"I am a most unworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely

America at the Crossroads

ARISE AND SHINE

Isaiah 60:1-3

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

Thus God describes the rising up of His Church at the end of the Dark Ages. This is the beginning of a wondrous time as God begins to free Christian Europe from the clutches of Mystery Babylon, and the Church once again begins to flourish as God had foretold in Isaiah 60.

In fact, out of all of history, there are three events that take place, which would change the world forever during this selfsame period of time. In 1456 Gutenberg prints his first Bible in Germany. In 1492 Columbus discovers America. In 1517, Martin Luther begins the Protestant Reformation. These three events changed the face of the world as we know, and yet, out of all of history, God saw fit to have these three take place within the same generation.

Isaiah 40:22

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens

Indeed one of the most powerful of these events occurred in the 15th century when a young man stood up to the scientific community and the established Church of his day. He did this because he had reached a conclusion based, not on the current evidence available in his day, but on a single verse he had found in the Bible. This young man’s name is Christopher Columbus

"I am a most unworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous presence. For the execution of the journey to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics, or maps. It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied."

Now Columbus would never complete the journey he set out on, but Magellan would. He did this in spite of the vast weight of the scholars, scientists, theologians, and evidence standing against him. He simply clung to one verse in God's word (Isaiah 40:22), and, using that verse, would change the world forever. God used this verse to guide Columbus to the New World in 1492.

Isaiah 60:9

Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.

In the Old Testament, the isles represent anything that is not part of the Old World, which consisted of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Furthermore Tarshish is a seaport in the south of Spain. What this verse is saying is that there were people who lived outside of the Old World who were waiting to hear the gospel, and the first ships to travel there would come from the south of Spain.

Keep in mind that the prophet Isaiah prophesied all this around 800 BC. It would be nearly 2,300 years later, in 1492, at the end of the Dark Ages, that men would travel from the Old World to the isles of the New World. The first ships to do this would leave from the south of Spain, just as God said they would. Interesting, to say the least!

ONE NATION UNDER GOD

The Spanish, thanks to Christopher Columbus, were the first to set up colonies in the New World in the 16th century, concentrating mostly on the hunt for gold in Central and South America. Following their example, the French would also begin exploring, going much further north and trying to find a waterway through the Hudson River area of Canada. English exploration was limited until 1585, when Sir Walter Raleigh tried to set up a colony in North America unsuccessfully.

In 1588 England defeated the Spanish Armada and this opened the Atlantic Ocean for English exploration to truly begin. The first permanent settlement would be tried when a group who called themselves the Virginia Company petitioned King James I of England to colonize the New World. The king's response was direct and to the point as to the fact that the purpose of this colony was to be solely for the....

"propagating of Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages, living in these parts, to human civility and to a settled and quiet government."

Thus the first English settlements in the New World were set up for a specific purpose, the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In 1607 the Jamestown settlement, and in 1620 the Plymouth settlement, were begun. In due time, our ancestors would break with England and take their own place among the nations. Instead of being ruled by a king, we decided to become a Bible Commonwealth, basing our government solely on the pattern found in the Bible.

Isaiah 33: 22

For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us.

The concept of American government is founded in the Holy Scriptures. Here we see the three branches of government: the judiciary, or the judge; the legislative, or the lawgiver; and the administrative, or the king. In America, we established three branches to our government based on this pattern. The judges of the Old Testament would be represented with the judicial branch of our government. The lawgivers would be found in the senators and representatives of our legislative branch, and the king would be found in the president, who today presides over the executive branch of our government.

The biblical system of governing was first put into effect in America when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock to set up what they called a Bible Commonwealth. Thus throughout most of our history our laws were based on common law, or the law founded on the Bible.

When our nation was founded in 1776, the predominant source for our common laws was "Commentaries on the Laws of England" written by Sir William Blackstone. These commentaries referred so many times to the Bible that one of the greatest evangelists of the 19th century was Charles G. Finney who was saved while studying for his bar exam. In his own words....

"I think I then saw, as clearly as I ever have in my life, the reality and fullness of the atonement of Christ. I saw that His work was a finished work; and that instead of having, or needing, any righteousness of my own to recommend me to God, I had to submit myself to the righteousness of God through Christ. After this distinct revelation had stood some little time before my mind, the question seemed to be put: 'Will you accept it now, today?'. I replied: 'Yes, I will accept it today, or I will die in the attempt'."

We will now allow some of our Chief Executives to speak out on what the establishment of our American government was truly about.

"It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States."-George Washington (1789-1797)

"That the Almighty does make use of human agencies, and directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the plainest statements of the Bible. I have had so many evidences of His direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from above."-Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)

"Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure ourselves what that life would be if these standards were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves."-Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)

"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.....The Bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God, and spiritual nature and needs of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation. America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture."-Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)

GIANTS IN THE LAND

Numbers 13:33

And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

God was not the only spiritual force at work in America, however. There have been, from the beginning, many spiritual giants in the land. One of the first giants we had to contend with was slavery. Slavery was first introduced into the Jamestown colony in 1620, the same year that the Plymouth colony was founded. This evil spiritual force would continue to grow in America until it would finally be stopped by a bloody Civil War in the 1860s.

Meanwhile in England, in the year of 1850, another spiritual giant would arise. A young man by the name of Charles Darwin would write a paper entitled "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." This paper gave evidence that life had not been created by God, but rather had evolved from lower forms of life. This new theory of evolution caught hold quickly in Europe.

