The Right to Liberty

The right to liberty is the second God endowed right expressed in our Declaration of Independence. It is a right that most of the world's peoples have never enjoyed. From Nimrod's first empire 4500 years ago to the Marxist dictatorships of today, tyrants have enslaved, terrorized, and brutally smothered the desires and ambitions of people to be free.

Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord (Genesis 10:9-10). He was infamously a hunter of men. The ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Persians and Romans, the Ottomans, the Mongolian Golden Horde, the kings of Europe, the Conquistadors, the Papacy, African tribes, Ayatollahs, the USSR and China, the communists of the 20th century all lived by one principle: the suppression of common people for the empowerment of despotic rulers.

Early Pilgrims led by John Winthrop envisioned America as a "shining city upon a hill." This was going to be a place where people could escape tyranny and enjoy the freedoms they had never known. America would be a place that opened its arms to the tired, the poor, the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." And so it has become.

When the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution they gave us a form of government where "We the People" granted limited powers to the Federal government in order for that government to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." But the original document gave no guarantees to those liberties and many of the Founders refused to sign it without the promise of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Those amendments were designed to limit the power of the government so that our freedoms, as delineated in the Declaration of Independence, could not be denied.

The First Amendment, our bedrock of liberty, guarantees the freedom of Religion, of Speech, of the Press, of Assembly, and the freedom to challenge and influence the direction of our government by a "redress of grievances." The Second guarantees our right to own and bear arms. These and eight more were added to prevent the government from becoming a tyranny.

This is a government, however, that will only work, as John Adams said, for a moral and religious people. Without God and a moral base the system collapses, but as long as people police themselves by self-discipline and consideration of their fellow men, the system works. When men love God with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves (Matthew 22:37-39), there is no need for excessive laws. This method worked well in America for over 170 years.

As the freest people in the world we became the mightiest and most prosperous nation in the world. We became the world's benefactor nation, first through missionaries and charitable societies, then by freeing the world from Nazi and communist tyrannies, and then by food aid and economic development programs designed to help struggling democracies.

But somewhere along the way we lost our focus. As we became affluent, we became apathetic. We turned our backs on the God of our Fathers, kicked Him out of our schools, and turned our compassion and our ambition over to the government. The more we turned over, the more the government took. The New Deal, the Great Society, the New World Order, stimulus packages, universal health-care, have all led to massive taxes and monstrous debt, and thousands of pages of new laws, new restrictions, and more government empowerment. When America forgot God and became secular, government stepped in and became god to many. And what happened to our liberty?

There is a direct correlation between government and freedom. The more power government takes, the less free people become. When the selfish clamor for rights goes beyond "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the cry for government to give us more ultimately results in government taking away what we had. The more secular and materialistic people become the less discerning they become. Now, an undiscerning populace, backed by a non-objective and undiscerning press, has elected a socialist, Muslim, who may not even be an American citizen, president of the United States, and the right to liberty is under attack as it has never been before.

Our right to be a free, independent people, secure within our own borders is being denied by the president and his administration, the very people obligated to provide that security. "We are not defined by our borders," the president said some months ago. Neither are we any longer defined by the Faith of our Fathers. According to the president we are not and never have been a Christian nation, and now a 13 story mosque next to Ground Zero in New York City is being planned with the blessing of the president and Democrat leftists.

This is not government; this is revolution. It is the overturning of what America is, a free Christian nation, in favor of a secular anti-Christian socialist system which will take America to the "ash-heap of nations" if it continues unchecked.

The right to liberty requires a return to the God of our Fathers, the God the left does not know. It requires patriotism, a love of country which the left does not have. It requires discernment, which the masses following the president like unquestioning lemmings are lacking. It requires responsible, law-abiding citizens, which illegal aliens are not. The right to liberty requires a moral and religious people who love America and are willing to fight for our country, our heritage, and our God.

If we don't draw the line and stand now, our liberties, and our right to be free, will be gone forever and like the godless Soviet Union, America will fall without a shot being fired.

The Right to Life

The first of the "certain unalienable rights" endowed by our Creator listed in the Declaration of Independence is the right to life. According to our Founding Fathers life is a God-given right.

