Dear Friends,
I have enjoyed reding the booklet Courageous
Men, Stories from American History by Dr. Kenyn Cureton that I
recently picked up at a Men's Retreat.
.
As a former history teacher, I enjoy the study
of American history, and especially history related to the founding fathers of
our great nation.
If you read the letters and speeches by so
many of our Revolutionary leaders, you are reminded again and again of how
important their faith in God was in their efforts to create a new nation.
Unfortunately, today many students don't know
about people like John Smith, the Father of Virginia or John Winthrop who took
part in the Great Migration from England to America and was Governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, or Richard Stockton from our own state of New Jersey
who was captured and imprisoned by the British in our War for Independence, and
whose name is affixed to an outstanding New Jersey college, Stockton College.
Part of the seminary I attended in Princeton,
N.J. was located on Stockton Steet, named after Richard Stockton.
Stockton died in 1781. He was one of the
original signers of the Declaration of Independence.
However, what impressed me the most about
him was his Last Will and Testament which he wrote with a view to his children.
"As my children will have frequent
occasion of perusing this instrument and may probably be peculiarly impressed
with the last words of their father, I think proper here, not only to subscribe
to the entire belief of the great leading doctrines of the Christian religion,
such as the being of a God, the universal defection and depravity of human
nature, the divinity of the Person, and completeness of the redemption
purchased by the blessed Savior, the necessity of the divine Spirit, of divine
faith accompanied with an habitual virtuous life, in the universality of Divine
Providence, but also in the bowels of a father's affection to charge and exhort
them, to remember that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom"
(Proverbs 9:10).
As our spiritual heritage and culture
continues to evaporate, it is important for us to remember that our nation's
foundation was built on Godly principles found in the Bible.
Before John Winthrop, set foot on our nation's
shores, he preached a sermon which included the familiar phrase "a city
set on a hill," describing his hope that his new home would be a beacon of
light for the world and a witness to the fact that it was God who had
fashioned this new nation and that He would prosper and bless it.
Unfortunately, what we see today is a far cry
from the nation our founders had hoped to build. Their vision for a Godly
nation has been swallowed up by a godless and growing secularization that seeks
to destroy the spiritual foundation on which our nation was established.
Oh, if we could only see those words of 2
Chronicles 7:14 lived out, what a radical change we would see in the fabric of
our nation.
"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."
May that prayer be our prayer and may its
promise be fulfilled as believers like you and me "humble ourselves and
seek His face and turn from our wicked ways.
As Thomas Jefferson asked, "Can the God
who gave us life and gave us liberty...... Can these liberties be secure when we
have removed the conviction that these liberties are the gift of God. Indeed, I
tremble for my country."
Yours in faith and friendship,
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