Go Back, America! # 1

Go Back, America! # 1

"If my people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin,and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).

No one can consider the history of the United States without realizing that we have been blessed of GOD in an extraordinary way. Despite all the faults of our country, the foundation that was laid in our early years - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the system of checks and balances which characterize the various branches of our government that were introduced y our founding fathers - remains the same. Surely those men who launched the Ship of State two centuries ago were led by GOD! They built far better than they knew.

I think of my own experience in coming to this country from Russia. Having only the equivalent of one year in high school, I found myself at a total loss because of my lack of knowledge of the English language. But the opportunity to learn was open. For me, from that time on, it was a headlong race to get an education. First it was grade school, then preparatory school, then university, then law school. I was filled with an insatiable desire for knowledge. And yet it was not so much for the sake of knowledge as it was "to get ahead." I was living for myself. There was no time for games or vacations - only time for study. And it came rather hard, though teachers helped me. Uniformly kind and patient, they were veritable mines of information. To me, America was a seven days' wonder.

I thought to myself, how did America differ from the old country? Was it in its tremendous land area? But Russia was larger by far, being nearly four million square miles larger than this country. What made it so different? Could it be its resources, its natural wealth, salubrious climate, rainfall, mighty rivers, great lakes, mountains of iron, layers upon layers of coal, gold, silver, flowing rivers of oil? But Russia was rich beyond dreams in all these things.

Was it mechanical skill, inventive genius, a land girdled with lines of commerce, belted with giant industries? But then there was Germany. Germany had the best steel, the best glass, the best precision instruments, plastics, synthetics before we had them, and later on guided missiles! Americans traveled to Germany to polish off their know-how. Surely, I thought, there must e some other reason for the greatness of this golden land.

Then came my own personal conversion to CHRIST, a spiritual upheaval in which my whole outlook changed. Time was taken for reanalysis, restudy, reevaluation of crammed-in-knowledge - so much of it second hand. Then I knew!

What caused these thirteen colonies, in a little over four lifetimes, to achieve such titanic growth? It was this: America was founded on the Atlantic seaboard by men, women, families who sought lebensraum - living room - not so much for their bodies as for their SOULS, not to discover the Fountain of Youth, but to gain the privilege of worshiping the MOST HIGH GOD in freedom and in truth.

Those stalwart people, saturated with the WORD of GOD, recognized the lordship of Jehovah. There was a conviction in their souls that the purpose of man was "to glorify GOD and to enjoy Him forever. With all due respect to the Plymouth Rock, the stone on which America was founded was the Bible. Christianity, the BOOK, the church, prayers, sermons, the salvation of souls, the dedicated lives of Christian believers, meant everything to those early American colonists. Meeting houses were built almost as rapidly as homes. Yet one thing more was needed - a trained ministry. Then those God-fearing ones grouped together, sacrificed their meager funds and started universities like Harvard and Princeton and Yale - for the purpose of training men for the Christian ministry.

Today, unfortunately for us, the Dewey humanist philosophy has taken over our educational system. But in the beginning it was not so. Schools, colleges, universities, technical institutions, far flung across the length and breadth of our republic - these, under GOD, are the factors which, more than other contributory advantages, are responsible for the achievements of our land. Atheists could not have done this kind of job. They never have. Agnostics could never have accomplished this. They never have. Liberals, modernists, rationalists have never even attempted it. Instead, termite fashion, they have crept into our institutions, befouling the nests where they were nursed, undermining the glorious privileges and opportunities which were bequeathed to them.

It was not education alone, to be sure, that helped to make this nation what it is. It was education rooted in GOD, in CHRIST, in the BIBLE, in the CHURCH, in the tenets of Christianity, that brought growth, greatness, and glory to this favored land. What else? How else? What other single reason can be found that has made this western democracy what it is today?

~Hyman Appleman~

(continued with # 2)