Yet, today the most explosive and divisive issue in our culture is about life and who has a right to it. One would think that in a society gone crazy about rights, human rights, women's rights, children's rights, gay rights, animal rights, environmental rights, that the right of a child to live in a woman's womb until birth would be automatic. But not so fast. The "right to choose," which is nothing less than the right to abort, has trumped all arguments. A woman's "right" to be promiscuous and not have to bear the burden of the consequences of her life style drives our pleasure mad culture.

This works for the men involved too. Free sex, no responsibility. This attitude was given an immeasurable boost when former President Clinton argued about his dalliances in the White House that it was "just sex." Sex is just a natural thing, it makes no difference who or when. Just go out and have a good time. His argument had the support of a willing liberal press and every characterless leftist in the country.

But it doesn't just stop with our country. Ever since Hillary Clinton spoke at the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995, there has been a concerted effort by Democrats in America to export the "right" of abortion world wide. Joe Biden recently visited Kenya to promote the proposed new Kenyan constitution which will open the door for abortion on demand in this country. It basically is a crusade to empower women, but empower them to what?

Any society that does not maintain a positive birth rate will eventually be unable to sustain itself. Since Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in America and America's birth rate has dropped below the sustainable minimum. When the nation becomes top heavy with the elderly and the work force becomes too weak to care for them the only option will be bankruptcy or euthanasia. That's not far-fetched. A few years ago former Colorado governor, Dick Lamb, declared that old people had a responsibility to get out of the way. In other words, die. Legalizing physician assisted suicide is being debated in several states.

And where did this cycle of thinking start? With abortion. It was claimed by the defenders of "Jane Roe" that abortion had to be legalized in order to protect the life of the mother, and that legalization would actually lead to a decline in the total number of abortions. Instead, the rate of abortions grew from a few thousand every year to over 4.4 million per year, and there have been hundreds of botched abortions. It has also been discovered that "Jane Roe," whose real name is Norma McCorvey, was not even pregnant during the Roe vs. Wade legal battle, and that she is now a pro-life advocate.

In order to justify themselves pro-abortionists consistently throw out the archaic argument, "When does life start?" There are two answers to the question; one spiritual and one physical. The spiritual argument comes from Psalm 51:5: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Theologically all men are born sinners (Romans 5:12) so if sin began at conception, so did life. The physical argument is much simpler. From the moment the sperm and the egg unite to form a zygote, the single cell begins to divide and grow. Dead things do not reproduce and grow. The fact is, the baby is a living being from the moment of conception.

Some will argue "viability," the child's ability to live outside the womb. That's a smoke screen. Viability isn't the question with partial birth abortions. These are performed into the ninth month of pregnancy right up to the moment before the baby is born. It is a hideous form of torture and murder. Now the Senate is considering a woman for the Supreme Court who intentionally manipulated information in the 90's in order to get the Supreme Court to overturn a partial birth abortion ban. And the president who nominated her believes that a baby that survives an abortion attempt (and there have been many) should be killed anyway. What does this say about the integrity of the leaders of our country? They have none!

With the invention of ultrasound the "when does life start" argument is no longer even intelligent, as if it ever was. Ultrasound technology has advanced from blurry images in the early 80's to reasonably clear pictures today and what it has shown is that what is developing in the womb is very much alive.

When my wife, Lhey, became pregnant with our second child, we had an ultrasound done to confirm the pregnancy. We saw very clearly the egg and the yolk sac. At about the sixth week Lhey had some bleeding so we went to see her gynecologist and we had another ultrasound. This time the baby was 1.8 centimeters long, just a blob with a head beginning to form and a black spot that we could both see and hear, the beating heart. Three days later my wife had a massive bleeding in the middle of the night. We rushed her to the hospital where the on-call emergency doctor examined her and said, "The pregnancy is over."

Our hearts were broken. Our first son, Jonathan, wept almost uncontrollably. I couldn't hold back the tears either. Lhey was stronger than both of us at that moment. I went to check her into the hospital and when I came back the doctor said, "What we're going to do now is called a D and C procedure." I said, "Wait a minute. I thought the baby had miscarried. Do you mean to tell me the baby is still there?"

He said, "There is evidence of fetal material, but it can't survive." I repeated my question, "Is the baby still there?" He gave me the same answer, "There is evidence of fetal material, but it can't survive." I told him in no uncertain terms he wasn't doing anything else until we had an ultrasound.

We had to wait five hours for the gynecologist and the ultrasound technician to arrive, and during that time we prayed and wondered and tried to comfort ourselves. Finally the procedure was done and we saw the baby, about an inch long with little stubs for hands and feet beginning to appear, and the heart still beating. He was alive!

