The idea that WE THE PEOPLE represents a new god will prove difficult for many readers. Let me defer to the inescapable truths of government and religion as presented by R.J. Rushdoony. Note his second point particularly:
- Law is in every culture religious in origin.
- The source of law is the god of that society.
- In any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion.
- No disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society.
- There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion.3
Let me elaborate upon these points one at a time.
Point #1: “Law is in every culture religious in origin.” There is no such thing as non-religious or morally neutral laws. All laws reflect a society’s morality, and are therefore religious in both origin and nature. Because there is no morality outside Yahweh’s morality, as codified in His commandments, statutes, and judgments, any legislation not in agreement with Yahweh’s law is legalized immorality.
Point #2: “The source of law is the god of that society.” Consider the following definition of “theocracy”:
[A] form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme ruler….4
Not all theocracies are Christian. Some are Jewish, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, and some are secular. There is no escaping theocracy. A government’s laws reflect its morality, and the source of that morality (or, more often than not, immorality) is its god. It is never a question of theocracy or no theocracy, but whose theocracy. The American people, by way of their elected officials, are the source of the Constitutional Republic’s laws. Therefore, the Constitutional Republic’s god is WE THE PEOPLE.
People recoil at the idea of a theocracy’s morality being forced upon them, but because all governments are theocracies, someone’s morality is always being enforced. This is an inevitability of government. The only question is which god, theocracy, laws, and morality will we choose to live under?
The rejection of one god leads inescapably to the choice of another god. If a person, group, court, etc. establishes himself as the final arbiter of right and wrong, then he/they have assumed the attributes of a god. Thus, he/they are theocratic…. Democracy can become theocratic if absolute power is given to the people. …vox populi, vox dei, “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” Those who promote a particular worldview and want to see it implemented socially, educationally, politically, and judicially have elevated the majority to the status of gods….
One assumes the mantle of deity when he sets himself up as the ultimate authority. [as in Article 6’s claim that the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land”] It’s the attributes of deity that makes someone god-like. In the eighteenth century, the French revolutionaries declared “reason” to be the goddess of their new state religion. Nineteenth century France was spoken of as “goddess France” by patriotic figures like Victor Hugo and Charles Maurras. Hegel, the philosophical patron saint of communism, wrote that “the State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth…. We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth…. The State is the march of God through the world.”5
Because “…there is none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4)6, there can be only one true theocracy. All other governments represent some form of humanism. The United States Constitutional Republic is one of many governments in which the people have dethroned Yahweh as the god of their society. All governments are theocentric – that is, god-centered. This is true of a government of, by, and for Yahweh, and it is true of a government of, by, and for the people. Herein we find the battle so often described in the Bible – the war between Yahweh’s will and man’s will:
It is better to trust in YHWH7 than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in YHWH than to put confidence in princes. (Psalm 118:8-9)
The first three words of the Preamble are an expression of this eternal conflict. In Marbury v. Madison, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshal acknowledged that the Constitutional Republic is fixated on the gratification of its god:
That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric had been erected.8
Conversely, Christians9 are fixated on pleasing Yahweh:
…we … exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that … you ought to walk [to] please God…. (1 Thessalonians 4:1, NASB)
Ron Paul, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate and one of today’s greatest defenders of the Constitution, declared, “The idea of a theocracy very much annoys me.”10 But, the fact is, a theocracy does not annoy Paul at all – at least not the theocracy of WE THE PEOPLE. He, like many Americans, is only offended by Yahweh’s theocracy. One has to wonder if Paul wasn’t influenced by a symposium of evangelical leaders, who in 1985, said nearly the same thing:
…evangelicals … desire a nation of Christians, but they are opposed to a Christian government that mandates “Christian” laws simply because they are Christian.11
Talk about a house divided against itself. Christians have somehow been convinced that unregenerate men with their imperfect laws and unrighteous judgments can do a better job of governing than can regenerated men with Yahweh’s perfect laws and altogether righteous judgments. G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”12
Point #3: “In any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion.” This means that with any change of law an explicit or implicit change of gods occurs as well. More on this later.
Point #4: “No disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society.” Every society’s government is religious in nature because all law is religious in origin and reflects the god of that government. There is no escaping this reality. Ironically, in his book The Nature of the American System, Rushdoony attempted to escape this reality as it pertained to the Constitution by claiming the federal government was neither secular nor Christian. He alleged it was religiously neutral, even though later he declared neutrality impossible:
Neutralism is a myth…. No person or institution possesses the ability to be neutral…. The alternative to “In God we trust” is “In man we trust,”…. The presuppositions of all of man’s thinking are inescapably religious, and they are never neutral.13
If the Constitutional Republic is not Christian, what is it? It has to be Judaic, Islamic, Buddhist, some other specific religious orientation, or secular (religiously humanistic).
Point #5: “There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion.” All law systems are intolerant of laws inconsonant with their own. Rushdoony elaborated, “Every law-system must maintain its existence by hostility to every other law-system and to alien religious foundations or else it commits suicide.”14 This was essentially stated in the following Supreme Court cases, so often peddled by Constitutionalists:
"...a law repugnant to the Constitution is void."
Marbury v. Madison, (1803)15
An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no right; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.
Norton v. Shelby County, (1886)16
A Change of Religion
You cannot have any civil government anywhere in the world without an establishment of religion…. All laws represent morality…. So it is inescapable that when you enact a law you are enacting your moral and religious faith.17
How does this statement reflect upon the Constitution? History demonstrates that during the 17th and early 18th centuries, Yahweh’s law governed the majority of what was then America. The following are but two of the documents attesting that early Americans formed Christian governments designed around Yahweh’s law18:
The Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Compact, 1638
We whose names are underwritten do hereby solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a Bodie Politick and as He shall help, will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given in His Holy Word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.
Fundamental Agreement of the Colony of New Haven, Connecticut, 1639
Agreement; We all agree that the scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in duties which they are to perform to God and to man, as well in families and commonwealth as in matters of the church; so likewise in all public officers which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, we will, all of us, be ordered by the rules which the scripture holds forth; and we agree that such persons may be entrusted with such matters of government as are described in Exodus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 1:13 with Deuteronomy 17:15 and 1 Corinthians 6:1, 6 & 7….
