February 12, 2003
The massive military buildup in the Middle East has set the nerves of the world on edge. Some say the U.S. should go to war, and others say we should not. To whom should we listen? To whom can we turn for answers?
At times like this, the only voice we can trust is the voice of God. He, alone, has the wisdom to direct us.
Sadly, many Americans are turning their backs on God at a time when we need him most. Some are even suing to have God’s name removed from our Pledge of Allegiance. How can God bless America when America is dishonoring God?
We need to get back to our spiritual roots. When the American colonists faced the threat of war in 1775, Patrick Henry said, “An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all there is left us. There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.”
In 1782, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution recommending that the Bible be used in all schools.
In his farewell address on September 19, 1796, George Washington said, “It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible. Reason and experience forbid us to expect that our national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Removing God from government results in moral decay.
Our second president, John Adams, said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
On July 4, 1821, John Quincy Adams, said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” In other words, church and state work together. They are bound together.
Our thirteenth president, Calvin Coolidge, said, “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 should cease to be practically universal in our country.”
John Jay, the first Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, urged the American people to elect Christians as their national leaders.
But in 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the precedents set by our founding fathers and built a wall between church and state.
Consequently, in 1962, prayer was removed from public school classrooms as unconstitutional.
In 1963, Bible reading in the classroom was outlawed as unconstitutional.
In 1965, audible prayer for food in a public school cafeteria was banned as unconstitutional.
In 1980, the Ten Commandments were banished from public schools as unconstitutional.
Nine tenths of the men who wrote the U.S. constitution and built our public school system were praying, Bible-believing, Bible-quoting men.
James Madison, the main author of the constitution, said, “We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon our capacity to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
In these perilous times, let us pray that our nation will return to God and that God will lead us.
Having prayed, let us take a stand with and for God. “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7).
Good people must speak up for God and speak out against evil if our country is to reclaim its spiritual heritage.
