This post originally appeared at https://www.vcy.org/from-the-executive-director/2024/06/10/from-the-director-12/
“We Have Forgotten God”
By Jim Schneider, Executive Director
VCY America
It was on July 4, 1776 that the Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence. A draft had been submitted on July 2nd and it was on the 4th that the edits and changes were agreed. Now 248 years later the importance of this date and of this document must not be forgotten.
In 1776 those living in the American colonies were outraged at the control that England bore over them. The Declaration carefully laid out their grievances as to why they were breaking away from Great Britain.
In all, there were 56 signers who were representatives from the 13 colonies. Their ages ranged from 26 (Edward Rutledge) to 70 (Benjamin Franklin), but the majority of the signers were in their 30’s and 40’s. More than half were lawyers, and others were planters, merchants and shippers. Together they mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. They were mostly men of means who had much to lose if the war was lost. Some of the signers were taken captive during the war and nearly all of them were poorer at the end of the war than at the beginning.
A Constitution and Bill of Rights were later drafted providing the framework for the freedoms we cherish today.
America has been a nation that acknowledged, reverenced, and honored God. Many leaders were not ashamed to honor God in our political bodies, in the nation’s schools in textbooks, in print media, in the churches, in the homes and in everyday living. We have gotten way off course in the relatively short time that we’ve been a nation. We have been off course before, and without question we are off course now.
Our nation has been blessed. We are a land of plenty, rich in minerals and natural resources, and with lots of farmland and produce. And we are blessed with freedoms that others in many parts of the world can only dream.
It is likely that Abraham Lincoln came to recognize the significance of Psalm 33:12. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.” His Presidency guided the nation during some very tumultuous times as this nation was being ripped apart at the seams through a Civil War.
The Civil War was the deadliest war in our nation’s history with some 620,000 deaths. That’s more deaths than the U.S. suffered in World War I, World War II, Viet Nam and Korea combined. Not only was there a physical battle going on, but there was very much a spiritual battle facing the nation. Our nation was less than 100 years old as the Civil War ensued. On March 30, 1863 Abraham Lincoln included Psalm 33:12 in a Proclamation Appointing a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer. Lincoln wrote in part,
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Can you image such a proclamation being issued today?
On August 23, 1984, President Ronald Reagan spoke at a Dallas Prayer Breakfast saying, “Without God, there is no virtue, because there is no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what our senses can perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under!”
After September 11, 2001 churches across the nation were filled to capacity. Congressman gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol singing “God Bless America”. Marquees at businesses across the nation encouraged people to pray for God to bless this nation.
Each year on the anniversary of 9/11 then President Bush called for a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance. In the years after, this was changed to a National Day of Service and Remembrance. The words of Abraham Lincoln appear to be true once again. “We have forgotten God.”
In April, 2009, then President Obama said “…we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
As a nation we have drifted afoul of God’s Word and the principles it lays forth. We have killed over 65 million babies in the name of “choice”. We have forgotten God.
On June 26, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned so-called “same sex marriage.” We have forgotten God.
We have changed military policy allowing open homosexuality and transgenderism. The Boy Scouts have dropped “Boy” from their name and have caved to the homosexual and transgender agenda. We have forgotten God.
This year in his National Day of Prayer Proclamation, Governor Tony Evers never mentions or refers to the name of God. We have forgotten God.
Corporate America is falling in line with this moral erosion and bending over backwards to celebrate “pride” and immorality. We have forgotten God.
Classrooms across the nation have become indoctrination centers for the DEI movement, aberrant lifestyles and undermining parental authority. University campuses are awash with anti-Semitism. We have forgotten God.
As a nation, we must again humble ourselves before God, calling upon Him in repentance and seeking His forgiveness. This is not only required of our nation, but must also be practiced by our churches, our families, and by ourselves!
Have you forgotten God?