In this thought-provoking episode, we delve into the foundational Christian roots of the United States as articulated by our early leaders. From Thomas Jefferson to Jedediah Morse, we explore the warnings they left for future generations about the potential decline of our nation if we stray from our founding principles. These warnings resonate more than ever in today’s rapidly evolving societal landscape.
Greetings, friends. Welcome to The Sound of Faith. to the Declaration of Independence, our nation’s birth certificate, to the Constitution, the framework of our freedoms, to the capital city itself, where the proof of our Christian foundation is written in its very cornerstones and walls, this incontrovertible truth, America is one nation under God. There’s a couple on here that really piqued my interest. And I’m calling them the warners. the warners. So even back then, there were men who maybe it was the Holy Spirit because they saw the tyranny in Europe that they were escaping, but for whatever reason, in their speeches, there is a strong warning to those who would forget God and abandon the Christian foundation that we have. And let’s see, the first one is Thomas Jefferson. who also was one of our presidents, amen, and he was also part of the writing of the Declaration of Independence. People think that he had a big part of writing the Constitution. Big, big error. Big misunderstanding. While the Constitution was being written in that so-called hot, stuffy room in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson was in France. And everybody uses him to say separation of church and state. He wasn’t even in the room. He wasn’t in the city and he wasn’t in the country. He was in France when the Constitution was being written. So the separation of church and state, they picked up, I don’t have the information with me, but they picked that up from a private letter. A private letter that he wrote to some ministers up in New England because the ministers in New England were afraid that, like it used to be in England, that they could be forced to come under a certain particular religion. That’s why they wanted to leave England. They didn’t all want to be of the Church of England. Amen. And so he, in a private letter, answered them back and said no. No, because the Constitution says that there is a separation of church and state. Saying that the government can’t force a religion on you. Not saying that the government can take away your right to religion. So let’s what he says, read this little warning he has. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis? What is that? A conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God. That they may not be violated, but without his wrath. That’s a pretty strong warning. He’s saying if you remove from the minds of the people, the American public, the conviction. How many know that’s a strong word? The conviction that all our liberties and blessings are a gift from God. If you remove that from their mind, from their conscience, how can we do that without incurring the wrath of God? Amen. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing today. Okay, here’s another one. This is by Jedediah Morse. He was the first American in the 1800s to put out a textbook on the geography of America. Which you can understand, America was a new nation. It was still being developed. People were still going west. Amen? But he wrote what became a textbook in public schools. For many, many years, he wrote subsequent books. that became the standard textbooks in American schools for geography. His son, Samuel Morse, and this is spelled M-O-R-S-E, Samuel Morse has a greater claim to fame that we know of, we think of, and he’s the one that invented the Morse code. So this is Jedidiah, and he says… To the kindly influence of Christianity, we owe that degree of civil freedom and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown and all the blessings which flow from them, we must fall with them. So these are some of the warnings that we see from those men who lived in the very early times of our nation. He said, if you remove the pillars of Christianity… Amen? And when we speak specifically of marriage, the two main pillars of marriage that the scripture tells us in Genesis 2.24, Jesus, he repeated it in Matthew 19.5 and 6, Paul repeated it in Ephesians 5.31, the two pillars of marriage is monogamy and heterosexuality. So when we begin to remove these pillars, then we’re going to find that we’re going to fall. Because if you start removing pillars, how many know the roof’s going to cave in? Amen. And then the foundation’s going to go. Amen. So our nation was founded by these great men. What was the thing that made our nation great? What was the one thing that these men all had in common? Let’s turn to Proverbs and read one verse in 1434. Proverbs 1434. The thing that these men had in common. that caused God to bless America like no other nation on the earth. Amen? He blessed Israel because they were the apple of his eye and his peculiar treasure. But no nation has risen to the political power, to the military power, to the economic power that America has. Most all of your modern day inventions… We’re Americans. Amen? So what was the thing that did it? Proverbs 14, 34. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. See, folks, no matter how glorious the foundation, how mighty the military, no matter how prosperous the people, no matter how resourceful a land is, God’s word said sin is a reproach. Amen. It’s a reproach. And we read that the nation that forgets God will be turned into hell. And we are leaving the foundation that this great nation was built upon. We are turning our backs on God and we are forgetting God. Amen? And the results are going to be catastrophic. Let me read to you from another great one of our founding fathers, Noah Webster. He said the moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and the evils that men suffer from vice and crime and ambition and injustice, oppression, slavery and war proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. Amen? That’s how it’s going to happen. Amen? And so we have forgotten God. We no longer teach our children in our schools since 1962, 1963, when we took out prayer and we took out Bible reading. We’re no longer teaching our children the foundational truths of the Word of God. When I was in school, every morning we started with… The Lord’s Prayer, one of the Psalms, and the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Amen? Every single morning. And some of the Psalms that I learned early in childhood, honestly, I didn’t learn them from reading the Bible. I was in grade school. I wasn’t really a big Bible reader at that time. I got what I got from Sunday school and sitting in church. But some of the Psalms that I learned verbatim is because we recited them every morning in school. Like Psalm 100. Right? Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Know ye that the Lord, L-O-R-D, all caps, he is God. And not we, ourselves, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful and bless the Lord for his mercy endureth forever and his truth to all generations. I did not learn that in church. I learned it at Armstead Elementary School number 33 on Light Street in South Baltimore. That’s where I learned it. And you say, well, that’s just a song, but listen to what it said. It is God who has made us. and not we ourselves. They wouldn’t be able to read that in school anymore today because today they teach you that we were not created, we evolved. It’s evolution now. Even though the Declaration of our Independence, the first document of this nation, says that we had these inalienable rights that we have received from our Creator, that all men are… created equally, not evolved equally, but created equally. Amen? But we are failing to teach our children that. And today it’s gotten to the point, okay, now Bible reading and prayer went out in 62 and 63. Now they want to get rid of the Pledge of the Allegiance to the flag. Some and a majority want to get rid of it because they don’t like the part that says one nation under God. They don’t like that at all. They say that that violates their conscience and it offends them. I guess it does because as I preached last week, their conscience is filthy, defiled. Amen? And that’s why it does. And there are even rallies being staged to burn the flag. And now you have other groups that are saying, I’m not going to fly the American flag. I’m not flying the red, white, and blue. I’m flying the rainbow flag. which is the symbol for the gay agenda. Then we’ve got others that are flying a black, green, and red, white flag, which is the symbol for African Americans, saying we don’t want the American flag, we want this flag. And then you’ve got others that are bold enough to fly the ISIS flag in the United States. Amen? But the American flag now is, oh, that offends me. And this is why our nation is filled with perversion and child prostitution and homosexuality and Satanism and violence and gangs and murder and abortion. Amen? Because we no longer teach them the Lord, He is our God. And He has made us. And He has created us. Amen? He has created us in His image and His likeness. But we’ve taken that away from them. Turn with me in Deuteronomy. We’ll read a couple scriptures in Deuteronomy chapter 4. Because there is such a correlation between America and Israel. And I say that because there are only two nations on the face of the earth that God specifically created. And that was for his glory, for his honor, and to propagate his word. And that was Israel and America, which we read in the Mayflower Compact. Amen? So Deuteronomy 4, let’s look at verse 7. And God is asking this question. This is God speaking. For what nation is there so great? who have God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all that things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great that have statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget. the things which thine eyes have seen, unless they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. But teach them, teach them thy sons and thy sons’ sons. Amen? And we can very easily insert America here. Amen? Because what nation is there, as I’ve already shown you through the words of our founding fathers? Amen? What nation is like unto our nation that was established on such laws of righteousness? Amen? biblical principles and teachings of Christianity. Amen? But he’s saying you’ve got to take heed lest you forget. And we know what the consequence is for a nation that forgets God. All nations that forget God will be turned into hell. Amen? But he said, don’t forget, but teach them to thy children. But you know what? We can learn very much. We can learn from Israel’s example what not to do. So turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 1. Now we read in Deuteronomy, God said, don’t forget, but teach your children and their children and their children and so on. But when we get to the time of Isaiah, and this is right before the nations are going to go into exile, they’re going to be carried away. Amen. Their king’s going to be stripped from the throne. They’re going to be carried away. This is what the prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah chapter 1, verse 2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. There’s nothing so painful as to raise children and invest your time, your love, your wisdom, your understanding, yourself into them, and then they grow up and rebel. It breaks your heart like nothing else will. And the other side of that is what John said, I have no greater joy than to know my children walk in truth. Amen. The greatest joy is to know that your children are walking in truth. And the greatest heartache is to see that they rebel against the truth. Amen. And so this is God speaking about his children. Verse 2. Verse 3, the ox knows his owner and the ass or the donkey knows his master’s crib or where he gets his food. But Israel does not know. My people don’t know or don’t consider. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. They are going away backward. Amen? He says, I’ve nourished them. I’ve brought them up. I’ve blessed them. I have poured out abundant blessings upon them. And instead of them being appreciative and grateful for my graciousness, they have rebelled against me. Look at the ox and the ass. They’re the dumbest animals there are. And they’re stubborn too. Amen? Amen? Dumb and stubborn. But he says, you know what? They know their masters. They know where the crib is, and that’s like the feeding trough. They know where to get their food. They know who butters their bread. They know who the master is that provides all things for them. They may be dumb as an ox or dumb as an ass and stubborn as one, but they know their master. They know who feeds them. Amen. He says, but not my people, not my kids, not my children. They don’t know me. It’s not that they don’t know me. They have forgotten me. They have rebelled against me. They were willfully ignorant. Amen. He said they are a people, a nation. They’re laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. Because you see, as I ministered before in other messages, the law of iniquity is this bent towards evil. It’s not just the specific sins, it’s the tendency toward being sinful. And the big problem with the law of iniquity is that it is not stagnant, but with every generation it gets worse. Every generation it becomes more iniquitous. Amen? He says they go from iniquity unto iniquity. Evil workers shall wax worse and worse. Amen? deceiving and being deceived amen so that’s what he’s saying because here’s what it boils down to folks and this is what we got to look at in our nation today sinful parents bear sinful children and they will go deeper into sin than their parents did they’ll go greater into depravity than the generation before and if you think this generation is depraved what do you think the next generation want to be that will grow up from day one with marriage being between, by that time, who knows who it’ll be between. Not only two men or two women, but we’ve got the polygamists now standing up and saying, well, hey, I should have my right. And you want to hear this one? Maybe you have. Pedophiles, specifically men who have a very strong urge for little boys. They said that just like the homosexual, they cannot help themselves. They were made that way. So who knows what the next generation is going to be like when children that are born now are going to grow up with that. They’re going to have no reference point. Of what a godly marriage is. It will become so obsolete, so antiquated. They won’t know what that is. Marriage is Heather has two mommies. Amen? That little book that came out in New York City. About, I don’t know, 20 years ago, it got the ball rolling in the public school systems. Amen? So the light, Israel was created to be a light to the Gentiles. Amen? But their light went out. And they were darkened, and instead, they ended up going into exile. And they went into slavery to the kings of Babylon. Amen? Turn in your Bibles with me to Matthew, the fifth chapter. Matthew 5, looking at verse 13. Jesus said, “‘If the light in you be dark, how great is your darkness!’ Looking at Matthew 5, 13. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost his savor or his taste, wherewith shall it be salted? It’s thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men. Amen? You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Amen. The dechristianization of America is causing her godly foundation to crumble under the weight of atheism and evolution, abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and racial hatred. The founding fathers warned God’s judgment would come upon this nation if we were ever to abandon our faith in God and the Bible. Friends, that day has come. Scripture says every nation that forgets God shall be turned into hell. And it would be foolish to think that America is the exception. Jesus said a city set on a hill cannot be hid. Washington, D.C. is a city set on a hill. Our capital building is called the hill, the highest seat of government on the planet, the emblem of liberty and freedom, the ideal of human government. Decisions made on the hill have far-reaching powers and influence, and when we examine the physical buildings and monuments in Washington, we quickly see they are inscribed with scriptures and petitions to God. The voices of her founders still speak today in the city that cannot be hid. One Nation Under God will take you through the Christian facts of America’s founding. It can be ordered on CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request SK181. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to soundoffaith.org where you can order on MP3. But to order by mail, send your minimum love gift of $10 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, and request SK181. Till next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.
