Watchman! Have You Been Sleeping?

By Helen Jordan Davis

Our rights are given to us by God, but they must be politically protected. Christians in America have disengaged from the political process to the point of being negligent of our duty to God and country. We have left a vacuum that the enemy has filled, causing a severe spiritual decline. Following the steps given here, the church can apply God'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Principle Books Publishers
• Release date: Mar 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780984841059

Book preview

Introduction

Alarm!

Posterity—you will never know how much it cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you make good use of it (John Adams in a letter April 26, 1777).¹

"Our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them to their posterity…. Now if we should give them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed? (William Prescott, 1775, Colonel at Battle of Bunker Hill.)²

Our ‘unalienable rights’ are given to us by God, but they must be politically protected, says David Barton.³

For thus has the Lord said to me: Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees (Isa. 21:6).

The purpose of the watchman on the wall is not just to warn that calamity is coming, but to call his hearers to take up their weapons and be prepared so they can experience victory. We’re to be watchmen on the wall, but we haven’t been watching. Vast stretches of the wall are unmanned. The enemy is coming through those openings and stealing rights and privileges we are supposed to be guarding.

We Christians have disengaged from the political arena to the point of being negligent of our duties to God and country.

Christian Non-Involvement

Today 60 million Americans claim to be Evangelical Christians. Of those 60 million, 24 million are not even registered to vote, leaving 36 million registered, says David Barton.⁴ Of the 15 million who voted in the Presidential Election in 2012, 6.5 million voted for the political platform that proposed continuing abortion for convenience or for any cause.⁵

That 6.5 million effectively cancelled out 6.5 million who voted pro-life. That took care of 13 million of the Evangelical Christian votes out of the 15 million cast, leaving only two million votes that really counted pro-life. This election was held with virtually no influence by Evangelical Christians.

Even then, the Pro-Life party lost by just over four million votes: 64,150,711 for the Abortion party, 59,995,405 for the Pro-Life party. That’s a difference of 4,155,306 votes.⁶ The total of votes, 126,405,821, includes 2,259,705 votes cast for someone other than the candidates of these two parties.

Just think: What if all 60 million had voted and had chosen to vote pro-life? How different could our country be today? If just that 6.5 million who voted for abortion had voted against it, Roe v. Wade would be just a black page in our history by now. The 3,500 babies that have died each day for the past year (almost 1.4 million for this year alone), as they have died in previous years since 1973, would have been saved. The provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require us to pay for abortions and require doctors and nurses to provide abortions or lose their jobs, would be no more if that 60 million had voted pro-life.

Why?

I’ve heard a number of people on television trying to analyze the election to see why the Abortion Party won. They say the Pro-Life Party leaders didn’t stress the right issues, that they chose a candidate who was too moderate and who didn’t connect with the people, that the running mate wasn’t the right choice, etc., etc. The real reason why the abortion party stayed in power was because those 60 million Evangelical Christians didn’t speak up for God and life. Those 60 million are supposed to be the voice of God speaking forth His will in this country.

Christian non-involvement today has caused a vacuum in our government, a vacuum that has been quickly filled by many who reject a biblical foundation. Secularists, atheists, ungodly religions, and just plain selfish people who are greedy for political power have all rushed to fill it. Because of this, we have moved farther and farther away from the founding moorings.

America today is like a boat cut free from the dock that is drifting out to dangerous waters in the sea, the people aboard never looking back at the moorings to see that they are drifting. They think they’re still safely anchored; they remain blissfully ignorant of the danger ahead. Even the Evangelicals.

In 1803, Rev. Matthais Burnet, pastor of the First Norwalk Church in Norwalk, Conn warned: Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you.⁷

Christian Involvement Then

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 27 were Seminarians; that is, they had either graduated from a Seminary or a Bible College.⁸ Men who were devout Christians and biblically trained saw it as their responsibility to be very involved in government, to help frame it according to biblical principles and keep it true to those founding principles.

Historians Lutz and Hyneman reviewed nearly 15,000 items written between 1760 and 1805 by the Founding Fathers…. Their research found that the most frequently quoted source by the Founders was the Bible....⁹

The Founding Fathers relied heavily on the Bible for the foundation of this nation.

Fundamental Change

Now there are leaders who want to fundamentally change our nation from its founding principles, and they have set about doing just that.

We must remember that we wrestle not against flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12), that we’re in a spiritual battle. The enemy uses flesh and blood people, though, to do his work, so we need to be aware of what he’s doing through them.

