Alan Keyes
January 29, 1999

Good morning! I always feel a little bit like a spoil sport, and I guess I will be this morning--because I always find that in the wonderful feeling that is created by God's Holy Spirit, it's sometimes hard for us to remember where we really are. And then it seems to fall to me to remind us that for all it feels wonderful in here this morning--wasn't that beautiful music?--we're living in Sodom and we know it. This is the truth.

And I honestly feel that the angels are amongst us. And you know what that means, don't you? It means that Abraham is somewhere pleading on our behalf and that the angels are amongst us. And I know that when they went amongst the people of Sodom, even at that point God would have spared them if they had managed even for one night to turn away from their wicked ways, but they didn't. And now, just to show you that sometimes I think we fail to remember that Christ is the Ruler and He will be the Judge, we don't even know where Sodom is, do we? This is what happens when you really upset God. They don't even know where you are anymore.

We are a prideful people, and right now we are in our pride. But that means we're also just on the verge of calamity. No, actually we're in the midst of it. We've kind of gone across the brink. I used to tell people we were on the brink. We are falling now. We're in free fall. And it is a miracle that will save us, but it's not clear we really want one. It really isn't.

So I have some unpleasant tasks to do this morning. I've got to remind you of what's really going on. And what's really going on is that as a people we have turned our backs on God. We have rejected the basic principles given us by our Founders, which acknowledged in our life as a people our reliance upon God. We have set the devil on the throne; we are unwilling to REBUKE him, and remove him from that throne, and we actually think we're gonna be all right. This is not true; we're not going to be all right.

I wish to remind you that we live at the end of the 20th century, and that you ought to look back on that century and take the lessons that it teaches. Because people were gathering together in various ways and they were praying in churches and they were holding prayer breakfasts and prayer meetings in Nazi Germany. And they called upon God and they thought that they were praying to Him, but they didn't stand up to rebuke the evil! And that evil overtook them, and it shall overtake us, for all our pretensions to the contrary.

If not the Lord keep the house, the watchman waketh . . .

And while we're awake . . . .see this is what I am supposed to feel, I am before the awakened ones today. Sometimes when I'm on my radio show I feel like I'm talking to people who are asleep. I know they're asleep, because they're babbling in their sleep when they call. But right now, y'all are awake. But what does that biblical scripture remind us of? If not the LORD keep the house, the watchman waketh . . . That means the watchman waketh, you see, he's awake, he's watching, but in vain! We don't like to think about that, do we? I want to talk about it today. I want to talk about it from the point of view of the one thing I know, because I have a lot to learn from y'all, and learn it all the time from folks like Bill Bright and Michael Yuseff. I listen to your broadcasts in my car when I'm driving in sometimes. I really enjoy it, thank you for all you do. I have to tell you, I learn a lot. And it helps me as an individual.

Why is it that we seem so bad though at talking to the American people? Why is that? Some of us are very good when comes to one-on-one work, but when it comes to talking to this people, we've got no guts, we are cowards. Why is this?

Cowardice hangs in the air like a filthy smell in this country. And no one is exempt from it. There is a controversy going on right now, apparently, because they're going to have what they call the "President's Prayer Breakfast" in Washington. [laughter] And some folks are upset because, apparently, maybe the President or somebody, invited Yassar Arafat and they're all upset about this. And I was informed of this night before last, somebody said, "Well, this controversy is going on, and isn't that upsetting?"

And I have to allow, as I didn't quite understand what the upset was. They're having the President there, why are they upset about Yassar Arafat? [laughter, applause]

We don't want to see it, do we? We don't want to see the fact that as a people we are living in the midst of a filthy time of lies and character assassination. We are living in a time when on the throne of this nation's life there is one without shame, without conscience, without decency, and we have shut our mouths and we're not willing to speak the truth. Well I'm here today, popular or unpopular, to tell you that's not gonna work, see?

If not the Lord keep the house, the watchman waketh but in vain.

And we need now to realize that when the Lord keeps the house, it's like when He spoke to the woman at the well. First thing He's gonna do is tell you the truth. He doesn't forgive you first. We think He forgives you first. We haven't noticed that even in His walk and in His life, first thing He did was to tell you the truth. He told you the truth about God's way, and then He told you the truth about how your life departed from God's way, and He didn't care how it hurt, or how it felt. We are so anxious to get to the forgiveness part that we don't want to go through the truth, which then leads to pain, which THEN leads to a turning back to the only One who can relieve that pain.

