One Nation: Faith and Morality | Faith & Freedom Series 1 | James Buntrock

In this first session of a multi-week series on America's forgotten founding history, we explore the miraculous and deeply Christian roots of the United States through artifacts, documents, and overlooked historical accounts. Drawing from the National Monument to the Forefathers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the message walks through the five foundational pillars the Pilgrims believed were essential to a free and just society: faith, morality, law, education, and liberty. From the Mayflower Compact's opening declaration "In the name of God, amen" to George Washington's providential escape at Long Island, to Benjamin Franklin's famous prayer address at the Constitutional Convention, the evidence presented makes a compelling case that this nation was not founded on secular ideals but on faith in the one true God. If you have ever been told that America's Christian heritage is a myth, this message will give you the history, the artifacts, and the confidence to say otherwise.

Transcript

Purpose Of Forgotten Truths Series

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let me start out with the purpose of this series. This is not a history lesson for the sake of an academic history lesson. What this is, is I'm going to present as much as I can fit in in about an hour truth out of our nation's history, out of our founding, critical things. And these are miracles in our nation. This nation is a miracle nation. And I say that because without God's favor and his direct intervention, we wouldn't have had a nation. We wouldn't have launched in this endeavor. And without his continued aid, the light of freedom would have been fully extinguished. And honestly, it almost was here very recently. But thank God for mercy. And just like Pastor said a few moments ago, the church needs to awake. And so there are churches that are beginning to revive. We're seeing signs of revival. We're seeing signs of revival on college campuses and in churches, and it's starting to spill out and go places. And if that will continue, if this continues with you, if you get revived and start to spill over to others and share this knowledge with others, and this becomes part of normal conversation in America, I believe this will result in another great awakening for this nation. And that's our hope, help, help, our hope. And you have a key role to play in that great awakening. So over the next three, this Wednesday included, so this Wednesday, plus two more, after you've had the food and the fellowship, we're going to present some of these forgotten truths. A full disclaimer here, I've got some documents in these large frames that line the front of the stage. These are not real original documents. These are replicas of the original documents. But everything you see on this table in front of me is 100% authentic, real, and very old. And we're going to talk about some of these things. And so every Wednesday night that we present, we'll present three Wednesday nights. And we're going to add to this display on the table in front of us right here. And so you're going to get to see other artifacts from our nation's history. Some predating our founding, some about the time of our founding, some around Civil War. And you're going to get to see some of this stuff. And I hope that it makes it become real to you. Now, for those of you who have registered and attend all four nights, your name is going to be placed in a drawing for this piece of colonial currency right here. This is a Pennsylvania colonial currency. So this was authorized by Pennsylvania in the year 1773. And uh and somebody's going to walk out of here with this after night four. Night four, we're going to show the Great Awakening movie. And that's the story of George Whitfield and how his ministry woke up America. And uh and we have a nation because of his ministry. I'm going to start tonight by reading out of the book of Psalms, and this is a warning in Psalm 78.

Psalm 78 Warning About Forgetting

SPEAKER_00 3:05

And I told you this is not a history lesson for the sake of academic history, but this are critical things that we need to not forget. And so in Psalm 78, this is a warning to the Hebrew people. It says, Give ear, O my people, to my law, incline your your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old, which have been heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from our children, telling to generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. For he has established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments. And I'm going to skip over to verse forty. And it says, How often they provoked him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert. Yes, again and again they tempted God and limited the Holy One of Israel. And I know God is sovereign and he can do anything he wants, but he will not violate his word. And he will bless people as far as he can bless them. He will bless a nation as far as he can bless the nation. But when people turn away from God and they begin to rebel and they forget his works and his wonderful works to the children of men, when they forget, then that people limits God's ability to bless them in their lives. And we're facing that similar condition in America today. And so I'm going to begin tonight. I've got to my left a replica of a monument statue. I'll be referencing this throughout the evening. I'll be referencing some of the things that are on the table and I'll provide descriptions to them. And at the end of tonight, you guys are welcome to come up front and see any of this stuff and take all the pictures that you want. The things on this table, you're welcome to get up close.