For instance, the removal of our crosses and Bibles from the public arena is not a new move but an old move by the enemy that has resurfaced due to our lack of vigilance. It first occurred in The Pact of Omar, a document of religious discrimination, designed to enslave non-Muslim people. "Omar was the second Caliph of Islam who ruled from A.D. 637 to A.D. 644. The non-Muslim citizens of the nations that were conquered through Jihad were forced to sign it (the Pact)."¹⁰ To have their lives spared, these non-Muslim people were required to agree to be subservient to the Muslims and agree to this Pact.

One provision of the Pact was: "We shall not display our crosses or our books on the roads or in the markets of the Muslims."¹¹ Another provision was: "We shall not proclaim our religion publicly or attempt to convert anyone to it."¹²

Satan has been the enemy of mankind since the Garden of Eden. The ploys he has used from the beginning have always worked, so he doesn’t need to invent new ones, just new ways of utilizing the old ones. Today, enemies of Christianity are successfully using our court system to force us to comply with these provisions of The Pact of Omar, and we are allowing them to do this. We’re giving up our crosses, removing our Bibles from schools and other public places, and silencing our public proclamation of Christianity. We’re allowing The Pact of Omar to replace our Constitution, which guarantees our freedom to do these things the Pact denies to us. We’re bowing to the enemy of Christianity, becoming subservient to him, by doing this.

Today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity, said Rev. Samuel Rodriguez (Founder and Pres. Of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference).¹³

Accountability

There are only two main theories of government in the world. One rests on righteousness, the other rests on force (Calvin Coolidge).¹⁴

If we allow the righteousness to be removed, what remains?

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within, says Will Durant in The Story of Civilization.¹⁵

Daniel Webster was a Representative, a Senator, and served as Sec. of State under three Presidents. When Daniel Webster was asked what the greatest thought was that ever passed through his mind, he responded: ‘My accountability to God.’¹⁶

We will be held accountable, too.

Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it,¹⁷ (Benjamin Netanyahu to the UN General Assembly).

Responsible

So, who is to blame for the spiritual state America is in? Atheists? Liberals? Listen to how Jesus explained this to His followers:

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven (Matt. 5:13-16).

Sadly, we Christians are to blame for the wretched state of America’s spiritual life. We haven’t been the salt (Matt. 5:13) and light (Matt. 5:14) Jesus said we are supposed to be. Salt to prevent decay and light to show the right way.

Do we really believe that light drives out the darkness? Try an experiment: walk into a perfectly dark room and switch on the light. Does any darkness remain? We must begin to be the light.

Yes, Christian non-involvement today has caused a vacuum in our government. Evil is simply filling the vacuum we have created. Look again at the figures we saw: 60 million Evangelical Christians, but only 15 million voting in an election as important as the 2012 Presidential Election, and 6.5 million of those voting for abortion. We’ve left quite a vacuum.

Pres. Calvin Coolidge said: The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country.¹⁸

It follows it. Think about that. The things happening in our government today point to how lazy, non-involved, disengaged, apathetic, and self-centered our Christian religion has become in America.

Charles Finney

Charles Finney was a lawyer who became a Christian because he read so much Scripture in Blackstone’s Commentary on the Law of England. Blackstone’s was the basis of American law from 1776 to 1920. It taught that our laws cannot contradict God’s direct decrees.

Finney gave up law and became a Presbyterian minister. He was a Christian leader in the second Great Awakening in the early 1800’s and the third Great Awakening in the mid 1800’s. He was President of Oberlin College from 1851 to 1866, and used the college as a station on the Underground Railroad to take slaves to freedom. He said this about Christian involvement in politics:

The church must take right ground in regard to politics. The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics. Christians have been exceedingly guilty in this matter, but the time has come when they must act differently. God cannot sustain this free and blessed country which we love and pray for unless the church will take right ground. It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation are becoming rotten, and Christians act as if they think God does not see what they do in politics. But I tell you, He does see it, and He will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics.¹⁹

What do you think Finney would say today? How horrified would he be?

America has become sick spiritually.

When you’re sick physically, you go to the doctor and tell him or her the symptoms you’re experiencing. While the doctor may give you medication for each symptom, for instance a medication for nausea or a sedative to help you sleep, etc., the real value of the doctor visit is to find the cause of the symptoms, treat the cause, and bring real healing so the symptoms will go away. America is sick spiritually.

God said through Isaiah:

Alas, sinful nation, … they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. … The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it (Isa. 1:4-6a).

Alas, sinful nation.

This spiritual sickness has been spreading to all areas of American life to fundamentally change this nation from its biblical foundation: removing Christian symbolism from the marketplace, anti-Christian influence in our schools, in the area of economics with the redistribution of wealth or anti-capitalism, attempts at anti-gun legislation so that we won’t be able