Why We Continue to Fail in Our Attempts to Arrest the Destruction of America
As I continue to pursue my self-education into the founding of this nation, I grow more and more frustrated with those Americans who profess to embrace and support the principles and ideal upon which this nation was founded, and to which it owes the fact that it has survived for so long. I grow frustrated because the founders were not only clear and assertive in stating and explaining them to us, they were mindful that they were speaking to us. Jefferson actually encouraged the people of the time – especially those who were leaders – to save every scrap of documentation that could be found so as to preserve the most complete record of what they were trying to do for posterity. That posterity is us, and those founders were not only diligent in preserving that history for us, they were successful. What they believed and why is everywhere to be found – if we but bother to look for it. Yet, if we look, we must look to those original sources. We can no longer trust the history books of our day as their authors willingly and deliberately lie. And it is when – and not until – we actually read the history our founders left us that we discover the missing element that has stood in our way of arresting the destruction of our nation. Whereas today we look to ourselves and invoke the founders for support in our cause, the founders looked to God and invoked His support in theirs. In short, God is Who is missing from our modern effort to save America.
What’s more, it isn’t just any god, but the God of the Bible to whom our founders looked for guidance and favor in their efforts:
“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. 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.”
–John Adams, In a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813
“In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.”
–John Quincy Adams, an Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1837
Even Jefferson, whose faith is often among the most questioned of our founders, even he recognized the inseparable link between the necessity of morality for a free and self-governing society and the link to Christ’s Gospel as the source of that morality:
“The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.”
–Thomas Jefferson, to James Fishback, September 27, 1809
The founders’ reliance on God for the righteousness and success of their cause is everywhere you look in the records of the time. It is in their personal letters, and the notes from the conventions which drafted the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and even the Constitution. In fact, the 2nd Constitutional Convention was at the point of collapse before Franklin stood and reminded them of this fact, and that they had not been seeking God’s guidance to that point. It wasn’t until after Franklin’s appeal to return to prayer that the Constitution became a reality. Look to the early Congress and you will find appeals to God, calls for national days of prayer and repeated calls for national fasts. The same will be found in the State records, as well. In short, the founders turned to and trusted God to guide them in everything they did.
Now I ask you: when was the last time a public leader in this nation did this? And do you think that it might just be that the reason we are failing in our efforts to save America is just that: that we are looking to ourselves and not to God? If you are Christian, you should know the answer to this. You should also know the solution so many keep asking others to provide. God built this nation through His people, and if we want Him to save it, then we have to turn to Him to do so again. But that will require us to do something first, because God cannot use His people to save America until His people remember and repent for their sins and seek Him and His favor once more:
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
…if I send pestilence among My people, 14 and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the Prayer offered in this place.
A Few Declarations of Founding Fathers and Early Statesmen on Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible
The Oil for Your Lamp 