We
Hold these Truths . . .
‘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.’
United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
The
Declaration of Independence marked the beginning of self-government in America,
kindling a flame that the Founding Fathers believed would eventually light the
world. Although the Declaration is a
masterpiece of eloquence that still inspires us today but there is grave doubt
as to whether America has actually lived up to these ideals. Three questions come to mind concerning
prevailing American political and educational policies that are in direct conflict
with the Declaration and the Judeo-Christian faith.
1. If we
believe in the Creator why do our public schools teach evolutionism?
2.
Why do our public school system disallow students to pray to
their Creator in the classrooms?
3.
If all men are created equal and all have certain
unalienable right to life, why do we legalize abortion and allow unborn babies to be killed?
Our
Founding Fathers had believed in a Creator God
"It is the duty of all nations to
acknowledge to Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for
His benefits, and to humbly implore His protection and favor."
George Washington October 3, 1789
Proclaiming a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"God who gave us life and liberty. And can
the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only
firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a
gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson - 1781
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Our laws and our institutions must
necessarily be based upon the teachings of the Redeemer of Mankind. It is
impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent,
our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian."
U. S. Supreme Court 1892
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The One True God is the
Only Creator
"In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Gen. 1:1).
“For
thus says the Lord, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth
and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed
it to be inhabited: "I am the Lord, and there is no other.” (Isa.
45:18)
God created
everything through Jesus Christ
“He
is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are
in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers.
All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all
things, and in Him all things consist.” (Col. 1:15-17)
Man
is Created in God’s Image
“Then
God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and
over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth. So God created man in His
own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created
them.” (Gen. 1:26-27)
How America had lost
faith in the Creator God
In
1844 a young Englishman named Charles Darwin wrote an unpublished essay on
natural selection. “The Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection” or the Preservation of Favored Races
in the Struggle for Life was first published in 1859. Darwin postulated that biological types or species such as man,
animals, birds, insects and other living organisms do not have a fixed
existence. In order to survive they
have to struggle for existence and adapt themselves to various environments – a
process called Natural Selection. These
species require enormously long periods of time to evolve from one form to
another. Darwin’s theory presupposes
there is no Creator God and that man had evolved from the lower forms of
species such as apes. This theory had a major impact on Nineteenth Century
thought.
In America
today, there is no law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the public
schools. Hence most if not all public
schools in America teach evolution instead of creationism. The sad thing is that the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) has successfully challenged creationism as an alternate
choice in the public school curriculum.
In the educational and political field America has seemingly either lost
the resolve to restore the faith of our Founding Fathers, or worse yet, lost
faith in our Creator God.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God
has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible
attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because,
although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but
became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and
four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to
uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among
themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and
served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
(Rom. 1:18-25)
How Prayer was banned in American Public Schools
In the distant past most of the public schools in
America traditionally began their morning classes with a prayer. Until 1962, public school students in
Baltimore, Maryland, began their day with a "reading without comment, of a
chapter of the Holy Bible and/or the use of the Lord's Prayer." To William
Murray, and his mother, Madalyn, both avowed atheists, this was not only an
affront to their freedom from religion, but it unconstitutionally established a
state religion. They sued.
Their
suit, in conjunction with one filed by the Ed Schemmp family against a similar
practice in Pennsylvania, brought about two landmark Supreme Court rulings. The
Court banned compulsory prayer and Bible reading, thus putting all states out
of the practice of teaching religion.
Madalyn
Murray (Mrs. O'Hair by remarriage) went on to found American Atheists, the
largest atheist organization in the nation.
In
addition to the ban of prayer in American public schools there are other
restrictions as well.
1. In 1963
the Supreme Court banned Bible teachings in public schools.
2.
In 1980 the Supreme Court ordered public schools to remove
the Ten Commandments from student view.
3. The rights
of students to publicly speak on their personal religious beliefs to a mass audience
during school hours.
4.
Teachers and school administrators are prohibited,
regardless of their own beliefs, to speak about or encourage religious activity
and from participating in such activity with students.
The false
interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s "wall of separation between church
and State" has been the basis for this and other discriminations against
the Christian religion in America.
In 1962,
state-authored, mandatory prayer in public schools in New York state was ruled
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1963, voluntary
prayer of any kind as well as Bible reading was also ruled unconstitutional by
the same court. The 1963 decision applied to every school district in the
nation.
In the
30-some years since this landmark case, the nation has lost its moral center.
Violent crime has increased from 16.1 to 75.8 incidents per 10,000 population.
Juvenile violent crime arrest rates have increased from 13.7 to 40 per 10,000
population. Teen pregnancy has almost tripled from 15.3 per 1,000 to 43.5 per
1,000 teen-age women. Almost half of these pregnancies end in abortion. A
startling 31% of all live births in America are now to unwed mothers. The
teenage suicide rate has increased 400% since 1963.”
Undeniably
there is a crisis of moral degradation in America. Unless something is done about it our country is heading towards
destruction. Please go to our web site:
à Will God continue to bless
America?
