Higher Law in the Crosshairs

Higher Law in the Crosshairs

September 12, 2025

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Co-host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Jeffrey Brauch

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/12/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, welcome to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and joining me as my co-host today is the Honorable Sam Rohrer, the President of the American Pastors Network, whom we are partnered with here first standing in Gap Media. We’re a ministry of the American Pastors Network and with so many things going on, and Sam, you and I talked some about this on yesterday’s program on Thursday, and of course with live radio the way things work, we had some technical things that we talked a little bit more about, but we’re coming off this 24th anniversary of September 11th, but just massive breaking news of this assassination of Charlie Kirk. All of that happened after I had already prepared notes for today’s program and sent them to our special guests we’re about to introduce, and having no clue that we would have somebody like Charlie Kirk, who has taken a very strong stand for a biblical worldview and explained to young people all over the world, but especially on college campuses, the importance of higher law.

And so I titled this program Higher Law in the Crosshairs before I knew any of that would happen. And then why does it matter? Why would somebody like Charlie Kirk be willing to put himself out there and do what he had done? He had many death threats against him before the assassination. So a lot of interesting things and we’ve brought somebody in. It’s a first time guest that I’m super excited to introduce to all of you today and to talk about and understand higher law, hopefully a little bit better and a little more knowledge about it. This is a concept that goes really well with a group like us that focuses on biblical worldview. And so our guest today is Dr. Jeffrey Brauch, an author and law school professor at Regent School of Law. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us and being on our program today.

Jeffrey Brauch:

Well, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me. I was really looking forward to talking with you today,

Isaac Crockett:

Jeff. We’ve had a number of your former students on our program. In fact, I don’t even know how many of them I know. It’s been a lot. Two of the ones who are on our program and have been on TV and things with us often both work with ACL J, the American Center for Law and Justice. Shaharyar Gill is a close friend of mine and he’s talked a lot about you as well as Ben Ney, another friend of mine, a long time friend of mine. So we’re glad to have you on. But before we get into this topic of higher law, I would love just for you to be able to introduce yourself maybe a little bit about what you do as a law professor at a Christian university that does an awesome job teaching law at the highest level, as well as instilling the biblical worldview. And then you’re also the director of Regent Center for Global Justice.

Jeffrey Brauch:

Yeah. Well thank you and thanks for mentioning Shaharyar and Ben. Those are two great guys, and your mention of them explains why I love doing what I do. I get to hang out with young people who have a sense of purpose and calling that God has called into the law and then just help equip them as a professor. And I’ve been doing this for 31 years now, but I teach courses and some of them very much like you would have at any law. I teach tort law, I teach human rights related courses, though we integrate faith into those courses. And then there are some courses that you might not get at another law school. And so I also teach a course called Foundations of Law where we try to think how do we think Christianly about what law is and what its purpose is and is there a higher law? And so I teach that course as well.

Sam Rohrer:

And Jeff, it is great to have you on board here. Let me just go down and just dig a little bit lower on that. We’re talking about higher law, but how about if you take and define law and from your perspective, what you tell your students from the perspective of why it is important that we understand law and the role that it plays within, say for instance, our representative Republic?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Yeah. Well, law itself is I think a gift from God, and God gives us dictates rules that are needed just to have a functioning society. But I think from a Christian perspective, and this is kind of where higher law comes in, these aren’t just dictate to the government to be whatever the current government in place wants to have. That law should in some way reflect justice. There are principles of truth about moral right and wrong about just what’s just and unjust. And so to me, the higher law is an eternal standard of right and wrong, just and unjust by which we can judge human law. Human law should conform to it. And so when we talk about law at Regent University, it’s not, oh, these are just the rules that have been laid out by the legislature today or enforced by this particular government, but we’re looking for principles that yes govern society, but how do they conform to true principles of justice?