Plymouth Rock And The Forefathers Monument

SPEAKER_00 5:22

How many have have heard of uh you know Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts? We know about Plymouth, Massachusetts. What's it known for? Plymouth Rock. So this is an image of where Plymouth Rock is in Plymouth, Massachusetts. There's this great little monument structure protecting this rock with the date 1620 carved into it. That's the rock that's uh uh that that marks where the pilgrims first landed when they came to the New World. Um about five miles away in a park that a lot of most people don't know anything about. It's hidden in a neighborhood. It's not well known, it's not even well marked. It's an incredible monument. This monument stands 81 feet tall. It's the tallest solid granite monument in North America. It was designed in 1820 and it was commissioned by the Pilgrim Society, so direct descendants of the pilgrims that came to America designed and commissioned uh this structure to be built. Its cornerstone was laid on uh August 2nd, 1859. But 1859 ticked over into 1860, into 1861, and then we had a civil war. And so they couldn't proceed with the construction of the monument and complete it until after. The original monument was designed to be 150 feet tall, but because of the shortage of funds and money after the war, they cut the design in half, and so it stands roughly in half at 81 feet tall. Abraham Lincoln was one of the first donors of this, and this monument was finally completed in 1888. This monument is not just a nice statue to look at. Uh, it represents the biblical worldview that the Puritans had, the pilgrims had when they came to this nation. It's a marker and it's an instruction manual. This monument is an instruction manual on how to build and sustain a free and just society under God's word. The pilgrims were were quite certain that with the flaws of man, that he would be selfish and prideful enough to drift away from the essential principles, and that man would ultimately throw out any instruction manual that might have been written down. And you see, even in recent times, people tearing down monuments. And these things are made of stone. Thankfully, they didn't know about this one, and this one still stands untouched, unscathed. And this right here holds the recipe for a nation who has turned away from God, who's turned away from its principles. This monument holds the recipe on how to get back to those principles of liberty and to build a free and just society and have a prosperous nation under God's word. And so I'm gonna talk a lot about the monument here and the figures that are on here. Uh, I'm gonna focus on two of the figures tonight, and next Wednesday I'll take another two of the figures, and the third Wednesday I'll take the the fifth figure on here. But the national, this is called the National Monument to the Forefathers, and it says, erected by a grateful people in remembrance of their labors, sacrifices, and sufferings for the cause of civil and religious liberty. And so I'll name the figures here. Every one of these figures has uh a label beneath it, and so the tallest figure is faith, and then we have below faith a figure labeled morality. We've got law, education, and liberty. And so tonight we're gonna focus on faith and morality.

Faith Figure And The Geneva Bible

SPEAKER_00 9:01

And so you can see that faith um has her finger pointed up towards heaven. And if we get in a little closer, um you can see that on her forehead is a star, and uh, and that star is symbolizing wisdom and knowledge. Proverbs 24, verse 3 says, Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established. By knowledge the rooms are filled with precious and pleasant riches. Faith is the tallest of all of the five figures, and she's at the center, she's at the core of this thing, and her feet are planted on a rock. If you look under her left arm, she's holding a Bible. And if you look closely, you can see that the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing those pages open. This is not a closed Bible. Um, what's unique about this is this is a Geneva Bible. And the Geneva Bible was the first Bible written in English with chapter and verse, so that the common man could read and understand God's word for the very first time. And so I'm gonna pause right here with the with the monument, and I'm gonna take one of these items off of this table here. This right here is a Geneva Bible. This one, if I open this cover up and look on the on the first page, it says imprinted at London 1599. So this is an old book. And I can tell you that the cover is real and it's old and it's original. The cover, the spine, the back cover has been replaced. There's been some repairs made in this book, but this Bible has got a date printed in here that says 1599. That date is not exactly true. How many in here have a King James Bible? All right, so King James in England printed his Bible in 1612, I believe, I believe it was, 1612, but by 1617, um, he had outlawed the printing of these Geneva Bibles and the importation of these Bibles into England. These Bibles represented a threat to his kingship. The commentary in here was sometimes pointed against his kingship, and the Puritans were very serious about their faith, and he was very serious about his rule, and so he said, You can only have my Bible here in England, these are right out. So you can't print these, you can't import these in England. So the Puritans took their printing plates and they took them to Amsterdam and they continued to print these Bibles, thus the fake date. So by 1617, you can't have these Bibles in England anymore that's printed or imported. So they printed a fake date of 1599 and smuggled them in anyway. So if they got caught with one of these Bibles, they could point to the date and they say, Oh, well, this one says 1599, it's been in our family a really long time, and it's been here long before your order, so this one's okay. And so they smuggled these in. In reality, this Bible was probably printed in the 1620s, perhaps 1630s. Okay? And so here we have a statue with the Geneva Bible under her arm. The pilgrims brought these Bibles to America. So what's the date on that rock? 1620. When did I tell you that Bible was printed? Roughly the same period of time. Perhaps it was after the pilgrims came over here, but I'll tell you that the same printing plates that printed that Bible on that table are very likely the same printing plates that printed the Bibles that came to America for the very first time. And so we have a piece of founding history right here on our Bible, on our table. Um faith being the prominent uh figure on here. Faith must be applied in every aspect of life. And it is primary to all the other figures on this statue. And the fact that she's got her feet planted on a rock, that reminds me of another scripture. In fact, a parable of Jesus talking in Matthew chapter 7, that whosoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will tell you what he is like. He's like the wise man who built his house on the rock. And so they that there's no accidents with this statue, there's no coincidences with the statues. This was very thoughtfully designed and flows with Scripture. And this statue by itself uh preaches an entire sermon. And so she is standing on the rock, the rock of God's word. Um, the next figure that we'll talk about tonight is morality, and you'll see that this woman is uh flip through the slides here.

