DAY 14

FOR FREEDOM – HE SET US FREE

The following are the dictionary definitions of FREEDOM:

1. The state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint.
2. Exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.
3. The power to determine action without restraint.
4. Political or national independence.
5. Personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom. (Source)

On the day we celebrate the biggest Birth of Freedom the world has ever seen, it would serve us well to take another look at what Freedom really means. It was more than just the removal of crazy King George III by the Continental Army, General George Washington and some rag-tag peasants. It was a dawn of a new day where the governed would govern themselves according to a set of Principles and not under some “divine right” of corrupt kings and queens. These principles were all based on the Bible.

It was a novel concept, a new paradigm. It was not to create another theocracy like Rome, but a land where non-believers in God would not just have the same rights and freedom to live peacefully, but could prosper as well. After all, the rain does really fall equally on the righteous and the unrighteous.  During the American Revolution, it was America’s pastors who were the conscience of the burst of Freedom and I would even venture to say that the First Great Awakening – the biggest Revival in the world at the time, had something to do with it. This Awakening was spurred by men like Jonathan Edwards – who preached the greatest sermon still in this country (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, July 1741). George Whitefield and John Wesley fired up America for the Gospel and people saw that there was Freedom in the Gospel, through Christ our Lord, for the first time in their lives.

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FREEDOM: of WORSHIP or RELIGION?

The Word of God has suffered at the hands of many a tyrant who has tried to destroy it. Pagan kings of Israel/Judah had tried to wipe it out…but could not. After the period of Christ’s Ministry, the persecution of the Church began in earnest as Christianity spread to the western world.

The Indestructible Book still could not be stopped. The Jews preserved the aging Hebrew manuscripts when the 72 scholars translated, what we call the Old Testament, into Greek less than 2400 years ago in Alexandria, Egypt. The early Christians used this Greek translation of the “Old Testament” (called the Septuagint) as the basis of our Faith. Most Christians spoke Greek in the new territories, hence the appearance of the letters and Gospels of the New Testaments in Greek.

Copies of some precious documents, especially the New Testament still exist. The earliest copy of the New Testament is from 150 AD and was written/copied over just decades after John the Revelator wrote the original gospel Book of John! Today, that which was preserved, is again under assault. If you wish to read about the Burning of Bibles by the religion of peace, which also burns down Christian churches and homes in their religion of peace middle eastern countries, CLICK HERE FOR A SHORT LIST. Just three years ago, US soldiers in Afghanistan were revealed to have burned Bibles sent from the US there, on orders from the High Command, after a news report from the Middle East TV Network Al Jazeera broke the story. Watch video here.

But we don’t have to go far abroad to find instances of persecution of Christians in North America. Whether it is some school district banning six year olds from singing “God bless America”; or a leftist judge ruling that a teenage kid cannot wear his Christian Faith T-shirt to school or even  Orange County, California shutting down a Bible Study in somebody’s home….let me repeat that – INSIDE A COUPLE’S OWN HOME…it is happening now with rapid frequency in the United States.

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