Copyright © 2012 Krystal L. Heath, Ph.D.

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1478368292
ISBN-13: 9781478368298
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62345-841-6
 To my family,
my very best friends.
 Table of Contents

Part I—A Historical Mandate: The Judeo-Christian impact in the formation of the modern world.

Chapter One: Moses and the Jews

Chapter Two: Jesus and the Jews
Chapter Three: Constantine and Catholicism
Chapter Four: Luther, Zwingli, and the Reformation
Chapter Five: Pilgrims, Penn, and the New World
Chapter Six: The Continental Congress and the Colonies
Chapter Seven: Hitler and Germany

Part II—A Call to Involvement: The Christian impact on America and the world of the twenty-first
century.

Chapter Eight: The Youth Fallout

Chapter Nine: The Jewish Factor
Chapter Ten: The Conservative Fear
Chapter Eleven: The Political Faith
Chapter Twelve: The Ambassador Factor

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Bibliography
 Part I
A Historical Mandate:
The Judeo-Christian impact in the
formation of the modern world.
It was sunny, sticky—a typical 2010 summer afternoon in central
Pennsylvania. A large crowd had amassed that day, most outfitted in at least
partial camouflage and carrying some type of weapon. As the line
lengthened outside the York Gun Show, my friend Rose and I embarked
upon our quest. It began with asking each person waiting for entry a simple
question: “Are you from Pennsylvania?” A negative response and we’d bid
the individual a good day and move on. A positive response, on the other
hand, would lead to an offering of our candidate’s literature and brief
explanation of who he was and what he believed.
Yes, it was an election year, and where better to find committed
conservative voters than at one of the state’s highly popular gun shows?
The line grew continuously for several hours, with Rose and I doing our
best to communicate with every person in it. Eventually, low on both
materials and energy, we decided to take a break and explore inside the
showroom.
A short time later, we headed back out of the arena armed with the last
of our literature, only to be intercepted at the door by an ally from another
campaign. “Did you hear about the shooting?” he asked. I chuckled. Ever
since Governor Sarah Palin had made a comment about terrorists not
showing up at gun shows, it seemed everyone in the conservative (and
liberal) worlds had a crack about backwoods events like these. “No,
seriously,” he continued. “A guy just committed suicide in the parking lot.
Came in, bought stuff, went back out to his truck, and blew his head off.”
I was dumbfounded. During the few moments we’d been inside and
less than twenty yards from where we’d been standing, a man had rejected
God’s greatest gift to him by taking his own life. Eternity was brought
quickly into perspective.
My first thoughts were for his family, if he had one. My second, those
of gratefulness that we had not heard the shot, rushed to the scene, and
beheld a sight we’d never forget.
The most overpowering feeling I had in those moments however, was
one of confusion. What was I doing there? Why was I distributing political
jargon to the masses? I had likely spoken with that man, looked into his
eyes, and yet missed the agony permeating his soul. What if I had been
distributing biblical tracts instead of political flyers? What if I had been
seeking to discern the spiritual states of the people I met rather than their
political party? What if I’d been asking different questions? What if...
All my life I’ve felt called by God to a life of ministry and missions;
I’ve spent countless hours in workshops, seminars, and classes and written
papers for multiple degrees in biblical studies. Yet, somehow, I also have an
insatiable passion for politics that led me to work on several campaigns.
The two most controversial subjects throughout history: religion and
politics. My life has been filled with them.
In the days following that suicide, I spent many hours wondering why
I was working a political campaign. Did it really even matter? Men and
women were entering eternity without God, and I was doing nothing to stop
it. While I wrote speeches, planned fundraisers, and hoped beyond hope
there wouldn’t be another direct mail piece to prep, every hour more than
six thousand people were realizing the fruit of their earthly labors and
entering eternity.1 I was trained to make a difference, called to be a light,
but was I?
Aren’t all Christians called to be missionaries? How are we spending
our lives? Why are we losing our culture?
Was I wasting time working in a system on an ever-downward slope?
Had I turned my back on God’s calling on my life for some temporal
political high? These and countless similar questions closed in on me,
screaming for answers.
The answers I found were not always pleasant, seldom agreed with
conventional wisdom, and at times seemed downright unscriptural. Yet,
there was no mistaking the truth I discovered and hope to share with you in
the pages to come. Although I won’t be able to answer every question
presented, I hope to help you begin to form the questions we should all be
asking.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
 Chapter 1
Moses and the Jews

The book of Genesis reveals the beginning of the universe and lays the
groundwork of history. After creating the earth and everything in it, God
created man and breathed life into him. From the dawn of time, man ruled
over the earth, with God ruling over man; theocracy in its purest form. This
concept is clearly set forth in the opening chapters of the Bible. Adam is
answerable to God. His descendants reject God, and Noah is chosen as the
one in whom obedience is found. Noah’s offspring fill the earth and set
about to create a centralized government—one which God did not
command—and the languages of humanity were confounded at Babel. Men
then scattered across the face of the earth as one biblical patriarch settled in
the greatest civilization of his day, Ur. That man was Abram.
God revealed Himself to Abram as never before in the early annals of
Scripture. With Abram, God made a covenant, a covenant that He would
place His name alongside Abram’s forever.
Abram was also the first person to have his name changed by God. (In
the ancient world, to name someone or something was to take responsibility
for him or it; with the designation of Abraham, God officially took
responsibility for Abram.) Through Abraham, God promised all nations of
the world would be blessed. A ruler would come from his loins to govern
the world as God had intended from the beginning of time.
That promise seemed tenuous at best throughout the biblical account
of Abraham’s life. A man without any children by his wife, Sarah, Abraham
produced a son with Sarah’s handmaid Hagar and named him Ishmael.
(Ishmael would be the father of the Arab world, which, through history, has
been the greatest threat to God’s promised seed of Abraham.) God’s
promise was not fulfilled through Ishmael but came several years later
through the miraculous conception and birth of Sarah’s son, Isaac.
Isaac became the father of Esau and Jacob. Jacob would wrestle with
God and emerge with the name of Israel (again confirming God’s
responsibility for His people). Israel was blessed with twelve sons, one of
whom was treacherously sold by his brothers into slavery in what was then
the world’s superpower, Egypt. This son’s name was Joseph.
Joseph, a fine young man, would overcome temptation, slander, and
wrongful imprisonment to rise to an honored position in the land of his
bondage. As second in command under the great Pharaoh, Joseph kept the
Egyptians and their neighbors from certain death by seven year’s famine
with his wisdom, preparation, and keen oversight. Among those he saved
would be his own deceitful family.
By saving his family, Joseph brought his father, Israel, and all his
relations to live in Goshen, a particularly fertile portion of the land of
Egypt. God’s plan for the rule of man had traveled from Eden to Ur and
from Ur to Egypt, civilization to superpower. It was there, among all the
world could offer, that God would reveal Himself, lead His people, and
entrust them with His Law, His government.
After four hundred years and multiple generations, the Hebrew
population of Egypt was estimated to have been in the hundreds of
thousands. Of the Egyptian population, those who knew and respected
Joseph had long since died. To the all-powerful Pharaoh and his servants,
the Hebrews had become a despised people, an overwhelming stench in
their land.
So it was that the Jewish nation was first put to servitude. The leaders
of Egypt determined the most effective way to halt the growth and spread of
the Jewish populace was through hard bondage and mandatory service. As
they implemented their family planning however, it backfired. The women
of Israel continued to bear children, and the Hebrews multiplied by greater
numbers and in more rapid fashion than ever before.
Their first plan having failed, the Egyptian government next turned to
a primitive form of partial birth abortion, demanding of its midwives that
they kill all male children as they emerged from the womb. This plan also
failed. Scripture states the midwives “feared God” and refused to carry out
the wicked government scheme.2
For the Pharaoh and his land, the political ramifications were serious.
Pharaoh was not merely ruler. He was a god of Egypt, one of its greatest.
He was not only revered but worshipped. What Pharaoh said was done.
What Pharaoh wanted was done. Pharaoh was god. Yet not only had he
failed to subdue the Hebrew people but his orders had direct bearing on
their continued, rapid multiplication. Additionally, the women who had
craftily defied his decree were prospering in his realm (Exodus 1:20–21
says God “made them houses,” implying He blessed the midwives with
families). Pharaoh’s power was languishing before his very eyes, leaving
him exposed to the people as weak. Certainly, doubts of his deity, or at least
the supremacy of his deity, came into question by the Egyptian people.
Egypt then turned to mass infanticide as the solution to its “problem.”
“And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall
cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.”3 This action may
have been an attempt to maintain a (supposed) higher race via Egyptian
blood and patriotic zeal, or it may have been a manner of sacrifice to Hapi,
god of the Nile.
The Nile River brought life, in great abundance, to Egypt. The Nile
made Egypt what it was (and is today). Without the Nile, Egypt was a
desert wasteland. Overflowing its shores and irrigating the land, the Nile
created fertile fields resulting in abundant harvests. Thus, the Nile was the
center of Egyptian life and worshiped as an adored fertility god ranking
high on Egypt’s list of thousands of nameable deities. The lives of Hebrew
children were commanded by Pharaoh to be extinguished by the very
waters that brought life and prosperity to his land.
This last feeble attempt to destroy the children of God coincided with
the birth of the most revered lawgiver of all time. Drawn from the very
waters of the river bringing life to Egypt was the man who would call down
God’s judgment on those who sought his destruction, the baby Moses.
What other non-Hebrew name holds such a place in the annals of
Israel’s history than that of a prince of Egypt, this Moses? Moses’ parents
had followed the letter—albeit not the spirit—of the dread Pharaoh’s decree
by putting their son into the Nile River after his birth. It was common
Egyptian practice to float the deceased across the Nile to its West Shores,
known as the land of the dead.4 Therefore, Pharaoh’s decree implied that
the Hebrew boys be dead prior to being placed in the Nile. Yet, both a
living Moses and his basket were discovered by a daughter of Pharaoh, who
took him to the palace and raised him as her own son, as a prince of Egypt.
The accounts from Eden to the Exodus and of Moses’ life are the
foundation of Judeo-Christian society. They tell the story of man, reveal his
history, and expose his feeble attempts to govern himself and others. Most
particularly, for the topic at hand, they shed light on the heritage of Moses,
father of the Law and scribe of the Torah.
As a prince of Egypt, Moses had grown into adulthood with the finest
of all the world had to offer. He grew up in the palaces of the gods of Egypt,
after all. He had the best food, the best companions, the best transportation,
the best clothes, the best education, the most loyal servants, and the most
thorough indoctrinations in all things Egyptian. Never is a child more
particularly reared, more economically savvy, or more studiously employed
than when preparing him to lead a nation! In short, Moses was reared and
geared for one purpose: to walk among the gods.
At some point in his life, Moses had learned of his Hebrew heritage
and knew his calling to deliver the people of the true God from the realms
of Pharaoh. (How or when he discovered this calling is not revealed in
Scripture.) Was the young Moses exercising god-like power when he
executed an Egyptian, which led to his wilderness banishment? Surely, the
princes of Egypt had authority to enact capital punishment. Or did they?
That fateful execution plunged Moses into a long, lonely journey into
the desert. Away from Egypt, all its splendor, power, and politics, God
would meet the zealous young man in the wilderness, give him a family,
confirm the purpose of his life and provide direction for the children of
Israel.
Forty years later, Moses found himself trekking back across the desert
to the people and nations he had fled. He went with purpose, as God’s
messenger, to deliver the people of God from the land of bondage and lead
them to a new land of their own.
The Israelites were skeptical of both Moses and his calling, demanding
the name of the God who sent him. I AM was His name. He was not a god
of Egypt, nor the god of the Nile, nor god of earth or of sea. He was God of
all of Israel, of all Egypt. He was (and is) the God. Put the Nile, the earth,
the sea or anything else as the suffix, He exercised dominion over it.
 In Moses, the God had arrived in Egypt with but one instruction for
her ruler: “Let My people go.”5 This statement, let alone its implications,
would have been an affront to Pharaoh on multiple levels. First, it came via
Moses, the outcast prince who had found home in neither Egypt nor Israel.
Pharaoh had likely grown up alongside the man standing before him who
now declared himself a messenger of God. Second, the edict was delivered
via Aaron. Moses—again, whom Pharaoh likely knew—would have been
perceived not to have the fortitude or decency to make the demand of his
own accord. Third, in declaring them “My” people, God (through Moses)
irrevocably denied any claim of Pharaoh to rule over, let alone enslave, the
Hebrews. Lastly, Pharaoh himself was god of Egypt. None dared question
him. Yet here stood a former colleague and probable friend with a message
from a non-Egyptian God, and a command for the Egyptian deity ruler. Not
just any command, but a command to admit his subjection to the God of
Israel, submit to Him and relinquish his authority, all while surrendering
rights to the sustaining workforce of his country.
No one in the courts of Pharaoh would view this encounter as a
command from God to man. All would view it as a decree from one God to
another god, from the God of the Hebrews to a god of Egypt, a spiritual
battle of epic proportions about to unfold before their eyes.
Pharaoh, needless to say, was disinclined to grant Moses his request
and questioned the existence of this God he represented. As proof, Aaron
cast down Moses’ rod, and it became a serpent. Or, at least that is what
English Bibles say. A closer look at the Hebrew reveals the word translated
as “serpent” is tanniyn, which can also mean crocodile.6 The crocodile was
a symbol of Pharaoh himself, another god of Egypt, and a representation of
the world superpower. These facts, coupled with the statement that Moses’
“serpent” devoured those of Pharaoh’s servants, suggests that this was not a
contest of snakes but of crocodiles; the first of many demonstrations of the
existence, power, and supremacy of Moses’ God, the I AM.
Crocodiles (or snakes) eating each other does not seem to be a feat of
particular significance. However, when it is realized that both the serpent
and the crocodile were symbolic of Pharaoh’s power, this account takes a
whole new meaning. The crocodile (power) of God had completely
annihilated the crocodiles (power) of Pharaoh.
Interestingly, beside humans, the crocodile has no real predator other
than his own kind. Thus, the crocodiles were a picture and foretelling of the
ensuing spiritual battle between the God of Israel and Pharaoh, the god of
Egypt. It was as if God was giving Pharaoh a chance, showing him a mere
glimpse of what would come, and offering him the opportunity to obey. But
Pharaoh refused that chance, and Moses was escorted from his presence.
The power of God had come into direct conflict with the power of
man. Ancient Egypt was the world’s superpower, of greater influence and
power than that of the United States in the modern world. It was the center
of trade, commerce, education, and international relations, a hub for the
world’s government. At the head of that governmental system presided
Pharaoh, through whom God was about to show His power—His rule over
the earth and all it contained.
Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh more than ten times. Each
time they presented the Lord’s message, they were refused. Upon each
refusal, God brought a situation that Pharaoh, god of Egypt, could not
remedy, and with each new plague, He exposed the fallacy of man’s gods
and the supremacy of the I AM.
Each of the ten plagues could be directly linked to one, if not many,
Egyptian gods. The first plague saw the Nile turned to blood. The Nile was
worshipped as the manifestation of the god Hapi, the giver of life. “The fact
that the Nile turned to blood, which was abominable to Egyptians, was a
direct affront to one of their chief gods.”7 Not only did the Nile turn to
blood but so did all the established water supplies of Egypt. The giver of
life had become the taker of life. All the fish (also held as a representation
of an Egyptian god) of the Nile perished, and the Egyptians were forced to
dig new wells.
Next came the plague of frogs. Heket was a fertility goddess believed
to create life in the womb and who was manifested on earth as a frog.
Through the plague, however, the Egyptian people came to despise the
creatures they claimed to worship.
Flies next filled the land, and yes, the Egyptians even had a fly god.
Murrain followed and all the livestock of Egypt perished. This judgment
reflected on the deities Apis, Buchis, and Mnevis, all bull gods of Egypt,
and other sacred cattle associated with a cow headed goddess of love.
The boils next encountered by the Egyptians immobilized a pair of
gods, Imhotep, the god of healing, and the goddess Sekhmet, revered for
her healing powers. Neither could relieve the Egyptians of their misery.
 Hail struck a blow to the worship of Nut, the mother of the sun god
who protected the earth from destruction originating in the skies. Locusts
followed and ate what the hail had left, reminding Egypt of her worship of
Senehem, the locust-headed god.
The ninth plague was a direct assault on the sun god, Ra, considered
the most powerful of all the gods in ancient Egypt. As the god represented
by the sun, Ra was believed to control not only day and light in his journeys
across the sky but even the activities of earth itself. Pharaoh was revered as
the son of Ra, and thereby, the supreme ruler of the earth and the universe.
The plague of darkness was an unmistakable blow to both Ra and Pharaoh.
As the sun and the son of Ra, neither were able to perform their most basic
function and give light to Egypt.
Nine plagues had come and gone. Egypt was being destroyed from
within by the representations of the very gods she worshipped. Pharaoh, for
all his might and power, was unable to remedy any of the judgments of God
and had been forced to lower himself to request God’s mercy via Moses
multiple times. The gods of his people had been rendered powerless and
brought to scorn in the eyes of the nation, a nation more religious than any
other of the ancient world. The country’s economy was staggering. The
agricultural outlook was bleak.
Yet, Pharaoh would not be moved. Instead, he laid down an ultimatum.
“Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more, for in that
day thou seest my face thou shalt die.”8 Pharaoh had had enough of Moses,
enough of Moses’ God, and enough of their influence on his people and
control over his nation. He would tolerate them no longer.
As a god and one with Ra, the line of Pharaoh was divinely chosen and
protected; he was the supreme deity. The sons of Pharaoh, sons of the god,
were also held as divine, particularly the firstborn, who would one day
reign over Egypt when his father joined Ra in his journeys in the heavens.
The great and final blow to the land of Egypt came on the night of
Passover. For the nation of Israel, Passover would be an evening of
contemplation and expectation, the eve of a promise fulfilled. That night
would become a yearly festival to rejoice in God’s mercy and goodness,
while pointing forward to the Messiah who would again redeem their nation
and free the Jewish people.
Not so for the Egyptians. The angel of death traveled throughout the
homes of Egypt that night, striking down the firstborn of each family. Heir
to the throne and deity of Egypt, the son of Pharaoh, the son of god himself,
died. The I AM of Israel had not only humiliated the idolatrous gods of the
land, but He had also killed the man destined to be worshipped as a
supreme god of the world’s greatest superpower. Pharaoh’s refusal to
comply had nailed the coffin of his family’s divinity shut.
Immediately, Moses and Aaron were brought before Pharaoh. Defeated
and desperate, Pharaoh commanded the people to leave, to take all they had
and all they wanted, and be gone. Seemingly finally realizing his defeat, he
even asked a blessing of Moses as the Hebrews left.9
With all that had transpired in his land, it seems odd that this man held
as a deity would ask a blessing from Moses. The words of Exodus 7:1
explain by saying, “And the Lord said unto Moses, See I have made thee a
god to Pharaoh.” While Pharaoh recognized the supremacy of Moses’ God,
he had also come to hold Moses on the same level as the gods of Egypt, as
equal even with himself.
Why would a God who shares His glory with no other raise a man to
the status of divine in the eyes of another man? Did it perhaps have
something to do with the history they shared together? Was it simply to
elevate God’s people in Pharaoh’s eyes? Or does this verse merely mean
that God would humble Pharaoh to the point of having to request Moses’
presence even after banishing him from his kingdom? The text does not
clarify this, but in a land of thousands of gods, it is significant to note that
Moses had become one of them in the eyes of Pharaoh.
The world’s greatest superpower had come face-to-face with the God
of the universe. All the power of Egypt had been proven to be nothing
before the dominion of the I AM. What was the purpose of it all? Was it one
big power struggle, a chance for God to show the world who was boss?
Definitely not. Scripture clearly reveals a threefold purpose for the
judgments upon and exodus from Egypt, the first real look at a direct
dealing of God and a government and the need to protect freedom and
pursue truth.
First, and apparently foremost in God’s purpose, was His love and
mercy for the Egyptian people. Four hundred years—multiple generations
—they’d dwelt alongside and among the people of God. Yet, they continued
in their pagan, idolatrous ways, separated from God. At the outset of
Moses’ calling, God specifically informed him that Pharaoh would not heed
him, followed with, “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord,
when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of
Israel from among them.”10 Following the plague of boils, Moses stood
before Pharaoh to further emphasize God’s message, saying, “I will at this
time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon
thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the
earth...and in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in
thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the
earth.”11
While the ten plagues “judged” Egypt’s gods, they should perhaps also
be considered as a manifestation of God’s mercy to the Egyptian people.
God had brought this Pharaoh to power for the express purpose of not only
delivering Israel but also for revealing Himself to Egypt and, thereby, the
world. An oft overlooked fact in the Exodus account is the success of this,
God’s primary purpose. Prior to the plague of hail, “He that feared the Lord
among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the
houses,”12 and they were spared. The short record of Exodus 12:37–38 is
more important still: “And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to
Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside
children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them.” Who comprised
this mixed multitude? Who left the land of Egypt with the people of God?
“Mixed multitude” implies not simply one race but several. However, in
that multitude undoubtedly were many Egyptians who feared the Lord
among Pharaoh’s servants. Having seen God and experienced His power,
they too would follow Him into the wilderness and receive His Law.
The second purpose for the plagues upon Egypt was for the benefit of
the Hebrew people. Clearly, being relieved from four hundred years of
oppression and taken to a land of their own would be a huge step forward
for the fledgling nation. However, the purpose of God for them in this
process far surpassed a mere physical removal from Egypt. Multiple
generations living alongside a highly pagan people would have created
much turmoil in the religious lives and beliefs of the people of God. A
perverted Judaism, including forms of outright idolatry, was commonplace
(as seen in the people’s request for an Egyptian god at the foot of Sinai and
their worship to it manifested in grossly pagan immorality). In the plagues
on Egypt, God demonstrated His power to His people and proved Himself
worthy of following, unquestionably declaring Himself the God of Israel.
 For the first few plagues, no difference was put between the lands and
peoples in Egypt as God’s judgments came forth. As events progressed
however, God made a clear distinction between His people and the
Egyptians. When the plagues continued in Egypt, but not in Goshen, none
could doubt the chosen status of the Hebrew nation as the people of this
God and under His protection.
After leaving Egypt, Moses taught the children of Israel a song. Its
stanzas would serve as a continual reminder to the people of their heritage
and standing: “The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my
salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare Him an habitation; my father’s
God and I will exalt Him,” and “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the
gods?”13
The final purpose for the deliverance of God’s people is not directly
seen in the text but can be clearly observed by even a casual reader of the
Old Testament. The Hebrew Exodus set the stage for the giving of God’s
Law.
It was necessary that Israel be removed from the splendor of Egypt
that they might be entrusted with the treasures of heaven. To that point in
history, the laws of men varied greatly from one people group to another
and were based not on a standard moral code but on the whims of imperfect
men and their demon-powered gods.14
In conquering all that was Egypt, the God of Israel established Himself
as the great and only true ruler of the universe. As such, His was the right to
set forth the standard by which men would live. So He did, through His
servant Moses.
Upon the Law of the Old Testament, the Law given to Moses (the
Hebrew Torah), the standard moral code of man presides. Why is murder a
capital offense? The Torah says so. Why is adultery wrong? The Torah says
so. Why should children honor their parents? The Torah says so. If we
eliminate the Law of God, the Torah, there is no standard of morality, no
foundation to society. Sodomy becomes a gay lifestyle. Sleeping around is
not a problem. A little white lie is exactly that. Being disrespectful to
parents is not an issue because they know nothing anyway. Communism:
not a problem. Sacrificing children, even that is acceptable. To remove the
Torah from a society and its government is to remove the only foundation—
the standard—for morality given to man.
 God moved His people from Egypt to set up just such a standard. The
Torah would be the center of Jewish life, both personally and nationally,
throughout the existence of the nation. It contained not only basic moral
codes of do’s and do not’s but also specific, practical instructions for daily
living.
Laws on hygiene, medicine, child rearing, teaching, marriage,
clothing, respect of women, proper nutrition, treatment of animals,
agricultural and construction laws—among many others—can all be found
in the Torah. Every situation a man could encounter was addressed, with
provision for Levitical counsel if one came across unfamiliar territory. The
Law was complete as given to Moses by God. It contained everything Israel
needed to survive as a nation. It even came with blessings for obedience.
That was God’s desire. He wanted to bless His people. He had freed
them from bondage that they might pursue Him and know His truth, that
they might know exactly how to obtain His blessing.
The United States of America has forgotten that blessing. More
accurately, like Esau, this nation has despised its birthright, her foundation
of Torah. What began as a removal of God’s Law from the classrooms and
the courts has rapidly crept into the churches. The focus of the Church in
America has become acceptance and tolerance. Without God’s Law, there is
nothing that cannot be accepted and nothing that can be condemned. Yet
many wonder why pastors fall into immorality, youth leave the church in
droves, and ministries dwindle. In his study of the book of Acts, John
Phillips wrote, “The church is weak today because of its desire to
compromise rather than confront.”15
The world today has become obsessed with a separation of church and
state. But in giving of the Torah, God made a powerful statement that
separation of God from state was never to be. God was the government,
and, thereby, the government was God. In pursuing Him and His truth, the
people of God found freedom. (This was true not for the Hebrews alone, as
even those who worshipped pagan gods recognized their deities as their
governmental system. If the gods were happy, they were free to live and
prosper.)
Separation of church and state was never contemplated by the ancient
mind. Worship was the way of life, and that way of life was based on the
will of your god.
 The history of humanity demonstrates that when God is removed from
society, there is no direction, no final authority in the life of a people or a
nation. The truth sets free, and when truth is rejected, when God is no
longer recognized by a people, that nation will crumble.
The Jewish people, however, never completely rejected the union of
God and government as one. Their history, fraught with turmoil and
rejection of God followed by repentance and return to Him, is well
documented in history. Yet, through it all they clung to God’s Law as the
life blood of their nation. It was the Torah of God that sustained them
through exiles, rebellions, and wars.
The love of a Jew for his Torah was (and is) the most passionate in the
annals of the world. Indeed, a Jewish lad would begin Hebrew school at the
age of three. His learning revolved entirely around the Torah. Vast portions
of Scripture, beginning with Leviticus, would be committed to his memory
before entering his teenage years. The most studious, wisest of the young
men would become disciples of a rabbi and eventually become rabbis
themselves, the revered teachers of God’s Law in the Hebrew world.16
Into this observant society that loved the Torah and devoted itself to its
adherence came another Deliverer, the One who was foreshadowed by the
Passover. His name was Yeshua.
 Chapter 2
Jesus and the Jews

