The Misunderstood “Trumpet Voice” of Liberty

Samuel Adams, though ignored today, was know as the Father of the American Revolution because of his Biblical thinking about civil law, and how to re-establish it when a tyrant has taken that law from a people and established his own will as law.

He was born in Boston in 1722 and grew up there, where the merchants said of him that he was so punctual in attendance at school, they could set their clocks by him.

As an adult he failed in business because his entire focus was on law and particularly what the American colonies should do to correct the dictatorship being imposed on them by King George III.  His leadership moved Boston to begin the network known as The Committees of Correspondence.  These Committees wrote back and forth to one another all over the American Colonies to discuss the issues that would lead to the War for Independence from England.

As a part of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, he wanted to write on the subject, “The Rights of the Colonists as Christians.”  In summary of that subject he wrote:

“The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, the rights of the Colonists as Christians may best be understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of The Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, [referring to Jesus] which are to be found clearly written…in the New Testament.”

He was held in great respect by the other Founders of America, which was evident by the the fact they ask him to bring the keynote address at the formal signing of The Declaration of Independence.  In that speech he stated his (and no doubt the other Founders’) deepest feelings about what they were doing that day:

“We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.”

The focus of Sam Adams on the Biblical principle of liberty, which created his unbending insistence on independence from England, is the reason you and I have enjoyed the liberty we’ve known in this nation.  Samuel Adams was the “trumpet voice” of your liberty and mine!