One Nation Under God

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensible."  George Washington

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction...that these liberties are the gift of God?  Thomas Jefferson

Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.  Noah Webster
    Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, Aug. 2, 1826. P. 146.

Noah Webster I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.  
    Second Speech on Foot's Resolution, Jan. 26, 1830. P. 316.

"...It is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand."   John Adams

"...the longer I live, the more convinced I become that God governs in the affairs of men..."         Benjamin Franklin

All Nations that have ever existed have been founded upon either a theistic or an anti-theistic principle--for example India is known for its Hinduism, China for Confucianism, Israel for Judaism, Saudi Arabia for Islam, and the former Soviet Union for atheism.  AMERICA was founded UPON CHRIST AND HIS WORD.  The American Government is a republic.   

CLICK HERE FOR  http://wallbuilders.com/    WallBuilders is an organization dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built—a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined. In accord with what was so accurately stated by George Washington, we believe that “the propitious [favorable] smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation which disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.”

One country, one constitution, one destiny.
    Speech, March 15, 1837. P. 349. Daniel Webster

CLICK HERE FOR  American Center For Law and Justice link

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHRISTIANITY TO KEY PATRIOTS

SAMUEL ADAMS  -  The firebrand of the American Revolution was Samuel Adams, a devout believer.  He saw himself as "the Last of the Puritans."  He is often called "the Father of the American Revolution."  for more than twenty years, he indefatigably gave himself ot the cause of liberty.  He formed the Committees of Correspondence.  "These Committees provided the unity and cohension necessary for the Colonies to stand united during a time communication was difficult and unreliable."   "Samuel Adams did more than any other American to arouse opposition against English rule in the Colonies."  He said free citizens could learn of their rights and wrote: "These [rights] may be best understood by reading and carefully studying hte institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament."      

When the Declaration of Independence was being signed in 1776, Samuel Adams Declared: "We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient.  He reigns in heaven, and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come."  And along this same theme, the published battle cry of the American Revolution was "NO KING BUT KING JESUS!" 

GEORGE WASHINGTON - Here is a representative sample of Washington's book of prayers: "O Most Glorious God, in Jesus Christ  my merciful and loving father, I acknowledge and confess my guilt, in the weak and imperfect performance of the duties of this day.  I have called on thee for pardon and forgiveness of sins, but so coldly and carelessly, that my prayers are become my sin and stand in need of pardon."

Washington was a vestryman in good standing in the Episcopal Church, at a time when their doctrine conformed closely to evangelical teaching.  He was well-known for his godly disposition and his fervent prayer life, for instance when he was spotted kneeling at Valley Forge.  His prayers were answered as God soverignly helped the fledgling nation in its struggle against the most powerful nation on earth.  So much so that Washington wrote this to Thomas Nelson in a letter dated August 20, 1778: "The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous  in all this, that he must be worse than infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

When Washington was inaugurated in New York City in 1789, he got down on his knees and kissed the Bible.  Then he led the Senate and House of Representatives to an Episcopal Church for a two-hour worship service. 

George Washington's lengthy farewell address says this about the place of religion in our national life:  Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness....And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

PATRICK HENRY - A Christian patriot, was the golden-tongued orator of the Revolutionary period.  Henry is perhaps best known for his history changing, impassioned speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he declared, "Give me liberty or give me death!"  He recognized the tremendous contributin Christianity made to the founding of this country.  He said: "It cannot be too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not be 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.

JOHN WITHERSPOON - Witherspoon is best described as the man who shaped the men who shaped America.  The only clergyman who signed the Declaration of Independence was Rev. John Witherspoon, the president of the College of New Jersey, which is today PRINCTON UNIVERSITY.  At that time, this college was a stalwart Presbyterian institution.  He shaped political thinking of many key Americans, including James Madison, who attended Witherspoon's college, while preparing for the ministry. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON - "Separation of church and state" --  the expression Justice William Rehnquist described as "a misleading metaphore" -- appeared in an exhange of letters between President Thomas Jeffersona and the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. 

