In this compelling episode, explore the four divine institutions essential to maintaining order and prosperity in any nation. Rick Hughes sheds light on the societal shifts threatening these institutions, reminding listeners of the foundational truths preserved in the Bible. From marriage to national identity, discover how these principles provide stability and prosperity, and why it’s crucial to adhere to them in today’s complex world.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, we’re going to bring you some information, some motivation, some education about And we’re going to try to do it without any type of manipulation. That’s right. No con games here. No asking for money. Not trying to sell you anything. The whole objective of the Flotline is to give you an opportunity to make a decision. To give you information that will verify as well as identify what God’s plan for you and for our nation is. And if you would like to orient and adjust to the plan, you have the freedom and the privacy to do that. But should you choose not to? Well, that’s up to you as well. One thing God did give you is a volition. He lets you make a choice, a decision. You do not have to make a decision to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You do not have to make a decision to believe in the principles of the Word of God. You can choose to live your life the way you want to live your life, as many have done it in the history of this world and recorded much of it in the Bible. The only thing I can tell you is that if you guess wrong, you’re in trouble. And I don’t think believing in Christ is a guess. You know, you make decisions based on faith sometimes. You make decisions based on empirical data sometimes. and sometimes you make decisions just rationally, trying to rationally figure things out. Faith is a legitimate way to make a decision, and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ requires faith. That’s why the Bible says, For by grace through faith are you saved, not of works, lest any man would brag about it. It takes faith to believe what’s in the Bible. It takes faith to believe who Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of God, is. And yet many people do that. Many people have that kind of faith and experience the real born-again life with Christ living in them and the Word of God sustaining them and the Holy Spirit empowering them. It’s a wonderful life, I can promise you that. But it’s up to you. Some people think they’re smarter than God and they got a better deal. They got it figured out a lot better. And I understand that. Sometimes that’s called artificial intelligence. A friend of mine who’s a pastor calls it arrogance plus ignorance equals artificial intelligence, AI. Arrogance plus ignorance equals artificial intelligence. And arrogance certainly comes into the scene when a person says, I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in God’s word. I think there’s a better way to do things, and that’s been proven wrong many, many, many times. That’s why I’m trying to show you this morning and the last Sunday morning how this client nation called America, the United States, may be under divine discipline. And I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m not telling you this to in any way intimidate you. I just simply want you to be aware that of the fact that you are the solution to what we face in the future. I’m not a pastor, let’s get that straight. You need to be under the authority of a well-qualified pastor. Don’t listen to me on Sundays and think this is all you need. One of the things that I do is I’m like a breath of fresh air, I hope. I open a window and fresh air comes in and you say, you know, I wish I could learn like that all the time. You can. They are great pastors, qualified pastors. Maybe not in your city, but men that I certainly know about. And I can recommend them to you. And you can access their DVDs and their MP3s. You can take your Bible and a notebook and sit at home and study until God leads you in the right direction. And don’t hesitate to ask if I can help in any way like that. But you must be under a pastor if you’re ever going to build a main line of resistance in your soul, a flot line, F-L-O-T, forward line of troops, a main line of resistance. What do I mean by that? This is a protection for your soul. This is learning the principles and the precepts of God’s word that will protect your soul in time of adversity. As we say so often, adversity is inevitable, stress is optional. Because adversity is what circumstances will do to you and stress is what you will do to yourself. Now let’s go back and remember a couple of verses before we move on. I went back to Jeremiah and quoted two verses that were written in Jeremiah’s time, but they’re applicable to us today. Thus saith the Lord, Jeremiah 17, 5, and this is true in a political season. Listen carefully. Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm in whose heart departs from the Lord. It’s a shame to get more involved in politics than in faith with the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet some people believe are totally involved in politics, are totally into the scene, and they believe that this candidate or that candidate can straighten out things in this country. And that is just not true. Some candidates are much better qualified than others. Some candidates do a better job than others. But to change the souls of the people that live inside this nation, no politician can do that because every politician, just like every person in this nation, has a sin nature. There is no perfect politician, even though they may get a makeup and they may have a facelift and may have their teeth fixed. They may look perfect, they may sound perfect, but they are imperfect, just as you are imperfect. So don’t make man, trust in man to solve your problems, Jeremiah 17, 5. And then in Jeremiah 16, 12, talking about their forefathers, you have done worse than your fathers did. For