Paradise On Earth

The unsaved mind, particularly on the political left, believe that a social utopia can be brought about through governmental collectivism. John Collier was an idealistic social worker whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed in 1933 as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Collier once wrote:

    “If our modern world should be able to recapture this power, the earth’s natural resources and web of life would not be irrevocably wasted within the Twentieth century…..True democracy founded in neighborhoods and reaching over the world become the realized heaven on earth. And living peace, not just an interlude between wars, would be born and would last through the ages.”

Can a true democracy ever be achieved in a nation. That would seem to give every individual the right to choose to do as he or she sees fit. Jenna Ashley Robinson wrote:

    “The founders understood that democracy is dangerous: perhaps the biggest threat to individual liberty besides government itself. Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch.’ The framers of our Constitution understood that the greatest threat to individual liberty comes at the hands of government. Or at the hands of majorities empowered, by government sanction, to abuse the rights of their fellow man.”

With Independence Day tomorrow, what did the Founding Fathers have in mind? What drove these men to divinely design a form of government, capturing these ideals on two magnificent documents; what utopia did they have in mind? John Adams wrote in his diary on February 22, 1756:

    “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow man; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God…What a Utopia, what a Paradise would this region be.”

The Declaration of Independence is our nation’s founding document. The seventy-one words that make up the opening paragraph include the presumptions of a more perfect union that Adams spelled out in his diary entry at the ripe young age of twenty:

    “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which THE LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD ENTITLE THEM, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” (Emphasis added)

Historical revisionists go to great pains to lessen the influence of religion and philosophy on our Founding Fathers but truth is their greatest challenge. Mark Levin in his phenomenal book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” writes:

    “Some resist the idea of Natural Law’s relationship to Divine Providence, for they fear it leads to intolerance or even theocracy. They have it backwards. If man is ‘endowed by [the] Creator with certain inalienable writes,’ he is endowed with these rights no matter his religion or whether he has allegiance to any religion. It is Natural Law, divined by God and discoverable by reason, that prescribes the inalienability of the most fundamental and eternal human rights—right that are not conferred on man by man and, therefore, cannot legitimately be denied to man by man. It is the Divine nature of Natural Law that makes permanent man’s right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’” (Pg. 26-7)

Our founders understood religious and economic persecution; they personally lived under a tyrant and the Declaration of Independences is an indictment of King George III for “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

As a theologian and Bible teacher I try to look at all things through a biblical lens. Last week I read through the Declaration of Independence again with the Bible in mind. I presented the idea here a few weeks ago of spending four hours in prayer on the morning of Independence Day praying for our nation. The Holy Spirit has given me an insight that will allows us to read the Declaration and look at each clause in the light of Scripture. I am by no means offering that these Scriptures were in the minds of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin while drafting the Declaration, however it is not a stretch to assume that Scripture influenced all three of these men, as well as the other Founders. History bares this out.

I have broken down the Declaration of Independence and inserted scriptural references that show that these concepts written down by Jefferson were indeed “divined by God and discoverable by reason.” You can access this study here at my blog.

This weekend as America celebrates “The Fourth of July” let us liberty-loving citizens celebrate “Independence Day” and let us do so in reflection of the magnificence of the Declaration of Independence and the majesty of Holy Scripture. As we read over this Bible study may we pray through the reading out loud of the words in the Declaration and the holy verses. And at the end may we become resolved once again as a people “for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Have a blessed and safe weekend and please remember to go to church on Sunday.

In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4

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