What happened was the placenta had attached low in the birth canal and had torn loose. It was barely hanging on. Lhey had to be on absolute bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. She had other bleeding spells along the way and spent nearly two months of the next six in the hospital. Because of her condition we were having monthly ultrasounds to check the baby's progress and a more beautiful thing you will never see. At only three months, after a minor bleeding spell, we watched the baby lying on his back, raise his right hand and begin moving it back and forth as if he were waving at us.

In the eighth month Lhey began bleeding again and the doctor decided she had gone far enough and suggested we schedule the birth by cesarean section for three days later. That night in the hospital she had another massive bleeding so they moved the birthdate up a day sooner and on December 13, 2007, Ethan Lance Patterson was born. The doctor said he had never seen a case like ours where the child had survived, and called him a miracle baby and Lhey a champion mother. And so they are.

Lhey would have met the criteria for an abortion from any "humanitarian" point of view. She was 44 years old, suffered several bleeding spells, was in severe pain and discomfort, and had to be on bed rest for the entire pregnancy, and the baby was hanging on by a thread. We even had a doctor who had misdiagnosed the situation recommending it. It would have been an easy decision for a pro-abortionist, but what we would have missed if we had thought along those terms. Today we have a beautiful, healthy child, who is a precious blessing to us. He is so much fun to have around.

Ethan had as much right to life as every man or woman ever conceived, and we are proud to have given him that right. I pity those, I say again, I pity those who are so selfish, cold-hearted and ignorant as to think the right to life does not extend to the life in the womb.

Are All Men Created Equal?

The Declaration of Independence finds it a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Yet all men are not equal. In fact, many of the signers of the document owned slaves even as they agreed to the proposition of equality. This has become one of the great controversies in American politics and culture. The Founding Fathers are accused of hypocrisy for not freeing the slaves outright in the Constitution, and of being racist for counting slaves as only three-fifths of a person. Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the United States Supreme Court, considered the Constitution to be one of the worst documents ever written, yet it was only because of that Constitution and the fundamental proposition of equality that he was able to become a justice on the highest court in the land.

Obviously all men are not born equal. Some are born to wealth and luxury while others are born to poverty. Some are born in good health, some are not. Certainly Jefferson and the signers understood that. The proposition was that God endowed them "with certain unalienable rights." It was to these God-given rights that all men are created equal. Those rights include, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." So why, if all men deserve these rights equally, did Washington and Jefferson still own slaves? Why was slavery not abolished in the beginning?

The answer is found in an understanding of our history. Washington inherited his slaves, he treated them well, and never sold a slave if it would break up a family, and both men freed their slaves in their wills when they died. They could do no better because a Virginia law at the time prohibited the freeing of slaves in Virginia. They were stuck with their slaves until they died.

Slavery was brought to America's shores not by the colonists, but by the British Crown. The Founding Fathers blamed the king for introducing and forcing the institution on them. By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the institution had become so ingrained in southern life that slave owners argued that it had become a necessity. The cotton industry had become so dependent on slaves that it could not be changed overnight with the stroke of a pen. Instead the Founders left it alone in order to unite all the colonies under one government, but put a moratorium on the African slave trade for twenty years believing that by that time the slave institution would be dying out on its own. They left it up to the individual states to end the practice when they felt ready, but they went on to prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territories.

The Northern States, where cotton and tobacco do not grow, were the first to outlaw slavery. The Southern States were expected to take a little longer, but then in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. His machine revolutionized the separating of seeds and dirt from the cotton and suddenly made slave labor a greater necessity than ever before. As cotton became king, slave owners, in order to justify themselves, began to view ownership as a moral right, even using Scripture to defend their position, and it was here that the nation began its slippery slide toward the "Irrepressible Conflict."

But what about slaves being considered as only three-fifths of a person? Again the answer is found in understanding the purpose of that arrangement. Fully a third of the population of the Southern States were slaves. Slaves were not citizens, yet southerners wanted to count every slave in the census as a citizen for the apportionment of congressional seats. The more slaves they could count the more voting power they would gain in Congress. The Northern States objected but agreed to the three-fifths rule as a compromise to give the southerners some votes, but to prevent them from getting all the votes they could if slaves were counted as a whole number. In the end this was not a racist decision declaring black people inferior, but a compromise designed to lessen the pro-slavery voting block and bring a quicker end to the practice.

