Galatians 5:1 “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
Romans 13:1 “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”
The Declaration of Independence brilliantly describes the true and ultimate source of our rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.”
We have been endowed by our Creator with rights that must not be taken away from us. They are unalienable!
He gave us life, he gave us liberty, and he gave us the opportunity to pursue happiness. We must never rob the Lord of the appreciation fully due to Him for these blessings in our lives. Once we lose sight of the source of these rights, we quickly drift away from liberty and towards bondage.
Rabbi Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013 reminds us that America’s “source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible.” He goes on to say that “the tree of liberty has religious roots. Don’t believe you can sever these roots and have the tree of liberty survive.” President Thomas Jefferson echoed these thoughts by words engraved on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”
John Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During his long voyage to the New World in 1630, he wrote “A Model of Christian Charity.” In it, he provides a stark warning for all: “For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”
If America loses sight of the Christ-centered source of our rights, then we risk becoming the cautionary tale of a nation that has been abandoned because we first did the abandoning.
PLEASE PRAY FOR AMERICAN CHRISTIANS TO RECOGNIZE AND RETURN TO THE TRUE SOURCE OF OUR RIGHTS. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness hang in the balance.
