The United States is 250 years old. But merely declaring our independence was not enough. It took the Revolutionary War to seal us as a nation with the blood of men willing to sacrifice their individual treasure, reputations, and lives. And for what? For a vision of a future, where a people could flourish in a land based upon the Biblical truth that all men are created equal under God.
In his farewell address, President George Washington noted, “With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of …common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”
Fact: Americans possessed the “same religion…and political principles,” which was the basis for the success of the Revolutionary War. That religion was Christianity and those political principles were derived from the Biblical loadstone of the inherent human dignity of all people made in the image of their Creator God.
But between President Washington’s Farewell Address and now, a silent coup of America’s soul has occurred. The ship of state jettisoned the compass of Christianity, making each person their own captain.
Scripture insists, “Where there is no vision the people perish” (Prov. 29:18). The bloody 20th Century is a picture of communist nations implementing a godless vision of society where all people are equal only insofar as a slave is equal to a fellow slave…just another one of the masses with government as her master. Make no mistake, atheism is a core tenet of Marxism. But that does not mean there is no god, only that government replaces Him.
To the extent that America has de-Christianized, she is in practice atheistic, breaking the soil for the seeds of Marxism to take root. At this point in our history, the God of the Bible may be forgotten but replaced perhaps not by an overt communist regime as much as by the proverbial “me.” Individualism, autonomy, personal rights, license to do whatever I want, be whatever I want is America’s governing god.
But when those appetites and interests (erroneously often called rights) compete, government must arbitrate, wielding her coercive power, mediating and mandating which rights take priority over other rights.
For example, what happens when government sympathizes to the sex-without-consequences culture? A right to abortion is fabricated. Then that new “right” competes with a baby’s unalienable right to life and a Christian’s freedom of religion and speech to stand against such legalized injustices. And which right will prevail? If government seeks to amass more power to itself, it must attempt to replace the morality derived from the image of the one true God as revealed in nature and Scripture with a new morality. To do so means government will prioritize the morality it fabricates over that of God’s. So, ironically, a woman’s government-initiated right to end the life of her baby is prioritized over a baby’s God-given right to life.
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As Washington warned in that same farewell address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” But what is to become of such a people who replace Christian duty with self, founding their morality on the ever-shifting sands of pleasure? He goes on to say, “…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
And if America has dispensed with Christianity and therefore, morality, her future is as a flower in a furnace.
Is it any wonder that protections are afforded barbarity? Pornography is protected now as freedom of expression. Abortion is enshrined, ironically, as a civil right in state constitutions. And doctor-assisted death is promoted under the guise of human dignity.
A nation so concerned with consumption will consume herself. She will be as the merchant nation, Babylon, in the book of Revelation, burning up in a day, dying by suicide, set ablaze by the all-consuming fire of her sinful passions (Rev. 18:9-24). Unless….
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in London, received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1983. He and many other Christians, after the Marxist revolution in Russia, were persecuted and killed for their faith along with 60 million of their fellow citizens. Where did Russia’s Revolution go wrong? Solzhenitsyn answers: “But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution…I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
America today has forgotten God.
The dark shadow of a silent atheistic revolution covers America, and she is gasping for life. We meander the midnight of a moral Dark Age, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). We continue feasting on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, foolishly exchanging God’s wisdom for ours, stupidly believing that we can have all the blessings of creation and life without the Creator and Sustainer of it all (Gen. 3).
Rejecting God creates a boiling sea of humanity, piranha-like, devouring and being devoured by ravenous carnal appetites. Doubt it? Does this generation of Americans possess the moral fortitude to see the evil and seek the common good such that they would sacrifice their comforts, reputation, wealth, and even their lives to secure, if not for themselves, for their progeny, a free nation like our forefathers did? This kind of sacrifice is exactly what it took to birth America, and this kind of sacrifice is now required to save her.
King David understood the indispensability of remembering God for the life of a nation. “Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help and our shield. For our heart rejoices in Him because we trust in His holy name” (Ps. 33:20-21).
In Christ,
Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div.
CompassCare CEO
EMC Frontline President
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