The Preamble

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

A New God

…from the beginning of the Constitutional era, Christian historians have promoted the myth of the Christian origin of the Constitution. Philip Schaff, the most prominent American evangelical Church historian of the late nineteenth century, summarized this view, and the language of his imitators has not deviated in any significant respect: “We may go further and say that the Constitution not only contains nothing which is irreligious or unchristian, but is Christian in substance, though not in form. It is pervaded by the spirit of justice and humanity, which are Christian….”¹

Constitutionalists often claim the United States Constitution was divinely inspired. It was inspired, not by Yahweh,² but by the new god known as WE THE PEOPLE.

WE THE PEOPLE became the replacement god for Yahweh, who was formally abandoned the moment the Constitutional framers penned the first three words of the Preamble and put their signatures to the social compact of the U.S. Constitution. The fact that they penned those words at all demonstrates they had already rejected Yahweh as their personal God – although some framers claimed otherwise.

The idea that WE THE PEOPLE represents a new god will initially prove difficult for many readers. Therefore, let me defer to the inescapable truths of government and religion, as presented by R.J. Rushdoony in his book The Institutes of Biblical Law. Note particularly Point #2:

1. Law is in every culture religious in origin.
2. The source of law is the god of that society.
3. In any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion.
4. No disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society.
5. There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion.³

Let me elaborate upon these points one at a time.

Point #1: “Law is in every culture religious in origin.” All law reflects a society’s morality (or, in most instances, legalized immorality⁴) and is, therefore, religious in both origin and nature. America’s “laws” reflect someone’s morality or immorality, as the case may be, either by design or by default.

Point #2: “The source of law is the god of that society.” Consider the following definitions of “theocracy”:

Government of a state by the immediate direction of God.⁵

1. a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme ruler…. 3. a commonwealth or state under such a form of government….⁶

Not all theocracies are Christian. There are Jewish theocracies, Hindu theocracies, Islamic theocracies, and Buddhist theocracies, each with their own godhead. In fact, there is no such thing as a non-theocratic government. All governments are theocracies, based upon the laws of either Yahweh or a replacement god:

Behind every system of law there is a god. To find the god in any system, locate the source of law in that system. If the source of law is the individual, then the individual is the god of that system. If the source of the law is the people, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, then these things are the gods of those systems. If our source of law is a court, then the court is our god. If there is no higher law beyond man, then man is his own god, or else his creatures, the institutions he has made, have become his gods. When you choose your authority, you choose your god, and where you look for your law, there is your god.⁷

Gary DeMar masterfully answers a dissenter’s objections:

The rejection of one god leads inescapably to the choice of another god. If a person, group, court, etc. establishes himself as the final arbiter of right and wrong, then he/they have assumed the attributes of a god. Thus, he/they are theocratic…. Democracy can become theocratic if absolute power is given to the people. …vox populi, vox dei, “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” Those who promote a particular worldview and want to see it implemented socially, educationally, politically, and judicially have elevated the majority to the status of gods. Their political advocates have theocratic tendencies. Only their choice of god has changed. “Messianic” is used in a similar way [as theocracy]. While the term in generally attributed to a religious figure, it is often used to describe people or institutions that have salvation in mind. For example, education (“The Messianic Character of American Education”), politics (“The Messianic State”), and science are often viewed as messianic…. Theocracy is no different….

One assumes the mantle of deity when he sets himself up as the ultimate authority. It’s the attributes of deity that makes someone god-like. In the eighteenth century, the French revolutionaries declared “reason” to be the goddess of their new state religion. Nineteenth century France was spoken of a “goddess France” by patriotic figures like Victor Hugo and Charles Maurras. Hegel, the philosophical patron saint of communism, wrote that “the State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth…. We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend Nature, it is harder to grasp the Essence of the State…. The State is the march of God through the world.”⁸

Too bad neither Rushdoony nor DeMar could not see how this applies to the Constitution.

In 1 Corinthians 8:4, the Apostle Paul informs us that “…there is none other God but one.”⁹ Therefore, there can be only one true theocracy. All other governments represent humanism, in any of its limitless forms. The United States Constitutional Republic is just one of many in which the people have replaced Yahweh as the god of their society. It is what might be dubbed a human theocracy. Each and every government’s laws reflect either Yahweh or man. Antinomians should take serious pause at the implications of these inescapable conclusions.

Not only are all governments theocracies, but as such they are theocentric – that is, god-centered. So it is with a government of, by, and for Yahweh; and so it is with a government of, by, and for the people. Herein we find the battle so often described in the Bible: the war between Yahweh’s will and man’s will:

It is better to trust in YHWH¹⁰ than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in YHWH than to put confidence in princes. (Psalm 118:8-9)

As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of YHWH, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth…. (Jeremiah 44:16-17)

The first three words of the Preamble are nothing more than an American expression of this same eternal conflict. In Marbury v. Madison, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshal acknowledged that the Constitutional Republic was erected on a government of, by, and for the people:

That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric had been erected.¹¹

Christians are citizens of and ambassadors for Yahweh’s kingdom, not man’s:

[Yahweh] Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son…. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him. (Colossians 1:13-16)

Yahweh’s kingdom, created by and for Him, stands in stark contrast to any kingdom created by and for the people.

In an interview on Bill Moyers Journal, 2008 Republican presidential candidate, and one of today’s greatest defenders of the U.S. Constitution, Ron Paul declared, “The idea of a theocracy very much annoys me.”¹² But, the fact is, a theocracy does not annoy Paul at all – at least not the theocracy of WE THE PEOPLE. He, like most Americans, is only offended by Yahweh’s theocracy.

One has to wonder if Paul wasn’t influenced by the symposium of evangelical leaders, who in 1985 said nearly the same thing in a Christianity Today article:

…evangelicals … desire a nation of Christians, but they are opposed to a Christian government that mandates “Christian” laws simply because they are Christian.¹³

Talk about a house divided against itself.

Point #3: “In any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion.” This means that with any change of law, an explicit or implicit change of gods occurs as well. More on this later.

Point #4: “No disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society.” Every society’s government is religious in nature because all law is religious in origin and reflects the god of that government. There is no escaping this reality.

Ironically, in his book The Nature of the American System, Rushdoony, in fact, attempted to escape this reality as it pertained to the Constitution:

Why … is there, in the main, an absence of any reference to Christianity in the Constitution? …There is an absence of [Christian or biblical] reference because the framers of the Constitution did not believe that this was an area of jurisdiction for the federal government.¹⁴

The United States, in its inception as a constitutional government, was not a secular state. As we have noted, it abstained from any particular form of Christian settlement because this was the prerogative of the states.¹⁵

Essentially, Rushdoony claimed the federal government was neither secular nor Christian. In other words, it was allegedly religiously neutral, despite that later in the same book he declared that neutrality is impossible:

Neutralism is a myth.¹⁶

No person or institution possesses the ability to be neutral….¹⁷

The alternative to “In God we trust” is “In man we trust,”…. The presuppositions of all of man’s thinking are inescapably religious, and they are never neutral.¹⁸

The federal government the Constitution produced was not biblical, pronomian, or Christian. If Rushdoony were still alive, I would ask him if the government the Constitution produced was not Christian, then what was it? It either had to be Judaic, Islamic, Buddhist, of some other specific religious orientation, or secular, that is, religiously humanistic.

Point #5: “There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion.” This is the same as saying that one law system can have no tolerance for any laws inconsonant with their own laws. Rushdoony commented, “Every law-system must maintain its existence by hostility to every other law-system and to alien religious foundations or else it commits suicide.”¹⁹ This was as much as stated in the following Supreme Court cases, which are so-often peddled by Constitutionalists:

All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
—Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 164, 176 (1803)

An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no right; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.
—Norton vs. Shelby County, 118 US 425, 442 (1886)

Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.
—Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 491 (1966)

James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, and Rufus King, all signatories of the U.S. Constitution, appeared to understand that Yahweh’s law was superior to the Constitution,²⁰ however, they still put their signatures to a document full of biblically conflicting edicts.

