Americas Fall from Grace

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Americas Fall from Grace

• Standing Against The Decline of America

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Ideas either govern the world or throw it
into chaos. - Albert Camus
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• A nation that forgets its past can function no
  better than an individual with amnesia. History
  is a guide to navigation in perilous times.
  History is who we are and why we are the way we
  are.
• David C. McCullough

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• An Accurate Picture
• of American History

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• ... our civilization and our institutions are
  emphatically Christian. This is a religious
  people. This is historically true from the
  discovery of this continent, to the present hour
  there is a single voice making this affirmation.
  We find everywhere a clear recognition of the
  same truth . . . that this is a Christian
  nation.
• - Trinity Decision, U.S. Supreme Court (1892)

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• 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 evils which men suffer, from vice, crime,
  ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war
  proceed from their despising or neglecting the
  precepts contained in the Bible.
• - Noah Webster

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• The greatest genius of the American Revolution
  was that it united in one indissoluble bond the
  principles of civil government and the principles
  of Christianity. It is only men and women in
  whom their dwells the spirit of Christ, who is
  able to turn their hearts and minds and to
  energize their beings toward godliness and
  morality, that freedom can exist.
• - John Quincy Adams

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The Madisonian Model

• Isaiah 3322 the lord is our judge, the lord
  is our lawgiver, the lord is our king.
• Jeremiah 179 -The heart of man is deceitfully
  wicked, above all things no man knowth it.

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• We have staked the whole future of American
  civilization, not upon the power of government,
  far from it. We have staked the future of all of
  our political institutions upon the capacity of
  mankind for self-government upon the capacity of
  each and all of us to govern ourselves, to
  control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according
  to the Ten Commandments of God.
• - James Madison

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• To suppose that any form of government will
  secure liberty or happiness without virtue in the
  people is a chimerical idea.
• - James Madison

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• We all came into these parts of America for one
  and the same end and aim, the advancement of the
  kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• - The New England Confederation

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• It may do for other countries and other
  governments to talk about the state supporting
  religion, but here, under our own free
  institutions, it is religion which must support
  the state.
• - Robert Winthrope

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• Without God and the Bible, it would be
  impossible to govern America.
• - George Washington

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• Finally, let us not forget the religious
  character of our origin... Our fathers were
  brought hither by their high veneration for the
  Christian religion. They journeyed in its light
  and labored in its hope. They sought to
  incorporate its principles with the elements of
  their society and to diffuse its influence
  through all their institutions, civil, political,
  or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments and
  extend their influence still more widely in the
  full conviction that that is the happiest society
  which partakes in the highest degree of the mild
  and peaceful spirit of Christianity.
• - Daniel Webster

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• When Did It All Change?

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• But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the
  gracious hand which preserved us in peace and
  multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and
  we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of
  our hearts, that all these blessings were
  produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of
  our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we
  have become too self-sufficient to feel the
  necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too
  proud to pray to the God who made us. Abraham
  Lincoln, instituting Thanksgiving (1863)

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• Karl Marx, when asked what he was trying to do,
  said, dethrone God and destroy Capitalism.

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• Congress shall make no law respecting an
  establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
  free exercise thereof.
• - First Amendment, U.S. Constitution

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• The First Amendment has erected a wall between
  church and state. That wall must be kept high and
  impregnable. We could not approve the slightest
  breach.
• - Everson v. Board of Education

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• Engel v. Vitale (1962) A verbal prayer offered
  in a public school is unconstitutional, even if
  the prayer is both voluntary and denominationally
  neutral.

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• Duran v. Nitsche (1991) Teachers and students
  freedom of speech is protected until that speech
  becomes religious, at which time the speech is
  deemed unconstitutional.

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• Stone v. Graham (1980) It is unconstitutional
  for students to see the Ten Commandments since
  they might read, meditate upon, respect or obey
  them.

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• Reed v. Hoven (1965) It is unconstitutional
  for a student to pray over his lunch out loud.

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• Harris v. Joint School District (1994) When a
  student addresses an assembly of his peers, he
  effectively becomes a government representative
  it is therefore unconstitutional for that student
  to engage in prayer.

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• Warsaw v. Tehachapi (1990) It is
  unconstitutional for a public cemetery to have a
  planter in the shape of a cross, for if someone
  were to view that cross, it could cause
  emotional distress and thus constitute
  injury-in-fact.

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• Roberts v Madigan (1990) It is
  unconstitutional for a classroom library to
  contain books which deal with Christianity, or
  for a teacher to be seen with a personal copy of
  the Bible at school.

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• Washegesic v. Bloomingdale Public Schools (1993)
  Artwork may not be displayed in schools if it
  depicts something religious even if that
  artwork is considered an historical classic.

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• Florey v. Sioux Falls School District (1979)
  It is unconstitutional for a kindergarten class
  to ask whose birthday is celebrated by Christmas.

