J's Cafe Nette

I received this Omega Letter in Saturday’s email, but just read it a few minutes ago. It bears posting:

The Great American Experiment is now two-hundred and thirty-three years old. It’s been a heck of a ride. There has never been a country so blessed in all human history.

One might add the fact that there has never been a country more worthy of her blessings than America has been, from the very beginning. America’s first European immigrants came to her shores in pursuit, not of gold, but of God.

The Pilgrims who first set foot upon Plymouth Rock in 1620 were members of a religious separatist group who refused to join and give allegiance to the Church of England.
Under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, not being a member of the Church of England was a crime — as was not attending weekly services.

The fine for missing a Sunday service or high holy day was the equivalent to about ten dollars. The penalties for conducting an unauthorized worship service included much larger fines, imprisonment, or worse. In 1593 Puritan leaders Harry Barrowe and John Greenwood were charged with sedition and executed by the Crown.

The Puritans had high hopes for King James I when he assumed the throne, but other than authorizing an English translation of the Bible (the KJV 1611) King James denied all other requests for religious concessions.

In 1607 the Puritans attempted to relocate to Amsterdam in search of religious freedom but were intercepted by the British and imprisoned for more than a month.

A second attempt to flee to Amsterdam the following year was also intercepted and broken up by the King’s men. In all, about 150 Puritans managed to make their way to Holland.

The congregation realized their children were growing more Dutch as the years passed and they feared eventual extinction if they remained.

At the same time, if they returned to England, they would be forced to join the state Church. So they cut a deal with King James. He granted them a charter to set up a colony in the New World north of the existing Virginia territory to be called “New England.”

There were one hundred and two passengers aboard the Mayflower when she set sail from England on September 16, 1620. By the time land was sighted on November 10, they had lost one crew member and one passenger.

Six months later, only forty-seven colonists had survived, together with about half the Mayflower crew.

From those humble beginnings in that tiny New England colony emerged the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever seen.

Despite historical revisionism, the Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly Christian. The so called ’separation clause’ was never intended to ban religion from the public arena. It was to prevent the imposition of a state religion which was, after all, the whole reason for coming to America in the first place.

The 1st Amendment says “Congress shall make no laws regarding the establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof.” Given the historical context in which the 1st Amendment was drafted, it is IMPOSSIBLE to believe the Founders intended to banish Jesus, God and the Bible from American life.

It is darned hard to read it that way even today. It forbids Congress from enacting laws establishing religion. But it also forbids Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

In addition, the 1st Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of people to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

It is worth noting that interpreting freedom OF religion as freedom FROM religion actually impinges on every other right guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, effectively nullifying both its application and intent.

If I am not free to preach from the Bible on public property, I am not free. Legal theory notwithstanding, in point of fact I am prohibited from the free exercise of religion. It also impinges on my right to free speech and my right to peaceably assemble.

The fact that these restrictions are limited to public lands is irrelevant and makes the prohibitions even more egregious since ‘public land’ — by definition — belongs to all of us.
(Indeed, public places are the ONLY places covered by the 1st Amendment. What is done on private property is protected by the Fourth Amendment, not the First.)

The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence specifically says my rights under the 1st Amendment are God-given and outside of the governments authority.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Notice that the Founders not only believed in the Creator, they were echoing Paul’s letter to the Romans, saying the existence of the Creator is ’self-evident’.
“For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, [because they are self-evident] being understood by the things that are made, [including the Founders] even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they [and all of us who came afterward] are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

America’s reliance on the Creator was the secret to her greatness. President John Adams said of the Constitution that it was “designed for a moral and religious people and wholly unsuited to any other.”

An immoral and irreligious people would find too much of it objectionable for it to long survive.

Assessment:
The Fourth of July is America’s birthday and a time of celebration unlike any other in the Republic. It used to be the day we thanked God for our blessings, before thanking God became illegal under certain circumstances, especially for students at graduations.
“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” (Romans 1:28)
Fast forward two-hundred and thirty-three years to July 4th, 2009. Things aren’t looking so good. There is no doubt that America is in decline. How did that happen? When did it start? What can we do about it?

