Another
Coffee Break:
The State
of Our Nation
Good
Morning! I need to take a break from the
series dealing with tribulation and wrath for a couple of weeks to talk about
the current state of our nation -- spiritually, politically and economically --
and talk about the crisis we all face.
I'll get back to our other series before too long.
A
portion of what I'm about to share has been shared before in several different
Coffee Breaks, but said a bit differently.
There
isn’t a one of us that would disagree with the premise that our entire body of
law, and our nation is built upon the foundation of the Constitution of the United States
So
reads the Preamble to the Constitution.
From there we launch into the specifics of that foundation to the laws
our founding fathers saw fit to incorporate as the starting place from which to
build a cohesive nation.
When
I ran for Congress back in 2004, I made certain that folks understood I was
running as a Constitutional conservative.
What I meant by that stance was that I believe in not just limited
government, but small government – government that does not intrude upon the
fundamental rights of its citizens, government that isn’t in the handout
business, but provides a hand to help its citizens make a life for themselves
and using some initiative to prosper according to their individual skills and
gifts.
Although
I'm still registered as a Republican it seems to me that many of the party
leaders have abandoned the fundamentals upon which the party was founded,
becoming pretty self-serving in the process.
I'm not a Libertarian simply because the Libertarian platform goes too
far in ignoring the spiritual foundations of our nation and treats those
foundations as an intrusion into our Constitutional liberties. I'm not a Democrat because the Democratic
party has long since left middle America and become the party of deviants,
aberrants and promoters of everything abhorrent to me -- first as a Christian,
and secondly as one who espouses the core of how this nation was founded and
established.
The
purpose of my discussion today, however, is not to rehash a political campaign,
nor is it to get into the basics of the Constitution of the United States United States
Now,
in case you are thinking I’m going to say The Ten Commandments, you’re
wrong. The Ten Commandments certainly formed
a fundamental core of the way in which our laws were written, but what I’m
talking about goes way beyond that.
Let
me begin with a portion of the Mayflower Compact – an agreement entered into by
the folks who fled England
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names
are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James,
by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,
King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory
of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, (my emphasis) and the
Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the
northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually,
in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together
into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and
Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid…….”
While
these settlers certainly had a reverence for King James, and England England
Looking
at each of the individual charters of the thirteen original colonies, it becomes
clear that – without exception – the freedom to worship God and serve the Lord
Jesus Christ was their underlying motivation.
One
of the arguments that I’ve engaged in with some folks during the past few
months has been over the recurrence of the phrase, “the Christian religion,” in
the body of many of our founding fathers’ documents. The argument raised of course is predicated
on Thomas Jefferson’s statement to a Baptist preacher concerning “a wall of
separation between church and state.” What most folks miss – and what most
leftists and liberals want to argue over – is that Christianity is not a religion. It is not a dogma. It is not some kind of body of theological
ideas.
Christianity
– true Christianity – as our founding fathers saw it, was a deep reverence for,
and worship of, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Folks could have differences of understanding over some things and be a
part of different church groups or organizations, but the common denominator
that bound our founding fathers together was the worship of the Lord Jesus
Christ. They defined the differences
that separated them as “religion,” but not the faith.
Are
you understanding what I’m getting at?
Some have supposed that there were deep differences that divided our
forefathers, that the division was religious in nature, and that the colonies
were established in order to ensure that the Baptists stayed to themselves, the
Quakers stayed to themselves, the Anglicans stayed to themselves, etc., etc. Not true!
As
I have often commented to some of my friends – perhaps rhetorically – I am a
very strong-willed and outspoken person.
(Of course, you’d have never guessed, huhh?) As a minister of the Gospel, and a preacher,
I can be verrry strong in some of the statements that I make. Those remarks are not made in anger, nor am I
trying to sell some nutty doctrine. I do
have strong convictions – convictions that are often based in years of personal
experience. That doesn’t mean that I
can’t be wrong, or that the Lord doesn’t still have to beat me upside the head
with a 2X4 once in awhile to get my attention.
He does, and I change. (OK. No smart alec remarks from the peanut
gallery!)
Many
of those early forefathers were preachers.
William Penn, for example, was a Quaker.
Just three weeks after his arrival (in 1682) in the colony that would
eventually bear his name, he called for an election of representatives to a
provincial assembly. Among Penn’s first
laws passed by this assembly were guarantees protecting the freedom of
conscience. These laws permitted
Christians who were considered heretics in the Old World
to escape their persecutions for worshiping God “differently” than some of
their brethren.
Roger
Williams was from the Antinomians – a sect that eventually became the first
group of Baptists. A brilliant apologist
for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Williams was influenced by the Reformation and
Martin Luther’s theses on faith.
Determined to ensure that the colonists had the freedom to worship God, he
labored long and hard to obtain a charter for the new colony of Rhode Island
John
Eliot, an ordained Anglican, but “nonconformist” minister, settled into this
newly developing colony to translate the Bible into the Indian tongue of the
local tribes, and evangelized the natives to such a degree that the
Massachusetts Parliament established, incorporated, and provided the necessary
financing to support “The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England .”
