[This edition is a re-print that was published at an earlier time]

The 4th of July is a special day in our country but not just for the signing of the Declaration of  Independence. Many special things have happened on this day.

Three American presidents died on the Fourth of July, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe.  Monroe was ready to die several days before but doctors kept him alive with drugs just long enough so that he could die on the fourth of July.  Why did they do that?  Because the fourth of July meant something.

- Calvin Coolidge was born on that day in 1872. West Point opened, July 4th 1802. Stephen Foster was born on July 4th.
- The song "America" was sung for the first time on July 4th, 1832 in Boston.
- Alaska and Hawaii both became states on the fourth of July. Slavery was abolished in the state of New York on July the fourth 1845.

And in that great document delivered on July the 4th, 1776, we read of a belief that all people have rights given by the creator of Mankind.  The document only has 1321 words, it takes just eight minutes to read, and God is mentioned four times, twice at the beginning and twice at the end.

And the purpose of the declaration was to separate us officially from the repression and authority of England.  And the very act of signing the declaration said to the world that I am a traitor to my native country of England. I am a criminal, a fugitive from London’s Justice.

Who were the men who were willing to sign?  Of the 56 men who signed it two were twenty years of age, sixteen were in their thirties, twenty in their forties, eleven in their fifties, six in their sixties, and one, Benjamin Franklin, over 70.  All but two were married. Each had an average of 6 children. 24 were lawyers, 9 were merchants, 14 were farmers, 4 were doctors, and one was a preacher.  We’re not talking about low life, drifters, or rebels.  We’re talking about educated, civilized men who were willing to sacrifice everything for a cause that they believed in. And history shows us that they paid the price for that bravery.

When Carter Braxton of Virginia, signed the Declaration of Independence, he was a wealthy planter and trader; but following his signing, his ships were destroyed and to pay his debts, he lost his home and all of his property and in the end he died in rags.  Thomas McKean of Delaware was so harassed by the enemy that he was forced to move his family five times in five months.  He served in Congress without pay, his family in poverty and in hiding.  Vandals looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Gwinnett, Walton, Hayward, Rutledge, and Middleton.

Thomas Nelson, Jr. of Virginia raised two million dollars in his own name to help fund the war.  After the War, he personally paid back the loans, wiping out his entire estate; he was never reimbursed by his government. And in the final battle for Yorktown, Nelson, urged General Washington to fire on Nelson’s own home, then occupied by the enemy.  He died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and everything destroyed, his wife imprisoned.  She died within a few months.

Richard Stockton, who signed the Declaration, was captured and mistreated, and his health mortally broken. And then his estate was pillaged.  John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside while she was dying; their thirteen children fled in all directions for their lives.  His fields and gristmill were laid waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves and returned home after the War to find his wife dead, his children and his properties gone.  He died a few weeks later of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, few were long to survive.  Five were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.  Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.  Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured.

And though few of them benefited from their bravery, and most lost everything they owned, not one recanted his original declaration of independence.  These men were courageous, valiant and brave. Because of them and others, we have the privilege of being here today, living in the greatest country in the world.  We are a great and blessed nation.

July 4th marks 234 years since our Founding Fathers gave us our national birth certificate.  We continue to be the longest on-going Constitutional Republic in the history of the world and we need to understand that blessings such as these are not by chance or accidental.  They are blessings of God.

To see the turmoil in other nations, their struggles and multiple revolutions, and yet to see the stability and blessings that we have here in America, we may ask, "How has this been achieved?  What was the basis of American Independence?"

John Adams said, "The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity".  Adams went on to say that in observing the 4th of July, “It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty."

Woodrow Wilson once declared, "A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, or what it is trying to do.

It was on July 30th (1789) that President George Washington gave his inaugural address, 1/3 of which was dedicated to the direct supplication to God for guidance and strength for our nation.  And with that start, God has blessed our nation. But have we forgotten who has blessed us?

The first three universities established on this soil were Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.  All were church colleges and all for the purpose of the training people for the ministry. That is what America is really about.

Over a decade ago a political science professor at the University of Houston did a research: "Who did the founding fathers quote the most?"  They examined 3,154 documents.  Who did they quote the most in the early part of our country?  Three writers.  Those three writers were Blackstone, Montague, and John Locke.  But 16 times more than those writers, they quoted from the Bible.  And that is what the foundation of America is really about.

But what has happened in our generation?  We have told God that we don’t need the Bible, we don’t need the church, we don’t need God in the running of our nation, our schools and sadly even our homes.

We told God we didn’t need him in 1962 and we have paid the price since them.  In 1962 a simple prayer was the center of a great deal of turmoil.  It says, "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country."

What is significant about that prayer is that that simple prayer, which only acknowledges God once, and does not even contain the word Jesus.  On June 25, 1962 in the case, Engel vs. Vitale, the courts declared that prayer to be unconstitutional despite the fact that our own Declaration of Independence acknowledges God four separate times.  But based on that decision the courts removed prayer from our schools.

Hosea 8:7 says, "They sow the wind, they reap the whirlwind.”  And the question is; what have we reaped from that sowing that one decision?

Prayer was removed on the basis of separation between church and state.  And to illustrate the atrocity of that decision we must consider the view our founding fathers had on that subject and how that decision came about.  A careful review shows that our founding fathers did not believe in a separation between the government and Christianity.  [More in the next edition of the Pastors Update]

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