A Change of Religion

…consider all morality [or immorality] in general as conformity to a law. (John Witherspoon, signatory of the Declaration of Independence)²¹

You cannot have any civil government anywhere in the world without an establishment of religion…. All laws represent morality…. So it is inescapable that when you enact a law you are enacting your moral and religious faith. (R.J. Rushdoony, Lecture: The U.S. Constitution Changed)

Based on the idea that all law is religious in nature, Rushdoony declared that any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion and, therefore, a change of gods. How does this reflect upon the U.S. Constitution?

History demonstrates that during the 17th and early 18th centuries Yahweh’s laws governed much of America. The following are but two of the documents testifying that early Americans formed Christian governments designed around Yahweh’s laws²²:

The Portsmouth, Rhode Island Compact, 1638
We whose names are underwritten do hereby solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a Bodie Politick and as He shall help, will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given in His Holy Word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.

Fundamental Agreement of the Colony of New Haven, Connecticut, 1639
Agreement; We all agree that the scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in duties which they are to perform to God and to man, as well in families and commonwealth as in matters of the church; so likewise in all public officers which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, we will, all of us, be ordered by the rules which the scripture holds forth; and we agree that such persons may be entrusted with such matters of government as are described in Exodus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 1:13 with Deuteronomy 17:15 and 1 Corinthians 6:1,6 & 7….

Historian John Fiske noted that this Agreement makes no reference to any other government as its source of authority:

It is worthy of note that this document contains none of the conventional references to a “dread sovereign” or a “gracious King,” nor the slightest allusion to the British or any other government outside of Connecticut itself….²³

Its longevity is also remarkable:

…Thomas Hooker, founded the colony of Connecticut… In 1639, he wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which many consider to be the first full-fledged written constitution in history. Whereas other documents in the colonies were later modified or replaced, the Connecticut Constitution remained intact up to and well beyond the adoption of the national Constitution.²⁴

Almost as impressive as New Haven’s agreement are the testimonies to this and other similar documents:

John Clark Ridpath, History of the United States, 1874
In June of 1639 the leading men of New Haven held a convention in a barn, and formally adopted the Bible as the constitution of the State. Everything was strictly conformed to the religious standard. The government was called the House of Wisdom…. None but church members were admitted to the rights of citizenship.²⁵

Note, an American Constitution existed almost 140 years prior to the United States Constitution. In The American Temper, Richard Mosier identified the Puritan Bible as not “only the holy restored word of God, but a constitutional document of the Protestant movement.”²⁶

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
They exercised the rights of sovereignty; they named their magistrates, concluded peace or declared war, made police regulations, and enacted laws as if their allegiance was due only to God. Nothing can be more curious and, at the same time more instructive, than the legislation of that period; it is there that the solution of the great social problem which the United States now present to the world is to be found.

Amongst these documents we shall notice, as especially characteristic, the code of laws promulgated by the little State of Connecticut in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and … they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ. “Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord,” says the preamble of the Code, “shall surely be put to death.” This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death….²⁷

In Proverbs 14:34, Solomon declared that “righteousness exalteth a nation.” Righteousness is only found in Yahweh’s perfect laws (Psalm 19:7-9). As attested by French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville, America was once an exalted nation, to which other nations looked as an example. Since 1787, when America, as a nation, stopped following Yahweh’s laws and began following the laws of WE THE PEOPLE, our legislation has ceased providing instruction to others. Instead, the rest of the world now holds America in disdain.

John Cotton described early New England governments as theocracies:

The famous John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, … earnestly pleaded “that the government might be considered as a theocracy, wherein the Lord was judge, lawgiver and king; that the laws which gave Israel might be adopted, so far as they were of moral and perpetual equity….”²⁸ At the desire of the court, he compiled a system of laws founded chiefly on the laws of Moses, which was considered by the legislative body as the general standard….²⁹

McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, Nineteenth-century America’s most popular school book, also testified to America’s early theocratic form of government:

McGuffey’s Sixth Eclectic Reader, 1879
Their form of government was as strictly theocratical insomuch that it would be difficult to say where there was any civil authority among them distinct from ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Whenever a few of them settled a town, they immediately gathered themselves into a church; and their elders were magistrates, and their code of laws was the Pentateuch…. God was their King; and they regarded him as truly and literally so….³⁰

In “Biblical Law in America: Historical Perspectives and Potentials for Reform,” John W. Welch commented on the outstanding influence that Yahweh’s laws had in Colonial America:

Especially in New England, the Bible served as the bedrock of most principles of early American jurisprudence.

The first step in approaching biblical law in America is to become aware of the prevalence of the Bible in early American history. The Bible was nothing short of the underlying fabric upon which American society was founded. Most people are surprised to learn, however, how large a role the Bible played in the formulation of the earliest laws of several of the American colonies of several of the American colonies. Indeed, it has it has rightly been concluded that “the ideal polity of early Puritan New England was thought to comprehend divine intentions as revealed in Mosaic law.” The rule of law began, not with the rules of man but with the rules of God. One Puritan document directly states, “[T]he more any law smells of man, the more unprofitable,” and thus, it asserts, the only proper laws were in fact “divine ordinances, revealed in the pages of Holy Writ and administered according to deductions and rules gathered from the Word of God.”³¹

Considerable differences existed between the Christendom of the 1600s and early 1700s and the Christianity of the late 1700s, as attested by Daniel J. Boorstin in his book The Americans: The Colonial Experience:

Compared with Americans of the 18th or the 19th century, the Puritans surely were theology-minded…. Yet what really distinguished them in their day was that they were less interested in theology itself, than in the application of theology to everyday life, and especially to society. From the 17th-century point of view their interest in theology was practical. They were less concerned with perfecting their formulation of the Truth than with making their society in America embody the Truth they already knew. Puritan New England was a noble experiment in applied theology. …for testing a theology, for seeing whether Zion [the Kingdom of God] could be rebuilt if men abandoned the false foundations of the centuries since Jesus – for this New England offered a rare opportunity.³²

Why not in one unspoiled corner of the world declare a truce on doubts, on theological bickering? Here at last men could devote their full energy to applying Christianity – to building Zion. ³³

The history of the New England pulpit is thus an unbroken chronicle of the attempt of leaders in the New World to bring their community steadily closer to the Christian model. The New England meeting-house … was primarily a place of instruction. Here the community learned its duties … so they could better build their Zion in the wilderness, a City upon a Hill to which other men might in their turn look for instruction…. In New England the ministers were, in their own words, “opening” the texts of the Bible by which they had to live and build their society. The sermons were thoroughly theological and yet thoroughly practical … for converting saints and building Zion.³⁴

The Ten Commandments were, of course, in the foreground of their thinking, but the Bible as a whole was the law of their life. For answers to their problems they drew as readily on Exodus, Kings, or Romans, as on the less narrative portions of the Bible.³⁵

The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay said that they started from “the lawes of God” rather than the laws of Englishmen.³⁶

The most dramatic and most obvious [changes in Puritan laws from the laws of England] were in the list of capital crimes. To those crimes punishable by death under the laws of England, the colonists by 1648 had added a number of others, including idolatry (violations of the First Commandment), blasphemy, man-stealing (from Exod. 21.16), adultery with a married woman, perjury with intent to secure the death of another, the cursing of a parent by a child over 16 years of age (Exod. 21.17), the offense of being a “rebellious son” (Deut. 21.20.21)…. These were clear cases where the laws of Scripture were allowed to override the laws of England.³⁷

Eighteenth-century Christianity, on the other hand, was depicted quite differently:

…[by] the mid-18th century … Puritanism was all but dead.³⁸

This means that government based upon the laws of Yahweh was also dead.