Isaac Crockett:

And that is the question, what does the law of God require of us? What does law require? We just have a few moments here before we go to break, but I want to kind of bring Sam, and we’ve talked a little bit about Sheharyar Gill, who works internationally with ACLJ and ECLJ over Pakistan especially. I’ve been over there with him and we’ve watched him and interacting and even in Muslim courts, and he is able to say, here is an eternal standard. Here’s a standard that’s higher than the human law. Sam, we just have a couple minutes, so I don’t want to throw at you unexpectedly, but what is that connection? And we’ve talked with Sharia too, particularly Pakistan where they have this interesting history of English common law in Sharia. What is so interesting about that that we can still rely on the higher law concept even in a place that we would maybe think has corrupted law.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, in simple terms, you can’t have a government unless you have an agreed to understanding of law. And what Jeff talked about was that, and even as he’s talking about over there in Pakistan where they have Islamic law, you have man’s law, Islamic law where if they could, they’d put it into practice, but he can’t appeal to them with the same understanding and definition of justice because the Islamic view does not equate to the biblical view. So he appeals to the former British common law, which has a different set of courts there, and they do appeal to the Judeo-Christian view of law and justice. And on that basis, that’s how he has been creatively able to intercede on behalf of a number of those persecuted believers there, which he’s talked about on this program. So yeah, the law becomes important, which law becomes really important, and that’s kind of the system which he operates. It’s pretty remarkable to hear him say what he was saying there.

Isaac Crockett:

And so for all of us listening today, we’re about to go to our break here, but this is so important that we understand there really is higher law. It’s not just some arbitrary thing that a bunch of rich men north of Richmond, as the popular song says, just kind of come up with this stuff as a way to fleece other people. There is a systematic approach, really even a theological approach, if we want to say a practical, applicable approach that really says, here are these laws of justice. Here is morality based on it being, as you just said, Jeff, a gift from God. And so there’s so much we want to unpack here, so much to talk about, and it is so important. It really is a life and death situation. What makes the murder of a human being, whether in the womb or assassinated in front of thousands of people, what makes that right or wrong? Well, we have to turn to higher law. So I want to thank you, Dr. Brock so much for setting the stage on why higher law is foundational. It pushes us back to this idea of true justice and it’s foundational to a biblical worldview. Folks, we’re just getting started. We’re going to hear a lot more from this after this quick break. We’ll be back on Stand in the Gap today.

Welcome back to this program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett. My co-host is the Honorable Sam Rohrer, and we’re talking with a friend of this program, Dr. Jeff Brauch from Regent University School of Law Professor there, also the director there. Well, he is an author of a number of books, but also he’s the director there of Regent’s Center for Global Justice. And one of the books, Jeff that you’ve written is a big book called A Higher Law Readings on the Influence of Christian Thought and Anglo-American Law. And so we are looking at this idea of higher law, that we are endowed with certain rights by our creator that true justice comes from God. It is a gift from God you just said in our first part of the program. And so you might be wondering, well, why does that matter? Who cares if it’s under attack? Well, to get into that, I think I want to take a clip from just last week, last Thursday, I believe it was one of the senators from Virginia, Senator Kaine who many of you know him through political things. He actually was on video talking about higher law, and he was saying that he finds it troubling to believe that our rights come from God. He believes that the notion that rights don’t come from the government, but from a creator, he compares that to believing the same thing as the Iranians believe. So I’ll go ahead and have our producer, Tim, if you could go ahead and play that clip. I just want to hear this and then we’ll discuss it.

Sen. Kaine:

Mr. Barnes, I was struck by your opening comments and I asked to get a copy of them so I could read them and make sure I quoted them correctly. You state, and this is a quote from Secretary Rubio, our rights come from God, our creator, not from our laws, not from our governments. I find that very, very troubling. I’m a devout person. I was a missionary in Honduras. We’ve got other devout folks in this room, Christian, Jewish, Muslim American, the notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the creator, that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets, Sunnis, Bahais, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their creator. So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.