The 1639 agreement makes no reference to any other government as its source of authority:
It is worthy of note that this document contains none of the conventional references to a “dread sovereign” or a “gracious King,” nor the slightest allusion to the British or any other government outside of Connecticut itself….19
Its longevity is also remarkable:
…Thomas Hooker, founded the colony of Connecticut.… In 1639, he wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which many consider to be the first full-fledged written constitution in history. Whereas other documents in the Colonies were later modified or replaced, the Connecticut Constitution remained intact up to and well beyond the adoption of the national Constitution.20
Almost as impressive as New Haven’s agreement are the testimonies to it and other similar documents:
John Clark Ridpath, History of the United States, 1874
In June of 1639 the leading men of New Haven held a convention in a barn, and formally adopted the Bible as the constitution of the State. Everything was strictly conformed to the religious standard. The government was called the House of Wisdom…. None but church members were admitted to the rights of citizenship.21
Richard Mosier identified the Puritan Bible as not “only the holy restored word of God, but a constitutional document of the Protestant movement.”22 Note, an American constitution existed almost 150 years prior to the United States Constitution.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
They exercised the rights of sovereignty; they named their magistrates, concluded peace or declared war, made police regulations, and enacted laws as if their allegiance was due only to God. Nothing can be more curious and, at the same time more instructive, than the legislation of that period; it is there that the solution of the great social problem which the United States now presents to the world is to be found.
Amongst these documents we shall notice, as especially characteristic, the code of laws promulgated by the little State of Connecticut in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and … they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ. “Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord,” says the preamble of the Code, “shall surely be put to death.” This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death….23
America was exalted in the eyes of the world because of her applied righteousness, embodied in Yahweh’s perfect law. Since 1788, when the United States of America, as a nation, stopped following Yahweh’s laws and began following the laws of WE THE PEOPLE, our legislation has ceased providing righteous instruction to others. Instead, the rest of the world now holds America in disdain. If America hopes to regain her favored status in the eyes of the world, she must return to her original Constitution.
McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, America’s most popular school book in the 1800s, also testified to America’s early form of theocratic government:
Their form of government was as strictly theocratical insomuch that it would be difficult to say where there was any civil authority among them distinct from ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Whenever a few of them settled a town, they immediately gathered themselves into a church; and their elders were magistrates, and their code of laws was the Pentateuch…. God was their King; and they regarded him as truly and literally so….24
William McGuffey was undoubtedly influenced by the writings of renowned early American preachers such as John Cotton:
The famous John Cotton, the first minister of Boston … earnestly pleaded “that the government might be considered as a theocracy, wherein the Lord was judge, lawgiver and king; that the laws which He gave Israel might be adopted….” At the desire of the court, he compiled a system of laws founded chiefly on the laws of Moses….25
John W. Welch commented on the outstanding influence Yahweh’s law had in Colonial America:
Indeed, it has rightly been concluded that “the ideal polity of early Puritan New England was thought to comprehend divine intentions as revealed in Mosaic law.” The rule of law began, not with the rules of man but with the rules of God. One Puritan document directly states, “[T]he more any law smells of man, the more unprofitable,” and thus, it asserts, the only proper laws were in fact “divine ordinances, revealed in the pages of Holy Writ and administered according to deductions and rules gathered from the Word of God.”26
Considerable differences existed between Christendom of the 1600s and early 1700s and Christianity of the late 1700s:
Compared with Americans of the 18th or the 19th century, the Puritans surely were theology-minded…. Yet what really distinguished them in their day was that they were … interested in … the application of theology to everyday life, and especially to society.27
The Ten Commandments were, of course, in the foreground of their thinking, but the Bible as a whole was the law of their life. For answers to their problems they drew as readily on Exodus, Kings, or Romans, as on the less narrative portions of the Bible.28
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay said that they started from “the lawes of God” rather than the laws of Englishmen.29
The most dramatic and most obvious [changes in Puritan laws from the laws of England] were in the list of capital crimes. …including idolatry (violations of the First Commandment), blasphemy, man-stealing (from Exod. 21.16), adultery with a married woman, perjury with intent to secure the death of another, the cursing of a parent by a child over 16 years of age (Exod. 21.17), the offense of being a “rebellious son” (Deut. 21.20.21)…. These were clear cases where the laws of Scripture were allowed to override the laws of England.30
Late eighteenth-century Christianity, on the other hand, was quite different from the Christendom of early America:
…[by] the mid-18th century … Puritanism was all but dead.31
This means that government based upon the law of Yahweh was also all but dead.
Theirs [late eighteenth-century man’s view of Christianity] was not a violent passion inspiring men to rebuild Zion … but a quietly pervasive sentiment which suffused the institutions of the colony with a mild aura of divine sanction…. The responsibilities of governing New England also dulled the edge of dogma so that by the late 17th century they had begun those prudent compromises which would produce 18th-century Congregationalism and 19th-century Unitarianism. Anglicanism in Virginia, for similar reasons, was destined to be even more practical and compromising than it had been in England.32
It is hard to name a leader of the Revolution, including such men as George Washington, James Madison, Edmund Pendleton, and Patrick Henry, who were not securely within the fold of the [Anglican] Church.33
The framers of the Constitution, although mostly churchgoers, were not the same cut of churchmen as those of the 17th century. The churches of the late 18th century and the churches of the 17th century were radically different. The former were interested in building the kingdom of God based upon the perfect law of Yahweh. The latter were hardly interested in Yahweh’s law at all, which certainly contributed to the absence of quotations from, or even references to, the laws of Yahweh in the Constitution. The Federalist Papers and the four volumes of notes from the Constitutional Convention are also conspicuously deficient in Bible references. God is mentioned twice in the Federalist Papers, and then only offhand:
Where a hundred years before every case, whether civil, political or criminal, was decided by a reference to the Old or New Testament … in “The Federalist” the Bible and Christianity, as well as the clergy, are passed over as having no bearing upon the political issues being discussed. …The eighteenth-century conception of Greco-Roman Paganism has completely supplanted Puritanic Judaism [Hebraism34].35
The theological differences between the worldviews of the Puritans and the constitutional framers are striking:
The idea that the state was beyond the reach of the claims of the Bible was … abhorrent to the Puritan…. In the Scriptures they found the origin, the form, the functions and the power of the state and human government. This resort to the Scriptures as the exclusive norm for human political organization and activity clearly differentiated them from both the Roman Catholics and that rising group of secularist writers [particularly in the 1700s] who were finding the origin of the state and the source of its powers in a vaguely defined source known as the social compact or contract. In the Puritan view of life man could no more create the government under which he would live and endow it with its just powers than he could effect his own salvation….
