PART 24
By
Pastor Roger Anghis
December 12, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
Discovering America’s Christian Heritage
Part 24: The Responsibilities of the Free, Part 1
Foundation Scripture:
Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children
Growing up my parents would always enforce the importance of responsibility. They taught me to be responsible towards school work, promises that I might have made, the chores that I was assigned to do. My step-father was very strong on the need to keep up to date on politics and our civil government. He was a legal immigrant from Greece and was very proud to have been naturalized. The day he was naturalized was the most important moment of his life and he never took his citizenship for granted. He instilled in me, though it took many years, the importance on knowing current events and the political climate. As citizens we must not be complacent about those that are in authority over us.
God instructed Moses to pick godly men to be in authority over the people. Exodus 18:21 “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:” Our Founders made the same declaration. John Adams stated: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” John Quincy Adams wrote: “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.”
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This can only mean that those that were in authority in civil government were god fearing, moral and just men. George Washington stated: “Without a humble imitation of the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, we can never hope to be a happy nation,” and “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stated: "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." Patrick Henry states: “It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, 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.” Samuel Adams stated: "The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." James Madison stated: “We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God.” Ronald Reagan stated: “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.” All of these quotes indicate that our Founders expected the people to choose godly men for political office.
They took that responsibility seriously. We should as well. Jesus stated in Matthew 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” The Greek word used for violence here is biazo and in this context it means to seek for with the most ardent zeal and the intensest exertion. The Greek word used for violent is biastes and means strive to obtain its privileges with the utmost eagerness and effort. The verse is talking about obtaining the kingdom of God here on earth. It just doesn’t fall into our lap. We have to fight to keep what God has given us. Our Founders believed that the rights they fought for were God given, not man given. If we don’t fight to keep them, we will be led to socialism’s slavery. As the church led the charge in the Revolutionary war, the church must lead the charge today. As the church goes, the nation goes. When David went up against Goliath he asked ‘Is there no cause?’ I ask today, ‘Is there no cause?’ Our religious freedoms have been taken from us one by one since 1954 and we have done nothing. We’ve allowed the government to violate our 1st Amendment rights and pass laws regulating religious activities.
We’ve allowed the judicial branch adjudicate in areas where the Founders gave them no authority. We have allowed the courts to use international law to decide laws in this nation when they have sworn to uphold the Constitution and done nothing about it. How much longer are we going to sit on our lazy backsides and let our enemy walk all over us? Jesus gave us a mandate to occupy until He returns. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines ‘occupy’ as follows: To take possession; To keep in possession; to possess; to hold or keep for use. We are NOT doing this. We have possession of nothing more than four walls. We are supposed to possess our communities, our states and our nation. Our Founders were able to possess the nation and all we seem to be able to do is appease our enemies instead of putting him under our feet.
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We have a Constitution and we are all aware that not many elected officials have ever read it let alone follow it. That document is what guides those who are in power. One Founder, John Francis Mercer, summed up how we would be governed. He stated: “It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we are to propose will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the government and the interest they have in maintaining it that are to govern them.
The paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are the substance and must do the business.” It is obvious that most of the men that we have in Congress today have little regard for the Constitution. One Congressman stated that he ‘pays no attention to the Constitution’ when voting on legislation. Another has stated that they ‘make up the rules as they go.’ One Congressman even stated that the legislation they pass is to ‘control the people.’
Where is the church in all of this? Sitting in the shadows afraid to make a stand because the government might take away their precious 501 (c) 3? They are more afraid of the IRS than of God. The church does not raise up the people that are in authority over us even though that was what God commanded us in Exodus 18:21. The church stays away from politics and the result is those that are in power have no godly values and the so-called spiritual advisor to the president today is a man who has a distorted view of the Gospel and believes that what Jesus preached was communism.
We are one of the few nations that allow the people to elect their leaders and we have elected leaders that want to turn America into a nation of people that are totally dependent on the government. That is not what our Founders sacrificed their honor, treasure and blood for. God will call us to account for how we have handled the nation that we live in. Just as God held the prophets and kings responsible for the direction of Israel, we will be judged. President James A. Garfield stated over 100 years ago: “Now, more than ever before the people are responsible for the character of their Congress.
If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand the high qualities to represent them in the national legislature . . . if the centennial does not find us a great nation it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”
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We have found ourselves with men and women in authority that do not hold to the moral standards of our forefathers. They do not hold to the high character standards that once were without question the standard for political parties. We have done this to ourselves and it will only be us that can reverse it.
Click here for part -----> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,
� 2010 Roger Anghis - All Rights Reserved
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Pastor Roger Anghis is the Founder of RestoreFreeSpeech.org, an organization designed to draw attention to the need of returning free speech rights to churches that was restricted in 1954.
President of The Damascus Project, TheDamascusProject.org, which has a stated purpose of teaching pastors and lay people the need of the churches involvement in the political arena and to teach the historical role of Christianity in the politics of the United States. Married-37 years, 3 children, three grandchildren.
Web site: RestoreFreeSpeech.org
E-Mail: editor@restorefreespeech.org