The line of the Herods ruled the lands of Israel with an iron fist. Entrusted
with their authority by Caesar himself, all the power of Rome supported the
whims, whiles, and governance of these “kings” of Israel. The Herods were
evil dictators, corrupted Jews scorned by their countrymen, and the last of
Israel’s kings.
Herod the Great is known for rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.
“Herod’s Temple” however, reflected about as much personal devotion to a
religion or deity as Herod’s other improvements to Jerusalem and its
surrounding areas. He constructed theaters as well as temples to pagan gods
and Caesar, and rebuilt Caesarea—named for the emperor and complete
with the most vile of men and man’s most abominable practices.
It is probable that Herod rebuilt the Temple in an attempt to regain
some type of favor—if not respect—from the Jewish people.17 Years of
bloodshed and murder had hardened both the people and priests of Israel
against him. Six times he instituted a change in the high priesthood,
ultimately bestowing it not on a faithful priest of Israel but on a foreigner of
Alexandria.18 His will and schemes engulfed the land of the Hebrews as he
sought complete control over every aspect of Jewish life, land, and society.
Within Israel, however, there was a contingent who loved Herod.
Though not perfect, he had brought a level of credibility and consistency to
their nation, while also rebuilding the center of Jewish life and worship.
Into this bleak, conflicted sky of Israel’s national life, a star unlike any
other appeared. Its burning brightness did not go unnoticed by the Jewish
people, nor by Israel’s king. Rather, it troubled Herod greatly. More
alarming to him, however, was the appearance at his court of a delegation of
men from the East and their perplexing question. “Where is he that is born
King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to
worship him.”19 A newborn king? Clearly Herod had not had any sons
since the appearance of the star. Is that what it had appeared for, to
announce a king? A new king?
The announcement of a king via a heavenly sign caused great turmoil
for the evil dictator. This was not merely some trick of the zealot forces that
despised him and tormented his soldiers, nor a deception of the rabbinical
Pharisees who taught against him in the synagogues. No, this was a
declaration only a god could give. Since it was made by a god, and Herod’s
Jewish lineage would have made him very familiar with the one God who
had created the sky and its stars, this sign could mean only one thing: his
entire realm would soon be taken from him. Like upon God’s rejection of
Saul of old, a David was again being raised up to rule God’s people. Nay,
rather, the Son of David foretold, Messiah himself had come!
The chief priests and scribes were assembled. Wasting no time, Herod
“demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him,
in Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet, and thou
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of
Judah: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people
Israel.”20 Next for questioning was the Eastern delegation, from whom
Herod inquired the time the star had first appeared. The wise men were then
sent on their way to find the new life, with instructions to return to Herod
with the exact location of this young king. But Herod never saw their faces
again.
An angel of the Lord had appeared to the men of the East and directed
them not to return to Herod. The angel also appeared to the new King’s
father with a command to flee with the Child to Egypt.
Herod, realizing the magi would not return, was enraged. His plan—
whether to take the child for his own, kill him and his family, or execute
some other devious scheme—had been thwarted. The appearance of the
Messiah would threaten Herod’s rule and must be dealt with creatively.
Based on the time derived from the magi— the star had declared the
coming of Messiah for two whole years—Herod ordered the slaying of all
children two years of age and under in all of Bethlehem.
 Outside the biblical record, history records little of this gross
infanticide. Factually, the population of the little town of Bethlehem would
have been unimpressive, and children of this age likely numbered no more
than twenty.21 A mere raindrop in the vast ocean of Herod’s record of
manslaughter, those innocents were the first to give their lives for the
Christ.
Scripture does not record whether Herod believed himself successful
in his attempt to eliminate the Messiah. Neither does it reveal the future of
the star. Did it leave the skies over Bethlehem on the very night Jesus was
whisked away to Egypt? Or, did it remain in the sky months or years
afterward, a continual reminder to both Israel’s people and her king that the
Christ had come?
But what of the birth of Him, the Christ? The Jews knew to expect his
arrival in Bethlehem, but no one else would ever dream a king could be
born in that lonely village!
It is essential to examine the circumstances surrounding the birth of
Christ to gain a better picture of the system of government God intended
but that had been corrupted by the repeated captivity and conquest of the
Jewish people. Doing so also presents valuable insights into the culture of
Jesus’ lineage, calling, and service.
As previously noted, Rome was the power of the world and ruler of
Israel at the birth of Christ. To the superpower of Egypt, God revealed
Himself to give His Law to His people. But it was to the Roman world God
sent His Son to fulfill the Law for His people.
Moses’ birth had come during a time of slavery and coincided with an
edict to kill all the male children of Israel. Jesus’ birth was precluded with a
census and resulted in the deaths of Bethlehem’s infants.
The census prior to the birth of Christ required every man to return to
the place of his family’s origin. Thus, Joseph and Mary had journeyed from
their town of Nazareth to Bethlehem. The name “Bethlehem” is Hebrew for
“house of bread,” i.e., a bakery. While in the house of bread, Mary gave
birth to the Messiah, the bread of life, and called His name Yeshua, Jesus.
On the night of his birth, as they’d done countless nights before, a
group of shepherds were in a field watching over their flocks. An angel of
the Lord appeared to them, accompanied by a host of heaven, proclaiming
glory to God at the birth of this, the Savior of mankind.
 To the eyes of those shepherds, a glimpse of the Kingdom of God was
given. Indicative of the manner of governance God would unveil through
His Son, the arrival of God among men was not heralded in the halls of an
earthly palace. Instead, it was entrusted to a group of humble shepherds.
Somewhere in the annals of history and pictorial accounts of the birth
of Christ, these shepherds became typified as middle aged, knurly, gnarly,
bearded men. A crude bunch, the outcasts of society, and all that image
implies. This picture has been taught, painted, and written across Western
culture and religious circles. This picture, however, lies in stark contrast to
first-century Jewish culture and is highly inaccurate.
The best picture Scripture gives us of a Jewish shepherd is in the child
David. When David watched his father’s sheep, he was a young man. More
specifically, he was the youngest of his family. Why David would be
entrusted with sheep rather than another of his brothers (or a servant) is
explained by understanding a cultural reality of the Eastern world. David’s
father, Jesse, had only sons. In the Jewish family, it would often be a
daughter or daughters that were entrusted with the flocks of their father at
the age of twelve or thirteen22 (the age of responsibility and adulthood), as
the boys would be busy learning their family trade. In the case of no
daughter, a family’s flocks would be left in the charge of the youngest son.
While it remains true that some men were shepherds by profession,
family flocks were generally maintained by young girls in the hills and
fields of Israel in company of their companions, the daughters of extended
family and family friends who also tended their flocks. Therefore, it is
extremely probable that the group of shepherds found in the Nativity
referenced not a group of middle-aged men but a group of adolescent girls.
To them the Gospel was first proclaimed, and they were the first to worship
the Savior. In a world of then male superiority, this is a very significant
realization.
Why would God entrust the most spectacular news of all time to a
group of young ladies? Perhaps for the same reason David was called of
God from the sheepfold to be king of Israel. God chose those deemed
insignificant, those useful only for watching sheep; being found faithful in
little, He entrusted them with much, much more than they could ever have
imagined.
Additionally, in the Jewish world, women were and are upheld as the
leaders of worship; they were responsible for establishing the foundation of
Torah understanding in the home. The home was the center of Jewish life,
Jewish culture, and Judaism itself. How appropriate then that those
responsible for Israel’s future were the first to know of Israel’s hope!
The Messiah had come, and His entry to earth was declared to a group
of young girls before anyone else. God Himself delivered the news to them
via the angels, and He gave them the honor of being the first to glimpse the
incarnate Christ. How awed they must have been! How they must have
admired Mary! And, as only girls can, how soon must all they met have
learned of the Good News! For, “when they had seen it, they made known
abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they
that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the
shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her
heart.”23
There, in an unclean barn, was Mary. Likely still a teenager herself,
what a blessing it must have been to her in that village not her own to
receive a visit from girls as excited as she at the birth of her Son! And how
much more understandable their visit, as no men would have been seeing
Mary—culturally—at that point in her life. Yes, the shepherd girls could
visit and confirm what Gabriel had told Mary nine months prior. Her child
was the Messiah. Blessed indeed was she among women!
The arrival of God on earth, the birth of the King of all mankind, was
not proclaimed by trumpets, priests, or princes. Instead, the rule of God was
heralded by humble shepherd girls. God had chosen, and would continue to
choose, the least and the rejected to reveal His truth to the world. An
amazing foreshadowing of things to come, the governance of God among
men would be unlike the rule of any other god man had created.
This fact would be demonstrated throughout the life of Christ. The
New Testament provides only one account of Christ’s childhood, but that
account reveals much insight to the life of Jesus.
It was Passover, the celebration of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. As
did many others, Jesus’ family traveled to Jerusalem, likely in a caravan of
dozens (if not hundreds) of cousins, aunts, and uncles for the festivities.
Upon conclusion of the feast, the joyful party began the journey home to
Nazareth. After a day’s travel, Joseph and Mary sought Jesus among their
relations. When they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem. Scripture
tells us it was three days later (one day from the city, one day back to the
city, and three days of searching would have left the young Jesus alone in
Jerusalem for five days) when He was found in the Temple reasoning with
the doctors, listening, asking questions, and astonishing the people with His
answers. “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I
have sought thee sorrowing,”24 Mary said upon their reunion. The response
to this by most children would undoubtedly have been, “You left me here!
What was I supposed to do?!” But not Jesus. His response was filled with
humility, wisdom, and truth, the very nature of His being. “How is it that ye
sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”25
There, in the Temple, at twelve years of age, Jesus declared Himself,
for the first time known in the text, to be the Messiah. How do scholars
know this? In Jewish culture, all of Israel referred to God as their Father,
“our Father” being the standard of Jewish thought and teaching. No Jew
however, would address God as “my Father.” To do so was an outright
Messianic claim, blasphemy from any but God’s own Son. Yet this was the
very term used by Jesus in the presence of not only His parents but also the
most learned men of Israel.
Additionally, Jesus’ presence in the Temple raised several questions.
How did He get there? Why would a mere lad be given such a place of
prominence that He commanded the attention of the Hebrew nation’s most
revered scholars, the doctors? These answers can be found in a study of
who a first-century disciple truly was. What was a talmid, a disciple?
A talmid (the Hebrew word for disciple) was one with a singular focus,
unquenchable passion, and total commitment to a distinct goal: to be like
his teacher, his rabbi. To obtain this goal, the talmid would spend every
moment of his day and night following his rabbi, asking him questions,
observing his life, and learning to be just like him.
When the twelve disciples come to mind, the picture often resembles
that of the Western view of the Nativity shepherds. Again we imagine
middle-aged, scruffy men, not the average guy or even someone to hang out
with. And again, this perception shows a lack of understanding of first-
century Hebrew culture.
The Jewish people held education in high esteem, particularly with
regard to the learning of Scripture. From birth, Jewish children began three
phases of learning. First, they were taught their heritage, that they were a
Jew. Second, they would begin to memorize Leviticus if a son and the
Psalms if a daughter. Third, the rabbis say that you cannot teach a child to
love God until you teach the child that God loves him; thus, the last
foundational truth taught from birth was that God had a purpose for each
child born into the family. Then, as early as four years, a child’s formal
education could begin. By age twelve, many boys would have committed
the entire Torah to memory, and girls would have completed their
memorization of the Psalms. At that time, “the children began to learn their
family trade (boys) or home skills (girls), with the most talented boys
continuing their Torah studies...[T]he student would approach a s’mikeh
rabbi in an attempt to further their study...to see if he would accept them as
a talmid, a disciple. The way they would do this is by approaching the rabbi
and asking him, ‘can I be like you?’”26 Then came the test. It wouldn’t have
been uncommon for a rabbi to require recitation of an entire book of the
Pentateuch, or more, from a hopeful candidate. Those who passed the test
would spend most of the rest of their lives following that rabbi, devoted
completely to him (to forsake one’s rabbi was to forsake God Himself; the
talmid was expected to guard his rabbi with his very life) before beginning
a ministry of their own upon their rabbi’s death. Those who were turned
away from one rabbi would find another and try again. If rejected, they’d
find yet another rabbi. Every Jewish boy wanted to be a talmid and would
exhaust every possible avenue to achieve that goal. Once every possibility
was expended and every rabbi asked, the youth would devote himself
entirely to the family trade and become a skilled laborer, supporting his
family and society with the work of his hands.
So what was Jesus doing, at age twelve, in the Temple, astounding the
doctors of the Torah? He knew His calling, and undoubtedly any who heard
Him speak would have foreseen a bright talmid and future rabbi in the
young man. The rabbis say that a student is measured not by the answers he
gives but by the questions he asks. How many rabbis left Jerusalem hoping
the young Jesus would ask to follow them?
Jesus’ response to His parents that He must be about His Father’s
business seems to indicate that He had every intention of becoming a talmid
Himself. (There is strong evidence that Jesus could have been a disciple,
most possibly of the great Hillel, who was one of very few Rabbi’s known
to choose his own disciples and whom Jesus quoted in many of His
teachings.) As such, He wouldn’t be returning home, he would be following
a rabbi.
His parents, however, seemed to have other plans, and Jesus returned
with them to Nazareth. There he became known as a carpenter and the son
of a carpenter (Mark 6:3). As such, those with whom He came in contact
would have assumed that He had been rejected by the rabbis, not worthy of
the calling of a talmid. In reality, it is far more likely that Jesus never sought
a rabbi and never asked the fateful question every Jewish child spent their
life preparing for and eagerly anticipating. It is also possible He was
handpicked by Hillel as a talmid, or that He simply chose to learn His
father’s trade, work as a carpenter, and support His earthly family. Scripture
does not give us the details of Jesus’ life between the ages of twelve and
thirty. What we do know is that Jesus understood His calling, that He
submitted Himself, and at the age of thirty emerged again on the pages of
Scripture not only as a skilled tekton (mason or carpenter) but as a powerful
rabbi Himself.
At that time, Mary did not ask Jesus what he was doing but what He
would do for the couple whose marriage celebration had run out of wine.
Thereby released by His mother to fulfill God’s calling, Jesus performed
His first recorded miracle, and water instantly became wine.
Surrounding this occurrence are the moving accounts of the callings of
Jesus’ disciples, the young men who would be His talmid. These were not
hardened men, learned men, or even grown men. They were boys. Boys
who had said, “Can I be like you?” and been rejected. When Jesus came to
each of these youths, He said, “Come after Me” or “Come, follow Me.”
There would have been no hesitation; here was a rabbi who sought them out
and believed they could be like Him without a single question. Yes, Jesus
was willing to stake His reputation on those who hadn’t been good enough
for the other rabbis.
Of the group, it is known that John was the youngest, probably a mere
twelve or thirteen years old, as his position in the traditions carried out
during the Passover meal of the Last Supper reveal. Peter would have been
the oldest, likely somewhere near twenty. (This can be deduced by the fact
that all Jewish men were required to pay a tax, and when Jesus provided
payment for Himself and Peter, nothing was given for the other disciples.)
This understanding clarifies Peter’s standing as a leader in the young group
and lends credence to his oft foolhardy remarks and actions. As the eldest
of the group, he was the one expected to speak and do. Realizing the status
of Jesus’ disciples as boys also clarifies the account of Matthew 20 and
Mark 10, where James and John’s mother approaches Jesus to request her
sons be seated beside Him in His kingdom. The mother of two adult males
would never have approached a rabbi with such a request, but with John
barely in his teens and James just a few years older, this becomes a
plausible picture. How clear also to see the ten other teenagers hear what
this mother had come to ask their Rabbi for, and no wonder they were more
than displeased!
Most important to realize in this concept of the talmidim (plural
Hebrew form of disciples) of Jesus is their calling. These young men knew
the Torah, had studied hard, and hoped for a life of devotion to a master, but
they just weren’t good enough for the rabbis. Jesus’ words suddenly burst
with new and vibrant meaning, not only for His talmidim but also for us
today: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you,
that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.”27
With that band of impetuous, handpicked young men following in His
footsteps, the Master would reveal the ways of God to the Hebrew world.
Misconceptions abound in modern society over the motives and
methods of Jesus throughout His ministry. What did God’s dwelling among
men really look like? How did God govern while He walked the earth?
Tolerance and acceptance are particularly prevalent ideas. The thought
that “Jesus loved sinners, He didn’t judge people” is rampant and
misconstrued, empowering the sinner and immobilizing the saints. What did
Jesus teach about life? Did His coming abolish the Law? Was a new era of
grace ushered in with His resurrection? And, what does Jesus’ life reveal
about God’s governance among men?
First, the mission of Jesus was to reveal the Father, His will, and His
ways. He would offer Himself as the Passover Lamb, a complete
substitutional sacrifice for all who would accept Him. It is true, Jesus loved
sinners. He came to seek and to save the lost. He died and rose again in
fulfillment of that promise. John 3:16-17 confirms and summarizes this
saying, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the
world through him might be saved.”
Jesus did not once, however, encounter sin without confronting and
exposing it for what it was. To say Jesus was not judgmental is an affront to
His character. Jesus has been entrusted by God the Father with the judgment
and reward of all mankind. To the woman caught in adultery, He
commanded she sin no more; He rebuked the Pharisees continually and
publicly; He threw out those who made the Temple a place of commerce;
and of Judas, Jesus declared it better had he never been born!
Jesus was meek, full of love, compassion, hope, and forgiveness. But
never once did He tolerate sin. Sin never came in contact with the Christ of
God and remained present. The perception of Jesus as gentle almost to the
point of weakness is utterly unfounded. C. S. Lewis may have said it best in
his allegorical tale of Christ’s relation to man in The Chronicles of Narnia
series with his description of Aslan: “Of course He’s good. But He’s not
safe. He’s not a tame lion!”28
Jesus taught a life of holiness, a life of complete abandonment to God.
In doing so, He did not abolish the Law. Indeed, the thought that Jesus did
not observe the Law and condemned those who did is groundless. However,
“The Old Testament is irrelevant” is another common misconception often
attributed to the life and work of Christ.
Jesus was a Jewish man, raised in a Jewish home, taught in a Jewish
school, living in a Jewish world, and known by His Jewish name, Yeshua.
In short, Yeshua was a Jew. To believe that Yeshua was a Jew but did not
live as one is ludicrous. He Himself said that He had not come to destroy
the Law but to fulfill it. In fact, many of the teachings of Yeshua correspond
directly with Jewish teachings of His contemporary rabbis. Parables, for
instance, were standard Jewish teaching tools, as were questions and partial
quotations of Scripture. (Assuming one’s hearers knew the Scriptures and
could fill in the next phrase or phrases, an instructor could give only a
portion of any given text as a method of emphasis and get more bang for his
buck.) These techniques were all regularly employed by Jesus.
What then, of the seemingly continual confrontations of Jesus and the
Jewish religious leaders all throughout the Gospels? If Jesus upheld the
Law, what about the writings of Paul?
Many Christians assume that Jesus’ continual confrontations with the
Pharisees and oft disparaging comments in their regard show that He
disapproved of these teachers of the Torah. Jesus was, however, most likely
a Pharisee Himself. The Pharisees were the conservative branch of Judaism,
upholders of the Law, and generally on the other side of the religious and
political spectrum from the Sadducees (who were in cahoots with the
occupational forces of Rome). It was the Pharisees who led and maintained
Israel’s spiritual existence through many tumultuous years at the turn of the
first millennia.
 That Jesus held the work of the Pharisees in high regard is evidenced
in Matthew chapter five. There, Jesus upheld the Law and commended
those who kept and taught it. “Think not,” Yeshua said, “Think not that I am
come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to
fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled…whosoever
shall do and teach them [the commands of the Law], the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven.” It would seem that in this passage
Jesus called the Pharisees great in the kingdom of heaven! The verse
following is even more revealing: “For I say unto you, that except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye
shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”29 This was not an easy
task. Jesus was not negating the righteousness the Pharisees held, but
stating clearly that theirs was a righteousness to be not only obtained but
surpassed. The scribes and Pharisees strove to follow the Law to the letter.
Yet, Jesus is demanding perfection, a life more in tune with God than even
the Pharisees had obtained with their meticulous adherence to every jot and
tittle of the Law of Moses.
Jesus had come to teach a new way, to be the New Testament. He had
not, however, come to remove the old laws in doing so. Instead, Jesus made
them more personal and, in some ways, more difficult. He revealed the
spirit of the law behind the letter of the commandments. The remainder of
the Sermon on the Mount clearly portrays this with, “Ye have heard that it
was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill
shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that whosoever is
angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the
judgment,”30 and many more “Ye have heard…but I say” references. Jesus
equated anger with murder and lust with adultery. He commanded love for
one’s enemy and bearing the burden of one who oppresses you by two
miles, not just the one mile then required by Roman law. He did not remove
the law already in place; He revealed it and ultimately fulfilled it.
Fulfillment of the law did not negate its necessity, but it did satisfy the
holiness of God on behalf of mankind.
Did Jesus then usher in a new era? Were Gentile Christians never
intended to keep the Law? What did Jesus mean by saying, “The scribes
and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you
observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say,
and do not.”31
Except where specifically indicated, the majority of Jesus’ teachings
were directed, as was the Torah, to the Jews. Indeed, the “New Testament”
was entrusted to the Jewish world and cannot be entirely understood unless
studied from a Jewish perspective.
The Gospels record very little interaction of Jesus with the Gentile
populace. His mission was to seek and save the lost sheep of Israel. Jesus’
Jewish disciples were given the responsibility of reaching the Gentiles with
the Gospel.
Notable among Jesus’ interaction with Gentile peoples, however, are
His encounters with the centurion, whose faith Jesus commended; the
Samaritan woman at the well who brought her village in contact with the
Messiah; and Pilate who found no fault with Jesus during the hours
preceding the crucifixion. In none of these instances, or others recorded in
the Gospels, did Jesus point those Gentiles to the Law, but always to the
Father. With the work of Christ, adherence to the Law was no longer
necessary for communion with the Father. Jesus (the perfection of the Law)
and a relationship with Him was the only requirement to gain fellowship
with the God of Israel. In short, Jesus never commanded a Gentile to keep
specific commands of the Torah.
To a Jewish world, the concept of fellowship with God the Father
outside the tenants of Judaism was blasphemous and caused great turmoil in
the young church. This issue came to an impasse at the Jerusalem council of
Acts 15. Jewish believers from Judea had been teaching Gentile believers
that if they were not circumcised (i.e., converted to Judaism), they could not
be saved. After much debate and discussion, the Apostle James issued the
decision of the council: “My sentence is, that we trouble not them, which
from among the Gentiles are turned to God: but that we write unto them,
that they abstain from pollution of idols, and from fornication, and from
things strangled, and from blood.”32
These were the requirements for non-Jews. Anything beyond into the
realms of Judaism was not an obligation for Gentile believers but an
opportunity should they wish to participate in additional traditions or Torah
observance.33 Thus it was officially declared that Gentiles were not required
to keep the Law for salvation. At the same time, however, Paul repeatedly
warned Gentile believers to remember the roots of their faith. Though God
has never required the same of Jew and Gentile, the Gentiles ought never
forget the mercy shown them by the God of the Jews.
With the coming of Christ and giving of the New Testament, “Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law”34 and ushered in what is often
denoted as the church era, an “era of grace.” Too often, this “grace” period
is translated as a license to sin and is accompanied by complete removal of
the Torah from the lives of believers. As acclaimed Jewish historian Marvin
Wilson notes,

“A Christian’s frame of reference must be constructed of

sound building blocks derived from Scripture. But God’s
people can scarcely be expected to heed Paul’s admonition to
“work out” their salvation (Phil. 2:12) within that biblical
frame of reference unless they know how that frame is
constructed. How does today’s Christian learn to think and
approach life as Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets
did, and as Jesus, Paul, and the apostles did? This knowledge
comes only by uncovering the overarching mind-set that the
writers of Scripture reflect. We must enter their world and
become conversant with their culture.”35

Where Jewish leadership had failed and passionate Zealots would fall,
a group of twelve teenagers would succeed in turning the world upside
down. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, bearing the Gospel of Christ, rooted
in Jewish hearts and Jewish culture, these youths would ignite a consuming
fire and declare the true God to the entire world. Twelve boys forever
altered the course of history and revealed God as accessible to both Jew and
Gentile, something Judaism had been unable to accomplish prior to Christ.
Jesus had come to reach the Jews and entrusted them with being His
witnesses to the ends of the earth. The Laws of God had not changed, but
with the coming of His Son, a revolutionary form of government among
men had arrived. Each man, Jew or Gentile, was now capable of standing
justified before God and interacting with Him on a personal level. The Law
had come through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ. Men
everywhere were without excuse, their consciences awakened forever.
God’s Spirit dwelled among men, convicting them of sin, righteousness,
and judgment to come!
 This form of governance was entirely new. With the coming of Christ,
every man became personally responsible directly to God, no matter his
heritage. Outward compliance to a set of specific rules was no longer
sufficient. No more sacrifices to multiple gods. No more questions of what
was right and wrong. A man’s thoughts and the intents of his heart lay open
and bare in the eyes of the God with whom he would one day give an
account.
Yes, Jesus forever changed the way governments would be established
and function. With the coming of Christ, men and women everywhere
realized the Law of Moses and its moral code that previously had
undergirded the Hebrew way of life. Families, societies, and nations across
the globe encountered the Gospel and spread the Law of Moses upon which
it was founded. Rapidly, the practicality of the Torah, accompanied with its
fulfillment in Christ, penetrated the way the entire world existed.
This penetration laid the foundation of several strong, powerful
societies. Yet, it was also perverted, corrupted, and used for evil in many
instances. The first of these corruptions would lead to a religion all its own:
Catholicism.
 Chapter 3
Constantine and Catholicism