The Church of England [Anglicanism], instead of being only one among numerous religious sects, in Virginia was a catholic [universal] church…. Theirs was not a violent passion inspiring men to rebuild Zion … but a quietly pervasive sentiment which suffused the institutions of the colony with a mild aura of divine sanction…. The responsibilities of governing New England also dulled the edge of dogma so that by the late 17th century they had begun those prudent compromises which would produce 18th-century Congregationalism and 19th-century Unitarianism. Anglicanism in Virginia, for similar reasons, was destined to be even more practical and compromising than it had been in England.³⁹

It is hard to name a leader of the Revolution, including such men as George Washington, James Madison, Edmund Pendleton, and Patrick Henry, who were not securely within the fold of the [Anglican] Church.⁴⁰

In other words, the framers of the United States Constitution, although mostly churchgoers, were not the same cut of churchmen as those of the 17th century. The churches of the 18th century and the 17th century were radically different. The former were interested in building the Kingdom of God based upon the perfect laws of Yahweh. The latter were not and this certainly contributed to the complete lack of quotations from, or even references to, the laws of Yahweh in the Constitution. The four volumes of notes from the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers are also conspicuously lacking in Bible references. Like the Constitution, the Federalist Papers also lack any substantial reference to Yahweh; God is mentioned merely twice and then only in an off-handed fashion:

…Alexander Hamilton almost goes out of his way to ignore the Old Testament in his recital of the various republics and their history in “The Federalist,”…. …the republic’s ablest group of statesmen, in defending the proposed constitution in appeals to the widest public, and using skillfully every argument that would make a new document palatable to the greatest number of people, saw fit to ignore the whole subject of religion. It is not that it is attacked or made little of, but the fact that it is entirely ignored, that marks the entire disappearance of the Puritan theocratic idea…. Where a hundred years before every case, whether civil, political or criminal, was decided by a reference to the Old or New Testament … in “The Federalist” the Bible and Christianity, as well as the clergy, are passed over as having no bearing upon the political issues being discussed. …The eighteenth-century conception of Greco-Roman Paganism has completely supplanted Puritanic Judaism [Hebraism⁴¹].⁴²

That C. Gregg Singer understood the striking theological differences between the worldviews of the Puritans and Constitutional framers is clearly detailed in his book A Theological Interpretation of American History:

It may very well be said that the first product of the Puritan theology was a Puritan philosophy of government…. The idea that the state was beyond the reach of the claims of the Bible was … abhorrent to the Puritan…. In the Scriptures they found the origin, the form, the functions and the power of the state and human government. This resort to the Scriptures as the exclusive norm for human political organization and activity clearly differentiated them from both the Roman Catholics and that rising group of secularist writers [particularly in the 1700s] who were finding the origin of the state and the source of its powers in a vaguely defined source known as the social compact or contract. In the Puritan view of life man could no more create the government under which he would live and endow it with its just powers than he could effect his own salvation.⁴³

Basic in Puritan political thought is the doctrine of divine sovereignty. It was the sovereign God who created the state and to it its powers and functions. The earthly magistrate held his position and exercised his power by a divine decree. He was a minister of God under common grace for the execution of the laws of God among the people at large, for the maintenance of law and order, and for so ruling the state…. In Puritan political theory the magistrate derived his powers from God and not from the people….⁴⁴

The whole conception of government that would later be proclaimed by John Locke and others, which placed the sovereignty in the hands of the people and which found the origin of government in a human compact was utterly unknown to the Puritans. They did not believe in a government by the people….⁴⁵

[The Puritans sensed] that in the democratic philosophy, with its emphasis upon the sovereignty of the people, lay a fundamental contradiction to the biblical doctrine of the sovereignty of God. They clearly perceived that democracy was the fruit of humanism and not the Reformation concept.⁴⁶

…it is not too much to say that the separation from England [in the 1700s] could not have taken place unless there had first been a revolt against the Puritan world and life view in the colonies. Richard Mosier correctly stated the case in his The American Temper when he wrote that the struggle against the absolutism of the King of England had its corollary in the struggle against the sovereignty of the Puritan God: “the ‘Revolutionary’ could no more admit a sovereign God than he could a sovereign king.”⁴⁷ Thus, Deism provided the motivation for not only the American Revolution, but also for the rise of Democracy in America (as distinct from that type of … government which had characterized the Puritan movement in the seventeenth century).⁴⁸

The sovereignty of God was replaced by that of the people and the decrees of God … were replaced by a nebulous, unhistorical and humanistic concept known as the social contract. The ruler was no longer responsible to God for his administration of government, but responsible to the people. The law he enforced was no longer the revealed will of God for men, but the announced will of the majority which was now sovereign.⁴⁹

Mosier has well observed that this revolutionary age demanded that both the absolute God and the absolute king must “henceforth rule by the consent of the governed. The God of Puritanism, stripped of His antique powers, had no recourse but to enter as a weakened prince into the temple of the individualism and there to seek refuge.”⁵⁰ This sovereignty which he once claimed, and was accorded by the Puritans, was now claimed by man himself. This was the philosophical and theological outlook of many of the leaders of the Revolution. …theirs was a secular political philosophy and … its roots are to be found in the Enlightenment in general, and in Deism in particular. Most of the Revolutionary leaders desired to retain the Christian ethic, but to separate it from the biblical revelation and to find a new basis for it in natural law.⁵¹

More from Mosier regarding America’s most significant paradigm shift to date:

The waning of Puritanism and the rise of religious rationalism, by loosening the bonds of the ancient faith, had thus prepared the colonial mind for the revolutionary ideas of the eighteenth century. …the absolutism of the Puritan God proved no less objectionable than the absolutism of the English king. The deistic faith of the eighteenth century proposed to limit the powers of both monarchs, confining the absolute God to the constitutional law of the cosmos, and the absolute King to the restrictions of a social contract.

The Puritan God was blown out of his cosmic throne only to dwell as an immanent divinity in the heart of man…. The absolutism of God was thus dissolved in the absolutism of man. The religion of reason triumphed over the waning Puritanism, and drew from a weakened God a bill of inalienable rights; while the piety which had once inspired the indomitable puritan fled into the arms of evangelical religion and bred a sentimental religion of the heart.

…before self-government could be proclaimed as a cosmic principle, either in the realm of nature or in the society of man, the absolutism of the Puritan God must be swept away…. For as long as the sovereignty of God went unquestioned, the sovereignty of man would remain in doubt.⁵²

The government of God had thus been transformed by the government of man; and the monarchy of the sixteenth century, with its heritage of absolutism, gave way to the republic of the eighteenth century, with its heritage of constitutionalism. …the sovereignty of God had now to be limited so that it might not interfere with the natural rights of man. It happened, accordingly, that where the government of God had become an impediment to the advancement of the new social order, the divine decrees of the feudal monarch [Yahweh] were transformed into the legal principles of a constitutionalist king.⁵³

The sovereignty of man … became the rallying cry of republican religion, bringing to a final point of disintegration the forces of Puritanism.⁵⁴

Put simply: the “world” created by the original Christian American forefathers was turned upside down in the late 1700s by the Constitutionalists:

For the [original] Constitution not to mention religion at all represented a rejection … an extremely controversial decision not to make the United States a Christian Nation. It wasn’t contemporary liberals who upset the founders’ religious ideas about the United States, it was the founders who upset the Puritans’ ideas.⁵⁵

The English liberal ideal [in America] that embraced religious laissez-fair [government noninterference] turned the Christian commonwealth [dominion] ideal that had been taught by Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Aquinas, John Calvin, and the American Puritans … into a form of tyranny. This traditional Christian view of the state … the American founders rejected….⁵⁶

According Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism should be and, in fact, is a religion:

The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; –let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; –let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.⁵⁷

Constitution vs. Constitution

The Constitutional form of government established in the late 1700s was not practiced in the 1600s or early 1700s. A change of law and government occurred in the late 1700s, supplanting what had been the law and government. From that moment on, the nation that had been predominately Christian became progressively secular and predominantly humanistic:

A nation’s religious foundation can be determined by looking at its economic system, judicial pronouncements, educational goals, and taxing policy. Culture is “religion externalized.” Look at the nation’s art and music, and there you will find its religion. Read its books and newspapers. Watch its television programs. The outgrowth of civilization will be present on every page and in every program. The habits of individuals and families are also indictors of a nation’s religious commitments. The sum of all these expressions will lead us to a nation’s religious commitments. While it might be beneficial to look at the creeds of the churches, the actions of the people who subscribe to the creeds are a more accurate barometer of what the people really believe.⁵⁸

The change of law and government in the late 1700s also brought about a change of religion, and because the former law and government represented Yahweh, both He and His laws were necessarily discarded for the new god and its laws.

