July 4th 2010

Abraham Lincoln:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.  We have been preserved, these many years , in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God...”

 

“We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us…and we have vainly imagined, in the deitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own…”

 

December, 2003 Pacifica High School in Oxnard, California. In the finale of a school program, a 200 voice choir was to sing "God Bless the USA." However, the program's directors, feared it might cause a problem and changed to "I love the USA." Parents went irate and it was changed back.  Unique incident?

 

http://www.citizenlink.org/videofeatures/A000012237.cfm

 

Today, celebrate 234th birthday.  Isa 46:9 Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me.

God set up national feasts to remember what He done (four times commanded remember beginning of nation in Deut)  A time of thankfulness and a time of assessment.  On this, our national feast, let us remember the same way. 

 

Pilgrims:

First, How did America begin?  The people who first came to America were hardened, determined people. They separated from wives, husbands, children, families and were willing to risk their lives in coming to a place where they could worship the Lord God and His Son Jesus.  They risked it all and paid the price for us.  Of the 102 who left England, only half survived the 1st winter.  As they prepared to leave the Mayflower, they penned an agreement as to why they were there. 

 

The Mayflower Compact (1620): 

"In the Name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten... have undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith to plant the first colony in the northern Parts of Virginia."  You will notice, nowhere in that statement does it declare, "That we have come to America to perpetuate the Muslim Religion, nowhere does it say that, "We have come to establish a colony for humanists and atheists." It says, "...for the advancement of the Christian faith."  In 1632 .... when Maryland was chartered as a colony, they wrote, "We are motivated with the pious zeal for extending the Christian religion."

Regardless of what's being written and taught today ... we have the honor of being The only nation on earth built upon the Christian faith!  WE NEED TO REMEMBER what God has done! 

Lev 26:3-12

 

Around 150 years later On July 4th, 1776, 56 of the bravest men who ever lived, signed the document known as "The Declaration of Independence," declaring independence from King George III and the government of England.  What did it say? 

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.   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, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That document became the steppingstone for the Constitution, which was signed just a few years later in Philadelphia in the year 1787.  What was the purpose of our country?  WE NEED TO REMEMBER! 

 

President John Quincy Adams "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were.... the general principles of Christianity."

 

Noah Webster "It is the sincere desire of the writer (Noah Webster) that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible , particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion.   The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws...."

 

President George Washington "It would be impossible to govern rightly without God and the Bible.  ...The Smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a Nation that disregards the eternal rules of Order and Right, which Heaven Itself Ordained."  

 

Benjamin Franklin "He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of a primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world." 

 

President John Adams "The highest story of the American Revolution is this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." 

 

34% of the founder's quotations during the Revolutionary war were taken directly from the Bible

 

Eight days after signing the Declaration of Independence they rang the bell in Philadelphia and had it engraved with Leviticus 25.10, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmC3IevZiik  Not a Christian Nation?

 

Patrick Henry boldly declared: 

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly 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.”

 

While the constitution was being drafted, what were the authors thinking?  Were they remembering God?

 

Benjamin Franklin in the 1787 Constitutional Convention:

"Except the Lord build the house, They labor in vain who build it."

 

President James Madison:

"We've staked the whole future of American civilization not on the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us . . . to govern ourselves according to the commandments of God. The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded."

 

Patrick Henry wrote:

"Whether this [new government] will prove a blessing or a curse will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation [Proverbs 14:34]. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself and encourage it in others."

 

Alexis De Tocqueville:

“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive one without the other.”

 

What did he see?

“The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me upon my arrival in the U.S. In France, I had seen the spirits of religion and freedom almost always marhing in opposite directions, in America, I found hem intimately linked together and joined and reigned over the same land…

Has our country continued to remember the Lord God of the Bible?  Our National Anthem wasn’t penned until the Battle of 1812 when Sir Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner” while on a British ship and helpless to warn Baltimore of an impending attack.  Who knows the fourth verse of our National anthem that Congress adopted  in 1916 and 1931, "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."  What was our motto? 

 

Did we continue to remember?  The Secretary of Treasury instructed the Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, to prepare a motto for our money with the following letter (Nov 20, 1861):   “Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.

You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.” 

In God We Trust was determined.  Congress passed an act in April 1864 to put it on our money, then re-passed 1865, 1866, 1873, 1908, 1909.  Finally on July 30, 1956 (not too long ago) A joint resolution was passed declaring IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States.  

 

So, our National Anthem is a call to remember God’s blessing, our National Motto is a proclamation of God’s care for us.  Our 7^th President Andrew Jackson was clearly correct when he said, "The Bible is the rock upon which our Republic rests."  Even down to the three branches:  Isa 33:22.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi-V_ilJu0w&NR=1  (Obama mocking the use of the Bible in government policy)

 

We sometimes think that the courts are coolly “anti-God”. 

 

First Chief Justice of Supreme Court John Jay "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers. And it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

 

United States Supreme Court Ruling 1892: "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."

 

Why has America become the greatest superpower of the modern era?  Ask John F. Kennedy in his 1946 4^th of July speech.  GOD!!  God blessed America because she was founded upon promises and principles of the Word of God! Don't let somebody tell you that America did not have a spiritual beginning!  America was born out of a revival!

 

Thomas Jefferson:

"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 the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."

 

Stand and read Psalm 33:8-22  We remember today Lord!  Amen!