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America and Christianity: Part 4 

Christianity’s part in the founding and revival of America 

Ephesians 5.1–17

Don Ruhl • Savage Street, Grants Pass, Oregon • April 28, In the year of our Lord Christ, 2019 

Persuasion: 

  1. The Fracturing of the Family Hurts America 
    1. It has also hurt the church. 
    2. However, it is the church that can reverse this trend. 
      1. The church is the one to do it because 
      2. God is the One who created marriage and the family. 
        1. It is His Son’s church that teaches the Scriptures. 
        2. It is the Scriptures that reveal the truth about the family, including 
          1. why it falls apart and 
          2. how to fix it. 
  2. Pornography Hurts the Family and America

    “Under the cloak and name of liberty, the pornographers are out to destroy liberty” (The Rebirth of America, p. 104).
    1. Romans 6 shows how a sin enslaves, although it promising liberty:

      12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

      – Romans 6.12–16
    2. Jude 4 warns us about men who use grace as a license for sin:

      4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

      – Jude 4
    3. First Peter 2 also warns about misusing liberty:

      16 …as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.

      – First Peter 2.16
      1. Pornographers use American political liberty as a cover for vice. 
    4. Let the church be active against all evil.

      11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.

      – Ephesians 5.11–12
      1. Is it contradictory to say that freedom has limits? 
      2. Unbridled freedom leads to anarchy. 
        1. Anarchy leads to the disappearance of freedom. 
  3. The New Sodom Has Hurt America 
    1. Sodomites are a minority, but 
      1. you would never know it. 
      2. Isaiah 3 reminds us of the boldness of the Sodomites. 
        1. Disgustingly, the same picture appears today:

          9 The look on their countenance witnesses against them,
          And they declare their sin as Sodom;
          They do not hide it.
          Woe to their soul!
          For they have brought evil upon themselves.

          – Isaiah 3.9
    2. Did you ever think you would see the day 
      1. when homosexuality would have such exalted and 
      2. accepted status in the United States of America? 
        1. It is now on countless television shows. 
        2. They have changed the Boy Scouts, a private organization. 
          1. Most corporations are being forced to accept homosexual insurance policies and similar benefits. 
          2. Almost daily our newspaper, the evening news, etc., give Sodomites some kind of coverage. 
    3. If God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain because of their rampant homosexuality, and 
      1. if the tribe of Benjamin in the Book of Judges was almost wiped out for defending homosexuality, 
      2. what will happen to America if the country as a whole ever accepts homosexuality? 
    4. Homosexuality destroys the family. 
      1. Whatever destroys the family destroys a nation. 
      2. The church is God’s rescue mission. 
  4. Abortion As Holocaust 
    1. Two survivors of the Nazi holocaust wrote:

      “The last graves were the newest, and we started with the oldest, those of the first ghetto. In the first grave there were twenty-four thousand bodies.

      “The deeper you dug, the flatter the bodies were. Each was almost a flat slab. When you tried to grasp a body, it crumbled; it was impossible to pick up. We had to open the graves, but without tools. They said, ‘Get used to working with your hands.’

      “When we first opened the graves, we couldn’t help it, we all burst out sobbing. But the Germans almost beat us to death. We had to work at a killing pace for two days, beaten all the time, and with no tools. The Germans even forbade us to use the words ‘corpse’ or ‘victim.’ The dead were blocks of wood with absolutely no importance. Anyone who said ‘corpse’ or ‘victim’ was beaten. The Germans made us refer to the bodies as Figuren, that is as puppets, as dolls, or as Schmattes, which means ‘rags.’

      “The head of Vilna Gestapo told us: ‘There are ninety thousand people lying there, and absolutely no trace must be left of them.’”
    2. During the early 1990s a California company became delinquent on its payments of metal containers. 
      1. Men went to clean them out and repossess the storage containers. 
      2. 17,000 pre-born babies, some as far as 7 1/2 months into pregnancy, were discovered in formaldehyde-filled containers. 
      3. It was 3 years before they were buried. 
        1. There had been a controversy over whether they were persons requiring burial. 
        2. Interestingly, in 1980 Kerri miscarried our first baby when it was 7 months along. 
          1. The girl weighed over a pound, coming in at 17 ounces. 
            1. We were required to have a funeral home 
            2. handle the body and we paid for a burial. 
          2. Later it was discovered that this funeral home 
            1. did not do as we had paid for them to do with the baby and 
            2. we do not remember if experiments were down or what, but 
              1. a lawsuit was brought against them and 
              2. we were invited to take part, but we declined. 
        3. With the 17,000 aborted babies, 
          1. those opposing burial said 
          2. that the containers did not have 
            1. victims or corpses but 
            2. were pregnancy tissue. 
    3. President Reagan said:

      “We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life…There is no cause more important.”
  5. Education without God 
    1. Martin Luther said:

      “I am much afraid that schools will prove to be great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth.