And so right now too many of us are trying to help this nation to get by this period without feeling the pain. I've noticed that in some of my Republican colleagues, who are anxious to get it over with. I don't want to get it over with; I want to get it right, don't you? We shouldn't be anxious to get it over with. [applause] Sometimes in our lives we want to get through the painful part, when it is in the painful part that we will actually confront the saving truth of our own helplessness without the grace of God.

But this is something which so many of us are good at getting across to individuals; how come we can't get it across to our country? How come we don't want to speak to the nation, to the people? So often in the Bible the Lord talks about what you say to "the people." The prophets, when they came spoke to "the people," they weren't afraid. The people can be a great beast. They'll turn and devour you. But as Jonah learned, the beast can devour you and God can still retrieve you from the belly of the beast, so why are you worried? And we worry too much. We don't want to face the consequences and so neither do other leaders in our society. If those for whom the flame of faith in God burns brightest still manage somehow to cover up that flame when it comes time to light the whole house of this nation's life, how can we expect these paltry, cheap politicos to have any sense of integrity?

If not the Lord keep the house, the watchman waketh but in vain.

In our house this is particularly important. And by our house I mean, right now, America, the United States. Why? I want to leave with you one thought today. I don't think that we appreciate how important we are to the safety and security and salvation of America. We don't. We miss that one sometimes. We know that individuals cannot survive without the living presence of our Lord and the Word of God. You know what? We've actually let ourselves be convinced by somebody that the nation can survive without that--this separation of church and state stuff. And what that means is we think that the individuals can not live without the Word of Truth, and we must carry it to them, but somehow or another the nation will survive without it. How can this be?

Especially how can it be in our nation, founded as it is on principles of self-government? We talk about "government, government, government." We have so many of these cheap politicos wanting the government to work. This nation wasn't about government; it was about self-government. You know what the real principle, the real essence of self-government is? The real essence of self-government, as St. Paul told us, is the indwelling of the law. When you have opened up your heart and your life, and He who is the embodiment, living presence of the law enters into you and becomes your will and animates you, then you are freed from the external constraint of the law. You are still law-abiding and law-respecting, but you are freed from the external constraint of the law because the law is for you an indwelling principle.

And when that happens, guess what? Then you can give laws to yourself. Once that principle is indwelling you can be a law unto yourself because your self is the presence of the living Word of God. Now we take that truth, which is one of the practical realities of Christian faith, and when you translate it into the political realm, you know what it becomes? It becomes self-government--a people able actually to choose its representatives, give laws unto itself that will be decent and produce prosperity and respect decency, where families will be strong and businesses will be prosperous, where the nation's policies will go right. And you know why it works? It only works if we are a people of character, and that character can only exist if we have at the very heart of our being the indwelling presence of the Word of God.

Christianity and freedom go hand in hand. Without faith there is no freedom. Without faith there is no freedom. Without God there is no liberty. And that is not a slogan, it's a literal truth. And what that means, of course, is that the other separation we've been trying to make these days can't possibly be true. The separation of church and state leads to the other separation being made today between "private life" and "public life."

I have discovered some very, very strange things in the course of the last several months. I have discovered, for instance, that the White House is a private dwelling. This came as a shock to me, because frankly I don't know why they make me pay for it if it belongs to somebody else. I have discovered that when you stand before the people of this country and you take an oath to faithfully execute the laws, that's kind of a smorgasbord oath. You faithfully execute them, but not when it's your private business and it's in the Oval Office and you're conducting the non-verbal interviews that characterize our day.

See, but what does that distinction really mean? Do you know why we're so willing, some of us, to make this distinction for the present occupant of the White House? It's because at some level we've wanted to make it ourselves. We've wanted to think that we can go out and we can behave however we please. We've wanted to think that the adultery is a private affair. We've wanted to think that the promiscuity is our own business, that we can engage in that and it doesn't hurt the people and it doesn't hurt the nation. It's our private business.

Why we thought this, I don't know, when as the adultery rate went up and the divorce rate skyrocketed and the illegitimacy rate ran out of sight, so did our budgets for trying to take care of all these problems. I say again, if this is private business, how come I'm PAYING FOR IT!! If this is private business, how come billions of dollars in public money have had to go to deal with its consequences? Even then we should have seen that this public/private distinction is not true. As our private character declines, our public business starts to be dominated by the consequences of our private abuses, and we pay and we pay and we pay. And we still can't deal with them.