behold, you walk everyone after the imagination of his own evil heart, and you will not listen to me. That’s indicative of this client nation today. Everything that used to be good has turned into evil, and everything that used to be evil has turned into good. That’s a quote from my pastor. And it’s true. This nation is slowly sunk into the quicksand of sin and we’ve changed tremendously. Now we honor things that we used to hate and we hate things we used to honor. The prophet of Isaiah wrote and prophesied about this. and about the coming discipline on the southern kingdom of Judah since they failed to maintain any spiritual heritage. If we fail to maintain spiritual heritage, we will undergo discipline from God. So listen to what Isaiah told that southern kingdom. He said, Alas, you sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who acted corruptly, and they’ve abandoned the Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned away from Him. Those three key words I gave you last Sunday, abandon the Lord, despise the Holy One of Israel, and turned away from Him, are exactly the reason why a client nation such as this can go under the fifth cycle of discipline or destruction of that nation. It’s obvious that a passage like that wasn’t written to us, but it’s obvious we have identical tendencies, and as a nation, it’s obvious we refuse to recognize God, even in the public arena, such as our schools or city council meetings or political rallies or sometimes even military functions, because we’re afraid we’re going to get sued by the Freedom From Religious Foundation. And if we’ve ever needed God’s grace and God’s protection, it’s today. In World War II, we wanted it. In World War II, we begged for it. But now, since we’re so prosperous, we really don’t want any of God’s blessing, do we? We believe we can go it alone in the devil’s world. So I took you on a journey. I took you down the road of what had been going on. We talked about it. We showed you how this is the devil’s world and you live in the devil’s world. We told you in Philippians 3.20, your citizenship is in heaven, which also we await the Savior to come back, the Lord Jesus Christ. I read 1 Peter 2.11 where it said, Those of you that are believers, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lust, which war against your soul. I showed you 2 Timothy 2.15, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman, one who does not need to be ashamed, but accurately dividing the word of truth. And I told you the reason we’re in trouble today is because we have failed to learn the word of truth. We’ve put the Word of God aside. It’s not important anymore. Most of our churches don’t spend much time teaching the Bible. There’s a lot of music and a lot of ritual without reality, and some of that is just meaningless. And Hosea, when he prophesied the destruction of the northern kingdom, he told them, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. You rejected knowledge. I reject you. People today don’t want to learn. People have a Bible, but sometimes it’s like a good luck charm in their car in the back window on the coffee table. It is a textbook. It is designed to be learned. And that’s why God gave the gift of pastor teacher to certain male individuals so they can teach it to you. And if you will learn it, you’re not going to learn it studying at an hour a week, an hour and a half a week. You learn it on a daily routine of feeding on the Word of God, daily. That’s why the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God. a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. If you learn it and you understand what’s in that book, you will understand there are four divine institutions. And these are what God has ordained for the orderly function of the human race. And this is the first thing that Satan attacks in this nation. In order to destroy the United States of America, he must destroy these four divine institutions. because they are the backbone of security and freedom in America. And they are four simple rules of order that provide freedom and prosperity for our nation, or any nation if they’ll adhere to them, the divine institutions. They’re wonderful. They define legitimate authority. They define morality and ethics and rule of law for all members of the human race. And they are the foundation for any client nation to God such as us. And Satan wants to overthrow these thoughts. To think in terms contrary to what this is, is simply satanic tyranny trying to overthrow God’s order. Satan doesn’t like it. And I’ll show you how he attacks it. The first one is freedom or volition. Divine institution number one, we saw it last Sunday. Volition, you have individual liberty. And this is something that God ordained. He gave you freedom to choose. He gave Adam in the garden freedom to choose whether or not he would eat of the forbidden fruit. Eve had the same freedom and she chose to eat the fruit after being tempted by the devil, Lucifer, the snake, the serpent. And then she induced Adam to eat the fruit. And the end result was for by one man, Sin came into the world and death by sin and now death has been passed upon all for all have sinned and the wages of sin is death. So this self-determination, this individual liberty we have with our own soul, it emphasizes our volition. And so you have to choose what’s the lifestyle you want to follow. Now let’s take a minute and think about this. Here you are all brilliant and bright. You got a high school degree, a college degree, a master’s degree, a PhD degree, And you’re very smart. You look at the Bible and you say, you know, that’s rather archaic. There’s nothing in there that can really enlighten me on how I should live my life. And maybe you adopt some progressive terminology. Maybe you adopt some new lifestyle, situational ethics, something like that. And you move on down the road in your life, ignoring the mandates of God, ignoring the laws that God set up. And you think you’re gonna be happy. You