Isaac Crockett:

Alright, Jeff, I wanted to make sure we played enough of that, that we get full context of what he was talking about because there are some shorter clips out there. But here’s a guy who says, Hey, look, I was a missionary. I’m a person of faith. I’m a devout person, but I don’t believe that we can say our rights come from God, that there’s a higher law. How would you respond to Senator Kaine, he’s your senator, about these comments about our rights really coming from government as opposed to our creator?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Yeah, he is one of my senators and I believe him to be a person of faith, but excuse me, he mentioned he was very, very troubled by this notion that rights come from God. I was very, very troubled when I heard this quote from him,

Multiple levels, but two things in particular. I mean, one is I just think it expresses or shows a real lack of understanding of American history and the role that higher law has played in crucial ways. And the second thing that I was really struck by was just how much he is sort of ignoring the implications, the scary implications. If he’s right, that rights come from the government and they are a whole source of rights, how fragile they really are. And so if I could just expand on one of those points real quick. From American history, higher loss played a huge role. I mean from the Declaration of Independence itself, Jefferson talks about he’s referring to the laws of nature and nature’s God to justify what the colonists are about to do, how the King of England has failed to follow God’s laws and why that justifies independence when it comes time, when the battle over slavery takes place, abolitionists appeal to the higher law to argue that, okay, the law, the government has not given us the right to be free from slavery. The law enforces slavery, but abolitionists appealed to a law above that law and argued that there’s this inherent dignity and worth of every human being. Martin Luther King did the same thing. The civil rights movement is based on the idea we’re going to appeal to a higher law than to the law currently being enforced by our government that allows racial discrimination expressly. And so just as a historical matter, I found it really surprising and troubling.

Sam Rohrer:

Jeff, in addition to that, I’m hearing that I have a lot of comments that I could make, but I want to come back and ask you on this as well, because when somebody like a senator, US Senator makes a comment that disregards a creator, God, as you say, he’s not only disagreeing with what the Declaration of Independence says in all of our history, but he is making it effectively almost impossible for justice to be done because you could forever have changing law. I mean, so how do you deal with this when you are teaching your students there at Regent University? How do you approach this because it’s almost like making an apologetic on a theological understanding of law from the Bible. How do you present it to your young legal students so that they understand how things are ranked and ordered?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Well, I’m teaching foundations of law this semester. So just the other day we were talking about how this notion of a higher law, it’s not invented by Jefferson, it’s not something that just Americans have talked about. This is deeply rooted in the way that we have thought in western culture about law and rights from a very long time. So we were talking about Thomas Aquinas from the 1200’s talking about how all of us are made with a certain knowledge about basic principles of just and unjust that they’re wired into us. He called it the natural law. And you can look across the world and see that in many different countries who have lots of different musical styles or clothing choices, very different social patterns, but there’s a consistency in certain types of laws being enforced around the world because Paul talked about this too, right in Romans that there’s a law written on our hearts that’s reflected in the world. So it’s not just, oh, in American history, a few people decided to talk about this. It’s deeply rooted in our history and in cultures around the world,

Isaac Crockett:

And that’s so important. You mentioned Thomas Aquinas in your book and in your classroom, you talk about William Blackstone and these British common laws as they call it, it wasn’t British law, it’s common law, it’s natural, it’s a higher law that’s there. How would you use that then those as assertations from those men, those assertions that they make to counter what Senator Tim Kaine was saying? Because what Tim Kaine is saying is what a lot of people are saying right now. I mean, what he’s saying is very popular. He’s a very powerful person at the Democratic Party. I’m sorry we only have a couple minutes here, but how would you counter that with those of what Aquinas and William Blackstone and others were teaching?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Yeah, I mean we want to talk about what they said and why it’s so important to help us understand law, but we also need to talk about what are the implications if you adopt the Tim Kaine view for instance, what’s the alternative to believing that there are eternal principles of right and wrong, true and untrue, just and unjust. If there’s no such thing as a just standard outside of us, what that really means is that law is purely based on power. Whoever is in power now gets to decide what is not just what’s the law, but what’s right might makes right, because there’s nothing to appeal to beyond your government. One of the leading thinkers of American law from the last century, Oliver Wendell Holmes believed this view and he said this, I am so skeptical as to our knowledge of the goodness or badness of laws that I have no practical criticism except what the crowd wants. Well, that’s a scary world to live in. If our rights are simply based on does the current administration or the current government in power believe in them?