But we have accepted this notion, at least in part because we want to apply it to ourselves. We've adopted what seems to be the new understanding of the Gospel. I didn't know this myself, but I have learned in the last several months that Christ didn't come to save us from our sins. He came to facilitate them. Did you know that? The great facilitator, Christ. He came to give us the magic formula that would allow us to sin as much as we wanted without consequence. And it was just very simple. The formula goes this way: judge not that you be not judged. It's a simple formula. See, that means that so long as you're willing to let them get away with it, you can get away with it.

Did y'all see that before? Because I have to confess I've read that passage many times, never understood it that way. But now it turns out that this is the new meaning of that scripture. And so if we're willing to let him get away with it, then we can get away with it. "By the measure wherewith you measure, so shall it be measured unto you" now becomes a formula that says "keep that measure of virtue real small, and not much will be required of you."

Do you really think that's what Christ meant? He certainly lived a strange life for somebody who thought that way, because He gave without measure of Himself and of His life, and of the word and living truth of God. If He wanted us to keep our measure small, why did He example for us so large a cup of sacrifice?

But we have fooled ourselves now, accepting all these little distinctions people want to make. The private things over here, the public things over there. The truth of the matter is, though, that in our life public success requires private integrity. And if we are now embarked upon an experiment in dividing the two, as a people we shall perish. And it is already happening.

I don't know what you make of the situation in Washington. This is what I make of it: when God really loves you--and I believe He does in spite of us--He wants to make sure you don't perish. And so when you're headed down the wrong road, He puts up every possible signpost and obstacle and warning. He'll send folks to warn you, he'll send the pastor and the spouse and the friend, he'll send strangers in various ways. If your ears are open and your eyes are open, He'll communicate to you somehow, "don't go down that road, the fire will consume you, the pit will be there and you'll fall in and you shan't get up," because He doesn't want you to perish. I think He's been doing that with America.

All these signposts that have come along in recent years as the family structure collapses and the children perish by violence and the mayhem rises and the lack of integrity becomes clear. But we didn't listen. And so He decided that he was gonna really get our attention. And since we wouldn't look at it in the house in the ghetto and we wouldn't look at it in the house in the suburb and we wouldn't look at it in the house in the rural area, we wouldn't even look at it when it was the neighbor's house. We didn't want to see it when it was our own house. So you know what He did? He took the image of our depravity and He wrote it just as big as He could write it and He put it in the one house we were not likely to ignore, the one house that would haunt us in our going out and in our coming in, the one house that we would see on the morning news and the evening news, and He put it right there in the White House where we couldn't escape it. And where we would see, writ large, the image of our depravity, and where in consequence we would watch as the instruments of our self-government ground to a halt as the corruption in our political elites was revealed one person at a time, and as the truth of its consequences came home to us.

And He wants us to understand this, and we still won't see it. We're still looking for the exit. We're still trying to find a way out. But the truth is that the Lord told us this, "he who is not with Me, is against me. He who does not gather to Me, scattereth." Does that sound like a censure vote to you? That sounds to me like an up or down vote. That sounds to me like you've got to decide, "here's the line, which side of it are you on?"

And to be sure, to be sure, if you're standing on the Lord's side you're not gonna be too humble to see if you can pull up somebody who needs to come with you. But you're not going to tell them that they're all right. You're not going to lie to them and get them to believe that standing in the very pit of perdition they shall be saved and forgiven, because that is a lie.

And I'd like to know, are we gonna plant that lie at the heart of this nation's life now? The nation that began with that great and ringing Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Do you know what that was? That wasn't a ringing declamation of rights; that was a ringing declaration of the authority of God.

And why is it then that in a country by God's providence, founded on a ringing declaration of God's authority, we as Christian people are ashamed and cowardly when it comes to declaring that very truth? Why is this? Why is it that we are willing to accept arguments that will have us ghetto-ize the Christian faith? Put it over here on a shelf somewhere, where they tell us it's all right, when Christ Himself told us that we should take it into every highway and byway, that we should take it and shout it from the rooftops, that we should hang it from the lamp stand so that the light went through all the house. And if they rebuke us and despitefully use us as a consequence, then we suffer with joy in the name of God. Where are those who will do that for America? Where are those who will stand in the pulpit and in the well of the house? Who will stand on the street corners and on the podiums of every part of this nation and remind this people that without faith there is no freedom, without God there is no liberty?

This is the only sense that I believe will help us now, because we must come together and with one heart we must beg our God for help--for I believe that there are signs that we are beyond all human help. We have a blindness now that only Christ can cure, the scales upon our eyes so that we see with eyes that do not see. And what is charming and eloquent to us is the foul blight of lies. And I'll tell you honestly I think about that when people tell me that Bill Clinton is eloquent. Bill Clinton is not eloquent. Bill Clinton is pathetic. Bill Clinton hasn't had an eloquent moment in his life, because there is no eloquence apart from truth. And if we think there is, then we have ears that are deaf and we have eyes that are veiled, and only, only our Lord can mix His spittle with the dank earth of our corruption and place it on our eyes that we may see.