      “I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the word of God must become corrupt.”
      1. That sounds severe, but 
      2. what has history shown? 
    2. Brother David Lipscomb sounded like a prophet in 1892:

      “We have little faith in the church’s making true and faithful Christians until it takes the children and teaches them—not an hour one day in the week, but every day of the week, faithfully teaches them—the way of life and truth. Until the church is thus earnest in training the children in the way of salvation, instilling the Christian religion into their hearts with almost every breath drawn, it will never have faithful, true, devoted members of the church. The church that gives up the education of children to others will, no doubt, have faithless members.

      “…A few earnest men and women in a schoolroom, day by day impressing the hearts of the young with the religious truths that should govern them through life, will do more to advance religion and build up the church than an army of eloquent preachers. We hope that, in a few years, no congregation in the land will be without a teacher devoted daily to giving instruction concerning Christ and His kingdom, free of charge, to all the children in the vicinity who will receive the instruction.

      “…We believe the government schools, in an effort to avoid sectarianism, will become infidel.

      “…Church members, as a rule, feel no obligation to attend worship unless we are entertained by the service. When we relegate the study of the Book of God to an hour in a week—and then in a loose and careless way—and study other things every day in the week, the children cannot avoid the conclusion; the one is a matter of indifference compared with the other.”

      – Gospel Advocate
      1. This is why it is essential that you teach your children daily at home. 
      2. A devotional of: 
        1. Scripture reading, 
        2. singing, 
        3. contribution, and 
        4. reading Bible literature is highly recommended. 
  6. Let Us Not Become the Silent Majority 
    1. Psalm 58 gives us something to think about. 
      1. I do not know of one Christian 
      2. who thinks things are fine just the way they are:

        1 Do you indeed speak righteousness, you silent ones?
        Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men?

        – Psalm 58.1
    2. Let us not believe that 
      1. religion is purely private 
      2. or that example alone will win people. 
  7. VII.Why Did the Roman Empire Fall?
    1. The Roman Empire was a mighty nation. 
      1. In Daniel 2 the statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream 
        1. represented four kingdoms. 
        2. The head, chest, belly and thighs represented three nations. 
        3. The legs and feet of iron represented Rome. 
      2. In Daniel 7 the prophet had a dream of four beasts. 
        1. The first three were ferocious, but 
        2. the fourth one was more so.

          7 “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. 8 I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words.”

          – Daniel 7.7–8
          1. History and the rest of the Bible shows that this was Rome. 
          2. Verse 23 says that Rome was to devour the whole earth 
            1. trample it and break it in pieces. 
      3. With such a mighty empire how could it fall? 
      4. It must have had a weakness. 
    2. Many people see similarities between Rome and America. 
      1. Interestingly, these people are not just preachers in the church. 
      2. Historians and others outside of the church see them. 
    3. Consider these truths: 
      1. Rome began with strong families. 
      2. Second, home education was common. 
      3. Third, the nation was prosperous. 
      4. Fourth, the nation achieved great things, such as its famous roads. 
      5. Fifth, in time Greek philosophy emphasizing humanism and a godless foundation were introduced. 
      6. Sixth, the government took over many of the roles of the family.

        “By the first century the father had lost his legal authority. It was delegated to the village, then to the city, then to the state, and finally to the empire. In Rome, citizens complained about housing shortages, soaring rents, congested traffic, polluted air, crime in the streets, and the high cost of living.”
      7. Seventh, the empire started to persecute the church. 
        1. Believe it or not, 
          1. the church is greater than any earthly nation. 
          2. Therefore, whatever nation persecutes the church is doomed to destruction.

            “Rome was quite tolerant of all religions except Christianity. Christianity was banned and Christians were persecuted, burned, and thrown to the lions. Why? Because the very nature of Christianity is intolerant of ‘the lie’ of Satan which is the basis of every other religion.”
        2. By the third century the church dominated Rome. 
    4. Do you know what is Satan’s lie that Americans believe? 
      1. Genesis 3 reveals his strategy, 
        1. which he has not altered. 
        2. When the enemy keeps using the same method
          1. you would think that we would catch on. 
          2. Why do we allow ourselves to be deceived generation after generation? 
      2. Watch how Satan works with Eve:

        1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

        – Genesis 3.1–5
        1. We think we are gods. 
        2. Or at least we act as though we are Gods. 
  8. VIII.Greece Had Similar Problems 
    1. Their philosophy was:

      “Man is the measure of all things. Man, not the gods, the relative, not the absolute.”
    2. The human body was idolized:

      “As immorality increased, the human mind became supreme. Reason itself was worshipped. The Greeks’ search for knowledge was unending. Their probing produced a pantheon of skeptics, cynics…Their attempt to integrate bodily ills and the psyche was the beginning of psychiatry. Athenians also had tax-financed medicare.”
    3. Greece, as with many other nations, forgot God. 
    4. Psalm 9 has something to say about this. 
      1. Do you know what happens to the nations that forget God?

        17 The wicked shall be turned into hell,
        And all the nations that forget God.

        – Psalm 9.17
  9. America Is By No Means Completely Lost
    1. What will you do? 
    2. Begin praying.