Then,
of course, you have the Moravians who settled North
Carolina , and the Puritans who settled Connecticut
I
don’t want this to turn into a history lesson, but it is important to see that
these original colonists all shared a common goal, and there was a common
thread in their objectives: the absolute right to worship the Lord Jesus Christ
as they saw fit without interference from government. To the contrary, as colonial governments
formed and charters were established, the common purpose in each charter was to
guarantee that – even if the local governments provided the funding to
accomplish it – the Gospel would be propagated, America ,
the “New Land
John
Winthrop even took it farther by stating clearly that this new land was
established as "a
modell of Christian charity," to
characterize the colonists' endeavor as part of a special pact with God to
create a holy community. He encouraged the colonists to "bear
one another's burdens", and to view themselves
as a "Company
of Christ, bound together by Love." He told the
colonists to be stricter in their religious conformance than even the Church of
England, and to view as their objective the establishment of a model state. If
they did so, God would "make us a prayse and glory, that man shall say of
succeeding plantacions: the lord make it like that of New England."
It
was this setting under which our Constitutional founders came together to
establish a single, unifying document which would combine the intentions of the
individual colonial charters and create a single new nation out of those
thirteen colonies.
Although
much has been made of Thomas Jefferson’s letter with the reference to the “wall
of separation,” few people seem to remember that it was Jefferson who, in 1786,
used the charter for the Virginia colony to draft a bill establishing
guarantees for the freedom of worshiping God, and setting the stage for the
First Amendment to the now-developing Constitution of the United States.
Fewer
still remember that when Jefferson became
President in 1800, he called for preachers from various churches to hold
worship services in the House of Representatives on a weekly basis. His successors followed suit for many years
thereafter.
Somewhere
in my document archives is a copy of a vision that George Washington had for
this country. The vision might be called
by some “apocalyptic,” but he had an experience in which the Lord allowed him
to see some of the very events that have unfolded in this country during the
past few years. He carefully wrote the
details of that vision and expressed both his concern and his prayer that God
would spare this nation the horrors he was seeing.
The
overwhelming majority of our founding fathers shared a common goal. James Madison, John Jay and Alexander
Hamilton wrote and published their discussions abroad in what we now have
compiled as The Federalist Papers.
Though these discussions take on just about every aspect of constitutional
law, the same common goal underlies those discussions.
It
was Noah Webster, however, who summarized our Constitution and all that went
into its writing when, in 1833, he wrote, “The religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the
religion of Christ and his apostles ... This is genuine Christianity, and to
this we owe our free constitutions and government ... the moral principles
and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our
civil constitutions and laws." (emphasis mine)
So
where does this lead us in this modern age of doubt, skepticism, atheism,
humanistic teaching and rampant attempts to rewrite our Constitution and Laws
so as to eliminate all reference to Jesus Christ, to God Almighty, and/or the
prevention of anything that could by the remotest stretch of the imagination be
termed “government sponsorship of religion?”
The
truth is that our spiritual underpinnings are the entire reason for our
existence as a nation. Were it not for
the prayer that bathed our beginnings, were it not for the faith expressed by
our founders, were it not for the absolute trust in God and the declared
intentions to build a nation in which the Lord Jesus Christ would be honored
above all else, it is fair to say that we would not exist today as a people.
The
Psalmist David wrote, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and the people He hath
chosen for an inheritance.” (Psalm 33:12)
That
said, the United States
We
have permitted our educators to stand in our nation’s classrooms for decades
and undermine our spiritual heritage, attempt to rewrite and revise our
nation’s history, defame and slander many of our founding fathers with false
accusation and/or innuendo, and destroy the trust of our youth in the very
fabric of our constitution. We have
allowed liars to stand in public and – in the name of constitutionally
guaranteed right to free speech – use that freedom to attack any elected
leaders who express their faith and trust in God.
Four
years ago we elected a Muslim for our President, a man who has no compunction
about lying and pretending to be a Christian, and all the while demonstrating
through his actions, his hatred and disdain of the God we know, love and serve,
and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
we as a nation are paying the price for that insanity. We are swimming in a sea of debt, spending
pretend money to finance social programs that are supposed to be the purview of
the body of Christ -- not government -- and ripping away at the social fabric
of our nation by encouraging the murder of the unborn and approving deviant
alliances between same sex partners while pretending that this is an acceptable
"alternative lifestyle' to which we can append and ascribe marriage.
There
are spiritual laws that are higher than that of our Constitution. There are laws which our forefathers obeyed
and utilized as they set our foundations in place which, if praying Christians
and believers today do not get a hold of, will bring this nation down. We will fail as every other nation in history
if we lose sight of those laws.
If
those who have the opportunity do not seize this time to reverse the laws and
trends that have ripped away our liberties to speak out publicly in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ and honor God, America is headed for the kind of woes we
have seen other nations suffer.
The
right to free speech in this nation is not a guarantee of anarchy. Contrary to the opinions of some, free speech
is not a right to treasonous proclamations by those in public leadership. The right to worship God, to praise His name
and honor him by public leaders is not some constitutionally-prohibited breach
of an imagined “wall of separation.”
If
we continue to tolerate the observance of this mythical wall, we will most
assuredly – in less than a decade – see the end of the American dream our
founding fathers sought to build. Come
on people! Stand up and be counted! Get your act together. Challenge the God-haters with their
agenda. No matter what it costs you
personally, get involved in the process to reverse the disintegration of our
spiritual fabric.
Whewww……. OK.
Got a bit preachy, there! Can’t
help it, though. Every bone, every cell,
every corpuscle in my being says, “NO! YOU WILL NOT!!” to those who seek to
remove our liberties.
In
the coming days or weeks, I hope to be discussing some of the particular ways
in which we can bring these trends to a halt – ways that every one of us have
at our disposal. In the meantime, have a
good and thoughtful day. Meditate on
these things.
Most
of all, be blessed today. Be blessed in
the city, blessed in the field, blessed coming in and blessed going out.
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
709 South 7th
Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are temporarily available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
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CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are temporarily available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
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