POLITICAL SERMONS FROM PASTORS IN THE FOUNDING ERA
PART 38
By
Pastor Roger Anghis
April 27, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
Preached before the Honorable Council, And the honorable House of Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusetts-Bay, in New-England. MAY 29th, 1776.
Being the Anniversary for the Election of THE honorable COUNCIL FOR the Colony. By Pastor Samuel West of Dartmouth.
Foundation Scriptures:
And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning : afterward thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city, Isaiah 4:26:
Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their congregations shall be established before me, and I will punish all that oppress them : and their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them, Jeremiah 30:20- 21.
As free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of GOD, 1 Peter 2: 16.
The beast that thou sawest, shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition : and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast. Revelation 17:8
West
has been describing the results of allowing men to be put into positions
of
authority that lack godly character. The result is exactly what we have
today, massive political corruption. The Democrat Party has embraced
everything that God opposes, homosexual marriage, abortion on demand
for any reason, teaching the abominable homosexual lifestyle to our
children in public schools, forcing religious organizations to financially
support all of the above even to the point of fining them if they don’t
participate. These were not even subjects to be considered before the
Founding Era, during the Founding Era or even well after the Founding
Era. We did not see this type of ‘tolerance’ until the early
to middle 1960’s and since that time period we have seen not just
the destruction of or the moral values that our Founders established,
but an outright disdain for anything moral. Recently a openly homosexual
football player was drafted into the NFL and all the media showed a
picture of him kissing his ‘boyfriend’. When an NFL player
tweeted his opinion of that action, he was fined and forced to take
some kind of diversity training.
My opinion of what we are seeing today as far as what society is willing to accept is because the pulpits of America will no longer preach messages like the one that we have been studying in the last few weeks. What West preached was being preached in virtually all of the pulpits of America from the founding of the first settlement in Virginia until the Declaration of Independence was declared and the preachers continued to preach the same message throughout the Revolutionary War and all the way into the early 1900’s. It wasn’t until after World War II that we began to see a significant cut back in this type of message from the American churches and then in 1954 the churches were unconstitutionally removed from the political arena with the Johnson Amendment. The churches have never fully regained their proper role in society since 1954 and because they were of very little influence we have seen more and more ungodly men in authority who do not care about executing their position as a minister of God. They consider it an opportunity for personal gain at the cost of the American public. This will not reverse until the pulpits of America return to preaching what God has mandated and ignoring the ‘rules’ that our government has set up for their own personal gain.
West has spent a considerable amount of time talking about ungodly people in authority but he also talks about how a man who does execute his position as mandated by God: “We have already seen that magistrates who rule in the fear of God ought not only to be obeyed as the ministers of God, but that they ought also to be handsomely supported, that they may cheerfully and freely attend upon the duties of their station ; for it is a great shame and disgrace to society to see men that serve the public laboring under indigent and needy circumstances; and, besides, it is a maxim of eternal truth that the laborer is worthy of his reward. It is also a great duty incumbent on people to treat those in authority with all becoming honor and respect, — to be very careful of casting any aspersion upon their characters. To despise government, and to speak evil of dignities, is represented in Scripture as one of the worst of characters; and it was an injunction of Moses, "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." Great mischief may ensue upon reviling the character of good rulers ; for the unthinking herd of mankind are very apt to give ear to scandal, and when it falls upon men in power, it brings their authority into contempt, lessens their influence, and disheartens them from doing that service to the community of which they are capable ; whereas, when they are properly honored, and treated with that respect which is due to their station, it inspires them with courage and a noble ardor to serve the public : their influence among the people is strengthened, and their authority becomes firmly established. We ought to remember that they are men like to ourselves, liable to the same imperfections and infirmities with the rest of us, and therefore, so long as they aim at the public good, their mistakes, misapprehensions, and infirmities, ought to be treated with the utmost humanity and tenderness.”[1] (Emphasis mine)
In his next statement he reminds his audience, the Massachusetts House of Representatives that it is not the duty of a Christian to honor a person in authority that is embroiled in things that are the results of bad character: “But though I would recommend to all Christians, as a part of the duty that they owe to magistrates, to treat them with proper honor and respect, none can reasonably suppose that I mean that they ought to be flattered in their vices, or honored and caressed while they are seeking to undermine and ruin the state ; for this would be wickedly betraying our just rights, and we should be guilty of our own destruction. We ought ever to persevere with firmness and fortitude in maintaining and contending for all that liberty that the Deity has granted us. It is our duty to be ever watchful over our just rights, and not suffer them to be wrested out of our hands by any of the artifices of tyrannical oppressors. But there is a wide difference between being jealous of our rights, when we have the strongest reason to conclude that they are invaded by our rulers, and being unreasonably suspicious of men that are zealously endeavoring to support the constitution, only because we do not thoroughly comprehend all their designs. The first argues a noble and generous mind; the other, a low and base spirit.”[2] (Emphasis mine)
|
West warned about the need to be ever vigilant concerning maintaining the liberties that have been granted mankind by God that they had already, before the Revolutionary War had been declared, established in the American society. Britain was trying to negate those liberties and force the existing British way of life on America. West declared that this was to be opposed with all that America had. Today we have in power the government that the Founders demanded separation from. I believe that today’s government is worse than anything the British government even tried to impose on us. What we have today is an administration that is doing its best to reduce America to a third world status and make America no better than any other nation. This must be resisted at all costs and the fight must begin in the pulpits.
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, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38,
Footnotes:
1.
Pulpit of the American Revolution, John W. Thorton, The Federalist Papers
Project, (Gould and Lincoln, Boston), pp. 303-304.
2.
Pulpit of the American Revolution, John W. Thorton, The Federalist Papers
Project, (Gould and Lincoln, Boston), p. 304.
� 2014 Roger Anghis - All Rights Reserved
Share
This Article
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
