Posted on 07/04/2012 10:06:33 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Atheists are determined to rewrite American history to further their ungodly purposes.
Consider the “Freethought of the Day,” published on this Fourth of July by the so-called Freedom from Religion Foundation, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin, which describes itself as the nation’s largest association of “freethinkers,” including atheists, agnostics and skeptics:
“On this date in 1776,” reads the atheist Freethought, “Thomas Jefferson’s ‘Declaration of Independence was adopted… Its secular purpose was ‘to dissolve the political bands,’ and it inaugurated the anti-biblical idea that ‘governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Finally, it repeats the canard that “Jefferson was a Deist,” adding that the founding father “was highly critical of Christianity” and that his “revolutionary document made reference to a ‘Nature’s God.’”
This is nothing more than atheist revisionism, meant to undermine the indisputable fact that America was founded by Christians, who envisioned the former collection of colonies as one nation, under God.
The atheists refer to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, as if it were entirely his creation. That’s because, in their twisted minds, they imagine he was secretly one of them.
But the Declaration was hardly Jefferson’s solo work. He was tasked with incorporating the collective thoughts of the founders in the document.
And while the Declaration did indeed have a “secular purpose,” to dissolve the political bands between the original 13 colonies and the British crown, that purpose was informed by the founders’ conviction that all men are created equal, and are “endowed by their Creator” – the God whom the atheists deny – with certain unalienable rights.
The atheists suggest that the principle with which there is near-unanimous agreement among Americans, that our government derives its just powers from our consent, is somehow anti-Biblical.
But nowhere does the Scripture endorse government exercise of unjust powers over the dissent of the governed.
Then there’s the weird atheist insinuation that Jefferson’s reference to “Nature’s God” was a tacit rebuke to Christianity, of which, they claim, the founder was highly-critical.
But Jeffersonwasn’t referring to Pan, the Roman god of nature, or to some other mythological god, but to the living God who created the whole Earth, which is filled with His glory.
And while the atheists at Freedom From Religion Foundation want to claim the Declaration of Independence as their own, the inconvenient truth is that not even one of the signers of the nation’s founding document was a “freethinker” or “atheist” or “agnostic” or “skeptic.”
In fact, all 54 signers were men of faith. And nearly half actually were heads of Christian seminaries.
To maintain that the faith of the nation’s founders had no bearing whatsoever on the Declaration of Independence is to deliberately skew American history.
But that’s the kind of deceitfulness for which atheists are known.
You can search both Testaments, but I think you'll have a really tough time finding any support for the notion that "the people" have a right to revolution.
Both Jesus and Paul specifically instructed Christians to obey the Roman government, and it was by any standard far more oppressive than the Brits.
It would be more accurate to say that the principle the author mentions is non-Biblical, though based on principles drawn directly from Christian ideas.
We shouldn’t OVERESTIMATE the reliance on the Biblical Truth by the founders, however. Jefferson and others like him were just as influenced by the natural history teachings of Locke as they were Jesus.
Not just atheists, but secular humanists, Marxists, abortionists, homosexuals, and other sundry lefty "progressives".
If you take Christianity to be a religion that believes Christ is God, then TJ was indeed highly critical of Christianity.
He even edited the Bible to take out all references to Christ as God (not that there are all that many of those), to the Virgin Birth, and to the performance of miracles.
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/
Bring in and recite Psalm 14:1 to obtain the discount.
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.
Not true. Caesar was to get only what was due to him. But one’s heart and soul belongs to God.
The thing about Jefferson, he lived a long life and wrote bales and bales of letters on every subject under the sun.
And his opinions evolved over time. So you can find Jefferson quotes to support just about any position you can come up with.
Quoting Jefferson to make a point is as bad as quoting out of context bible verses.
You can search both Testaments, but I think you'll have a really tough time finding any support for the notion that "the people" have a right to revolution.
True. But according to the NT what was “due to Caesar” was all political authority. Which pretty much ruled out revolutions.
If I were God, I would have done one thing differently. Only those who have surrendered their lives to Christ as their Savior and Lord would live in the joy and freedom of being born again. People like this atheist outfit, who deny God and badmouth Christian principles, would be subject to the same judgments which existed in the days of Israel in the Wilderness.......when that bunch badmouthed Moses and Aaron and Miriam and the ground opened up and swallowed the rebel leaders as well as their families in a matter of a few seconds. It would surely be transformational how something like that would jerk the slack out of these blotches on the face of humanity that somehow get to exert so much unjustified influence today.
The conquest of Canaan was exactly that, invasion and extermination of one people by another.
It was not a revolt of the people against their duly constituted authorities.
Edited for the education of whom?
What Scholars Propose
For the original population, as distinct from today's Jewish population (see above): Currently biblical scholars recognize three possible scenarios explaining Israel's rise to power in Canaan:
1. the Conquest theory: that Israelites came in from the outside and conquered the land;
2. the Peaceful Settlement theory: in which it is argued that Israelites entered gradually, settling in the sparsely populated areas of the central highlands; and
3. the Peasant Revolt or Social Revolution theory: that Canaanites rose up against their overlords. see link The Problem of Israel's Origin
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_the_Jewish_people_originate Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_the_Jewish_people_originate#ixzz1zgCyj8xm
You are of course welcome to believer any of these theories.
However, the Bible is quite clear on what it says happened.
At least one of the natives joined Jews in the battle against the corrupt Kings. Rahab the harlot.
It is not unbiblical to conjecture that other natives did as well.
Clearly an Atheist document.
In fact, from the very site you posted is this in the introduction:
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to William Canby, "Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus." He described his own compilation to Charles Thomson as "a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen." He told John Adams that he was rescuing the Philosophy of Jesus and the "pure principles which he taught," from the "artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms as instruments of riches and power for themselves." After having selected from the evangelists "the very words only of Jesus," he believed "there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."
Jesus himself ha something to say about priests (and scribes, the religious lawyers of the day) and what they were doing:
“Tell me,” replied Jesus, “why do you break God’s commandment through your tradition? For God said, ‘Honour your father and your mother’, and ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death’. But you say that if a man tells his parents, ‘Whatever use I might have been to you is now given to God’, then he owes no further duty to his parents. And so your tradition empties the commandment of God of all its meaning. You hypocrites! Isaiah describes you beautifully when he said: ‘These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’.”(Mat 15:3-9)
Unfortunately, if you take the Bible's word literally, with very few exceptions the Canaanite natives weren't allowed to switch sides. They were to be exterminated or expelled.
This contrasts dramatically with the account of the exodus from Egypt, in which a "vast mixed company" leaves Egypt with the Israelites. 40 years later there is no mention of a mixed company when they enter Canaan, with the obvious implication that they were assimilated.
Was Caleb an Israelite? At Numbers 32.12 he is called a Kenezite. Elsewhere he is treated as belonging to the tribe of Judah. Heber the Kenite (Judges 4.11 and 5.24) also seems to be a non-Israelite.
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