© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

In the hot summer of 1776, a group of 56 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to discuss their differences with the British Crown and Parliament.  The most important question to be decided was:  Who was the source of their rights of life, liberty, and property?  Was the source God or government?  England thought the colonies existed for the good of the Mother country.  Thus, they thought the rights of the colonists were “government granted”.  The people in America thought they existed for the “glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith”, as the Pilgrims had stated.  Thus, Americans believed that their rights were “God given”.  What had to be decided was:  Is Parliament and the English King the highest authority, or is there a higher law in place?  If there was a higher law, did the colonists have to submit to laws that disagreed with that higher law?

The Americans did believe there was a higher law, which was the Law of God written in the Bible.  The ministers of this time period in America were remarkably agreed on this position.  They quoted over and over the passage in Romans 13:1-2 that states:

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

Who were the thinkers behind the American Revolution which would give birth to the greatest Republic the world had ever seen? Actually, men like Washington, Jefferson, or even Samuel Adams, were not the “root” thinkers of that Revolution. You may be surprised, but the truth is: It was the Pastors who inspired the thinking that brought about the American Revolution. They taught it in the churches! The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts stated in 1774:

“…we cannot but acknowledge the goodness of Heaven in constantly supplying us with preachers of the Gospel whose concern has been the temporal and spiritual happiness of this people…and do therefore recommend…that they assist us in avoiding that dreadful slavery with which we are now threatened…”

(Christian History of the American Revolution, V. Hall (F.A.C.E. pub.), p.402)

The inspiration for the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolutionary War, was none other than Jonas Clark, Pastor of the Church in Lexington for twenty years before the Revolution. It was he who authored almost every state paper written to record the town’s position on liberty. Without him, there may have been no “shot heard round the world!”

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about government and the money it takes to operate it.  And all this has produced is just more debt, more tax, and more destruction of our nation—While the government gets larger and larger.  And if we don’t quickly return to the Founding principle of America we will shortly live under a dictator.

Our Founders taught a principle to their children which summed up all the Biblical teaching about government.  It was this:

“The more internal self-government you have, the less external civil government you need.  But the less internal self-government you have, the more external civil government you need.”

America was built on this principle.  The Pilgrims learned to walk in the internal self-government which the Holy Spirit produces when a life is surrendered to Christ.  This started when they received Christ as their Lord and Deliverer and thus, were born again.  But the earliest among them had learned something about this internal self-government that would profoundly affect the birthing and the growth of America.  In the mid-1500s they had gone to Geneva, Switzerland to learn from a scholar by the name of John Calvin.  Calvin taught a simple principle which would change the course of the Western world.  He called it “renovation”.  The word renovation means to make new.  This is what Christ does when He enters a life that has just surrendered to Him as Master.  He changes that life by flowing with His life from that person’s spirit, into his soul, and out through the actions of his body.  That is what the Bible means when it says,

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

In declaring our Independence from England, were our Founders rebels, pushing against God-ordered government? Or were they revolutionaries, re-establishing God-ordered civil government? It’s way past time we again considered the twenty-seven reasons they listed for declaring Independence. They stated:

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

“He has refused his Assent to Laws…wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance…

“He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature…

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual…for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

© 2023 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

The time had finally come. After twenty years of growing government interference into the affairs of the American Colonies, the patience of Americans was exhausted. The Representatives of America had appealed to their British King and the Parliament over and over during those twenty years, and had only been insulted for their efforts. Over and over the King had treated their appeals with disdain. Finally, Thomas Jefferson would sum up the attitude of the majority of Americans when he wrote in The Declaration of Independence,

“A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

The final break with England began on March 16, 1776. The Continental Congress, representing each of the thirteen colonies, called upon the American people to observe a day “of fasting, humiliation, and prayer”. The Congress stated:

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

The Bible says, “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1)

Ladies and Gentlemen: The following document is the reason you and I, in America, are free:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world…”

© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

The Bible says, “Remember those who led you…” (Hebrews 13:7) Yet, in America we’ve forgotten what those who founded this nation were like. We no longer know how they thought or what they did. Someone has truthfully described us as having “national amnesia”.

The great danger in a nation forgetting its past is that they will lose the foundational ideas that made that nation great. We’re missing out on the inspiration provided by the stories of our ancestors who did amazing things to birth, grow, and protect America. Worse still, we’re missing the interventions by God Himself so that we no longer credit Him with America’s existence. Thus we lose the very Strength Who has brought the good to us which we now enjoy.

A renowned minister, A.W. Foljambe, spoke great wisdom when he said in 1876:

“The more thoroughly a nation deals with its history, the more decidedly will it recognize and own an over-ruling Providence [in it], and the more religious a nation [it will] become; while the more superficially it deals with its history, seeing only secondary causes and human agencies, the more irreligious will it be.”

One of the greatest ways to rediscover our past is simply to read the statements of our Founding Fathers. They wrote a great deal in journals and documents just so the following generations could know the foundational ideas on which they birthed and built this nation into the greatest in world history. They didn’t claim that they came up with these ideas. They constantly acknowledged the Bible to be the source of this wisdom.