Morality And The Gospel’s Role

SPEAKER_00 13:26

So there's morality. You see that she's seated in a chair. Um, her eyes are closed, and you won't be able to see that very well in these pictures, but her eyes are closed because she's looking inward. Um, all of the other figures on this statue, their eyes are open and they're they're looking out. This is the one figure where her eyes are closed. She's looking inward because the Puritans believed that their morality was an internal quality. And you'll see that she's holding the Ten Commandments in her left hand, and in her lap, under her right hand, are the scrolls of Revelation. Morality was not a moral standard imposed by a king or a government. They believed that morality was a quality that came through being born again, being reborn, having a reborn spirit through Jesus Christ. Morality didn't come unless you had a reborn spirit through Jesus Christ. And so that's what she's representing right here. The pilgrims believe that civil liberty and religious liberty begins with the transformation of the heart by the Spirit of God through the preaching of the gospel. And so, let me click over a couple more slides here. Under the pedestal, so this is uh on her left side, under the pedestal, there's another relief carving right there, and let's see if we can zoom in a little bit tighter on it, and it says, evangelist. Again, the pilgrims believe that civil liberty and religious liberty began with the transformation of the heart. And so they were not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. They truly believe that it was the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. They believed this, they lived this, and they put it right here in this monument. They believe that when your heart's transformed by salvation, that you begin to love what God loves. And you begin to hate what God hates. And you got to think about it. You know, if we put somebody else's faith at the top here, we'd have somebody else's morality. And it wouldn't align with God's word. And so it's very critical to the success, the success of this nation that we have faith in God. This wasn't faith in any God. It wasn't a generic faith. It was faith in the one true God. It was faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It was not any faith. There was no Muslim faith. They didn't attribute faith to the Muslim, to the to the Buddhist, to even the Catholic, like the Puritans and the Catholics were at odds because Catholics were kind of mean during those times. But it's faith in the one true God. And our morality comes from God. And that's where we begin to love what God loves and hate what he hates. And so on the left side you have evangelists, on the right side, um, you've got the prophet. And so right there is a depiction of the prophet, the great prophet, uh Moses, and you'll see that he's holding uh the Ten Commandments up under his arm right there. And so they they talk about the evangelist and the prophet to go preach the gospel, to preach morality, to carry it uh to the world. And we'll talk some more about the Ten Commandments when we get to next Wednesday. Next Wednesday we're gonna speak about education and law, and the Ten Commandments were part of the book of the law, and we'll speak about those things, and we'll talk about some of the uh uh some things about our education. But on the front of this is a marble inlay, and uh and this is titled Embarkation. And so it's an image uh of the pilgrims boarding the boat when they're saying goodbye to the friends and family that they were leaving behind. And uh, and so there's a depiction of that right there. And so just as Pastor said when he opened up, this is a Christian nation. There is no doubt this is a Christian nation. And America has been founded on the rock. And they landed at a rock, but it's founded on the rock, the rock of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Mayflower Compact And Founding Purpose