Every
Unborn Baby has the Unalienable Right to Life
In 1973,
the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade, overturned laws limiting abortion in
every state in the union. Since then, women have had easy access to
inexpensive, impersonal, "same day service" abortions, legally
available through all nine months of pregnancy. Estimated annual abortions in
our country went from two thousand annually to over 1.5 million (Abortion in
America, by Bernard Nathanson ).
A
Christian ethic of pro-life versus abortion must be firmly grounded in biblical
principles, such as the sanctity of human life created in God's image and
likeness. What we have read in secular
discussions of this issue are mostly pragmatic reasons in favor of abortion but
little consideration is given to the dignity and value of human life as
presented in the Holy Bible. We shall
look at this issue from the biblical viewpoint.
The
Sanctity of Human Life
Questions
about the nature and value of prenatal life in God's sight can best be
understood by the biblical doctrine of the creation of man. Foundational to
that doctrine is man's creation in the image of God is recorded in Genesis
1:26-27
The
imposition of the death penalty for murder presupposes the sacredness of man's
life in the sight of the Creator, precisely because man bears the divine image:
“Whoever
sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He
made man.” (Gen. 9:6)
Shedding
man's blood is a heinous offense for the very reason that an attack on the
bodily integrity of man is an assault on the dignity and honor of the One who
created him.
The
sanctity of human life is expressly guarded by the Ten Commandment’s
prohibition of murder (Exodus 20:13; Deut. 5:17). The sixth commandment thus
states: “You shall not murder” forms an integral part of the life-affirming
principle found throughout the Bible. Abortion on demand, the deliberate
killing of innocent prenatal human life, is clearly incompatible with that
life-affirming principle.
Our Lord
Jesus Christ makes the profound ethical implications of the Ten
Commandments in his Sermon on the Mount. The law prohibits not only the act of
adultery, but also the lustful intentions of the heart (Matt. 5:28); The sixth
commandment prohibits not only the physical killing of another person, but also
the attitude of contempt and hatred that demeans his personal worth (Matt.
5:21,22).
Life
begins at Conception
Perhaps
the most crucial question for a Christian regarding abortion is whether God
considers the unborn child a person. The Bible clearly implies the personhood
of the unborn, therefore Christians have an obligation to seek the protection
of the unborn through educational, religious, and legislative action.
Personal
Language Applied to the Unborn
In a
number of the inspired biblical texts the writers freely apply personal language to the unborn child. Genesis 4:1 says that "Adam knew
Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain." The word of God's reference to Cain extends back beyond his birth, to his conception. That is when
his personal history begins. The individual conceived and the individual born
are one and the same, namely Cain. His conception, birth, and postnatal life
form a natural continuum, with the God of covenant involved at every stage.
Genesis 5:3 states that when Adam had lived 130 years he "begot a son in his own likeness, after his image; and
called his name Seth" (NKJV). In the opening verse of this
chapter, which constitutes the "book of the generations of Adam," is
a reference to man's creation in the likeness of God. From Genesis 5:3 it seems
clear that human reproduction was the means by which the image and likeness of
Adam were transmitted to Seth. A personal continuity between father and son
is here linked to bodily existence, sexuality, and prenatal life.
Personal
Relationship between God and the Unborn Child
In
Psalm 51:5 David confesses his sin
“Behold,
I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”
Here the
psalmist is relating his sinfulness to the very inception of life; he traces
his development beyond his birth to the genesis of his being in his mother's
womb -- even to the very hour of conception.
In confessing his personal guilt for his adultery with Bathsheba, David
traces his involvement with sin to the very beginnings of his existence. This
application of moral and spiritual categories to David while in his
mother’s womb suggests a relationship
to God and the moral law even in his embryonic state.
In the
next verse David goes on to confess that already in his mother's womb the moral
law of God was present with him. According to the New King James Version the
text of Psalm 51:6 reads, "Behold, You desire
truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part You will make me know
wisdom." Even in his prenatal state David was being taught the
moral law of God.: the psalmist knows full well the divine desire for truth to
be a moral imperative even in the formative stages of his being within his
mother's womb . . . and is conscious that even there wisdom was taught him,
i.e., in his embryological state . . . the moral law was inscribed within his
being.
One of the
most striking Old Testament passages to attribute personal characteristics to
the unborn is Psalm 139:13-16.
13.
“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.
14.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your
works, And that my soul knows very well.
15.
My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully
wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were
written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.”
David focuses on God's intimate knowledge of and
creative involvement with his prenatal development. “You covered me in my mother's womb.” David's
praise, spoken from a postnatal perspective (v. 14), assumes his identity with
the prenatal individual described in verses 13, 15, and 16. He says, (v.13),
and similarly, “When I was made in secret.” (v.15).
David naturally acknowledges his personal history and identity to have begun in
the womb. His language suggests that his personal identity is not restricted to
his conscious memory, but extends back beyond conscious recollections, to the
earliest time of God's creative control of his prenatal development. These
verses strongly imply that personal identity is a continuum, beginning in the
womb and extending naturally into postnatal life.
