrate churches with immediate abolitionism.
The Splits in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist Churches: The Presbyterian Church split first in 1837, followed by the Methodists in 1844 and the Baptists in 1845, each over the slavery agitation.
Contemporary Warnings That Church Division Would Destroy the Union: Leaders like Charles Hodge, John C. Calhoun, and others predicted that the severing of religious ties would lead to civil war and the dissolution of the republic.
The Role of Force After the Cords of Union Snapped: Calhoun warned that once the religious cords were broken, only force would hold the states together, a reality Weaver sees continuing since 1865.
Applications: The Necessity of Submitting to God's Word: Weaver applies the lesson that problems are never resolved until all parties submit to Scripture, whether in marriage, church, or nation.
Conclusion: Know and Stand for Truth: Because cultural changes follow theological changes, believers must know and stand on biblical truth to face coming challenges.

Major Themes

Key Arguments

Abolitionism was a theological revolution that rejected biblical authority.

Weaver argues that the abolitionist movement was fundamentally a theological departure from orthodox Christianity, denying inspiration, deity, and the supernatural.

Weaver states, 'The abolitionists did not care for the scriptures. They denied the inspiration of the scriptures. They denied the deity of Jesus Christ.'

The abolitionists sought power, not the welfare of slaves.

Weaver contends that the abolitionists used the slavery issue as a means to gain power and influence, not out of genuine concern for slaves.

Weaver says, 'They were not interested in the slaves, but interested in that as a means of gaining power and influence.'

Church divisions over slavery directly led to national division.

Weaver presents extensive historical testimony that the splits in the major denominations were seen as the precursor and cause of the Civil War.

Weaver quotes John C. Calhoun: 'The first of these cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church.'

When Christians cannot resolve conflicts biblically, the nation suffers.

Weaver argues that the failure of professing Christians to work out differences according to Scripture leaves no hope for the heathen and leads to national ruin.

Weaver asks, 'When professing Christians refuse to sit down and work things out biblically and scripturally, what hope do the heathen have?'

Force becomes the only bond when spiritual cords are severed.

Weaver highlights Calhoun's warning that once religious ties are broken, only force remains to hold the Union together, a condition he sees persisting.

Weaver quotes Calhoun: 'Nothing will be left to hold the states together except force.'

Right belief is necessary for right action.

Weaver asserts that theological error inevitably leads to moral and cultural decay, and that correct doctrine is essential for godly living.

Weaver states, 'If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right.'

Scripture References

Psalm 11:3: Weaver uses this verse as the foundational text for the series, asking what the righteous can do when foundations are destroyed.
Amos 3:3: Weaver cites this verse to illustrate that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed, applying it to the necessity of unity in the church and nation.

Historical References

William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator: Weaver mentions Garrison's statement that the Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell, illustrating abolitionist contempt for the Constitution.
Oberlin College and Charles Grandison Finney: Weaver describes how Finney's revivalism at Oberlin was co-opted by abolitionists like Theodore Dwight Weld to spread immediate abolitionism.
Theodore Dwight Weld and the American Anti-Slavery Society: Weaver explains that Weld and 70 agents were sent to infiltrate churches with abolitionist doctrine.
John Henley Thornwell: Weaver quotes Thornwell, a Southern Presbyterian theologian, who framed the conflict as Christianity versus atheism, not merely slavery versus abolition.
Charles Hodge: Weaver cites Hodge's warning that the division of the Presbyterian Church would lead to the disunion of the states.
John C. Calhoun: Weaver extensively quotes Calhoun's 1850 speech describing how the snapping of religious cords would leave only force to hold the Union together.
Peter Cartwright: Weaver quotes the Methodist circuit rider's reflections on the 1844 split and his prediction that it would lead to civil war and the downfall of the republic.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin: Weaver notes that Stowe had never been to the South and wrote her novel based on abolitionist accounts, not personal experience.
Stonewall Jackson's black Sunday school class: Weaver uses Jackson as an example of a Southerner who taught his slaves the Bible, countering the abolitionist claim that slaves were denied Scripture.
Abraham Lincoln's use of executive power: Weaver lists Lincoln's actions—executive orders, martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, arrests—as examples of force holding the Union together.

Important Quotes

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

This is the central text of the series, framing the question of how the righteous should respond when foundational truths are undermined.

You cannot have a cultural revolution without having a theological revolution.

This statement encapsulates Weaver's thesis that all cultural changes are rooted in prior theological shifts.

The truth of the matter is the abolitionists wanted power.

Weaver asserts that the abolitionist movement was motivated by a lust for power rather than genuine concern for slaves.

Can two walk together except they be agreed?

Weaver uses this biblical question to argue that true union requires unity, and forced union without agreement leads to conflict.

We shall become two nations in feeling which must soon render us two nations in fact.

Charles Hodge's prediction that the division of the Presbyterian Church would inevitably lead to the division of the nation.

Nothing will be left to hold the states together except force.

Calhoun's warning that once religious ties are severed, only coercive force can maintain the Union, a condition Weaver sees as ongoing.

If you don't believe right, you're not going to act right.

Weaver's concluding application that right doctrine is essential for right living and cultural stability.

Discussion Questions

[Question]

How does the principle that 'ideas have consequences' apply to current cultural shifts in our society?

[Context]

Weaver opens the message by stating that cultural changes are always preceded by theological changes.

[Question]

In what ways might a desire for power disguise itself as a noble cause, as Weaver claims happened with abolitionism?

[Context]

Weaver argues that the abolitionists were primarily motivated by a quest for power rather than genuine concern for slaves.

[Question]

What are the dangers of forced union without genuine unity, and how does Amos 3:3 speak to this?

[Context]

Weaver uses the illustration of two tomcats tied together to show that union without unity leads to conflict.

[Question]

How should Christians today handle disagreements over secondary doctrines while maintaining unity on the fundamentals of the faith?

[Context]

Weaver acknowledges that believers can disagree on issues like eschatology or baptism while still cooperating on the essentials.

[Question]

What lessons can we learn from the 19th-century church splits about the relationship between ecclesiastical unity and national stability?

[Context]

Weaver presents extensive historical testimony that the denominational divisions were seen as the entering wedge for the Civil War.

[Question]

Why is submission to the Word of God essential for resolving conflicts, and what happens when parties refuse to do so?

[Context]

Weaver applies the historical lesson to personal, familial, and ecclesiastical conflicts, insisting that only biblical submission can bring resolution.

[Question]

How can believers prepare themselves to stand for truth in a culture that increasingly rejects biblical authority?

[Context]

Weaver warns that Christians must know and stand for truth because cultural deterioration follows theological compromise.

Applications

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