think you’re gonna find peace and security. And your life is constantly in turmoil. You’re constantly trusting someone else to provide for you. And what becomes a real life becomes a miserable life because Your happiness depends on what other people do for you. And that’s not the way the Bible sets up. God said, happiness belongs to those people who hear my father’s word and keep it. And the happiness comes from having the lifestyle of Christ in you. That’s where the real happiness comes from. But political discourse today wants to take away your self-determination, take away your freedom to make decisions and the responsibility that goes with those decisions and And redistribute your money. Redistribution of wealth. Social justice, they call it. You know, meeting the grievance of humans. And listen, you must have freedom to choose. I remember years ago when seatbelts came out and you have to wear a seatbelt. And if you don’t wear a seatbelt today, you’ll get a ticket. You can’t even choose not to wear a seatbelt. And I wear a seatbelt every time I get in the car. I’m not against it. But it’s the fact that someone tells you, you must do this, you must do that. And little by little, your rights are taken away from you. You surrender your rights for freedom. You surrender your rights for prosperity, security. A lot of people would rather have security than freedom in this country. So your volition is critical. Choose you this day, Joshua said, whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. He issued a challenge. Choose you this day. You know, what did the thief on the cross said? You know, I believe you are the son of God. And Jesus said, today you’ll be with me in paradise. He made a decision. He chose to receive Christ as his savior, even on the cross. So your volition is essential. You’re going to make decisions today that are going to make yourself miserable because you use your volition spurred on by your emotion. You’re going to let your emotion dictate policy instead of thinking. Thinking. This is what the Christian life is about. Thinking. You say, well, that sounds kind of weird. No, it doesn’t. The Bible says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. You live your Christian life in your thoughts. You must learn to think divine viewpoint. The Bible says in Romans 12, 3, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. But think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. It’s about thinking. You live inside that head. The Bible clearly says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. You are a product of your thoughts, your decisions, your motivation, your intentions, your desires. That’s you. God gave you volition, and your volition can destroy you, or your volition can guarantee you a wonderful life in Christ. It’s up to you. You make the choice. No one’s going to make it for you. How’s it going so far? Are you having clear sailing? Are you making yourself miserable by making a lot of bad decisions because you want him to take time to consider what the Bible says? What does the Bible say? Well, divine institution number two says marriage is an ordained policy of God because God took Adam and from his rib brought out a wonderful woman called Eve. This is the first marriage created in perfect union by God, man and woman. And monogamy becomes a permanent relationship between one man, one woman, and it was ordained of God, and it’s to remind mankind that he has from the beginning a design by God called a right woman for the right man. And therefore, the Bible said it’s not good that man should be alone, thus God created a female, not another male, a female. It’s the most basic fundamental organization in the human race, marriage. Even unbelievers who have a totally miserable life can have a temporary happiness if they marry the right person. So this is important to you. Marriage is one of the greatest areas of mistake in life. Some of you have been married and divorced several times. You can ask God to forgive you anytime you fail. You know that. Well, wouldn’t it be better to be married once and spend your life with one person and not have to gamble, not have to make a mistake? If you’ve made a mistake, is your life over? No, not at all. Just confess it to God and move on down the road. Don’t look back. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t think what allows I am. I wound up divorced. God has a plan. I tell you, a lot of people don’t understand this. Did you know Moses was divorced? You didn’t know that? You didn’t know Moses was divorced and he remarried another person that made his brother and his sister go nuts? They didn’t like it? Yeah, absolutely. Moses’ first wife left him and he wrote her a divorce decree. She left him when he went back to Egypt and she took the two sons and went home with them. She didn’t want anything to do with it. And Moses gave her a divorce. So that may be a shock to you, but that’s true. So marriage is one of the most basic fundamental organizations in the human race. And in marriage, the man must have authority over the wife. We talked about that. Wife, submit yourself to your own husbands as to the Lord, Ephesians 5, 22. And we went on to another Genesis 2, 24. For this reason, a man should leave his father and his mother, be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Okay, we’ve been through all of that. We can give you all that information. Let’s move into divine institution number three today, the family. The family. God ordains the family. And this is where all authority is established. Parental authority is the way we prepare children for having a normal life. We have authority that must conquer their arrogance and their rebellion. And permissiveness by parents destroys this. There’s got to be recognition of authority. There’s got to be orientation to certain principles in life or the kid will grow up and self-destruct and probably destroy himself and destroy somebody else with him. So the highest expression that