This is difficult to accept, especially because we have repeatedly been told the Constitutional framers were such godly men. Today’s Christian⁵⁹ Constitutionalists are always quick to share the framers’ Christian-sounding quotations. There are in fact hundreds of books replete with such quotations. No one who has studied their writings can question that many of the framers and their disciples often said the right things regarding Yahweh, His Son, Christianity, and even His laws as they apply to government and life in general. But such statements, by themselves, mean nothing. Thomas Jefferson made some Christian-sounding statements, but no one would argue that Jefferson was a Christian.

Politicians are notorious for saying the right things – particularly Christian sounding statements. Two-hundred years from now, Christian historians will likely be using Christian-sounding statements from Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama to buttress declarations that these men were also great Christians.

Constitutionalists would do well to heed Job’s young friend Elihu who declared that “great men are not always wise,” which he preceded with the true test of greatness: “the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding” (Job 32:8-9). For all practical purposes, the framers failed the test of greatness when they disregarded the inspiration of Yahweh by ignoring and failing to instate His laws:

…[Yahweh] shall come as an eagle against the house of YHWH, because they have transgressed the covenant, and trespassed against my law…. Israel hath cast off the thing that is good; the enemy shall pursue him. They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not…. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind…. I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. (Hosea 8:1-12)

Some people seem to believe the only thing necessary to prove one’s godliness or Christianity is an invocation of God. This erroneous and dangerous thinking opens the door to political abuse in the name of Christ and what is, more often than not, Christian sanction of ungodly actions. This is certainly true today and was no less true in the late 18th century. It is this very naivety that has prompted Christian sanction of the United States Constitution since its inception.

Dennis Woods points out what is required for the United States Constitution to be a truly Christian covenant:

…two key elements of any covenant are specification of the parties to the covenant and the details of administration. First, as we have seen, if a national organic document is in fact a covenant with God, then it must state this clearly in the preamble. A covenant, as opposed to a contract, includes God as party to the agreement.

Second, there must be a delineation of how the covenant is to be administered. If a covenant is made with God, then it must spell out the nature of the authority to whom God has delegated administration of the covenant. Who represents the people before God? If these two elements are missing, it is impossible to claim that the document represents a covenant with God. In fact, if these elements are absent or distorted, it is possible to argue that the document represents a national break from covenant with God, since this covenant had been established earlier in the Mayflower Compact and the various colonial charters.⁶⁰

Government [covenanted with Yahweh] is not, therefore, a “social contract” as taught by Locke, Rousseau, and Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Civil government is established by the sovereign will of God, not the “consent of the governed.”….

…the covenant model posits the foundation of civil government in God and His Word. God is invoked as party to the covenant, His law provides the operational framework for the government, and He is the ultimate enforcer of its provisions. God is acknowledged as an active participant, not just remote spectator as under the social compact.⁶¹

Additionally, recognizing the Bible and Christianity’s influence upon society is not the same thing as specifically legislating and adjudicating according to Yahweh’s laws, and one only needs to look at the record to know there has been a dearth of the latter since the Constitution’s ratification.

In order to conclude that the Constitutional framers were Christians, today’s Christian Constitutionalists have severed the framers’ words from their actions. This is similar to Christian Republicans who ignored Bush’s conspicuous record and separated his Christian remarks from his actions.⁶² Christians of every persuasion are notorious for blinding themselves to the facts in order to claim that their political leader is a Christian.

To date, the battle between Christians and secularists over the U.S. Constitution and its framers has been a war of quotations – and there are plenty to go around for both sides, often from the same framers. Take Madison’s quotations for example:

Madison, on the other hand, defies definition or description. Seeking evidence of his faith quickly leads to the conclusion that there is, in the words of the poet, no there there, that in the mature Madison’s writings there is no trace, no clue as to his personal religious convictions. Educated by Presbyterian clergymen, Madison, as a student at Princeton (1769-1772), seems to have developed a “transient inclination” to enter the ministry. In a 1773 letter to a college friend he made the zealous proposal that the rising stars of his generation renounce their secular prospects and “publicly … declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ.” Two months later Madison renounced his spiritual prospects and began the study of law. The next year he entered the political arena, serving as a member of the Orange County Committee of Safety. Public service seems to have crowded out of his consciousness the previous imprints of faith. For the rest of his life there is no mention in his writings of Jesus Christ nor of any of the issues that might concern a practicing Christian. Late in retirement there are a few enigmatic references to religion, but nothing else….

Scholars, nevertheless, have tried to construct from this unyielding evidence a religious identity for Madison. He is such a commanding figure in the founding period’s controversies over religion’s relation to government that a knowledge of his personal religious convictions is sought as a key to his public posture on church-state issues. The very paucity of evidence has permitted a latitude of interpretation in which writers have created Madison in the image of their own religious convictions. To Christian scholars Madison is a paragon of piety; to those of a more secular bent he is a deist.⁶³

This war of citations will persist and there will be no end to this battle. The only means of determining whether the framers were Christians is by comparing their actions to the Word of God:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity (anomian – lawlessness). (Matthew 7:21-23)

…men shall be lovers of their own selves … having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (2 Timothy 3:2-5)

This is a perfect description of the Constitutional framers. Although many of them privately and publicly claimed to be Christians, they openly practiced anomianism. Benjamin Rush, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, is a perfect example. David Barton (founder of Wallbuilders) and others laud Rush as an example of one of America’s great Christian founding fathers, and yet in “An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments Upon Criminals, and Upon Society,” in which Rush promoted the unbiblical prison system and rejected Yahweh’s punitive system of public executions and restitution, he lauded capricious reason as the means of determining what is right:

…truth in government, as well as in philosophy, is of progressive growth…. Reason, tho’ deposed and oppressed, is the only just sovereign of the human mind. Discoveries … have derived their credit and usefulness only from their according with the decisions of reason…. Whatever is humane is wise – whatever is wise is just – and whatever is wise, just, and humane will be found to be the true interest of states…. For the honour of humanity, it can be said that in every age and country there have been found persons in whom uncorrupted nature has triumphed over custom and law…. These things are the latent struggles of reason, or rather the secret voice of God himself, speaking in the human heart….⁶⁴

The framers never attributed the Bible or the laws of Yahweh as the inspiration for any specific article or amendment in the Constitution. After reviewing over 2,200 political writings published between 1760 and 1805 (known as the “founding era”), David S. Lutz and Charles S. Hyneman came to some very interesting conclusions regarding the Bible’s influence upon the Constitutional framers and other founding fathers of that period. Lutz admitted that while the “book … most frequently cited by Americans during the founding era [was] … the Book of Deuteronomy,” “the Bible’s prominence disappears [during the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate over the Constitution]” and that “the Federalists’ [the framers and other proponents of the Constitution] inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant.”⁶⁵ In one of the tables provided by Lutz, between the 1770s and 1780s, Bible quotations decreased among both Federalists and Anti-Federalists while Enlightenment and Whig citations increased.

Clearly, the U.S. Constitution was inspired, not by Yahweh, but by a small group of men claiming to represent their new god – WE THE PEOPLE. Patrick Henry (who refused to be one of Virginia’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention, claiming he smelled a rat) later declared the conventioneers had no right to claim they represented the people. Nevertheless, by their silence, the people gave their assent, as did those in 2 Samuel 24 when King David pursued an unlawful census.

