The founding document of Christianity is the New Testament. The writers (apostles and prophets, Eph.2:20), inspired by God, risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in delivering the will of God, the New Testament, to the world.
The founders of our nation - in writing the Declaration - risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. That they were inspired by God is evident from the sources they cited in writing the Declaration and the Constitution.
In a ten year study beginning in the 1970's, a group of political scientists analyzed more than 15,000 political writings from the Founding Era (1760-1805) to determine the sources of our Founding Father's political ideas. One source was cited four times more than Montesquieu or Blackstone and twelve times more often than Locke. In fact, that source, the Bible, accounted for 34% of the direct quotes from that era. Some have even conceded that "historians are discovering that the Bible, perhaps even more than the Constitution, is our Founding document." (Kenneth Woodward and David Gates, "How the Bible Made America," Newsweek, Dec. 27, 1982, p. 44.)
It's no coincidence that our two most celebrated holidays are Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ who freed us from the chains of sin and death, and the Fourth of July, celebrating our freedom from English tyranny; or as Patrick Henry pleaded at the end of his speech before the Second Revolutionary Convention of Virginia, in the old church in Richmond:
"Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery!
Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace, Peace"--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field!
Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry gave this speech 237 years ago. A year later the Declaration of Independence was signed. We are fighting the same battle today. "There is no retreat but in submission and slavery." We have not been vigilant. Andrew Jackson warned in his Farewell Address of March 4, 1837:
"But you must remember, my fellow citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government."
What will it take to wake up the citizens of the United States? What will shock us into action? Will it take the same kind of shock Patrick Henry got when, a short time before he gave his famous speech, he rode into the town of Culpeper, Virginia and saw a minister tied to a whipping post, his bloody back laid bare. Patrick Henry is quoted as saying: "When they stopped beating him, I could see the bones of his rib cage. I turned to someone and asked what the man had done to deserve such a beating as this." The reply was that he was a minister who refused to take a license. A license often becomes an arbitrary control by government that makes a crime out of what ordinarily would not be a crime. It turns a right into a privilege.
The requirement to pay for and obtain a permit for concealed carry is an infringement on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Politically correct speech has a division called hate speech. Who decides what is politically correct or hate speech? Those who have rejected Bible standards. Parts of the Bible have been designated as hate speech. Some who have expressed their Bible beliefs have been reprimanded and required to take sensitivity classes. This is thought control. Two college girls advertising for a roommate choose not to accept a lesbian as a roommate. They were fined and required to take sensitivity classes.
"What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?" What course will we take?
DEFENDER