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• County of Allegheny v. ACLU (1989) It is
  unconstitutional for a nativity scene to be
  displayed on public property unless surrounded by
  sufficient secular displays to prevent it from
  appearing religious.

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• The only true basis of all government is the
  law of God and nature. For government is an
  ordinance of Heaven, designed by the all
  benevolent Creator.
• - Samuel Adams

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• The wall of separation between church and state
  has made a perfect chaos out of legal decisions.
  It has been no guide in governing, and it is bad
  history and worse law and it should be frankly
  and explicitly abandoned.
• - William Renquist, Chief Justice of the U.S.
  Supreme Court

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• Justice Byron White concurred with Justice
  Renquist and said,
• all decisions made under that doctrine should
  be reevaluated.

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• What has been the Impact?

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• The new Reich will give its youth to no one,
  but will itself take youth and give to youth its
  own education and upbringing.
• - Adolf Hitler, 1937

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• There is no god, and there is no soul, hence,
  there are no needs for the props of traditional
  religion. With dogma and creeds excluded, then
  inimitable, unchangeable truth is also dead and
  buried. There is no room for fixed natural law
  or moral absolutes.
• John Dewy

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• One of the major characteristics of the moral
  decline in the United States in recent decades
  has been the rapid growth of moral relativism.
  This idea is now so wide-spread that each
  individual has some kind of sovereign right to
  create, develop and express whatever values he or
  she happens to prefer.
• Paul Vitz, NYU

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• ...to establish a system of state-national
  schools from which all religion is to be
  excluded.
• - Orastese Bronson (1828)

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The Pied-Pipers of our time

• Dr. Spock
• John Dewy
• Sigmund Freud
• Avalok Ellis
• Bertrand Russell

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• In the late 1960s, a Newsweek Magazine article
  exclaimed, the old taboos are dead or dying, a
  new more permissive society is taking shape. The
  people are breaking the bonds of puritan society
  and helping America to grow up.

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• No gods, no masters. Let the government and
  the gods make laws for themselves, I want none of
  them
• . . . What they consider morality, we consider
  moral imbecility.
• - Margaret Sanger

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Phil 318-19

• For, as I have often told you before and now
  say again even with tears, many live as enemies
  of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is
  destruction, their god is their stomach, and
  their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on
  earthly things.

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1 Cor 69-10

• Do you not know that the wicked will not
  inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived
  Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor
  adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual
  offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor
  drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will
  inherit the kingdom of God.

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New Methodology

• Values Clarification
• Emotive Based
• Be true to yourself
• Critical Thinking
• Cognitive Based
• Intellectual Ascent to Rightousness

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• Prov 1412 - There is a way that seems right to
  a man, but in the end it leads to death.
• Prov 226 - Train a child in the way he should
  go, when he is old he will not turn from it.

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Matt 713-14

• "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the
  gate and broad is the road that leads to
  destruction, and many enter through it. But small
  is the gate and narrow the road that leads to
  life, and only a few find it.

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• All who have meditated on the art of governing
  mankind are convinced that the fate of empires
  depends on the education of youth.
• - Aristotle

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• I am much afraid that schools will prove to be
  great gates of hell unless they diligently labor
  in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them
  in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place
  his child where the Scriptures do not reign
  paramount. Every institution in which men are
  not increasingly occupied with the Word of God
  must become corrupt.
• - Martin Luther

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• Where do we Go
• From Here?

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We Need to Be in Prayer

• Confess your sins to one another, and pray for
  one another so that you may be healed. The
  effective prayer of a righteous man can
  accomplish much.
• - James 516

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We Need to Be Informed

• We demolish arguments and every pretension that
  sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and
  we take captive every thought to make it obedient
  to Christ.
• - 2 Cor 105

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We Need to Be Outspoken

• This is what the LORD Almighty says "Just as I
  had determined to bring disaster upon you and
  showed no pity when your fathers angered me,"
  says the LORD Almighty, "so now I have determined
  to do good again to Jerusalem and Judah. Do not
  be afraid. These are the things you are to do
  Speak the truth to each other, and render true
  and sound judgment in your courts.
• - Zech 814-16

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We Need to Be Consistent in Our Christian
Worldview

• Do not love the world or anything in the world.
  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father
  is not in him.
• - 1 John 215

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We Need to Be Involved

• "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt
  loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty
  again? . . .You are the light of the world. A
  city on a hill cannot be hidden. . . In the same
  way, let your light shine before men, that they
  may see your good deeds and praise your Father in
  heaven.
• - Matt 513-16

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We Need to Be Missionaries

• Those who live according to the sinful nature
  have their minds set on what that nature desires
  but those who live in accordance with the Spirit
  have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind
  controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.
• - Rom 85-6

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Matt 2819-20

• Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
  them in the name of the Father and of the Son and
  of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
  everything I have commanded you. And surely I am
  with you always, to the very end of the age."