By 1860 the issue had become slavery in the western territories. The Republican Party, with Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for president said,"No." Slavery could not be allowed to spread, although it would not be interfered with where it already existed. This was unsatisfactory to the people of the South and what followed was the bloodiest war in American history.

The argument today is that the war was not over slavery, but over State's Rights. The problem with that argument is that the only right that the states could not reconcile through ordinary legislative means was the right to slavery. In the last weeks of 1860, Southerners led by William Yancey and a group of 52 men calling themselves "Secession Commissioners," stirred up the South to fight for the very right of owning slaves. In the end over 660,000 men died, around 400,000 of them from the North fighting to preserve the Union which resulted in the destruction of the institution of slavery.

Blacks and other minorities were still not treated equal in many parts of the country, but the Civil Rights Act of 1964 put an end to Jim Crow laws and segregation. As a nation we have bent over backward in the last fifty years to ensure equality for all people. And now, in spite of his playing the race card when he announced his candidacy, we have even elected a black president.

America is not perfect because, in spite of our Christian heritage, we are a nation governed by men and women. We are flawed and imperfect. Our history proves it. Our present government really proves it. Yet in the history of the world there has never been a nation like the United States of America. Lincoln said, "Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men.... Ours began by affirming those rights." There is not a nation in the world where the people are as free and equal as the people of the United States.

Self Evident Truths

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

“We,” were the fifty-six delegates who represented the thirteen colonies in the Continental Congress. They were all agreed that there are self-evident truths, that is, things that are so natural and obviously known that no one disputes them. The first obvious self-evident truth is that they all believed they were created by an intelligent Creator with a purpose to give them certain rights.

The second obvious self-evident truth is that the author, Jefferson, believed in the same Creator and the same rights. The proof is in the fact that he wrote the document. A third obvious truth is that a deist would never have written such a statement because deism believes in an eternal source that started it all, but not a personal God who cares to give anything to His creation.

Still, liberal educators with the help of anti-American publishing companies, the ACLU, and other historically blind revisionists, insist that Jefferson could not have been a Christian. They cite his edited “version“ of the Bible saying he cut out all the parts he didn’t like leaving only a fraction of the Scriptures intact.

Once again, without studying the history of the “Jefferson Bible” it is easy to misunderstand or slander his intent. In 1803, the United States government had made a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians. Jefferson, wanting to open the door for missionaries to take the Gospel to the Indians, edited the Bible to include only the words of Jesus in order to make translation easier and quicker so the Word of God could be read and understood by the various Indian tribes.

What Jefferson did was no different than a Bible society publishing just the New Testament, or just a Gospel of John or a Book of Romans. In this case it was just the words of Christ for the purpose of enhancing evangelistic efforts. It is also significant that in every annual budget during Jefferson’s presidency there were funds designated for the evangelization of Indians with the Christian religion. You wouldn’t really expect a non-Christian to do something like that.

Jefferson’s theology was more ecumenical in nature than orthodox, but he was a strong proponent of religious liberty. He didn’t believe in the ascendency of any particular sect over another, yet his writings show a clear aversion to the Catholic Church. In a letter to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith in 1816, he wrote, “I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to Him, and not to the priests.”

To a Mr. Samuel Kercheval he wrote in 1810, “But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.”

The Great Reformer of the Jewish religion is an obvious reference to Christ, and the special servants enslaving mankind by use of Church and State the papacy. These thoughts would have been consistent with colonial and early American theology in general as the early Pilgrims and settlers came to America to escape Romanism or its English equivalent, Anglicanism. There were very few Catholics in America until after the Civil War.

Again, the self-evident truth about any religious discussion by our Founding Fathers is that it is the Christian religion they are talking about. In 1801, Jefferson wrote to Moses Robinson, “The Christian religion . . . brought to the original purity and simplicity of it’s benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.”

The problem in trying to pinpoint Jefferson’s Christianity is that he left no clear testimony of faith in Jesus Christ. He was an adherent of no particular denomination but was in favor of religious liberty for faiths of all kinds, including Hinduism and Islam. However, his writings about God in general are all focused on Christ and the Christian religion.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, 1794, he wrote, ““And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have lost the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?”