Rome had burned. Christians had been tied to posts, tortured, and set
aflame as torches in Nero’s palace gardens. Others, refusing to recant, were
mercilessly thrown to starving lions, their bodies ripped to pieces and
devoured. Such was the glory of the Roman Empire!
Following Jesus’ resurrection, Christian influence spread rapidly. The
Jewish boys who had stood on the steps of the Temple declaring Jesus as
Messiah had ignited a flame that spread from Jerusalem across Asia Minor
and to the very core of the world—Rome.
However, the emperors during Christianity’s first several hundred
years of existence were not in favor of the new religion. It sprung from a
people they abhorred—the Jews—and centered on treason. A single God,
who demanded complete obedience and left no room for emperor worship,
was not acceptable.
The chronicles of God’s interaction with man’s great governmental
systems had begun with the god of Egypt, Pharaoh, and now stood in direct
opposition to the god of Rome, Caesar. Again, the idea of separation of God
and government is not grounded in history. On the contrary, from the
Roman Empire sprung a Christianity that continues to influence the world
today.
It was the eve of battle. The co-emperor, son of a Roman military
leader, faced his great rival, Maxentius, at the Tiber River for the battle of
the Milvian Bridge near Rome. Defeat seemed unavoidable for the hero’s
son, and the co-emperor turned his thoughts not to strategy but to the gods.
All the pagan gods of Rome were petitioned. The young ruler even threw in
the name of the Christian God, Jesus, vowing to convert to Christianity and
establish Rome as a Christian empire if successful in battle. The following
morning, that monarch, Constantine, reported to have had a vision of a
cross that appeared with the words, “in this sign thou shalt conquer.”36 And
conquer he did.
True to his word, the year following, in AD 313, Constantine and his
co-emperor, Licinus, issued the Edict of Milan, officially permitting
Christendom in the realm. Nearly three hundred years of persecution came
to an end as tolerance for Christians was ordered and freedom of religion
guaranteed.
In 324 AD the empire united under Constantine, who established his
rule from Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey). The spread of
Constantine’s Christianity was rapid, quickly engulfing the entire Roman
Empire.
Unfortunately, where the Devil and persecution had failed in
penetrating the soul of the young church, they would succeed via
infiltration. Under persecution, Christianity had thrived in the empire.
Though men and women were continuously tortured and killed for their
faith, their witness bore fruit by the multitudes as thousands of pagans came
to know the God formerly accessible only as the God of the Jews.
Lives were changed. People were different because they were
Christians. The Kingdom of God was advancing.
Then, with Constantine’s vision, suddenly—seemingly overnight—
Christianity went from the most persecuted way of life to the most praised
religious endeavor. Pagans flocked to the doors of newly erected Roman
churches, bringing their idolatrous thoughts and ways with them.
Christianity was no longer a life changer. Under Constantine,
Christianity became a status symbol, a social club, the thing to do. Because
many who came to the churches were not Christian, Christianity became a
mere addition to daily life rather than the center of it. With the pagans,
idolatry stormed to the forefront in the “worship” of the true God.
Christianity was sequestered. Roman Catholicism was born.
Rome was Catholic. Catholicism was Rome. Constantine appeared to
have united God and government as never before. However, the perverted
Christianity that formed under his rule was idolatrous, pagan, and
ineffective. Yes, a god governed Rome, but it was not the God of the
Christians.
Nevertheless, perhaps never more clearly in history—aside from
Pharaoh who was himself worshipped as god—had a government been so
completely aligned with a deity. The Romans knew there could never be a
successful government or successful nation outside the divine. Their
deification of Caesar warped into worship of the Christian God and the
idols they created as representations of Him.
In the centuries following Constantine, Catholic Christianity exploded
throughout the Roman Empire. Many Christian disciples banded together
and worshipped outside Rome’s established churches, while others sought
to be a light from within. The “acceptance” of Christianity also made it
possible for true disciples to safely travel the best roads of the ancient
world, carrying the Gospel message to the corners of both the Eastern and
Western worlds, entrenching Christianity throughout societies and cultures
across the globe. These faithful, however, constituted a minority.
Some in the minority of genuine believers rose to prominence and
produced great Christian thought and writings. Yet, eventually many of
them even fell sway to Catholic dogmas.
Among these teachers was Augustine. Hailed as a wise and powerful
church father, the works of Augustine continue to be studied by Catholics
and Protestants throughout the world. Augustine had the influence to make
a difference, to right the wrongs in the young but growing movement of
Roman Catholicism. Instead, Augustine and others taught and promoted
purgatory, sacramental grace, transubstantiation, and other extra-biblical
traditions that would blind eyes and hold thousands, if not millions, in
bondage for millennia. Additionally, Augustine’s “interpretation of the
Millennium as the era between the Incarnation and Second Advent of Christ
in which the church would conquer the world led to the Roman emphasis on
the Church of Rome as the universal church destined to bring all within its
fold.”37
While the church and Catholicism dominated the Roman Empire and
her culture, it rapidly lost its influence over individuals. Empty buildings
and vain traditions failed to change the hearts and souls of the masses. Men
and women continued to attend and even join the Roman Catholic Church,
but when their lives were not impacted, they failed to impact society.
 The disciple’s message, a relationship with God through Jesus Christ,
had turned the world upside down. The message of the Catholics, a
relationship with Rome through God, turned the world downside up.
The disciples, by training, culture, and in obedience to God, were
missionaries, ambassadors of good news and new life. The early Catholics,
by training, culture, and in obedience to Rome, were conquerors,
ambassadors of darkness and death. What the disciples had died for, the
name of Christ and His kingdom, the Catholics would kill for. What the
disciples had earned by relationships and community, the Catholics would
take by force and oppression. The Catholics abandoned the way of the
disciples. Subsequently their influence dwindled and was replaced with
overwhelming intolerance.
Officially established in Rome in the early 500s (ironically very near
the time marked by historians as the beginning of the fall of the Roman
Empire), the Romans had dubbed their religion “Catholicism.” “Catholic”
means “universal.”38 The Catholic Church was intended to work hand-in-
hand with Rome in conquering and controlling the world. “From the
beginning, Roman Catholic missions were closely tied to political and
military exploits, and mass conversions were the major factor in church
growth. Political leaders were sought out and through promises of military
aid became nominal Christians, their subjects generally following suit.”39
By 1000 AD, the greatness of Rome had faded to distant memory. The
world was reeling from the Dark Ages. In the tumultuous five hundred
years between the birth of Catholicism and the dawn of a new century, a rift
had developed in Catholicism that would eventually mature into the
Reformation. In 1054 AD, that rift broke the surface.
A contingent of Catholicism rejected the tenants of transubstantiation
and the sprinkling of infants, among other church doctrines, creating a
divide in the church that could not be spanned. While traditional Catholics
held firmly to their beliefs and the Church’s Roman epicenter as Roman
Catholics, the dissenters split, became known as Orthodox Catholics, and
established a foothold in the East.
This separation dealt an immobilizing blow to the ranks of Roman
Catholicism. In response, the Roman Catholics decided to embark on an
ambitious missionary journey.
Centuries before, a man named Mohammed had appeared on the world
stage, created Allah, and conquered Catholic people and lands, gaining
converts on his holy jihad to Jerusalem. The Roman Catholics, rather than
follow in the footsteps of the disciples, opted for the Muslim approach to
missions and set out on several holy jihads of their own. They called these
ventures “Crusades.”
“I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas and
thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms, but in the end all are
destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. Whence it seems
to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought...to be attempted…by love
and prayers.”40 Thus rightly declared Raymond Hull, who devoted his life
to reaching Muslims for Christ in the manner of Christ. The church around
him, however, drastically failed to recognize the wisdom of his approach
and biblical missions.
Obsessed with a hunger for converts and filled with an overpowering
desire to rule the Holy Land, the Roman Catholics launched several
Crusades for the express purpose of conquering biblical lands and
reestablishing their church throughout an empire.
Thousands of men, women, and children died fighting under the
banners of a God they did not know, compelled by a government they
worshipped. In 1096 AD, the crusaders began their mission to annihilate
Islam and eliminate heathenism on their path to Jerusalem, then a Muslim
stronghold. By 1099 AD, they had reached its formidable walls. Claiming a
biblical promise not their own, they marched around the city seven times.
The walls remained. Turning to traditional battle, knights then stormed
Jerusalem, continuing the rampage of death and destruction they had
measured out along their path to the Holy City. Jews, Muslims, pagans, the
young and the old, the weak and the strong, any who refused to name the
Christ of the crusaders as their god was viciously slaughtered. Mosques,
synagogues, homes, and businesses went up in flames.

“Sword in hand they followed, past the empty stalls of the

dark bazaar, past the open doorways. Their swords hacked
and thrust, scattering blood on the panting men...[W]hen
groups of Arabs, penned in the alleys, faced them without
hope, they leaped forward, struck furiously into the bodies of
snarling men, and passed on, stumbling and shouting. Here
and there Moslems defended the roofs with arrows, and the
crusaders ran into the houses, cutting down the wailing
 women who shrank back from them. Behind them lay the
broken bodies of children and young girls lying with
sightless eyes. Blood drained from the stairs and stained the
white walls. Down toward the heart of the city they fought
their way. Along the Via Dolorosa armed knights passed,
like a black storm cloud. The hour of retribution had come,
and death for the unbelievers.”41

This was the picture of Christ. This was done in His name, under His
banner, by those who called themselves Christians! These were not,
however, anything like those humble men who had first been called
Christians in Antioch.
These murdering Catholic crusaders would control Jerusalem for
roughly one hundred years. Threatened by terrorism without and treachery
within, the Holy City was anything but “Christian” during the Catholic rule.
Yet, that was the picture of “Christian” missions forever etched in the minds
of Jews and Muslims alike.
Muslim forces regained control of Jerusalem through intense fighting
in 1187 AD. The crusaders had failed to convert the people to Catholicism
during their rule, and the city reverted back to Islam. The crusaders’ desire
to “live there, in the promised land, ruled by no king but by the will of
God”42 had come to a brutal end.
Yet again, a group of people had recognized that God and government
were inseparable. The crusaders sought to establish the Kingdom of God by
force. They sought to take in God’s name that which He had not given to
them but to the Jews. They conquered in the name of One whom they did
not know. And they failed. What they did and how they did it was wrong,
evil, and immoral. Their actions, activities, and attempted conquests were
not directed by God and had no basis in Scripture.
The concept driving their actions, however, in its purest form, was
perfectly accurate. The crusaders were right about one thing: government
could not survive outside of God and would never succeed without Him.
Simply, God was (and is) the Sovereign over all, including man’s feeble
attempts at self rule.
The great failure of the crusaders was in attempting to establish the
Kingdom of God without God. It should be noted, however, that many
crusaders wholeheartedly believed Jesus was the Son of God and Savior of
the world. They were sincere in their simple faith and felt they were truly
carrying out God’s will.
The problem was these men and women were the result of the Dark
Ages. During the Dark Ages, knowledge was scorned and education was
limited. Thus, as a whole, these Christians did not know the teachings of
Jesus or the Torah of God. Rather, they knew what Church leaders told
them was Jesus’ teaching. They knew what church leaders told them was
the will of God. They didn’t know they were to be ambassadors, not
crusaders. They didn’t know what it meant to be a talmid. They didn’t know
what a Christian was because they didn’t know Christ. They knew what was
said about Him, they believed in Him as Sovereign, and they gave their
lives fighting under His symbol. But as a people, they didn’t know Him;
they didn’t know who He was.
Yet, this group of Catholic Christians died for what they believed.
They were a powerful force. To the Muslims, they were an abomination. To
the Jews, they were a manifestation of the Rabbi Jesus. To the pagan, they
were insufferable. To other Christian groups, they were hypocrites.
So it came to be that separation of church and state weighed heavily on
the hearts and minds of many believers. If God’s involvement with
government was what Constantine had brought, it must be stopped.
Immediately.
Yet during the collapse of the Roman Empire and throughout the
Crusades, Catholicism, both Roman and Orthodox, continued to grow.
Though no longer the state religion of Rome, forms of Catholicism had
crept into and become dominant across Europe. Even “Protestant” churches
that had sprung up continued to function under largely Catholic dogmas and
national rule. The people were still oppressed, priests were still corrupt, and
forgiveness and eternal life could be bought. Churches and Catholics ruled
the world.
 Chapter 4
Luther, Zwingli, and the Reformation

Thoroughly entrenched in Catholicism, the pope ruled the Roman

Catholics, and the king ruled the Church of England (though Anglican,
largely Catholic in doctrine and governance). The Church dictated the lives
of the people but failed to minister to their spiritual needs. (Note: for this
and upcoming chapters, “Church” will reference the Catholic Church and/or
the Body of Christ as a whole unit, with “church” referencing individual
groups of believers and/or local churches.)
It seemed God and government had never before been so united, but
such was not the case. God was not given a place in government; His laws
went unheeded. The Church was government, and by and large, God was
not in the Church. Instead, the Church was filled with idols—demons—who
kept individuals in spiritual darkness and blinded their eyes to the truth.
Many within the ranks of Church leadership recognized this darkness.
They saw the inconsistencies; they realized the lack of care for their flocks.
Yet, most chose not to respond to what they knew, instead to continue in
their comfortable, clerical lives. Reading and teaching in Latin, estranged
from their people, and distant from God, it was the clergymen preceding the
Reformation who might be the greatest villains of the era.
A few, however, chose to make a stand. They risked their lives, many
meeting with ends crueler than even Nero had imagined, to be dubbed
heretics while proclaiming the truth of the Gospel. No government was as
powerful as their God, and until He was given rightful place, they would
not be silent.
 November 10, 1483, nearly three hundred years following the
crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem, a peasant couple was living in Eisleben,
Germany. While there, the wife, Margaret, gave birth to a son. Six months
later, the family moved to the smaller town of Mansfield, the general area in
which the young Martin Luther would spend his childhood.
The Luthers were a good, religious family. Martin’s father, Hans
Luther, was known to pray by the bedsides of his children.43 Yet, young
Martin’s school life was not particularly pleasant, and he remembered his
teachers as cruel. Nevertheless, it was in those first school days in
Mansfield that Luther would get his introduction not only to grammar and
arithmetic but also to rhetoric, logic, and monkish Latin. His school, like
most others, was run by the Church (a monk and his assistant). Thus, from
early in life, Martin developed an affinity for the Church and the Scriptures.
He was a wise student who noted from his early teens the many unbiblical
teachings of the Church, and in the zeal of his youth, he believed the
Church would reform when simply presented with her errors.
Martin Luther, however, quickly found such was not the case. “I once
thought all that came unto me, professing to have a regard for the gospel,
were godly men; but the knaves have taught me to be wise. A fish is never
more in his place than when in the water, nor a knave than when on the
gallows.”44
However, the young Luther did not discover this until thoroughly
indoctrinated in Catholicism. So ingrained in his life was the papal system,
that he loved and sought after fastings, good works, and pilgrimages to
procure divine favor. Indeed, for so he had been taught not by God but by
his government, the Church. Neither the Torah of God nor the truth of
Christ was the standard declared from Germany’s pulpits, but the latest
dream, revelation, or fantasy of her monks. Yet, anything taught from the
pulpit was considered doctrine of God to the people, and thus were students
—like others throughout Europe—kept in great spiritual darkness.
So corrupt was the Church, so complete the influence of the Devil as
an angel of light that Luther wrote of his upbringing, “We were
scandalously led astray in the papacy; for Christ was not painted out in so
mild a character as he is by the prophets and apostles. We were all taught
that we must ourselves make sanctification for our sins, and that, at the
judgment, Christ would call us an account in respect of our penances, and
the amount of our good works.”45
 Additionally, traditional Church teaching of Luther’s day taught that
baptism washed away original sin. Any transgression committed after the
moment of baptism, however, was not atoned for and required penance and
good works to procure God’s forgiveness and obtain His renewed favor.
Driven by a constant fear for his eternal state, guilt over his sinful
nature, and an insatiable desire to earn the favor of God, Martin Luther
sought out a life of monasticism. Several cities, many miles, and years of
study took place after Luther left home at the age of fourteen. By 1501, he
had arrived in the town of Erfurt. It was there, in Erfurt, that Martin Luther
entered the Augustinian convent.
After studying with the Augustinians, Luther traveled to Wittenberg at
the age of twenty-six. He continued three years there, studying at the
university. He was then “Graded doctor at the expense of Elector Frederic,
Duke of Saxony: for he had heard him preach; well understanded the
quickness of his spirit; diligently considered the vehemency of his words;
and had in singular admiration those profound matters…he ripely and
exactly explained. This degree Staupitius...enforced upon him; saying
merely unto him, that God had many things to bring to pass in his Church
by him.”46
Little did Staupitius know the truth of his words. The year 1516 was
monumental in Luther’s life. His letters to friends and colleagues began to
take different form, encouraging personal relationships with God while
expounding errors in Church theology and, thereby, much of his own.47 His
life was on the brink of reformation.
To that point, Luther’s life and learning had been consumed by
Catholicism. His was a religion of works and penance, purgatory and
indulgences. The fateful, famous morning at Wittenberg’s door was
predicated by his recognition that the Christian life was about a personal
relationship with God. That revelation set Luther on a path leading right to
the heart of the Church, as he pursued the truth at the expense of his
freedom.
The practical outward manifestation of the work in Luther’s heart
began in 1517, when Luther began preaching a call to personal repentance
to the masses, exposing the fallacies and abuse of papal indulgences by
monks and Church leaders. But he did not content himself with exposing
the Church’s leadership to the people, nor did he preach against them in the
streets. Instead, he appealed to Church leaders even while teaching biblical
alternatives to their methods and doctrines.
Appealing to his superiors within the Church hierarchy, Luther
requested a removal of indulgences from Church doctrine, pointing to their
lack of Scriptural support in defense of his argument. His efforts to reform
from within met with continual rejection, however. Thus, on October 31,
1517, Martin Luther famously nailed his ninety-five theses on papal
indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg Church, thereby catapulting his
message to the pope, the parishioner, and the peasant alike.
Some were receptive and encouraging of Luther’s work. Indeed,
Erasmus said, “Luther did well in detecting errors, that reformation was
very necessary in the Church: adding moreover, that the effect of his
doctrine was true.”48 His enemies, however, sprung up rapid and
determined. They wrote objections to Luther’s theses and condemned him
as a heretic to the pope.
It was not long before Luther was summoned to Rome for trial. With a
forthright defense of his position, Luther’s summons was withdrawn, and he
appealed instead to the cardinal of Augsburg to present his defense. After
successfully doing so, he returned to Wittenberg. In Wittenberg, he
continued to teach and write to mixed responses from those within and
without the Church.
Luther had also discovered the power of the original languages of the
Bible, becoming an avid pupil of both Hebrew and Greek. These studies
equipped him mightily in his arguments and defense of sola scriptura—
Scripture alone. By 1519, Luther’s most controversial work and the
keystone to the reformation in Germany, his Commentary on the Epistle to
the Galatians, was published. He also wrote on Christian liberty, affliction,
blessings, good works, and other practical subjects for the flock of God
entrusted to his care.
Luther’s works endeared him to the students and populace of
Wittenberg, while continually enraging papal authorities. As nothing
seemed to stop his influence, cardinals from the German countryside to the
city of Rome began burning his works. In response, on December 10, 1520,
Luther led the citizens of Wittenberg in creating a bonfire of recent decrees
of the pope!
Luther continued to defy the Pope and teach openly against the Church
when he believed her to be in error. By 1521, Luther had become a
household name in Christendom, Germany, and the Papal Empire. So too,
had his teachings.
Thus, he found himself again summoned for trial and appeared in his
own defense at the Diet of Worms. Instructed to recant his teachings, Luther
was granted a day for reflection, afterward returning to the diet stating, “I
beg your Imperial majesty or anyone else who can, whoever he may be, to
bring forward proof against me, and overcome me by the writings of the
apostles and prophets. And then, if I am shown to be in error, I will be ready
and willing to retract, and will be the first to cast my books into the fire.”49
Naturally, none of the wisest of the Church fathers could thereby refute
Luther’s Reformation teachings. His wise and solid defense planted seeds in
the minds of those German leaders that would eventually lead to a
Protestant split from the Catholic churches.
Luther continued to teach and preach the Word of God to the German
people for the remainder of his life. During that time, he was in continual
danger of harassment by the Church and execution by the pope. Yet, he
remained faithful. He sought the truth and ministered to the people, opening
their eyes to freedom from Catholicism and the hope of new life in Christ.
Luther knew that God was the governance his people required, and labored
tirelessly to lead them into His kingdom.
Martin Luther died in 1546 at the age of sixty-three, loved by his
people, hated by his Church, but with a resolve questioned by none.
Luther’s reforms continued to dominate German Christianity for centuries
after his death and were foundational to the Protestant Reformation.
Meanwhile, as Luther’s teachings engulfed Germany, a man named Ulrich
Zwingli was pioneering a reformation in Switzerland that would forever
impact Protestantism.
Zwingli was the third of nine children born to a family in the Swiss
Alps. An intelligent child, his parents chose to allow Ulrich to pursue an
education rather than work with the family’s livestock. With a brilliant mind
and fervent religious zeal, he was appointed a bishop of the Catholic
Church at the age of twenty-two.
As bishop, Zwingli applied himself more studiously to his learning. He
became especially interested in Greek philosophy and the study of biblical
languages. These studies led the young bishop to realizations of errors
within the Catholic Church, and he began to teach biblical doctrine to his
congregants in direct opposition to Catholic dogma.
 These new teachings alarmed many of Zwingli’s contemporaries and
superiors, who believed the German Luther’s influence was swaying their
brilliant-minded bishop. “Somewhat later, a worthy priest, who had been
his schoolfellow, coming to see him said: ‘Master Ulrich, I am informed
that you are falling into this new error; that you are a Lutheran!’ ‘I am not a
Lutheran,’ said Zwingli, ‘for I learned Greek before I had ever heard the
name of Luther.’ To know Greek, to study the gospel in the original
language, was, in Zwingli’s opinion, the basis of the Reformation.”50
Zwingli’s passion and teachings spread like wildfire, and young people
amassed in Zurich to study under the reform-minded preacher. Switzerland
rapidly embraced Zwingli’s teachings, and by 1523, the city of Zurich
abandoned the Catholic Church in favor of an officially established
Protestant Church.
Zwingli’s reformation in Switzerland, though begun prior to Luther’s
in Germany, held many similarities to it. Both men taught Scripture as the
final authority for faith and practice, rather than the laws of the Catholic
Church. Both taught against indulgences, emphasizing instead the need for
personal responsibility. Both taught salvation through Christ alone. Their
only significant difference was in the matter of transubstantiation, which
Luther upheld as the literal, and thereby he believed accurate, interpretation
of Scripture, while Zwingli believed the Communion elements to be only
symbolic.
Zwingli also succeeded in laying a foundation for Calvinistic thought
prior to the life and work of John Calvin. It was Zwingli who first taught
predestination from the pulpits of Switzerland. His work also established a
basis on which covenant theology would be built.
The focus of Zwingli’s work was that all doctrine must be supported
by and based upon Scripture. During one of his many disputations, this
particularly in regard to the Mass, Zwingli declared, “I will also preach and
act against it if they [the Catholic Church] decide otherwise. I am not
putting the decision in their hand. They are not over the Word of God, and
this goes not only for them but for the whole world.”51 Zwingli’s earnest
quest for religious freedom and passion for the truth of God’s Word drew
students to him en masse.
Inspired by his convictions and compelled by his students, Zwingli
decided—in compliance with biblical narrative—the Mass would be
abolished on Christmas Day, 1523, and replaced with a simple observation
of the Lord’s Supper. When, however, a ruling council dissented, Zwingli
abandoned this plan.
Zwingli’s students were disappointed in their leader, believing he’d
abandoned his principle of sola scriptura. A rift thus began between
Zwingli and his followers that would be consummated when Zwingli
abandoned another earlier conviction, believer’s baptism, in favor of infant
baptism. Their studies of the Greek text would not allow Zwingli’s zealous
students to embrace a baptism outside the baptizo (a Greek term meaning
full immersion) concept they saw in Scripture, and many disciples left
Zwingli to form what became known as the Anabaptist movement.
Not directly affiliated with the Baptist movement of the Americas, the
Anabaptists were nevertheless the pioneers of believer’s baptism in Europe
throughout the Reformation. Their rejection of covenant theology and strict
adherence to baptizo (immersion) of only those who physically professed
Christ as Savior led to great persecution, even from those within the throngs
of the Reformation itself. Hundreds of men, women, and children were
slaughtered by both Catholics and Protestants for their conviction that
biblical baptism was believer’s baptism.
“By 1525 the protest movement involved much more than the Mass or
even believer’s baptism...The concept of a church of committed believers
had taken the place of a church made up of the mixed multitude. This new
church, like that of the apostles, was to be made up only of those confessing
Christ as Lord followed by believer’s baptism, instead of everyone born in a
given parish.”52
Thus, the work of Zwingli can be attributed to two great, albeit
opposing, tenants in Protestantism. In training his students in Greek, he
opened their eyes to the relevance of baptizo and paved the way for
believer’s baptism, the Anabaptist movement, and support for the emerging
Baptist Church in the United States. Also in Switzerland, “In defense of the
truth of infant baptism over against Anabaptism, the great truth of the
covenant was set forth by Zwingli and later by other Swiss theologians.
[Those] who so deeply cherish the truth of the Covenant do not look, in the
first place, to Calvin as [their] spiritual father in this doctrine, but to
Zwingli and the Swiss who worked with him.”53
Regardless of which position is held, one cannot help but wonder what
may have developed under Zwingli’s incredible influence and the difference
it might have made in Church history if he had held to his original
convictions in favor of believer’s baptism. Nevertheless, Zwingli
recognized the need to pursue truth. He also recognized the need for God
and government to unite rather than divide, and he thereby sought and
instituted a state Church (Protestant) in Switzerland. Under his leadership,
the mass was reformed but not abolished. Truth was pursued, but freedom
was not defended. The very men and women who had studied under
Zwingli were sought out by his Church and killed by the dozens, often at
his very instructions. In fact, Anabaptists were slaughtered in greater
numbers by other Christians during the Reformation than Christians had
been under the rule of Rome prior to Constantine!54
Zwingli had come incredibly close to reuniting what had been lost in
Eden, antagonized by the crusaders, and perverted through Catholicism—a
co-working of God and government. His failure to stand by the truth or
defend the freedoms of those braver than he who did choose to do so kept
him from realizing what could have been an incredible breakthrough in
Church and world history. All things working together for good, however,
the diligence of Zwingli’s reformed followers and passion of the Anabaptist
movement would root themselves deeply in the European continent and
eventually bear fruit both there and in lands across the seas.
As Zwingli and the Anabaptists led the way to a Protestant movement
in Switzerland and Luther’s teachings filled Germany, a young Welshman
was completing his master’s degree at Oxford. Erasmus was lecturing there
at the time and released his Greek New Testament in 1516. Although its
effect on the professors and students at Oxford upon publication was
minimal, at Cambridge its influence was overpowering. In pursuit of the
truth, the Welshman, William Tyndale, left Oxford for Cambridge. There he
studied Erasmus’s work and developed a great passion for Scripture’s
original text.
Upon completion of his time at Cambridge, Tyndale became tutor and
chaplain for an Englishman named Sir John Walsh. Tyndale’s duties with
the Walsh family left him ample time to mingle with the townsfolk of
nearby Little Sodbury Manor, where he would often preach. In addition, his
employer was a knight of great influence in the community, and doctors,
teachers, and church officials would regularly visit the Walsh home. With
these men Tyndale often disputed matters of God and tenants of the faith
from the original text.
 From his interactions with the people of Sodbury, Tyndale realized that
Erasmus’s work had no effect on them. Many were illiterate in English, let
alone biblical languages! Yet, by British law, the Scriptures could only be
communicated in Latin and any translations must be approved by a bishop.
Tyndale sought out and was refused permission to translate the words of
God into the common language of the people. He was driven from the
community by those authorities with whom he had regularly discussed the
text within the Walsh home.
Thus, Tyndale moved to London, where he began secretly translating
the New Testament into the English language. He found little aid for his
mission there, being turned away by multiple bishops, but eventually took
shelter with the alderman of London. “So remained Master Tyndale in
London almost a year, marking with himself the course of the world, and
especially the demeanor of the preachers, how they boasted themselves, and
set up their authority…insomuch that he understood, not only that there was
no room in the bishop’s house for him to translate the New Testament, but
also that there was no place to do it in all of England.”55
Thus, Tyndale headed to Germany. He found safety for himself and his
work in Luther’s city of Wittenberg. Though they disagreed on multiple
points of doctrine, Tyndale and Luther met together on several occasions,
supporting each other in their mutual missions of preaching the truth of
Scripture alone and working on behalf of the common people.
William Tyndale believed passionately that many problems of the
Church could be solved simply by giving the common people the words of
God in a language they could understand and read for themselves. He also
understood that in order for the people to be free to pursue truth and know
God, they needed to be able to hear from Him without a mediator and to be
able to understand and verify the words of the mediator when he did speak!
Thus, in Germany, Tyndale set out on his incredible mission to
translate the Scriptures. He was spurred on over the statement made by a
concerned cleric, “We were better to be without God’s laws than the
Pope’s.” Naturally, an argument ensued. “Master Tyndale, hearing this, full
of godly zeal, and not bearing that blasphemous saying, replied, ‘I defy the
Pope, and all his laws;’ and added, that if God spared him life, ere many
years he would cause a boy that driveth the plough, to know more of the
Scriptures than he did.”56
 This he did. After multiple attempts, evasion of spies, and escapes in
the dark of night, Tyndale’s manuscript reached completion and was printed
in 1525 in Worms, Germany. The next year, the first copies of Tyndale’s
work were smuggled into England.
Tyndale’s New Testament took the British by storm as hundreds read
and distributed copies enthusiastically, not heeding the prison sentence
facing any who perused or passed along the book. The popularity of
Tyndale’s work infuriated the British government, who made diligent
efforts to purchase and destroy every copy. Tyndale, however, knew which
of his customers were government spies and sold copies to them at four
times over cost; the king of England thereby financed the printing of more
copies of Tyndale’s illegal English New Testament!57
The year following, Tyndale traveled to Marbury where he studied
Hebrew and eventually translated the Pentateuch into English. For the
remainder of his life, Tyndale lived as a fugitive, continually hunted by
British spies as he translated additional portions of Scripture into English
while also writing in support and defense of the Protestant Reformation
sweeping across Europe.
Ten years after the first printing of his New Testament, Tyndale was
betrayed by an Englishman named Harry Phillips. He spent the following
eighteen months imprisoned outside Brussels, as many of his friends
labored ceaselessly to procure his release. Their efforts failing, William
Tyndale was tied to a stake, strangled, and burned as a heretic. His last
recorded words on earth were, “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!”58
William Tyndale’s quest for the truth cost him both his freedom and
his life. He became a martyr, sacrificing himself in a fight against a system
so corrupt that its religion was its government, but that religion and its
government both stood in direct opposition to the truth they claimed to
uphold.
Tyndale’s labors, however, were not in vain. His colleagues continued
his work and officially presented a copy of Tyndale’s English New
Testament to King Henry VIII in 1538. The monarch approved the
manuscript and ordered it to be placed in every church in England!
The truth for which Tyndale had died laid the foundation of religious
freedom for the British people. Not only had the king’s eyes been opened in
answer to Tyndale’s last prayer but the common people, even the boys at the
plows, were able to read the words of God for the very first time. The truth
would set them free.
 Chapter 5
Pilgrims, Penn, and the New World

The same year William Tyndale was born, a Spaniard set foot for the first
time on an island he dubbed “Holy Savior,” better known as San Salvador.
This discovery by Christopher Columbus of the New World in 1492 flung
open the doors to a multitude of possibilities. With new lands came new
products, new commerce, new culture, new people, and new colonization.
Columbus had endured the mockery of nobles and rejection of kings
for seven long years as he sought out a sponsor for his quest. He
wholeheartedly believed his mission to discover a trade route to the Indies
was from God and, thus, refused to give up his dream.
Columbus desired a trade route and, in its establishment, the
conversion of the Chinese people to belief in the Christ of his own
Catholicism. Firmly rooted in this conviction, Columbus was bold in his
message and declared his intentions for both exploration and missionary
endeavor as feasible and godly. Through his passion, he encouraged others
to like adventures.

