We need to stand up for what is Biblically correct. We must defend religious freedom with a vengeance! Our Lord Jesus Christ made it very plain when He stated,
Mat 22:17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
Mat 22:18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?
Mat 22:19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
Mat 22:20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
Mat 22:21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.
Mat 22:22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.
Jesus did NOT say we are to render to Caesar the things that are God’s!
Just now, in the news, the Roman Catholic Church and its Bishops in America are rightly objecting to certain provisions of “Obama Care” that violate their conscience and their doctrine. One of the Roman Catholics I read of made it plain that he would encourage all 70 million Roman Catholics to vote against Obama in the next election.
That should be enough to swing the election the right way. I only hope and pray that they will “remember in November.”
But this is not only a Roman Catholic issue. This is a Biblical issue, and therefore must be of supreme concern for all Christians, particularly those who believe the Bible (and those are the only true Christians, by the way).
Here in the United States of America we have been privileged to live under a Constitution with a specific Bill of Rights. The First Amendment declares we have the God-given right to absolute religious freedom, a freedom that “shall not be infringed.”
This is not merely “freedom of worship.” That limited “freedom” is even granted in Communist countries. What we have is “freedom of religion,” and this includes the public expression of religion.
This freedom is not a privilege granted by government. It is a freedom given by God. I intend that we keep this freedom. The way to do that is to get more people busy reading the Bible for themselves, believing it, and obeying it. That is what Real Bible Study is all about.
Today I received an important email from Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, urging me to sign the following petition. I did, based on obeying what Jesus taught in Mark 12:17,
Mark 12:17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
MR. PRESIDENT, I STILL BELIEVE
Dear President Obama,
I am deeply disappointed at your recent failure to protect religious liberty in the context of the HHS preventive care mandate. As Americans we are used to having political and religious disagreements. But we should all be able to agree that the government should not force religious people and institutions to provide drugs and services that violate their faith.
The recent statement from HHS that it will give religious objectors one extra year to change their religious views added insult to injury. It is as if you are saying to religious people “We respect your religious views so much that we’ll give you one extra year to abandon them.” Religious principles have no expiration date. True protection for religious liberty–the kind required by the Constitution you swore to uphold and the federal laws you are obliged to enforce–requires a broad religious exemption, one that protects any person or institution from being forced to provide services in violation of sincerely held religious beliefs.
Please reconsider your administration’s actions and order HHS to provide the kind of broad protection for religious liberty that our laws require. Doing so would honor the sacrifices of those who fought and died to give us our freedoms. It would allow religious employers across the country to stay in business and keep offering health insurance to their employees. And it would pay tribute to the great heritage of religious diversity upon which this great nation was built.
SIGN THE PETITION:
http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/petition/petition.aspx
Once again, I have not been able to figure out how to make a link “live” in a post.
Remember, the Bible instructs us that we are to obey God rather than man,
Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
As far as I am concerned, the “compromise” recently offered (as of this posting date) by President Obama that is being hailed in the news media is utterly unsatisfactory. It is not in accord with the intended protection provided by the First Amendment. It is not in accord with what the Bible teaches. I commend President Obama for reading the Bible nightly as once reported in the news. I hope the news report is correct about that. But President Obama and everyone else in this country needs to learn how to dig deeper into the truths of the Bible for themselves.
And to do that, I invite everyone to come here and start reading. I suggest that you look to the right under “Archives,” and begin reading the oldest posts from January 2010 first, and work your way up to the current posts. By the time you get that far, you surely will have learned a whole lot about Real Bible Study!
If a FLDS believer wanted to have multiple wives, does the STATE have the right to deny this? As you say, the constitution says we have an “absolute religious freedom, a freedom that ‘shall not be infringed.’ ” Is it a violation of the separation of church and state to infringe on the FLDS church to practice what they believe? What say ye?
I suppose if Moslems with Sharia Law asserted it was a violation of their religious freedom to be prevented from chopping off hands or heads….
So – freedom of religion is only if they are Christian and believe the Bible?
Or how about some states legalizing “marriages” between two men or two women?
Now if Sodomy is supported by our federal government as the law of the land under the rubric and misnomer of “gay rights,” then what logic remains to condemn the group you named for practicing what they allegedly believe in, the right to have multiple wives at the same time?
The founding fathers, some of whom were genuine Bible believing, Bible supporting Christians, intended that what we might call generic Christianity (Bible-believing, Bible practicing Christianity totally apart from any denominational linkage) must be the root and foundation of the nation’s morality, and must have full freedom of expression in “the public square,” and anywhere else. Therefore the First Amendment included the provision that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
It also provided that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble….”
Historically, “an establishment of religion” has only to do with the issue of the government establishing an official state church, thus we have no state supported national church, unlike the Church of England in Great Britain. Our leadership in all three branches of government has consistently misinterpreted this provision of the Bill of Rights.
The Judicial Branch has imported a phrase from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to get around the religious freedom our founding fathers intended to protect. That phrase, “wall of separation” between church and state, forms no part of this country’s founding documents. It is a phrase employed today by atheists and humanists to forward their own anti-Biblical and anti-Christian agendas.
And you are right: “religion” in the minds of our founding fathers had primary reference to the religion of Christianity, and the usage of the term in this context in that day had primary reference to the supreme law of the Bible, termed “natural law” or the “law of nature,” a concept fully documented in sources still available for us to read that were written at or before the time of the founding of this nation. Our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution were written in full recognition of the primacy of this “higher law.” That higher law is what is given to us in God’s verbally inspired written word found in the Bible.
Only a Bible-believing, solidly Christian nation (in terms of its worldview) can support and promote true religious freedom. Those who have the truth can afford to grant a voice to different views, because the truth of God found in the Word of God brings true freedom and liberty.
Have you noticed the blatant contradiction in our culture today that freedom is given largely to everyone but genuine Christians? That so-called toleration is staunchly intolerant of the Biblical worldview? Clearly our general culture has lost its once solid basis in the Biblical worldview, just as Francis Schaeffer warned in his writings several decades ago would happen as we lost the “veneer of Christian civilization.”
People at large have moved away from being a Biblically informed, Bible reading public.
That is one reason why I promote Real Bible Study here.
On the topic of marriage, I think the state should stay out of the business of marriage, period. To the state, marriage is a contract. No so in the eyes of God. We have state laws against polygamy. But unmarried and married people are having multiple affairs all the time. Where is the law enforcement there? Were they people in the Bible that had multiple wives? Oh yes! Should we allow it today based on the Bible? The Bible has rules for divorce. Were they the ideal? Oh no! Should we have divorce today?
Should we have religious freedom for ALL religions? Where do you draw the line?
This nation by the way, was NEVER a “Christian Nation”. Unless you feel slavery and manifest destiny are the Christian way to behave…