We are fortunate to have Rick Green with us today. Being a part of the Wall Builders Ministry he is someone who has really studied the Constitution and the First Amendment. He reminds us that the pilgrims came because they wanted to have freedom of worship. They did not want a pantheistic religion and they believed the worship of God was being endangered in Europe. So these pilgrims took the dangerous trek over to America.

We never want to forget our roots, because without these roots we can forget who we are. By forgetting who we are opens us up to any and every other identity which is constantly being overlaid and forced upon us. If we are poor historians then we become poor futurists. Because what will happen if we don’t study history is that we will be pushed to repeat history over and over again and we would not have learned anything from past errors. We certainly don’t ever want our roots to erode.

On CNN several years ago 4 giant sequoias collapsed under just the slightest of winds, not a heavy wind storm, not even rain. When asked about it, the park ranger Deb Switzer said that the sequoias were suffering from root erosion. This occurs with the thousands and thousands of visitors year after year trampling on the grounds around the giant trees causing weakening of their root system below. So now to prevent future damage, there are enclosures around the trees’ root systems.

So the same is true for us, if we don’t protect our roots, then we will allow our own roots to be trampled on and our country will collapse from the slightest wind.

I was reviewing the preambles of the constitutions of each state and did you know that 90% of these preambles all speak about God in them, even Hawaii’s? Our preamble even asks for God’s presence of His Grace. California calls Him the great Legislative Judge of the universe. Even Massachusetts which approved same sex marriage asked God for His providence in making important decisions. It’s all very interesting especially when we go the other way instead. There is such an erosion of roots in America because we have forgotten what came before us.

We are even trying to eradicate the phrase “Under God” from the pledge of allegiance because people are saying that it was added by Christians, but in truth it was written in 1863 and recited by Abraham Lincoln in his famous speech “The Gettysburg Address”.  In the end of his speech he says, “That this nation ‘under God’ shall have a new beginning of government, of the people, by the people, for the people and will never perish from this earth”.

See by being poor historians, it is so easy to say that “Oh it’s the Christians putting those things in” but in reality these references to God are actually recorded in the original documents of our own forefathers of this nation. And so word by word our roots are being eroded because all these words that are being eradicated are the very words of our founding fathers. And we should not forget that our country was built on by true Christian founding fathers and we should not forget who we are. Here now is Rick Green.

Today we are going to take you all back to the beliefs of our Founding Fathers who built this nation on the principles of Truth. Today this country is being held back by people who don’t want our nation to be built on Truth so they attempt to take away our rights as the people of this nation by saying that there is no right or wrong; that everything is relative. So tonight, we will go back to the roots built by our Founding Fathers.

We are going to start by talking about George Mason, who is known as the father of the Bill of Rights. He was the man who is responsible for bringing the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. Although he helped frame the Constitution he refused to sign it because it did not have these individual protections that the Bill of Rights establishes for us. So he and James Madison added in those words. Mason also gave us a great quote that says “NO free government nor the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people but by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles”.  This simply means that we need to remember our roots and remind ourselves of what is the foundation of our nation. What is it that made our nation so successful and has given us such a freedom that we as a nation get to enjoy?

Can you imagine a picture in your mind, one that best represents freedom to you? Keep that in your mind and frame it. Now just imagine what will happen if that frame falls apart. You will then lose that sense of freedom. So what is the frame of our country? The following passage is that frame of our freedom.

“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …”

 In the words of the Declaration there are 4 basic principles that make up the frame of America. First, that truth is real, is obvious and it does not change. Second, they made it clear that God represents freedom, just like the Declaration says our rights not only come from any elected or appointed official but they come from God. Third, the just power of government can only come from you and me obviously the founding fathers did not want the government to use their power without our consent. So always remember that government without consent is tyranny. The last part of the frame is the pursuit of happiness which is the free enterprise system that makes America the most successful nation in history.