A look at the high points and low points of American history is instructive in this regard. America was founded by men seeking freedom to worship God directly instead of worshipping the state masquerading itself as God. America prospered but her continuing existence was threatened by the immorality of slavery.

America’s lowest point was also her highest. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the preservation of the Union was still very much in doubt. But from the moment slavery was abolished, her fortunes began to turn.

By the end of the 19th century, America had begun to be numbered among the world’s great nations. By the middle of the 20th century, America was the greatest single nation on the face of the earth.

England, which had been the world’s only superpower for four hundred years, lost the title as a consequence of the Second World War. But it sowed the seeds of its own decline twenty years earlier.

In 1917, Lord Balfour issued his famous proclamation granting the newly-captured territory of Palestine to the Jews as a “Jewish homeland.” At the time of the Balfour Declaration, the outcome of WWI was still very much in doubt.

Within a year, the Kaiser was vanquished and England owned most of the Middle East, including the Holy Land.

Once in possession, however, the Crown turned on the Jews, took away most of the Balfour land grant and severely restricted Jewish immigration.

Twenty years later, the British Empire stood in ruins as America was joined by only the second nation on earth to acknowledge God as the midwife responsible for its birth.
As America’s support for Israel increased, both nations prospered.

By the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, both nations had peaked. Israel had become one of the ten wealthiest and most militarily powerful nations on earth.

The First Gulf War established America as the worlds’s undisputed leader and only superpower. Her lopsided victory over what had been considered the world’s fifth largest standing army in Iraq in 1991 led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the end of that same year.

In 1991,the world was in awe of America and her fortunes couldn’t have been higher. It is hard to recapture the feeling, but remember when the biggest worry facing America was how best to spend the ‘peace dividend?’

Then, in 1993 Bill Clinton involved the United States in the Oslo Land for Peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

On September 13, 1993 Bill Clinton urged Yitzhak Rabin to take the blood-stained hand of Yasser Arafat on the Rose Garden lawn, setting into motion the systematic dismantling of Eretz Yisrael.

“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” (Zechariah 12:3)

It is no coincidence that 1993 also the year that terror first came to America’s shores with the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Later that same year, the United States was forced to withdraw from Somalia after one of the most humiliating defeats in US history.

As America withdrew from Somalia in disarray, Osama bin Laden began the construction of terrorist training camps in Sudan.

Two days short of the eight year anniversary of that Rose Garden signing ceremony, 19 Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 35 hijacked four domestic aircraft and destroyed NY’s Twin Towers and severely damaged the US Pentagon.

The final death toll from the attack was 2,985 civilians — more than the number of US casualties at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Eight years later, America is still at war. Her infrastructure is crumbling, her cities in disrepair. Her industrial base is imploding, her economy is in shambles. On this 4th of July, one in ten Americans is out of work and one in five is underemployed.
Sixteen years after Oslo, the Middle East is more volatile than it was when we starting backing Israel’s dismemberment as a viable peace plan. America’s standing among the nations has never been lower.

The country stands on the brink of economic depression, friendless, in debt and hopelessly entangled in a war specifically sparked by America’s involvement in Oslo, according to bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war against the West
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This is easily the most depressing 4th of July message I’ve ever presented. I am so very sorry for that.

(Part of the reason today’s OL went out so late was because I kept trying to come up with a different message for today. But this is the only one the Lord would give me.)
I pray that someway, somehow, America will again heed the promise of 2nd Chronicles 7:14:
“If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

But with Barack Obama in the White House, humbling ourselves as a nation before God seems pretty unlikely.

There HAS to be some good news for this 4th of July, something to hang on to as we enjoy the hot dogs and ice cream and fireworks. And there is.

As bad as things are, they also serve as evidence that our God is still on the Throne and that He keeps His Word.

He promised to bless them that blessed Israel and curse them that curse Israel. He promised that any nation who involved itself with Jerusalem would be cut in pieces.
We did. And we are.

But He also promised that when those things prophesied for the last days began to come to pass, that it was a signal to look up and lift up our heads, for our redemption draws near.

When its bad news, God keeps His promises. He also keeps His promises when it is good news. The Lord is coming. He’s coming soon. He promised.

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.”

Written by Jeanette

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