This is quite long but worth it. My father said, WONDERFUL essay! It should be heard by more people! COMPLETELY TRUE! Completely true. An Independence Day Sermon We are coming up on Independence Day, the day America stood up and boldly declared itself to the world. The reasons for the existence of our organization are deeply bound up with the Biblical foundations of our nation and today I am going to speak to those foundations but I want to state clearly and up front that I am not saying that one must be of my faith to participate in America or the Light Foot Militia. I know some of us are Christians, some practice other faiths, some practice none and I also know that it takes everyone to make both America and the light Foot Militia work. Thomas Paine is one of the most well-known supporters of American independence and it is entirely possible that without his tireless and eloquent defense of the Revolution, King George may have prevailed in that struggle. Something that a lot of people might not know is that Thomas Paine was also a tireless and eloquent atheist as well, but even he recognized the usefulness of a firm Biblical foundation on which to build America. It is to that foundation that we now turn our attention. America is unique. Is that because of liberty and freedom? No... It’s very easy for us, here and now, to take that liberty and freedom for granted. But, almost without exception, all of history is a tale of darkest tyranny and bone-crushing oppression. Those rare exceptions were Old Testament societies under the God of Jacob, Isaac and Abraham and even those were short-lived. Why is America different? The same reason those Old Testament societies were different. The Founders acknowledged an Authority higher than man as the Law Giver, while all the rest of history found a way to deny God and make man the law They made mankind into god and ultimately, over and over down through history, they would make an individual man into a god. His name was Pharaoh... His name was Caesar... His name was Fuehrer... But the Founders did not make a government built around the image of the all-powerful god-man. They took for their model of government the example graciously provided by Jesus Christ, the humble man-God, the Servant. The Founders saw in Him the concept of government as the servant of the People, not the master and through that vision they crafted a Constitution that is a shining light in the midst of millennia of the stifling darkness that characterizes most of mankind’s time on earth. Patrick Henry said it plainly: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government. Benjamin Franklin truly stated that “...we will be ruled by God, or we will be ruled by men.” There are classes of philosophies in the world, we’ll lump them under the heading secular humanism, that deny God, that exalt man and the disciples of these philosophies hate and fear what America and the Constitution represent. America says that men are not gods, only God is God. In America you cannot be Pharaoh...Caesar...Fuehrer...Men cannot rule men. The very existence of America is an accusing finger pointed straight at the heart of those philosophies. You hear from them all the time. They are the voices that shout that America was not created as a Christian nation, that deny the hand of providence in the birth and life of this nation. The founders were deists at best but more probably mere self-serving power seekers around whom history has painted a cloud of myth. Those voices are loud, persistent, coming from every direction all the time and as you know, the big lie repeated constantly and with confidence can seem to become the truth for many. And it is becoming the truth for more and more Americans all the time. Some in the House of God have even come to believe the lie and so we see so many churches beginning to be conformed to the world instead of the Word. We hear much of what others say of the Founders in these matters. What do the Founders themselves tell us? George Washington: 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. _______________________ John Adams: “In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God. ________________________ Patrick Henry: It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here. ___________________________ John Jay (AN AUTHOR OF THE FEDERALIST PAPERS; ORIGINAL CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE U. S. SUPREME COURT): Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. ______________________ Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: I verily believe that Christianity is necessary to support a civil society and shall ever attend to its institutions and acknowledge its precepts as the pure and natural sources of private and social happiness. ___________________ Noah Webster REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER; JUDGE; LEGISLATOR; EDUCATOR; “SCHOOLMASTER TO AMERICA”: “[T]he religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles... This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.” “The moral principles and precepts found in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.” “[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.” ___________________ Dr Benjamin Rush SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; RATIFIER OF THE U. S. CONSTITUTION: “[T]he only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.” Please remember that Dr Rush lived through the founding of America when you hear his next statement and realize that the voice of secular humanism was at work even back then. “The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.” _____________________ Now, concerning our rights: General John Dickinson, (Signer of the Constitution): [Governments] could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source: from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. _____________________ Thomas Jefferson: Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are a gift from God? Yes, our rights, liberties and freedom are a gift from God. They can have no other source. In the secular humanist universe, in a world with no God it is impossible to make the case that freedom and liberty even exist, let alone that men have a right to them. In a world where our very existence is an improbable, random accident our lives can have no purpose or function beyond seeking pleasure, avoiding pain and trying not to die for as long as possible. The pain is inevitable and we have no right to the pleasure or even life itself. How can we have a right to anything at all if we are just meaningless accidents? Listen carefully to this John Adams: Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. _____________________________ We will be governed by God, or we shall be governed by men. To rule ourselves under God we must submit to the light and gentle yoke of Jesus Christ. Or we throw off that yoke, to be driven by our passions and appetites. Such a people can only be ruled by naked force, by raw power. Now we must ask ourselves if, after so many years of that humanist chorus singing the praises of man and the condemnation of God and His Son, Jesus, is America still populated by a moral and religious people? Can Americans still govern themselves under God and in Liberty or is Satan succeeding in setting the stage for the next Pharaoh... the next Caesar... the next Fuehrer? If so, how did it come to pass that Jesus is no longer the model for our governance? Is there anyone to blame? The 19th-century revivalist Pastor Charles G. Finney has spoken to these question. Many of you know of this man and his role in the Second Great Awakening. He speaks to our day just as uncompromisingly as he did to his If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. There is no denying that the conditions that Pastor Finney described prevail in America today. They prevail for only one reason: the social, cultural, educational and political institutions of this nation, which were once grounded in the certain knowledge that God Almighty rules the universe, have slipped into the grasp of a philosophy that insists that man is the highest power in the universe. That happened not because the humanists came up and took control of the rudder away from Christians. It happened because Christians simple let go of the tiller. We let go because we started to believe those voices, those loud, persistent voices coming from every direction all the time repeating over and over the big lie that Christians have no role in the affairs of the world, that Jesus is a private thing, to be kept in the home, confined to the church building, not to be applied to the serious business of operating a society. That America is not, and never has been, founded on Christianity. The pulpit is indeed responsible. But does that mean that the burden falls on the individuals we hire to speak from the pulpit, the professional preachers? No, because the servants of Christ, those of us who have given our lives over to the Son of God, each and every one of us is a pastor, each and every one of us is in the pulpit, at all times. And we all fall short of the glory of God. I do, you do, each and every one of us does. And the world provides us all with a path of least resistance, just to make it easier. And so the Christian heritage bestowed upon us by the Founders, and the liberty, prosperity and security that comes with it, drifts away from us, by default. Can we do anything to take back that heritage, to recover those divine gifts of freedom and liberty that we are letting slip away? No. We can’t. They are not qualities we can grasp a hold of and wrest away from the humanists. The humanists don’t have them. They didn’t take them away from us. We let go of them. The only thing we can do is turn our face to Jesus and do our duty to Him Who has saved us. We must walk the path He has laid for our feet and in doing so, show Him to the world. We govern our lives and that part of the world in which God has placed us according to His ways so that the world may know God rules in us. Are we accountable for how the world receives this knowledge? No, but we are accountable for making that knowledge available. Men cannot save America, for men did not create her. But God can save America. If we, as the body of Christ in America just remember who we are, and Who God is it will be as He promised in II Chron. 7:14 “If my people, which are called by my name shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways: then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (II Chron. 7:14). Lt William Tuttle, Chaplain 83rd BN Light Foot Militia 43rd Field Force
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 04:16:54 +0000
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