In the New Testament, Luke in particular is
sensitive to the development of the unborn. In chapter 1, Elizabeth greets her
visiting cousin Mary with these words: “For indeed, as soon as
the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for
joy.” (Lk. 1:44) Two elements are noteworthy here.
First, John the Baptist in his mother's womb
leaped for joy in response to Mary's greeting. Human emotion is explicitly attributed to the unborn John. His
mother Elizabeth was probably still in her sixth month, since it seems likely
that Mary's visit followed closely upon the announcement by the angel Gabriel
(cf. Luke 1:36,39). Elizabeth's statement should not be dismissed as poetic
hyperbole, since Luke specifies that Elizabeth was speaking under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:41). Furthermore, it is now well known
that an unborn child can respond to touch at eight weeks and at 25 weeks can
respond to human voices and feel pain and discomfort. There is no scientific basis for precluding human emotion in John
the Baptist at that stage of his prenatal life.
A second point worthy of note is the use of the
term “babe”
or “infant” (Greek – brephos) to
describe John in the womb. Elsewhere in the New Testament the same term is used
freely of infants and the newly born (Luke 18:15; 1 Pet. 2:2; Acts 7:19). Here
again we have language indicating an understood continuity between prenatal and
postnatal existence.
Visit other Web Sites
that present the Christian View on the Abortion Issue
Is the unborn
human less than human? Click Here à m
http://www.prolifeforum.org/churches/bible/stottdilemma.asp
Entrance to the Kingdom
of God requires the New Birth
One of the most important teachings of
our Lord Jesus Christ is the New Birth as recorded in John 3:1-8).
1. There
was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2. This
man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a
teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is
with him.”
3. Jesus
answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
4. Nicodemus
said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second
time into his mother's womb and be born?"
5. Jesus
answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit.
7. Do
not marvel that I said to you, "You must be born again.'
8. The
wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where
it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the
Spirit."
Why
does God require a person to be born again in order to enter His Kingdom? The answer is simple. Every person is conceived in sin. David wrote: “Behold, I was
brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psm. 51:5) The sin of a child in
the mother’s womb is called the original sin that comes from Adam. “Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men,
because all sinned—“ (Rom. 5:12). The
fact and evidence of sin existing in an unborn child is irrefutable – they
die. If the unborn child is aborted he
dies in his sin and there is no way for him to have the first birth, much less
a new spiritual birth. Abortion denies
the unborn child from having a life on earth and, more importantly, having
eternal life and entering the Kingdom of God.
It is against the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and against the
will of God.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nearly 1.5 million babies are aborted each year in the United
States. Records of why women abort are not kept, but in a study of 1900 women,
only one percent aborted because a doctor had actually diagnosed something
wrong with the baby. For another seven percent of the women, pregnancy
threatened their own lives or health. Taking these results into consideration,
over ninety percent of aborted babies are perfectly healthy and pose no threat
to their mothers. They are aborted solely because the pregnancy is unwanted,
poorly timed or inconvenient.
God’s Warning to America
Our
prayer and hope for America is for the whole nation to come to its senses
before it is too late. The very Constitution upon which this country was
founded has been mocked at and rendered null by the un-American and ungodly
forces around us. America
has removed God out of our government.
We have removed Him out of our law courts. We have removed Him out of our public schools.
Sex education in our schools is teaching "safe sex" rather than
condemning fornication and adultery as sins. Very
few young women or men who graduate from high school are virgins. We have
exterminated some 40 million unborn children through abortion. We have redefined homosexuality as an
alternative lifestyle. Our public schools
have been saturated with a humanistic philosophy that teaches there is no right
or wrong because everything is relative to one’s opinions. Movies and television programs are filled
with all kinds of sexual perversions, violence, making mockery of God and the
Christian religion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If we abide by the principles taught in
the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our
posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a
catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound
obscurity."
Daniel Webster - 1821
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Will
this gross wickedness that permeates these United States ever stop? Will this nation ever repent of its sins
and return to the One True God? Here is
God’s message of warning to America.
9.11 was a Wake Up Call
Repent of your sins and
Return
to God or else Perish!
“The instant I speak concerning a nation and
concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that
nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the
disaster that I thought to bring upon it.
And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to
build and to plant it. If it does evil
in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning
the good with which I said I would benefit it.” (Jer. 18:7-10)
“For the nation and kingdom which will not serve You
shall perish, And those nations shall be utterly ruined.” (Isa. 60:12)
"So you shall say to them, 'This is a nation that
does not obey the voice of the Lord their God nor receive correction. Truth has
perished and has been cut off from their mouth.” (Jer. 7:28)
“But
if they do not obey, I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation,"
says the Lord.” (Jer. 12:17)
Pray for America
A Sermon based on this Article was preached by Paul Wong
to a Congregation in Houston, Texas on
March 23, 2002
For comments please write first to: ark@pdq.net
May God bless you.
Paul Wong is a Christian minister and the President of ARK International.
His ministry also serves as an architectural service company in Houston.
The ARK Forum on the Internet is international and non-denominational.
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