“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” as Thomas Payne wrote, yet “we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

America’s Millennial and Z generations appear thus far not to appreciate freedom’s ‘dearness’. For all they know, freedom is free. They may soon learn the true cost of independence. Human nature does not change. It is today as it was twenty centuries ago. History, therefore, constantly repeats itself.

Using their experience with tyranny to good purpose, the 17th-century Founders established checks and balances to separate powers within a constitutional framework. They were anxious to prevent any branch of the new government from grabbing power away from the others. Biblically literate, they recognized that natural man cannot act contrary to his corrupted nature. Without God as the source of standards for governance, freedom becomes precarious.

Scripture teaches that sin carries to the third and fourth generation [1], unless broken by spiritual regeneration. The Founders placed a premium on Biblical education among youth. They doubtlessly understood that natural man acting against his corrupted nature is just as improbable as water flowing uphill, to paraphrase A.W. Pink.[2]

Secularists deny the fact that America’s Founders established the Bible as the ‘principal text’ in public education. Fisher Ames, author of the first Amendment and formulator of the Bill of Rights, warned in 1789: “We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We’re starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. … We’ve become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children containing fables and moral lessons. … We are spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text of our schools.”

Millennial and Z generations have yet to experience the consequences of losing the pitched battles taking place in America’s streets. The assertion that it is nothing more than the political fight between Democrats and Republicans creates a completely false narrative. In reality, the battle for the Soul of America involves two distinctly antagonistic religions: Secularism and Christianity. The former presumes man’s fundamental goodness, whereas the latter maintains that “man is deeply flawed in mind and will, inclined to evil, imperfect in knowledge.”[3]

As long as secularists control the cultural mountains of influence, America will continue her downward spiral. The ongoing profanation of the culture provides unequivocal testimony to that. Millennial and Z generations ultimately will either return the nation to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or face profound consequences. For, as the Hungarian theologian Adolph Saphir noted, “There is no safety in distance from God.”[4]

Unless Christians start bringing Biblical values outside of the church building into the public square, spiritual deflation and collapse is only a matter of time. America is on the verge of learning something that can be learned in no other way: “Notwithstanding all our blowing, the fire will not burn without the Lord.”[5]

And that brings us to 2018.

On entering the Promised Land, Joshua and the children of Israel learned a valuable lesson. Despite having won the land and defeating the standing armies of the Canaanites (like on Election Day 2016), “Yet much of its actual territory was still in the hands of its original inhabitants, who remained to be dispossessed. It is important to distinguish between the work that had been done by Joshua and that which still remained for Israel to do.”[6]

“There is really a deep state,” says former Speaker Newt Gingrich. “That Deep State at the Justice Department gave 97% of its donations in 2016 to Hillary Clinton. … It’s clear that you have an attitude at senior levels, not down at the local case worker, not down at the level of local offices, but in the Washington headquarters, both in the Justice Department and in the FBI … [where] the senior figures, by any plausible standard, are corrupt.”[7]

Although Trump won the presidency, formidable opposing forces still need to be overcome. What has emerged since President Trump’s Inauguration “should remind us all how closely we came to losing the country. [Between Obama and Hillary], a total disregard for the truth, lying about Benghazi, Bin Laden, and Russians.”[8]

Obama alone presents a case study in chicanery and duplicity. Running as a moderate Democrat in 2008, he renounced homosexual marriage, promised to heal racial tensions, to tackle illegal immigration, and so on. “We will try to do more,” he declared, “to speed [up] the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws.”[9]

Saying one thing and doing the opposite is called deceit. Obama weaponized the IRS [in order to badger conservative and Christian groups], the FBI, the NSC, the CIA, and the State Department. He redefined the Deep State as if it were Congress, but with the ability to simultaneously make and enforce laws. Whereas he vowed to “work across the aisle”, to be a “bridge builder”, to remedy racial animosity and restore America’s prestige abroad, he did exactly the opposite. “Hope and Change” turned into “You didn’t build that!”[10]

In light of this, it will be easy to see why Newt Gingrich before the Inauguration expressed the hope that “Trump wouldn’t lose his nerve.”

Now, God be thanked, Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand.

David Lane
American Renewal Project

 

[1] Numbers 14:18, “The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. He lays the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected – even children in the third and fourth generations.”

[2] A.W. Pink, Exposition of the Gospel of John

[3] M. Stanton Evans, The Theme Is Freedom

[4] Adolph Saphir, The Hidden Life: Thoughts on Communion with God

[5] The Complete Works of Thomas Manton

[6] A.W. Pink, Gleanings From Joshua

[7-8] Newt Gingrich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7ZNwx0cMgI

[9-10] Victor Davis Hansen, https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/origins-of-second-civil-war-globalism-tech-boom-immigration-campus-radicalism/