Listen to or read this week’s “Think About It” Radio Program: “Patrick Henry- Voice Of Liberty”

© 2012 Don Pinson / To Download, right-click here: [Download] /

A few years ago a state Senator said to me, as I was urging him to stand against the uprising of homosexuals in Kentucky, “I tell you now, I just try to get along with everybody down here (referring to people in Frankfort).”   I often hear young people saying what they’ve heard in school or the music of our day:  “Let’s just compromise; everybody give a little so we can get along.”  I wonder if this state Senator and these young people know that they have been deceived by liberal thinkers of our day into thinking that the foundation of freedom is compromise.  This is not what America’s Founders believed!

They believed you must know the truth about every subject as the Bible revealed it.  Jesus had said, “If you continue in My Word, then are you My disciples indeed.  And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8: 31-32)  Then once you knew the truth, you must stand for that truth no matter what the cost.  This was true in your personal life and it was true in your state and nation.  They believed that your personal moral goodness, founded in knowing Jesus Christ as your Master and Savior, was the basis of being able to stand for liberty.  If you knew internal self-government of your bodily desires, then you were qualified and empowered to walk in liberty in your community and nation.  If you didn’t, you would have to be ruled by someone else.  If you couldn’t control yourself, someone else would have to control you.  Patrick Henry of Virginia summed this up well:  He stated,

“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of [unbelievers] or idolaters should be a nation of free-men. It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains. An [impure] state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.”

(Henry, Patrick. Tryon Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thoughts – A Cyclopedia of Quotations (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1852; revised and enlarged by C.H. Catrevas, Ralph Emerson Browns and Jonathan Edwards, 1891; The Standard Book Company, 1955, 1963), p. 337.)

In 1765, Patrick Henry would give a speech before Virginia’s Legislature that many would consider an act of treason.  As he urged the Legislature to refuse King George’s Stamp Act tax as being against their God-given rights as Englishmen, many in the House would shout, “Treason, Treason!”  To which Henry replied, “If this be treason, then let’s make the most of it!”  He believed our God-given rights were worth fighting for; and if need be, worth dying for.  He refused to compromise liberty!

He would later write, on the reverse of his Stamp Act Resolves, passed in the House of Burgesses, in May 1765:

“This brought on the war which finally separated the two countries and gave independence to ours. Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings, which a gracious God has bestowed on us.

If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable.  ‘Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation’.  Reader! Whoever you are, remember this, and in your sphere, practice [moral goodness] yourself, and encourage it in others.”

(Henry, Patrick. May 1765, written on the back of The Stamp Act Resolves, passed in the House of Burgesses. William Wirt Henry (grandson of Patrick Henry), editor, Patrick Henry – Life, Correspondence and Speeches (NY: Burt Franklin, 1969), Vol. 1, pp. 91-93. John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution – The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, A Mott Media Book, 1987; 6th printing, 1993), p. 302.)

Are you “[standing] fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free” (Galatians 5:1) by disciplining your own bodily desires?  Are you showing that His indwelling life is the power that enables us to be what He created us to be?  Are you teaching your children to walk that way?   You know— it’s the only way to preserve liberty.

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.