Do not forget that it wasn’t David who took the brunt of Yahweh’s wrath, but rather the people who let David get away with the census. Judgment of the people for their rulers’ transgressions is found time and again in the Bible (2 Kings 24:1-4, 2 Chronicles 28:19, etc.). The people are ultimately responsible. They were responsible when the Constitutional conventioneers chose a new god, and we will continue to be responsible until we rise up, repent of our forefathers’ sins, overthrow the Constitution of WE THE PEOPLE, and return to Yahweh and His Constitution.

Internal Evidence

Humanism is the placing of Man at the center of all things and making him the measure all things.

Francis Schaeffer⁶⁶

The more any law smells of man the more unprofitable.

John Cotton⁶⁷

The real evidence that WE THE PEOPLE represents a new national god is found throughout the United States Constitution, particularly in the Preamble. The Preamble is arguably the most audacious claim to sovereignty ever written. If you stop and think about its presumptuous claims, you will see that this new constitution is humanism of the rankest sort. It is the same sin described by the Prophet Habakkuk:

…[Yahweh’s] law is slacked [ignored, NASB], and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth. (Habakkuk 1:4)

The Prophet Malachi put it similarly:

Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law. (Malachi 2:9)

What a perfect description of what occurred at the Constitutional Convention in the late 1700s. The framers were unquestionably slack with Yahweh’s laws. They not only compromised Yahweh’s laws, they completely ignored them.

With such a significant Christian beginning in the early 1600s, how can we have strayed so far from our Christian roots? The answer is simple: the framers’ hearts were divided (Hosea 10:2). Consequently, Yahweh’s law was slacked, and once that door was unbolted – once Pandora’s box was opened – there was nothing to stop the continuing compromise, especially with Christians touting the very document that started them down the pernicious road on which we find ourselves today:

The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance [violated statutes, NASB], broken the everlasting covenant. (Isaiah 24:5)

In other words, because America has sown the wind by transgressing Yahweh’s covenant and trespassing against His law, she is now reaping the whirlwind. (Hosea 8:1, 7)

Thanks to countless cases like O.J. Simpson’s and Stella Liebeck’s (the infamous McDonald’s coffee spiller), both Christians and non-Christians are wondering what has happened to justice. Habakkuk provides the answer:

Therefore, the law is ignored And justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore, justice comes out perverted. (Habakkuk 1:4, NASB)

When the wicked surround the righteous, justice is eventually sacrificed either on the altar of public opinion or the altar of political correctness. What little righteousness the U.S. Constitution provided was negated by its unrighteousness.

Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs. (Habakkuk 1:5-6)

Today’s heathen also possess dwelling places that do not, by covenant, belong to them. They hold these high places due to the abdication of the true possessors. You might say that Jacob Israel has given the birthright back to Esau Edom⁶⁸ without even getting back his original bowl of beans. Christians have given the Kingdom away thanks to doctrines promoting an exclusively future Kingdom, the Kingdom in heaven rather than the Kingdom of heaven, the rapture, the idea that “this world is not my home,” the irrelevance of Yahweh’s laws under the New Covenant, and a nearly absolute obedience to any and all government authority.

Even Benjamin Franklin understood we would eventually get what we deserved under the U.S. Constitution:

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults … this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.⁶⁹

Franklin might well have been prophesying the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, all of which most Americans deserved.

Habakkuk continued on the subject of the heathens who were given the Kingdom:

They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. …imputing this his power unto his god. (Habakkuk 1:7, 11)

The New American Standard Bible renders verse 7 more accurately:

…Their justice and authority originate with themselves. (Habakkuk 1:7, NASB)

A better description of humanism and Constitutionalism cannot be found. The Preamble declares that “WE THE PEOPLE” for various reasons do “ordain and establish this constitution….” In Deuteronomy 12:8, Moses warned, “Ye shall not do after … whatsoever is right in [every man’s] own eyes.” Constitutionalism is but a collective, agreed-upon form of humanism. By their silence and thus their acquiescence, the people claimed their authority, not from Yahweh, but from themselves.

In two of his many arguments on behalf of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers, James Madison declared where ultimate power resides in a Constitutional Republic:

The adversaries of the constitution seem to have lost sight of the people…. They must be told that the ultimate authority … resides in the people alone….⁷⁰

As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power … it is from them that the constitutional charter under which the [power of the] several branches of government … is derived.⁷¹

In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton stated it similarly:

The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.⁷²

Much more consequential, the federalists and anti-federalists alike lost sight of Yahweh and His ultimate authority.

George Washington (who presided over the Constitutional Convention) confirmed this self-originating authority in his “Farewell Address”:

This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and support.⁷³

The Constitutional Republic’s fifth president, James Monroe concurred:

The people, the highest authority known in our system, from whom all our institutions spring and on whom they depend, formed it.⁷⁴

John Adams confessed to the same thing regarding the State Constitutions:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history.... It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven … it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.... Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone….⁷⁵

Following are samplings from some of the state constitutions:

…all power in inherent in the people and all free governments are founded on their authority. (Pennsylvania, Article IX, Section II)

…all power is originally vested in the people and all free governments are founded on their authority. (South Carolina, 1790, Article IX, Section I)

...no authority shall, on any pretense whatever, be exercised over the people or members of this State, but such as shall be derived from and granted by them [the people]. (New York, 1777, Article I)

…all political power is vested in and derived from the people only. (North Carolina, 1776, “Declaration of Rights,” Article I)

…power is inherent in them [the people], and therefore all just authority in the institutions of political society is derived from the people. (Delaware, 1792, Preamble)

…all power being originally inherent in, and consequently derived from the people, therefore all officers of government – whether Legislative or Executive – are their trustees and servants and, at all times in a legal way, accountable to them. (Vermont, 1786 “Declaration of Rights,” Article VI)

…all power is vested in and consequently derived from the people. (Virginia, 1776, “Bill of Rights,” Section 2)

…all government of right originates from the people, is founded in consent, and instituted for the general good. (New Hampshire, 1784, Part I, Bill of Rights, Article I)

All power residing originally in the people and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority – whether Legislative, Executive, or judicial – are their substitutes and agents and are at all times accountable to them. (Massachusetts, 1789, part I, Article V)

In Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, David Barton confirmed this people power:

American government belonged to the people, and power over that government rested totally in the hands of the people.⁷⁶

In his repudiation of the National Association for the Amendment of the Constitution [to recognize “the rulership of Jesus Christ and the supremacy of the divine law”], Horace Greeley wrote, “Almighty God is not the source of authority and power in our government; the people of The United States are.”⁷⁷ In a letter to William Charles Jarvis, Thomas Jefferson agreed:

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.⁷⁸

Establishing Justice

According to Habakkuk, not only did the Chaldeans’ authority originate with themselves, but so did their justice. And so does the justice of WE THE PEOPLE: “WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice….” What an audacious and insolent assertion! Only Yahweh is just in and of Himself, and only He can establish justice:

Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy [Yahweh’s] throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. (Psalm 18:14)

Many seek the ruler’s favour; but every man’s judgment [justice, NASB] cometh from YHWH. (Proverbs 29:26)

In a lecture entitled The Common Law, Lecture #2, Constitutional Attorney Herb Titus claimed that the Preamble’s assertion that WE THE PEOPLE established justice did not authorize “the national government to define justice.”⁷⁹ However, because nowhere in the Constitution is Yahweh’s law declared the standard for determining justice, it has always been left to the national and state governments to define justice.

Instead of confirming the justice already established in Yahweh’s perfect laws, the framers’ declaration implies that justice had yet to be established. This (and other numerous confirmations throughout the Constitution) reveals that they preferred their justice to Yahweh’s.

Anytime autonomous man attempts to establish justice outside Yahweh’s perfect laws, it always results in injustice. It is depicted in Isaiah 5:20 as calling good evil and evil good. The word “autonomous” comes from two Greek words: auto meaning self and nomos meaning law. The word, which literally means “self law,” is just another way of describing humanism or, in this instance, Constitutionalism.

