SHOULDER TO SHOULDER #25a ---- 7/5/98
Posted by: lifeunlimited <lifeunlimited@...>
Encouraging One Another as we "Fight the Good Fight"
TITLE: Independence Day ---- A Day For Rejoicing or For Repentance?
Greetings, my friend!
Here another week has passed. However, is not just an ordinary week.
This one is different ---- different because we have just celebrated our
222nd anniversary as a nation. God has certainly blessed us and
prospered us. Have you thanked Him lately?
I am going to do something I have never done before with this encourager
letter ---- write a Daily letter for two to four days, in order to keep
them shorter, and in order to cover a topic I believe is very important
for us to consider this week after our Nation's anniversary. So, unless
something happens, I will write a companion letter tomorrow and another
Tuesday with possibly another one or two, if needed. It is my prayer
that your heart will be stirred ---- to action. Frankly, it will be very
important for you to take time to read all of them.
We, the most blessed of all nations other than Israel, are in a perilous
position before almighty God. I want to address that fact, not just in a
way that "curses the darkness", but also in a way that "blesses the ray
of light" that is available to us, if we will but grasp it.
It seems that each succeeding year I go through a greater and greater
struggle between thanking the Lord for His blessings and feeling deep
sorrow over the current conditions we find in our nation.
GRATITUDE OR GRIEF:
How do you balance the two? There is no doubt that God has poured out
His blessings on us from the very beginning of our nation. And, yet,
just as Israel did, we have so basked in our bounty that we have become a
nation of greed instead of gratitude, a land where plenty has become
promiscuity, liberty has become license, and democracy has become
demagoguery.
Frankly, I seriously have difficulty finding the balance between
thankfulness for what we have been and sorrow over what we have become
---- thankfulness for where we have come from, and great concern for
where we are headed ---- thankfulness for God's amazing generosity to us
and shame over how we have hoarded and squandered it.
If I focus on the positive, I'm charged with living in a dream world,
being a materialistic and shallow Christian and sticking my head in the
sand.. If I expose the evil, I'm accused of being ungrateful and
negative, and of always complaining and preaching negative sermons.
Ever been there?
I'm sure you have.
I pray you will be blessed and encouraged to action with my comments
today.
OUR NATION'S CONCEPTION:
He was a young man ---- a dedicated believer in Jesus Christ ---- a man
of conviction, compassion, and courage. Yet, most people have never
heard of him. He exhibited moral character, and spiritual maturity
beyond his years.
One day he faced the greatest challenge of his life ---- for his very
life itself. While at sea, he was the victim of a tragic shipwreck at
the hands of an intense storm. After hours in the turbulent waters
beckoning for his life, and near death itself, he was washed up on shore.
He lay there unconscious among the rocks in the water's edge ---- some
say perhaps for days. Finally his body was discovered by some local
towns people. To their amazement, he was still alive. They rushed him
into town and began the process of nursing him back to some semblance of
health.
He eventually made his way back to his homeland and his family.
Years later, after raising a family to adulthood he would tell his young
grandson a fascinating story ---- it probably went something like this
(my treatment is questionable, but the basic facts are true and
documented):
"As I lay there on the rocks, too weak to move, and drifting in and out
of consciousness, I seemed to remember a scene ---- a dream ---- perhaps
a vision ---- I cannot tell. I heard this voice without sound ----
something telling me that some day there would be a land, far away, where
Christians would come ---- a land from which all the nations and tribes
of the world would hear the Gospel ---- a land out of which would come
the message of Jesus Christ preached to all other nations."
Sitting with rapt attention, that young grandson would ask his
grandfather to repeat the story over and over. It would become a story
that would drive him as a young man, and capture his heart fully as an
explorer. And, one day, in his own captain's log, reflecting on his
grandfather's story, Christopher Columbus, whose own name means "bearer
of Christ", would pen his own words about that land.
"it was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me)
the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. . . .