a parent can give to their children is the form of discipline. Children must be trained to respect the privacy, the property, and the rights of others. not to abuse freedom and to have respect for all authority. And Christian parents especially must also evangelize their children. Tell them the good news of the gospel. Tell them about the Lord Jesus Christ. And provide biblical training for them so that when they get older, at least they can see two different roads. At least they can see… thy way, highway, or my way, highway. At least they can see divine wisdom as compared to the cosmic wisdom. It’s out there. Cosmic wisdom will tell you one thing. Divine wisdom tells you another thing. Which one is true? Which one do you want to believe? Which one do you want to follow in the area of marriage or in the area of the family or in the area of your own volition? Listen, Deuteronomy was very important about this. Deuteronomy 6, 6 through 9, an Old Testament verse, but it shows the importance of training children. This is what Moses said, And these words which I command to you this day shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently unto your children. And you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lay down at night and rise up in the morning and you will bind them, B-I-N-D, bind them for a sign upon your hand and they shall be as frontless between your eyes and you shall write them upon the post of your house and on the gates. This was to remind the children of the importance of the word of God. So when parents don’t instill that, If you don’t instill in your children divine norms and standards, if you don’t put that in their soul, then you guarantee them a one-way trip into the cosmic system since that’s the only alternative they’ve ever heard. Thousands of teenagers today have never, ever been exposed to the word of God. Never exposed to the gospel message of faith alone in Christ alone. Never been exposed to the four divine institutions. Thus they think only in the terms of the cosmic system. And what we know is the genius of Satan. And the Bible calls it the genius, all right? The genius of evil, right? Evil wants to overturn everything that God has set up. Remember it’s the devil’s world. And the thing that he hates the most in this world is the living word of God. He hates that Bible. He can’t do anything about the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s seated at the right hand of the Father from whence he would come to judge the quick and the dead. But he hates that Bible. And he’s going to do everything he can to get you to ignore it, to discard it, to disregard that Bible, not to pay attention to it, and to make sure that no future generations of Americans know what’s in that book. Because what’s in that book is the secret to safety, the secret to society. The secret to security, the secret to happiness, all in that book. Now listen, the fourth divine institution, we’ll wrap it up with this. The fourth divine institution is called nationalism. Nationalism. Say, what is that? Well, if the entire human race were under one rule prior to the millennium, then it would self-destruct. So, internationalism is outlawed as being evil by the word of God. We are not to be internationalists, we are to be nationalists. This is exactly why God separated the human race. This is why he perpetuated the human race to bring history to its logical conclusion. So God designed the nation to protect the freedom and the rights of X number of people on this planet. Nationalism, one language, should be recognized in one nation. You know, this all started at the Tower of Babel with the divine judgment of the original United Nations at the Tower of Babel. The human race was then divided into nations. This division was originally based on racial, geographical, and linguistic norms. And as the human race continued in history, true racial distinctions began to be obliterated in the rise of civilization. Thus, you may be surprised by this, but racial purity is a myth except in pristine areas. Race is generally used by politicians to create false issues in narrative. That’s usually what it’s about. But the biblical proof that nationalism is authorized by God is found in Genesis 10, 5, in Deuteronomy 32, 8, and Acts 17, 26. And I’ll read that one. And God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth. And he has determined the times before appointed in the bounds of their habitation that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might follow after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being as certain also of your own, poets have said, for we are also his offspring. Listen to Genesis 10, 5. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their land, every one after his own tongue, every one after their own family, every one in their own nation. Listen to Deuteronomy 32, 8. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, he separated the sons of Adam. He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. god set boundaries god put north america south america european continent different race different language different face different color it was for a reason it was to protect the world from satanic domination in the end as the tribulation appears this is what the antichrist will want to do to become an international nation international world so he can one man can rule the whole world which is what he will attempt to do. Man, I hope this is making sense to you. I’m running out of time so fast. We just have to remember these divine institutions are critical if this nation is ever going to succeed. I’ll try to come back next week and give you some conclusions on these things, review them one more time. And if you’ll watch the news and pay attention, you will see freedom, marriage, family, and nationalism attacked on a daily basis. Okay, hope you’ve listened. Hope you learned something. I hope you’ll come back next Sunday. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
