Did You Know That:
Congress formed the American Bible Society. 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.”
Times have changed, the world is different from those days, yet we all have the same hopes and desires, the love of God, family and the freedoms that such a spiritually based birth gave us here in America. Yes, we are a great nation, but it was earned by the sweat and toil and prayers of men and women like these.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks! I’ve been contemplating this whole presidential thing and also the state of our country. Blessings to you and your family!
Brian
Unbelievable! Why the selective quotes from Jefferson and Adams? I am so tired of people propping these men up to decieve us into thinking they were Christian men. Jefferson denied the deity of Christ and re-wrote the new testament leaving out the virgin birth and all of the miracles. Ed you know that many of these men were 33rd degree Masons. And my 2 cents on Reformed and Calvinists is that they have another gospel with their security in sin message. Ed I love you but I can’t abide these inconsistencies.
I am sorry for your weariness.. However, the quotes were not out of context and not ‘inconsistent with my whole point that our ‘founding fathers’ as they are referred to, made it clear that this nation was one set upon Biblical principles with God and His word as the foundation. They established the Bible as a key document in our government, lived by and governed by its principles and said the things that i quote her.. in context,, and in public.. I am not here to defend any of their personal lives. This entire article dealt with public record at the time our nation’s foundation as it was dedicated to the one and True God.
You accuse Jefferson of being deceptive in his faith in Christ, yet much of his public statements were of Christ and the Jefferson Bible was a primer of the sayings and doctrines of Christ only, pulled out from all the other Biblical writings in his personal attempt to show the purity of what men heard directly from Christ only.
Not the approach I would ever use.. but he certainly understood who Christ was and when he said “I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”… I have to take it at face value.
Are you invalidating the entire article because you think he was somehow a liar along with Adams?
The only signers of the Declaration of Independence who were Masons is a short list.
William Ellery, RI
Benjamin Franklin, PA
John Hancock, MA
Joseph Hewes, NC
William Hooper, NC
Robert Treat Paine, MA
Richard Stockton, NJ
George Walton, GA
William Whipple, NH
Most were not 33rd degree but Blue Lodge members.
President Adams was an outspoken critic of Freemasonry. He wrote, in one instance: “I am prepared to complete the demonstration before God and man, that the Masonic oaths, obligations and penalties, cannot, by any possibility, be reconciled to the laws of morality, of Christianity, or of the land.”
Jefferson has been accused of being a Freemason but absolutely no evidence exists. One Masonic scholar, James W. Beless, 33° wrote in the Scottish Rite Journal:
“Was Thomas Jefferson a Freemason? This question has been asked by Masons and others and not conclusively answered for 200 years. In 1960, Brother William R. Denslow, Masonic scholar and editor of the Transactions of the Missouri Lodge of Research, concluded that Jefferson was not a Mason, saying all claims for his membership are based on association or insinuation, with no proof by records.” http://srjarchives.tripod.com/1998-03/beless.htm