Basic in Puritan political thought is the doctrine of divine sovereignty. The earthly magistrate … was a minister of God under common grace for the execution of the laws of God among the people at large, for the maintenance of law and order, and for so ruling the state…. In Puritan political theory the magistrate derived his powers from God and not from the people….36
The whole conception of government that would later be proclaimed by John Locke and others, which placed the sovereignty in the hands of the people and which found the origin of government in a human compact was utterly unknown to the Puritans. They did not believe in a government by the people…. [They sensed] that in the democratic philosophy, with its emphasis upon the sovereignty of the people, lay a fundamental contradiction to the biblical doctrine of the sovereignty of God. They clearly perceived that democracy was the fruit of humanism and not the Reformation concept.37
[Richard] Mosier has well observed that this [late 17th-century] revolutionary age demanded that both the absolute God and the absolute king must “henceforth rule by the consent of the governed. The God of Puritanism, stripped of His antique powers, had no recourse but to enter as a weakened prince into the temple of the individualism and there to seek refuge.” This sovereignty which he once claimed, and was accorded by the Puritans, was now claimed by man himself. This was the philosophical and theological outlook of many of the leaders of the Revolution. …[T]heirs was a secular political philosophy and … its roots are to be found in the Enlightenment in general, and in Deism in particular. Most of the Revolutionary leaders desired to retain the Christian ethic, but to separate it from the biblical revelation and to find a new basis for it in natural law.38
Mosier had more to say regarding America’s most significant paradigm shift, to date:
The waning of Puritanism and the rise of religious rationalism, by loosening the bonds of the ancient faith, had thus prepared the colonial mind for the revolutionary ideas of the eighteenth century…. The religion of reason triumphed over the waning Puritanism, and [allegedly] drew from a weakened God a bill of inalienable rights; while the piety which had once inspired the indomitable Puritan fled into the arms of evangelical religion and bred a sentimental religion of the heart.39
The sovereignty of man … became the rallying cry of republican religion, bringing to a final point of disintegration the forces of Puritanism.40
The “world” created by America’s original Christian forefathers was turned upside down by the Constitutionalists in the late 1700s:
For the Constitution not to mention religion at all represented a rejection … an extremely controversial decision not to make the United States a Christian Nation. It wasn’t contemporary liberals who upset the founders’ religious ideas about the United States, it was the founders who upset the Puritans’ ideas.41
According to Abraham Lincoln, constitutionalism is a religion itself, demanding absolute devotion and obedience to the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof:
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. …to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; –let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap –let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; –let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.42
Most Americans, non-Christians and Christians alike, have done precisely that.
Constitution vs. Constitution
The United States … was conceived in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 … [and] was … born [when] the document was ratified.”
Warren Burger, Supreme Court Chief Justice43
The constitutional form of government established in the late 1700s was not practiced in the 1600s or early 1700s. A change of law and government occurred in the late 1700s, not only from English rule, but also from the Colonies’ Biblically based governments. From that moment on, the nation that had been predominately Christian became progressively secular and humanistic:
A nation’s religious foundation can be determined by looking at its economic system, judicial pronouncements, educational goals, and taxing policy. Culture is “religion externalized.” Look at the nation’s art and music, and there you will find its religion. Read its books and newspapers. Watch its television programs. The outgrowth of civilization will be present on every page and in every program…. While it might be beneficial to look at the creeds of the churches, the actions of the people who subscribe to the creeds are a more accurate barometer of what the people really believe.44
The change of law and government in the late 1700s brought about a change of religion, and because the former law and government represented Yahweh, both He and His law were necessarily discarded for the new god and its laws. This is difficult to accept, especially since we have incessantly been told the constitutional framers were such godly men.
Today’s Christian Constitutionalists are quick to share the framers’ Christian-sounding quotations. Hundreds of books, replete with such quotations, have been compiled, and no one can question that many of them often said the right things regarding Yahweh, His Son, Christianity, and occasionally even His law. But such statements mean nothing by themselves. Thomas Jefferson made Christian-sounding statements, but no one would argue that he was a Christian. Politicians are famous for saying the right things. Two-hundred years from now, Christian historians will be using Christian-sounding statements from Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama to buttress declarations that these men were great Christians.
Constitutionalists would do well to heed Job’s young friend Elihu who declared that “great men are not always wise,” which he preceded with the test of greatness: “the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding” (Job 32:8-9). The framers failed the test of greatness when they disregarded Yahweh’s inspiration by ignoring and failing to instate His law:
…[Yahweh] shall come as an eagle against the house of YHWH, because they have transgressed the covenant, and trespassed against my law…. Israel hath cast off the thing that is good; the enemy shall pursue him. They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not…. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind…. I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. (Hosea 8:1-12)
Some people seem to believe the only thing necessary to prove one’s Christianity is an invocation of God. This erroneous and dangerous assumption opens the door to political abuse in the name of Christ and the Christian sanction of ungodly actions – including those of the constitutional framers.
What is required for the Constitution to be a truly Christian covenant?
…two key elements of any covenant are specification of the parties to the covenant and the details of administration. First, as we have seen, if a national organic document is in fact a covenant with God, then it must state this clearly in the preamble. A covenant, as opposed to a contract, includes God as party to the agreement.
Second, there must be a delineation of how the covenant is to be administered. If a covenant is made with God, then it must spell out the nature of the authority to whom God has delegated administration of the covenant. Who represents the people before God? If these two elements are missing, it is impossible to claim that the document represents a covenant with God. In fact, if these elements are absent or distorted, it is possible to argue that the document [the Constitution] represents a national break from covenant with God, since this covenant had been established earlier in the Mayflower Compact and the various colonial charters.45
Government [covenanted with Yahweh] is not, therefore, a “social contract” as taught by Locke, Rousseau, and Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Civil government is established by the sovereign will of God, not the “consent of the governed.”46
Recognizing the Bible and Christianity’s influence upon society is not the same as legislating and adjudicating according to Yahweh’s law. One only needs to look at the record to know there has been a dearth of the latter since the Constitution’s ratification. In order to conclude the Constitution is a Christian document, today’s Christian Constitutionalists have severed the framers’ words from their actions. To date, the battle between Christians and secularists over the Constitution has been a war of quotations – and there are plenty to go around for both sides, often from the same framers. Take James Madison for example:
Educated by Presbyterian clergymen, Madison, as a student at Princeton (1769-1772), seems to have developed a “transient inclination” to enter the ministry. In a 1773 letter to a college friend he made the zealous proposal that the rising stars of his generation renounce their secular prospects and “publicly … declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ.” Two months later Madison renounced his spiritual prospects and began the study of law. The next year he entered the political arena, serving as a member of the Orange County Committee of Safety. Public service seems to have crowded out of his consciousness the previous imprints of faith. For the rest of his life there is no mention in his writings of Jesus Christ nor of any of the issues that might concern a practicing Christian. Late in retirement there are a few enigmatic references to religion, but nothing else….
