Ask that question of 1,000 different Americans and you would probably get 1,000 different answers. Ask many professional sports figures, politicians at the highest level of America’s government, radical thug groups such as Black Lives Matter, illegal aliens who both curse and burn the flag, members of the media, or any of a host of others whose sentiment is prevalently anti-American and a majority of the answers would be there is nothing right with America.
Step into the classroom of most any secular College or University and you’ll hear liberal, atheistic professors spewing forth venomous propaganda about America and her Godly heritage in an attempt to rewrite the history of our nation. Turn on the evening news and listen to all the stories about murder, about war, about our economic woes, the true unemployment rate, and one could but wonder if there really is anything right with America.
Well, it is time to remember that there is more right with America than wrong. The problem is we have forgotten the right people, the right purpose, and the right principles upon which this great nation of the United States of America was founded.
America Was Founded By the Right People
In the summer of 1787, representatives met in Philadelphia to write the Constitution of the United States. After they had struggled for several weeks making little or no progress, 81 year old Benjamin Franklin rose and addressed the discouraged men who were about to adjourn and go home. Here are the words Benjamin Franklin spoke to that assembly:
“In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for DIVINE protection. Our prayers, Sirs, were heard and were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a super-intending Providence in our favor. Have we now forgotten this POWERFUL FRIEND? Or do we imagine we no longer need His divine assistance? I have lived, Sirs, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that GOD governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
One of the first official acts of our very first President was to designate a national day of Thanksgiving. President George Washington proclaimed:
“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and to humbly implore His protection and favor… I do hereby recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November, to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious BEING who is the beneficent AUTHOR of all the good that was, that is, or that will be… that we may then all unite in rendering unto HIM our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection.”
Many years later, our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln said, “It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence on the overruling power of God, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”
The pages of our History books are filled with numerous quotes such as these from our founding fathers –– men who were not ashamed of their faith in Almighty God. We read in Proverbs 29:2 “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked bear rule, the people mourn.” Had America been founded by Godless men, this nation would never have risen to greatness.
As the scripture in Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He chose for His inheritance.” Yes, America was founded by the right people.
For the Right Purpose
When we Americans look back upon our humble beginnings, we usually point to that little band of sea-weary travelers that landed in 1620 on Plymouth Rock. We have come to refer to them as Pilgrims. Those pilgrims did not come here for economic or political reasons, they came here for RELIGIOUS reasons.
Believing the liberal Church of England had strayed far from the scriptures, the 100+ Pilgrims boarded the Mayflower and made a perilous journey across the Atlantic to lay the groundwork for a new nation where they could worship God according to the scriptures. When they arrived at Plymouth Rock they drew up what is now called The Mayflower Compact. In that document the Pilgrims stated:
“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten have undertaken for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia.”
It has been about 396 years since those Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Only half of the 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower even survived the first winter. We all owe a debt of gratitude to those brave men and women who came here to found this great nation for the right purpose, that Biblical Christianity might advance.
As this nation grew she became home to more churches, more Christian Private Schools, more Bible Colleges, and more Christian Orphanages than any other nation in history. This nation has also trained more preachers, sent out more missionaries, and printed more Bibles and Christian literature than any other nation on earth. Our most prestigious University, Harvard, was formed in 1636. The University’s original motto, Christo et Ecclesiae (“Christ and Church”), later changed to Veritas (“Truth”).
A 1643 publication said the school’s purpose was “to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” Perhaps they knew the meaning of Proverbs 29:18, which states “Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keeps the law, happy is he.”
On the Right Principles
Listen to the words of one of our great American Forefathers, Noah Webster: “The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war proceeds from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”
Let’s suppose you turned on the evening news tonight and heard Lester Holt or Scott Pelley or Chris Matthews report the following lead story “Today, in a shocking development, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, announced that “I conceive we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world… that the confusions that are and have been among the nations may be overruled by the promoting and speedily bringing in the holy and happy period when the kingdoms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and the people willingly bow to the scepter of Him who is the Prince of Peace.”
What do you think the reaction would be to such an announcement? While we Christians would applaud such an announcement it would likely set off a religious war and persecution of Christians unlike anything we have ever seen before. After all, one must be politically correct, and not do or say or write anything that might even in the smallest way offend other religions, especially that of ungodly Islam, its perverted prophet, and its Muslim followers.
Would you believe that announcement was actually made in a Fast Day Proclamation issued by Gov. Samuel Adams, Massachusetts, March 20, 1797? The Bible was the original American reading primer for school children. What a novel concept!
Christians, we must never forget that America was founded upon Biblical principles. It appears they also understood the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 12:13, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”
America was founded by the right people, for the right purpose and on the right principles. Why, then, are there so many things wrong with America today? The answer is obvious!
There was a time in our nation’s past when we stood by and allowed the wrong people who lived by the wrong principles to use this Nation for their own wrong purposes. And now, this once great nation is reaping what it has sown.
But there is yet hope for America. It is found in 2 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 forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
Therefore, we need to pray for our nation, ask God to grant America a time of national repentance, and trust the Sovereign God who reigns in the affairs of men to return America and her people to her right purpose and her right principles! God bless the United States of America.
