Words On Freedom, For July 4th

Whether you are reading this before or after July 4th makes no difference. Here are words written by the founding fathers of the United States of America.

From the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] 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.”

From the preamble of the United States Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”

From the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

From Ronald Reagan, on January 5, 1967: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for,  protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”

From George Washington, the first president of the United States: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

From Alexander Tytler, a Scottish historian living at the time of America’s founding fathers, who researched the cycle of nations, “from bondage to spiritual freedom, from spiritual freedom to great courage, from great courage to liberty, from liberty to to abundance, from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency to bondage again.”

There is another cycle, or I should say, “a downward spiral” of moral and spiritual decay. It is found in Romans, the sixth book of the New Testament. Beginning in verse 21 we read, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God, or give thanks to him, but became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened…Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.”  (The next several verses perfectly describe homosexuality.) Continuing on in verse 28, “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what not ought to be done.”

Take a moment to reflect on the above quotations and ask yourself, at what point is America today in terms of freedoms being taken away, especially free speech? What phrase in the “cycle of nations” most describes this country, and the world? To what degree has America lost its spiritual and moral foundation?

We must get back to the words of Noah Webster, a great American statesman: “The moral principles contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitution and laws. All the miseries of evil which men suffer from-vice, crime-proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”