A deist god does not give gifts, neither is it just. A deist god could care less about slavery or gratitude for favors. A deist god would not endow its creation with unalienable rights. Whether or not Jefferson was a true believer in Christ might be questionable, but there is no doubt that his religious beliefs, his character, and his insistence on the Bill of Rights to include religious freedom were influenced by Christianity and the Gospels, not by any other philosophy.

A War for America's Identity

This week the Justice Department officially filed a law suit against Arizona over the immigration law Arizona passed in April. The Justice Department's argument is that "enforcing immigration law is a Federal responsibility." Well, duh! Wake up Eric Holder. The reason Arizona acted is because the Federal government has reneged on its responsibility. By the way, have you read the Arizona law yet?

Step up former Arizona governor and now head of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. This week she self-righteously claimed that she had walked the border, driven the border and she can assure everyone that the border is as secure as it has ever been. As former Congressman James Traficant would say, "Beam me up, Scotty." What universe is Napolitano living in? People are dying. Gun battles are taking place and a "hit" has been ordered by Mexican drug lords on an Arizona sheriff.

Up steps the president in typical "cut-the-throat-of-your-ally" fashion and says the border is too long to secure, and a fence wouldn't solve the problem anyway. But if 18 million illegal immigrants are given amnesty then he'll be able to build the fence. Wait a minute, Mr. President. Your Homeland Security wonk just said there wasn't a problem! So what are you talking about, or does Napolitano really need to get on a space ship and go somewhere else?

This immigration problem has been brewing for decades. Ronald Reagan wanted to close the border but couldn't get the funding out of the Democrat controlled House to do it. He finally agreed to a Ted Kennedy compromise. Give amnesty to 300,000 illegal immigrants and they'll secure the border. The 300,000 turned into three million and no fence was ever built. Bush 1 and Clinton ignored the border, and when Bush 2 with a Republican controlled Congress was pressured to act he refused until Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 2006 to build the fence. But by the time the law went into affect the Democrats had won back control of both Houses and refused to appropriate the funds to carry out the law.

Now we have what amounts to an invasion of our sovereign soil, not just by illegal migrant workers looking for jobs, but by drug running criminals with assault rifles and machine guns, as well as Muslim terrorists from other countries. About one in ten of those captured are non-Mexican. The Border Patrol, sadly lacking in personnel and resources, is doing a great job in trying to fight this battle, but what is needed is an Army division with tanks to stop the flow until the double security fence can be built.

We are literally in a war for our identity as a nation and immigration is only one battle in that war. The leftists in charge are constantly attacking our First and Second Amendment rights, particularly our Christian values. U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro just ruled a 1996 Massachusetts law defining marriage as one man and one woman unconstitutional. The "don't ask don't tell" policy on gays in the military has been declared unconstitutional. Hillary Clinton has promised the United Nations that the U.S. will sign its international gun ownership ban. The news media is being prohibited by the government from broadcasting about the Gulf oil spill on location. Christian values are denied on college campuses.

All the while plans for a 13-story mosque two blocks from ground zero in New York City is being defended as an example of religious freedom and separation of church and state. That mosque is an insult to all those who died on 9/11 and an affront to every patriotic American citizen. It is part of a subtle plot by Islamists to invade and change the culture of our country as a step toward turning us into an Islamic state, and President Barack Hussein Obama is in lock step with that plot.

The president said this week that the reason he has trouble with Israeli relations is because the Jews fear his middle name. No, Mr. President, that's not it. It's because of your Muslim loving, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish policies that are changing the greatest nation on earth into the laughing stock of the world while you subvert our free enterprise system in favor of a bankrupt socialist one world state with no borders.

If We the People don't have enough sense to vote these anti-American leftists out in November and the president out in 2012, there may not be an America left to have free elections in 2016. You think I'm kidding? I warned about this two years ago but never in my wildest imagination did I see anything happening as fast as it is happening. If we want to remain a free America with the true values of our Christian past, we Christians need to get on our knees and start begging God to intervene. Last Sunday Baptist pastor Charles Stanley asked his audience to commit to praying specifically for our country everyday for the next 140 days. I committed to join him, I hope you will too, and by all means, when elections come around, get out and vote.

A Re-Information of Our Greatness

There is a YouTube video circulating of a former Marine singing the last verse of the National Anthem. A comment with the video says the audience was shocked that he knew the last verse. It didn’t shock me. My fourth grade music teacher, Mrs. Lewis, taught the anthem, both verses, to our class. I’ve remembered it ever since. What dismays me, however, is how few people actually do know it.

