By way of introduction, you may want to read Psalm 33:8-22.
Our lives are filled with symbols.
Visitors from greater Philadelphia (where we once lived) gave me a paperweight with miniature replicas of the Liberty Bell (FREEDOM),
Constitution Hall (LAW), and the Betsy Ross House (LOYALTY). On the bottom of
the paperweight was another symbol: “MADE IN CHINA!”
Today an increasingly secular
society refers to those who believe the Bible as the “Religious Right.” BUT WE
HAVE NOT MOVED! The evidence of America's godly heritage is all around us.
You can hear it in our songs:
Katharine Lee Bates wrote: “America! America! God
shed His grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining
sea!”
And, though you may never have
heard it, this is the last stanza of our National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled
Banner:”
“Blessed with victory and peace,
may this Heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a
nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; And this be our motto:
‘In God is our trust!’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er
the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”
You can see it on our money:
“Every coin minted in the United States bears, along with a bust of a past
hero, these words: LIBERTY
-- IN GOD WE TRUST. It was not lightly that our forefathers chose these
inseparable words, for they knew the tremendous cost and sacrifice that had
been paid to secure our freedom. In gratitude, they continually acknowledged
that God had made and preserved our nation. They were confident that God was
blessing their endeavors because they acknowledged Him and sought His aid in
all their doings. They warned future generations that the day God was not
earnestly revered in America,
she would become a byword among nations (p. 12).”
In 1776, our forefathers not only
declared their independence from an earthly power; they also declared
their dependence upon Almighty God. The closing words of the Declaration
of Independence state: “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our
sacred honor.”
They sought freedom, not from
God, but under God. Their ideal was freedom of religion, not
freedom from religion. And they were willing to pay the ultimate price
for it.
Speaking of this freedom, Thomas
Payne wrote in 1776: “What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it is
dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a price
upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as
freedom should not be highly rated.”
The American system was to be the
political expression of Christian ideas. Our forefathers constantly reaffirmed
the need and role of God in the United
States government.
You can hear it from the lips of early American leaders:
Benjamin Franklin, 1787: “God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow
cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can
rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that
except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly
believe this ... I therefore move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance
of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every
morning.”
Those daily prayers continue to be offered even at the
present time.
George Washington, in his inaugural address to Congress: “No people can be
bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of
men more than the people of the United
States. Every step by which they have
advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished
by some token of providential agency ... We ought to be no less persuaded that
the propitious smiles of heaven cannot be expected on a nation that disregards
the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself has ordained.”
First Thanksgiving
Proc’m: duty to acknowledge, obey, thank, implore.
US Capitol Bldg –
room for prayer for members of Congress; focal point is a stained glass window
showing Washington
kneeling in prayer. Behind him are etched the words of Psalm 16:1 – “Preserve
me, O God, for in Thee do I put my trust.”
Abraham Lincoln: “It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own
their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime
truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those
nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”
Calvin Coolidge: “The foundations of our society and our government rest
so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support
them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our
country.”
Thomas Jefferson’s words etched in stone at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington: “God who
gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we
have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot
sleep forever.”
“When America
Cried for Bibles” -- Because of the American Revolution, England stopped supplying Bibles to America.
Patrick Allison, chaplain of Congress, placed before that body in 1777 a
petition urging immediate relief. A special committee considered the problem
and reported: “... that the use of the Bible is so universal and its importance
so great that your committee refer the above to the consideration of Congress,
and if Congress shall not think it expedient to order the importation of types
and paper, the Committee recommend that Congress will order the Committee of
Congress to import 20,000 Bibles from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere, into the
different parts of the States of the Union. Whereupon it was resolved
accordingly to direct said Committee to import 20,000 copies of the Bible.” In
1780 the need arose once more. Robert Aitken, who had set up in Philadelphia as a
bookseller and publisher of The Pennsylvania Magazine, saw the need and
petitioned Congress. In response, Congress actually commissioned and approved a
special printing of Bibles!
Listen to the words of Daniel
Webster, who in 1851 wrote: “Let the religious element in man’s nature be
neglected, let him be influenced by no higher motives than self-interest, and
subjected to no stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority, and he
becomes the creature of selfish passion or blind fanaticism. On the other hand,
the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousness ...
inspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social
fabric, at the same time that it conducts the human soul upward to the Author
of its being.”
Religious
principle >> moral habits >> security of gov’t and people.