In 1859, a young man by the name of Karl Marx would write "Das Kapital" which he dedicated to Charles Darwin. He used Darwin’s theory of evolution to build his own political system, today called Communism, and this spiritual giant would change the world. Finally in 1910, the Communist Party would be formed in Russia, and the world has not been the same since.

Around 1917 another young man would build a second political party using these same tenets found in the theory of evolution. Thus the Nazi Party was formed in Germany. This young leader’s masterpiece would be entitled "Mein Kampf", which means "My Struggle" in English. He took his title directly from the phrase "the Struggle for Life" which is found, once again, in the title of "Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. Throughout his life, this young man named Adolph Hitler would openly state "I am simply taking evolution and applying it to world politics!" Thus the spiritual giant of Nazism was born.

Meanwhile, in America, yet another giant appeared. In 1917, Roger Nash Baldwin, a World War I draft dodger formed the National Civil Liberties Bureau. The United States Postal Service would determine his Communist propaganda to be unmailable and he would ultimately be arrested by the FBI and spend a year in the penitentiary. After his release, he would share offices with the Communist Party USA. Finally in 1920, he would rebuild his organization under the name of the American Civil Liberties Union with the help of the Communist Party USA. Thus was born the spiritual giant that we today call the ACLU.

The founding members of this group included Norman Thomas, Communist candidate for President; William Foster, director of the Communist Party USA; Max Eastman, editor of the Communist Party Paper; and Clarence Darrow, an attorney and anti-Christian crusader. At the time of its founding, the ACLU was considered a Communist front organization. Baldwin has openly stated concerning this group that "Communism is the goal.", and would later himself admit that groups he worked with were actually recruiting centers for the Communist Party.

In 1920, Clarence Darrow defended Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb who had kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks. One of the reasons he gave for the killers' actions was that they had been taught the evolutionary worldview at the University of Chicago and thus considered killing a person no different than killing any other animal. His closing statements included the following.

"Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite, not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way."

His defense was so successful that it saved the two killers from the death penalty. Darrow would be one of the early pioneers of the insanity defense in this case. Today this defense is repeatedly used as a legal technicality to release dangerous criminals back into our culture to seek out new victims.

In 1925 the ACLU ran ads in Chicago newspapers looking for a teacher who was willing to get a job in the Tennessee public school system to help them undermine the teaching of creation science in American classrooms, as evolution was a basic tenet of Communist doctrine. They found a young man named John Scopes who was willing to take them up on their offer, and the rest is history.

This calculated violation of the law resulted in the now famous Scopes Monkey Trial. While they lost the case, the national media made a circus of the event. Today we can clearly see this as the first major step away from God by this nation in this century.

The cry of the ACLU at this trial was that creation science and evolution should have equal treatment under the law. Interestingly enough today, as evolution has now gained the upper hand in the public schools, this same group has now become a major opponent to giving equal treatment to creation science. America has been on a long downward spiral since that time.

Now the rule by common law is replaced by case law. This means that laws are no longer made by the legislative branch, but are now created by decisions made by the judicial branch. Laws that have stood for centuries can now fall victim to the whims of any activist judge and his private interpretation of the law. Thus the ACLU set the stage for America’s laws to no longer be based on the word of God, but rather on the traditions of men.

In the 1960s they decided it was time to take the next step and remove God from American classrooms altogether. This time they found an atheist by the name of Madelyn Murray O'Hare who had just returned from the Soviet Union. They brought suit on her behalf and millions of school children were told they could no longer pray or read the Bible in American public schools.

Since I have stated many times the horrendous results of this decision, let me share just one of those now. William Bennett, former director of the National Education Association and the author of "The Book of Virtues", stated concerning American schools the following.

"In 1940 teachers were surveyed. They were asked 'What are the most serious problems in the schools?', and teachers told us, in their own words, that the most serious problems were talking in the halls, running, chewing gum, and making noise against lockers. In 1990 teachers were asked, 'What are the most serious problems in American schools?", and they said alcoholism, assault, rape, robbery, drugs, and teenage pregnancy. That is cultural decline."

A basic tenet of Communist doctrine is that men are just educated animals. Therefore killing humans should be no worse than killing any other animal. Thus, in the 1970s, the ACLU found a young woman who wanted an abortion and Roe vs. Wade is now history. Since that day, over 30 million Americans have been killed with the approval of our government.

It is interesting to note that we are today having major problems with the Social Security system. This is a system funded by workers contributions to help the disabled and aged within our culture. Is there any wonder it is in financial difficulty when we have killed over 30 million of the potential contributors?

This is just a few examples of some of the ungodly actions taken by the ACLU, which have changed American society for the worse. There are literally hundreds more. That is why I say, with confidence, that the ACLU is definitely one of the giants opposing the church in America today. There can be no doubt that this group is not interested in equal treatment under the law but are now and have always been change agents for Communism in our nation.

The results of these ungodly policies can be seen all around us. Keep in mind, this is only one of the giants we contend with today. These gianst have many strange names like NAMBLA, who promotes the sexual abuse of children, or NARAL and NOW, who both promote the killing of childen. They each protect a spiritual stronghold that gives them the power to exist and they will continue to grow as long as God’s people allow them too.

We stand at a crossroads today. One fork is a broadway that leads downward to death and destruction. The other is a narrow path that leads us back to the God of our fathers. Which road shall we take? It is up to each one of us to do all we can at this vital hour to turn America back to God.

II Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.