In the remarks section below on one of the e-mails sent to me were several critical comments including one that was almost a joke. Some liberal, left wing, anti-Christian wrote, “We are not a Christian nation. Read the Founders, they were all deists.” Read the Founders! What a novel idea. Obviously that person had never read the Founders or he would have known his own statement was untrue.

What America needs today is what Ronald Reagan suggested almost thirty years ago when he said, “There is a need in America today for a … re-information of our greatness.”

We need to start with a “re-information” of who we are. Obama says we were never a Christian nation. Liberals notoriously deny our Christian heritage. The Supreme Court continues to rule against Christianity and the Bible in the public square even though the Ten Commandments are written in stone above the Justices’ bench in the Supreme Court chambers. So, what is our heritage? What did our Founders really believe? Who was George Washington praying to at Valley Forge, or was he praying at all?

Isaac Potts, a Valley Forge resident, told of riding through the woods in the harsh winter of 1778 when he heard a voice as of a man in prayer. He went quietly toward the sound and found Washington alone on his knees begging God for aid in the cause of the country. Potts had never believed a man could be a soldier and a Christian, “but if there is one in the world, it is Washington,” he said.

In his 1796 Farewell Address to the nation Washington said that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” to political prosperity. He also wrote, “Do not let anyone claim to be a true American if they ever attempt to remove religion from politics.” That statement is enough to indict the United States Supreme Court, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and every other anti-Christian organization or individual that seeks to remove God from our politics for being un-American. No doubt Washington thought we were and needed to be a Christian nation.

Consider what some of our other Founders wrote.

Patrick Henry, who stirred the passions of the colonists when he said, “Give me liberty, or give me death,” closed his Last Will and Testament with the following: “This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.” Henry was a Presbyterian and a devout student of the Scripture.

Our second president, John Adams, in his last speech in office, dedicated the newly created District of Columbia and capitol building by offering a benediction. “It would be unbecoming the representatives of this nation to assemble for the first time in this solemn temple without looking up to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, and imploring His blessing.... Here, and throughout our country, may simple manners, pure morals, and true religion flourish forever!” Obviously John Adams believed religion was a necessary part of American life and government.

To be clear, the only religion the Founders were talking about was Protestant or Baptist Christianity. Adams also had this to say, “I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

And then there are these:

“Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation.” - John Jay, First Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

“Principally and first of all, I recommend my soul to that Almighty Being who gave it and my body to the dust, relying upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.” – Samuel Adams’ Last Will and Testament.

“I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the same in substance equal in power and glory.” – Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

“History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion … and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.” – Benjamin Franklin, signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

This is but a small sampling of what all the Founders and early leaders of America wrote, but if we were to quote all of them we would find nearly all of them in agreement. There is not a deist among them, and that includes Franklin and Jefferson. This is the truth about America’s founding. We were definitely founded as a Christian nation.

Today we are in a war for the heart and soul of America. It is more than just a question of a socialist system versus a free enterprise system. It is about our national identity, about who we are, about whether we are a free or an enslaved people, about whether our culture will continue to honor the God of our Founders or drop into the abyss of atheistic impiety.

Actually, our culture as a whole has not really honored God for a long time. Ronald Reagan declared 1983 to be the Year of the Bible, yet the Bible was not even allowed in our public schools. Just this last week the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in Christian Legal Society vs. Martinez, upheld a California law school’s banning of a Christian student group because it would not allow non-Christians to be voting members. The assault on our First Amendment religious liberties has been so relentless in recent years that the Christian Law Association has represented thousands of cases defending religious freedom. And now we have a president who is not just trying to push another failed high tax welfare system on the country, but who, with leftist, liberal help, is trying to undo our Constitution and turn us into a socialist, anti-Christian state.

This year as we celebrate the independence of our great nation, we need more than ever before to join together as Christians and conservatives to fast and pray for God’s mercy on America. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

The issue in Jefferson’s day was slavery. The issue in our day is also slavery. We have two choices. Either we turn back to the God of our Fathers and constitutional government, and continue to be free, or we will finally turn our backs on God completely to be enslaved by pagans, atheists, and Islamists, and lose our liberties forever.

Would you join me in praying for our country? God Bless America.