You can hear it from the mouths of foreigners:
More than 100 years after Webster,
Charles Malik, one-time Ambassador to the United States from Lebanon, put it
this way: “The good (in the United States) would never have come into being
without the blessing and the power of Jesus Christ ... I know how embarrassing
this matter is to politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and cynics: but,
whatever these honored men think, the irrefutable truth is that the soul of
America is at its best and highest, Christian.”
You can even see it in writing from the United States Supreme Court:
All of us are familiar with modern
Supreme Court decisions banning school prayer, authorizing abortion, and
increasingly limiting or even denying our free speech rights as Christians.
But let me read you another Supreme
Court Decision you may have never encountered before.
“Our laws and our institutions must
necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of The Redeemer of mankind.
It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this
extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian ...
This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of
this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this
affirmation ... we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth ...
These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of
unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a
Christian nation.” Supreme Court Decision, 1892. Church of the Holy Trinity V. United States.
Would you believe this ... Inside
the Supreme Court building today, above the head of the Chief Justice, are the
Ten Commandments, with the great American eagle protecting them. In a marble
sculpture group on the east front of the building, Moses himself is seen,
holding the tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments written on them in
Hebrew! That alone should tell us that the Supreme Court was originally
instituted to operate only within the parameters and limitations imposed by
Scripture.
There was the assumption and
consensus that the government was not to issue judgment in areas where God had
already done so in Scripture. For example, divorce and remarriage. On one
occasion, the Supreme Court would not even put forth an opinion, because it was
seen as settled by the Bible.
Hear Daniel Webster again: “Lastly,
our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious
sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other
foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not
supported by moral habits.”
Note that! According to Webster,
the security of a government depends upon moral habits. And moral habits
cannot be sustained by any other foundation than religious principle!
Textbooks used in our nation’s
public schools were basically all built on Scripture. Verses from the Bible
were used for memory work and even for practicing the letters of the alphabet.
The Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments were recited, and Bible study was a
regular element in the classroom. If you were to read some of the material,
you would think it was taken straight from a Sunday School class. By the way,
the main problems the teachers had then were not with children handling guns
and knives and drugs; they were with children chewing gum and forgetting to
whisper in the halls.
You can hear it in our early government assemblies:
Prayers in all government
assemblies. Hear these words from Benjamin Franklin, spoken in the summer of
1787 in Philadelphia
at the Constitutional Convention. When the delegates met with serious
disagreements with each other, and they were about to adjourn in confusion, the
eighty-one-year-old Franklin
rose and said:
“In the beginning of the contest
with Britain,
when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine
protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All
of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of
a super-intending Providence
in our favor ... Have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine
that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the
longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs
in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His
notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been
assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they
labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this ... I therefore beg leave to
move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its
blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning.”
You can see it in our early documents such as our state charters:
The very purpose of the Pilgrims in
1620 was to establish a government based on the Bible. The New England Charter,
signed by King James I, states as the goal: “... to advance the enlargement of
Christian religion, to the glory of God Almighty ...”
The Rhode Island Charter of 1683
begins: “We submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ,
the King of kings and Lord of lords and to all those perfect and most absolute
laws of His given us in His Holy Word.”
Notice that our fathers saw this
new society, not as a democracy based on the majority vote and the
changing whims of sinful human beings, but as a republic to be governed
by the absolute laws given in the Bible.
You can hear it from our early U.S. Presidents:
What about the early U.S.
Presidents? Hear George Washington, in his inaugural address to Congress: “No
people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts
the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which
they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been
distinguished by some token of providential agency ... We ought to be no less
persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven cannot be expected on a nation
that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself has
ordained.”
Washington issued the first
Thanksgiving Proclamation, which reads: “Whereas it is the duty of all nations
to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful
for his benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor ...” It goes on
to call the nation to thankfulness to Almighty God.
Psalm
16:1 – In the U.S.
Capitol
A reminder of Washington’s faith is found today in the
U.S. Capitol building. In the Capitol is a small room set aside for the private
prayer and meditation of members of Congress. The room’s focal point is a
stained glass window showing George Washington kneeling in prayer. Behind him
are etched these words from Psalm 16:1: “Preserve me, O God, for in Thee do I
put my trust.”
Abraham Lincoln: “It is the duty of
nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power
of God and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and
proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the
Lord.”
Lincoln again, regarding the Bible: “All
the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated through this Book; but
for the Book we could not know right from wrong. All the things desirable to
man are contained in it.”
Have you ever visited the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington?
I have. It is massive and impressive. Engraved in the walls are words spoken by
Lincoln himself which represent his view. Things like this: “And this Nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” At the opposite end, on the
north wall, his Second Inaugural Address alludes to “God,” the “Bible,” “providence,”
“the Almighty,” and “divine attributes.”