Isaac Crockett:

We have about a minute here, Jeff. How does that involve what we see on social media with what we call political correctness? This might equals what’s right.

Jeffrey Brauch:

Well, that’s probably a complex topic to talk about, but I think sometimes political correctness simply becomes about trying to enforce whatever a current social view is so that if a certain way to about an issue or the world, the current society believes, oh, that’s the only way you can look at it. You start shouting down those who hold alternative views, you start enforcing it as a matter of law. And all it’s based on is sort of current social trends. And just like power current social trends is a very weak undergirding for something as important as rights that we enjoy in our society.

Isaac Crockett:

And this is so important because every one of you listening, you may be, remember some of the things we’ve gone through even here at Stand In the Gap media censorship that we’ve had through corporate censorship and other platforming issues and problems. And I don’t think we’re alone. I think almost any Christian or conservative organization can point to being platformed at some point or another. And what does that go to? It’s the might equals what’s right. We have control, we have popular opinion, and that’s not asking the right question. That’s still not asking, is this right or wrong? You’re saying who’s in control? And so this is such an important topic. We want to talk more about this. We want to unpack more of what’s going on here and look at the difference in this next segment after we take this break to hear from our partners, look at the difference between a Christian worldview, a biblical worldview, an Islamic worldview, and see how this divine law differs and see what it means for a society like what we have in America now that could be defined as pluralistic or syncretistic. So a lot of questions, a lot to unpack when we come back right after this on staying in the gap today.

Welcome back to the program. If you’re just joining us, I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’m here with my co-host Sam Rohrer. And our guest, this program is Dr. Jeff Brauch from Regent University School of Law. And it’s been very eye-opening listening to what Jeff is talking about for the need for understanding higher law, for the need of having it without it, what would be the implications? And I will just say we’ve had a number of Jeff’s past students on our program, a couple of them from the A DLJ repeated times, and I recently, actually last semester took an online course, a free online course, which Jeff was one of the main teachers of it about higher law from Regent University, offered free online amazing opportunity, a great course. And so we’ve been having these discussions today. Sam, I want to go to you. You’ve worked in politics for a couple of decades. You were a civil leader and worked through these things. Could you just kind of give us an overview of what we’re talking about here? Maybe even summarize what we’ve been talking about that first half before we move into talking about higher law and the difference between a Christian worldview and Islamic worldview, but highlight what we’ve been talking about up until here,

Sam Rohrer:

Isaac. I’d be glad to do that. Yeah. Being in office and now as we do at the American Pastors Network, even instructing pastors, and I’ve had a privilege to be able to teach a lot on this. What I have perceived is this, if I could sum it up, law is best recognized as authority. There is no better place to understand authority than probably Romans 13 in the New Testament where the apostle Paul lays out and says that all authority laws authorities are ordained by God, Greek term taso, basically to arrange in order the understanding that authority is arranged in order by God, with God at the top and then everything down beneath it. So as we talk about a biblical worldview, you have God, you have the individual obviously as an authority, but then you have the family as an institution, you have civil government as an institution, you have the church.

Those are the authorities ranked by God and they all have their duties and responsibilities, but they all ultimately report to and will give an account to God. So that is the understanding of what we term a Judeo-Christian worldview, Isaac. And it’s really authority as far as I have seen in my time in office and beyond that is probably the most misunderstood or lack of understood at all for the church. And those in office is authority because anytime we step outside of God’s order, we step out of authority and now we become enemies of God. The world doesn’t like to know that, but that’s frankly, that’s the way it is. And there is something, I’ll just give it quickly, just not so I don’t be right back to shorten this up. When I was in the Pennsylvania House, there is in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the history of the development of law.

