10 December 2007

"Blessed Be"--the nation whose God is the LORD (part 1)

There was a time in this country when it would have been unthinkable that anybody anywhere would be offended by the mere mention of the name Jesus Christ. And yet that’s precisely what is happening today. Over the last 80 or so years, many anti-Christian groups--not just UN-Christian groups, but vehemently ANTI-Christian groups--have been filing lawsuits, going to court, trying to strike the name of God from our lips. Because it “offends” them. They say that they feel “threatened” by Christians. And they have succeeded for the most part. But when the Constitution was being written, and that part called the First Amendment was being debated, it was never the intent of these men that prayer should ever be taken out of schools. In fact, Bible reading was part of the school day for children for the first 150 years this country existed. Then, in 1929, the atheists managed to get evolution into schools. The notion that we came from monkeys—that we are nothing more than glorified apes—has been crammed down our children’s throats for nearly 80 years.

Then, in 1963, Madelyn Murray O’Hair fought to have prayer removed from schools—and won. So now, not only are children being taught that they are worth nothing more than an animal. Now they are being led to believe that the Bible is just some book written by a bunch of old Jewish guys, and that it really isn't that important, and that they can live without it, and that they should be more worried about their self-esteem and not offending others with all that talk about this Jesus guy. Then in 1973, any concept that life is valuable got thrown out the window when the Supreme Court made their abominable ruling in Roe v. Wade, allowing women to kill their children before they're even born. So now, we’re not talking about a child growing inside a mother’s womb. Now we’re talking about a “blob of tissue”. We’re talking about “reproductive rights.” We’re talking about “choice.” I could show you pictures of what aborted children look like (here--GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING). And if a person can look at those pictures and still say that “a blob of tissue”, or “a choice”, then that person’s blood is truly cold.

And look at the mess we have in this country now. Look at all the shootings that are taking place in schools—by schoolchildren! And it’s only by God’s grace that it hasn’t happened somewhere here in Knoxville! And yet the people who hate the Bible, and who don’t want children to know anything about God, where do they place the blame? On the guns. It’s the guns’ fault. That gun just jumped up into that kid’s hand and started firing itself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to glorify guns, or gun violence. But a gun is simply a tool. Like a hammer or a wrench. A person can kill as many people, just as easily, by driving their car into a crowd as they can by using a gun.

But many people just focus on the gun. And they shift the focus from the person committing the crime to the object they use. They say “(X number of people) were killed by” knives, or guns or whatever. When they should be saying that “(X number of people) were killed by PEOPLE USING” knives, guns, whatever. But that’s the world we live in. To these people, the explosion of crime in this country over the last few decades—murder, and rape, and carjackings and prostitution and all kinds of new drugs—doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that children are being fed a bunch of gobbledy-gook that leads them to the conclusion that this life is all there is. Because, after all, we’re just monkeys, life doesn’t start until you come out of the womb. And if you get too old, and you're too much of an inconvenience, we should be able to just put you out of our misery.

And you should do whatever you want to in this life—it’s your life, you should go live it the way YOU want to live it. Because you're just an animal, and you're life really doesn’t matter, you're just going to die and turn to dust and that’s that. Listen to these chilling words from Jeffrey Dahmer. Listen carefully, because this is what your children are being taught in school:

“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing else…”

People say, “You can't legislate morality.” They forget that the laws we have against murder and rape and robbery are all based on some type of morality. Today, we're going to look at the first part of Psalm 33:12--“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.” Make no mistake about it—this country was settled and founded by those who worshiped Almighty God. And it was founded on what we call Judeo-Christian principles. That’s just a fancy way of saying the principles of justice and morality found in the Bible. The great patriots who led the fight for independence were very fervent in their devotion to God.

And they knew that if this land was going to flourish, and become a great nation, they knew that even the greatest men could not do it alone. They knew that the force of arms and armies would not give them the peace and security they would need. They knew that in order for these United States to survive and flourish, they would need help from Almighty God. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Listen to these quotes from some of our Founding Fathers:
  • George Washington—
    --Reason and experience…forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail [without] religious principle[s].
    --It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.
  • John Adams—
    --The general principles upon which [we] achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… those… principles… are as eternal and indisputable as the existence…of God.
    --[July 4th] ought to be [observed]…by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.
  • Benjamin Franklin—
    --God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?
    --In the beginning of the [war] with Britain…we had daily prayers… for Divine protection. Our prayers were heard, and they were graciously answered… do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?”
At the time the Constitution was written, it would have been unthinkable that there would ever be a time when people praying ANYWHERE would even be questioned! The men who wrote and signed the Constitution would have never considered opening any public meeting without prayer. In fact, they would have thought it foolish to open ANY meeting WITHOUT it. Yet what do we see today? Groups like the ACLU trying to dictate when and where we can even mention the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. They go around screaming “Separation of Church and State!”—a phrase that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. It was part of a letter written by Thomas Jefferson. And folks, Thomas Jefferson ain't the Constitution.

But we have the freedom in this country to worship as we will. That’s one of the things that makes this country great and which makes it so appealing to those who seek to come here—the fact that no matter what religion you practice, the laws of the United States protect you from being arrested and prosecuted and imprisoned for your religious practice. In fact, if someone does try to prohibit you from practicing your religion, you can take your grievance to court. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not encouraging you to worship another god besides the one true living God. It may be OK in the eyes of the laws of this country, but it ain't OK to Almighty God.

The reason this country was so great for so long, the reason we became independent, the reason we won the War of 1812, the reason that we won WWI and WWII was because we honored and revered Almighty God, and we gave Him the credit for this country’s very existence and success. But what has happened in the years since? What direction has this country been heading ever since we started turning away from God, and started screaming for more freedoms? We wanted to be able to go to a movie theater, or a magazine store, and watch and buy pornography. We want drugs legalized. We want prostitution legalized. We want to be able to kill our children before they're even born. There are some who want to legalize sex between men and boys. There are those who want to lower the age of consent, so they can have sex with little girls. We want the freedom to do whatever we want without any restrictions. We are a nation whose god is US.

So we have AIDS. We have STD’s skyrocketing—in TEENAGERS!! We have divorce running rampant. We have men beating up their wives. We have shows like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich—we sit and we watch and we laugh as people’s lives fall apart. We let our daughters leave the house wearing—well, barely anything. We let them go out and stay out until all hours of the night. Parents don’t want to be parents anymore. They don’t want to deal with their kids pouting, so they just give them whatever they want. Don’t think that these things haven’t found their way into the church. You can go to some churches any given Sunday and see teenage girls wearing spaghetti strap dresses, and strapless tops and short skirts, looking like whores. Looking just like the world that we are supposed to be set apart from! We are to be “IN” the world, but not “OF” the world.

We are to live in this kingdom of Satan, remembering that our citizenship is in heaven. So many of the problems and tragedies facing this country today would be virtually wiped out if people would just repent and turn their face to God. Because so many of these things are our own fault. So many of these things are preventable. You can't catch an addiction from somebody sneezing. Prostitutes don’t live inside your walls, waiting till you turn the lights out to attack you and force you to pay them for sex. I don’t think, anyways.

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part 2 tomorrow.