© 2018 Don Pinson | [Download]
(Link not working? Right-click and select “Save As”.)
Is America a nation birthed by God? Well the Bible says all nations are birthed by God: In Acts 17:26 the Bible says,
“[God]…hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined…the bounds of their habitation;”
Let’s continue to learn about it from the book, Why God Birthed America…
“God’s plan had not changed, even though man had left the good beginnings brought about by Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension, and outpouring of His Spirit into believers. Still yet, God had not given up on His dream of man being a vessel through which He could live His life. And He was about to do something major to get man back on track with His purpose.
“He had been preparing a man in England to be His vessel in this next move. It was the mid-1300s. John Wycliffe was a professor at Oxford University. He was a Godly man who was grieved by the wrong he saw all around him. He saw the hypocrisy so rampant in the Church—in leaders as well as followers. He saw government administered by men eaten up with selfish ambition. Wycliffe had watched the Bubonic Plague kill over a third of the population of Europe. Men were oppressed by sickness and poverty simply because they didn’t know the truth taught in the Bible about health and how to prosper in this earth.
“God birthed in John Wycliffe’s heart a dream of changing all that. He believed that the Bible had the truth, not only about how to get to heaven, but also how to live life now in this present world. He knew if he could just get the Bible into the hands of men, God would use His truth to help men start turning to God. The new birth would then bring the indwelling Christ into their lives and they would, by His power, start changing according to His Word.
“But how could he do this? Even if he could manage to get the Bible into the hands of the common man, how could he make him understand it? Very few people could read. If they were to understand it, either they must be taught to read, or someone must read and explain it to them. Wycliffe decided to use both these methods to accomplish his God-given vision.
“He left his position as professor at Oxford and became the Pastor of a small church. His aim was to free up his time so as to be able to use much of it for translating the Scriptures into the English language. Though his salary was much less, he gladly embraced his new setting because he believed it was the Lord Jesus’ method of bringing men back to Himself.
“His commitment was contagious. Others began to join him in getting out portions of the Scripture to people all over England. These followers came to be called Lollards. The term means ‘idle babblers’. It evidently was pinned on them due to their method of teaching people to read the Scriptures by phonetic sounds.
“The method worked. Wycliffe completed his translation of the Scriptures in A.D. 1382. And before many years had passed, half of the English population had turned to Christ and aligned themselves with the ‘Lollard movement’. Their fervent preaching and distribution of the Scriptures brought new understanding to the English population of who God was and what His plan was for man. Revival fires began to burn all over England because of the Lollards’ faithful sharing of the Scriptures with their nation.”
The sharing of the Scriptures can change America too. Are you sharing them with others!
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.