Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey, podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And right now, your generous gift will have twice the impact, thanks to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge, active now through July 6th. To give a special matching challenge gift, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's word with every day on this Bible teaching program.

Speaker 3

On today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

What has happened is we have allowed the secularists, the humanists, the atheists, the infidels to pervert our Constitution into something our founding fathers never intended.

And it is time for Americans to stand up and say, enough.

We're not going to allow this in our Christian country anymore.

It is time to put an end to this.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress.

You know, the America we live in today is but a faint shadow of what our Founding Fathers fought to establish. Every day, local and high court judges are busy redefining marriage while politicians are working to silence Christians throughout the public square.

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress calls America back to her Christian roots.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message. Dr. Jeffress.

Speaker 3

Thanks, David. And welcome to this special Independence Day edition of Pathway to Victory. On the weekend that we celebrate our nation's independence, I can't think of a better subject to address than the Christian heritage that we desire to enjoy. You see, no matter what the pundits say, America was founded as a Christian nation. And in a moment, I'll give you ample evidence to validate our Christian heritage.

But first, at midnight Sunday, Pathway to Victory will close the books on the $1 million Salt and Light Matching Challenge. From the first day of June until now, the doors have been open to receive your generous gift with the commitment to match whatever amount you give dollar for dollar. Please don't delay in getting in touch with Pathway to Victory. Now, the quickest way to respond is by going to ptv.org, or later in the program, we'll give you our phone number and our mailing address as well.

Because of this record-breaking matching challenge of $1,000,000, your gift will be matched and therefore multiplied by two. Pathway to Victory is committed to being a beacon of light in a nation that's shrouded in darkness. By giving your very best gift, as the Lord leads you to this matching challenge, you're becoming salt and light, just like a missionary who spreads the good news.

In addition, when you respond today, I'm going to say thanks by sending my brand new book, Shine the Light. Now that's a lot of information, and so we'll be sharing more details later. But right now, I'm eager to equip you with the factual history about America's Christian heritage. I've titled my message, "America is a Christian Nation."

Speaker 2

Now today, in the minutes that we have, I want to do three things. First of all, I want us to look at the historical evidence for the Christian founding of our country. Secondly, I want us to look at our detour from that Christian foundation of our nation. And then finally, we're going to look at the consequences of renouncing our Christian foundation as a country.

First of all, let's look at the historical evidence. What is the evidence this nation was founded as a Christian nation? Well, first of all, let's look at the spiritual beliefs of our founders. Fifty-two of the fifty-five men who attended the Constitutional Convention were Orthodox Christians. Some years ago, two professors from the University of Houston, Charles Lyneman and Donald Luntz, did a study to try to determine whom our founding fathers quoted the most. More than a third of all the founding fathers' quotes came directly from the Bible, and another 60% came from those authors who had based their writings on the Bible. It is that historical fact that caused Ken Woodward, writing in Newsweek magazine in an article titled "How the Bible Made America," to come to this conclusion. He said, quote, "Now historians are discovering that the Bible, even perhaps more than the Constitution, is our founding document." That is Newsweek magazine. It's not Christianity Today; it's Newsweek magazine. Our founding document is the Bible. That is what the history says.

Never did the founders believe the so-called establishment clause would be used to absolutely silence prayers at graduations, or Ten Commandment displays in the courthouses, or nativity displays in the town square. That was never the intent of the founding fathers. You say, well, that kind of makes sense. But how do you know that for sure? Not only listen to the writings and the words of our founding fathers, but look at the early court rulings. These court rulings not only show that the nation was founded on a Christian foundation, but in many cases, government was encouraged to support the Christian faith.

For example, consider the case of Runkle versus Weinmiller in 1799. Now remember, 1799 is seven years after the ratification of the First Amendment and the no establishment of a religion clause. In 1799, the Supreme Court of Maryland said in its decision, "By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion." The next case, Vidal vs. Girard's Executors, 1844. Now, this was a complicated case, but here's the gist of it. A man died in Philadelphia, a very wealthy man, and in his will, he left his proceeds to the starting of a school for orphans. They used to call those colleges back then, a school for orphans. But he had one stipulation: that no Christian minister could teach in his school that he was funding. The Supreme Court actually ended up upholding this man's will. Why did they uphold it? Because they said, "The fact that you can't have a minister teach doesn't keep Christianity from being taught in the schools."

And this was what they said, quote, "Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a divine revelation in the college, its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained, and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?" Likewise, the court had something to say about those who would say, "Well, then you've got to treat all religions the same." They said, "It is unnecessary for us, however, to consider what the legal effect of such a device in Pennsylvania for the establishment of a school or college for the propagation of Judaism or deism or any other form of infidelity. Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country."

