Volume V, Issue IV
Governing Best by Governing Self...
"Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty G-d ... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be."
--John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. III, p. 9.
"While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian."
--George Washington, The Writings of Washington, pp. 342-343.
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of G-d? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, p. 237.
"Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual. ... Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on G-d, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us."--John Hancock, History of the United States of America, Vol. II, p. 229.
Joy, one of my three readers writes: "Isn't It Ironic? The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to "please do not feed the animals" because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves."
To which my nephew, who served in Iraq writes: "I wonder if the Roman politicians bragged about how many loaves had been handed out at the gladiator games before their society pooped out?
The less self sufficient you can make people the easier it is to control them. It's almost as easy as invading their lands."
How true! But when people willingly give up the sense of G-d instilled principles that guide their lives and look to the government to provide for them, they give up far more than self-sufficiency. They enslave themselves. The "other" weekly news magazine once presented "Ten Ideas that will Change Your Life," but they are at best reporting social trends.
There is nothing new under the sun though. Moses led the people out of Egypt and with ten simple lines of Divine revelation built a people that have carried their heritage and built a great nation several times over. They built the first kingdom, returned from exile under Ezra and Nehemiah and built the amazing Nation of Modern Israel in the mid-Twentieth Century!
Our Founding Fathers took the same principles with them to found the great Nation we live in.
It should not surprise us that the values we have built upon are under attack from those who do not love our Nation or Israel. We do well to understand that "lunch inspectors" in schools are not just an annoyance, they represent a usurping of the authority G-d has given parents in Holy Writ. The G-d who states that "Children are a blessing from the LORD" cannot regard well the proclamations of a John Holdren who wants to tell us how big our families may be.
There is not space here to adequately discuss how popular media and the elite "educated class" war against these values, but much of the vitriol being heaped on those who would offer Biblical solutions to our problems has its roots in this struggle.
This week the 'other' weekly news magazine presented "The Gunfighters" [click to read], Mayor Bloomberg, Joe Biden and Gabrielle Giffords. Unfortunately, the best efforts to eliminate access to dangerous devices will do nothing to reach the depraved heart that seeks them with evil intent.
Revival and Renaissance in America
Many around us are looking for deep answers to deep problems. Of times like this it might well be said: "Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest." -- Luke 10:2. Now more than ever, those who would stir men's hearts to higher, nobler aspirations are needed... men and women who understand where a society's true greatness really lies.
Concerned about the materialistic, acquisitive, corrupt world of an affluent society, they sought to confront her sins and establish her again as a light to the world. The year was 1769 and under the preaching of George Whitefield the English beginnings of the Great Awakening had their start. Soon it would change the fabric of American life as well.
Men like Jonathan Edwards took the message of redemption and made it personal. His sermon: "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" moved many to see the Gospel message in a personal way, not simply as academic material. The personalization of faith led men and women to change their ways and live in light of a redemptive message. Scholars may debate the amount of influence this movement had in the creation of the United States of America, but the fact that it had an influence is clear!
The late Eighteenth Century saw waves of revival. Camp meetings organized by preachers like James McGready brought the far scattered settlers together to confirm their commitment to personal and life-changing faith. Itinerant preachers spread the movement through the South among both those of both European and African ancestry. A massive interdenominational meeting at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, marked the high point of the movement.
but by 1830 the movement had waned.
America's failings are well documented. Dark times such as the Cherokee Removal and a host of local rebellions show us that America was often prey to the baser nature of man. Modern historians tend to forget the perilous course of America's journey.
Our nation might have ended early in its founding when Continental Army soldiers, who had not been paid, were set to march on Philadelphia. They might have killed the representatives but for the intervention of their beloved leader, George Washington, who rode out to meet them.
The shots fired on Fort Sumpter might have been the end of our United States as well. Indeed the 1860's saw a divided landscape and untold carnage at places like Antietem. Great cities such as Richmond and Atlanta were destroyed, their citizens displaced, their economies ruined.
Men like Dwight L. Moody spoke into the darkness. Moody's revivals are legend.
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