No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian Religion allied and accepted by all the classes. Should our Republic ere forget this fundamental precept of governance, men are certain to shed their responsibilities for licentiousness and this great experiment will surely be doomed.
—John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court—
Key point: You show me the Ten Commandments, and I’ll show you the only true foundation for lasting liberty.
An expanded version of this article is available here.
If you haven’t seen The Ten Commandments in the theatre, you likely haven’t seen this introduction by director and producer Cecil B. DeMille:
Ladies and gentlemen, young and old: This may seem an unusual procedure, speaking to you before the picture begins, but we have an unusual subject — the story of the birth of freedom, the story of Moses. The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.
The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.
—director and producer Cecil B. DeMille, in his on-stage introduction to The Ten Commandments—
The Ten Commandments and the genesis of liberty are inseparable. The Ten Commandments and the preservation of liberty are equally inseparable. We see this vividly in Scripture, but we also see it in history. The story of America is — and we must not miss this — a story of freedom and liberty made possible by God’s law, including His Ten Commandments.
Liberty cannot be established or maintained without God and His laws.
Far too few individuals today understand this important principle, but one leader who does is Sam Jones, Pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Hudson, Iowa and cohost of The Shining Light Podcast. Pastor Sam has written an important new book that affirms just how necessary divine law is to the preservation of liberty. Just as Cecil B. DeMille said of his epic film, so it can be said of Sam’s book: The theme “is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God?”
Sam demonstrates the interlocking relationship of liberty and law by warning readers about what happens when the Ten Commandments are ignored or treated with disdain by the populace of a once-free nation. The title of Pastor Sam’s book is 5 Steps to Kill a Nation and How to Stop the Bleeding.
You may have heard that at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September of 1787, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what form of government the delegates to the convention had decided the new nation would have. Franklin replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” After recounting this event, Pastor Sam writes,
Benjamin Franklin understood what many modern-day Americans apparently do not: The form of government the Constitution affirmed is fragile. It will only work if the people cooperate, not merely enjoying their liberties and rights for their own sakes, but accepting their responsibilities as citizens.
Among those responsibilities is the duty of embracing and practicing virtue, because, as we will see, freedom cannot be maintained without it. In turn, virtue is tied to faith in and devotion to God. How does one express these? Obeying the commandments is ground zero. When we as Americans do this, we help make it possible to keep the republic our Founding Fathers painstakingly established in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
Conversely, one of the most effective ways a society can kill a free nation is by dismissing, ignoring or directly rebelling against the Commandments. We can summarize rejection of the Ten Commandments in five easy-to-remember principles:
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- Forget God (this relates to Commandments 1 through 4),
- Destroy the Family (Commandments 5 and 7),
- Devalue Life (the Sixth Commandment),
- Take What Isn’t Yours (Commandments 8 and 10) [, and]
- Hate Your Neighbor (the Ninth Commandment).1
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In the body of the book, under the umbrellas of these themes, Pastor Sam discusses
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- the nation’s departure from a respect for God and the things of God, from a Judeo-Christian faith and a Judeo-Christian set of ethics,
- the assault on the the time-honored definitions of marriage and the family,
- the evil of abortion and the rise of a disrespect for human life in general,
- the deceptively enticing push for socialism, which includes assaults on property rights and on hard work as the most reliable means of increasing one’s own wealth and independence, and
- a relentless attack on objective truth; an attack which, not coincidentally, has given rise to relativism and other belief systems that glorify personal autonomy.
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All of these, of course, are directly related to the nation’s posture toward the Ten Commandments and the values they uphold. “In the Ten Commandments,” Sam writes, “we see the foundation of Western Civilization.…If a foundation cracks and turns to dust, no structure resting on it can remain. I believe that after reading this book you will find a direct correlation between the cultural and societal decline in America and the dislodging of these great principles from the nation’s foundational base.2
In the Ten Commandments, we see the foundation of Western Civilization.…If a foundation cracks and turns to dust, no structure resting on it can remain.
—Pastor Sam Jones—
Learn How to Stop the Bleeding
Dear reader, I cannot encourage you enough to get a copy of Pastor Sam’s book. Read it and
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- learn the true extent to which our liberties — liberties we have all too often taken for granted — are in peril.
- Learn about the false yet noble-sounding ideas that have taken hold in our country, and how Satan has used them to attack God’s commands and to turn citizens’ hearts away from the Supreme Lawgiver.
- Learn the importance of one individual’s obedience to God, and of contending for God’s truth, even in a day when it appears that truth will be soundly rejected. It may be that many won’t listen, but some will, and some will respond with open hearts and minds.
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Read — and remember that Jonah preached to a city many would have written off as hopeless. Yet the people of Nineveh repented! “God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.”
If Nineveh repented, so can America; but God’s people are going to have to be informed, alert, on task, walking in step with Him, and understanding the times and responding appropriately…
…doing all they can, with God’s help, to stop the nation’s bleeding and to promote her healing.
A PDF file of this visual is available here.
Copyright © 2021 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image credit: Photo by Jackson Eaves on Unsplash
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture passages have been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Notes:
1Pastor Sam Jones, 5 Steps to Kill a Nation and How to Stop the Bleeding, (Newport Beach, CA: The GK Publishing Company), 14.
2Jones, 15.