"Two Laws That Changed America"

“Two Laws That Changed America”

October 7, 2012

2 Timothy 3:1-5

“You should know this, Timothy that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that.”

We live in the most exciting time in history! We are living in the very end of the age. We have the privilege of seeing the bible come alive. It would be pretty scary – but I have read the end of the book. We will be okay – at least those of us who continue to walk faithfully with the Lord. But the Scripture is clear. We live in very difficult; very perilous time.

We who live in America are doubly blessed. We live in such wealth and luxury compared to the rest of the world. We live in safety with the best healthcare and education and government in history. But things are changing. People are changing. Does anyone not think that the people described in our Scripture are in our world and in our society today? Look at them again.

“Loves of self (selfish); lovers of money; boastful and proud; scoffing at God; disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.”

This could be a modern day writer writing about our people today. These are the character traits of our society. And the character of the people in a society changes society. This morning I want to talk about two historical moments in my lifetime that has changed our country and literally is changing the world. There may be more defining moments – but to me, these are the greatest destructive things to happen to our country in my lifetime.

The most important happened in 1963. In 1963, Madalyn Murray O'Hair won a lawsuit against the Baltimore School System, which voted in her favor 8-1 to ban school prayer and label it "unconstitutional". In two landmark decisions, Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), the US Supreme Court established what is now the current prohibition on state-sponsored prayer in schools. While the Engel decision held that the praying of an official state-school prayer stood in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause (thus overruling the New York Courts’ decisions), Abington held that Bible readings and other (state) school-sponsored religious activities were prohibited.

I was reading a rebuttal of an atheist to this and his position was that there is no law prohibiting prayer in school. Anyone can pray anytime they want and no one even needs to know. And that is true. What the problem is that when we as a society prohibited collective or official prayer out of a Judea-Christian culture that our forefather founded – the results went deep and long. When I was a boy we had a “canned” morning prayer. The inference of that prayer; the unspoken lessons were – 1. There is a God. 2. If there is a God, He cares about what we do. 3. If there is a God – then there is right and wrong. 4. If there is a God who determines what is right and wrong – then we will have to answer for our actions one day.

I’m sure there is more to it than that – but those are a few simple things that were obvious to me. Today, the kids are not taught about God; they can’t pray as a group; they are left in confusion about moral values; and the bottom line is that our schools teach, at least by inference, that there is no right and wrong and you can do anything you want to or think you can get away with. So let’s see what the result of that mind set is. Let’s see the fruit that taking prayer out of school produced.

(Power Point on taking prayer out of school)

Choices have consequences. The day we took prayer out of school was a day that America Changed. From a Christian nation we progressed toward a pagan nation. And look what the result in society has been.