Pastor Joe Fuiten, June 29, 2003

 

            Behind me hangs a giant American flag.  It is 20 feet by 30 feet.  When the choir began to sing their opening number and we saw it rise to its place.  It is always a thrilling moment when the big flag goes up.  The whole church is decorated in an American flag theme.  We are not only doing this today, we do it every year.

Even though this is America, and we support the country, we should answer the question of why a church should support the country.  Especially here in the Seattle area, that question should be answered.  Fully 43% of the entire population of this region was not born in America.  One of the ways this church is blessed is with a rich cross-section of foreign-born members.

Last night at the prayer meeting I asked Mercy Dworzak what she thought of America and why she is here.  Almost always the whole family comes to the prayer meeting.  Mercy is from India.  Tom, her husband, is from Germany.  In response to the question, “Why did you come to America?” Tom sent an email.

1. It was a dream since early childhood, long before I was a Christian.
2. I wanted to go and to live in the freest country in the world, a country of innovation and new beginnings.
3. After becoming a Christian, I wanted to start a new life and develop a ministry with international impact, in the New World, the only place on the globe where that is truly possible.
4. America offers more potential, possibilities and has more dream-come-true stories than any other country.
5. There is no other country in the world, where you can freely worship in lively churches, and AG-churches are top of the line (Biblical, balanced, Full Gospel and full life).  Note: the deadest church in America would be a "wild" congregation in Germany, and therefore socially unacceptable.
6. There is nowhere else so much acceptance, tolerance, freedom and expression of life's happiness.
7. It's getting out of Egypt into the Promised Land.

Well, I missed the Mayflower, and had to come all the way swimming, a little later.  They don't make it easy for "late-comers".

We are here 10 years now, and my daily prayer is to get the Green Card through.  Its on somebody's desk, waiting!

I love America from the bottom of my heart!  I wish I would have been born here!  You can quote me on all the above anywhere, anytime.  God bless America and you.  (signed)  Tom

 

            In many parts of the world, they think of us as a Christian nation.  Part of why the Moslem countries hate us so much is that they think of us as all being Christians.  To fight the USA is to fight against the Christian Crusaders.  In fact, I still think of us as a Christian nation.  We are in a battle for our heritage, and we have lost some high-visibility battles, but the war is not yet lost. 

Congress formed the American Bible Society.[1]  Immediately after creating the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress voted to purchase and import 20,000 copies of scripture for the people of this nation.

Patrick Henry, who is called the firebrand of the American Revolution, is still remembered for his words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” But in current textbooks the context of these words is deleted.  Here is what he actually said: “An appeal to arms and the God of hosts is all that is left us.  But we shall not fight our battle alone.  There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations.  The battle sir, is not to the
strong alone.  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."

These sentences have been erased from our textbooks. Was Patrick Henry a Christian?  You be the judge.  The following year, 1776, he wrote this: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here."

Consider these words that Thomas Jefferson wrote on the front of his well-worn Bible: "I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.  I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator " He was also the chairman of the American Bible Society, which he considered his highest and most important role.

On July 4, 1821, President 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."

There is more.  In 1782, the United States Congress voted this resolution: "The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."

William Holmes McGuffey is the author of the McGuffey Reader, which was used for over 100 years in our public schools with over 125 million copies sold until it was stopped in 1963.  President Lincoln called him the "Schoolmaster of the Nation." Listen to these words of Mr.  McGuffey: "The Christian religion is the religion of our country.  From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe.  On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions.  From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred Scriptures.  For all these extracts from the Bible I make no apology."

Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636.  In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the scriptures:

"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 Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."
 

 

Yale historian Harry S. Stout's wrote an article in Christian History magazine titled, “Christianity and the American Revolution”.   Here is what he said about America at the time of the Revolution.

      - Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!

      - Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God's. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist, to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God's providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors. - [Today] taxation and representation are political and constitutional issues, having nothing to do with religion. But to eighteenth-century ears, attuned to lifetimes of preaching, the issues were inevitably religious as well.

      - When understood in its own times, the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event.[2]

            The foundation of our country is absolutely Christian.  Since then, we have had great periods of revival and great periods of spiritual coldness, some maybe even worse than today.  The revivals are what give me hope for the future and what makes me get involved in politics through my work as President of Washington Evangelicals for Responsible Government. 

            I have not left the ministry to enter politics because of God’s call and also because I do not believe that politics has the answer.  The answer is still revival.  On the other hand, I get involved in politics because I believe that a church that exclusively promotes revival as the answer is not being true to either the history of Christianity or to God’s sovereignty over all the things of the earth.

            I am sure that many ministers will criticize the Supreme Court’s recent deplorable decision to overturn the laws of Texas with regard to Sodomy.  It was a terrible decision partly because it gives governmental approval to sinful behavior.  On an even larger scale, it is the wholesale destruction of representative government in America.  The people of Texas passed that law.  Only by inventing a “right to privacy” in Amendment 14 of the US Constitution were they able to overturn previous Supreme Court decisions and impose their own social views on us all.[3]  Nine judges rode into Texas, captured the Legislature, disarmed the police, and made two men sovereign over all others. 

            Representative government is being destroyed and is being replaced by radical individualism.  The Supreme Court is empowering the individual and binding Legislatures.  I believe the rise of radical individualism is the final phase in human history prophesied by Daniel. The flowering of this political philosophy is the immediate precursor to the coming of the Lord. In radical individualism, the individual rules.  In the prophetic words, “the people will no longer remain united.”  In what sense are we united when nine judges can overrule elected legislatures to empower two individuals against the government?  I have developed this idea extensively in my book, “Chaos and the end of time”.  It is available for purchase at the church or the text is free online at http://www.cedarpark.org/library/books.htm  I will not revisit all those ideas here, but I do believe this has prophetic significance and could take us to within an inch of the abyss.  Senator Santorum said a few months ago that this case could take away all the legal defenses against incest, polygamy, or any other “private” sexual behavior. I wonder if he had seen a secret preliminary decision on this case.  The lack of support for his statements might have been interpreted by the Supreme Court as license to do what they have just done.

            In the Texas Sodomy case, the court used the same logic found in Roe v Wade.  Kennedy used the same “right to privacy” and applied it to homosexual behavior: “The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.”  In doing so, they overturned their own 1986 decision that had rejected the right-to-privacy argument for same-sex relationships. O’Connor, who voted with the 1986 majority, this time ruled that legal distinctions between heterosexual relations and homosexual relations cannot be made on moral grounds:  “Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate governmental interest under the Equal Protection Clause,” she wrote.

            Think what this could mean if taken to an extreme but logical conclusion.  What if a woman were willing to accept domestic violence.  If she consented to it for some sick reason, would that make the behavior “between consenting adults” and therefore “private”?  If it is private, upon what basis could the state regulate it?

            If morality cannot be the basis, then some basis other than morality must be invented.  A new morality must be invented without any basis in biblical morality.  Welcome to sin city.  Welcome to the end times.

            I use this example to illustrate the battle against the Christianity that has dominated America for these past centuries.

 

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