Scholars, nevertheless, have tried to construct from this unyielding evidence a religious identity for Madison. He is such a commanding figure in the founding period’s controversies over religion’s relation to government that a knowledge of his personal religious convictions is sought as a key to his public posture on church-state issues. The very paucity of evidence has permitted a latitude of interpretation in which writers have created Madison in the image of their own religious convictions. To Christian scholars Madison is a paragon of piety; to those of a more secular bent he is a deist.47
The only means of determining whether the framers were Christians is to compare their actions to the Word of God:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity [anomian – lawlessness]. (Matthew 7:21-23)
This is a perfect description of the constitutional framers. Although some of them claimed to be Christians, they openly practiced lawlessness. For example, David Barton (founder and president of WallBuilders) and others laud Benjamin Rush, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, as one of America’s great Christian founding fathers, and yet in “An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments Upon Criminals, and Upon Society” (which promoted the unbiblical prison system and rejected Yahweh’s punitive system of public executions and restitution), Rush lauded capricious reason as the means of determining what is right:
Reason, tho’ deposed and oppressed, is the only just sovereign of the human mind. Discoveries … have derived their credit and usefulness only from their according with the decisions of reason…. These things are … the secret voice of God himself, speaking in the human heart….48
The framers nowhere attributed the inspiration for any specific article or amendment in the Constitution to the Bible or the laws of Yahweh. After reviewing over 2,200 political writings published between 1760 and 1805, David S. Lutz and Charles S. Hyneman came to some very interesting conclusions regarding the Bible’s influence upon the constitutional framers and others of that period. Lutz admitted that while the “book … most frequently cited by Americans during the founding era [was] … the Book of Deuteronomy, … the Bible’s prominence disappears [during the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate over the Constitution],” and “the Federalists’ inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant.”49 Between the 1770s and ‘80s, Biblical quotations decreased among both Federalists and Anti-Federalists, while Enlightenment and Whig citations increased.
The Constitution was inspired, not by Yahweh, but by a small group of men claiming to represent their new god WE THE PEOPLE. Patrick Henry (who refused to be one of Virginia’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention, claiming he smelled a rat) later insisted the conventioneers had no right to claim they represented the people. Nevertheless, by their silence, the people gave their assent, as did those in 2 Samuel 24 when King David pursued an unlawful census. David did not take the brunt of Yahweh’s wrath, but rather the people who allowed David to proceed with the census.
Judgment of the people for the transgressions of their rulers is found time and again in the Bible (2 Kings 24:1-4, 2 Chronicles 28:19, etc.). The people are ultimately responsible. They were responsible when the constitutional conventioneers chose a new god, and we will continue to be responsible until we rise up, repent of our forefathers’ sins, overthrow WE THE PEOPLE’s constitution, and return to Yahweh’s constitution.
Internal Evidence
Humanism is the placing of Man at the center of all things and making him the measure of all things.
Francis Schaeffer50
The Preamble is arguably the most brazen human claim to sovereignty ever written. If you stop and think about its presumptuous claims, you will see that this new constitution is humanism of the rankest sort:
…[Yahweh’s] law is slacked [ignored, NASB], and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth. (Habakkuk 1:4)
The framers not only compromised Yahweh’s law, they completely ignored it, and, in many instances, legislated against it (and the wicked have compassed the righteous ever since). With such a significant Christian beginning in the 1600s, how can we have strayed so far from our Christian roots? The answer is simple: the framers’ hearts were divided (Hosea 10:2). Consequently, Yahweh’s law was slacked, and once that door was unbolted, there was nothing to stop the continuing compromise, especially when Christians herald the very document that started them down the pernicious road on which we find ourselves today.
Because America has sown the wind by transgressing Yahweh’s Covenant and trespassing His law, she is now reaping the whirlwind. Thanks to countless cases like O.J. Simpson’s and Stella Liebeck’s (the infamous McDonald’s coffee spiller), both Christians and non-Christians alike are wondering what has happened to justice.
Therefore, the law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore, justice comes out perverted. (Habakkuk 1:4, NASB)
When the wicked surround the righteous, justice is eventually sacrificed either on the altar of public opinion or the altar of political correctness. What little justice the Constitution provides is negated by its unrighteousness.
Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously…. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs. (Habakkuk 1:5-6)
Today’s heathens possess dwelling places that do not, by covenant, belong to them. They hold these high places due to the abdication of the true possessors. Christians have given the kingdom away as the result of doctrines promoting 1) an exclusively future kingdom, 2) the kingdom in heaven rather than the kingdom of heaven, 3) the idea that “this world is not my home,” 4) the irrelevance of Yahweh’s law under the New Covenant, and 5) a nearly absolute obedience to any and all government authority.
…their judgment [justice, NASB] and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. …imputing this his power unto his god. (Habakkuk 1:7, 11)
The New American Standard Bible renders verse 7 more accurately: “their justice and authority originate with themselves.” The Preamble declares that “WE THE PEOPLE,” for various reasons, do “ordain and establish this constitution….” In Deuteronomy 12:8, Moses warned, “Ye shall not do after … whatsoever is right in [every man’s] own eyes.” Constitutionalism is a collective, agreed-upon form of humanism. By their silence, and thus their acquiescence to this new form of government, the American people claimed their authority, not from Yahweh, but from themselves.
In one of his many arguments on behalf of the Constitution, Madison revealed where ultimate power resides in a Constitutional Republic:
As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power … it is from them that the constitutional charter under which the [power of the] several branches of government … is derived.51
Alexander Hamilton stated it similarly:
The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.52
This emphasis on the people by both the federalists and anti-federalists alike is evidence that they had lost sight of Yahweh and His ultimate authority. Such an emphasis on the people cannot be found anywhere in the Bible. George Washington (who presided over the Constitutional Convention) confirmed this self-originating authority in his “Farewell Address”:
This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and support.53
The Constitutional Republic’s fifth president, James Monroe, concurred:
The people, the highest authority known in our system, from whom all our institutions spring and on whom they depend, formed it.54
John Adams confessed to the same humanism regarding the States’ Constitutions:
It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [the establishment of the States’ Constitutions] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven … it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.... Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone….55
Following are samplings from some of the State Constitutions:
…all power is inherent in the people and all free governments are founded on their authority. (Pennsylvania, 1790, Article IX, Section II)
...no authority shall, on any pretense whatever, be exercised over the people or members of this State, but such as shall be derived from and granted by them [the people]. (New York, 1777, Article I)
…all political power is vested in and derived from the people only. (North Carolina, 1776, “Declaration of Rights,” Article I)
…power is inherent in them [the people], and therefore all just authority in the institutions of political society is derived from the people. (Delaware, 1792, Preamble)
All power residing originally in the people and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority – whether Legislative, Executive, or Judicial – are their substitutes and agents and are at all times accountable to them. (Massachusetts, 1789, part I, Article V)
A return to the States’ Constitutions and the Articles of Confederation will not solve America’s propensity for humanism.