Now let’s talk about George Washington the Father of our country. Everyone knows about George Washington except as to whether he was a man of faith or not a man of faith. Well people of today tell us he wasn’t a Christian, everyone says he was an atheist, but let’s take a look at the man from the things that he did and the people who spent the most time with him. If you really want to know about any of our founding fathers you can spend time with them by reading their journals. They wrote countless correspondence back and forth with each other just as much as we text messages to each other today.

We can read journals upon journals regarding General Washington from General Henry Knox, who spent many hours with the general throughout the revolutionary war. Knox wrote over and over in his journals “Oops, I accidently interrupted the general in his tent again, as he was praying”. While in congress Senator Thompson wrote that even he walked in on the President as he was praying. He prayed in Congress and on the battle field. If you go out to Valley Forge you will see a big bronze statue of George Washington praying. Go down to the corner chapel, and he is praying. He is depicted in a stained glass window praying and we see many paintings of George Washington praying. It seems amazing that an atheistic founding father is recorded or depicting as praying constantly. In fact, it seems he prayed more than even some Christians pray today. But it’s not only George Washington who scholars claim was an atheist. It is written that all of our Founding Fathers were atheists, agnostics and deists.

George Washington once said, “Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Which means to be successful as a nation we need to have religion and morality in the heart of who we are. We don’t get morality without religion and without morality then that liberty will be lost.

The father of our country also wrote, “In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars (free religion and morality)”. In other words, without these great pillars we lose our patriotism. If we remove God from our culture or remove religious influence from our walls then our nation will fall apart because we are tearing down the very fabric of what made our nation great in the first place.

When he wrote this speech George Washington is observing the French Revolution, and he, the President to the Constitutional Committee noted that the difference between the French revolution and our revolution is that our revolution sought liberty under God and derived from God, but the French sought liberty without God. They killed the priests and each other! The French took religion out of the framework and it led to total chaos and eventually, the guillotine. WE don’t want that to happen to us so we need TRUE liberty and that is liberty under God under the parameters of what God has given us. All this said by only ONE of our Founding Fathers, so far. But, let’s find out about the others of our Founding Fathers.

Abraham Baldwin is founder of University of Georgia.  He was the chaplain of the Revolutionary War, So what are we saying “they couldn’t find a true man of faith, so they got an atheist to be the chaplain of the Revolution for 7 years?” He was even offered the Professorship of Divinity at Yale University at age 21.

Rufus King was the original manager of the American Bible Society.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Langdon were founders of the American Bible Society

So why would a bunch of atheists start a Bible Society??? Now why would atheists start Bible Societies? After all, what are Bible Societies, but organizations that spread and study the word of God.

James McHenry started the Baltimore Bible Society now known as Maryland Bible Society

Gouverneur Morris spoke 173 times at the Convention. He influenced the document more than anyone else. He wrote the preamble to the Constitution all by himself. He even said, “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God”.  Wait a minute isn’t this unconstitutional? This man gave us the Constitution.

James Wilson spoke 168 times at the convention.  He was appointed by Washington to be the first judge to serve on the Supreme Court. He was the 2^nd most active man at the Convention. He signed both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He wrote “Human Law must rest its authority ultimately upon that law which is Divine. Far from being rivals or enemies religion and law are twin sisters. They are friends and mutual assistants and indeed these two sciences run into each other”. This means that they work together on giving us a good culture and a good society. We see here that James Wilson the best expert on the Constitution says here that Human Law is based on a HIGHER Law.

Roger Sherman, John Dickenson, James Broom were all major Theologians who were on the committee. So what are we seeing here? These men, these Founding Fathers who GAVE us the Constitution, ALL agree that human law is based on something more divine or higher than mankind. They are saying that Religion and Morality Influence our Law. We need to look back and we need to know the truth.  We don’t change truth into something else because we want to make it different. I mean we can call it whatever else we want, but the truth never changes. That’s why we need to get back to the foundation of the Divine Law that our nation was based on from the beginning of time.

