“Can America Change?”

"Think About It"

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Is there any hope that America can be turned back to be a nation that honors the God who created her?  The Bible says, “Yes!”  Now, it doesn’t say it just like that.  But it says,

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

(2 Chronicles 7:14, emphasis added)

This promise is unchanged.  So America, or any nation, can change.  If we will do what this verse says, in a home, a church, a local community, or a nation, God will do what He promises to do, which is: “…forgive their sin, and…heal their land.”

So where do we start?

We start by praying ourselves—those of us who are the people of God.  We start by believing the Bible is “living and powerful”— that it wasn’t just written for Solomon’s day—that God will do today what He promised then.  We must begin to pray for revival; and for that revival to grow into a reforming of our culture—starting in our own home.

Once we’ve begun to pray, the next thing we need to do is to begin to read the Bible from beginning to end—from Genesis to Revelation.  Whether this takes us a few weeks or a few years, we read it through.  And when we’ve finished reading the last page in Revelation, we go back and start reading the first page in Genesis and read it through again.  In this way God’s Holy Spirit can teach us the way God wants us to think about all of life—in this world and the next.  He can teach us how to live according to His moral law in our individual lives, our family lives, and in our churches and local communities.  This can spill over into our states and nation in time.  Nations are rebuilt from the bottom up, not the top down.

This practice of reading the Bible in its entirety and living by it was what birthed this nation in the first place.  It is what made our Founders such wise men.

Elias Boudinot was the President of the Continental Congress and a Congressman from New Jersey during the first several Congresses.  He helped found the American Bible Society.  Elias Boudinot made it his practice to read the Bible through.  He stated,

“….Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.”

(Verna M. Hall, Christian History of the American Revolution (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976), p. xxv.)

Dr. Benjamin Rush was the Surgeon General of Washington’s Continental Army.  He was later U.S. Treasurer and the Father of America’s original public school system.  Dr. Rush made it his practice to read the Bible through from Genesis to Revelation.  He said of the Bible:

“The great enemy of the salvation of man…never invented a more effectual means of [removing] Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”

(Rush, Benjamin. July 13, 1789, in a letter to Jeremy Belknap. L.H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, New Jersey: American Philosophical Society, 1951), Vol. I, p. 521.)

He also said,

“Let the children…be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion.  This is the most essential part of education.”

(Rush, Benjamin. 1787, A Plan for Free Schools. David Barton, “America, God Shed His Grace on Thee” (Garland, TX: American Tract Society, Box 462008, Garland, Texas, 75046; 1994), p. 4.)

George Washington read the Bible both morning and evening on his knees!

John Quincy Adams was an Ambassador to England at age 14!  He helped write the Constitution and was our sixth President.  We know he read the Bible through 55 times!

Can America change to again live by the Bible?  We’ll never know unless you and I change to live by it.

Think About It.  Because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—
and for your children!  And you won’t like what that brings to you.  I’m Don Pinson, this has been Think About It.