In his repudiation of the National Association for the Amendment of the Constitution [to recognize “the rulership of Jesus Christ and the supremacy of the divine law”], Horace Greeley wrote, “Almighty God is not the source of authority and power in our government; the people of The United States are.”56
Establishing Justice
According to Habakkuk, not only did the Chaldeans’ authority originate with themselves, but so did their justice. And so does the justice of WE THE PEOPLE: “WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice….” What an audacious assertion. Only Yahweh is just, and only He can establish justice:
Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy [Yahweh’s] throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. (Psalm 89:14)
In a lecture entitled The Common Law, Constitutional Attorney Herb Titus claimed that the Preamble’s assertion that WE THE PEOPLE established justice did not authorize “the national government to define justice.”57 However, because the Constitution never declares Yahweh’s law the standard for determining justice, the definition of justice has always been left to the federal and state governments. Instead of confirming the justice inherent in Yahweh’s morality and already established in His perfect law, the framers’ declaration implies that justice had yet to be established. This (and other numerous confirmations throughout the Constitution) reveals they preferred their own justice to the justice of Yahweh.
Anytime autonomous man attempts to establish justice outside Yahweh’s moral laws, the result is always injustice. In Isaiah 5:20, this transposition is depicted as calling good evil and evil good. The word “autonomous” comes from two Greek words: auto meaning self and nomos meaning law. The word, which literally means “self-law,” is just another way of describing humanism and, in this instance, constitutionalism.
In a lecture entitled “God, Man, Legal Education & Law,” Titus summarized by pointing to the source of justice. He seemed oblivious that his statement condemned the Constitution he promotes:
The ministry of justice, it is the very essence of law. It is the very purpose of law to administer justice…. And to do so, one must have laws fixed as to time, uniform as to person or situation, and universal. Without God as the source of law, without God as the source of truth, it is impossible to do justice.58
Earlier in the same lecture, he asked and answered the following question: “What’s the problem with building a legal system based upon man’s reason even though it might be man’s best reason? [The answer] is that man’s reason changes.”59 And, yet, after admitting to this problem, Titus champions a legal system based upon man’reason rather than Yahweh’s law.
Justice is defined as “the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness.”60 This is a perfect description of Yahweh and His law, particularly from the perspective found in Isaiah 33:22 and James 4:12 that there is only one lawgiver and judge. All law, righteousness, equity, morality, truthfulness, and justice originate with and emanate from Him. None of this exists outside Yahweh and His law, and it all existed long before 1787. Because the Constitution did not uphold Yahweh’s lawfulness, righteousness, and justice, it established lawlessness, unrighteousness, and injustice. Christian Constitutionalists recognize this in regard to any other false god. Their unwillingness to apply the same criterion to WE THE PEOPLE is evidence that WE THE PEOPLE is indeed a god to them.
Tribunals of Injustice
If justice be taken away, what are governments but great bands of robbers….
Augustine61
Most people recognize that today’s courts are tribunals of injustice. When the constitutional framers excluded Yahweh’s justice, they opened the door for justice to be defined however judges choose to define it. In other words, the Constitution allows justice to originate with the judges themselves. Any constitution or government formed with designs to define and establish justice of itself denies and stands opposed to the kingdom of Jesus62:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder…. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end … and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever…. (Isaiah 9:6-7)
Behold, the days come, saith YHWH, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. (Jeremiah 23:5)
Jesus’ purpose was to execute justice here on earth once His kingdom was established at His first advent. (See Chapter 2 “The Kingdom: Yesterday, Today, and Forever” for Biblical evidence that Jesus’ kingdom was established at His first advent.) The constitutional framers rejected Jesus’ government and justice in an attempt to establish their own notion of justice. But justice cannot exist outside Yahweh, and only Yahweh’s subjects, who serve Him according to His perfect laws and righteous judgments, are able to render justice:
The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment [justice, NASB]. The law of his God is in his heart…. (Psalm 37:30-31)
When the constitutional framers spoke of justice in the Preamble, they were not speaking of the justice that originates with Yahweh, but rather “justice” that originated with themselves. Otherwise, they would have followed the example of our Christian forefathers in the 1600s and early 1700s and cited, or at least mentioned, the laws of Yahweh upon which their justice was based.
A More Perfect Union
In contrast with New Haven’s 1639 Agreement (“we all agree that the scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction of government”), one of the purposes for this new Constitution was “to form a more perfect union.” What the framers had in mind was a union “more perfect” than that of the Articles of Confederation. However because the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were both based upon the imperfect laws of man, both were a far cry from the governments of the New England Colonies.
“More perfect” is not the same as perfect. Neither the framers nor the Constitution nor the union it formed were perfect. Yahweh, His knowledge, His work, His way, His will, and His law are perfect.63 Therefore, His government must also be perfect. The question we all face is whether we believe this. John Milton (1608-1674) believed Yahweh’s government exceeded those of Greece and Rome:
…the Bible doth more clearly teach the solid rules of civil government than all the eloquence of Greece and Rome.64
Milton would have certainly claimed the same regarding the United States government, particularly because the Constitutional Republic was fashioned after Roman law. What the framers believed can only be determined by their actions, and their actions make it clear they did not believe in Yahweh’s perfection. Otherwise, they, like the Colonialists, would have established a government based upon His perfect law. Instead, they were willing to settle for something more perfect, which resulted in something far less than perfect.
How about us? What are we willing to settle for? As a nation, we settled for Bill Clinton, the Bushes, and Barack Obama. Why? Because, like the Israelites in 1 Samuel 8, most Americans desire a finite flesh-and-blood president instead of the King of kings. This can only be because – despite what some may claim – they do not believe in the perfection of Yahweh, His way, His work, His will, His law, and His government. The framers and most of today’s Americans (non-Christians and Christians alike) are more like the men of Israel in 1 Samuel 8 than Gideon:
Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son also…. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: YHWH shall rule over you. (Judges 8:22-23)
Securing Liberty
As stated in the Preamble, another purpose of the Constitution is to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” From childhood, Americans are indoctrinated to believe that, thanks to the Constitution, America is the freest nation on earth:
The media … has played a key role in persuading people that we are the most free nation on earth. While this may or may not be true, most people have never considered this possibility: If all of the other nations were under 100% totalitarian dictatorships, and the United States of America was only under a 95% totalitarian dictatorship, it could still be said that “America is the most free nation on earth.” So it is a rather meaningless boast.65
Suppose it be “the best government on earth,” does that prove its own goodness, or only the badness of all other governments?66
Convinced the Constitution would fail to secure and protect liberty, Patrick Henry voiced his concerns to the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788:
…I say our privileges and rights are in danger. …the new form of Government … will … effectually … oppress and ruin the people…. In some parts of the plan before you, the great rights of freemen are endangered, in other parts, absolutely taken away…. There will be no checks, no real balances, in this Government: What can avail your specious imaginary balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances? …And yet who knows the dangers that this new system may produce: they are out of the sight of the common people: They cannot foresee latent consequences.... I see great jeopardy in this new Government.67
In contrast to the federalists’ failed predictions, this and nearly everything the anti-federalists forecast about the Constitution has come true.