In a lecture entitled “God, Man, Legal Education & Law,” Titus summarized his talk by pointing to the source of justice, somehow oblivious that his statement condemned the Constitution he so adamantly promotes:

The ministry of justice, it is the very essence of law. It is the very purpose of law to administer justice…. And to do so, one must have laws fixed as to time, uniform as to person or situation, and universal. Without God as the source of law, without God as the source of truth, it is impossible to do justice.⁸⁰

Earlier in the same lecture, he asked and answered the following rhetorical question, without somehow recognizing that it applies best to the Constitution: “What’s the problem with building a legal system based upon man’s reason even, though it might be man’s best reason? [The answer] is that man’s reason changes.”⁸¹

Justice is defined by Random House Webster’s College Dictionary:

1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness. 2. rightfulness or lawfulness…. 4. the quality of being true or correct. 5. the moral principle determining just conduct…. 7. the administering of deserved punishment or reward. 8. the maintenance or administration of what is just according to law….⁸²

This is a perfect description of Yahweh and His laws, particularly from the perspective of Isaiah 33:22 and James 4:12 – that is, that there is only one lawgiver and judge. All law, righteousness, equity, morality, truthfulness, and justice originate with and emanate from Him. None of this exists outside of Yahweh and His laws, and it all existed long before 1787. Therefore, it was not lawfulness, righteousness, and justice that was established by WE THE PEOPLE, but instead lawlessness, unrighteousness, and injustice.

Christian Constitutionalists recognize this in regard to any other false god. Their unwillingness to apply the same criterion to WE THE PEOPLE is evidence that WE THE PEOPLE is indeed a god to them.

Tribunals of Injustice

If justice be taken away, what are governments but great bands of robbers.

Augustine⁸³

Most people recognize that today’s courts are tribunals of injustice. When the Constitutional framers excluded Yahweh’s justice, they opened the door for justice to be defined however the judges of the United States choose to define it. In other words, the Constitution provides for justice to originate with the judges themselves.

Any constitution or government formed with designs to establish justice of itself denies and stands opposed to the Kingdom of Yeshua (Jesus’ given Hebrew name).⁸⁴ It was Yeshua’s Kingdom that was prophesied to bring about justice:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of YHWH of hosts will perform this. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

Behold, the days come, saith YHWH, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. (Jeremiah 23:5)

Yeshua’s purpose was to execute judgment and justice here on earth once His Kingdom was established, at His first advent.

The Constitutional framers clearly rejected Yeshua’s government and justice, choosing instead to establish their own notion of justice. But there is no justice outside Yahweh’s:

Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek YHWH…. Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment [justice, NASB] to rest for a light of the people. My righteousness is near … my righteousness shall not be abolished. Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law…. (Isaiah 51:1-7)

Only Yahweh’s subjects, who serve Him according to His perfect laws and righteous judgments, are able to render justice:

The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment [justice, NASB]. The law of his God is in his heart…. (Psalm 37:30-31)

When the Constitutional framers spoke of justice in the Preamble, they were not speaking of the justice that originates with Yahweh, but rather the “justice” that originated with themselves. Otherwise, they would have followed the example of our Christian forefathers in the 1600s and early 1700s and cited or at least mentioned the laws of Yahweh upon which their justice was based.⁸⁵ If the Constitutional framers had referred to Yahweh’s justice, they would have at least acknowledged and honored Yahweh. But because their Constitution was a secular, pluralistic, polytheistic covenant (as especially demonstrated in Article 6 and Amendment 1), they dared not do so.

A More Perfect Union

Human government is more or less perfect as it approaches nearer or diverges farther from the imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.

John Adams⁸⁶

In contrast with New Haven’s 1639 Agreement (“we all agree that the scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction of government”), one of the purposes for this new Constitution, as stated in the Preamble, was “to form a more perfect union.” Most likely the framers had in mind a “more perfect union” than had been achieved by the Articles of Confederation. But being that the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution were both based upon the imperfect “laws” of man, the “more perfect union” was a far cry from what had been established in many of the New England colonies.

Do not overlook that “more perfect” is not the same as perfect. Neither the framers nor the U.S. Constitution nor the union they formed were perfect. Yahweh (Matthew 5:48), His knowledge (Job 31:16), His work (Deuteronomy 32:4), His way (2 Samuel 22:31), His will (Romans 12:2), and His law (Psalm 19:7) are perfect. Therefore His government must also be perfect. The question we all face is whether we really believe this. John Milton (1608-1674) believed that Yahweh’s government far surpassed that of Greece and Rome. I suspect he would have claimed the same regarding the United States Government as well:

…the Bible doth more clearly teach the solid rules of civil government than all the eloquence of Greece and Rome.⁸⁷

The framers’ beliefs on this matter can only be determined by their actions. Their actions make it clear that they did not believe in Yahweh’s perfection. Otherwise, they, like the Puritans, would have established a government predicated solely upon the perfect laws of Yahweh. Instead, they were willing to settle for something more perfect, which is ultimately the same as less perfect.

How about us? What are we willing to settle for? As a nation, we settled for Bill Clinton, the Bushes, and Barack Obama. Why? Because like our forebears in 1 Samuel 8, Americans desire a finite flesh-and-blood president instead of the King of kings. This can only be because – despite what people may claim – they do not believe Yahweh, His way, His work, His will, His law, and His government are perfect. The framers and most of today’s Americans (non-Christians and Christians alike) are more like those in 1 Samuel 8 than they are Gideon:

Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: YHWH shall rule over you. (Judges 8:22-23)

Securing Liberty

As stated in the Preamble, another purpose of the United States Constitution is to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” From childhood, Americans are brainwashed to believe that, thanks to the U.S. Constitution, America is the freest nation on earth:

The media … has played a key role in persuading people that we are the most free nation on earth. While this may or may not be true, most people have never considered this possibility: If all of the other nations were under 100% totalitarian dictatorships, and the United States of America was only under a 95% totalitarian dictatorship, it could still be said that “America is the most free nation on earth.” So it is a rather meaningless boast.⁸⁸

Suppose it be “the best government on earth,” does that prove its own goodness, or only the badness of all other governments?⁸⁹

Patrick Henry was not in the least convinced that the U.S. Constitution would secure and protect liberty; in fact, quite the opposite. Following is part of his speech to the Virginia Ratifying convention in 1788:

…I say our privileges and rights are in danger. …the new form of Government …will … effectually … oppress and ruin the people…. In some parts of the plan before you, the great rights of freemen are endangered, in other parts, absolutely taken away…. There will be no checks, no real balances, in this Government: What can avail your specious imaginary balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances? …And yet who knows the dangers that this new system may produce: they are out of the sight of the common people: They cannot foresee latent consequences.... I see great jeopardy in this new Government.⁹⁰

Consider carefully the empty claim of Chuck Baldwin (the Constitution Party’s 2008 Presidential Candidate):

Under God, it is allegiance to the Constitution that has preserved our liberties, our peace and happiness, our security, and our very way of life. Furthermore, it is the repudiation and rejection of constitutional government that is responsible for the manner in which these very same blessings are currently being lost.⁹¹

Talk about calling evil good and good evil – or in this instance, slavery freedom and freedom slavery. The liberties once enjoyed in this nation were secured in the 1600s – not the 1700s – by means of Yahweh’s perfect law of liberty – not the United States Constitution:

So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever. And I will walk at liberty…. (Psalm 119:44-45)

…whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:25)

Baldwin’s claim is essentially the same as the Israelites’ when Aaron fashioned the golden calf:

…they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 32:8)

Baldwin’s declaration that our liberty, peace, happiness, security, and way of life were provided by the Constitution “under God” vindicates him no more than did Aaron’s attempt to name the golden calf Yahweh.

Except for occasional interference from the English kings across the Atlantic, this nation experienced its greatest liberty in the 1600s and early 1700s. From the ratification of the U.S. Constitution until now, our liberty has been slowly whittled away. At present, we would be hard-pressed to find a nation with less liberty than the United States of America. As Pastor Byles put it following the American War for Independence: “We traded one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants a mile away!”