Not only do you have to look to the court rulings and the utterances of the fathers, but look at something else that is so fascinating. Did you know that for the first 150 years of the founding of America, and even after the ratification of the Constitution, there was a schoolbook that was used in grade schools for children? It was called the New England Primer. It contained prayers, creeds, and even Bible verses that children had to memorize. Can you imagine children having to learn that today in schools? Today, they're not even allowed to acknowledge there is a God or that there is a designer who created the world in which we live. But 150 years ago, this is what children were learning.

You say, what happened? Pastor, how do you account for the seismic shift away from our nation's Christian foundation? Well, it all began in 1947. That is the first time that the United States Supreme Court ever used the phrase "the separation of church and state." And that's an amazing thing when you think about it. If this was such a foundational doctrine of our country, why did the Supreme Court never mention it for 150 years? It wasn't until 1947 in the case of Everson versus the Board of Education. This was a case in which the state of New Jersey was using tax dollars to support religious schools. Back then, the only religious schools were Catholic schools. The justice who delivered the majority opinion was Justice Hugo Black. He said this breaches the separation of church and state, which is high and impregnable.

Now, many researchers of recent days have pointed out that Hugo Black, the justice who delivered this decision, had also been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The only people the Ku Klux Klan hated more than blacks were Catholics. In fact, two recent members of the Supreme Court, the late Justice Anton Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed that this was a bigoted ruling. In fact, Clarence Thomas said this doctrine, the separation of church and state, born in bigotry, should be buried. That was the first stone in this wall that is being built by secularists.

The second stone was Engel vs. Vitale, 1962. In that case, the court ruled that students could no longer voluntarily offer this 22-word prayer: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country." Have you ever read anything more offensive than that? We pray for our teachers, our country, our parents. But the Supreme Court said children can no longer voluntarily say that prayer. Why? Because it breaches the constitutional wall of separation between church and state. The court went on to say, "A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."

Now that sounds so enlightened and intellectual to us today. But compare that to what John Quincy Adams said: "The highest glory of the American Revolution was that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government and the precepts of Christianity." You know, ironically, even though these school children can't say that 22-word prayer every day, every session, the United States Congress begins its session in prayer. Yet in 1970, the Supreme Court said that it was unconstitutional for a group of students before school to gather together on school grounds and read the prayer printed in the Congressional Record of the United States. Is that not lunacy? That's where we're going as a country.

The third case, Abington School District versus Shemp, 1963. This is the case that outlawed students voluntarily reading ten verses of scripture at the beginning of each school day. They brought in experts to say why that was not a good thing. One expert actually said if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be psychologically harmful to the children. Now, again, compare that to what the Supreme Court had said in 1844: "Why may not the Bible, especially the New Testament, be read and taught as divine revelation in the schools, its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained, and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?"

Then the next stone: 1967, Spain vs. DeKalb County Community School District. In that case, the Supreme Court allowed a lower court ruling saying that a kindergarten teacher could no longer have her students recite not a prayer, but this poem: "We thank you for the flowers so sweet, we thank you for the food we eat, we thank you for the birds that sing, we thank you for everything." The Supreme Court said, "You can no longer have children say that because even though the poem doesn't mention God, it could cause the children to think about God, and that's unconstitutional."

The final stone came in 1980. Interestingly, the case is Stone versus Graham. The situation here was that copies of the Ten Commandments had been donated to schools in Kentucky and were posted in hallways. Nothing else was on the display except the Ten Commandments. No teaching of it, no recitation of it. It was just purchased with private funds and posted in the hallways of Kentucky schools. In 1980, the Supreme Court said, "You can no longer post these words: Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not lie, Thou shalt not murder." You can't post it any longer. And what was their reasoning? I quote directly from Stone vs. Graham: "If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the school children to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not permissible as a state objective under the establishment clause of the First Amendment."

Can you believe that? We can't post these words any longer because if we do, the children might read them. They might venerate and respect them. And if they respect the words, heaven forbid they might actually obey the words. And that is unconstitutional. What lunacy! We have let the inmates out to run the asylum here. That's exactly what is going on.

Compare that to what, for example, John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is totally incapable of governing any other kind of people." Or think about again, 1844, the Supreme Court: "Why may not the Bible, especially the New Testament, be read and taught as divine revelations and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?"

Now here's the question: What has changed? What has changed in these 150 years? Has the Constitution changed and nobody told us? Is that what happened? Of course not. What has happened is we have allowed the secularists, the humanists, the atheists, and the invaders to pervert our Constitution into something our Founding Fathers never intended. And it is time for Americans to stand up and say, "Enough! We're not going to allow this in our Christian country anymore. It is time to put an end to this."

Now, I'm almost through, but I'm not quite through. This morning I got up early and I was flipping through my telephone, different articles, and I read a column about me. A liberal writer made an amazing concession. He said, "You know, the truth is, Jeffress probably has a point to make. Looking at the early writings of the Fathers, the early court rulings, he has a case to make that America was founded with a bias toward Christianity. But I would remind Jeffress that the Founding Fathers and even the Constitution at times also embraced slavery. But that didn't make it right."