Now scholars still say that our Founding Fathers were atheists, agnostics and deists, but, out of 250 of our Founding Fathers, only 10 were not Christians - that leaves 95% that were Christians, and not a single one of the 10 were atheists, agnostics or deists. They still believed and referred to a God that was involved in each of our daily lives. These 10 simply did not believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God so they are not Christians, but they were also not atheists. We’ve been lied to about what our fathers believed in. Okay, so people still argue that they may have been men of faith but there is nothing about God in the document -  it’s still a “Godless document”. There is nothing about the Bible in the document.

Well even that is incorrect because these Founding Fathers traced the history of what they put into the Constitution and clause by clause made references to scripture from the Bible.

For example:

The Separation of Power

This is taken from Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is evil no man can know it”

This means that if you are king but you have evil intent in your heart, you may be a good guy now but with power you start to use the evil in your heart and without this law of checks and balances it will turn into tyranny.  That’s why there needs to be that separation of power.

The Three Branches of Government

This is based on Isaiah 33:22 “For the Lord is our Judge, The Lord is our Lawgiver, The Lord is our King”

Republicanism

Is based on Exodus 18:21 “Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear of God, men of truth, hating covetousness and place over them to be rulers of thousand , rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties and rulers of tens.”

So we see here that the Constitution is also based on The Bible on how to even choose our leaders. That’s rulers of tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands…that there is our city, state and federal governments. Right here we have a guideline right out of the Bible on how to have an effective government and how to do our job.

The Constitution is NOT a Godless Document.

Okay so if all these things are in the constitution then why are all these learned men, Cornell professors saying that the document is a godless document? Well, I don’t know but if you look at the back of their books this is what it says in place of footnotes: “We have dispensed with the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes”. It’s as if they are saying to just trust them that they know what they are writing about. But I don’t trust them. So I have my doubts about these people who write about the Constitution as being a Godless document. We can go directly back to our Founding Fathers and see exactly what they actually wrote and read, for ourselves, through their own writings and journals.

Well then what about the phrase, “separation of church and state”? When I ask law students where does it mention separation of church and state? Many times they say it’s in the Declaration of independence and when I say that it isn’t there, they then say the Constitution, so I show them the Constitution and I ask, “Where is it?” and they all say the First Amendment. But it’s not once mentioned in any part of these documents. In fact the first Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the freedom to exercise there of”. Do you see anything about separation of church and state? So what the student usually says, “Well it is what they meant.”

Fortunately, it is because of legislative intent which we can uncover the truth. Legislative intent is the process with which we can make a proposal to pass a bill. We present it to the floor explaining eloquently why it is so important to pass this bill and how the legislature can’t live without this bill. Then you have a bunch of friends at the microphone that will ask easy questions that will help you look smart about this bill. Meanwhile, everything said gets recorded in a journal and our discussion is recorded with the intent of that law. Because 10 years from now someone will get confused about that law and then people will argue about what that bill means and they go to court but then with that journal the judge can look back at the original intent of that law. The wonderful thing about that is WE can go all the way back also to the original journals and read about those original intents of all these documents including the Constitution.

So when someone argues about the meaning of that First Amendment and claims that separation of church and state is the intent of that Document, we can read the journals from the First Amendment and the Second Amendment.  What we find out that even after months and months of debate and discussion not once were the words “separation of church and state” ever mentioned in that discussion. If it was that was the intent you would think that phrase would have been mentioned at least once. But it wasn’t.

In fact it wasn’t until 10 years later that Thomas Jefferson made that statement in regards to a totally different issue regarding the Danbury Baptist Association. This group was worried about the codifying of freedom of religion. This statement had nothing at all to do with the Constitution or the First Amendment. And in fact this statement referred to the concern that one day some government would take over and would one day take away the FREEDOM of religion. The Bill of Rights, in truth, are NOT about what freedoms the Founding Fathers gave us but it refers to the rights GOD gave us and that therefore those freedoms God gave us cannot be taken away.

