© 2020 Don Pinson | [Download]
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With more disrespect being shown to our flag, even within our own borders, it would do us well to revisit our heritage! Fort McHenry (where in 1812 a battle raged which inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner) was named after a man who served as a medical soldier in George Washington’s army, and later signed the U.S. Constitution. His name was James McHenry. While unknown to us today, James McHenry was one of those men who laid such a firm foundation for America that during the 1800s it would grow to become the greatest nation on earth. James McHenry got his foundation from the Bible. In addition to his achievements just mentioned, he also served as a member of the Continental Congress, his state legislature, and the U.S. Secretary of War—and President of the Baltimore Bible Society! He had this to say about the Bible:

“…public [usefulness] pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise…can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness.

“In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments.”

He then Continue reading →

© 2020 Don Pinson | [Download]
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On April 19th, 1775, seventy-five American farmers faced an overwhelming force of some 600 British professional soldiers. The Americans were out-manned, out-gunned, and out-trained. And when the first shots were fired, nine of the Americans fell dead. Why were they willing to face such overwhelming odds? Were they dreamers? Were they crazy? Were they men of such noble ideas that they were willing to die for them? While they were all these things (except crazy), they had an even greater reason for resisting the King of England. They believed they were obeying the God of the Bible with their resistance. Their Congress had stated:

“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian…duty of each individual…Continue steadfast, and with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly…defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.”

(Massachusetts Provincial Congress. 1774, in a resolution. George Bancroft, Bancroft’s History of the United States, Vol. X (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 3rd Edition, 1838), Vol. VII, p. 229 | Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg’s Heart’N Home, Inc., 1991), 8.31.)

When our ancestors defended themselves on Lexington Green, and later much more successfully at Concord Bridge, they believed they were walking in a principle of liberty taught in the Bible.

When God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, he told him to “keep it”; that is, to Continue reading →