The 10 commandments are right behind the bench, but across around the ceiling of the room, they’re all evidences of the movement and the development of law. But there is one there in particular that’s hanging there, beautiful depiction. Violet Oakley was the one who drew it, and it’s called the scale of law and the scale of law. There’s eight of that I’m going to share. And they are written with musical notes beside of them, the one at the top, then it starts and it goes up the octave. There’s eight. That’s an octave in music, in an octave, you have music. If you have only seven notes, you don’t have music, you can’t make music. This is what puts it all together. And I’m just going to cite these because to me demonstrates very well the understanding of higher law. Here’s how it goes at the top, divine law, God’s law, underneath of that is the law of nature.

And then revealed law, then law of reason, and then common law, we’ve talked about that law of nations next. And then international law in the way this is depicted as going from the bottom up. And so on the top is again, divine law. So in the biblical understanding of the ranking of law, it starts with the divine law and then it is anchored at the top or the bottom, depending whether you go at the top going down or the bottom going up. It’s anchored in divine law, divine law, divine law. There is no escaping it. Every one other of man’s laws is in subjection to God’s law. To me, that was the best way to understand a higher law. If somebody doesn’t understand that they can’t enforce justice, they can’t make proper law, they can’t enforce proper law.

Isaac Crockett:

That is very good, Sam, thank you for that. And that’s so helpful. It starts and ends with God and Jeff, that’s what you were talking about. You said that justice comes from God, it reflects God. It’s an eternal standard that all human laws must conform to. There’s that authority that we’re talking about. So going back to the statement we heard in the last segment from Senator Tim Kane where he said he was very disturbed, he was very concerned about this idea. I think he was reading from Marco Rubio’s work that he was attributing our freedoms to a creator as opposed to the government that issues the laws. And he was implying that the government should give rights because otherwise who’s to say which religious group is right on the higher law? So how do you respond to that? Because this is coming from other people quite often that don’t believe in this, that don’t have a biblical worldview. And even from people like Tim Kane who claim to have a belief in the Bible and things, how do we respond to that, that he says we’re no different than Iran basically, if we believe in our sovereign, that gives us our rights.

Jeffrey Brauch:

Yeah. Well first I have no reason to question his own personal faith. I believe he’s a genuine man, but I think he has a really strong misunderstanding about what a higher law and theocracy. He seems to equate the idea that if you believe in a higher law or you make a reference to a higher law, well then immediately you are advocating for a theocracy where you are trying to enforce on the population of whatever nation you’re in, your theological views, that it almost necessarily entails religious intolerance. And that is just not the case from the higher law tradition, the higher law tradition has been deeply supportive of the notion of religious freedom, the idea that every human is made in the image of God, that we all have an ability to have a relationship with God. Paul in Romans talks about how our conscience, our conscience gives witness.

And then the higher law tradition has always believed that each individual has a responsibility to God. Senator Rohr, you mentioned our self-government, that we have a duty ourselves. We’ve been given authority, but we also have a responsibility to respond to God with our conscience. And it is really in the higher law tradition that we have deeply rooted the idea of religious freedom, that we can’t compel an individual’s conscience. They need to be free to worship God and respond to God. And so I think first and foremost, I just reject the notion that to believe in a higher law means I am adopting a view that is like the Iranian view, that there will be no religious freedom. You must believe in a certain way, and in fact you can be prosecuted if you don’t.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, and Jeff, let me just ask you this, going beyond that a little bit, what are you finding about the attitude of students even coming in to region? Obviously they’re a qualified group. They probably already have a fairly developed biblical worldview, but ultimately, don’t you find this comes down to worldview because if you embrace an Islamic view of law, you have an Islamic worldview. If you have a view that’s like what we’re talking about, it’s a Judeo-Christian worldview. But in this society where for so long where we’ve taught, people have lifted up a pluralistic society as an example, as what we ought to be, that’s what kind of opens the door for all this confusion. Don’t you think?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Well, I would say I agree with you on the point that there is a very different worldview if you come from an Islamic standpoint than if you come from a Christian standpoint. So in a Christian worldview, human beings are made in the image of God. They are made with a worth and a dignity that comes from our creator. There is an equality that is protected under law and under a Christian worldview, we not only believe that humans have rights and worth, we also know that human beings are fallen, that sin has impacted us and that affects how much power we want to give to government. Government power is limited or needs to be limited in some way. And so some of the effects of this are we protect equal rights under the law. We protect things like due process where before a person is going to be found criminally guilty or have legal power brought against them in some way, they have a right to defend themselves. They’re image bearers of God. They have a right to be heard.