And I know, because I hear it all the time, people are a little discouraged, some folks, today, because they keep talking to me about polls and stuff that indicate that the American people are corrupt and that they accept all this garbage and what not. First of all, the polls don't even suggest that, if you accept them. (I don't, because I think they're a bunch of manipulated lies, but leave that aside.) Even if you look at them as they purport to be, they don't confirm that we are a people without decency. No. Most people are willing to say that what's going on is filthy and wrong, and ought to be condemned, right?

But you know what they're not willing to say? They're not willing to say that there ought to be a consequence. They're not willing to say that, in point of fact, something must follow from that corruption. And that's the problem that we face. Eighty percent: "this is a terrible guy, leave him where he is." Why do you think that is? Why do you think that we are willing to smell the stench, and see the corruption, and believe the we'll be okay in spite of it? Could it be that those who are charged with telling us the true consequences of our actions are more willing to tickle our ears than to speak the truth?

If not the Lord keep the house . . .

But you know we could also say if not the Lord keep our tongues, if not the Lord keep our speeches, if not the Lord determine our deeds, then we speak and we act all in vain. And that's what we--all of us here in this room, the waking watchmen on the walls of truth--that's what we have to decide about America's public life right now. Are we gonna be willing to speak the truth, and if need be to suffer persecution, for the sake of justice and for the sake of Christ? Or are we going to shrink from that to tickle the ears of our people, to promise them individual salvation even as we perish as a nation? What do you say?

I believe that we're clearly at a great time of decision. You know how you can tell? If the scripture is any indication--and that's why I've mentioned these polls--one of the things that God seems to do when it comes right down to the moment when He's gonna reach in or not: He cuts you back considerably. If you go through and read the number of passages in the Bible where, both in the Old Testament and the New, we are reminded that many are called, but FEW are chosen. This suggests that things have really reached a point of true discernment, a point of real crisis when it looks like there's nobody standing on God's side.

That's the real test. The line is there and God is on one side of it, and on the other side of the line you have 76% of the people who say it's wonderful to commit adultery and do whatever you please, and on the other side you have this few people sitting over there like this, just saying, "Oh boy, all those people over there aren't with us." See? And don't you know that as Christian folks it seems to me that if we look around and we see a lot on that side and a few on this side, we know we're where we belong. That's right.

And it's been true ever since the Old Testament time. You show up with your 30,000 and you think that you're so wonderful and you're gonna beat the enemy. And God says "send most of those people home, okay?" And then you get down to 3,000 and you think "well, we're few, but we're still enough to do the job." And then He says, "no, go take a drink of water and sober yourself up." And the ones of you that know how to drink of my living water in the right way, you stay. The rest of you go. And then when you're standing there looking around and you're thinking to yourself, "no way we can do this, this can't work, there's no way. 100,000 of them and 300 of us? We're finished."

At that point, when you reach that point of real discouragement, when you think that there's no way victory is possible, when you understand as you look around that all the help that you've been able to gather, all the staff that you've been able to put together, all the money that you've been able to gather, none of it's gonna be enough, that they're always more than you are, they will always have greater strength, they'll always have better access to the media, they'll always get better press and better comment on the editorial pages than you. And when you've reached that point and you're feeling like there's no hope and it's all discouragement, you remember that that's the moment when God's gonna step in, because that's the moment when you'll be sure and they'll be sure that the victory is HIS victory, not your victory, that the strength is HIS strength, not your strength.

And my friends, we have reached that time in American public life. We have reached the time when there's just a hardy band on one side and all the lies on the other. And when more and more folks are crossing the line in the wrong direction, because they think the truth can't possibly prevail, so let us worship now the lie. But I would hope that it is for us, if we are indeed awake, to understand that it is in this very moment that God will show Himself and that we just need to be sure of one thing: that we are still walking in the footsteps of the Lord. See, that's all.

I think about this as I watch some of my colleagues in Washington struggling with the terrible problem of impeachment. I don't understand why it's such a terrible problem. If you wake up in the morning and you stroll into the kitchen and the air is filled with the strong odors of the dinner from the night before, and you look around and you realize "somebody forgot to take the garbage out," what do you do? Do you stand there and agonize "oh my, should I take it out or should I leave it there? What are we gonna do without that?" NO, you don't. Do you worry about whether or not the neighbor down the road is gonna take his garbage out or her garbage out? No you don't. What you do is you take it out.