“No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of the
Savior, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy
service. The working out of all things has been assigned to
each person by our Lord, but it all happens according to His
sovereign will even though He gives advice...Oh, what a
gracious Lord, who desires that people should perform for
Him those things for which He holds Himself responsible.”59
 Columbus quickly discovered that the lands he found in 1492 were not
the West Indies but a territory completely foreign to the developed world—
a new land ripe for discovery. While the noble adventurer had not
established a new route to the East, nor would he ever influence the Chinese
for Christ or Catholicism, Columbus had forged the trail to a beacon of
religious freedom and a future hub for Christianity and world missions.
Meanwhile, in England, though English Bibles had found their way
into the Church and people were finally able to read God’s Word for
themselves, there remained a vast dilemma in the realm. Church and state
were one. The kings and queens of England held supreme authority in the
Church. In 1599, Queen Elizabeth issued the “Act of Uniformity,” requiring
all English subjects to attend services, with punishments of torture and life
imprisonment for more than three absences!60
Within the sphere of English Christendom developed two distinct
groups of dissenters. Each saw many errors within the Church of England in
both its doctrine and its leadership. However, the solutions they devised for
solving these problems were quite different.
The Puritans were the first group, faithful to the Church, believing God
worked through His servants. They sought to reform the Church of England
from within, believing their influence, steadfast purity, and Bible-based
reforms could effect lasting change in their country via its churches.
The Separatists, on the other hand, believed the Church and its
leadership corrupt and incapable of change. They held to the position that
the Church of England did more harm than good for the Kingdom of God.
God, they believed, could only be truly worshipped and served by those
who were not bound to the heresies they observed in the Church.
One sect of the Separatists was a group known as the Pilgrims. In
1608, the Pilgrims left their native England for Holland and religious
freedom. There they remained for twelve years, working tirelessly to
support their families while pursuing truth in a land that allowed them
freedom of worship.
Although Holland was a hub for religious freedom, the Pilgrims found
that freedom not anchored in truth could be more devastating than bondage
and persecution. In a new land with new opportunities and new friends—
friends who had never experienced living and dying for one’s faith—
Pilgrim youth were drifting away from the firm foundations their parents’
beliefs were built unshakably upon. The Pilgrim community began to decay
slowly from within as young men and women abandoned the faith and
community for a life at sea, immorality, and overall degradation.
The Pilgrim leaders knew the solidarity of community, especially their
own, lay in the strength of their families. They also realized remaining in
Holland would result in the continued destruction of their families through
the slow spiritual slaughter of their youth.
Thus, the difficult decision to leave Holland for an unknown land,
completely desolate from all the world had to offer, was made. Governor
Bradford, the great Pilgrim leader, stated of their decision to embark for the
Americas, “They cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good
foundations, or at least of making some way toward it, for the propagation
and advance of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of
the world, even though they should be but stepping stones to others in the
performance of so great a work.”61
One hundred two Pilgrims set sail across the Atlantic in May of 1620.
Their journey was perilous, fraught with storms, sickness, and death.
Forced below deck and with a broken beam, the Pilgrims aboard the
Mayflower made slow but steady progress. They’d been guaranteed
religious freedom in the New World by the English Crown and granted
rights to colonize in Virginia on the Hudson. Two months after their
departure and five hundred miles north of their intended destination, the
Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts just in time for their first harsh New
England winter.
Having arrived in lands owned by, but not granted to them by the king,
the Pilgrims were faced with the dilemma of whether to remain in their
northern environs or continue south to Virginia. Their deliberations were
led by William Bradford.
Bradford’s parents had died when he was a young child. Following
their deaths, he found fellowship amongst England’s Separatists and sailed
to Holland with the Pilgrim families when he was sixteen years of age. He
had witnessed—and was old enough to remember—the persecution
experienced by Separatists under the king. The next eleven years of his life,
some of the most important in the development of a person, Bradford spent
in Holland. He would have watched as his colleagues, friends, and
childhood playmates turned away from their faith and embraced the
licentious culture around them. Undoubtedly, the temptation was great for
Bradford, as well. Yet he remained faithful in his youth and became the
pillar of Pilgrim society, being named governor of the new land the Pilgrims
settled. He was reelected to that office thirty times in thirty-five years.
Under the early leadership of the young but wise Bradford, the
Pilgrims drafted a governing document declaring their loyalty to King
James and establishing the governance for the new Pilgrim colony of
Plymouth Plantation. Bradford recognized the need to unite religious
freedom with a governing power, but he did not seek to establish his own
dominion or create a Pilgrim’s paradise.
Though he led a group of Separatists, Governor Bradford and “his”
people chose to exercise their religious freedom under the context of an
already established authority, taking an almost Puritan stance in the New
World by recognizing the king’s rule where he held no previous settlements.
They also knew their religious freedom was somewhat dependent on the
benevolence of King James, and they understood their pursuit of truth was
most possible under his protection and promise of freedom.
It was on the soil of this new land that church and state united in a
manner entirely new to history. Each recognized and respected the other.
Although dependent on each other—the king for his colonization and the
church for its freedom—they nevertheless remained separate.
The dutiful faithfulness of those Pilgrims laid the foundation for the
spread of Protestant Christianity and the English Empire in the Americas.
Their governing document, The Mayflower Compact, set forth the mission
the Pilgrims embarked upon and succeeded in achieving.

“Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement

of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a
voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of
Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the
presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine
our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better
ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends
aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts,
constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be
thought most meet and convenient for the general good of
the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and
obedience.”62
 It was simple yet powerful. The Pilgrims recognized King James,
declared their purpose for God’s glory and the advancement of the faith,
and in honor of their country, set out to establish a community. Those few
who braved the harsh New World, lost half their members in their first
winter, and would be instructed by the miraculous gifting of Squanto, were
an amazing people upon whose shoulders a great nation would rise.
Not many years after the establishment of Plymouth Plantation, there
was born to a British admiral—a national hero and advisor to the British
Crown—a son, William, in 1644. Following the death of his friend, the
sovereign King Charles, William’s father, Admiral Penn, was given the task
of taking Hispaniola in the New World from the Spaniards. The admiral and
the soldiers he ferried found the task impossible and instead took Jamaica in
the name of the new Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell. This
change of plans led to Cromwell’s disfavor with Admiral Penn, and he was
cast into the Tower of London for several months. Upon his release, the
admiral moved his family to Ireland, where he joined in the British
expulsion of the Irish. English laborers were then imported to tend the lands
he conquered.
It was in Ireland that young William Penn had his first contact with the
movement known as the Quakers. A Quaker by the name of Thomas Loe
had been reported as stirring up trouble on the Penn’s lands with his
fanatical religious teachings. In a spirit of justice and generosity, the
admiral invited Loe into his home to present his case. “True religion is not a
matter of outward observances,” Loe instructed those gathered to his
meeting. “Rather it takes place within the heart...[E]ach man, in the quiet of
his heart, must come to his own reckoning with God. For the Scriptures tell
us that man looks on outward appearance, but God looks at man’s heart.”63
Loe’s words left lifelong impressions on many in the Penn household, none
more so than young William.
Four years later, Cromwell was dead and England returned to a
monarchy. The rift Cromwell and his Puritans had created with the
aristocracy was inherited by Charles II, who came to the throne and
knighted Admiral Penn. Penn subsequently moved his family back to
England when William was sixteen years of age and enrolled him at Christ
College in Cambridge. At Cambridge, William became friends with a
Puritan scholar and the former dean under Cromwell, John Owen.
 The political ramifications of recent events still keen on the hearts of
all, the divide at Cambridge between aristocrats and Puritans ran deep and
strong. The taunting and worldviews of each side stood in stark contrast to
the other, and the young Penn wanted nothing to do with either group.
His resolve did not last long, however. William’s association with
Owen soon led him to a deeper consideration of Puritan beliefs, and he
began to side with the conservative friends he made. When it was declared
all students must attend chapel services and do so wearing the white robes
of the aristocracy’s Anglican priests, William refused. Therefore, at the age
of eighteen, Penn was expelled from Cambridge.
Admiral Sir William Penn was mortified at his son’s expulsion and the
dishonor brought on the family name thereby. Determined to teach his son
what a proper Penn should be, conscience notwithstanding, William was
sent to France for two years. There, he was put in contact with the finest
French families and visited the homes of the wealthiest aristocrats. His
heart, however, was far from the finery of his surroundings, and he sought
refuge by attending a Protestant school on the Loire River, where he happily
studied.
Upon his return to England, William Penn had not only mastered
French and the charms of high society but he had discovered the desires of
his heart. His joy came in the pursuit of truth related to the realms of
religion and politics. Admiral Penn noted this passion for questions and
discussion, and promptly enrolled his son in Lincoln’s Inn, a law school.
William did well at Lincoln’s Inn but was forced home after only a year’s
study due to the outbreak of the bubonic plague.
Thus it came to be in 1665 that William Penn returned to Ireland to
oversee the family’s Irish estates. He spent nearly three years on the island
and was reintroduced to the teachings of Thomas Loe. Loe regularly
conducted Quaker meetings in the town of Cork, which William learned of
and attended.
It was September 3, 1667, when a single soldier discovered the secret
meeting place of Cork’s Quakers. What he did not realize was not all in the
assembly were pacifists, and their arrests would not be as easy as he
assumed. William Penn, son of a national war hero and a passionate lawyer
himself, was outraged by the disturbance and single-handedly expelled the
soldier from the service. Shortly thereafter, an entire company of soldiers
returned to the place of meeting. The Quakers were arrested and taken to
the mayor’s office for discipline. The mayor, immediately recognizing Penn
as a nobleman’s son and the lord of an Irish castle, demanded his release
from the other prisoners.
In that moment, William Penn made a life-changing proclamation:
“Lord Mayor, I beg to differ with you. I am indeed a man of wealth. My
father, as you well know, is Admiral Sir William Penn. But know this as
well: I am also a Quaker, and whatever you plan to do to my friends I ask
you to do to me also.”64 His request was granted. Prior to being committed
to the prison’s walls, William Penn unbuckled his sword and placed it in the
hands of a young man. “Take this, from now on I will walk unarmed in an
armed world.”65 The decision was made. William Penn was a Quaker.
Penn’s Cork imprisonment was short-lived. With his wisdom, cunning
legal mind, and social position, his pen quickly procured both his release
and that of the Quaker community incarcerated with him.
When word reached Admiral Penn of these latest of his son’s
discrepancies, the namesake was summoned back to England to face his
father. The elder Penn could not comprehend why his son was determined
to throw away a good life simply to live in compliance with his conscience.
Under the admiral’s watchful eye, the two lived together for a short time but
were continually at odds.
The younger William continued to meet with Quakers in London.
Inevitably, he was again arrested for his participation in forbidden meetings.
Released and again sent home to his pained father, it was the final straw.
Admiral Sir William Penn refused shelter to his son, expelled him from his
home, and wrote him out of the Penn family future.
Thus, William Penn turned to his Quaker friends for shelter and
support. He began writing and teaching, quickly becoming a vital leader in
the English Quaker community.
In 1668, a Presbyterian minister named Thomas Vincent debated
Penn’s teaching with the Quaker minister before his congregation. Held in
Vincent’s own church, the debate was far from polite and left Penn few
opportunities to expound or explain Quaker positions. Frustrated by this
scene, Penn wrote and distributed a tract entitled “The Sandy Foundation
Shaken.”66 The bishop of London held this work of Penn’s as a personal
affront as well as an outright attack on the Church. The anomaly of an
aristocratic Quaker was arrested yet again and became the second Penn to
find himself locked in the Tower of London.
 William Penn remained in the Tower nine months, where he continued
to write. He authored additional literature on Quaker beliefs and lent his
legal mind to his own defense. He successfully procured his release yet
again with compelling arguments for religious freedom in appropriate
appeals to proper authorities. His release, however, was contingent on his
being placed in his father’s custody for one year. Admiral Penn seized the
opportunity to remove his son from the tense religious situation of London;
father and son were reconciled, and William went back to Ireland to again
supervise his father’s estates.
In Ireland, William returned to studiously serving the cause in which
he believed. While caring for his father’s holdings, he also labored with and
on behalf of Irish Quakers. Due to his tireless efforts, all Quaker prisoners
held solely for their religious beliefs were released.
By 1670, William was back in London. His father had become gravely
ill. Some of Admiral Penn’s last words to his son were, “I would not live
over my days again, if I could command them with a wish, for the snares of
life are greater than the fears of death…Let nothing in this world tempt you
to wrong your conscience. I charge you, do nothing against your
conscience. So will you keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in
a day of trouble.”67 Not only did it seem the elder Penn finally understood
his son’s heart but he had also benefited from his wisdom. For though the
admiral once threatened to remove his name from the family, William Penn
was named in his father’s will as successor to all his land holdings. William
Penn, aristocrat by birth and Quaker by choice, became a wealthy man.
Over the next few years, Penn continued to teach and write, traveling
throughout Europe addressing various Quaker groups. In 1672, he married
Gulielma Springett, a fine woman who shared both his faith and his
passions. They were blessed with two sons and a daughter. While William
managed the vast lands he inherited, he also cultivated a friendship with
James, Duke of York, brother of King Charles II and friend of his late
father.
In 1680, Penn petitioned the Crown for land in the New World as
repayment of debts owed to his father. King Charles II was highly generous
and granted the son of his friend a large tract of land to be named after
Admiral Sir William Penn: Pennsylvania. “Penn’s Woods,” the literal
interpretation of Pennsylvania, made William Penn the largest private
landowner in the world at the time.68 The king also granted Penn freedom
to do whatever he pleased with the land and govern it any way he deemed
proper. The only restriction upon Penn was abstention from cultivating an
armed force of any kind.
Penn immediately recognized the opportunity before him. “It is a clear
and just thing, and my God that has given it to me through many
difficulties, will, I believe, bless it and make it the seed of a nation. I shall
have a tender care to the government, that it be well laid at first.”69 William
Penn proceeded to invite any and all who sought freedom of religion to join
his newly formed colony and labored incessantly to procure the friendship
of the Indian peoples of Pennsylvania.
Penn’s Woods became a haven for Europe’s religious outcasts,
particularly the Quakers, who quickly comprised half the population of the
colony. However, under Penn, Pennsylvania also gave shelter to Moravians,
Lutherans, Catholics, and others. Pennsylvania was the first true American
beacon of liberty and justice for all.
Penn’s first visit to his vast colony came in 1682. His labors with the
Indians had been successful, and they welcomed their friend with open
arms. He learned their language, sat at their fires, and played their games.
Penn was a walking model of the love and tolerance he preached.
Pennsylvania’s Quakers also delighted to see their friend and
benefactor, and welcomed him to worship among them. Perhaps most
important of Penn’s visit however, was Penn’s discovery of a tract of land
he envisioned for his city of “brotherly love,” Philadelphia. Based on his
personal and familial experience with the tragic London Fire sixteen years
prior, Penn brilliantly engineered his city in a grid pattern with generous
dimensions to avoid any similar calamity.70
In the two short years of William Penn’s first trip to the New World, he
met with unparalleled success in colonization. The Indians welcomed him,
and peace ruled his colony. More than 2,500 people settled in Philadelphia,
and bountiful farms surrounded the city. Trade was established with
England. Penn’s holy experiment was blessed and prospered on every side.
The leadership of a godly man had proven what a governmental system that
respected the authority of the Word of God could accomplish.
Yet, the founding of Pennsylvania was not without its challenges. Lord
Baltimore, who governed Maryland, disputed with Penn over lands along
the Delaware. Penn also lost his wife and a daughter during his absence
from England and was remembered only by one of his sons upon his return.
 And those were only the beginnings of the difficulties. King Charles II
died as Penn returned to England’s shores, and James II took the throne.
Since James II was a friend of the family, William was able to capitalize on
their relationship to procure the release of over one thousand Quakers from
English prisons. The revolution of 1688, however, brought William and
Mary to the throne, and Penn was immediately suspected as treasonous due
to his friendship with previous sovereigns.
The twenty years from 1692–1712 were tumultuous for the Quaker
and his colony. Penn found himself in continual conflict with the throne
over the jurisdiction of his lands in the Americas. Additionally, his son
Springett died during his struggle with the new monarchs. Eventually worn
down in 1712, with assurances of religious freedom to his settlers, Penn
conceded his colonial authority to the queen of England. Six years later, on
July 30, 1718, the great aristocratic Quaker died.
However, William Penn’s legacy lives on to this day. Thomas Jefferson
declared him to be “the greatest lawgiver the world has produced.”71
Unparalleled in US history was his passion for people of faith to work with
the government to provide freedom whereby truth might be pursued without
fear or endangerment. He was more successful than any of his
contemporaries in working with the Native Americans, and his “holy
experiment” worked.
To this day, Pennsylvania remains a hub unrivaled the world over for
religious groups like the Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers. In Penn’s
Woods they are free to worship God in their communities without any
government interference. Penn had not forced his Quaker beliefs on any
who chose to settle his colony. Just as when God gave His Torah to Israel
but left other nations free to determine whom they would serve, Penn
allowed all men to dwell and worship in his lands as they chose. Penn’s
testimony also generated great respect for the Quakers, who would become
the leaders of the American antislavery movement in the United States.
William Penn’s vision of establishing a center for religious freedom, a
city set on a hill and beacon of light to the world, had been achieved. The
price of truth is always bartered with the weight of freedom, and it was a
long, perilous, and costly journey for William Penn. Yet, the City of
Brotherly Love he devotedly built as a haven of both truth and freedom was
destined to become the keystone of a great nation.
 Chapter 6
The Continental
Congress and the Colonies

The British Empire loomed large, powerful, and sophisticated. English

colonies throughout the world were orderly, religious, and dutiful. Her
soldiers regularly maintained peace and order while continuing to expand
the holdings and influence of her sovereigns around the globe.
The American colonies were no exception and her colonists lived and
worked proudly under the British flag. They did not, however, meet the
English standard for decency and decorum. A feisty, fighting spirit was
alive and well in the American pioneers many years prior to the founding of
the United States.
Coming from a multitude of backgrounds, religions, and countries,
those who settled on American soil nevertheless had much in common.
They were rugged, they were committed to freedom, and they would do
whatever it took to survive and thrive in the New World.
European ways were largely tossed aside in this new society. Learning
was elevated. The Christian Religion—whether Baptist, Puritan,
Presbyterian, or another denomination—was the center of life and learning.
Nearly every home had, and treasured, a family Bible.
The vast majority of colonial reading materials were religious or
political in nature. Universities were founded expressly to advance these
two causes that undergirded the American spirit.
Families lived simply, often as farmers in modest homes. Yet, they
worked, studied, and played hard, and the American populace quickly
developed into the most literate society in the world.72 American boys like
John Adams would grow up on the farm and go on to become lawyers. The
future of the American colonies was bright.
What Americans knew best was what they loved most, their land, their
religion, and their politics, all at the center of their lives and comprising the
foundation of the freedoms they so deeply cherished. It was known
throughout the civilized world that nearly every aspect of American life
revolved around these things they loved so deeply.
“Most musical endeavor...was applied to religion, where church hymns
were sung a cappella and, occasionally, to the accompaniment of a church
organ. Americans customized and syncopated hymns, greatly aggravating
pious English churchmen…Colonial literature likewise focused on religion
or otherwise addressed the needs of common folk…Although literacy was
widespread, Americans read mainly the Bible, political tracts, and how to
books on family, mechanics, and moral improvements.”73
Interestingly enough, it was this deeply religious society that gave
birth to the Great Awakening. Of particular note in that movement were the
labors of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield. Edwards and Whitfield
worked primarily in the northeastern Colonies, conducting open-air
meetings and preaching in churches. Their message was not only of
salvation through Christ alone but was also a call to an observance and
understanding of sound doctrine. Both men had highly effective ministries.
While Edwards was known for his profound teaching and insights,
Whitfield was characterized by his commanding presence and booming
voice. (Whitfield even acted out the biblical accounts he taught his
audiences, leaving an unforgettable impression in their minds.74)
Hundreds came to know Christ, and still more made recommitments to
Him through these men and others like them. While most homes in the
Colonies owned a Bible prior to the Great Awakening, most homes in the
Colonies read and many studied the Bible following the Great Awakening.
The spiritual seeds left by over one hundred years of those seeking
religious freedom had been watered and grew through this time of revival.
On the shoulders of this renewed faith would stand the colonists’ quest for
liberty!
Approximately a decade following the years of the Great Awakening,
from 1754–1763, the British Empire was plunged into the long and tedious
conflict known as The French and Indian War. Its battles were fought in
Europe, Canada, and the Colonies, as the English fought the French and
Indians over territorial claims. The English eventually won the day and
were given not only the export-rich nation of India by the French but also
Canada and all French held lands east of the Mississippi (including
Louisiana),75 putting the English Crown in control of nearly the entire
Eastern Seaboard of the Americas.
Seeming to pale in comparison with the vast land acquisitions of the
British from the French by the Treaty of Paris, one of the most significant
outcomes of the battles fought on American soil was the realization by the
English Crown of the tangible economic importance of the Colonies. As
historian Carl Van Doren wrote, “The French and Indian War, which made
the British government think of the Colonies as important enough to be
taxed, had made the Americans think of themselves as important enough to
say how they should be taxed.”76
Though the Colonies had experienced some previous taxation by the
British Crown, it was the Stamp Act of 1765 that set in motion a series of
world-changing events. The Stamp Act was a requirement for fifty-five
items—ranging from books to playing cards, real estate to liquor, and
diplomas to marriage licenses—to display a stamp bought from the English
Crown, effectively taxing each item. America’s populace developed a
growing concern that this move not only violated the rights of Englishmen
(they were being taxed but not represented) but that it could lay the
groundwork for an intrusion into their faith and personal lives. Their lives
—marriages, family, and fun—now required the king’s mark. Would tracts
and Bibles be next in line for the king’s literal stamp of approval?
The movement to repeal the Stamp Act was led by a young patriot
named Patrick Henry. Henry argued the illegality of this imposition
effectively in Virginia, which led to a meeting of colonial leaders for the
Stamp Act Congress in New York. There, the colonial delegates drafted the
Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which stated in no uncertain terms
they would not tolerate taxation in violation of Britain’s own laws!
Benjamin Franklin, a leader in Pennsylvania, was in England as the
Declaration of the Stamp Act Congress was issued, and he appeared before
Parliament to represent colonial grievances. Under questioning, the
unofficial transcript of Parliament’s (“Q”) interaction with Franklin (“A”)
reads as follows:
 Q: Do you think the people of America would submit to pay
the stamp duty, if it was moderated?
A: No, never, unless compelled by force of arms…
Q: What was the temper of America towards Great Britain
before the year 1763?
A: The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the
government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts,
obedience to the acts of Parliament…They had not only a
respect, but an affection, for Great Britain, for its laws, its
customs and manners…Natives of Britain were always
treated with particular regard; to be an Old Englishman, was,
of itself, a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank
among us. Q: And what is their temper now?
A: Oh, very much altered…
Q: Was it an opinion in America before 1763, that the
Parliament had no right to lay taxes and duties there?
A: I never heard any objection to the right of laying duties to
regulate commerce, but a right to lay internal taxes was
never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not
represented there…
Q: If the stamp-act should be repealed, would it induce the
assemblies of America to acknowledge the rights of
Parliament to tax them, and would they erase their
resolutions?
A: No, never.
Q: Is there no means of obliging them to erase those
resolutions?
A: None that I know of; they will never do it unless
compelled by force of arms.
Q: Is there no power on earth that can force them to erase
them?
A: No power, how great soever, can force men to change
their opinions.77

Franklin won the day. The Stamp Act was repealed. The American
mind was set; they had acted, united, against the British Empire and
succeeded. No power would change their belief in their right to be free men,
justly governed. The birth pangs of a nation had begun.
The Sons of Liberty, a famous patriot group of the American
Revolution, formed with the specific purpose of harassing the king’s Stamp
Act officials. Fueled by the passion developed throughout those activities,
the Sons of Liberty—and numerous other groups—continued their meetings
after the repeal of the Stamp Act, forming a patriotic hotbed in the colony
of Massachusetts. Sensing the rising patriotic fervor of the northeast and
anxious to quell the fevered pitch toward independence, the British
transferred the bulk of their American-based troops to Boston. Redcoats and
patriots became quickly at odds in the colony, continually taunting one
another while vying for local leadership positions and employment
opportunities.
On March 5, 1770, the taunting turned to snowballs thrown at a
customhouse sentry by Boston’s overly zealous youngsters. Several soldiers
came to their comrade’s aid, where they were surrounded by an angry mob
of nearby shipyard employees. The soldiers, terrified—as well they might
be—were ordered by their captain to fire on the unreasonable colonial
crowd. Three Bostonians were killed on site, and several others were
mortally wounded in the incident. Cries of outrage and injustice rang
throughout the Colonies. Sam Adams published scathing articles on the
British actions and intolerances as showcased in what he dubbed the
“Boston Massacre.” A distant cousin, however, disagreed with his
sentiments and even represented the frightened soldiers in court. John
Adams rightfully won the acquittal of the British troops, but his
representation would not stem the rising tide of patriotic fever throughout
the land.
In 1773, England proverbially poured gasoline on the embers of
revolutionary thought with an act levying a tax on tea. Coming on the heels
of the Stamp Act, this tax would have lessened the price of tea across the
board in the Colonies. However, as tea was an integral part of colonial life
(and could be easily smuggled into the country illegally to avoid the tax
altogether), the outrage over this action was incredible. Water in its purest
form was generally unfit for consumption and required boiling, making tea
a staple of life and community in the Americas. Americans wanted nothing
to do with a government that involved itself in their everyday lives. Thus,
what the Crown had meant to even the playing field for tea suppliers and
their colonial customers actually struck the final blow to the foundation of
British rule in the Colonies.
Led by Sam Adams, an assembly of more than seven thousand
colonists converged on ships laden with tea in Boston Harbor. The Sons of
Liberty, dressed as Indians, unloaded the ships, throwing all the tea into the
cold December waters. This, the Boston Tea Party, was followed by other,
although less dramatic, demonstrations in resistance to the tea tax
throughout the Eastern Seaboard.
As retribution, the English shut down Boston Harbor and annulled the
Massachusetts Charter; Massachusetts thereby fell under direct rule of the
king. With the king’s rule could come the king’s religion. In a New England
dominated by Anabaptists, the thought of potential establishment of the
Church of England on American shores was highly troubling to the
Evangelical Protestants, particularly John Adams (whom to that point had
regularly sided with the Crown in colonial disputes).
It was in another hotbed of freedom, William Penn’s City of Brotherly
Love, that a Continental Congress convened in September, 1774. The
Colonies’ greatest leaders and most noble patriots gathered to discuss and
rectify the injustices done to the citizens of Massachusetts, emerging the
following month with a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. Delegates
from up and down the seaboard had entered Philadelphia as sympathetic
neighbors. They emerged as a united force.
Patrick Henry’s remarks best summarized the results of that first
Continental Congress: “I hope future ages will quote our proceedings with
applause…The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New
Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an
American.”78
Still leading the charge for justice, Massachusetts raised a force of
citizen-soldiers, minutemen, ready to be called on to fight for their freedom
at a moment’s notice. Virginia convened another legislative session, and the
passionate Henry again immortalized the zeal of the American spirit.

“Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What

terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted?
Let us not, I beseech you sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir,
we have done everything that could be done, to avert the
storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have
 remonstrated, we have supplicated; we have prostrated
ourselves before the throne, and have implored its
interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry
and Parliament...There is no longer any room for hope...An
appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left
us...We are not weak, if we make a proper use of those
means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of Liberty,
and in such a country as that which we possess, are
invincible by any force which our enemy can send against
us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is
a just God, who presides over the destinies of nations, and
who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The
battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the
active, the brave…Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be
purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but
as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”79

Henry’s famous speech presents a clear picture of the passion of the

American patriots. Their love for freedom, firmly grounded in an
unshakeable faith and belief in the truth, produced a generation who would
die for liberty and inspire their children for centuries to do the same.
The remaining months of 1775 were some of the most legendary in US
history. Paul Revere, a Son of Liberty, rode through the night alerting
Americans to British troop movements, while lanterns were hung in the
North Church for the same purpose. The first official military engagement
followed in Lexington, where several members of the Massachusetts militia
were killed in the fight for liberty. Then, April 20, 1775, brought a sound
that resonated throughout the Colonies and across the seas; it was the shot
heard ’round the world. Historians continue to debate which side fired the
first shot—a redcoat aimed at squelching the colonial uprising, or a
minuteman under strict orders not to fire unless fired upon. Regardless, the
ensuing English victory at Concord, where eight Americans died and ten
more were wounded, unequivocally exposed the need for the formation of a
proper colonial army.
 American sentiment for a complete uprising against the English Crown
coincided with the meeting of the Second Continental Congress. Convening
again in Philadelphia in May 1775, the delegates forcefully debated the
subject of outright revolution. In similar fashion as their Puritan and
Separatist ancestors, the question of whether to reform British rule from
within or separate from it entirely was a lengthy discussion and a heavily
debated subject.
Yet, the price for liberty must be paid, and the Colonies united to form
a joint army, placing it in the hands of General George Washington.
Washington’s army would harass and combat the redcoats while inspiring
even greater revolutionary zeal among the American people. Though most
of the opening campaigns of the Revolution were unsuccessful from a
military perspective, they fed the colonial desire for freedom. The
Americans loved liberty, and they were willing to die for it.
By June of 1776, Washington’s troops had gained momentum and been
successful in driving the British occupational forces out of Boston. Patriotic
fever was at its zenith in Revolutionary history. A young Virginian patriot
was chosen of the congressional delegates, once again convened in
Philadelphia, to draft a declaration by the Continental Congress on behalf of
all Americans. Thomas Jefferson was reluctant; he wanted the older, more
mature John Adams to take the lead. Adams refused and presented a clear,
compelling argument for Jefferson to write the draft: “Reason first—you are
a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business.
Reason second—I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very
much otherwise. Reason third—you can write ten times better than I can.”80
It was settled. Jefferson would compose on behalf of the delegates.
Jefferson worked approximately two weeks drafting the Declaration of
Independence; it then was taken up for debate, edited, and redrawn. On July
2, 1776, Congress voted to declare independence as set forth in the
declaration. After more debate and further rewriting, twelve of the thirteen
colonies adopted the final version of the Declaration of Independence that
same day (New York ratified five days later, on July 9). John Hancock and
Charles Thompson, president and secretary of the Congress, respectively,
signed the document, and the declaration was sent out for publication.
On July 8, the Liberty Bell hanging from the steeple of what would
become known as Independence Hall did as its inscription required and
proclaimed liberty throughout the land. Its toll summoned all to attend the
first public reading of the historic document. Eleven days later, on July 19,
Congress had an engrossed parchment copy made of the Declaration.
Finally, on August 2, 1776, the remaining members of Congress began their
signing of America’s Declaration of Independence, knowing, as Franklin so
famously forewarned, “We must all hang together or most assuredly we
shall all hang separately.”81
Of the fifty-six men who signed the declaration, the youngest was
twenty-six and the oldest was seventy. They came from various
backgrounds and trades—lawyers and farmers, pastors and doctors. All
were held in highest esteem by their fellow Americans, and all were willing
to risk their lives for their country. Thus they committed their names and
futures to the declaration, ending with the following:

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of

America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the
Supreme Judge of the world, for the rectitude of our
intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good
people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that
these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent states…And for the support of this Declaration,
with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,
we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and
our sacred honor.”82

The months ahead were long and bitter for the American patriots. Her
farms were burned, her leaders were hunted and killed, and her soldiers
went barefooted through the harsh New England winter. They would not
surrender; liberty was a cause worth their lives, and they continued on.
Perhaps nowhere in the annals of the young nation was the love for liberty
more clearly seen than in the winter Washington’s troops spent at Valley
Forge.
Prior to that famous winter, the army had suffered serious defeats in
New York but won the battles of Princeton and Trenton (the latter after
famously crossing the Delaware on a cold Christmas night). Congress,
however, had fled Philadelphia, and Washington, knowing his troops
unready to face the British forces gathered there, quartered his men in
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The winter was long and harsh, bringing with it
both death and disease. Washington, undaunted, petitioned Congress
continually for supplies, while concurrently using the temporary lapse in
conflict to train his farmhand-filled troops.
General Washington was successful. The farmers who had walked into
Valley Forge marched out as soldiers. That harsh winter generated a
disciplined fighting machine that would defeat the greatest military force on
earth.
By 1781, Washington’s troops had overcome the British. English
Lieutenant General Cornwallis and his troops were surrounded at
Yorktown, Virginia. Left unaided, Cornwallis and his men, many in tears,
laid down their arms in surrender to Washington and the American troops
on October 19, 1781. Though several skirmishes would follow this event,
the impossible had been done. Bands of patriot farmers had withstood
nearly five years of conflict to overthrow the English Crown. Cornwallis’s
surrender paved the way for the preliminary Treaty of Paris, ending the
hostilities of the Revolutionary War on November 30, 1782.
The war having come to an end and British forces dispersed, the
Colonies were faced with forming a new government. A Constitutional
Convention convened in May 1787 to organize the states. As days turned to
weeks, Benjamin Franklin’s famous address to the convention summarizes
well the American thought pervading the day.

“The small progress we have made after four or five weeks

close attendance and continual reasonings with each other—
our different sentiments on almost every question, several of
the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a
melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human
understanding…In this situation of this Assembly, groping
as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able
to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened,
Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly
applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our
understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great
Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily
prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers,
Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered…And
have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Of 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 in the affairs of
men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His
notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His
aid?”83

The answer to Franklin’s question, of course, is no. With his address,

Franklin drew the delegates back to the heart of their original mission for
freedom. They had set out to perform God’s will and could not complete it
without Him. Prayer was then regularly instituted in the convention, and the
Constitution of the United States was ratified on September 17, 1787.
A nation was born. Built on the backs of saints and patriots, revival
and revolution, the United States arose. Nowhere else in history had man’s
commitment to faith been so united with his formation of a government.
America’s families, desperate for truth, gave their lives for freedom,
recognized that God governed the affairs of men, and sought to establish a
system of rule consistent with His Law. Indeed, the patriots sought
separation of church and state, where corrupted leaders of each worked
together to deceive and abuse their people. Never, however, did they seek
separation of church from state, where men would live different lives in
public than in private; where one’s faith was personal but had no place in
public life or government affairs. No indeed, for the Founding Fathers were
men of faith and recognized the Colonies rose from nothing to nation with
the aid of Heaven and her Creator Himself!
 Chapter 7
Hitler and Germany

“A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; our helper He,
amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing...[L]et goods and kindred go, this
mortal life also; the body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still, His
kingdom is forever.”84 Martin Luther’s well-known hymn bespoke the path
of Germany following the Reformation.
The German people were kingdom—empire—oriented. Throughout
their history, they were fiercely loyal to their leaders. Following Luther,
they were also deeply religious. The thoughts and teachings of Martin
Luther permeated German homes, universities, and churches, culminating
in a largely religious society. By the twentieth century, 95 percent of
Germans affiliated themselves with either the Catholic or Protestant
churches of their country.85
Unfortunately, German state supremacy and anti-Semitism can also be
traced to Luther’s works. Into that religious land, the philosophies of two
deceitful men had taken root based on several gross errors in Luther’s
theology.
The first of these men was Georg Hegel. Teaching philosophy at Berlin
University, Hegel taught that private morality should be exactly that—
private. Rejecting the notions of morality in public affairs, Hegel set
government above the will of the law. He further rejected the Old Testament
with its obvious Jewish origin, teaching that true Christianity could be
achieved only by a pure, non-Jewish people, namely, the Germans.
 In Hegel’s footsteps followed Friedrich Nietzsche. The son of a
Lutheran pastor, Nietzsche took Hegel’s beliefs leaps forward, declaring
God dead. Nietzsche believed individual genius supreme and above the law.
He also taught that an intelligent (German) form of governance was
unbound even by the morals of its people.
Otto von Bismarck led the Second German Reich of 1871–1918,
uniting the German states of Europe during his rule as premier of Prussia.
Under von Bismarck’s rule, the ideals of Hegel and Nietzsche were
realized, and he created and maintained a state system held by the German
people as above both the law and morality.
The question is not how this was possible in a deeply religious society.
It was because of the deeply religious society that Hegel, Nietzsche, and
von Bismarck’s philosophies prevailed in German thought. The teachings of
Luther were greatly reverenced and empowered these anti-biblical
worldviews. Luther had been kingdom and governance oriented, supremely
loyal to his country, anti-Semitic, and encouraging of each. Thus, in von
Bismarck’s Second Reich,
“The state, it was argued, should not be judged according to
conventional law because its responsibilities went beyond ordinary human
values. This dichotomy, which some would say goes back to Luther, who
insisted that the peasants obey their leaders no matter how tyrannical, was
taught in German churches. Paul’s teaching that we should be subject to
political authorities was emphasized (Rom. 13:1–2). The laws of the state
were to be obeyed without asking for a moral rationale for what one was
commanded to do. As Bismarck said, ‘I believe I am obeying God when I
serve my king.’ A commitment to high national honor was a sacred duty.”86
Luther and the Germans who followed him shared von Bismarck’s
sentiments. Their quest for a pure reich—or kingdom—could be traced to
the deeply religious nature of the culture. The Lord’s Prayer was quoted
throughout the country each Sunday morning declaring, “Dein reich
komme...” German churches sought to fulfill God’s will with the creation of
the German Reich based on Luther’s teachings of unquestioning submission
to one’s government and her leaders.
Luther, the great reformer and church hero, was a close ally to the
German Jews at the beginning of the Reformation and declared, “The Jews
are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood,
the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if
you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as
a Jew.”87
However, when Jews failed to convert en masse to Protestant
Christianity, as Luther had anticipated with the decay of Catholicism in
Germany, his demeanor toward the people of God took an inconceivable,
and somewhat inexplicable, turn. His infamous 1543 publication, On Jews
and their Lies, then permeated German Protestantism, with statements
including, “Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that
wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils
in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God
and men are practiced most maliciously.”88
Not only did Luther write against the Jews as a race, he also promoted
their persecution as individuals. Luther championed the thought of Jews as
less than human and needful of subjection by superior peoples. In his words
the Jews were,

“the type of human beings if I should call them that...rejected

and condemned…We dare not tolerate their conduct…[S]et
fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover
with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever
again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in
honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might
see that we are Christians…I advise their houses also be
razed and destroyed…Third, I advise that all their prayer
books and Talmudic writings…be taken from them. Fourth, I
advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach.”89

Luther’s advice on the Jews continued with recommendations of

restricted travel, refusal to borrow or lend to them, and forced manual labor.
One philosophical thought of Nietzsche’s not traceable to Luther was
the statement that God was dead. Nevertheless, it was mixed in with the rest
of his Luther-originated teaching and accompanied Hegel’s into the
subconscious of Germany. And if God was dead, what law, what
accountability was there? None.
Following World War I, the German nation was in shambles. Her
people were humiliated, the nation was divided, and the economy had
completely collapsed. The political, social, and societal outlook was bleak
for the German people.
In the midst of that darkness rose an Austrian lad who believed in
Providence, held Nietzsche as his hero, and believed his destiny a great and
unshakeable dominion ordained by God. The blond haired boy was one of
only two of the five children born to his parents to survive infancy. He
fought bravely and served faithfully in the German Army during the First
World War. He was one of only six hundred of the more than three thousand
soldiers in his regiment to survive the First Battle of Ypres, receiving two
awards for his often reckless bravery. He later became thoroughly suicidal
and yet lived to survive six assassination attempts on his life. Can it be any
wonder that Adolph Hitler believed himself under the special protection of
Providence or felt he was destined to fulfill great plans?
Recognizing the great void in national authority, imminent economic
peril, and believing himself functioning within the will of God, Hitler
attempted to seize control of Germany’s government in 1923. His plans
failed, however, and he was convicted of treason and sent to prison. Hitler
spent about nine months behind bars writing what would become the Nazi
Bible, Mein Kampf.
Emerging from prison smarter and more zealous than he had entered,
Hitler realized his quest to control Germany would require proper
adherence to her political system. He successfully endured the rigors of
political life and found himself appointed chancellor of Germany in
January, 1933. The following month, Berlin’s Reichstag building (which
housed the German Parliament) burned. Many historians believe Hitler
himself had secretly ordered the arson. Chancellor Hitler pounced on the
heightened fears of the nation to convince Field Marshal Von Hindenburg to
issue a decree providing immediate protection for the people but which
required, in turn, suspended individual liberties and eliminated the
requirement of a search warrant to enter German homes.
By July of the same year, with that decree as his foundation, Hitler
further convinced the Reichstag to amend the constitution and thereby
transfer all legislative powers to one man, himself. With the ratification of
that amendment, Hitler declared the Nazis the only political party in
Germany and himself not only chancellor but also führer, the father of the
fatherland.
 Hitler’s political machine was quick and effective. Within five years,
the German economy was restored. Unemployment was nearly eliminated.
Roads were constructed and German automobile plants built cars for the
people at an affordable price for all. The “Strength through Joy” vacation
program Hitler implemented brought relief and pleasure to thousands of
German families.
Hitler was a national hero. He had rebuilt their country in mere years
and ushered in a Third Reich for the German people. Indeed, had World
War II never occurred, Hitler would likely have been hailed throughout
history as an outstanding government leader and studied by politicians as a
shrewd statesman.
Nazi flags, with Christian crosses abreast the swastika, filled the
churches of Germany as Bibles took second place to Mein Kampf. Pastors,
priests, and parishioners gave the Nazi salute and cried “Heil Hitler!” from
the pulpits and in the streets. Thousands of pastors joined the SS (a branch
of the Nazi secret service that proved particularly cruel, and were
responsible for the majority of the brutalities headlining the reich’s rule),
swearing their allegiance to the national hero who was restoring their nation
in God’s name, as God’s ambassador.
However, the caring, compassionate Hitler of public esteem was
privately anything but. Instead, he was hot tempered and cruel. But Hitler,
and thereby, Nazism, had taken the hearts of Germany by storm. True to
form, as a nation, the German people would stand by their leader and
uphold their government, supporting those they held as above the law and
morality even to the offense of their consciences.
Hitler had met the immediate needs of the people, who willingly
sacrificed their souls in exchange for their bodies, and their lives in
exchange for eternity. Hitler had become the god of Germany.
As the dark side of Nazism arose, it went almost completely unnoticed
by those already blinded by false hope and misguided loyalty. The German
people had long since surrendered their freedom and, in doing so, lost sight
of the truth. Where darkness abounds, evil does much more abound—and
Germany was a nation blanketed in the darkness of Nazism.
“I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of conscience—
imperious, relentless, and cruel,”90 Hitler declared. He knew what so many
others had forgotten. To conquer a nation, one must captivate, compel,
inspire, and thereby capture the hearts of the nation’s youth.
 Beginning in Munich, the Hitler Youth program was established for
this purpose and rapidly progressed from one thousand members in 1923 to
2.3 million in 1933. By 1939, Hitler Youth was the largest youth
organization in the world with over seven million members.91
The Nazis capitalized on the quick-adapting, fast-learning zeal of
Germany’s young people, eventually requiring every child over the age of
ten to enroll in Hitler Youth, and thereby quickly counting 90 percent of the
young German population in its ranks.92 Girls were inspired with Nazi
philosophy, taught obedience, and learned to encourage socialism in their
future homes. Boys were taught warfare, trained to build gliders, given
licenses, learned to drive motorcycles, educated in navigation, received
flights in bombers, and had hands-on naval instruction aboard German
warships.
From the ranks of the Hitler Youth organization came many a German
soldier, most notably an entire division, the Twelfth SS Panzers. The
Twelfth SS fought at Normandy and Falaise, at the Battle of the Bulge, and
in Budapest before surrendering to American forces in May of 1945. Hitler
Youth also manned antiaircraft defenses across Germany, dug trenches to
protect the Fatherland, and participated in the burnings of Jewish
synagogues.
As the end of the war drew near and Germany’s forces continued to
dwindle, hundreds of Hitler Youth joined their army and played a major role
in both prolonging the war effort and in mounting Germany’s final defense.
At the Battle of Berlin, Hitler Youth proved the fiercest fighters in opposing
the Russian troops.93
Hitler’s goal had been accomplished. He had stolen the hearts of
Germany’s youth. They loved their leader, clung to his ideals, and would
die by the hundreds for him. Why?
The Hitler Youth program was military led and functioned on a
military schedule, but with a home-like atmosphere. Hitler believed in his
young people and invested in them. They knew it; they could see it every
day. Hitler brought order to their lives, he gave them a cause to live and die
for, and he placed the future of his nation in their hands. In other words,
German youth became Hitler Youth because he earned it. They were eager
for someone to follow, a hero whom they might idolize. They found that
someone in Hitler.
 But Hitler was much more than a hero to the Germans. He garnered
and demanded not only respect but worship. He held himself invincible, and
his people believed him infallible. Hitler was a god in Germany. Though he
believed Providence protected and ordained him for greatness, he also
believed himself above the laws of God and his life unrestricted by any
form of morality or higher power.
As a god, Hitler believed it his prerogative and took it upon himself to
purge Germany of God’s people, the Jews. He implemented Luther’s
solutions on a broader, crueler, and incredibly grotesque scale. The German
people—from Hitler youth, to girls, to mothers, to soldiers, to elite Nazi
troops—would oppress and terrorize Jewish families throughout Hitler’s
reich in the most horrific persecution of the Jewish people in history. In
fact, many historians believe Hitler and the German high command entered
World War II not only to conquer Europe and create a powerful German
empire but also, and possibly primarily, to completely eliminate the Jewish
population of Europe.94
November 1938 had signaled the very public beginning of German
Jewish oppression within the reich. The Kristallnacht (Night of Broken
Glass) marked widespread and vicious attacks on Jewish synagogues and
shops as 100 synagogues were demolished and 7,500 Jewish businesses
were looted and destroyed.95 Twenty thousand German and Austrian Jews
were arrested and taken to concentration camps, while hundreds more were
killed in this single attack on God’s people. Germany’s subsequent attack
on Poland (which coincided with the implementation of the murdering of
Germans who were deformed or handicapped) resulted in the slaughter of
90 percent of Polish Jews.
Hitler’s official plans for a “final solution” were adopted on January
20, 1942. They set out precise details for the specific and systematic
extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. As German troops
marched from country to country, conquering nation after nation, all
branches of the German occupational forces united to coordinate the death,
deportation, and imprisonment of any and all Jews with whom they came in
contact. Concentration camps were filled as Jews of all ages were abused,
tortured, experimented upon, systematically starved, and eventually sent to
slave labor camps or the infamous gas chambers for execution. By the end
of the war, more than two-thirds of the European Jewish population had
been killed by the murderous Third Reich and wicked direction of Adolf
Hitler.
Sam Bankhalter, a Polish Jew, was approaching his teens and running
an errand for his father when he was captured by the Nazis. He was
immediately sent to Auschwitz, where he would spend the entirety of his
teenage years. Sam miraculously survived his imprisonment, and his
account of life in that dark concentration camp is a vivid portrayal of the
horrors abounding throughout Europe while Hitler ruled.

“What you got for clothing was striped pants and the striped
jacket, no underwear, no socks…If they told you to do
something, you went to do it. There was no yes or no, no
choices. I worked in the crematorium for about 11 months. I
saw Dr. Mengele’s experiments on children, I knew the kids
that became vegetables. Later in Buchenwald I saw Ilse
Koch with a hose and regulator, trying to get pressure to
make a hole in a woman’s stomach. I saw them cutting
Greek people in pieces…I knew everybody, knew every trick
to survive…I was able to see my family when they came to
Auschwitz in 1944… I went over to my father and said,
‘Dad, where’s God? They kill rabbis, priests, ministers, the
more religious, the faster they go! What has happened?’ His
only answer to me was, ‘This is the way God wants it.’ This
was the last time I spoke to my father.”96

Where was God? Sam Bankhalter’s question continues to haunt the

world today. Was Sam’s father right? Was the annihilation of more than
two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, not to mention the deaths of
thousands of others, really what God wanted? Were Hitler’s actions and life
indeed protected and sustained by God? Sam Bankhalter’s father was a
student of Hebrew, a Zionist who had helped many Jews move to Palestine.
Did he believe something unthinkable and completely repulsive to
mankind? Indeed, where was God?
Why had Hitler not died in infancy? Why had he not committed
suicide? How had he survived World War I? How did he survive six
assassination attempts? God had allowed Hitler to live. God had allowed
Hitler to implement his reign of terror. At any moment, God could have
removed his spirit and Hitler would have died. God could have protected
His people. Clearly, the atrocities implemented through Hitler’s machine
were not what God wanted, but He did allow them. He allowed Hitler and
Satan to have temporary power over but a fleeting moment in history to
wreak their havoc, but their rule was restrained and would ultimately
crumble.
God was at work both within and without Germany even during the
terrors of World War II. During Hitler’s rule, there remained Germans who
recognized the incredible breeches of freedom and the silencing of truth
they rapidly produced in their country. Unlike most of their neighbors
whose lives had been consumed with the nation’s temporal suffering, they
saw God’s hand at work, stuck by His Law and the principles of His Word,
while trusting His goodness to prevail in the end. Best known of these
faithful servants were Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer said, “When God calls a man, he bids him come and
die.”97 While the Jews and others who failed to meet Hitler’s standard for
selection in the “master race” were hunted for destruction and had their
fates chosen for them, there were others who willingly walked a path that
could—and most likely would—lead to their deaths, choosing to suffer
affliction in the cause of righteousness rather than live in peace with a
world at war with God.
As the extermination of the Jews and exploitation of the helpless
continued, there rose up from within (and without) the German Church a
large number of men and women who would not tolerate the evils of
Hitler’s Third Reich. As the months turned to years, Christians in Germany
began to realize the savior they once hailed had been exposed as an angel of
darkness, and Hitler began losing his grip over the people of God.
Of Germany’s churches, Einstein (who was expelled from Germany
for his Jewish roots) would explain, “Being a lover of freedom, when the
[Nazi] revolution came I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing
that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no,
the universities were immediately silenced...Only the Church stood squarely
across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth…the Church
alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral
freedom.”98 Einstein recognized the unbreakable bond between truth and
liberty, and saw the Church as the final holdout for both. It was these brave
Christians, along with many other German patriots, who were heroes amidst
the Third Reich’s reign of terror.
Some, like Corrie Ten Boom and her family, sheltered, protected, and
aided Jewish families, eventually ending up living alongside them in
concentration camps. Others, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taught against the
Nazi’s political agenda, joined in assassination attempts, devised plans for
smuggling Jews out of Germany, and worked with the Allies to draft terms
of peace should the removal of Hitler be successful. When the final attempt
on Hitler’s life failed, Nazi authorities seized the opportunity to apprehend
the outspoken pastor who taught against the reich, imprisoning and later
martyring Bonhoeffer.
A mere three weeks following Bonhoeffer’s murder, Hitler committed
suicide. No man had been capable of taking his life; God had allowed him
to live, yet Hitler ended it all himself as he watched his kingdom crumble
before his eyes.
The Allied forces, greatly due to America’s participation in the final
years of the war, succeeded in securing the full surrender of Germany.
When peace was achieved, the remnant of the Jewish population of Europe
left the continent on a broad scale. Nearly all who fled the memories of
years of death and misery journeyed to the United States or to Palestine,
where the nation of Israel would soon be born.
The long war, misguided loyalties, and Nazi rule left the German
people and their land, once again, in a tragic state of disarray. Her cities lay
in ruins. Her economy was again broken. Her people were imprisoned,
impoverished, and disillusioned. Their national hero had become the
world’s nightmare. Their faith had become their foe. What had begun in
political greatness ended in the greatest debauchery known to the modern
world.
Yet, Germany was—or rather, had been—a Christian nation. Built on
the shoulders of the Reformation and following in the footsteps of brave
Protestant leaders, the German people were highly religious, well educated,
and had a solid foundation in and thorough understanding of the Christian
faith—perhaps more so than any other nation. In fact, the only nation with
equivalent and potentially higher levels of Christian influence in its roots
was the very one that brought Germany to its knees: The United States of
America.
 This facilitates two inevitable questions: Is the United States capable
of falling to a state similar to that of Nazi Germany? How did a nation so
entrenched in the doctrines of Christ fall to such incredible depths of
outright, unashamed evil?
Hitler’s program entailed capturing the nation’s youth and eliminating
its Jewish influence. Faith was marginalized to private life, and as a whole,
seemingly good men simply did nothing. And that was—though obviously
other factors were involved—in essence, all it took for evil to prosper in a
Christian nation.
Freedom had been sacrificed on the altar of self-preservation. Truth
had been compromised for uniformity and acceptance of all who agreed
with a progressive, socialist agenda.
Hitler’s Third Reich had not attempted something new in world
history. Many tyrannical dictators had vanquished freedom and suppressed
truth in their quest for world domination before. The Nazis, however,
perfected that quest. The intervention of a Christian nation was required to
stop the evil permeating Europe.
The deep roots of Christianity in America can be traced through the
founders to William Penn, then to the Pilgrims, and thereby the
Reformation, and thence, one could argue, even Germany itself. Biblical
references, paintings, and sculptures still adorn many of America’s public
buildings. Congress is still opened, as Franklin had proposed, with prayer.
English Bibles are legal and can still be found in most American homes.
And yet, Barack Obama, forty-fourth president of the United States, is
noted for his statement in June 2006 of, “Whatever we once were, we are
no longer a Christian nation—at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation,
a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”99
With this statement, President Obama made two distinct declarations.
First, he confirmed America was indeed a Christian nation—a nation
founded on Christian principles, by Christian families, with Christian
leaders. America was a nation of one God. Second, he unequivocally
expressed that America is no longer a nation of one God but of many gods.
What might the founders think of their successor’s statement? Has America
forgotten the roots from which she sprung? How did Bibles, once the center
of American life, become reduced to collecting dust on dressers and
shelves, even in Christian homes? Why has the simple worship of the
country church house been transformed into a Hollywood style production
of Main Street, USA?
Can it be that as America’s churches lost their influence on the world,
the world’s influence infiltrated American churches? In failing to defend
truth, is the church of America responsible for jeopardizing liberty in the
land of the free? And what can be done to prevent further decline and again
promote one nation under God?
 Part II
A Call to Involvement:
The Christian impact on America and the
world of the twenty-first century.
“It really doesn’t matter,” my friend told me as we sat talking after dinner.
“When it comes down to it, God is in control and people’s souls are the
only things that matter; so politics, they just don’t matter.”
God, His Word, and people are indeed the only three things that last
forever. My friend was right, politics don’t make the cut.
But what about men like William Penn, William Bradford, and
William Tyndale? What heritage might America have had if George
Washington and John Adams, two God-fearing men, had not been her first
two presidents? What if atheists truly had written the Declaration of
Independence? What if America had chosen not to get involved with the
politics of Europe during the world wars?
The impact of Judeo-Christianity in the formation of the modern world
is unquestionable. God has been at the center of world affairs throughout all
of history.
God, His Word, and people. Yes, they are the three things that are
eternal. However, abandoning everything else in life is not the solution to
the world’s problems. When Christianity turns its back on the political
realms, God’s Word and people inevitably suffer harm; it has been so in the
past, and it will be so in the future.
The spread of freedom and truth require God’s people being involved
in politics and playing an active role in their governments. For Christianity
to continue its impact into the twenty-first century, Christians must be
involved in the world around them!
(Note: For the remaining chapters, “Church” shall refer to the body of
Christ as a whole in the United States, with “church” continuing to
reference individual fellowships.)
 Chapter 8
The Youth Fallout