By the way, that shows you how perverted and twisted the liberal mind is to equate obedience to God with slavery. But he said, "Just because the early founders subscribed to this proposition that America is a Christian nation doesn't make it right."

Well, fair enough. Let's look finally at the consequences. What has happened in our country since we have loosed ourselves from our Christian foundation and become a secular nation? Is our country better off today that we have found this freedom from God? Is it? Let's look at the evidence.

William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, back in the early 90s, issued what he called the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators. He studied the trends for 30 years between 1960 and 1990, the years that correspond with the judiciary's all-out assault on Christianity in our country. What happened during that period of time? There was a 419% increase in illegitimate births, a quadrupling in divorce rates, a more than 200% increase in the teenage suicide rate, a drop of almost 80 points in SAT scores, and a 560% increase in violent crimes.

And today the trend continues. Over 10 million teenagers in the US drink alcohol regularly. Twenty percent of those engage in binge drinking. Nearly 2,800 children die each year as a result of gun violence, and another 14,300 are injured. Nearly 1 million babies were murdered in the womb last year, and 1 in 4 women in the US will have aborted at least one of their children by age 45. In 2011, over a half a million teenagers became pregnant, with about 30% of those pregnancies ending in abortion.

Are these tragedies just a coincidence? Not when you consider God's warning to His people 3,000 years ago—a warning that is just as applicable today as it was then. In Hosea 4, verse 6, God talked about what happens to a nation that forgets Him and forsakes Him. He said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being my priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children."

Ladies and gentlemen, God is no respecter of people or nations. Any nation that reverences God will be blessed by God. And any nation, including the United States, that rejects God will be rejected by God. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

I close today with the reflections of a man who could hardly be labeled a conservative. When I was growing up here in Dallas in the 50s and 60s, the chief justice of the Supreme Court for much of that time was a man named Earl Warren. Many of you remember Chief Justice Earl Warren. In the South, he was vilified. He was thought to be a communist, a pinko liberal. People hated Earl Warren. As I look back as an adult now, I see the reason people in the South hated him. In many cases, it was because he believed in the equality of the races. He was trying to get justice for people regardless of their race. But that wasn't always talked about. It was talked about how liberal he was.

And yet, in 1954, Earl Warren gave this assessment of our nation's Christian heritage. He said, "I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia or to the charter of New England or to the charter of Massachusetts Bay, or to the fundamental orders of Connecticut, the same object is present: a Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it. Freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under the law, and the reservation of powers to the people. I like to believe that we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country."

The nation that reverences God will be blessed by God. The nation that rejects God will be rejected by God. Blessed is the nation whose God is blessed.

Speaker 3

May God be honored and may our country prosper as we declare our allegiance to God alone. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

As I mentioned earlier in today's program, Midnight Sunday is the deadline for giving your generous gift to the $1 million matching challenge. As a result of this generous, generous gift that was set aside by some of our ministry partners, we will use the total amount and anything that exceeds it on reaching more people with the bright hope of the Gospel.

Here's what that means to you today. Whatever amount you're able to give will be magnified to twice the size. A hundred dollar gift becomes $200. A $500 gift becomes $1,000. A thousand dollar gift would become $2,000. You set the amount and whatever you give will be doubled until we reach the goal of $1 million. So please take this special occasion to leverage your gift to Pathway to Victory.

Again, the deadline is this Sunday night at midnight for receiving your gift to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge. As a creative means for saying thanks, I'm going to send you an exclusive book I've written for you. It's called Shine the Light. In this exclusive book published by Pathway to Victory, I'll show you how your acts of kindness, whether big or small, will be used by God to shine His light.

Thank you so much for participating in this all-important moment in our ministry's history. Pathway to Victory wouldn't exist without friends and family just like you.

As we come into this holiday weekend, don't forget you can watch Pathway to Victory on television on Saturdays. You can catch us at noon Eastern on TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. On Sundays, we're on hundreds of stations including TBN at 10 AM Eastern.

Speaker 1

David Thanks Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you invest in the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the brand new book by Dr. Jeffress, Shine the Light. Call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org and when your gift is $100 or more, we'll also send you the complete unedited collection of audio and video discs for the Shine the Light teaching series.

Remember, every dollar you give right now will be doubled in impact. That's because of our Salt and Light Matching Challenge until we reach the goal of $1 million. But the match will only be available until Sunday, July 6th at midnight. So don't put off calling any longer. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like. Here's that mailing address: P.O. Box 2236, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 2236, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins wishing you a very happy Fourth of July. Join us next time for the start of our next series, Seven Marks of a Disciple, that's coming up Monday here on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible.

And right now, your ministry gift will be matched and therefore doubled in impact thanks to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge. Take advantage of this opportunity to double your impact before the deadline on July 6th. To give toward the matching challenge, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.