The election of President Jefferson -- America's first Anti-Federalist President--elated many Baptists since that denomination was, by-and-large, strongly Anti-Federalist.  This political disposition by the Baptists was understandable; from the early settlement of Rhode Island in the 1630s to the time of the federal Constitution in the 1780s, the Baptists had often found themselves suffering from the centralization of power.  They had written a letter to President Jefferson which prompted him to make the state of separation of church and state. 

Jefferson understood the concerns of other denominations that the Baptists would be the national religion and declared the inability of the government to regulate, restrict, or interfere with religious expression.  For example:

[N]o power over the freedom of religion...[is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution." Kentucky Resolution 1798

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] government.  Second Inaugural Address 1805

[O]ur excellent Constitution...has not placed our religious rights under the power of any public functionary.  Letter to the Methodist Episcopal Church  1808

I consider the government of the United States as interdicted [prohibited] by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions...or exercises.   Letter to Samuel Miller 1808

JEFFERSON BELIEVED that the government was to be powerless to interfere with religious expressions for a very simple reason: he has long witnessed the unhealthy tendency of government to encroach upon the free exercise of religious expression.  As he explained to Noah Webster:

"It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States that the purposes of society do not require a surrender fo all our rights to our ordinary governors...and which experience has nevertheless proved they [the government] will be constantly encroaching on if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious [effective] against wrong and rarely obstructive of right, which the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove.  Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion."

Thomas Jefferson HAD NO INTENTION of allowing the government TO LIMIT, RESTRICT, REGULATE, OR INTERFERE with public religious practices.  He believed along with the other Founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted ONLY TO PREVENT the federal establishment of a national denomination--a fact he made clear in a letter to fellow-signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush:

"[T]he clause of the Constitution which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect belives its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.  The returning good sense of the country threatens abortion to their hopes and they believe that any opporition to their schemes.  And they believe rightly."

Benjamin Rush , M.D. will be forever immortalized in America as one of the fifty-six individuals who signed our national birth certificate: the Declaration of Independence.

The Pilgrims in 1620 arrived in the New World on the Mayflower.  When this group arrived--but before they disembarked--they voluntarily agreed to Christian self-government by writing up the MAYFLOWER COMPACT, which states:

"In the name of God, Amen.  We, whose names are underwritten the loyal Subjects of our dread Soverign Lord, King James....Having undertaken for the Glory of God, our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid." 

The significance of the Mayflower Compact to our constitutional form of government cannot be stressed enough.  Nor can the link between their church covenant and the Mayflower Compact, which was political echo of their church charter.  The World Alamanac 1991 says of the Mayflower Compact: "The voluntary agreement to govern themselves was America's first written constitution."

Scholar Dr. Robert Barlett, who is a direct discendent of the Pilgrims and who has written The Pilgrim Way, writes: "This compact was to play a role in the development of American democracy.  It repudiated the aristocratic system which exalted the privileges of the few and established a small community based on a signed, mutual agreement."

Over the next 150 years, these dedicated Christians in New England wrote up about 100 different compact covenants, and constitutins.  Like the Mayflower Compact , they reflect the Christian motivation of these early Americans.

The numerous constitutions, covenants, and compacts that these early settlers wrote up paved the way for the constitutional form of government we enjoy in America. 

Carry out My Commands and leave the result to Me. Do this as obediently and faithfully as you would expect a child to follow out a given rule in the working of a sum, with no question but that, if the working out is done according to command, the result will be right.

Remember that the commands Ihave given you have been already worked out by Me in the Spirit World to produce in your case, and in your circumstances, the required result.  So follow My rules faithfully.

Realize that herein lies the perfection of Divine Guidance.  To follow a rule, laid down even by earth's wisest, might lead to disaster. 

The knowledge of your individual life and character, capability, circumstances and tempations must be, to some extent, lacking, but to instructions given with a full knowledge of you and the required result.

Each individual was meant to walk with Me in this way, to act under Divine Control, strengthened by Divine Power.