SPEAKER_00 17:24

And so let's go back to uh the time when they when they traveled across the Atlantic, the pilgrims on the Mayflower. Uh it was a 66-day journey. They were plagued by storms of rough seas and and dwindling supplies. They lost a man overboard, they had parts of the ship break and they had to make at-sea repairs. Uh, they recovered the guy who went overboard. Um, but that's that's an adventure when when you lose somebody overboard at sea. They even had a baby born on board the ship. And the parents thought it cute to name their child Oceanus. But that's real, they did. Um, they were not planning to land where they landed. You know, their days of navigation and ability to actually end up where they were hoping to go wasn't quite as accurate as it is today. And so they were hoping to land at a place somewhere near the mouth of the Hudson River in the area of New York. Um, but with the sea conditions and the storms and it being late in the year, um, they landed just off the tip of Massachusetts and set anchor about where Cape Cod is and came ashore at Plymouth, um, where you saw that rock in the beginning. So they they it was 66 days, they landed on November 11, 1620. Um, they were outside the jurisdiction of the original land uh patent that they had. And so they didn't have any rules that were set up for where they were about to land. And so before they set foot on shore, 41 men on board got together and they drew up a covenant, a pact. It's called the Mayflower Compact. And I'm gonna read you a couple of lines out of this because again, I'm making the point tonight that this is a Christian nation. And I want to feed you this information so that you can help other people around you. We need to talk about these things. We need to share this with our kids, with our children's children. This needs to go from generation to generation. This is forgotten history, this is lost history. These are things that are not necessarily taught in schools anymore. You know, I saw some of the kids up here looking at some of these uh replica founding documents here, and that just brought joy to see kids take an interest in these things. But a lot of the kids don't even read cursive anymore because they don't teach cursive in school. So if you don't learn cursive in school, how can you read these documents? And if these documents are somehow put into print, then someone can change the print. And then our kids can learn something else that is not real to our founding. And so this is critical stuff, and we have to know this and help others to know. So, Mayflower Compact, it starts out and says, In the name of God, amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, Ireland, King Defender of the faith. And this is their purpose, the defined purpose of why they left one place, why they left one land to come over here, they said, having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. That's why they came. Don't let anyone ever tell you anything different. They came for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. That's why they were here, that's why they got started. And they didn't just launch onto the beach. They said that they have to set up some rules and so that do by these uh presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civic body politic to our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid. In other words, we're not just gonna launch, we're gonna set some boundaries and form our first government before we set foot on the shore. And it wasn't a light-hearted thing. They called it a covenant. They had a covenant with each other and with God for what they were about to do. And so we'll fast forward from that moment in time because there's a lot of things that happened, but I just want to pick some high points here tonight.

Declaration Of Independence And Rights

SPEAKER_00 21:13

But we'll we'll fast forward to the time of our founding as a nation. And so the Declaration of Independence is our founding document. Um, there are other founding documents, but we didn't have a nation until we declared our independence from Great Britain. And so the Declaration of Independence is our founding document. It was adopted by the Second Continental Congress July 4, 1776. We are about to celebrate 250 years after that date. When we come up to July 4th, 2026, you do the math, it's 250 years as a nation. That is a miracle. For the type of government we have, that is a miracle. That means God is in this. That means left to its own natural devices, we would have failed a long time ago. But God. And so the Declaration of Independence, to my far right, is the replica document that we have on display. And it starts out, it's titled at the beginning, it says the Unanimous Declaration of the 13 United States of America. The 13. That's what we started with. It mentions nature's God and it mentions the laws of nature and nature's God. And it says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, so there were truths that were self-evident. In other words, you didn't have to explain it to anybody. It was just, we all know this. This is normal. We know this. There are certain truths that are just require no explanation. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Number one, that all men are created equal. One, we are created. That means there's a creator. We don't have to wonder that. And yet in schools, they're wondering that and teaching other things. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created. We're created equal with each other. And that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. That means that it's inseparable to our creation. We were created with these rights. It came with the package. As soon as we were alive here, we automatically had these rights attributed to us by God. The right to life. Even in the womb, the right to life, the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And so that's the foundation for our nation. And God is mentioned, I believe, four times in the Declaration of Independence. And so don't let people tell you that, you know, this was a secular form of government. It wasn't. You have the Declaration of Independence, and we'll talk more about this maybe when we get under law, but you got the Declaration, and then you have the Constitution, and the two are inseparable documents. The Constitution refers back to and dates itself to the Declaration of Independence. You wouldn't have the Constitution if you didn't first declare your independence. And the Declaration really declares the rights that people have, and the Constitution exists to protect those rights. And so those two documents, although they were written about 11 years apart and signed by different signers, and there is some crossover between the signers, but they are inseparable documents to our founding and they go together. And when they swear an oath to the Constitution, some will say, Well, I swore to the Constitution, but I didn't swear to the to the Declaration of Independence. But the two are really connected. And so we'll draw some more of those lines a little bit later. And so there you have the 13 colonies as they declared their independence. Here's an image of the draft of the declaration of being of independence being presented in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And so on the podium right in front of me is the draft declaration. So if you look at this image on the screen, you'll see the tallest figure at that desk right there with the red vest on. That's Thomas Jefferson. And this draft declaration was drafted on the podium right here. It was drafted by Thomas Jefferson. And you'll get to see, if you come at the end of the service and you look at this draft declaration, you'll see some things lined out and some crossed out and some things that were written in bold and some edits to this document. It was a draft. And you get to see the kind of the thoughts behind some of the changes that were being made. We'll speak more about the significance of the draft declaration versus what we ended up with later. But