“Children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his
reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the
youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be
ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” These final
three verses of Psalm 127 paint a beautiful picture of the ancient (and
somewhat still current), Middle Eastern or Jewish view of the family.
Children were a blessing. Families were large. A man with many
children was held as having obtained God’s favor.
(Interestingly, when King David failed to bring the ark of God to
Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 6, he left it on the property of a man named Obed-
edom. Verse eleven of that chapter specifically states that the Lord blessed
Obed-edom and his entire household. This writer believes that blessing is
revealed in 1 Chronicles 26:4–5, which lists the names of eight sons of
Obed-edom and concludes with the phrase, “for God blessed him.”)
How many pastors in today’s Western church speak of God
“rewarding” a family with the birth of a new child? Yes, a “blessing” is
always spoken of, but almost to the point of being cliché. The rich imagery
that a child is God’s reward to his or her parents presents an entirely new
and exciting concept for the parents, family, community, and even the child
himself.
Psalm 127 states that these rewards are like “arrows” and a “happy”
father has his “quiver full” of them. The question? How many arrows make
a full quiver? How many arrows does an archer take with him to meet his
enemy? Only a foolish man would meet his enemy insufficiently armed!
However, in Western culture, large families have become novelties and
are often viewed as inconvenient. Even pastors counsel and teach that
couples should limit themselves to a family they can afford. Churches teach
faith and trust in God for everything but the size of the family. Apparently,
God needs help there. He doesn’t know what the wife can handle, nor does
He understand what the husband’s job can afford.
Has America forgotten what made her great, individuals and their
families? Confucius got it right when he said, “To put the world right in
order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we
must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first
cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”100
The Western Church does not know what to do with God’s blessings or
how to handle His rewards. While abortion would almost never be
considered by a God-fearing couple nor encouraged by a Godly pastor, that
same couple will likely embrace contraceptive medications without
considering the potential destruction of life that accompanies them.
Research shows that birth control pills usually prevent pregnancy, but have
also been proven to abort pregnancy and destroy life.101 Yet, it is somehow
more spiritual and entirely acceptable in the majority of Christendom to
implement family planning on this “harmless” scale, while hypocritically
condemning the world as “horrific” in their methods of abortion. How old
must a life be to be sacred?
There is a widespread mindset that the perfect family consists of
merely four people: Dad, Mom, Son, and Daughter. This “perfect family”
model, however, cannot be found anywhere in the pages of Scripture!
A USA Today article on the statistics of a 2007 US Census Bureau
survey found that 59.5% of American households had pets, translating to
2.2 cats or 1.7 dogs each.102 Compare that statistic with the 0.9 children per
2.6 individuals living in the average American household,103 and the
average American family has twice as many pets as children!
In a country that houses more—and potentially invests more time and
resources in—pets than children, is it any wonder that the United States is
rapidly declining into moral debauchery, economic peril, and political
scandal? America, as a whole, invests little in and thinks little of children.
And a society that rejects God’s blessings will quickly reject God Himself
—just as the American culture has and is doing. The greater danger,
however, is that this rejection mentality, this limiting of God’s blessings,
has crept into America’s churches and permeates all aspects of society.
This mindset could be dubbed strike one in the myriad of problems
leading to dramatic failures and fallout of young people from families and
churches on a widespread scale across the nation. In fact, statistician
George Barna discovered “A majority of twenty-somethings—61% of
today’s young adults—had been churched at one point during their teen
years but they are now spiritually disengaged (i.e., not actively attending
church, reading the Bible, or praying).”104 The world has captured the
hearts of the church’s youth, and young men and women are leaving
churches in droves, most never to return. Why?
The Pilgrims knew the power of their youth. They knew their future
rested in the hands of their young people. They accepted responsibility for
and took very seriously their calling as parents. They knew it was no light
matter to be entrusted with God’s blessings. Thus, they labored long and
hard for their families. Then when their freedom was threatened, they
moved their families to Holland. In Holland, however, they encountered a
far greater danger. The children of the world were overwhelming the
Christian children of the godly Pilgrims, squelching the truth of Christ and
His ways in their lives. Pilgrim children began to be lost to the world. The
Pilgrims found freedom, without a solid foundation in truth, was useless—
nay, dangerous for the human soul. Thus, their families made the ultimate
sacrifice, leaving behind all they held familiar, transplanting their entire
lives, many dying in the process, and risking all they had to move to a new
world in hopes of preserving and protecting the souls of their children.
Parents were willing to risk everything they were, everything they had, to
give their children a chance to succeed. They did so not just to provide
physical, temporal success in a land of freedom but spiritual, eternal success
in a land where that freedom might be grounded in truth.
America is heralded the world over as the land of opportunity. Yet,
countless American youth meet with life-changing decisions, only to
choose paths destructive to themselves and heartbreaking to their families.
In a land revered for its greatness, America’s Christian youth regularly fail.
Could this be because they are not set up to succeed?
While the Pilgrim society sacrificed all they had and were for the
physical and spiritual well-being of their children, American culture of the
twenty-first century generally has a mere toleration for children. (Bless
God, there are many exceptions to this and other trends mentioned in this
chapter. This section seeks merely to address American culture as a whole.)
Children are an addition to life but not the focus of it. Family decisions and
relocations are based on work, rather than what is best for the family. Day
care centers offer enrollment for very young children, even infants, as
society increasingly abandons the home in favor of the workplace, sports
activities, and friends.
Then, just as the child reaches the age where his brain functions as an
incredible sponge—absorbing anything and everything it encounters—the
child dedicated to God, born to a devoted Christian family, is thrust into a
world diabolically opposed to everything his family envisions for his future.
There he will experience a culture standing in opposition to the truth he will
learn in his Christian home and community, and all that pertains to
Christian life and godliness.
This world, this enemy, is the current public school system of the
United States. Those at the helm of the American educational system
encourage a course predicted by John Dunphy, a humanist author:

“A viable alternative to [Christianity] must be sought. That

alternative is humanism. I am convinced that the battle for
humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public
school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their
role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of
humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what
theologians call divinity in every human being. These
teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the
most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be
ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a
pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they
teach, regardless of the educational level...The classroom
must and will become an arena of conflict between the old
and the new… the rotting corpse of Christianity, together
with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of
humanism.”105
 Charles Potter, another humanist, stated, “Education is thus a most
powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of
humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a
week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the
five-day program of humanistic teaching?”106
The difference, aside from length, in the quotes of Dunphy and Potter
is that Dunphy gave his analysis of humanism in the American public
school system in 1983. Potter, however, presented his question in 1930.
Same analysis. Different generations. What happened?
By 1918, laws requiring at least elementary school attendance had
taken effect nationwide.107 Humanism, the religion of me, was then
propagated to American youth on a widespread scale from early childhood.
Strike two.
President Theodore Roosevelt said, “To educate a man in mind and not
in morals is to educate a menace to society.”108 Yet, that is precisely what
the nation continues to do with its youth! Bibles and prayer have been
removed from the schools. Gay Pride events are promoted. Sex education
classes are encouraged for children as young as five years old, while it is
suggested that condoms be distributed freely to boys as young as
thirteen.109 History is rewritten. Man is scientifically “proven” as an
accident, merely a glorified monkey, a freak of nature and its processes of
natural selection.
For twelve years, and oftentimes longer, the American child is
bombarded with lies about himself, His Creator, and the world around him.
Thoroughly equipped with a philosophy void of moral absolutes where
physical, spiritual, and sexual experimentation are encouraged, American
youth emerge in droves from public schools with lives devoid of purpose. Is
it any wonder that Christian youth subjected to this same indoctrination,
though they grew up in great homes with God-fearing parents, turn to
drugs, alcohol, casual sex, and even abortion on a large scale?
Worst of all, culture now accepts these outcomes as not only normal
but as a necessary component of the teenage years and beyond! The cliché,
“They’ve got to learn from their mistakes,” is a sad commentary on
Americans’ societal mindset toward her youth. Why do they have to learn
from their mistakes? Why do parents expect mistakes? Children want
something to aspire to; they look for a goal to achieve. Why is the bar set so
low? Youth don’t have to learn everything the hard way. It is time for
Christian parents to teach their children to do right instead of assuming
they’ll do wrong!
The United States has and is raising a generation unlike any other in
history. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of America’s “greatest
generation” are growing up in a world where failure is okay, even expected.
Grades are given on a curve, sports are played but no scores kept, no one is
cut from team tryouts, everyone gets a trophy, and years of rebellion are
accepted as culturally necessary. How is it that failure has become
acceptable? All high standards have been removed so no one feels they fall
short. Failure is okay, but still culture will make sure you don’t fail by
simply taking away the measuring stick. Never before has a generation been
presented with such a warped view of life.
To further complicate matters is the American myth that eighteen is a
magic number. Freedom from home, parents, and school is given in a
moment; freedom to go wherever and do whatever without any restriction
or inhibition. Is that what adulthood is all about? All through high school,
young adults anticipate “freedom” from all the rules. Then, eighteen comes,
high school ends, and suddenly they’re faced with a whole new world
where this “freedom” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The carefree high school kid who partied under Friday night lights is
overnight eligible to vote and able to be recruited by the armed forces. Yet,
that same individual deemed by society as old enough to die for his country
cannot legally grab a can of beer with his buddies before heading into
battle! Society tells him he is mature enough to take a life, mature enough
to save a life, but not mature enough to drink responsibly for another three
years. What kind of message does that send to the American teenager? If he
is old enough to vote on who will govern the greatest nation in the world
and old enough to die protecting that right, how can he possibly not be old
enough to drink? How can he be old enough to handle the one but not the
other? And if he’s not mature enough to be trusted to drink responsibly, is
he really old enough to die for his country? Is he really mature enough to
vote on who will govern America? Which age should society change,
eighteen or twenty-one?
American culture is such that there is no clear path to adulthood, no
time of transition; the teenage years are continually glorified as the best
time of life in a live-for-the-moment society. Rebellion is expected, and
failure seems to be the preferred rite of passage. This philosophy has
culminated in the proverbial strike three: low expectations.
The result of low expectations has been low self-esteem characterized
by immorality and complacency in American young adults. Life is not
valued, for it has no purpose. There is no plan, no motivation. Possibly
worst of all, there is little to no vision—no passion coupled with purpose—
in the life of the average high school graduate.
In a world with continuously diminishing vision, those who pursue a
college education seek a path that will bring them the greatest income with
the least amount of effort, generally with little to no thought of if that path
corresponds with their life calling. Additionally, increasing numbers of
college freshman enroll with an undeclared or undecided major. They go to
college without direction, seemingly only because it is the thing to do. Then
there are those who, upon graduating high school, wisely choose to take a
year or two to work and figure out what they want to do before entering
college. Another group entirely are the brave youth who leave high school
with a vision, implement it, and discover a college education unnecessary in
fulfilling their goals and dreams.
The outcome of society’s treatment of children, particularly when
coupled with a college education, is ravaging the Church in America. A
survey of one thousand twenty to twenty-nine year old evangelicals, 95% of
whom attended church regularly while in elementary school, found that
only 11% were attending church in their first years of college.110
As previously shown by George Barna’s research, American churches
are losing their youth in droves, as they precariously perch on the pinnacle
of a steep, slippery slope into irrelevancy. David Kinnaman, director of
Barna’s research, clearly pointed to the heart of why the American church is
losing her youth: not for lack of programs but for a lack of discipleship. The
Church is not making talmidim of its youth.

“Much of the ministry to teenagers in America needs an

overhaul—not because churches fail to attract significant
numbers of young people, but because so much of those
efforts are not creating a sustainable faith beyond high
school. There are certainly effective youth ministries across
the country, but the levels of disengagement among
twentysomethings suggest that youth ministry fails too often
 at discipleship and faith formation. A new standard for
viable youth ministry should be—not the number of
attendees, the sophistication of the events, or the ‘cool’
factor of the youth group—but whether teens have the
commitment, passion and resources to pursue Christ
intentionally and whole-heartedly after they leave the youth
ministry nest.”111

Hitler, on the other hand, knew the secret. He saw the potential of the
youth of Europe. He understood that young souls crave a life of purpose;
that’s what they were created for, after all! He knew the remedy for low
expectations—make them high. While today’s Church gives way to apathy,
young people are looking for radical; they want a cause not just to die for,
but also to live for.
Hitler thought about his youth; he invested in them. He gave them
purpose and ignited their hearts with passion. Though Nazi Germany was
an evil regime and eventually fell to the Allies, the Hitler Youth program
was the most successful—albeit misguided—youth education program the
world has ever seen.
Except one. And that is the biblical model. Matthew 28:19 is an oft
quoted verse at missions conferences. Not once, however, has this writer
ever heard it used in reference to children’s ministries. While the Great
Commission is a clear call to reach the nations, whom among the nations is
Jesus telling the apostles to reach, and how?
Jesus said to go into all the world and make disciples, to make
talmidim! Yes, the Church must reach the world, but if Jesus’ words are
understood from a Jewish perspective, what the Great Commission is
actually telling Christians is to make disciples of the world’s youth!
Earlier, in Chapter Two, Jesus and the Jews, the topic of first century
discipleship was addressed. The relentless drive in the hearts of Jewish
youth to become talmidim was fueled by the lifelong investments of
parents, family, and community in their lives. From birth, Jewish children
were taught that God had a purpose for their lives. They were required to
memorize Scripture and expected to live like a good Jew even as a child.
Childhood memories become adult realities, and Jewish youth were
prepared for adulthood from the moment of their birth. In other words, they
were counted a blessing, encouraged to succeed, and great things were
expected of them from their pre-school years! The results: pre-teens who
loved God and wanted nothing more—and nothing less—than an all-out
pursuit of Him as a talmid to a great rabbi.
The contrast between the biblical model and America’s Church is
staggering. While all Jewish life centered around God, today’s Christian
children sit in Sunday school to hear stories (translation: fairy tales) for an
hour. Then, they spend over five hours per weekday in secular, humanistic
schools learning the supposed facts of life. Is it any wonder the majority of
those Christian youth will leave the Church for college and secular,
humanistic liberalism and never return? This utter tragedy is at the core of
the decline of America’s greatness, and it is the epicenter of the ruin of her
churches.
America is a nation of freedom. It is upheld as a beacon of hope to the
world. Yet, for her young people, freedom has become a snare, as it has
separated them from the truth. The freedom to abort, to be gay and proud, to
exercise any religion aside from Christianity, to engage in safe sex, and to
live a life centered on self have drowned out the truth of God’s Word.
The youth of America are not her future. They are America. Now.
Today’s ideas will be tomorrow’s laws. What will a generation devoid of
purpose and passion, who grew up in an anything-goes world, implement as
rule for their children and grandchildren? This is the generation forbidden
to take a Bible to school, but a Bible is still the first thing handed to them if
they are committed to prison!
Like the crusaders of Constantine’s era, America’s youth grow up
under a banner of God, claiming Christ without truly knowing Him. If there
is hope for the future of this great nation, it is truly in change. Change in
American churches that will be reflected in the lives of her youth. The
Church must give its youth something to live and die for. If she does not,
American Christianity will continue to lose her influence.
How can this change be made? How can the Church reclaim its youth
and thereby, the nation?
Jesus presented the parable of the vine and the branches in John 15.
Verse five states, “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit.” Fruit is what is lacking in the Church and in young lives!
If there is no fruit, there must be a problem with the branch’s connection
with the vine or its root. In John 15, Jesus presents God the Father as the
gardener, Himself as the vine, and His people as the branches. What is not
referenced is the root. Who is the root?
 Chapter 9
The Jewish Factor

If God is the gardener and Jesus the vine, from whence came Christ? The
Messiah, King of Israel, was of the “root” of the line of David. David
represented the nation of Israel. The root of Christianity is Judaism.
John 15 is an oft discussed and debated passage amid Christian circles,
particularly verse two’s wording of, “Every branch in me that beareth not
fruit he taketh away.” Rather than a precise translation of the original text,
the common English rendering is an inaccurate interpretation of the Greek
word airo as “taketh away.” In Matthew 14:20, after the feeding of the five
thousand, the Disciples “took up of the fragments that remained twelve
baskets full.” The phrase “took up” is the same word, airo, that is used as
John 15:2’s “take away,” but is a far more accurate translation. Airo means
“take up” or “lift up.”112 Why would Jesus use this “lifting up” metaphor of
a branch that is not abiding and, thus, not bearing fruit?
Its most obvious reason is to help the Church realize the need for
restoration of those that wander from the truth. One must consider why a
branch would need to be “lifted up.” A branch that begins to journey out
from the grape vine, if it touches the ground, will begin to set down its own
roots and eventually create a second vine.
The spiritual parallels of that statement are significant and staggering.
Those who are not bearing fruit are those who have come in contact with a
world outside the vine and are fighting to set down their own roots,
abandoning both the branches and vine of Christ and His Church.
 But take the analogy a step further. If Judaism is the root of Christ and
Christianity, what is implied when Jesus instructs that His Father, the
Gardener, will “lift up” those who set out to establish a different root?
Further still, is a branch—whether in the form of an individual or an entire
church body—capable of bearing Christ’s fruit if it is not aware of and
connected to its Jewish root? Christ, the vine, springs from that root, so if a
Christian is abiding in Him, he must also be benefiting from the “root” of
his faith.
However, the modern Church has largely neglected its Jewish roots. A
congregation will fight to keep a plaque of the Ten Commandments in the
local courthouse, but in the church halls, grace will be taught and the Old
Testament tossed aside as legalistic or irrelevant.
The fact of the matter is, Christianity is based on Judaism and the
Scriptures revealed to and written by Jews. The heart and soul of
Christianity is comprised both of the Law and the prophets given to ancient
Israel and of the God that gave them to His people. Further, this great nation
was founded on those same Judeo-Christian principles.
In order to produce fruit, churches must give thought to their Jewish
roots. In order to restore our nation, America must again recognize the
relevance of the Jewish state and continue to support her strongest ally in
the Middle East. If the Church abandons her Jewish roots, the voice
representing the chosen people of God will be silenced in this land.
Yet, few churches teach regularly from the Old Testament, let alone the
Torah. Fewer still explain and expound to their congregations the roots of
their faith. It was not always so, however.
“The earliest Christians did not consider themselves followers of a
new religion. All their lives they had been Jews, and they still were...Their
faith was not a denial of Judaism, but was rather the conviction that the
Messianic age had finally arrived.”113 The first Christians, like Jesus, were
Jews. The first missionaries, like Jesus, were Jews. The first elders and
teachers in the Church, like Jesus, were Jews. Christianity was an entirely
Jewish religion. Christians kept the Sabbath, celebrated Jewish feasts, and
observed the Law. The first Jewish Christians also began meeting together
on Sundays, the first day of the week, to celebrate and commemorate the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
These Jewish believers wasted no time in sharing the Good News of
the Messiah for all mankind with the whole world, and Gentile believers
and churches multiplied and flourished throughout the Roman Empire in a
matter of decades. The beginning chapters of Acts are rife with accounts of
Gentile conversions. With these conversions, however, came confusion.
Up until that point, Christianity had been strictly Jewish. Did these
Gentiles need to become Jewish to have a part in Christ and be reckoned
amongst the Christians? The Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 determined
proselytization was not necessary for salvation, declaring instead of Gentile
believers, “That they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication,
and from things strangled, and from blood.”114 Four things, only four
things, were required from the Torah to be kept by Gentile believers. The
decision was hailed by all as both wise and decisive, and the Church of both
Jew and Gentile coexisted harmoniously for many years, centered on
Judaism and its capital city of Jerusalem.
Just prior to the First Jewish Revolt of AD 66–73, the majority of
Jewish Christians left Jerusalem and established a community in the Jordan
Valley about sixty miles northeast of the city in Perea. This move created a
schism between Jewish believers and nonbelievers, the latter of whom were
on the brink of battle with Rome.
However, it was the Second Jewish Revolt of AD 132–135 that drove
the stake in the great divide of Jewish-Christian relations. This revolt was
led by Simon Bar Kokhba, who proclaimed himself Messiah. Rabbi Akiba,
the greatest teacher of his day, supported this claim.115 Jewish Christians
saw Bar Kokhba as a heretic and antichrist that misled their brethren and
turned their hearts away from the true Messiah, Jesus, which in fact,
Kokhba did. On the other hand, the Jews who followed Kokhba viewed
their Christian brothers as both treacherous and traitorous for their lack of
support for their nation, which in fact, the believers were.
Kokhba and his armies failed, and Jerusalem was leveled by the
Romans. The Jewish Christians blamed the destruction of the capital on the
followers of the false Messiah, while the followers of Kokhba blamed it on
the Christian Jews who did not join the freedom fight. The division between
synagogue and Church had taken hold.
In that fight for freedom, a battle far more significant than for
Jerusalem’s walls had been lost. The unity of Christianity and Judaism had
suffered a blow that would mask the foundations of Christendom, frustrate
the Jewish pursuit of the true Messiah, and impact world history for
generations.
 The seeds planted in the Second Jewish Revolt would soon flourish
into full-blown hatred on both sides, but “in the early Rabbinic sources,
until the end of the second century, nothing is said against the person of
Jesus or against the faith he had elicited.”116 Jews and Christians had
existed harmoniously, many individuals living as both Jew and Christian at
the same time. Following the revolt, however, the divide was great and
manifested itself in malicious words and actions from both sides.
As centuries turned into millennia, Paul’s teachings in Romans of
being “grafted into” the tree that is Israel were abandoned on a broad scale.
They were replaced with a Galatians emphasis and with what Gentile
Christians held as doctrinal grounds for the abject rejection of not only the
Law of God but all things Jewish in their churches and communities. The
devastating effects of this global, “Christian” mindset have been previously
demonstrated.
Indeed, even the decision of the Acts 15 council has been largely
tossed aside by the Church of the twenty-first century. Fornication,
particularly referring to adultery in that passage,117 is commonplace via
divorce and remarriage within the Church (as Jesus defined it in Matthew
5:32). Further, most Christians think nothing of ordering a medium rare to
rare steak or burger, or of the blood that is not cooked out of that meat,
clearly in violation of the “Christian Torah” of Acts 15. Then come the
implications of the “things strangled” mandate, and the nearly kosher diet
that requirement demands, but which the Church puts aside as unnecessary.
Gentile believers were given four simple laws, but they are rarely
taught or followed by today’s Christians. True, Christians are not under the
Law, but what of these items given the Gentile Church to follow in Acts 15?
Furthermore, the Church believes it can reach the Jewish people while
living in direct opposition to the law of their God! Indeed, “The Jewish
rejection of Christ was triggered by the Christian rejection of the Law...the
rejection of the Law was enough; to ask the Jewish people that they accept
this rejection...was like asking them to tear out their heart. History records
no such example of such collective suicide.”118
To add insult to injury, the Church boasts of evangelical and
missionary “crusades” where individuals are “won” to Christ. Though
largely unintentional, this lack of education is heartless and hopeless; how
can the Church continue to “crusade” for God knowing the deep seated,
pain-filled history and the cruel images this phrase brings to the minds of
not only Jews but Muslims as well?
To complete the animosity, Christians commonly refer to themselves
as “disciples” of Jesus Christ. Very few, however, comprehend the rich
Jewish imagery this term implies. The Church fails to realize the all-out
abandon the title “disciple” required and knows little to nothing of how
Jewish young people would invest their entire beings into becoming exactly
like their rabbi. Yet, Jews take Christians at their word. They look at
Christianity with its infighting, youth failure and fallout, rising divorce rate,
and overall worldliness, and determine that if these “disciples” are a
reflection of their Rabbi, then they want nothing to do with one who
thereby appears to them as the lawless, godless Jesus of Nazareth.
It is the strong belief of this writer that American Christianity must
rekindle its understanding of and support for its heritage: the Jewish people
and the God they brought to them. Not only is it nearly impossible to reach
the Jew with the Christian Gospel in its current state but the abandonment
of the Church’s foundation is leaving her sick and dying. “Easy believism”
and cheap grace have made the average American “Christian”
undistinguishable from the world around them. If the Church would again
make a difference in the world, the Church must again be different from the
world. It is time for the Church to be in the world but not of it. It is a time
for true discipleship and reckless abandonment to God—a concept
completely Jewish and best understood from a Jewish perspective.
The history and heritage of the Church have been unappreciated and
misunderstood far too long. Providentially, with the formation of Israel as a
nation in 1948, the Jews again rose to the forefront of international policy,
politics, and thought, particularly in American churches and Christianity as
a whole.
Organizations such as Jews for Jesus became more sought after as a
portion of the Church began to realize a part of itself was missing. Through
the combined ministries of Focus on the Family and a teacher named Ray
Vander Laan, the Bible soon came to life in the United States through the
work of That the World May Know Ministries. That the World May Know
created instructional videos filmed in biblical lands to transport the viewer
to the actual locations of biblical accounts. Ray’s work opened the eyes of
many Christians and set them on a journey to think and read Scripture from
a Jewish perspective—the perspective from which it was written and is best
understood. Similar organizations, such as Under the Fig Tree and the
Center for Judaic-Christian Studies, have developed with like purpose and
are effectively helping today’s Church gain an understanding of her heritage
and appreciation of the root from which she sprung.
Other organizations have recognized the lack of Christian
understanding of her spiritual heritage, blatant disobedience to Acts 15, and
misrepresentation of Jesus as non-Jewish, and they set about to rectify the
situation with a return to Judaism. These believe that Christianity was never
meant to exist outside of Judaism and call for the total return of believers to
their Jewish roots in order to fully experience life as God intended. They
believe that it is a sign of the last days that Gentile believers “are feeling a
deep longing to return to the biblically observant lifestyle [Torah keeping
Judaism] founded in the Torah.”119
From either perspective, whether it be simply opening the eyes or
calling for a complete return to Judaism (albeit Messianic), both sides
represent a different side of the same coin. That coin is the dire need for a
greater understanding of all of God’s Word by all of God’s people!
(It should be noted, however, that this writer agrees with the
observation that the Jewish feasts and observant lifestyle are, for the Gentile
believer, spiritual opportunities rather than obligations. It is further believed
by this writer that God never sought an entirely Jewish world but rather
those whom He desired to be among His chosen people, the Jews, were and
will be born into Jewish families.120)
The outreach of the Church has become ineffective in America
because it has lost sight of its heritage and focuses on preaching a Peter
message to a Paul world. Acts 2 recounts how the testimony of Peter and
the Apostles had a dramatic effect in Jerusalem, resulting in the salvation of
three thousand individuals. Paul, however, generally gained converts by the
mere handfuls in his lifelong ministry efforts. The great difference between
the two was that Peter’s ministry was primarily to the Jews. Paul’s was
primarily to the Gentiles. Peter’s message was simple and straightforward
because it was addressed to an audience who already understood who God
was, what sin was, and who realized the need for a Messiah. Paul’s message
was changing and controversial because it was addressed to people with
many gods, with no concept of sin, and who saw no need for a Messiah.
The American Church is attempting to reach a culture with many gods,
fleeting concepts of right and wrong, and no need for a Messiah with a
simple message: Jesus loves you and will save you from the penalty for
your sin. The problem is America is not a Peter crowd; a simple message
will not work!
In the early years of the twentieth century, a biblical foundation was
normal in American family life. People were familiar with biblical accounts
and had an understanding of right and wrong based on the Bible. Today, on
the other hand, the Bible is little read, less understood, and morality is
entirely subjective. In order to reach America for Christ and make a
difference in the nation, her spiritual foundations must be relaid. Rather
than beginning Gospel presentations with how Jesus loves the sinner, it first
must be established who God is, what sin is, and what effect sin has on the
human soul in separating it from God.
Yes, Jesus loves the sinner. Yes, Jesus will save you. But what good is
it to tell someone Jesus loves them if they don’t know who Jesus is? What
good is it to tell someone Jesus will save them if they don’t know they have
a sin problem?
Judaism holds the key to understanding who God is and who His
people are to be. That is why Christian support of Jews and Israel is crucial.
The Church must stand beside Israel, urge her national leaders to do the
same, and set out to understand her Jewish roots. A nation built on Judeo-
Christian principles cannot remain Christian without also maintaining and
supporting its Jewish heritage!
It is the responsibility of the Church and the nation to support Israel.
Not simply because they are the greatest American ally in the tumultuous
Middle East, though they are. Not simply because Israel is the apple of
God’s eye, though it is. The Church must support Israel and its religious
system because they are the foundation of the Church and thereby, this
country. A house cannot stand if its foundations are destroyed.
Freedom is in constant danger; the truth of history and an
understanding and appreciation of Israel and the Church are vital to its
preservation. After all, freedom was in fact invented by the God of Israel.
 Chapter 10
The Conservative Fear