Consider carefully the empty claim of the Constitution Party’s 2008 Presidential Candidate, Chuck Baldwin:
Under God, it is allegiance to the Constitution that has preserved our liberties, our peace and happiness, our security, and our very way of life. Furthermore, it is the repudiation and rejection of constitutional government that is responsible for the manner in which these very same blessings are currently being lost.68
This is an example of calling evil good and good evil or, in this instance, calling slavery freedom and freedom slavery. The liberties once enjoyed in this nation were secured in the 1600s – not the late 1700s – by means of Yahweh’s perfect law of liberty – not the Constitution:
So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever. And I will walk at liberty…. (Psalm 119:44-45)
Baldwin’s declaration that our liberty, peace, happiness, security, and way of life were provided by the Constitution “under God” does not vindicate him any more than did Aaron’s attempt to name the golden calf Yahweh in Exodus 32. Like Aaron and Baldwin, Constitutionalists are notorious for attempting to make Yahweh an accomplice to their idolatry.
And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to YHWH. …[T]hey have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 32:5, 8)
Except for occasional interference from the British kings across the Atlantic, this nation experienced its greatest liberty in the 1600s and early 1700s. From the ratification of the Constitution until now, our liberty has been whittled away. At present, we would be hard-pressed to find a nation with less liberty than the United States of America. As Pastor Mather Byles purportedly put it before the American War for Independence: “Which is better – to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?”
It is extremely difficult to convince well-fed, content, and happy Americans they are not free. But contentment has nothing to do with freedom. A slave is a slave even if he’s fat and happy. “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”69
2 Corinthians 3:17 states, “…where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” The Spirit of the Lord cannot be found in the Constitution because Yahweh and His perfect laws of liberty were flagrantly disregarded. Instead of liberty, the Constitution provided us with bondage: dishonest and reprobate legislators, ever-expanding debt, an ungodly court system, an unnecessary and inept prison system, corruption, licenses, permits, countless registrations, ungodly wars, in addition to taxes on nearly everything. None of these atrocities can occur under Yahweh’s system of law.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. (Matthew 7:16-18)
What has been the fruit of the Constitution? We have only to look at the historical record of the last 200-plus years to know the Constitution shackled us with slavery. Man-made surrogates never have and never will provide liberty. Only Yahweh, by way of Jesus’ blood-atoning sacrifice and resurrection, can free us as individuals, and only His perfect laws of liberty can free us as a nation.
Americans are noted for gullibility, and their unfounded confidence in the Constitution is no exception. Because the Preamble tells them the Constitution was ordained to secure their liberty, most Americans take it at its word, despite the fact that the first three articles of the Constitution enslave us to an ungodly congress, president, and judicial system – something the 17th- and early 18th-century Christians flourished without.
The constitutional framers could not provide their fellow Americans with liberty for the simple reason that slaves are never able to grant freedom to fellow slaves:
While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption…. (2 Peter 2:19)
The Missing God
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1:16)
The absence of any mention of Yahweh will always dog those who desperately want to make the Constitution either Biblical or Christian:
The revolutionary generation had customarily adorned its formative political documents with references to God. …But when Americans, acting as We the People in the Constitution’s preamble, invented the United States of America, they chose not to clothe their act of political creation in the language of faith. …[T]hey breathed not a syllable of piety. This fact did not go unnoticed by some citizens, who complained bitterly about the absence of any reference to God in the Constitution.70
How can a document that snubs the God of the Bible be Biblical? How can a document that ignores Christ be Christian?
That no notice whatever should be taken of that God who planteth a nation and plucketh it up at his pleasure, is an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate. Had such a momentous business been transacted by Mahometans, they would have begun, “In the name of God.” Even the savages whom we despise, setting a better example, would have paid some homage to the Great Spirit. But, from the Constitution of the United States, it is impossible to ascertain what God we worship; or whether we own a God at all….71
When the war [for Independence] was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by [Charles] Thomson the secretary [of the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1789], and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it….72
Although it is true that four or five weeks into the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin proposed “prayers imploring the assistance of heaven, and its blessing upon our deliberations, be held in this assembly,”73 his proposal did not even merit a vote.74 Franklin wrote, “The Convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.”75 This alone is an abomination to Yahweh:
…I will cut off … them that are turned back from YHWH; and those that have not sought YHWH, nor inquired for him. (Zephaniah 1:4-6)
Die-hard Constitutionalists often try to justify the framers’ failure to follow through on Franklin’s proposal with the following, taken from Madison’s Journal of the Convention, as if it excused the framers’ dereliction in seeking Yahweh’s favor and direction:
Mr. Hamilton and several others expressed their apprehensions, that, however proper such a resolution might have been at the beginning of the convention, it might at this late day, in the first place, bring on it some disagreeable animadversions [criticisms]; and in the second lead the public to believe that the embarrassments and dissensions within the Convention, had suggested this measure. It was answered by Dr. Franklin, Mr. Sherman, and others, that the past omission of a duty could not justify a further omission, that the rejection of such a proposition would expose the Convention to more unpleasant animadversions than the adoption of it; and that the alarm out of doors that might be excited for the state of things within, would at least be as likely to good as ill.
Mr [Hugh] Williamson observed, that the true cause of the omission could not be mistaken. The Convention had no funds [with which to pay a professional clergyman to come and pray each morning].76
Who cares how it would have appeared to others? Hamilton’s excuse sounds all too similar to the excuses of today’s politicians. What kind of Christian men would neglect prayer because they could not pay someone to pray for them, especially since three of the framers were active clergy?
Reverend Hugh Williamson [the same as above] was a licensed preacher of the Presbyterian Church who conducted regular church services in North Carolina. Reverend W. Samuel Johnson of Connecticut was the President of Columbia University when he was appointed to the convention. Finally, the third member of the clergy, Reverend Abraham Baldwin, was a typical colonial clergyman who combined religion and politics….77
Despite the fact that the framers did not collectively seek Yahweh either before or after Franklin’s proposal, baseless claims like the one below are common among Constitutionalists:
Our founders, who authored the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution 11 years later, were filled with an attitude of dependency on God. They looked to Him as the source of their strength and the hope of their success in all major endeavors.78
Because the framers legislated contrary to Yahweh’s morality, it is doubtful He would have paid them any heed even if they had prayed at the Convention:
Behold, YHWH’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:1-2)
Franklin’s proposal included the following:
I have lived … 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? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”79
Gary DeMar hit the proverbial nail on the head:
Franklin was not known as orthodox in his religious beliefs, but there is no doubt that he understood what made nations great…. The self-taught candlemaker’s son … knew that the key to national success was the acknowledgement that God establishes empires, and He requires that they be built in a certain way. In practical terms alone, Franklin reasoned that to exclude God in nation building is to discount long-term national success.