Washington’s Long Island Deliverance

SPEAKER_00 25:44

I want to share some of the miracles of our nation, and one in particular is about George Washington and our Continental Army. And this is the uh the battle at Long Island. And so we've declared our independence 1776, July 4th. Six weeks later, after declaring the independence, we've got the wrath of the British military coming down on our continental army. This is the greatest military power on earth. We are not in a position to win against the British. This is almost a death warrant. In fact, at this moment right here, this was absolutely a scene that was set up for automatic defeat. Because there were 30,000 British troops surrounding George Washington and 9,000 Continental Army soldiers. 30,000 to 9,000. Now these guys didn't have automatic weapons. They had one-shot rifles, and they had kind of a long time to reload between shots. So while we might get off 9,000 shots, we're going to spend a little bit of time reloading while the British military is finishing the job on us. This is not a recipe for success. And so George Washington is in this position. His back is up against the river. And he was known as a man of prayer. He prayed. He prayed every day. And he had such a reputation of prayer that when he was praying, everyone knew not to bother him. He's praying, we leave the general alone. He was in a position of just sure defeat, and what does he do? He takes time to pray. He knew that he had to evacuate somehow. He's got to get his troops off this beach, and yet he's surrounded. And so he thought of the best thing he could do, and he said, Find anything that floats. People weren't real good swimmers at the time, and the river's about a mile wide at this point. He said, Find anything that floats. On the British side, you've got the British General Howe, who decided, I don't know why, but he decided to do absolutely nothing for three days except to just sit and surround. For three days. He did nothing. I suspect he was hoping that, you know, certainly George Washington's going to come to his senses here. He knows he's surrounded. He knows he doesn't have a shot at this. Let's just sit and watch and let him give him give him some time to think about this, and maybe he'll do the right thing and wave the white flag, and we can call this thing quits and go back home to Great Britain, and we'll all be good again. That's probably what was going through his mind. On the third day of doing nothing, and George Washington hasn't yet surrendered. In fact, his men are feverishly finding things that floats, little barges, logs, boats that they can find from the region and assemble all this stuff on the beach there. General Howe called for the British Navy to bring their ships upstream to this point. Let's just go ahead and finish the job and completely surround them. And so as soon as he starts bringing, you know, the orders given, the ships are starting to pick up their anchor and set their sails to move upstream up the river, there was a strange storm that suddenly happened. And it blew the ships further away. They picked up anchors, set sail, started making their way, and a wind blew them the other direction. And the ships tried to tack their way back and forth up the river, and the harder they sailed, the further they got downstream until nightfall, and they couldn't sail through the night in those treacherous areas right there, and they had to just drop anchor even further from the scene than they had started out. Someone who was a British sympathizer of the day saw what George Washington and his men were doing in this moment. They saw that he's gathering things that floats, he's beginning to prepare to carry people across the river, and they felt the need to rush to the British camp and tell the British George Washington's about to escape, and you can't let him do that. And so this do-gooder for the British ran towards the camp and was immediately caught and arrested by a couple of guards that only spoke German. There were some Germans that the British brought over. We got different people in this war, different nations, but they like the Germans caught these two and thought they did a good thing, and so they locked them up until they could talk to somebody at a higher level, and nightfall was happening and they didn't have anywhere to take them, and so they locked these two up, and then they're you know the two are excited trying to say, but George Washington is coming across and nobody's understanding each other. And so George Washington that night began carrying his troops across the river, and he wasn't doing this. He said, I'm gonna stay on this beach until the last one gets off the beach. My troops are going over. And so, mile wide, trip after trip, all night long, they're making this trip back and forth across the river. Morning came, and they had had about 8,000 troops that they had carried across the river, with about a thousand to go, plus George Washington, still stuck. At that time, a thick fog settled on the British camp. So there's a major Benjamin Talmage, who in his diary wrote these words. He said, A very dense fog begins to arise and it seemed to settle in a peculiar manner over both encampments. I recollect this peculiar providential occurrence perfectly well. And so very dense was the atmosphere that I could scarcely discern a man at six yards distance. He called it a providential occurrence. In other words, he recognized God caused this fog to settle on both encampments. I mean, at that point, he ought to recognize God's favoring the enemy here, and I'm on the wrong side. So, again, 8,000 have made it across, a thousand left to go, the sun starts to rise. About this time, the fog settles, and remember the two German soldiers that caught these British do-gooders who were wanted to tell on Washington. Um, one of the lieutenants came in and says, Who are these guys that are locked up? And the and and the Germans and this lieutenant, they were communicating, and they said, Well, these guys came to the camp and we arrested them, and what are they in for? And so the lieutenant goes over and visits with them, and then he understands that they were there to alert that Washington is carrying people across the river, and now it's morning. So by the time the British recognized it's morning and Washington is escaping, the fog settles. And there's this providential occurrence. God is in this. Does this remind anyone of an occurrence in the Bible? We're saying, I don't know, an oppressed people were trying to escape from an oppressive government, and they found themselves surrounded at the bank of a river, and God made a way for the sea apart, but he also used a cloud by day and a fire by night that separated the two. Like this is biblical kind of testimony stuff. And we ought not forget this. I never heard any of this in school. I heard lots of things in school, but not this. And so when the fog lifted, the British got to see the image of the last man stepping out of the last boat, and that was George Washington on the opposite shore. So let's wrap that war up.

