WHY STUDY THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE?
Is ignorance really bliss?
When I was a child, I was taught to pray the “Our Father.” I later learned this was known as the “Lord’s Prayer,” and that Jesus had “taught it” to His Disciples.
As I came across this passage in my private Bible reading, it became clear to me that many are confused about this prayer and its significant guidance to mankind.
We can find the record of Jesus “praying this prayer” in Matthew, chapter 6, verses 9-16.
I prayed this prayer many times as a youth, but I never really understood what I was praying or why I was supposed to pray it. I did not understand its meaning or significance to my life. I simply recited what I had memorized.
As an adult, and as I began my quest to know the God of the Bible, I noticed something in the verses that preceded this prayer.
In verse 7, Jesus instructed His disciples not to “use vain repetitions” in their prayer, “as the heathen.”
It struck me that I had been taught to memorize and recite (or repeat) these words that I did not understand, because Jesus had supposedly instructed His disciples to do so.
I had been ignorantly taught by those who had also been ignorantly taught to do exactly what Jesus had told them not to do.
The prayer he prayed was an example of how to pray, not what to pray.
Likewise, we live in a nation governed by a Constitution that was based on a belief system delineated in the Declaration of Independence.
Many Americans have never read the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution. If they have read them and can recite passages from them, they have often not understood their precepts.
My latest article was intended to help us focus on the meaning and intentions of the Declaration of Independence.
The Constitution is based on the precepts established in the Declaration.
I hope you will take the time to read that article and understand why our forefathers rebelled against their earthly king and why they believed this rebellion to be in faithful service to their heavenly King.
Let us be purposeful in what we believe and why we believe it. Let us be purposeful in what we allow our political representation to require and allow in the government of our culture.
Evil will never retreat. It will continue to advance at whatever rate our society allows. It will only be halted by a people who confidently resist the tyranny of evil.
The Supreme Court was never intended to decide what our laws mean. They were intended to decide cases, based on the laws as they were created by our Congress. Congress was intended to represent the “will of the people.”
The House of Representatives was intended to represent the citizenry, the Senate was intended to represent the several states in the creation of our laws, and the President was to ratify or veto them based upon the foundation of our society.
The Declaration and US Constitution will not, yea, they can not defend themselves. As Ronald Reagan once proclaimed, they “must be fought for, protected, and handed on [to our progeny] for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
“Duty is ours, results are God’s.” __John Quincy Adams
God bless you, Dave