It is extremely difficult to convince Americans they are not free. This is especially true of the average American, who is relatively well-fed, content, and even happy. But contentedness and happiness have nothing to do with freedom – a slave’s a slave even if he’s fat and happy. According to German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), “none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

2 Corinthians 3:17 states “…where the Spirit of the Lord is there liberty.” Constitutionalists can lie to themselves all they want, but the Spirit of the Lord cannot be found in the U.S. Constitution because Yahweh and His perfect laws of liberty were flagrantly disregarded.

The U.S. Constitution provided us, not with liberty, but with bondage: licenses, permits, and countless registrations, in addition to taxes on nearly everything imaginable. For anyone inclined to argue that it was not the U.S. Constitution that has brought all of this upon its subjects, please consider Matthew 7:

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. (Matthew 7:16-18)

What has been the fruit of the United States Constitution? You only have to look at the historical record of the last 200 plus years to know that the Constitution shackled us into slavery. Man-made surrogates never have and never will provide mankind with liberty. Only Yahweh, by way of Yeshua’s blood-atoning sacrifice and resurrection, can free us as individuals, and only His perfect laws of liberty can liberate us as a nation.

Americans are noted for gullibility, and their unfounded confidence in the U.S. Constitution is no exception. Because the Preamble tells them the Constitution was ordained to secure their liberty, most Americans simply take it at its word. They believe this despite the fact that the first three articles of the Constitution enslave us to an ungodly congress, president, and judicial system – something the 17th and early 18th-century Christians flourished without.

The Constitutional framers could not provide their fellow Americans with liberty for the simple reason that slaves are never able to grant freedom to fellow slaves:

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest…. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity…. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption…. (2 Peter 2:17-19)

The U.S. Constitution is aptly described as a well without water and the Preamble as swelling words of vanity, wholly unable to deliver their promises. In his political tract, No Treason, No. 6., The Constitution of No Authority, Libertarian attorney Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) was correct: “[the U.S. Constitution] has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it.”⁹²

The Missing God

They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1:16)

Before leaving the Preamble, I must address the Christian Constitutionalists’ Achilles’ heel. The absence of any mention of Yahweh will always dog those who desperately want to make the United States Constitution either biblical or Christian:

Of the notable features of the U.S. Constitution … one of the most significant was its godlessness…. It was simply silent about the Almighty, and this fact alone made the Constitution unusual for its day. The revolutionary generation had customarily adorned its formative political documents with references to God. …But when Americans, acting as We the People in the Constitution’s preamble, invented the United States of America, they chose not to clothe their act of political creation in the language of faith. …they breathed not a syllable of piety. This fact did not go unnoticed by some citizens, who complained bitterly about the absence of any reference to God in the Constitution. For nearly a century afterward, opponents of the Constitution’s godlessness would attempt to correct this defect by amending the document to provide some testimony to faith. But they never succeeded in this endeavor.⁹³

How can a document that snubs the God of the Bible be biblical? How can a document that ignores Christ be Christian?

…no consideration will justify the framers of the federal constitution, and the administration of the government in withholding any recognition of the Lord and his Anointed from the grand charter of the nation. On our daily bread, we ask a blessing. At our ordinary meals, we acknowledge the Lord of the world. We begin our last testament for disposing our worldly estates in the name of God; and shall we be guiltless, with the Bible in our hands, to disclaim the Christian religion as a body politic.⁹⁴

It must be deplored that in a [the United States] Constitution … there is nothing to turn the mind of the nation to God, to inculcate reverence for the authority of his Son or respect for his word.⁹⁵

…that very constitution … does not so much as recognize his being! While many, on various pretenses, have criminated the federal constitution, one objection has urged itself forcibly on the pious mind. That no notice whatever should be taken of that God who planteth a nation and plucketh it up at his pleasure, is an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate. Had such a momentous business been transacted by Mahometans, they would have begun, “In the name of God.” Even the savages whom we despise, setting a better example, would have paid some homage to the Great Spirit. But, from the constitution of the United States, it is impossible to ascertain what God we worship; or whether we own a God at all…. Should the citizens of America be as irreligious as her constitution, we will have reason to tremble, lest the Governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people, any more than by individuals, overturn, from its foundation, the fabric we have been rearing, and crush us to atoms in the wreck.⁹⁶

When the war [for Independence] was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by [Charles] Thomson the secretary [of the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1789], and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it…. There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God’s laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory.⁹⁷

An Antifederalist writer warned in a Boston newspaper on January 10, 1788, that since God was absent from the Constitution, Americans would suffer the fate that the prophet Samuel foretold to Saul: “because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee.”⁹⁸

While it is true that during the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin (after four or five weeks of not seeking Yahweh’s blessing and guidance) proposed “prayers imploring the assistance of heaven, and its blessing upon our deliberations, be held in this assembly,”⁹⁹ he had few supporters. As reported by Robert Yates, Chief Justice of the State of New York and one of New York’s delegates to the Constitution Convention, Franklin’s proposal did not even merit a vote.¹⁰⁰ Franklin wrote, “The Convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.”¹⁰¹ This alone is an abomination to Yahweh:

They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. YHWH looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. (Psalm 14:1-2)

I will cut off … them that are turned back from YHWH; and those that have not sought YHWH, nor inquired for him. (Zephaniah 1:4-6)

Die-hard Constitutionalists often try to justify the framers’ failure to follow through on Franklin’s proposal with the following taken from Madison’s Journal of the Convention, as if it excused their dereliction in seeking Yahweh’s favor and direction:

Mr. [Roger] Sherman seconded the motion.

Mr. Hamilton and several others expressed their apprehensions, that, however proper such a resolution might have been at the beginning of the convention, it might at this late day, in the first place, bring on it some disagreeable animadversions [criticisms]; and in the second lead the public to believe that the embarrassments and dissensions within the Convention, had suggested this measure. It was answered by Dr. Franklin, Mr. Sherman, and others, that the past omission of a duty could not justify a further omission, that the rejection of such a proposition would expose the Convention to more unpleasant animadversions than the adoption of it; and that the alarm out of doors that might be excited for the state of things within, would at least be as likely to good as ill.

Mr [Hugh] Williamson observed, that the true cause of the omission could not be mistaken. The Convention had no funds [with which to pay a professional clergyman to come and pray each morning].¹⁰²

What kind of Christian men would neglect prayer because they could not come up with enough money to pay someone to pray for them, especially with three of the framers being active clergy?

Reverend Hugh Williamson [the same as above] was a licensed preacher of the Presbyterian Church who conducted regular church services in North Carolina. Reverend W. Samuel Johnson of the Connecticut was the President of Columbia University when he was appointed to the convention. Finally, the third member of the clergy, Reverend Abraham Baldwin, was a typical colonial clergyman who combined religion and politics: he was a lawyer, a chaplain in the war, a member of the Georgia legislature, and a member of the continental Congress before becoming Georgia’s delegate to the Convention.¹⁰³

Why had these three pastors or any of the others who claimed to be Christians not been praying all along? In his prayer proposal to his fellow conventioneers, Franklin queried, “how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?” Good question.

As for Hamilton’s argument against imploring Yahweh’s intervention, who cares how it would have appeared to others? Can you imagine Daniel coming up with these kinds of excuses? Their excuses sound all too similar to what today’s politicians might come up with.

Despite the fact that the framers did not collectively seek Yahweh either before or after Franklin’s proposal, such baseless claims like those from Mark Beliles and Douglas Anderson are all too common among Constitutionalists:

Our founders, who authored the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution 11 years later, were filled with an attitude of dependency on God. They looked to Him as the source of their strength and the hope of their success in all major endeavors.¹⁰⁴

Even if they had prayed, it does not mean that Yahweh would have heard to the framers’ prayers. Because they legislated so many times contrary to His morality as found in laws, it is doubtful that Yahweh would have paid them any heed:

Behold, YHWH’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his hear heave, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:1-2)

Franklin’s proposal included the following:

I have lived … a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”

Gary DeMar hit the proverbial nail on the head:

Franklin was not known as orthodox in his religious beliefs, but there is no doubt that he understood what made nations great…. The self-taught candlemaker’s son … knew that the key to national success was the acknowledgement that God establishes empires, and He requires that they be built in a certain way. In practical terms alone, Franklin reasoned that to exclude God in nation building is to discount long-term national success.