Without a fixed transcendent law and law-giver, law becomes the creation of the State. Any action by the State is justified because the State is God.80
Is it any wonder that the Constitutional Republic has proved such a failure?
It is said that, after the convention had adjourned, Rev. Dr. Miller, a distinguished professor in Princeton College, met Alexander Hamilton in the streets of Philadelphia, and said, “Mr. Hamilton, we are greatly grieved that the Constitution has no recognition of God or the Christian religion.” “I declare,” said Hamilton, “we forgot it!”81
Hamilton and the other framers should have considered the following admonition:
Beware that thou forget not YHWH thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes…. Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget YHWH thy God…. And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember YHWH thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget YHWH thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. (Deuteronomy 8:11-19)
To forget Yahweh is to forget His law, with consequences equally calamitous:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee … seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. (Hosea 4:6)
In 1812, in a speech to students assembled in the Yale College chapel, Pastor Timothy Dwight summed up this travesty:
The nation has offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgement of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a people, of His government, or even of His existence. The Convention, by which it was formed, never asked even once His direction, or His blessings, upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God.82
Humanist Manifesto II, written in 1973, asserts: “As non-theists, we begin with humans, not God, nature, not deity.”83
Conclusion
Idolatry – man making gods in his own image – is the epitome of stupidity. This is precisely what the constitutional framers did when they fashioned the god they christened “WE THE PEOPLE,” in whom they imputed authority and power. Isaiah 44:17 depicts idolaters futilely begging their idol, “Deliver me; for thou art my god.” Most Americans appeal to the laws of WE THE PEOPLE for deliverance rather than to the laws of Yahweh. Consider Jeremiah’s poignant warning:
…they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith YHWH … because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; but have walked after the imagination of their own heart … which their fathers taught them…. (Jeremiah 9:3-14)
This passage, by itself, denounces any contract of the people, by the people, and for the people. Idols are never surrendered easily. Like the Ephesians in Acts 19 who cried out for two hours, “Great is Diana of Ephesians!,” most Americans have been crying out for over two centuries, “Great is the Constitution of the United States!”
Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne [and compounded] their iniquities. (Lamentations 5:7)
2 Chronicles 7:14
The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see. O YHWH, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! Even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! (Habakkuk 1:1-2)
Many Americans have had similar sentiments during the last 200-plus years. Christians are incessantly claiming 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” Tragically, the very people who claim this verse fail to heed it:
He that turneth away his ear from hearing the [Yahweh’s] law, even his prayer shall be abomination. (Proverbs 28:9)
Because our prayers for national deliverance are not being answered, we have obviously failed to fulfill the requirements found in 2 Chronicles 7:14. The Constitution represents our national idolatry, and until we repent of our veneration of WE THE PEOPLE and all it represents, we cannot expect Yahweh to hear our prayers and heal our land. In fact, such a request is akin to Joshua’s prayer regarding Israel’s defeat at Ai. Following is Yahweh’s response:
And YHWH said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them … I [will not] be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against to morrow: for thus saith YHWH God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. (Joshua 7:10-13)
Until Christian Americans recognize and destroy the accursed thing in our midst, we have no reason to believe Yahweh will hear our prayers for deliverance.
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End Notes
1. YHWH (most often pronounced Yahweh) is the English transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, the principal Hebrew name of the God of the Bible. For a more thorough explanation concerning the sacred names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read online, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*
2. Gary North, Conspiracy in Philadelphia: The Broken Covenant of the U.S. Constitution (Draper, VA: Nicene Council.com, 2004) p. 322.
3. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973) pp. 4-5.
4. Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, s.v. “theocracy” (New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 2000) p. 1356.
5. Gary DeMar, “Defining Terms: Theocracy,” 26 February 2007, http://americanvision.org/1629/defining-terms-theocracy/.
6. All Scripture is quoted from the King James Version, unless otherwise noted. Portions of Scripture have been omitted for brevity. If you have questions regarding any passage, please study the text to ensure it has been properly used.
7. Where the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) – the four Hebrew characters that represent the personal name of God – has been unlawfully rendered the LORD or GOD in English translations, I have taken the liberty to correct this error by inserting YHWH where appropriate. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read online, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*
8. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137; 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803).
9. Not everyone claiming to be a Christian has been properly instructed in the Biblical plan of salvation. Mark 16:15-16; Acts 2:36-41, 22:1-16; Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 2:11-13; and 1 Peter 3:21 should be studied to understand what is required to be covered by the blood of Jesus and forgiven of your sins. For a more thorough explanation concerning baptism and its relationship to salvation, the book Baptism: All You Wanted to Know and More may be requested from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for free.
10. PBS, Bill Moyers Journal, 4 January 2008.
11. Kenneth S. Kantzer, “Summing Up: An Evangelical View of Church and State,” Christianity Today (April 1985) p. 58, quoted in Dennis Woods, Discipling the Nations: The Government Upon His Shoulder (Franklin, TN: Legacy Communications, 1996) p. 140.
12. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910) p. 48.
13. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Nature of the American System (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1965/2001) pp. 82, 87, and 88.
14. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, pp. 5-6.
15. Marbury v. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 164, 176 (1803).
16. Norton v. Shelby County, 118 US 425, 442 (1886)
17. Rousas John Rushdoony, Lecture: The U.S. Constitution Changed.
18. Because man is finite, he is imperfect. It’s not surprising that early American history provides examples of digression from Yahweh’s laws (the Salem witch trials, the Mary Dyer case, etc.) among those professing to keep them. This does not change the general intent of the early Americans to live and be ruled by Yahweh’s law. These exceptions do not reflect a failure of Yahweh’s theocracy. They reflect man’s departure from His law.
19. John Fiske, The Historical Writings of John Fiske, 12 vols. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1902) vol. 6, p. 155.
20. Mark A. Beliles, Douglas S. Anderson, Contending for the Constitution: Recalling the Christian Influence on the Writing of the Constitution and the Biblical Basis of American Law and Liberty (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 2005) p. 95.
21. John Clark Ridpath, History of the United States, 4 vols. (New York, NY: The American Book Company, 1874) vol. 1, p. 181.
22. Richard Mosier, The American Temper (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1952) p. 44.
23. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: NY: The Colonial Press, 1899) vol. 1, pp. 36-37.
24. William Holmes McGuffey, McGuffey’s Sixth Eclectic Reader (New York, NY: American Book Company, 1879) p. 225.
25. Jeremy Belknap, John Farmer, The History of New-Hampshire (Dover, NH: George Wadleigh, 1862) pp. 42-43.
26. John W. Welch, “Biblical Law in America: Historical Perspectives and Potentials for Reform,” Brigham Young University Law Review, 30 September 2002, http://www.contra-mundum.org/essays/theonomy/WEL1.pdf.
27. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1987) pp. 5-6.
28. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
29. Ibid., p. 24.
30. Ibid., p. 28.
31. Ibid., p. 6.
32. Ibid., pp. 124-25.
33. Ibid., p. 131.
34. Thomas Hall erred concerning a connection between Judaism and Puritanism. He should have used the term “Hebraism.” Judaism or Talmudism, a corrupt and blasphemous religion brought back from Babylon to Judea, has little to do with the Hebraism of the Old Covenant. God’s Covenant People: Yesterday, Today and Forever conclusively proves that Hebraism and Judaism are two different and adversarial religions. God’s Covenant People may be read online, or the book may be ordered from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $14 donation.*
35. Thomas Cumming Hall, The Religious Background of American Culture (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1930) pp. 184-85, quoted in Gary DeMar, America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, Inc., 1993/2008) pp. 83-84.
36. C. Gregg Singer, A Theological Interpretation of American History (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964) pp. 13-14.
37. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
38. Ibid., p. 35.
39. Mosier, pp. 69-72.
40. Ibid., p. 79.
41. Nicolas Lehman, The New Republic, quoted in Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966) p. 1.
42. Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions: Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838,” Abraham Lincoln Online: Speeches & Writings, http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm.
43. Warren E. Burger, Foreword, Patrick T. Conley and John P. Kaminski, eds., The Constitution and the States: The Role of the Original Thirteen in the Framing and Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1988) p. vii.
44. Gary DeMar and Peter Leithart, The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press and Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1988) p. 300.
45. Dennis Woods, Discipling the Nations: The Government Upon His Shoulder (Franklin, TN: Legacy Communications, 1996) p. 25.
46. Ibid., pp. 134-35.
47. James Hutson, “James Madison and the Social Utility of Religion: Risks vs. Rewards,” James Madison
:
Philosopher and Practitioner of Liberal Democracy, Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/hutson-paper.html
48. Benjamin Rush, “An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments Upon Criminals, and Upon Society,” read in the Society for Promoting Political Inquiries, convened at the house of His Excellency, Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, in Philadelphia, March 9, 1787, http://english2.byu.edu/facultysyllabi/KLawrence/RUSH.punishments.pdf.
49. Donald S. Lutz, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” The American Political Science Review (March 1984) pp. 189-97.
50. Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (1981), in The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, 5 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1982) vol. 5, p. 426.
51. James Madison, The Federalist, No. 46 (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888) p. 217.
52. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 22 (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888) p. 135.
53. George Washington, Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols. (New York; NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892) vol. 13, p. 297.
54. James Monroe, “Views of the President of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements,” 4 May 1822, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles20.html.
55. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865) vol. 4, pp. 292-93.
56. Horace Greeley, quoted in Robert Michael, A Concise History of American Antisemitism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005) p. 87.
57. Herb Titus, The Common Law, Lecture #2, 1998.
58. Herb Titus, “God, Man, Legal Education & Law,” Disc 1, God, Man, & Law: The Biblical Principles (Powder Springs, GA: The American Vision, 2007).
59. Ibid.
60. Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, s.v. “justice,” p. 720.
61. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, IX:4.
62. Yeshua is the English transliteration of our Savior’s given Hebrew name, with which He introduced Himself to Paul in Acts 26:14-15. (Jesus is the English transliteration of the Greek Iesous, which is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua.) Because many people are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Yeshua, I have chosen to use the more familiar Jesus in this book in order to remove what might otherwise be a stumbling block. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the sacred names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read online, or Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*
63. Matthew 5:48, Job 31:16, Deuteronomy 32:4, 2 Samuel 22:31, Romans 12:2, and Psalm 19:7.
64. John Milton, quoted in Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2005) p. 61.
65. James Bruggeman, epilogue to Christian Duty Under Corrupt Government: A Revolutionary Commentary of Romans 13:1-7, by Ted R. Weiland, 2nd ed. (Scottsbluff, NE: Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, 2006, 2nd ed.). Christian Duty Under Corrupt Government may be ordered from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $7 donation.*
66. Lysander Spooner, No Treason, No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority, http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm#.
67. Patrick Henry, Ralph Ketcham, ed., “Speeches of Patrick Henry (June 5 and 7, 1788),” The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2003, 2nd ed.) pp. 200-08.
68. Chuck Baldwin, “Save The Planet? How About Saving The Republic?,” 30 July 2008, Chuck-Wagon Email Commentary, www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2008/cbarchive_20080730.html.
69. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Otto Wenckstern, trans., Goethe’s Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science and Art (London, UK: John W. Parker and Son, 1853) p. 3.
70. Alexander M’Leod, D.D., “The Character, Causes, and Ends of the Present War” (1815), quoted in Rev. D. M’Allister, “Testimonies of Religious Defect of the Constitution,” Proceedings of the Fifth National Reform Convention to Aid in Maintaining the Christian Features of the American Government, and Securing a Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, February 4, 5, 1874, With a History of the Origin and Progress of the Movement (Philadelphia, PA: Christian Statesman Association, 1874) p. 46.
71. John M. Mason, D.D., ed. Ebenezer Mason, 4 vols., The Complete Works of John M. Mason, D.D. (New York, NY: Baker and Scribner, 1849) vol. 3, p. 53.
72. Harry Elmer Barnes, History and Social Intelligence (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) pp. 347-48.
73. Benjamin Franklin, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/benfranklin.htm.
74. Robert Yates, “Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787,” Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention 1787, Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1838 (Hawthorne, CA: Omni Publications, 1986) pp. 197-98.
75. Benjamin Franklin, quoted in William Templeton Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (London, UK: Henry Colburn, 1818, 3rd ed.) p. 195.
76. James Madison, E.H. Scott, ed., Journal of the Federal Convention (Chicago, IL: Albert, Scott & Co., 1893) p. 260.
77. Beliles, Anderson, p. 17.
78. Ibid., p. 3.
79. Benjamin Franklin, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/benfranklin.htm.
80. Gary DeMar, “Ding, Dong the Law is Dead (With Apologies to Frank Baum),” Biblical Worldview (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, March 2003) vol. 19, num. 3, pp. 3-4.
81. Benjamin F. Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, Inc., 2009, originally published 1864) pp. 296-97.
82. Timothy Dwight, quoted in Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966) pp. 105-06.
83. Humanist Manifesto II, www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II.
*In keeping with 2 Corinthians 9:7, this ministry is supported by freewill offerings. We are admonished in Matthew 10:8 that “freely ye have received, freely give.” Therefore, we will be pleased to provide you with whatever you need for whatever you can send.
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