© 2023 Don Pinson | [Download]
(Link not working? Right-click and select “Save As”.)

Liberty or Security?  Which is most important in the long run?  It is impossible to have 100% of both liberty and security in this natural world.  Liberty, of necessity, must involve some risks.  The major one is that you have to trust your neighbor to respect your God-given rights of life, liberty, and ownership of property.  Likewise, your neighbor must be able to trust you in the same way.  This is why our Founders warned us that we couldn’t maintain this Republic, with its great amount of liberty for the individual, without most of our people knowing the religion of Jesus Christ in the pure way that Jesus gave it.  If I know that I will “reap what I sow”, both in this world, and in the world to come (Galatians 6:7), I have a strong reason to respect your rights; knowing that God Himself is judging me in my actions.  If I’ve had those truths hidden from me both in the home and the school, then I don’t know that I will surely “reap what I’m now sowing”; thus, I have no deterrent to my own selfish desires, leaving your rights at risk.

Thus, God gave us civil government based on His Ten Commandments in order to aid us in keeping the last six of those commands toward our neighbor.  Government “bears not the sword in vain” (Romans 13:1-4); thus, the threat of punishment becomes Continue reading →

© 2023 Don Pinson | [Download]
(Link not working? Right-click and select “Save As”.)

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 →