The story of America, though short in comparison to most countries of the

world, is still one of struggle for survival. At every turn, America and
Americans have fought for freedom.
The Revolutionary War gave way to the War of 1812, which was
followed by the Civil War. Then, with the latter half of the nineteenth
century came the great western migrations via the Oregon Trail and newly
built railroads. It was the age of the wagon train, stagecoach, steamboat,
and iron horse. By 1896, Americans had made it to Alaska in search of
gold. The quest for freedom has been hindered only by imagination in
America’s vast explorations.
The story of moral decline in the United States is the story of the
century that followed those explorations: the twentieth century. At the
outset, the 1900s looked promising for the nation. Patents were filed by the
hundreds of thousands, reaching over one million in 1911,121 and signaled
the dawn of a modern America full of energy and innovation. Construction
and invention dominated the headlines and the horizon as the Empire State
Building rose in New York City and the Wright brothers took to the skies
over the sandy Kill Devil Hills of North Carolina.
The rest of the world, however, was creating far different headlines
and plunged into international discord. By 1917, the United States could no
longer ignore the difficulties in Europe, and under President Woodrow
Wilson, America declared war on Germany and officially entered the Great
War. The presence of American troops strengthened the Allied forces and
led to the end of the conflict.
The government’s decision to enter the war also brought with it the
Selective Service Act of 1917, which officially recognized conscientious
objections on a national level for the first time in American law.122 The act
presented Christians in the US with a choice: was fighting for one’s country
biblical or not? A man by the name of Alvin York vividly portrayed the
struggle facing Christian patriots in his autobiography, Sergeant York.
Believing in peace, men like York recognized the need to defend freedom
abroad in order to support the furtherance of truth at home and proudly
served their country.
At the conclusion of the First World War, America’s farmland—her
food supply—was greatly diminished. Nevertheless, the American spirit
was strong, and the men who fought abroad would continue the fight at
home to meet the economic needs of their families. Because of their
diligence, the roaring ’20s were exactly that. America rebounded sharply
from the war effort, filling factories and assembly lines and bringing the
United States back to its prewar greatness.
By 1929, however, the Federal Reserve System could no longer keep
up with the boom,123 and seemingly overnight, the stock market crashed.
The Great Depression had arrived.
Until the mid-1930s, poverty ravaged the country, as families survived
off their ration books, living more like victims of the Great War than its
heroes. Then in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was elected and the nation began
to turn around yet again. Prior to those dark days, the American people had
never experienced such extreme nationwide poverty. But when the going
gets tough, the tough get going. And so they did.
The children of the Great Depression grew to become the men of the
United States armed forces during World War II. The greatest fighting force
in the history of the world was birthed on the shoulders of the most difficult
times the nation had ever seen. Those brave men were no stranger to
rationing, no stranger to hardship, and no stranger to fighting for survival.
Without them, Hitler’s reign of terror had the potential to continue
indefinitely in Europe. The children of the Great Depression became the
men of the greatest generation.
When this great generation returned home from war, they married,
established homes and began families. Soon, children were everywhere—
the baby boomers had arrived! The ’50s were the years of Superman, “truth,
justice, and the American way,” while John Wayne, Walt Disney, Joe
DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, and Billy Graham were the men of the
headlines. Happy and carefree, America was in its golden age.
All that glittered, however, was not golden. It was also the ’50s that
brought Dr. Spock to prominence with his spanking-free child-rearing
philosophy. In answer to the baby-booming phenomenon, the birth control
pill was born—incapable of preventing actions but capable of removing
would-be “consequences” of those actions. The Ozzie and Harriet, I Love
Lucy, and The Andy Griffith Show generation gave way to Hugh Heffner
and an anything goes, Playboy mentality.
No wonder then that the happy days of the ’50s turned into the rock ’n’
roll, drug-crazed rebellion hype of the ’60s. What had been allowed in
moderation by the parents of the ’50s was abused in excess by the youth of
the ’60s. Love was free, life was cheap, and drugs were easy.
1960 began a decade of unprecedented turmoil and rampant
immorality in the United States. Dr. Spock’s kids proved the outcome of his
parenting theories with their protests of Vietnam, feminist demonstrations,
and Woodstock. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll were the fuel that fed the
future of America.
A generic study of the ’60s generally covers these events, alongside
JFK’s assassination, the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement, and
the first man on the moon. Amid the chaos, it is little wonder that history
books often pass over a monumental Supreme Court ruling with national
implications even forty years later.
“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we
beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our Country.”124
The year was 1962, and this prayer was offered in the public schools of
New York State prior to a day’s classes. In Engel vs. Vitale, the Supreme
Court ruled that this prayer was unconstitutional, but put no ban on
voluntary prayer by students. North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin’s response
to the court’s decision was, “I should like to ask whether we would be far
wrong in saying that in this decision the Supreme Court has held that God is
unconstitutional and for that reason the public school must be segregated
against Him?”125
It was the following year, 1963, under the guidance of Madalyn
Murray O’Hair (an atheist), that the school prayer debate reached its tipping
point. Fueled by militant leftist views, O’Hair filed suit against the
Baltimore school board. Judge J. Gilbert Pendergast received the petition
and rejected it with the statement, “It is abundantly clear that petitioners’
real objective is to drive every concept of religion out of the public school
system.”126 Taking her case to the Maryland Court of Appeals, O’Hair was
again rejected. “Neither the First nor the Fourteenth Amendment was
intended to stifle all rapport between religion and government,”127 they
ruled. Moving to the Supreme Court, Leonard Kerpelman argued that
school prayer was unconstitutional, based on the Constitution’s designation
of a “wall of separation” between church and state.128 Justice Potter
Steward requested the location of that wording in the Constitution, to which
Kerpelman had no answer. The ruling, however, was eight to one, and
prayer and Bible reading were abolished in America’s public schools.
History reveals that throughout this process, “Not a single Christian
organization filed a brief in support of school prayer.”129 The Church in
America was inexcusably missing in action as the nation decided this
pivotal case in her history. If all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men
to do nothing, American Christians had unequivocally proven it. Where was
the Church? Where were the men of the greatest generation? Why did not a
single Christian organization stand up to fight for freedom? Were they
afraid? Did they truly believe prayer had no place in schools?
Noah Webster said, “All the...evil which men can suffer from vice,
crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their
despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”130 Why was it
routine for prisoners to be given a Bible but school children were forbidden
to have one?
The die was cast. The Bible, and thereby God, were removed from the
public education system. With the removal of God, a huge religious void
existed in America’s public school system that was quickly filled with
humanistic teaching.
Following the O’Hair ruling, there was also a dramatic rise in the
number of private schools across the country. What had been mere handfuls
of private learning institutions in the nation grew to hundreds, then
thousands as Christian parents sought faith based education for their
children. This resulted in fewer public school students and an obviously
decreased Christian “light” in the hallways of American education.
 Benjamin Rush’s words of warnings would quickly be realized. “The
Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of
life...[T]he Bible...should be read in our schools in preference to all other
books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge
which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.”131
The Bible rejecting society continued her downward slope with the
arrival of the ’70s, as Roe v. Wade rocked the nation and abortion was
legalized. Then, in 1981, novelist Felice Picano wrote in his diary,
“Yesterday a friend, Nick Rock, died. He’d been ill for the past few months
with what was finally diagnosed as cat-scratch fever…for years, his
immunological system couldn’t cope with it. Before the illness was
diagnosed he wasted away, formed lesions on the brain, etc., fell into a
coma…”132 What Picano had actually recorded was one of the first known
AIDS deaths in America. The virus spread rapidly across the nation, a
distinct reflection of her immoral, godless lifestyle. In just two hundred
years, America had gone from a beacon of hope and religious freedom,
where truth was proclaimed, revival was rampant, and prayer was evoked in
schools, to a land ravaged by drug and disease, if it feels good do it, without
moral absolutes, and which forbid its children from bringing a Bible to
school.
Where was God? Or, more precisely, where were His people? Why did
the Church shrink back in fear when it should have been marching boldly
forward? Somewhere amid the turmoil, Christianity in America had become
the silent minority, her members content to sit on the sidelines of public
affairs and policy. World missions flourished, but the soul of the nation was
left without a conscience as the American Church content herself to sit on
the bench and watch. After all, her calling was to win the world for Christ,
not fight meaningless government battles at home.
The problem with this philosophy was and is twofold. First, there are
no government battles that are meaningless. Every action prompts a
reaction, as simple physics reveals. Each decision is built upon another,
previous decision. A small unchecked compromise today can lead to a
lifestyle tomorrow. Second, American government, as a republic, was never
meant to function outside the realms of Christian religion; that is, the
founders did not establish this nation with any thought that anything other
than Christianity would be her supporting heartbeat.
 The commander-in-chief of the Continental army, George Washington,
addressed his troops and commended their courage on May 2, 1778, saying,
“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and
soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of
religion. To the distinguished character of a Patriot, it should be our highest
glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian.”133
Washington called on his soldiers not merely to fight for their country but to
fight for the heart and soul of the nation. They were not to be afraid.
Even in the early 1800s, America was still known for her deep-seated
inseparability from Christianity. Harriet Martineau was a British journalist
who traveled across the United States from 1834 to 1836. In 1837,
Martineau published a work titled Society in America, chronicling her
travels and saying:

“The institutions of America are, as I have said, planted

down deep into Christianity. Its spirit must make an effectual
pilgrimage through a society of which it may be called
native; and no mistrust of its influences can forever intercept
that spirit in its mission of denouncing anomalies, exposing
hypocrisy, rebuking faithlessness, raising and communing
with the outcast, and driving out sordidness [vileness] from
the circuit of this, the most glorious temple of society that
has ever yet been reared.”134

What made America great was what her founders built her upon:
Christianity.
The twentieth century is a picture of why Christians must be involved
in politics. It is a vibrant spectacle of what happens when the Church
chooses to separate itself from the state. Who is responsible for the state of
the nation? The Church in America. Afraid to be the bad guy, the Church
that stood by, content to merely let things happen rather than be involved
and make them happen.
The result? Liberals are viewed as the champions of the poor. Why?
Because the Church handed over its responsibility to care for them. Now,
the government is saddled with society’s poor and aged, and problems with
Medicare and Social Security abound. If the Church had done her duty,
these programs would be unnecessary. Is liberalism actually the answer for
the poor? Only if one believes, among other things, that alternate lifestyles
are normal, reckless spending is essential to happiness, abortion is okay,
and government handouts are necessary! Liberals do not have the answers
to America’s problems. Yet, they continue to be portrayed as the saviors of
the poor and protectors of the helpless!
Compare the meaning of liberal with that of conservative. A
conservative is one who is “disposed to preserve existing conditions,
institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.”135
Liberals on the other hand, are portrayed as the hip and the cool of society.
Conservatives are portrayed as the has-beens, the traditionalists that are out
of touch, particularly with the poor. To combat this misrepresentation,
President George W. Bush popularized the phrase Compassionate
Conservative. While that terminology is helpful, it is also insufficient.
What America needs is a movement of compassionate Christians. Not
Christians who roll over and play dead and foster a mentality of anything
goes, no behavior is unacceptable because God loves everyone, and
everything’s okay. That would be liberalism.
It is true, God does love everyone. Jesus died to save anyone who will
believe in Him. But nowhere in Scripture did Jesus come into contact with
sin and not change the situation for God’s glory. Sin cannot be tolerated.
The sinner is to be loved. But loving the sinner does not mean accepting the
sin itself. Compassionate Christianity requires a balanced worldview. It
requires compassion, as Jesus had for both sinner and saint, the kind that
makes a decisive difference in the lives of individuals. It is not a reckless
support of any government program that may or may not benefit the poor. It
is not an abandonment of personal conviction so as never to offend anyone.
Rather, compassion is about personal responsibility and personally doing
what one can for whom they can. And doing it all in the name of Christ.
This level of personal responsibility is key to conquering the
polarizing fear that immobilized conservatives for a century. Christians
must live right in their homes and neighborhoods while standing up for
what is right in their states and their country.
Christians hold the key for the future of the country—because the
future of the country is in the hands of her youth, and the Church has the
fire that can fuel them to successful lives and futures. The Church is key
because her teachings are the foundation of America’s laws. The Church is
key because she holds the beacon of the truth that sets free.
 Is America better off today than she was forty years ago when Dr.
Spock’s youth were gallivanting across the nation, experimenting with all
types of evil? In the opinion of this writer, the answer is yes. America is
better off today because Christians have had their eyes opened. The abuse
of freedoms and blatant rejection of God by culture have led Christians and
churches to speak out and stand up against society’s evils as never before in
her history. Organizations across the country, such as the American Center
for Law and Justice, the Home School Legal Defense Association, and
many more fight according to the law, against abuses of the law, both on the
behalf of Christians and for the heart of the nation.
Christians have begun to say “enough” and must continue to hold their
ground. It is time for disciples to again be patriots, time for the Church to
rise up and fight for the soul of the nation! If the Church would say it loves
the country, she can do no less.
Or, as William Bennett wrote in the introduction to his Patriot’s
Almanac:

“To love something is to try to make it as good as it can

possibly be. The United States will always need patriots
willing to work to improve it. In this land of plenty, we’re
often distracted by easy entertainments and shopping aisles
full of the latest fashions and gadgets. This country needs
citizens who remember that America is about much more
than the good life, patriots who are willing to strive for our
best ideals…Patriotism brings obligations. It involves
actions, not just feelings. Claiming patriotism while shirking
the duties that come with it is no better than telling your
parents how much you love them and then looking the other
way when they need your help…It’s usually not that hard to
be a patriot. But it does require some effort.”136

Conquering the conservative fear can only be accomplished with

involvement. Can a Christian be a patriot? Yes. Rather, a Christian must be
a patriot.
 Chapter 11
The Political Faith

“A Citizen of the United States has more reason to love his country than
the citizen of any other land; for it is ‘a government of the people, by the
people, for the people.’...He helps run the government. Its officers are his
officers, its institutions are his institutions, its fame is his fame, and he is
thoroughly identified with it if he be a true citizen.”137
It is not the president who is responsible for the state of the Union. It is
not the Senate. It is not the House of Representatives. It is not even the
judicial system. It is, instead, the person in the mirror.
The United States is run by citizens, who are elected by citizens. Every
American is just as responsible as the next for the state of the Union
because his vote counts equally as much as the other.
Every Christian in America should vote. Voting is the least one can do
for their country. But if Christians are content to simply do the least they
can, how can the Church expect to impact the nation? Christians have a
choice. They can go one mile. Or they can go two. But until Christians
begin going the extra mile and do more than merely the least they can, they
will not effect lasting change in society.
It is the responsibility of the individual to encourage friends and family
to vote—to make a difference. Without active involvement—at the very
least in the duty of voting—one cannot claim the title of patriot.
What does patriotism look like to a Christian? Is it marching in a Walk
for Life rally? Maybe. Is it working a poll on Election Day? Maybe. Is it
preparing care packages for our brave men and women in uniform? Maybe.
Is it running for the school board? Maybe. Patriotism has many sides, many
faces. At its core, patriotism is to love one’s country and to uphold one’s
fellow countrymen as a result of that love.
What patriotism is not, however, is blind obedience. Never was it
intended that Americans adhere unquestionably to every declaration of
government. Governments, left to themselves, can themselves become a
source of evil. Thus, the Founding Fathers established systems of checks
and balances meant to curb the dangers of a large and central government in
the United States.
For love of his country, the patriot would lay down his life. The only
point where patriotism ends is where conscience begins. This is particularly
true for the Church and the Christian. As in every other aspect of life, if the
government requires that which would defile the conscience or violate the
law of God, the nation must be refused.
This is the essence of Christian patriotism: knowing when to stand and
fight for one’s country against foes from without, while knowing when to
stand and defend one’s country from foes from within. Andrew Fletcher,
hero of the English Revolution, understood the essence of patriotism—and
its limits. He said, “I would lose my life to secure my country, but I would
not do a base thing to save it.”138
A Christian patriot is exactly that. First and foremost, a Christian. That
is who he is, the essence of his being. (Or if not, it certainly should be.)
Patriotism describes what he does, based on and in extension to who he is.
Because of this, the Christian patriot has abundant opportunities to involve
himself in that which is both Christian and patriotic. He might coach the
Little League team, assist in the soup kitchen, or run for mayor. Each of
these pursuits is both Christian and patriotic, if done by a Christian patriot.
He mentors the young, feeds the poor, and leads his fellow man. That is
why it is vitally important the Christian choose wisely with what and whom
he affiliates himself.
There is a growing movement in America and revisionist history to
portray the founders of America as neither Christian nor patriotic. They are
misquoted and declared to have been atheists and agnostics, misrepresented
as Indian killers and thieves. The facts of history paint a picture far different
however, showing that this country was founded by godly men who loved
their country. An examination of some Founding Fathers’ words clearly
shows this:
 John Adams—“The general principles on which the fathers
achieved independence were the general principles of
Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now
believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as
eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of
God.”
John Quincy Adams—“In the chain of human events, the
birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday
of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the
cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of
Christianity.”
Patrick Henry—“Righteousness alone can exalt America as a
nation. Whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere
practice virtue thyself, and encourage it in others.”
Benjamin Rush—“I do not believe that the Constitution was
the offspring of inspiration, but I am as satisfied that it is as
much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles
recorded in the Old and New Testament.”
Daniel Webster—“Whatever makes men good Christians,
makes them good citizens.”
Noah Webster—“The Christian religion is the most
important and one of the first things in which all children
under a free government ought to be instructed. No truth is
more evident than that the Christian religion must be the
basis of any government intended to secure the right and
privileges of a free people.”139

The Founding Fathers were patriots because they were Christians.

Their love for freedom sprung from their passion for the truth.
Freedom is a God thing. Man is bent on oppression; freedom comes
from God. The love of freedom is a love for what God loves. It drove the
Founding Fathers to form a land under God, with liberty and justice for all.
To them, there was no issue of separation. The state was not to interfere
with or control the Church, nor was a Church to control the state. Not a
single founder, however, would have considered abandoning religion at the
door when entering a public arena. Yet, in today’s America, more often than
not, that is exactly what happens.
 A huge problem in American Christianity is the tendency to
compartmentalize life. Church goes in one compartment. School goes in
another. Family in another. Business gets its own slot, too. Like a
chameleon, the “Christian” changes and simply pulls out whatever
compartment is needed to adapt to the surroundings of the moment.
Tolerance is paramount, so if tolerance in the workplace requires leaving
faith on the shelf, that’s okay, because it can just be stuck back in its
cubbyhole and taken out again later. If Church doesn’t want an election
discussed inside its sanctuary, that’s okay, too, because politics is just
another compartment of life that can wait for later. These things should not
be!
The Christian, though like Paul in becoming all things to all men to
gain some, is not a chameleon! Paul adapted when he saw opportunities to
minister and present the Gospel. Today’s Christian does the opposite by
adapting to blend in and avoid confrontation over the Gospel.
Jesus said He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Should not His
disciples then be the same in the workplace as they are at church? Should
not a Christian be the same person whether with children or with
coworkers? One truly saved cannot pursue God if He is continually put into
a box and thoughtlessly set aside when not needed. If Jesus Christ is not
Lord of all, then is He really Lord at all? If God is to have complete control
of a life, He must have total governance of it.
A man is given one life to live. That life is not meant to be separated
and compartmentalized but lived to its fullest for the glory of God.
If life is not to be compartmentalized, religion and politics cannot be
separated. Both connect to and affect the other. One simply cannot be
following Christ and separate his political thoughts from his spiritual life.
Only if God gets one slot and government gets another compartment in the
soul can they be separated. And if God is to be in control of all, how can
separation of Church and state by its modern definition be possible for the
Christian? One life. One person. Doing all for the glory of God requires His
overseeing in one’s politics as well as one’s faith!
The two most controversial topics in the Western world are religion
and politics. Talk about the weather, talk about the football games, talk
about the fishing trip; anything, everything is discussed in polite company.
But no politics, no religion. Both are avoided with a passion. Why? They
are controversial. They lead to conversations that may become
uncomfortable and where disagreement is inevitable.
At their core, both religion and politics reveal and expose a person’s
soul. The deepest convictions and strongest beliefs are manifest not at
football games (though there are moments when this could be debated!) but
in faith and patriotism; both spring from a deep-rooted love. Right or
wrong, men will defend their beliefs with their lives.
What would happen if politics became the focal point of casual
conversation? Disagreement. Disagreement over right and wrong, what
should be done and what shouldn’t be done. If there is a Christian in the
conversation, the opportunity to “become all things to gain a few” is ripe!
There should be no one who loves a political conversation or controversy
more than the disciple of Christ, because he knows the One with the
solution to every problem. Encounter a liberal who wants to help the poor?
God provided for them in the governmental system He established in the
Torah. Jesus also provided long-term solutions for the poor; He didn’t just
give them a fish, He taught them to fish. What about the conservative who
thinks taxes are high and should be drastically decreased if not eliminated?
God’s people paid taxes to Joseph in Egypt and to their kings in the Old
Testament. Further, Jesus said to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
When confronted with abortion, conservatives say life is valuable.
Liberals say the woman has the choice. Who has the answer? God. Life is a
precious, priceless gift. The woman did have the choice. She had the choice
not to sleep with that man. If she was forced, she still did not create the life
in her. Only God can create life. Only He has the right to take away the life
He gives. (Additionally, however, if she were raped, God’s Torah provided
instructions for severe discipline of the rapist.)
How simple, yet how profound that liberty cannot be defended without
the truth itself. With no foundation in truth, there is no right, no wrong. One
who does not know God—for Jesus is the embodiment of truth—will
ultimately fail to defend freedom. Freedom is dependent on what is right
triumphing over what is wrong. It is good conquering evil. A free world is a
world based on moral absolutes. Remove God, remove the Bible, and there
is no longer a standard for life and conduct. A rejection of absolutes always
results in the decay of freedom.
The Christian who would be a patriot can render no greater service to
His country than to know God. To love Him with all the heart, soul, and
strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is the highest calling of a
Christian and the lifeblood of a Christian patriot.
Seemingly intangible, keeping the greatest commandment is,
nevertheless, the key to a Christian’s involvement in politics and, thereby,
the preservation of this great land. There are also many tangible ways for a
Christian—or any citizen—to do his duty for his country. The single most
important element to Christian patriotism in America, outside of a fervent
prayer life and being a faithful representation of Christ, was presented
previously and is found in a single word: vote.
Voting is a simple action. It requires little to no physical exertion. The
time required to cast a ballot is minimal. Yet, 40 percent of Americans
generally do not vote!140
Voting is the most basic of American freedoms. Americans have the
great privilege and grave responsibility for selecting their own leaders.
Shirking this duty is more than unpatriotic. It is downright treacherous.
The excuses for not voting—even for not becoming involved with
politics in any way—are many. One is that politics, even politicians
themselves, are evil. Lying is the most common fault attributed to the
political realms. “Politicians lie” is too often a mantra used to simply not
support any candidate at all. This is unfortunate, first, because it is not true,
and, secondly, because it keeps many good people from holding political
office.
It is true, a vast number of politicians do lie, many even purposefully
deceiving those they claim to serve. But generalizations are dangerous
when applied to any group of people, and politicians are no different.
“Priests molest children,” “Teenagers do drugs,” and “Politicians lie” are all
blanket generalizations; the first two society reject as maliciously false;
why doesn’t anyone object to generalizations of politicians? These and
other generalizations are based on the same false premise. The assumption
that there is not an exception to the majority. But there are.
Many godly men and women run for public office. If Christians don’t
turn out to vote for them, who will? Someone is going to lead the
community, the state, the country. There are but two options for the one
who will do so. One who is a Christian, or one who is not.
The citizens make their choice every year at the ballot box. Thus, they
are responsible for who governs and, thereby, for the actions and activities
of their land. In a republic as Americans hold, the rulers reflect the
populace. So if the governance is opposed to God, what does that say about
the people of the land?
President James Garfield, who was also a minister of the Gospel, best
summarized the duties of the Christian and their effect on American
government.
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the
character of the Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it
is because people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be
intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high
qualities to represent them in the national legislature...[I]f the next
centennial does not find us a great nation…it will be because those who
represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not
aid in controlling the political forces.”141
Perhaps so, some would say, but there is no longer any difference
between any of the political parties or candidates, so no need to get
involved! The “no difference” mentality is one of the most deceptive in
American culture. My life makes no difference, going to church makes no
difference, being on time makes no difference, et cetera.
In politics, the lines dividing parties can get fuzzy at times (a good
thing when done in the best interest of the country). However (while there
are exceptions among individual candidates), the parties themselves, as a
collective whole, are very different.
How to choose? Democrats—again, as a whole unit—tend to be liberal
and progressive. They see faults at home and abroad and believe the
government should fix them if at all possible. Republicans—as a whole—
are usually conservative and family friendly. They believe government
should involve itself less and individuals more with society’s ills.
Independents claim to hold the middle ground, but they tend to lean far
right or far left, differing merely on a few points with one or both parties.
(A note on Independents: within the current two-party system, only
Democrats and Republicans are able to vote in most state and national
primaries. An individual has no right to criticize November’s ballot choices
if they did not help to choose a candidate via the primary elections the
spring prior. Therefore, in the opinion of this writer, it seems most
responsible—at least until the rules change—to affiliate with one major
party to make one’s voice heard in the selection of candidates.)
 At the heart of the matter, however, is not the party, as there are always
exceptions to the rule. Some Democrats are conservative on social issues.
Some Republicans are liberal on legislative issues. A conscientious patriot
should always vote, and vote for each individual candidate—not a party—
they believe will best represent them.
Saying there is no real difference between candidates in any given
election is ludicrous. There is always a difference, be it on social issues,
national defense, foreign policy, the domestic agenda, or all of the above.
Americans are given a choice every single election. Only those who have
failed to educate themselves will say there is no difference between
candidates. Being a patriot requires taking responsibility and doing the
research. It is the duty of every citizen to educate himself and cast an
informed, purposeful vote. This is particularly true for the Christian, who
knows he must give an account for all he does! As Noah Webster said,