There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit,
because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy
Scriptures. . . For the execution of the journey . . . I did not make
use of intelligence, mathematics or maps. It is simply the fulfillment
of what Isaiah had promised (Isa 49:1,6). . . No one should fear to
undertake any task in the name of our Savior, if it is just and if the
intention is purely for His holy service."
After land was sighted at 2:00 a.m. on an August morning in 1492 and the
landing party came ashore after daylight, the first act committed was
that of Columbus and his two captains kneeling before God with
thanksgiving on the shores of what was to be known as San Salvador ("Our
Savior").
That pattern repeated itself later on the West Indies and virtually
everywhere he went in discovering new territory.
It is not surprising that not only did the historians of Columbus' day
omit these facts and distort the actual accounts, but the revisionists of
our day, beginning back in the 1930's, have done the same thing. All we
hear today about Columbus is the way he ravaged and raped the people of
their innocence and their land of its riches.
OUR NATION'S BIRTH:
The story of Columbus and his grandfather was played out in actuality in
the formation of our nation.
1. The Pilgrims: Captain John Woodlief led the ship "Margaret" and its
passengers from England to near Jamestown in December, 1619, with clear
instructions that "Wee ordaine the day of our ship's arrivall at the
place assigned for a plantacon (plantation) in the land of Virginia shall
be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty
God." Their first act upon landing was to carry out that instruction at
what became known as the "Berkeley Hundred" plantation.
Captain Christopher ("Christ-Bearer") Jones, on September 6, 1620,
embarked from England on the ninety-foot-long Mayflower with a group of
Christians seeking complete religious freedom in the new land. Dropping
anchor in Provincetown Harbor, the weary and malnourished group came
ashore near where Plymouth Rock rests. After a harsh winter during which
nearly one half of the 103 original passengers died, Chief Squanto
befriended them and taught them skills of crop raising, resulting in a
prosperous Spring and Summer.
Governor William Bradford issued the following proclamation that Fall.
"inasmuch as our great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest
. . . and has made the forests to abound with game, and the sea with fish
and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the
savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us
freedom to worship God accourding to the dictates of our own conscience;
now, I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your
wives and little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between
the ours of 9 and 12 in the daytime, on Thursday, November ye 29th of the
year of our Lord 1623, and the third year since ye Pilgrims lande . . .
there to listen to ye pastor, and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God
for all His blessings."
2. The Founding of our Nation: In 1776, after identifying 27 violations
of Biblical principles of which England was guilty, the colonial leaders
declared independence, and addressed and incorporated those 27 Biblical
principles in the Declaration of Independence. Few people are aware that
this most sacred of all human documents in the United States is actually
a treatise on these Biblical priniciples.
Of the 55 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, 53 were
(contrary to the ACLU, the People for the American Way, and others)
active members of local churches.
James Madison said, "We've staked our future on our ability to follow the
Ten Commandments with all our hearts!"
Noah Webster, writer of the first dictionary, could spontaneously quote
scripture, verse after verse, chapter after chapter.
George Washington said, "You can't have national morality apart from
religious principle."
During his first year as president, and because of national peace and the
ratification of the U.S. Constitution, he also proclaimed a day of
thanksgiving, for, as He said, "... the signal and manifold mercies, and
the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and
conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union,
and plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational
manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of
Government for our safety and happiness."
3. The Development of Our Nation:
Abraham Lincoln, after a bloody year of war punctuated by the battles at
Gettysburg and Vicksburg, said in 1863, "It is the duty of nations as
well as of men to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God;
to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with
assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and
to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and
proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the
Lord.
"We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subject
to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justify fear
that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be
a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins; to the needful
end of our national reformation as a whole people?
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have
been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in
numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have
forgotten God! We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in
peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly
imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings
were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated
with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the
necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God
that made
us.
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly,
reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice,
by the whole American people...."
I could go on for pages, documenting the Judeo-Christian origins of this
nation. The facts are there.
However, in the last fifty to sixty years, we have progressively drifted
from these spiritual moorings and are on the verge of eminently crashing
on the rocky shores of the land of "used to be" ---- the land inhabited
by the descendants of past Godly nations.
