Joining Former Presidents To Commemorate 250 Years Of American Independence

TODAY made a special video for America's 250 year anniversary in which they interviewed four former presidents. I wanted to do something patriotic on the 4th of July to celebrate such an important milestone, so I watched a short excerpt. George W. Bush talked about the golden rule and volunteerism. Joe Biden talked about how his dad always told him everybody deserves a fair shot. I couldn't quite understand what Bill Clinton was saying. And Barack Obama said America was founded on the idea of no kings.

Mr. Bush's comments warmed my heart a bit. Anytime somebody does what they don't have to do to help somebody they don't have to help that's really special and amazing. And some people do it with their whole lives. Jesus said we need to love our neighbors as much as we love our self, and some people seem to volunteer in such impactful ways with such self sacrifice that from my perspective they are even going above this and loving their neighbors more than their self. I couldn't help but agree with Joe Biden's quote from his dad. In a free society with just and impartial laws the rich have the same chance of becoming poor as the poor have of becoming rich, and without corruption and inflation the economics seem to suggest that a modest amount of effort and self discipline would be enough for anyone to succeed materially. Although I didn't understand much of what Bill Clinton was saying, I did hear him say it feels good when you can make something good happen for somebody.

Finally I thought about Barrack Obama's quote. Of the four, his vocal tone and posture carry the most authoritativeness, and although he is the youngest of the group, nobody can deny his unique charisma and obvious intelligence. With a person like that you have to listen twice, because everything they say will sound true. So when he says, "we don't have kings in America", you naturally think, "He's right, we have a republic with democratically elected representatives who are entrusted to do what is best for the citizens over what is expedient for themselves." But then I thought, "Wait a second, America was not built on the principle of no king." If anything resonates consistently through the documents I've read from the earliest days of America it is that our country was founded on the principle of one King: God. "One nation under God." "In God we trust." Even the current President, whom I suspect professes some sort of Christian belief, only seems to mention our true King in passing, as if it is just something people like to hear. America gets all the glory and honor and praise.

We cannot forget the reality that it is God alone who took a handful of religious refugees who could barely survive a winter on the new continent and permitted them to grow into the most powerful country in the world within a few generations, whether it is still that today or not. Isaiah wrote, "All the nations are as nothing before Him, they are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness." The prophet Daniel recorded King Nebuchadnezzar saying, "All the peoples of the earth are counted as nothing, and He does as He pleases with the army of heaven and the peoples of the earth." God is the One who builds nations and tears them down, who appoints rulers and deposes them, who watches and defends, protects and provides, in ways our eyes can rarely see. And God has a Law.

There was a time when God's Law, which we call the Ten Commandments, although there are more, hung on the walls of every courtroom in America, from what I have been told. There was a time when any representative submitting a law to congress would have been challenged to show it in the Bible, with the rationale being that any law that does not align with the Law of God is a bad law, from what I have read. And there was a time when American thinkers wrote things like this, written by the second president John Adams: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." And in the Declaration of Independence our couragious founders wrote, "all men are created equal" and "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," and that they were relying firmly on "the protection of divine Providence".

In the book of 1 Samuel, when the Israelites rejected God as their King, He did not argue or fight with them, He simply gave them a slightly insane and tyrannical human king who used the people for his own profit. And when they rejected God's Law and embraced sin and idolatry, He turned them over to Babylon who conquered them and led them into exile. They lost everything, and it doesn't seem like they ever fully recovered. Do we expect a different outcome to the American dream if we reject our King and His Law? We shouldn't. Just as surely as He built us up He can tear us down, and America has plenty of enemies.

People have been warning Americans for years and years that sin will destroy our country. We have heard it so often and for so long that most of us have probably become immune to it. But the truth is that sin has already destroyed much more than most of us realize. It has been quietly and steadily destroying foundations. Families. Communities. Friendships. Companies. I would say churches, but these are part of the problem. The organizations that claim to represent God on earth are spewing out lies about how Jesus abolished the Law on the cross, that Christians are not under the Law, and that the Law is a curse that enslaves. This is the opposite of what Jesus taught, and the opposite of what every legitimate prophet has taught about the Law of God since God gave it to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Jesus said the Law of God can be summarized in two Commandments: Love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. I must do this. You must do this. Regardless of whether anybody else does it or understands it or even if they oppose us doing it. Remember that God told Abraham He would not destroy Sodom if He found even five righteous people there. Apparently He didn't find five righteous people, because He destroyed Sodom and the neighboring cities, but that doesn't have to be the case in your city, and it doesn't have to be the case in America.

The Law of God is a blessing to those who follow it, and doing so brings protection and provision from God. It is the primary reason for America's unprecedented success, and forsaking it has been the primary reason for its current decline. Jesus came to set people free from sin, not to give them a free pass to sin. If a person wants to keep sinning they will find where it leads, just don't let that person be you. For the sake of your country, your company, and your community. For the sake of your friends and your family and for the sake of your own soul. Stop sinning. Before it's too late for you, and before it's too late for America.