Trinity Treaty And National Thankfulness

SPEAKER_00 33:24

That war finished up with the signing of a document called the Treaty of Paris. Now, why is it the Treaty of Paris? Because it was signed in Paris. And there's actually other documents called the Treaty of Paris, and then fill in the year, the year that it happened. So this is the Treaty of Paris, 1783. And there were other nations present in this. So we declared our independence from Great Britain, but by the by the time this war ended, this was a multinational war. We were a nobody. We declared our independence. We did so with quoting things about God and where our rights come from and how our rights have been violated, and these rights come from God, and we're going to take a stand, and we're not really a nation. We have no shot at the coming up against the British. And now we're on the world front with other nations in Paris signing the treaty of 1783. And I believe Benjamin Franklin was one of the signers at the Treaty of Paris. There were other couple other guys that were there. I don't remember who it was at this moment, but it stuck out to me that Benjamin Franklin, who was a signer of the Declaration, who was a signer of the Constitution, who was a signer at the Treaty of Paris, was in all three places. And we'll talk some more about Benjamin Franklin and what a unique guy he is and how God used him. But the Treaty of Paris. So there's an image of the Treaty of Paris right there. What is unique about this document? The title. And if you learn about it in school, you'll hear it called the Treaty of Paris, 1783. The title of this document is In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. That's a weird title. But that's what they titled this document that ended the war and ultimately settled that we are one nation under God. They titled this document in the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. Tell me again why you think we are not a Christian nation. We're talking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the title of this document. So fast forward a few more years, George Washington makes a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. And by the way, there were something like by 1815, there were over 1,400 government-issue proclamations of prayer and thanksgiving and fastings and all kinds of things, and even more as time went on. But just by 1815, there were already 1,400 proclamations of prayer to not just any God, but the one true God that faith is pointing to right here. And so I'll read you a little bit of the Thanksgiving proclamation of 1789, whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to acknowledge that he exists and that the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, and to be grateful for his benefits and humbly implore his protection and favor. And whereas both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me, George Washington, to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed and be acknowledged with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. We think about Thanksgiving when the pilgrims came over and they started to run out of food and it was getting cold, and you know there were some nice Indians there, and they you know they had this relationship and ultimately they had this big fancy meal and a turkey and pumpkin pie and all that stuff. We think about Thanksgiving in those terms. That's not the set of terms that Washington was thinking about. He was thinking about God Almighty and how God Almighty gave them a form of government for their safety and happiness. He was thinking about that time when they were stuck on the beach at Long Island with 30,000 troops facing them down. He was thinking about that time when God made a way for them to cross the river and how God hid them, concealed them with his fog at the right time. He's thinking about these things and expressing his gratitude. So it's so much more than we made it to the shores of America and there were nice Indians turkey pie. It's so much more than that.

