Posted on 07/10/2009 7:57:28 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
John Calvin’s 500th birthday was on July 10.
Who, you may ask, is John Calvin? And why should we care about someone born 500 years ago?
While Martin Luther has was the man who started the Reformation, when he nailed his 99 theses to the door Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, Calvin became arguably the most influential of the Reformers.
Calvin’s 16th Century influence not only rocked the status quo of the institutional church, but also gave rise to modern education and democracy.
The first settlers arriving from on this continent were French Huguenots, Scottish Presbyterians, and English Puritans – Christian people walking strongly in the Reformed tradition. It was the roots that these people laid that led to the founding of the great nations of the United States and Canada.
Leopold von Ranke observed: “Calvin was virtually the founder of America.”
Here, we celebrated Canada’s 142nd birthday on July 1 – Canada Day.
Many will remember our national birthday’s original moniker as Dominion Day. “Dominion” comes from the life of one of our own founding fathers, Samuel Tilley. As Canada’s original statesmen were deliberating over how to classify our coming together as a country, Sir Tilley sought the council of God. As he was praying and reading his bible one morning, he came across a verse from Psalm 72: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Verse 8).
That word became the basis of what our nation came to be known as – the Dominion of Canada. That verse is inscribed on a cornerstone of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
The first line of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms reads as follows: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law. “
This again shows the influence of Calvin, as he fought to establish governmental reform based on the biblical teaching that there are transcendent principles in place that need to be acknowledged, recognized and embraced in order for a society to be established, flourish, and even survive.
How far we have fallen. How soon we forget. Today, society is being as intentional as possible to create distance from our national foundation and roots.
I read an interesting article recently about recent changes to the Oxford Dictionary, where words associated with Christianity, the monarchy, and British history are being removed and replaced with more contemporary, relevant words. So no longer will people have a definition for sin (one glaring omission), but we will all be able to define MP3 (until it is soon relegated to the technological ash-heap of irrelevance). This is just another cultural commentary on how, we in this post-modern era, are seeking to re-write history by ignoring it, and in essence, rewriting it.
As a home-schooling father, I hold a strong conviction that my children grow to be responsible citizens in this country I was born in and love dearly.
I am concerned about the Canada that my grandchildren will inherit. My forefathers were Mennonites. Many of the early Mennonites gave their lives for the biblical truths recovered out of the reformation. My grandparents came to Canada to avoid religious persecution. The Judeo-Christian ethic in this land drew them here. I wonder if they would have chosen to come today?
William Lund said: “We study the past to understand the present; we understand the present to guide the future.”
Where are we going, Canada? I thank God for people like Calvin, the founding fathers of North America, and my grandparents. They stood for something foundational and timeless.
In my commitment to stand on guard for my country, my prayer is, “God keep our land, glorious and free.”
That will just happen. It will take the self-sacrificing faith of people committed to humble themselves before a transcendent God and admit that His ways do work, and our ways often do not.
Remember where you have come from – it’s the only sure way to know which way to go from here.
How can you explain back in England the Scot Presbyterians and English Puritans wanted to impose their own forms of worship and moral behavior on the population? **Sarcasm**Cromwellian England was a real beacon of liberty.***Sarcasm Off***. This ignores how people had to flee the Bay Colony to establish Connecticut and Rhode Island to escape persecution. Most of the Virginians who fought for liberty were members of the Anglican Church.
His ways are always working and always work...it’s just that sometimes, we don’t care for the results.
You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?"
But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"
Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?-- Romans 9:19-24, ESV
Man turns to his own way ... and screws up the systems completely.
God the Father left instructions on how to live to please Him. Man turns away. Time after time.
Jesus Christ came to show us the Father. We are slow, slow , ... in fact incapable of learning ... that our way is punished ... His way is blessed. It is the unending battle between good and evil..
We know how the story turns out in the end. Between now and then we have choices and so far we are going the way of death ... when we could be going the way of life. Where are you in day? None of us are promised tomorrow.
God help us in our day, God bless America. Amen.
??? OK
I believe that man follows the path that God has made for him.
The central thesis that Calvin was a virtual founder of America is questionable. Maryland was a pretty open and had a Toleration Act in place until the Puritans took over and kicked everyone else out. And of course they ran the show in New England. But Catholic Spain wasn’t so hot either, nor was Anglican Virginia or South Carolina. So I’m not sure you can pin modern religious liberty on those individual streams of thought.
If anything, I’d say that having folks of different confessions on these shores—and the various swings of power that that caused—was the prime force in disconnecting the state from the churches. It is enormously destabilizing to a society to keep swinging back and forth from one official religion to another. Or having different regions with different religions when the population is very mobile. At some point, people just get sick of the whole thing and just figure well, let’s just keep the state out of promoting religion.
And as far as Calvin’s influence in the idea of a society built on the supremacy of God and the rule of law...I’m not sure how that is unique to him either. I’m pretty sure most every Christian held to that view.
Perhaps God, in His wisdomand power, gave each of us different lessons, and what appears to be resistance to you, really isn’t?
God has a standard we are to measure our self with, and hope to grow more like, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Those that turn to Him and ask Him for forgiveness of our sins, and accept Him into our heart and follow Him ... He promised to give us living water, and life eternal..
Nothing on earth measures up to that. That is His offer. We are not forced to accept it. When we do we are changed by the renewing of our mind.
Those on the outside looking in ...
do not know the peace of God that passes all understanding.
God help us in our day, God bless America. Amen.
Yes, and I believe that standard is different for each individual.
God is not a respecter of persons. He answers a repentant heart and a calling on His name.
And I believe God knows our choices and deeds, before He even creates us.
He does not make us choose one way or the other. He leads us ... if we will follow.
That He knows the outcome from the beginning has little to do our choices. We are free to choose. He stretches out His arm to us.
If we are hardening our hearts toward God ... we are doing it. Not having it done to us. We will bear the consequence.
God bless America. God have mercy on the stubborn and the self righteous. Amen.
I believe we all follow God, whether or not we appear to choose good or evil.
He does not make us choose, He designs us to choose what He wants us to choose, what He has planned for us. We can do nothing against His will, or what He knows we will do.
That He knows the outcome of our choices and designs us with those outcomes inevitable, has everything to do with what we think we choose.
What is your basis for believing God works in this way?
” ... We can do nothing against His will, ...”?
I see that it lets the individual off the hook so to speak ...
‘God made me do it’ ...
instead of
“the devil made me do it”
Either way you are without choice.
It seems a totally demoralizing way to believe.
You just make up your own belief. That is what man defaults to doing ... over and over ... and over.
There we all are hanging by unseen threads ...without hope and mercy.
God help us in our day. God bless America. Amen.
My basis? Just an inherent belief, one of those self-evidential things.
Perhaps to you, it’s demoralizing, but not to me.
I don’t believe there is a hook to be on or off of.
I appear to make choices all the time, but I believe that ultimately, I am just doing as God would have me do.
Can an inherent, self-evident, and what I believe to be God-given, belief, be made-up?
While you may be without hope and mercy, I am not.
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