And frankly, I don't get it. I'm not even sure why all this agony takes place. You simply look at what's going on, you decide what's right, and you do it. And if at the end of the day not enough people are standing on your side right now, that's okay, because the people who don't stand on the right side in a matter like this, they think they're judging others but they're really judging themselves. And if we have faith, then we know at the end of the day the judgment is not in our hands, it is in the hands of God. And we are just trying the best we can to be on His side of it. That's all. And this is what we need to do as a people. We need to do it in every area.

I hear people talking about all these issues, Social Security, income taxes, all this stuff. I'm as good as anybody, I suppose, at talking about all those things. It turns out that the right solutions are pretty evident once you get down to it. They all depend on something, though, that we don't wish to recognize maybe. They all depend on character.

See, if we want the right solution in welfare and all that, it ends up that the right solution is encouraging people to take care of themselves. How many people you know will take care of themselves and take care of each other when they feel no sense of moral decency and obligation? Character is the key. So if you want to take the right approach, you've got to have character. Same is true of all the things that have to do with our money. Most of us recognize that the right solution for all of these things is the solution that leaves our resources in the control of the people themselves so that they can take responsibility, make the right decisions. But how many of those approaches are gonna work if people don't have character? Do you know somebody who really takes care of themselves well when they don't feel a sense of moral responsibility, who takes care of their family and their children without a sense of obligation before God? The key to it all is moral character. All the right solutions, all the things we would really like to see happen, can't work no matter how much we put the databases together and have the nice facts and figures to throw out--all of it is just a pipe dream if we don't have character.

Now, admittedly, there are some people who don't like those solutions. They'd just as soon we lived under some benevolent despotism where people were dictated to by an all-powerful government and it took care of them and took care of the consequences of all their misdeed. You know, "Are you promiscuous? Have some abortions and condoms and we'll take care of it. Are you lazy? Have some welfare and we'll take care of it, don't worry about it. Are you tired of your children? Send them to daycare, and we'll take care of them, don't worry about it."

Is this the right way to go? Most of us think not, I think. But you know, if you believe that's the right way to go, one of the strongest arguments in your favor is a people of no character. There is no way that we shall take the right road of freedom and responsibility, and stay on it, if we come to think of ourselves as a depraved people.

This, by the way, in case you've been wondering, is the secret of Bill Clinton's popularity with the media and the left-wing ideologues and all. You know why he's popular? Some people think he's popular in spite of his vices. No. Bill Clinton is popular with them BECAUSE of his vices. He is the poster boy of moral depravity in America. He is the one who sets before us the image of our moral incompetence, who gets everybody to affirm that we're not responsible enough, not good enough, not careful enough, not able in fact to provide for ourselves or for others. "Can't control your own money, you won't take care of it right. Can't take on the business of caring for your neighbors and dealing with poverty and lifting up those who are less fortunate, because you won't have the heart for it, you won't have the love for it."

And you know what the antidote is for that lie about our character? The antidote for that lie is the truth preached by Jesus Christ, the truth that tells us to live as the living instruments of God, because then we will love and then we will care, and then we will stand and meet our obligations to one another.

Without faith there is no freedom. It's a literal truth. We shall not preserve our liberty except that we have the character that comes from living a life of faith.

And that means that the message that we're carrying to people and offering to them as the path of individual salvation turns out to be the only path that will save our country, the only path that will let liberty flourish, that will keep freedom from becoming a curse, that will preserve the institutions that provide some safeguard from indignity and oppression.

You see how important we are? This nation won't survive if the message of truth, the message of Christ's truth that we carry, is not lit as a flame in every heart and set as a lamp for every eye. As individuals and as a people we must understand and live this truth, or as a free people we shall perish.

I hope that we will come to understand that, and with more than our minds, because I think that the hour is late. I am sure that, in the end, the truth prevails, and I am sure that in every age and every time, however awful the times, even in the heart of the Nazi beast, people were brought to the light of Christ's truth and saved for God's kingdom. In every place and every time, that hope endures. It shall never die.

But that doesn't mean this nation won't. I still do not believe in my heart of hearts that God intends for it to perish, but He will let it perish if we are not willing to do what it takes to turn it back to Him. And more than for any other group in this country right now, it is the job of waking Christian people to be the instruments of that return.

If not the Lord keep the house, the watchman waketh but in vain.

It is for us, I think, to return our nation to God's keeping, so that though we sleep in mourning, we shall wake to joy.