In GOD we trust!

IN GOD WE TRUST!

Independence Day is a national holiday in the United States of America. In my lifetime I have witnessed a strange occurrence. Fewer and fewer people know of and understand the importance of this holiday.  For a brief refresher, here, in a rather lengthy BLOG this month, I share part of a reprint of an advertisement paid for and placed full-page in our local newspaper by a successful business known as HOBBY LOBBY.  I BLOG not so much about our sovereign independence but the standards set by five key facets of our society, our nation.  These areas reflect who we are, or perhaps more specifically - who we have become.

I.   FOUNDING FATHERS:
“An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us! … Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. … 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. … 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

II.   PRESIDENTS:
“And 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 of the gift of God?  That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”  THOMAS JEFFERSON

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  JOHN ADAMS

“Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior?  That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation?  Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth?  That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?”  JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

III.   SUPREME COURT JUSTICES:
“The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next.  Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.”  JOHN JAY: FIRST CHIEF JUSTICE

“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.”  JOHN JAY: FIRST CHIEF JUSTICE

“One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. … There has never been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations. … I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society.”  JOSEPH STORY: U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

IV.   CONGRESS:
“We are a Christian people…not because the law demands it, not to gain exclusive benefits or to avoid legal disabilities, but from choice and education; and in a land thus universally Christian, what is to be expected, what desired, but that we shall pay due regard to Christianity?”  SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE REPORT, JANUARY 19, 1853

“At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged. … That was the religion of the founders of the republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.”  HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE REPORT, MARCH 27, 1854

V.   SUPREME COURT RULINGS:
“Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a divine revelation in [schools] - its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? … Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?”  VIDAL v. GIRARD’S EXECUTORS, 1844 (UNANIMOUS DECISION AND ENCOURAGING THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN GOVERNMENT-RUN SCHOOLS)

EDUCATION:
“Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.  And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of Him (Proverbs 2, 3). Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein.”  HARVARD 1836 STUDENT GUIDELINES

And a man I met again when he was Governor of California, President Ronald Wilson Reagan said, “We have to keep in mind we are a nation under God, and if we ever forget that we’ll just be a nation under.”  Look around you and ask yourself, are we there yet? Are we getting close?  

RELATED BIBLE VERSES:
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.” PSALM 33:12

“The wicked will return to hell, Even all the nations who forget God.” PSALM 9:17