There are strong checks on government authority. And if you look at most Islamic societies, you don’t see that same equality under the law. I mean, think about women in Afghanistan today or women’s the right to even be educated or to work. You don’t see due process often in a society that is very theocratic under a Sharia law system. So people can be charged with very vague charges, not fair processes, the right to be heard. And you see Christians being persecuted in places like Iran or Saudi Arabia on flimsy charges with a little chance to defend themselves at times.

Isaac Crockett:

So yeah, just because we believe in a higher law doesn’t mean that we’re saying we believe in a theocracy like Iran. And again, I think it’s important we point this out because these accusations are out there just recently with Senator Tim King, but he’s saying what many other people are saying, we’re going to take another brief time out. I don’t think you want to leave where you’re going to wrap things up. I think you see how crucial it’s been that what Jeff is pointing out, that we anchor our laws in God’s truth. We have a little bit more to talk about. We want to wrap things up after this on Standing the gap today.

Well welcome back to the program. We’ve enjoyed a great discussion with Dr. Jeffrey Brock of Regent University School of Law. He’s written a book on higher law, a big textbook. The title of it is a Higher Law Readings on the Influence of Christian Thought in Anglo-American law. And Jeff, I had the pleasure of taking an online course that you and some of your other professors there at Regent hosted and it’s free online. And I took it last semester, it was called Foundations of Law. After that, I reached out to you and we actually started working on getting you on a program here, but could you tell us just a little bit about that three online class foundations of law?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Sure. And I’m really honored, Isaac, that you were part of that. So thank you for doing it. Yeah, we realized last year that these ideas about the notion of a higher law and the risks of not believing that such a higher law exists really matter more than just to law students. And so a couple of guys, a couple other professors and I put together a series of about eight lectures and each one’s 15 minutes long or so dealing with just one aspect of the higher law. And so in a couple of hours you can hear about a little bit of the history of the higher law. Where does this idea come from? How has it shown itself in American history? How does it affect human rights or the rights of parents in guiding their kids’ education? And so I encourage you, if anybody’s interested in this, whether you want to go to law school or not, this is designed for anyone who wants to think about how thinking Christian Lee applies to their legal system. And so there are a couple of ways you can hear this. One is you can go to our YouTube channel. You go to YouTube and then Regent law videos, you can see one version of this. And then the course version, you can go to courses.cbn.com. And I think that’s probably the version that you did courses.cbn.com, which has some follow-up questions that come after each video.

Isaac Crockett:

You’re right, that’s the one I did. I was very impressed with how much it was so intentional. You packed so much into such a short period of time and you could hear it, you could watch it or you could read it or all of the above. I’m just looking at some of the things I went through was an introduction to higher law scripture and Western legal tradition, roots of English and American law, core principles of American law, human rights and higher law, and then history of religious liberty. So many just crucial aspects to that. Well, Jeff, as our program is coming to an end, are there any final remarks you want to leave us with or something to think about before we close here? You are a law professor and you’re having an opportunity to teach us all over the country, even a few other countries. Any final remarks that you would like to say to this classroom? Spread all over through radios and podcasts?

Jeffrey Brauch:

Yeah, well thank you for the opportunity first. I’ve enjoyed the discussion with you gentlemen today. I think it does go back to something that I’ve heard flowing through the ads and through our talks so far. And that is the existence of truth. We live in a day when there’s a lot of question about whether there are any such things as real truth or is it just my truth and your truth? Can we say anything is fundamentally just unjust, right or wrong? And if can’t, if everything is just preference, we’re living in a very dangerous time. But one thing that I’m encouraged about is we know that God has put on the heart of every single person some knowledge about him and that there are indeed principles of justice and truth. Paul talks about it as the law that is written on our hearts. And my encouragement I think to this audience is whether you’re a lawyer or whether you’re a pastor or you’re a citizen, talk about these truths.

