The Indissoluble Bond Created By Our Founders

The Indissoluble Bond Created By Our Founders<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
J. Michael Sharman
 
 
            The Declaration of Independence was first read in public outside of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Philadelphia's Independence Hall on July 8th, 1776.
            The Continental Congress had approved the wording of the Declaration almost a week earlier on July 2nd, a day John Adams said, that "ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever."
            His son, John Quincy Adams, as a witness to that era and a U.S. president himself, spoke at many July 4th commemorations. On July 4, 1821 he 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."
"From the day of Declaration, they [the American people] were bound by the laws of God," John Q. preached. 
            A quarter century later, in another Fourth of July speech, he continued that theme: "Why is that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and venerated festival returns on this day? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? … Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon the earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity and gave to world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest Hebrew prophets 600 years before."
The worship leader at our church's early service, Lee Catherine Clayton, read those quotes to us and then read to us John Wycliffe's prologue to the first English translation of the Bible in the year 1384: "The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People."
Lee Catherine punctuated those ancient remarks with some from a more recent past.
Carlos Peña Romulo, the Philippine ambassador to the United States, cautioned us in 1952, "Never forget, Americans, that yours is a spiritual country. Yes, I know that you're a practical people. Like others, I've marveled at your factories, your skyscrapers, and your arsenals. But underlying everything else is the fact that America began as a God-loving, God-fearing, God-worshipping people."
Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran minister who spent 14 years in a Romanian prison because of his faith, said in 1967, "Every freedom-loving man has two fatherlands; his own and America. Today, America is the hope of every enslaved man, because it is the last bastion of freedom in the world. … I have seen fellow-prisoners in communist prisons beaten, tortured, with 50 pounds of chains on their legs – praying for America, that the dike will not crumble; that it will remain free."
After reciting those quotes, Lee Catherine then asked us, "How will America remain free? Scripture says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Where Jesus is proclaimed, exalted, and made Master and Lord, there His Spirit will be."
            The founders obviously knew that, and as our pastor, Jeff Light, pointed out, they wrote a sermon within the Declaration's last paragraph, proclaiming they were "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our Intentions," and, therefore, they could with confidence conclude, "with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred honor."
           
 
 
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