Please allow me to join your family and friends in wishing you a very blessed and Merry Christmas. Along with many others, I am praying that God will continue to shower His protection and provision upon our land.
As a nation, we have drifted very far from the principles upon which our country was founded. I doubt that Washington and Jefferson would even recognize what their posterity has done to what was once a constitutional republic. I am old enough to say that I don’t even recognize my country anymore. We don’t deserve God’s protective hand, that is for sure. However, as God would have spared Sodom for the sake of ten righteous souls, I am praying that there are yet enough truly righteous men and women in these United States that God will be pleased to spare us.
As we approach Christmas day, I am reminded of what John Quincy Adams said on the occasion of America’s Independence Day celebration, July 4, 1837. He said, “Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets 600 years before?”
Adams was exactly right. Contrary to the opinions of some, the birth of the United States is directly linked to the birth of the Savior. At its inception, America was a nation created by Christian men upon Christian principles. Christian thought, Christian virtue, and Christian revival laid America’s foundation as surely as there is a sun in the sky.
America has never been perfect. Nothing that man touches is. However, America was the greatest experiment in limited government and individual freedom that the world has ever known. Sadly, the powers that be are currently experimenting with the old, antiquated ideas of collectivism and globalism. Sadder still, a sizeable percentage of the American people have lost touch with their heritage and no longer seem capable of distinguishing between good and bad government. Of course, this serves the interests only of those dedicated to bad government.
I am still convinced that the hope of America is what it always was: spiritual revival. This can come only with revival preaching. The kind of preaching once heard throughout America. Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, D.L. Moody, Charles Finney, Billy Sunday kind of preaching.
I tell you this: America will never have revival listening to Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, or Bill Hybels. That’s the problem: too many Americans are looking for entertainers, cheerleaders, and motivational speakers. Not enough care anything for old fashioned, like-it-or-lump-it, hell-fire Gospel preachers. We’ve traded the cross for a circus. And, unfortunately, we are the ones swallowing the sword. But I digress too much.
From my immediate family, my church family, and my fine staff, a very Merry Christmas to all of my readers and friends throughout America. I love you. More importantly, God loved you so much He sent His only begotten Son to Bethlehem’s manger to become our Savior. Merry Christmas!
(c) Chuck Baldwin