We have made the identical mistake other nations have made. We are
following the very course repeated time and again by Israel in the Old
Testament.
And, God is about to repeat His response ---- only this time it's going
to be on us.
My dear friend, history is about to repeat itself again, and, frankly,
either the Church doesn't see it, or it doesn't care, or it doesn't think
it can do anything about it.
OUR NATION'S PURPOSE:
You can say what you will, but I am convinced that the primary purpose
for America's conception and birth was NOT that there could be religious
freedom for these pilgrims from Europe, (most of them already had
considerable such freedom), but that there would be a place ---- a
platform ---- from which the Gospel could be presented to the world.
Three verses of scripture are heavy on my heart ---- they drive Jo Ann
and me daily, especially as it pertains to our ministry of encouragement
to men and women in vocational ministry, to churches hungry for revival,
and to our overseas ministry, especially in eastern Europe.
1. Psalm 2:1-12, especially verse 8: "Ask of Me, and I will surely give
the nations as Thine inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy
possession." I believe this is the Father's promise to the Lord Jesus
Christ, His Son. It is in God's heart to give the nations of the world
to His son as His inheritance. Why is it not in ours? There are some
serious issues here that need to be ---- yes, must be addressed ---- and
one day will be addressed.
2. Psalm 67:1-7, especially verse 7: "God blesses us, that all the ends
of the earth may fear Him." I am absolutely convinced that the primary
reason God has prospered America for 222 years is in order that all the
tribes and nations of the earth will come to fear Him. There is no other
reason for our bounty and blessings.
Here we sit, the most democratic and free country in the world, with less
than 20% of all the Christians of the world in our population, yet over
80% of the Christian wealth of the world in our pockets, and all we can
do is sit around and play church, condemning all the evil, doing almost
nothing to change our nation back to what it should be, and spend much of
our time figuring out just when Christ is going to come and take us out
of here, while God is trying to get us to stay here and get the job done,
so Christ can then indeed return. We don't even realize that we are
actually hindering His return by our own lethargy over the needs around
us and our selfish infatuation with the second coming of Christ.
We should be ashamed!
We should be broken hearted!
But we're not.
Some of the smallest countries in the world are seeing the outpouring of
God's blessing and power in far greater proportion that we are. In spite
of the "light sprinkles" of revival rain that are indeed falling in
selected areas, and in spite of some great movements of God that have
risen up primarily outside the organized church, the church is a far cry
from what God intended it to be after more than 200 years in a free
society. There are scores upon scores of places around the world that
are not only experiencing the refining fire and reviving breath of God,
but are also sending out more missionaries and making greater sacrifices
than we are in this most blessed of all nations.
Would you believe that countries like South Korea, Austria, England, and
others are sending missionaries to these shores? God knows we need them,
but how tragic that it is so necessary!
3. Revelation 5:9: "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy art Thou
to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst
purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and
people and nation." Those 24 elders knew full well the fulfillment of
God's promise to His Son, and they knew nobody deserved the praise and
glory and honor other than Jehovah God Himself.
But we apparently don't.
Why is that?
IN CONCLUSION:
Let me know what you think.
In the meantime, I'll continue tomorrow by sharing some things about our
nation's current plight.
I know this is a terrible way to end a letter designed to encourage you,
but that's the best I can do ---- especially at past 11:00 p.m. Sunday
night.
Please be assured, my dear friend, that my greatest desire is that your
hope will be firmly settled in Jesus Christ, that your vision will be
wholly from God, and that your service will be exclusively empowered by
the Holy Spirit. If you and I ---- and every other minister of the
Gospel ---- will set our own spiritual houses in order to these truths,
then it is not too late.
However, if we do not, . . . . . .
In Christ's Compelling Love,
Bob Tolliver
Copyright July, 1998. All rights reserved.
Life Unlimited Ministries
[email protected]
Ph: 417-275-4854.
Fax: 417-275-4855