Posted on 07/01/2021 8:18:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation,” said Elizabethan sage Walter Raleigh.
Or, as an anonymous patriot of his period put it to would-be agitators in his nation: “You will chip away and chip away until nothing is left that makes Scotland Scotland.”
One looks now at the drastic alterations of America’s spiritual, psychological, social, and political DNA, and the mutating dynamics they set loose upon the nation’s very being, and wonders if America will be America for the present generation’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Scientists like Francis Collins taught us much about the human genome and the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that carries the information and genetics forming the nature of a person.
Collins led the task force that decoded the human genome. On the day of the announcement, President Clinton said: “We are learning the language in which God created life... We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.”
On this July 4th it would be a good idea for Americans everywhere to reflect on the beauty and wonder of the “DNA” that formed the best of America.
Ages ago God led Moses and his people into the Sinai wilderness and to the foot of Mount Sinai. God summoned Moses up the mountain to renew His Covenant with the people. Receiving that Covenant would give birth to the nation, Israel. God made it clear that Israel must not worship the gods of the Canaanites lest they become like the Canaanites. (See Exodus 34)
So, to worship the “gods of the land” is to take on the spiritual “DNA” of the people of the land, and to take on the identity of the people of the land is to adopt their gods.
For example, previous generations in America—including people and churches identifying as Christian—embraced slavery, in conformity with their culture.
Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, nevertheless could not quiet the voice of judgment within his mind and heart: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
And it did not.
A nation-rending war resulted. Succeeding generations learned little and perpetuated discrimination through officially sanctioned racism and segregation.
God warned that If Israel worshiped the “gods of the land” when it arrived in Canaan, then Israel would cease to be Israel and lose its purpose and destiny.
America is by no means the “new Israel,” but she has had remarkable blessings of liberty, prosperity, and security.
God’s aim in history is for the good news of His beautiful Kingdom to be proclaimed to all the inhabited earth. This is the business, not of the state, but of the church within the nation. For this mission to be carried out there must be freedom of religion so the church can go about its business, and have the material means to take the gospel globally.
Any nation that permits such freedom will be blessed. The health of a nation, therefore, is in direct ratio to the health of the church within the nation.
Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington explored what we refer to here as America’s “DNA” in his book, Who Are We? There he discussed the American “Creed” comprised by these and other “DNA” components:
Huntington did not shy from crediting the Judeo-Christian worldview as the source of these elements of America’s spiritual “DNA”.
If there is socio-cultural sin in our past and present it is not because these principles were corrupt but because sinful human beings of all persuasions corrupted the “DNA”. We have too often worshiped the “gods of the land” and in the process defiled the Source of our blessings, to the hurt of many and alteration of our national character.
The present struggle in American society and culture spans the past, present, and future. All the generations are at stake: We are ashamed of the sins of the past, hopeless in the conflicted present, and anxious about an uncertain future.
Therefore, this Fourth of July we must reflect on the sobering truth of what will happen as America’s “DNA” is altered. The nation will go...
If all that happens our national “DNA” will be altered so drastically that America will no longer be America.
A violent revolution will not save America. The matter at the core is spiritual and only a spiritual revolution, “great awakenings,” will save us.
Pulpits must once again reach into the depths of biblical revelation and proclaim the Kingdom of God rather than the therapeutic or prosperity “gospels”.
Congregations must learn anew the importance of going to their knees... standing in the “gap” ... for their nation before God.
Wallace B. Henley’s fifty-year career has spanned newspaper journalism, government in both White House and Congress, the church, and academia. He is author or co-author of more than 20 books. He is a teaching pastor at Grace Church, the Woodlands, Texas.
Jean-Luc Picard, facing the Borg threat of 2366, asked rhetorically:
“I wonder if the Emperor Honorious, watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill, could truly realize that the Roman Empire was about to fall. This is just another page in history, isn’t it? Will this be the end of our civilization? Turn the page.” (TNG: “The Best of Both Worlds”)
I thought this was an anti vaccine article from the headline.
3 "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; ........."
Are we "falling away as a nation? What do you think?
There will be stories told to the young by elders late at night in front of the fireplace about the wonderous country of United States that existed in the 1900’s and early 2000’s...
The children will listen wide-eyed and wonder how could things have been so good???
A subtle thing often missed is that dictatorships wear the skin suit of the nation they overthrew. DC in no way resembles the Republic we still knew as recently as the 1950s.
It is almost a complete abomination of the founders vision.
The Gestapo was nothing new to Germans, neither were the courts, the tax agencies, the banking and the industrial base. Germany had a Chancellor long before Hitler was called that and they still have one today.
The Cheka, Smersh, and NKVD did the same bloody repressive work as the Czar’s secret police. The Russian Army was still the same but the leadership and principles were changed (sound familiar). The leader ruled from the Kremlin and had Dachas.
And here we enter our American dictatorship. The military leadership has been replaced and is not globalist, communist and sexually deviant. We still have a “President” who lives in the White House. The FBI no longer hunts for enemies and criminals, now it is a Praetorian guard and an instrument of internal oppression. We of course, will still have “elections”. So did the USSR, so did Saddam. We will still shoot fireworks on the 4th of July and have a State of the Union address.
But America is gone. It lives in the hearts of the majority of the people, but as an entity bearing the ideas of the founder, it is 100% dead.
One can only hope we can find a way to reestablish it.
The military leadership has been replaced and is NOW globalist, communist and sexually deviant
I heartily endorse a little antinomianism in my absinthe every evening.
Ahh, the days of Roddenberry Trek.
Before the dark times.
Before the Kurtzmann.
Is that pastor antinomian?
America above all is an idea. 50 years ago it was the most powerful idea in the world because of what we had accomplished. In short order we won WWII, developed the atom bomb, built a prosperous middle class, landed on the moon, and won the Cold War.
America did great things and the entire world acknowledged the greatness of Americanism.
What have we done over the last thirty years to be proud of? A pair of long, bloody, and inconclusive wars, an economic collapse, a series of failed presidents.
Raw or pasteurized antinomian, that is the question. Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of the judgmental ones or live walk by Faith.
And the celebration and advancement of perversion.
“What have we done over the last thirty years to be proud of?”
Well, we gave the world the internet, but that’s more of a mixed bag :)
Hell, it isn't America for my grandparents' grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“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 where men were free.”
― Ronald Reagan
“But America is gone. It lives in the hearts of the majority of the people, but as an entity bearing the ideas of the founder, it is 100% dead.”
Sadly, I agree with you. Not only are the ideas of the founders gone, but the founders themselves are on the way to being demonized and banished from “civil” society.
In the not too distant future when whites become a minority, the US will become South Africa.
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