Franklin’s Prayer And A Biblical Blueprint

SPEAKER_00 37:51

So what about the morality? I mean, we're talking about faith, we're talking about morality here. So what about the morality of our founders? There were slave owners, yes. Thomas Jefferson drafted this draft of the Declaration of Independence, and yet he owned slaves. And our declaration says that we're endowed by our Creator, that all men are created equal, all men are created equal. We're gonna address some of those things when we get to law and education next Wednesday, because there's an answer for it. And uh and a pretty profound one. And so we're gonna talk about the slavery issue. Um not all of our founders were favorable, not all of these colonies were favorable towards the practice of slave trade. And there's a couple of different kinds of slave trade that happened. There was the kind where they were ripped off the shores of another country in another hemisphere and transported in horrendous conditions and brought over here, and then there were others who just left Great Britain or someplace in Europe and they had no money and no means to travel, and so they sold themselves to the ship captain in slavery called indentured servitude. And it was for a set period of time, nonetheless, but it's still a brutal practice to be enslaved for any period of time. And not all of them were treated well, and so we'll talk about those things. But Benjamin Franklin, let's talk about him because he was a signer on the Declaration of Independence, he was a signer on the Constitution, he was a signer on the document named in the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, signed in Paris. I was taught in school that he was a deist. And okay. I was taught that he was a drunkard. Perhaps, yeah. He was a womanizer. He had a history. He was not the most moral of people. In fact, when when he was described to me in school, I don't know how it was for you, but when I heard about Benjamin Franklin, you know, he was this great character, and they were trying to dash the great character of this man and say he was the worst one of the bunch, and that might have been so. So let's just assume for a moment that he is the worst one of the bunch of founders that we had. Um, according to his own diary, his own writings, he was a deist for about a week and a half. And for those of you who don't know what a deist is, a deist is one who believes in the existence of God, uh, just simply on the reason of the evidence that we have in nature. But they reject the idea of supernatural revelation that God speaks to and provides revelation to us. And they they perceive that God is indifferent to creation and to specifically the affairs of man. God just doesn't care. He created this thing and just wound it up, pulled the string, let her go, and he's got hands off now. So that's that's the idea of a deist. That's where Benjamin Franklin was for just a very short period of time in his life. Just like all of us, we were not saved at one point in life. And then at some point, by the grace of God, if you received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you were yanked out of that world of darkness and into his marvelous light. I don't know if Benjamin Franklin ever made it to be a Christian. I'm optimistic, and when I see the fruit of his life, I kind of think he was. And let's talk about why. Benjamin Franklin was one of six individuals who signed both the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, at Independence Hall. So there's the uh the signing of the Constitution at Independence Hall. At Independence Hall, they met from uh May 5th to September 17th in 1787. So this is the constitutional convention where they are trying to come up with a constitution, a set of laws to or rules to protect the rights and freedoms of people here in this country. And they have all these differing opinions. Remember, we got 13 colonies, and all of these colonies are represented in this in this scene, and they're arguing and fighting for weeks and weeks and weeks, and they're getting nowhere. And these guys are about to give up and go home. They have had it, they're feeling hopeless, we're not settling on what the Constitution should look like. We've looked to other nations, we looked other times in history, none of these things seem to fit where we are as a people, none of these things are suitable. And so Benjamin Franklin recognizes that this is not going very well. And this is where he has his famous address, and he's he's reminding the Convention that when our lives, he said, were at greater risk, we prayed every day, talking about when they signed the Declaration of Independence. When they signed the declaration, they signed their death warrants. King George was coming after them and would hang them if he caught them. So they signed their lives away, and he said, When our lives were at greater risk, we prayed every day. And then he says, and our prayers were heard and graciously answered. He's talking to the people in this room, in this scene right here, and he says, our prayers were heard and graciously answered. Remember, only six of the people in this room were there at the signing of the declaration, so most of these guys aren't familiar with we were praying every day, and our prayers were graciously heard and answered. And he in his address he says, and have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs the affairs of men. And if a sparrow can't fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable an empire can rise without his aid? He said, We have been assured in the sacred writings. He said, I I've believed this, I firmly believe this, and we have been assured in the sacred writings that unless the Lord build, they labor in vain that build it. He said, I also believe that without his concurring aid, we will succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. And so I look around today and I see people in government. Trying to do things without the aid of God. Babel is a sign of man trying to do something without God's help. We have Babel happening in our nation today. And here, Benjamin Franklin, remember the deist, the drunkard, the womanizer, the worst one of the bunch is calling them back to recognize that God graciously answered their prayers and we need to call on him once again. When they did this, they wrote a constitution in a form that had never been done in history. God gave them something. God gave us something. He gave us a constitution that was unique, that was precious. We are the longest lasting, and people call us a democracy. We are not. We're a constitutional republic. And we have the longest lasting constitutional republic in history, in the history of the world. So people ask, why is this? We're coming up on 250 years. We've already outlasted how long theoretically this nation should be able to last with some kind of a government like we have.

