"One God, One Country, One Destiny.”

“ONE GOD, ONE COUNTRY, ONE DESTINY.”

Eph. 2:13-16

Int: It was the spirit of Christianity that changed the face of the ancient world. No other event has so impacted the human race as did the coming to earth of Jesus, the Christ. His message was so totally different from the prevailing world view of His day that it literally turned the world upside down within a few hundred years. By becoming a man, Jesus demonstrated the dignity of the individual that had been made in God’s own image.

The influence of Christianity literally brought a civilized spirit into the minds of men and women. The idea that government and the State were made for the individual and not the individual for the State, threatened the very core of the established power systems of the day. Through Jesus, God’s law was written on the heart of each person. Through this law in the heart, the capacity for self-government under God was restored and true liberty was experienced. Men and women learned that true freedom begins in the heart, and that once the heart is free, it can be carried out into the public realm.

The principles of Christianity were so deeply entrenched in the establishment of America that one must conclude that without Christianity, there would never have been a country such as the United States of America. This nation is the first nation in all of recorded history to be established for the express purpose of acknowledging the sovereignty of God and the dignity of man.

Among those principles that came straight from the teachings of the Lord Jesus, are the rights and responsibilities of the individual, the necessity for a spirit of unity and an overall sense of union. Jesus taught that the greatest commandment of all is for each person to love God with all of his being. He showed us that this is the beginning point of all that matters about life and existence. He also showed us that the second greatest commandment is to love others as we would love ourselves. It is only when we have the proper relationship with God that we can fully and appropriately relate to our fellow human beings. This is the type of framework in which the government of the United States was formulated.

I. THE COMMON THREAD THAT RELATES CULTURES INTO A UNIFIED WHOLE.

Early in my life, I saw this principle demonstrated. My grandmother had a large wooden frame that was suspended from some hooks in one of the rooms in her house. More than once I saw her and some of her friends bring together several pieces of cloth. They were of different colors and different sizes, but under the skillful fingers of the ladies, from these pieces, a beautiful patchwork quilt would emerge.

A. The vast Diversity of our early American Ancestors.

The early settlers of the United States were people who ranged from rugged frontiersmen to polished and cultured aristocrats. Some had been trained in the best universities of the world, some had received their training by carving a living from an unfriendly wilderness. Some had come from strong and powerful families on the European continent, some came from those who had known nothing but mistreatment and abuse at the hands of others. Some came from the highlands of Scotland and Ireland, some from the seafaring peoples of England, France and Spain. Some came from peoples whose manner had been to engage in great wars, some came from people who lands had been overrun by powerful forces. Some came from a background of a strongly structured religion, some came from people whose religious preferences ran contrary to the state sponsored religion. Some came from famous people, some came from unknown people. They all desired to be free!

B. The strong Convictions of our early American Ancestors.

The overwhelming conviction that was predominant in the minds of our ancestors was that one’s basic rights are God-given. They do not come from man! The understanding that each must relate to a higher authority and at the same time, relate meaningfully to his fellowmen grew out of this conviction.

Each citizen is a citizen of the United States, while at the same time, he is a citizen of one of the states. Each state is a member of the United States, and at the same time, has a meaningful relationship to each of the other forty-nine states that make up the union we know as the United States of America. When this kind of unity exists between the citizens that make up the states and the states that make up the United States, the result is a Union that is strong and dynamic and cannot easily be broken. This principle of the union of the whole with the unity of its citizens brought about the Declaration of Independence, as well as the Constitution. Had it not been there, England would have put out the spark of liberty before it could be fanned into a flame. 1700 years of Christianity contributed to bringing the reality of the United States into existence.