Definitely speak up for them. Teach them to your kids. Let them guide the way you live, the way you engage in your community, the way you vote. And one other point I guess I would make is we may have to be different in different settings in how we describe these things. I had a law professor who once told me, Jeff, you got to be bilingual. And what he meant was that as a Christian, I go to scripture and I learned fundamental principles that God lays out there about how life works and how principles for government, and I should go to scripture to form the views that I have about how I should live, parent use, engage in government. But not everybody goes to scripture. And so I’ve got to find ways of communicating in a winsome loving way with those who maybe come from a different place, but yet appealing to that same law written on their hearts that we know is there.

And that can come from using logic and history. It can be pictures. If you guys remember the picture of Leah Thomas, this swimmer who was a male, identified as a woman who won the 500 meter NCAA championship. And this picture of this guy towering over the runners up, I think helped change the view of the way people thought about gender in this country. And it was an appeal from the eye to our heart, something we knew that gender is binary. It’s not a continuum. And so I guess I would just appeal to the audience, seek truth, discuss truth in a winsome way, but finding various ways to connect with people out there and appeal to that law that’s written on their heart.

Isaac Crockett:

That’s very good. It reminds me of the statement, and I think a lot of times credit goes to Augustine back in the three hundreds and four hundreds, all truth is God’s truth. And then Thomas Aquinas, he really took that and developed it even more, arguing that God, his truth itself, I’m the way, the truth in the life. And pointing back to that, some of the other reformers here, John Calvin and different guys like that use that commonly use that during the Protestant reformation. All truth is God’s truth. And so if you believe that there is objective truth that’s come from a biblical worldview and so important to meet people where they’re at, Paul did a good job of that depending on what audience he was talking to. Jesus, of course, is our ultimate example of doing that, and he himself became the object lesson coming and putting on flesh. Just incredible. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for the work that you are doing in the front lines, in the classroom and in the courtroom giving us godly people who can have that biblical worldview, that understand higher law and work in our court systems defending us. We’re very thankful for you and the work you’re doing. Sam, I want to have you close this in prayer or maybe you have something you’d like to say before we close the program.

Sam Rohrer:

I’d be glad to close in prayer, Isaac, and it’s one thing, and just thinking about what Jeff you were saying, and then we’ve said on the program is that one of the benefits of understanding biblical truth is that yes, as you said, Jeff, God has puts on our own heart a desire that’s within to seek. But Isaac, as we’ve talked about, the choice for truth is a choice God gives to us as human beings, free will. If we choose to pursue truth, as Proverbs says, we will find it, God will bring it to us. But if we choose a lie as Eve, it will not lead us to God. It will lead us away. So there’s a choice, but if we choose truth, it will do it. If we put it into place as God told Israel, fear God and keep his commandments, anybody who does that will be blessed of God.

And that’s one of the great things about being a Christian is if we do what the Bible says or as a nation we do what the Bible says, God will bless and he makes it very, very clear. And anybody can do that, but we have to do it God’s way. That’s a biblical worldview. Alright, let me go ahead and close here. Heavenly Father, Lord, we’re thankful that you have placed us who most are listening to this program in a nation here in America where we’ve had the foundation where those who came here did fear. You did choose to put into effect and place into law those principles reflecting you and you did bless. Lord, we need to get back to that today. In Jesus name, amen.

Isaac Crockett:

Amen. Thank you so much for that. Sam, thank you so much, Dr. Jeff Brauch from Regent University, and I hope that this has been a blessing to you today, understanding a little bit more of this understanding why real truth higher law has been in the crosshairs and why it’s so important to have a biblical understanding of all of this. Please pray for us here at the American Pastors Network. We appreciate you listening. I hope that you’ll share this program with somebody else. And until next time, please stand in the gap for truth.