When approached about this issue of the Danbury Baptist Association, Jefferson says, that in writing about separation of church and state, the government will never stop them from living out their faith. This phrase is NOT saying that the church cannot influence government. So in essence the real intent of separation of church and state was to prevent the government from stopping US from living out our faith. But because this statement has been taken entirely out of context and the words are twisted, the government IS IN FACT trying to stop us from living out our faith.

But more than that, Jefferson had absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. Remember, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of independence NOT the Constitution. Also, it was stated BY Jefferson that when the Constitution was written, he was in Europe.

So if we want to know the true intent of the First Amendment we have to go back to the time of the debate. We find James Madison and this is what he says bout the First Amendment, “all we are doing is preventing a single national denomination.” What does that mean? It means they don’t want religion in America to be like what was happening in England. They don’t want to be stuck with one religion.

Here is a great quote by Thomas Jefferson in regards to the firm basis of the foundation of liberty. He said, “Taking the liberties of the nation we thought were secure when we remove the only firm basis which is the conviction that these liberties are the gift of God, that they are not to be violated but with His wrath. Indeed I tremble for this country when I reflect that God is just and His justice cannot live forever.” Because he understood that if we ever forget that God is no longer the source of freedom in America then we will no longer live out our freedom respecting His authority. If we no longer live out our freedom respecting God’s authority then anything goes and everything is okay. Therefore there is no truth and our culture will get so radically transformed and we will get so far off track. Then the morals that this country was founded on will be destroyed.

Jefferson also says, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate power of the present society but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion… the remedy is to not take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.”  In other words don’t let some politician say,” I know this better than you -  you’re not smart enough so I’ll take care of this”. If we aren’t smart enough then we need to become educated otherwise it becomes a form of abusive constitutional power over us. We should not take the power from the people but we should educate the people of these principles. So we should ALL read and study the Constitution so that by knowing their rights we can stand up and defend them. After all, the Constitution was written “For the People”.

Why should we study the Constitution and exercise our rights? Because we are the City on the Hill and we are the Salt of the Earth and we need to influence the world. If we are not influencing the world then we are like the salt that has lost its flavor and we are not functioning as the church should.

Reverend Charles G. Finney said, “The church must take right ground in regard to politics. Politics is a part of a religion in a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to their country as a part of their duty to God.” God will bless or curse this country by how much us Christians will take part in our politics. When we render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s…Well guess who Caesar is in our country? WE ARE. That’s why it is written, “We the People”. We simply need to live out our freedom. Like the Bible story of the talents. We will be that wicked and slothful servant if we don’t invest our talent which in this case is the talent of freedom.

Shouldn’t we be willing to give our life as our Founding Fathers did when they signed the Declaration of Independence? Each man knew as they signed that they were signing their death warrant. Don’t be like the 10 spies who cried it can’t be done, be like Joshua and Caleb. They saw the same giants and enemies but they relied on God and even though they know it would take years, they trusted God and did as God commanded so they would receive as God had promised.

Righteousness or wickedness. We need to stand up and speak out. We need to speak the truth with moral clarity. Don’t be like the Germans who, in regard to Hitler, wrote on the walls at the exit of the concentration camps, “We are sorry about our silence”.

Study the constitution, study the candidates, get involved, get educated, and exercise your right to vote.

Do not allow it to be said of our generation that the torch was only dimly lit, but let it be said that on our watch the torch was lit the brightest it has ever been.

1) What have you learned about the beliefs of our Founding Fathers?

2) How can we better become aware of the culture around us so that we can influence them as Christians?

3) How can we protect and nurture our roots so that we can survive the challenges affecting us?

4) Where did the phrase “separation of church and state” come from?

5) What does the phrase “separation of church and state” really mean?