It then continues: “As was said
3000 years ago, so it still must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether (from Psalm 19:9).’”
Woodrow Wilson: “... the Bible ...
is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of
God and spiritual nature and need of men. It is the only guide of life which
really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation.”
Andrew Jackson: “Go to the
Scriptures ... the joyful promises it contains will be a balsam to all your
troubles.”
Calvin Coolidge: “The foundations
of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible
that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would
cease to be practically universal in our country.”
Even Thomas Jefferson’s statement
about the “Separation of church and state” was intended, not to keep God out
of government, but to keep the government from sticking its nose into
religion. It was to protect the church from the government, not to
protect the government from the church, that this idea was put forward.
It was our fathers’ concern that
the government not force any one denomination on anyone. Not show favor to any
group over another, as long as these groups all professed to follow Jesus
Christ. It was their intent instead that, with a nation based on faith in God,
Jesus Christ and the Bible, each individual would be free to worship and serve
according to his own beliefs and conscience.
How can I be so sure that Jefferson did not intend to keep faith in God out of the
government? Because of the other things Jefferson
wrote. For example, consider these words of his, etched in stone at the
Jefferson Memorial in Washington:
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure
when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His
justice cannot sleep forever.”
You can read it in stone in our government buildings:
* A portrait of Moses with the Ten Commandments hangs above
the Speaker’s chair in the United States Congress.
* The Library of Congress (another government institution)
has statues of the apostle Paul and Moses, and it has large inscriptions of
Micah 6:8 and Psalm 19:1 prominently displayed.
* The Lincoln Memorial has chiseled on it, “The judgments
of the Lord are righteous.” (Government Property) – Ps 19:8
* The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is dedicated to a soldier
“Known but to God.”
* There is a prayer room in Congress.
* The very branch of our US Government which ruled against
prayers at a high school football game opens the Supreme Court Session with the
words, “God save the United
States and this honorable court.” They do
this publicly, not privately.
* The United States Constitution refers to Jesus, stating
the Constitution was signed in 1787 “in the year of our Lord.”
You can see it in the early colleges our fathers established:
It may surprise many people to
realize that almost every Ivy League school was established primarily to train
ministers of the gospel -- and to evangelize the Atlantic seaboard.
Harvard, founded in 1638. From
Harvard’s “Rules and Precepts” adopted in 1646: “Every one shall consider the
main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal
life. Seeing the Lord giveth wisdom, every one shall seriously by prayer in
secret seek wisdom of Him. Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the
Scriptures twice a day that they be ready to give an account of their proficiency
therein, both in theoretical observations of languages and logic, and in
practical and spiritual truths ...”
In fact, 52% of Harvard’s graduates
in the 17th century became ministers!
Similarly:
Yale, 1701.
Princeton, 1746.
Dartmouth, 1754.
Columbia University
William and Mary
And many others
CONCLUSION
Noah Webster was right when he
said: “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to
form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and
evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression,
slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts
contained in the Bible.”
His words now appear prophetic. For
it is exactly because God and the Bible have been abandoned by our culture that
we are now seeing such immense moral collapse.
SCRIPTURES AT NATIONAL MONUMENTS
Lev 25:10 – On the Liberty
Bell
Proclaim liberty throughout the
land.
There is a copy of the Liberty Bell
in every one of our 50 state capitals.
Psalm
16:1 – In the U.S.
Capitol
A reminder of Washington’s
faith is found today in the U.S. Capitol building. In the Capitol is a small
room set aside for the private prayer and meditation of members of Congress.
The room’s focal point is a stained glass window showing George Washington
kneeling in prayer. Behind him are etched these words from Psalm 16:1:
“Preserve me, O God, for in Thee do I put my trust.”
Psalm
19:9 – At the Lincoln
Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington – It is massive and impressive.
Engraved in the walls are words spoken by Lincoln himself which represent his
view. Things like this: “And this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom.” At the opposite end, on the north wall, his Second Inaugural Address
alludes to “God,” the “Bible,” “providence,” “the Almighty,” and “divine
attributes.”
It then continues: “As was said 3000 years ago, so it still
must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether
(from Psalm 19:9).’”
Micah 6:8 and Psalm 19:1 – In the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has statues of the apostle Paul and
Moses, and it has large inscriptions of Micah 6:8 and Psalm 19:1 prominently
displayed.
Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is
good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of
God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Collected from multiple sources. Edited by Cory Collins.