Study Finds Bible As Top Source

SPEAKER_00 45:10

So a professor at the University of Houston, that's where we are, Houston, asked this question, and you know, why is this? Why have we lasted this long? And so they commissioned a study to see who the founding fathers quoted and where they got their ideas from. So they started in this study with about 15,000 writings from the founding era. They narrowed it down to about a thousand writings that they considered the most important. So these were things on the level and on par with like other state constitutions and the colonies. They examined those documents and they looked for quotation marks. If it's in quotes, they took special attention to it, special notice to it. And so they wanted to see what the founders were quoting. They found 3,154 direct quotes out of those 1,000-ish original writings by the Founding Fathers. They tracked every one of those quotes back to the original source and they found that the number one most cited source was the Bible. Remember that Bible that the pilgrims brought to this country that's under the arm of faith right here. They loved not their lives unto the death. They carried that Bible to these shores with the purpose of the furtherance of the gospel of Christ and the glory of God. And the number one most quoted source in the founding documents, the thousands of documents that the University of Houston reviewed was the Bible. Don't let people tell you this is not a Christian nation. Now, of all the 66 books in the Bible, Deuteronomy was by far the most quoted book. That book within the Bible of Deuteronomy within the Bible was the most quoted of all the other religious books, because there were quotes from other religious books and non-religious books, and still just the quotes from Deuteronomy far exceeded those religious and non-religious writings that the founders also quoted. Before we were the United States, again, we were the states and colonies, 13 of them to begin with. Nine out of the 13 original state constitutions required you to be a Christian in order to serve in public office. Nine out of 13, 13 out of 13, that's all of them, required a public statement or declaration of faith. Nine out of 13 required you to be a Protestant. Maryland required you to be a Catholic. But they still had a statement of faith that was required for you to serve in office. Almost all the state constitution at that time professed that Jesus Christ is Lord. Our declaration of independence, if you read through this document in one of the latter paragraphs, it reads like a prayer. And it is addressing in one of the latter paragraphs the supreme judge of the world. The declaration was really a declaration and a prayer to the supreme judge of the world. Revelation refers to the supreme judge of the world as Jesus Christ. He will judge the nations. And this is who they were appealing to in that declaration of independence. Fifty-five out of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Bible-believing Christians. Our original founding document, the Declaration, references God four times and derives all of its principles from biblical law. The Declaration and the Constitution, I told you, they work together, they are inseparable, and they list the rights of men in the Declaration, and the protection of those rights comes from the Constitution. John Adams said that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. George Washington said in his farewell address, of all the dispositions that lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In other words, if we're building this thing on a foundation of supports, if you take away religion or faith and morality out from under this thing, the whole thing falls. That's two of our founders right there that acknowledge that it was for a moral and a moral and religious or faith people

Key Takeaways And Next Wednesday

SPEAKER_00 49:20

in the one true God, and that without these two things the whole thing crumbles. So once you have faith and morality, a biblical perspective or worldview, you're looking through the eyes of faith, you're looking through God's morality, you have a biblical worldview, then you can establish good laws in your nation. And so faith and morality are the basis for good laws and the basis for good education. And we will pick those two up next Wednesday.