“When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting

for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God
commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in
the fear of God. The preservation of a republican
government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if
the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in
office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be
made not for public good so much as for selfish or local
purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to
execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on
unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated
or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure
public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the
citizens neglect the Divine commands and elect bad men to
make and administer the laws.”142

Worst of all is the lie that it just doesn’t matter at all; one vote doesn’t
make a difference, so why bother? Ask the families of the American
Revolution. Ask the men and women in Afghanistan. Around the world,
people die and others are killed for the right to vote. Voting is both a
privilege and a responsibility, the most basic right of a free people.
 It is also important to realize, however, that a single vote does in fact
make a difference. Each of the millions of votes received by a presidential
candidate is comprised of many, individual votes. Each of those votes
represents a person, a person standing behind that candidate declaring him
or her their choice to best represent themselves.
California, Idaho, Oregon, Texas, and Washington all obtained
statehood by the margin of one, single vote.143 The account of Texas’s path
to statehood is particularly compelling in the argument for the validity of a
single vote. In 1844, a miller in DeKalb County, Indiana, was persuaded by
friends to go to the polls. The Indiana legislator voted for by that miller won
his election by a single vote. That same legislator cast the single, deciding
vote to send Edward Allen Hennegan to the United States Senate as a
representative from the state of Indiana. In the Senate, Hennegan presided
as president pro Tempore when the issue of Texas statehood met with a tie
vote. It was Hennegan who then voiced the vote that brought Texas into the
Union.144 So it was that a forgotten miller from nowhere Indiana was
responsible for the statehood of one of the great beacons of American
freedom, Texas.
More recently, the Florida recounts of the 2000 presidential election
reminded Americans of the importance of every single vote. One vote, your
vote, does matter!
It is time. Time for Christians to put their faith into action in the
political arena. It is time to no longer turn a blind eye, but neither is it time
for blind obedience. It is time to de-compartmentalize life. It is time to be
completely who God intends. It is time God rules in every aspect of
American Christianity.
The great preacher, Charles Finney, exhorted Christians to do their
duty for God and country, saying,

“The Church must take right ground in regard to politics...

[T]he time has come that Christians must vote for honest
men…God cannot sustain this free and blessed country
which we love and pray for unless the Church will take right
ground. Politics are a part of a religion in such a country as
this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a
part of their duty to God...He [God] will bless or curse this
 nation according to the course they [Christians] take [in
politics].”145

Could it be God’s blessings on America are decreased because His

people are not fully engaged in the political battle for the soul of the nation?
To have an impact on the culture, the Church must make an impact in the
culture.
 Chapter 12
The Ambassador Factor

“I am of the opinion that the dangers which confront the coming century
will be religion without the Holy Ghost; Christianity without Christ;
forgiveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration; politics
without God; and heaven without hell.”146 William Booth was exactly right.
Religion has become popular but powerless. “Christian” ministers preach
salvation without Christ. Forgiveness is emphasized, while repentance is
marginalized. Heaven is popular, but no one wants to talk about hell. (Or
politics.) People are indeed without God.
Frankly, God doesn’t believe in separation of Church and state. He
doesn’t sit in heaven concerning Himself with everything except what goes
on in the government of the United States or any other country of the world.
He doesn’t focus all His energies on “spiritual” matters and leave the
politics to someone else.
No, God plays an active role in governments now, and He has
throughout all history. This has been shown in His battle with Pharaoh in
Egypt, by Jesus’ interactions with Jewish rulers, in Constantine’s
“conversion,” by the Reformers, in the lives of the Pilgrims, through the
Continental Congress, and even during Hitler’s reign of terror. God is not
silent in the governing process. Rather, He is actively involved in every
element of all that transpires in the world, including the political arena. God
does not separate Himself from politics. And if He does not, how can His
people?
 Daniel, a great hero of the faith, found himself immersed in one of the
most wicked dynasties of the ancient world. Babylon was both a corrupt
and cruel conqueror. Yet, Daniel served, never in violation of his conscience
but always faithful—even to the wicked rulers in authority of the realm and
to the peril of his own life. He understood a concept so many today have
forgotten, saying, “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever: for
wisdom and might are His: and He changeth the times and the seasons: He
removeth kings, and setteth up kings.”147 Daniel made a difference in a
wicked government system because he chose to represent God regardless of
what the world around him was doing or saying.
Hope for America doesn’t lie in a better economy, bigger schools,
increased tax breaks, or even an honest presidential candidate. Those things
definitely help, but the real hope for America lies with the Christian
becoming actively involved in the world God has set him in. Like Daniel,
the Christian must be an ambassador of God and truth to his community, his
state and his country.
Christian men, women, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, pastors, and
teachers each must get involved. It is time for complacency in Christianity
to be abolished. First and foremost, Christians must involve themselves in
an all-out pursuit of Jesus Christ, living with “no reserves, no retreat, and
no regrets.”148 Second, they must take responsibility for and be
wholeheartedly involved with their families. (A godly family cannot be
supported if the personal walk with God is neglected.) As the pillar of
society, the family unit must involve itself in making a positive impact in its
community and be a light to its neighbors—remaining in the world, but not
of it. This is what it means to be God’s ambassador. This is how individuals
and families can change the world.
Religion means “bondage.”149 Literally. The world is not searching for
religion. They’re hungry for freedom. They’re looking for answers.
Hollywood Christianity—one big feel-good show at a glorified country club
“church” and a Christianity that is found on Sundays but forgotten the other
six days of the week—is not going to change the nation, let alone the world.
Religion must be abandoned for a relationship. Indeed, true Christianity is
not about a religion, but about a relationship with God through His Son,
Jesus Christ. That relationship, when it controls a life, will make a
difference, for it will be contagious. Yes, “When you set yourself on fire,
people love to come and see you burn.”150
 Those who brand themselves “Christian” associate the name of Christ
with everything they do. As an ambassador of Christ, the Christian who
parties tells the world Jesus would party. The Christian who lies tells the
world Jesus would lie. The Christian who commits adultery tells the world
Jesus would commit adultery. The Christian who slanders tells the world
Jesus would slander. Is it any wonder the world rejects the version of Christ
they see and work with every day?
Being an ambassador requires daily representation. Sunday
Christianity has not and will not effect change in the life of the nation.
Christians must act like Christ; complacency must be sacrificed to courage.
Courage to do what is right, speak what is right, and live what is right. It is
not enough to sit on the sidelines, hoping and praying the team will win.
Christians must fight for their country, or they will lose it forever. As
revolutionary patriot John Hancock said, “I conjure you, by all that is dear,
by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray but that
ye act.”151
Freedom means nothing if it is not based on truth. Freedom means
nothing if it is merely physical. Truth means nothing if it is merely
metaphorical. Truth is strangled if freedom does not hold it up.
Freedom has a name. Truth has a name. That name is Jesus Christ. “Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”152 Jesus Christ is
the way, the truth, the life. Christians have nothing more—and nothing less
—to offer their country than Jesus Christ. He is the essence of freedom. He
embodies the truth.
How can there be hope for the future of America if Church and state
are separate? Where is truth if God is silenced? Where is freedom if Christ
is reserved for Sunday only? One who does not defend the truth cannot
complain when freedom is lost.
John Witherspoon, a New Jersey clergyman of the Revolutionary War
period commented, “There is not a single instance in history in which civil
liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.”153 If the Christian
would defend his faith, he must support his country and protect her from
evil!
Today’s generation is seeing a growing patriotism within and without
the Church. Americans are realizing the encroachments upon their liberties
and witnessing firsthand the slaughter of truth on the altar of convenience.
 The Tea Party, however, is not the answer. Occupy Wall Street is not
the answer. Ousting of every member of Congress is not the answer. The
answer, Christian, is you. You are God’s ambassador of freedom to the
world.
The land of the free and home of the brave is fraught with drugs and
violence. Children are gunned down in high schools and one-room
schoolhouses. AIDS is ravaging families nationwide. Terrorism is a threat
to American shores and cities. These are perilous times. The enemy has
come in like a flood. Will you be the standard God raises up? Are you
prepared for such a time as this?
“Righteousness alone can exalt them [America] as a nation. Reader!
Whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself,
and encourage it in others. [T]he great pillars of all government and of
social life: I mean virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my
friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible.”154 So said Patrick Henry,
the great Christian patriot, who regretted he had but one life to give for his
country.
However, John Phillips, in his commentary, Exploring Acts, wrote,

“How does the Church confront the evils of society? What is

the New Testament answer to social injustice? It is
surprising, and significant, that Paul made no attempt to
change society; his work was to change people…He
preached the Gospel. His job was to win men to Christ.
When enough people get saved, the conscience of society is
awakened and social reforms follow. It takes longer, but, in
Paul’s opinion, (if we can judge from his methods), it was no
business of his, even as a Roman citizen with a vast
following and wide influence, to meddle in politics. His job
was to win people to Christ.”155

That’s a compelling conclusion, one that is popular in today’s Church

and difficult to argue with. So is that it? Are Christians to focus on saving
souls? Is it the job of the Christian to simply preach the Gospel and leave
the rest to God? If just enough people get saved, will our country really turn
around?
 First, with regard to Paul, he was a Roman citizen. He understood the
political system and worked through it—appealing to Caesar upon his final
arrest. He was proud of his political standing and declared himself “free
born” in Acts 22:28.
With regard to societal reform, more Christians are not the answer.
America today has the proverbial “church on every corner.” If ever
Christianity alone was capable of reforming social ills merely by its
presence, the United States is a perfect picture of what that utopia should
be.
It is true, society does reform as Christ changes hearts; society changes
as people change. However, it is not enough to preach the Gospel and hope
that by saving souls, society will be reformed, government will be filled
with righteousness, and no further participation is needed by the Christian
beyond the Sunday sermon and Wednesday Bible study. These are good
things—necessary things—but they are not enough!
Dozens of Germany’s Jews were grateful the Ten Boom family did not
content themselves with preaching the Gospel. The Ten Booms got
involved. They risked their lives to save lives. Their actions undoubtedly
had greater impact on their Jewish friends than those of the German
Christians who contented themselves with simply praying for God’s
intervention during the atrocities that made up the Third Reich!
The balance of faith and action can be found by solving the dilemma
of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s statement, “Some people are so heavenly
minded that they are no earthly good.”156 Or better yet, as God said in
James chapter two, “Faith without works is dead.”157
Eternity begins at birth. The minutes and days of life on this planet are
not only building our eternal future—they are part of our eternity now. How
will you serve God in eternity? Well, how are you serving Him now?
Yes, unquestionably, the Christian should distribute more tracts than he
does political literature. But tracts don’t necessarily have to take the form of
a piece of paper. The life of a Christian—what one does day in and day out,
in the environment God has placed them in—is a constant, continual
reflection of Christ. Indeed, the primary focus should not be on how many
doors we knock on but on what Jesus looks like to our family, friends, and
coworkers! That is the ambassador factor.
Politics do matter. As a republic, each citizen is responsible for his
government, its leaders, and their decisions. The Church must work to save
souls, yes. But she must also work to save the nation. The hope for America
is with the Church, for she holds the secret to freedom; she alone has the
truth of Jesus Christ.
Not every Christian can run for office. Not every Christian can work a
poll. Many will be able to do little. But each must do something. Be
involved. Be responsible. Be a patriot!
 Conclusion

From the beginning of time, it has never been God or government. History
shows it has always been God and government. The battle for our nation is
a heavenly one. God is looking for men and women of faith to stand up and
fight for the heart and soul of their country.
Moses gave his life to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt and
establish a new community. Jesus came as the truth, to free men forever.
Constantine added God to his government and conquered “in the name of
Christ.” Brave reformers fought untruths to the loss of not only their
freedoms but even their lives. The Pilgrims abandoned Holland’s freedom
for the sake of their families. That Pilgrim foundation led to a constitutional
republic with liberty and justice for all. Hitler destroyed freedom by
perverting the truth. From these and countless other historical accounts, it is
unquestionable that God and government have been intertwined from the
dawn of creation.
Where does that leave the Church today? John Witherspoon was the
second president of Princeton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
and a member of the Continental Congress; he was a patriot. President John
Adams said Witherspoon was, “A true son of liberty...But first, he was a son
of the Cross.”158
With regard to the nation, Witherspoon had a powerful answer to those
who think politics are unimportant or insignificant in light of eternity.

“Shall we establish nothing good because we know it cannot

be eternal? Shall we live without government because every
 constitution has its old age and its period? Because we know
that we shall die, shall we take no pains to preserve or
lengthen life? Far from it, Sir: it only requires the more
watchful attention to settle government upon the best
principles and in the wisest manner [so] that it may last as
long as the nature of things will admit.”159

The answer: yes, all Christians are called to be missionaries, to make

talmidim (disciples of youth). That is where the fight begins to regain the
culture. But that is not where the battle ends. Letting our light shine requires
the Christian in every aspect of society, including the political world. Or, as
Witherspoon said on May 17, 1776,
“He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most...active in
promoting true and undefiled religion…to bear down profanity and
immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple
not to call him an enemy of his country. It is in the man of piety and inward
principle that we may...find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and
the invincible soldier.”160
So was I wasting my life that day distributing political literature
outside a gun show where a man was about to take his own life? Had I
turned my back on God’s purpose for me? The answer to both these
questions is no. God had given me the opportunity, indeed the great
privilege, to be involved in the political system of this incredible land. It
was His will for me to be there, and should He call me back, I will gladly
return to the political arena. I want to be where His is, involved in what
He’s doing. There is a great battle waging over our nation even now. God is
not dead, nor does He sleep! He is at work. He is moving. I want to be on
His side. I want to fulfill whatever purpose He has for me. And that purpose
might not be evangelizing a native tribe in a remote jungle. It just might be
fighting for the soul of my country. Because this is a country worth fighting
for!
You see, politics, they do matter. It’s true, they’re not eternal. But what
happens in the political realm is controlled by the One who is eternal, and
political decisions have long-lasting consequences on the only other two
things that are eternal: God’s Word and people. Therefore, if I really want to
make a difference in eternity, how can I not be involved in politics? For that
matter, if making an eternal impact is the goal, perhaps politics aren’t really
that different from missions, after all. Both are directly involved with all
things eternal and, when used properly, impact lives for good in the present.
The question, however, is not missions or politics, or whatever else
God calls you to do. Rather, it is what you do with that calling and how you
are involved with the land and people God calls you to.
God doesn’t separate Himself from the state. God is still involved in
politics, and His primary focus is still the souls of men. This is
demonstrated in God’s calling of the Christian to be ambassadors to this
world. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as
though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye
reconciled to God.”161 The Church can make a difference in lives. The
Church can make a difference in the community. The Church can make a
difference in the nation; nay, the Church must make a difference in the
nation! But the Church is made up of individuals.
Are you making a difference in the lives of your family and friends?
Are you making a difference in your community? Are you making a
difference in the nation?
As long as you’re alive, God still has something He wants you to do.
Are you doing it? Are you sitting on the sidelines, or are you actively
involved in all God brings to you?
The solution? Be the difference you want to see in this world! The
answer to America’s problems is simple: you.

“And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for
ye serve the Lord Christ.”
Colossians 3:23–24
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I bless God for His great mercy to me and for His
unfailing love to mankind in giving us His Son and our Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is my Life, my Fortress, my Defender, and my King.
I am grateful to my parents for always encouraging me to love God
with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Their loving guidance has been
a beacon of truth lighting my path each day of my life. I’m also appreciative
of my brother Jeremiah, who lived with me during the final weeks of my
writing. Jeremiah, you never complained no matter how many hours I sat at
my computer, and your presence inspired me to the finish! To all of my
incredible family: Dad, Mom, Josh, Sarah, Bethany, Jonathan, Jeremiah,
Jessie-Marie, Anna, and Tyler, thank you for loving me no matter what. I
love you all more than anything.
There are many friends to whom I also owe a debt of gratitude. A
special thanks to Pastor George for challenging and inspiring me while
giving me eyes to see and ears to hear. To Marty, my thanks for your
questions, answers, and ever-readiness to discuss the Text no matter the
hour of the day. To Andrew, my thanks for your wise counsel and unending
concern. Thank you all for your thoughts and comments on my work. Each
of you gave of time you did not have to bless me. Thank you.
To Uncle Dale and Aunt Sherry, Uncle Dave and Aunt Evie, Uncle
Denis, Pastor Port, and Chet and Sharon: each of you hold a special place in
my heart for always believing in me. I was never too young or too
inexperienced in your eyes. Instead, you were an incredible encouragement
and provided me with many opportunities early in life. Thank you.
 To Aunt Shelly, thank you for always sharing Uncle John. You both
have blessed me more than you will ever know. I look forward to hearing
Uncle John’s incredible laugh again in heaven one day, and know that both
your rewards will be great. God bless you.
My friends Rose and Kim: thank you for making me smile! You both
inspire me to do great things. Thank you, Rose, for always being ready for
anything, the riff to my raff. Kim, verily, none could ask for a better haver.
Lastly, to you who read, thank you. It honors me that you would
choose to spend your time considering the thoughts presented here. I pray
you will be encouraged and challenged by what you have found. May the
blessings of our great God rest upon you and may God continue to bless
America!
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44 Ibid., 38.
45 Sears, 40.
46 John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1981), 154.
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48 Foxe, 158.
49 Sears, 317.
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51 William Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 17. Brackets added
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52 Estep, 20.
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56 Foxe, 139.
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59 Richard Wheeler, God’s Mighty Hand (Bulverde, TX: Mantle Ministries, 2006), 47.
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61 Wheeler, 83.
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67 Benge, 94.
68 Benge, 120.
69 Benge, 121.
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71 Benge, 196.
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73 Ibid., 40.
74 Allen and Schweikart, 43.
75 Ibid., 56.
76 As quoted by David Colbert, Eyewitness to America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997),
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77 Colbert, 54–55.
78 Colbert, 62.
79 Colbert, 67–68.
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86 Lutzer, 24.
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88 Martin Luther, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” Iahusha; available from
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89 Martin Luther, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” Iahusha; available from
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90 Lutzer, 9.
91 Carmelo Lisciotto, “The Hitler Youth,” Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team;
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92 Avi Hein, “Hitler Youth,” Jewish Virtual Library; available from
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29, 2011.
93 Lisciotto, accessed October 29, 2011.
94 Steven Ozment, A Mighty Fortress (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), 278.
95 Rhoda Lewin, Witnesses to the Holocaust (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990), xv.
96 Lewin, 5–6.
97 Lutzer, 173.
98 Lutzer, 158.
99 Monte Kuligowski, “Obama’s Christian Nation,” American Thinker; available from
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100 “Quotes on the Primacy of Character Education,” Legacy Educational Resources;
available from http://www.character-education.info/Articles/Motivational-Character-Quotes.htm;
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101 J.C. Willke, “Contraceptive Pill,” Life Issues Institute: available from
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 102 Elizabeth Weise, “We really love–and spend on–our pets,” USA Today; available from
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7, 2011.
103 Rose Kreider and Diana Elliott, “Population,” Census Bureau; available from
www.Census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabst-F1-2000.pdf; Internet; accessed November 7,
2011. Also see Heather Whipps, “Census: U.S. household size shrinking,” NBCNews.com; available
from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14942047/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/census-us-
household-size-shrinking/#.UED2jMFmR9E; Internet; accessed September 3, 2012.
104 Barna Group, “Most Twentysomethings Put Christianity on the Shelf Following
Spiritually Active Teen Years,” Barna Group; available from http://www.barna.org/barna-
update/article/16-teensnext-gen/147-most-twenty-somethings-put-Christianity-on-the-shelf-
following-spiritually-active-teen-years; Internet; accessed December 18, 2011.
105 David Pratte, “Humanism and the Public Schools,” Truth Magazine; available from
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106 “Secular Humanism—Exclusion of God,” All About Philosophy; available from
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107 Deeptha Thattai, “A History of Public Education in the United States,” Journal of
Literacy and Education in Developing Societies; available from http://www.servintfree.net/aidmn-
ejournal/publications/2001-11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html; Internet; accessed November
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108 “Quotes on the Primacy of Character Education,” accessed November 29, 2011.
109 Sreeraman, “Imparting Sex Education for Young Kids Could Tackle Teen Pregnancy,”
Medindia; available from http://www.medindia.net/news/Imparting-Sex-Education-for-Young-Kids-
Could-Tackle-Teen-Pregnancy-31275-1.htm; Internet; accessed November 29, 2011.
110 Ken Ham, Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it
(Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2009), 31.
111 Barna Group, accessed November 29, 2011.
112 Bruce Wilkinson, Secrets of the Vine (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Books, 2001), 33.
113 Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 20.
114 Acts 15:20.
115 Wilson, 81.
116 David Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988),
635.
117 Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG
Publishers, 1992), 1201, #4202.
118 Jules Isaac as cited by Wilson, 80.
119 Thomas Lancaster, Restoration, Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus
(Littleton, CO: First Fruits of Zion, 2005), 164 (bracketed note added for clarity).
120 George DeJong, as taught during Under the Fig Tree September 2011 Israel study trip.
121 Allen and Schweikart, 459.
122 Michael Neiberg, “Conscientious Objectors,” Gale Encyclopedia of US History; available
from http://www.Answers.com/topic/conscientious-objector; Internet; accessed November 12, 2011.
123 Allen and Schweikart, 459.
124 “School Prayer,” All About History; available from
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125 Ibid.
126 “School Prayer,” All About History, accessed November 12, 2011.
127 Ibid.
128 Ibid.
 129 Ibid.
130 David Barton, “The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible,”
Wallbuilders; available from http://www.Wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=8755; Internet;
accessed November 14, 2011.
131 David Barton, “The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible,”
Wallbuilders; available from http://www.Wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=8755; Internet;
accessed November 14, 2011.
132 Colbert, 550.
133 David Barton, Original Intent (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1997), 550.
134 Harriet Martineau as cited by Barton, Original Intent, 122.
135 Dictionary.com, “Conservative,” available from:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative; Internet; accessed December 18, 2011.
136 Bennett and Cribb, ix–x.
137 William Thayer, Gaining Favor with God and Man (Bulverde, TX: Mantle Ministries,
1989), 347.
138 Thayer, 341 (original emphasis removed for clarity).
139 All quotes as cited by Barton, “The Founding Fathers”; accessed November 14, 2011.
140 Sonja Bonin, “100 Million US-Americans Don’t Vote,” Atlantic Review; available from
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141 Barton, Original Intent, 348.
142 Barton, Original Intent, 342.
143 Paul Harvey, “Just One Vote,” Koinonia House; available from
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144 Ibid.
145 Barton, Original Intent, 342.
146 Aaron Hills, “Holiness Rejected Produces a Godless Christianity,” Sermon Index;
available from http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=6803;
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147 Daniel 2:20–21.
148 William Borden as cited by David Nolte, “No reserves, no retreats, no regrets!” Dave’s
Sermon Page; available from http://id.mind.net/~dnol/noreservesnoretreatnoregrets.html; Internet;
accessed September 6, 2012.
149 Gary Amirault, “Etymology of the word ‘Religion,’” Tentmaker; available from
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150 John Wesley as quoted on ThinkExist.com; available from
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151 Barton, Original Intent, 350.
152 John 8:32.
153 Allen and Schweikart, 68.
154 Barton, Original Intent, 321.
155 Phillips, 336.
156 Oliver Wendell Holmes as quoted by Brainy Quote; available from
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8, 2011.
157 James 2:17.
158 “The American Minute: November 15,” Conservative Action Alerts; available from
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accessed December 18, 2011.
159 Barton, Original Intent, 346.
160 Op. cit., ibid., 346.
161 2 Corinthians 5:20.