Without a fixed transcendent law and law-giver, law becomes the creation of the State. Any action by the State is justified because the State is God.¹⁰⁵

Is it any wonder that the Constitutional Republic has proved to be such a failure?

There are additional excuses proffered for the lack of anything Christian in the Constitution. Despite being pro-Constitution, DeMar does a good job addressing these in America’s Christian History: The Untold Story:

While the Constitution does not repudiate the Christian religion formally, it does imply its dismissal by not “acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler of all nations, and his revealed will as the supreme law of the land.”… There are theories as to why the Constitution makes no direct reference to God.

One theory to explain why the Constitution is silent on religious issues is that there were so many different Christian denominations represented at the constitutional convention that the representatives were forced into religious neutrality. “James Madison tells us there was ‘discord of religious opinions within the convention,’ which undoubtedly kept theological controversy off the floor.”…¹⁰⁶

This argument breaks down somewhat when we analyze the environment of state constitutional conventions. The same religious discord was present at the state level, but this did not stop the states from clearly setting forth the basic precepts of Christianity as requirements for holding public office.

A variation of Madison’s explanation is that the representatives wanted to guard the states from federal intrusion, preserving the authority of the states to establish their own religious parameters. Since the religious issue was already settled at the state level, there was no need for the federal government to meddle in an area in which the national government has no jurisdiction.¹⁰⁷

In other words, there is no excuse for the framers’ oversight, intentional or otherwise. It was for this reason that many Christians refused to support the ratification of the Constitution:

At the time of the Constitution’s ratification, a number of Christian organizations refused to support the newly formed political document because a specific reference to God was purposely omitted. Some objected because the Constitution did not recognize the Providence of God in the affairs of the colonies. “Two small Presbyterian bodies, the Associated Church and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, decided to abstain from voting [to ratify the Constitution] until the Constitution was so amended as to acknowledge the sovereignty of God and the subserviency of the state to the kingdom of Christ.”¹⁰⁸

The absence of a direct reference to God in the Constitution has played its hand in American politics and law. Only time will tell what further damage will be brought upon our republic as we continue to rule in its absence.¹⁰⁹

With such keen insight, one cannot help but wonder how DeMar can continue to support what is clearly the genesis of America’s woes:

It is said that, after the convention had adjourned, Rev. Dr. Miller, a distinguished professor in Princeton College, met Alexander Hamilton in the streets of Philadelphia, and said, “Mr. Hamilton, we are greatly grieved that the Constitution has no recognition of God or the Christian religion.” “I declare,” said Hamilton, “we forgot it!”¹¹⁰

Perhaps Hamilton and the other framers should have considered the following admonition:

Beware that thou forget not YHWH thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget YHWH thy God…. And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember YHWH thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget YHWH thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. (Deuteronomy 8:11-19)

To forget Yahweh is to forget His law, with consequences equally calamitous:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee … seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. (Hosea 4:6)

In an article entitled “Chipping Away at the Historical Record,” DeMar rightly voiced his concerns regarding the removal of Christianity’s influence and, thus, Yahweh from our American textbooks, apparently not recognizing that many of his remarks equally apply to the Constitution:

...even the People for the American Way acknowledged that religion is often overlooked in history textbooks: “Religion is simply not treated as a significant element in American life – it is not portrayed as an integrated part of the American value system or as something that is important to individual Americans.” A 1994 study of history textbooks commissioned by the federal government and drafted by the National Center for history in the Schools at UCLA concluded that religion “was foolishly purged from may recent textbooks” In 1990, Warren A. Nord of the University of North Carolina wrote: “…the relative absence of religion from history textbooks is deeply troubling.”¹¹¹

In a speech to students assembled in the Yale College chapel, Pastor Timothy Dwight summed up what was clearly an aberration from what had previously been standard practice:

The nation has offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgement of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a people, of His government, or even of His existence. The [Constitutional] Convention, by which it was formed, never asked even once His direction, or His blessings, upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God.¹¹²

Humanist Manifesto II, written in 1973, asserts: “As non-theists, we begin with humans, not God, nature, not deity.”¹¹³ The question with which Christians are faced is whether to follow the document that begins “In the beginning God” or the one that begins WE THE PEOPLE.

Conclusion

The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man…. (Isaiah 44:13)

Idolatry is the epitome of stupidity. Whereas God made man in His image, man makes gods in his image. This is precisely what the Constitutional framers did when they fashioned the god they christened “WE THE PEOPLE.”

Later in verse 17, Isaiah depicts idolaters praying to their god, “Deliver me; for thou are my god.” This is true for Constitutionalists and non-Constitutionalists alike, as evidenced in that most people appeal to the laws of WE THE PEOPLE for deliverance rather than to laws of Yahweh. Consider carefully some of Jeremiah’s poignant warnings:

…they that handle the law knew me not….Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith YHWH. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:11-13)

….they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith YHWH … because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; but have walked after the imagination of their own heart …. which their fathers taught them…. (Jeremiah 9:3-14)

O YHWH, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. (Jeremiah 10:23)

This last passage, by itself, denounces any contract of the people, by the people, and for the people.

At this juncture in history, most Americans are too apathetic to even read a book on this subject. The average Christian and Constitutionalist who has read this far is likely finding this a difficult message to accept. Idols are never given up easily. Like the Ephesians in Acts 19 who cried out for two hours “Great is Diana of Ephesians!”, most Constitutionalists have been crying out “Great is the Constitution of the United States!” They have been doing so, not for two hours, but for over two centuries! I pray this is about to change.

2 Chronicles 7:14

Habakkuk 1 begins with the prophet wondering why Yahweh does not hear his prayers:

The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see. O YHWH, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! Even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! (Habakkuk 1:1-2)

Many have had similar sentiments during the last 200-hundred plus years. Christians are incessantly claiming 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by 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.” Tragically, the moral climate in America is only deteriorating as time marches on. David and Solomon reveal the cause of America’s steady decline:

Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after [bartered for, NASB] another god…. (Psalm 16:4)

He that turneth away his ear from hearing the [Yahweh’s] law, even his prayer shall be abomination. (Proverb 28:9)

The Prophet Isaiah adds:

Behold, YHWH’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:1-2)

2 Chronicles 7:14 has nothing to do with the heathen. It says if His people – those called by His name, those who today claim to be Christians – humble themselves, pray, and turn from their own ways to seek His ways, He will hear their prayers and heal their land. Because our prayers for national deliverance are not being answered, we have obviously failed to fulfill the requirements found in His Word. As a consequence of our rebellion, Yahweh has turned us over to be punished by our enemies, like Israel of old:

They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images [or to men whom they have made gods], Ye are our gods. Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see. Who is blind, but my servant? Or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? Who is blind as … as YHWH’s servant?... YHWH … will magnify the law, and make it honourable. But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore. Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the time to come? Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not YHWH, he against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger … yet he laid it not to heart. (Isaiah 42:17-25)

The Constitution of the United States represents our national idolatry, and until we repent of our veneration of WE THE PEOPLE and all it represents, we cannot expect Yahweh to hear our prayers and heal our land. In fact, we have no business even asking Him to do so. It is akin Joshua’s prayer regarding Israel’s defeat at Ai. Following is Yahweh’s response to Joshua’s prayer:

And YHWH said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them…. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against to morrow: for thus saith YHWH God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. (Joshua 7:10-13)

Until Christian Americans recognize and destroy the accursed thing in our midst, we have no reason to believe that Yahweh will fulfill 2 Chronicles 7:14.

Like apostate Israel of old, the framers’ legacy was doomed to failure from its inception because they looked to themselves and WE THE PEOPLE as the authority for their government:

Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images…. Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men. (Hosea 10:1, 13)

There are many ways in which to determine whether the Constitution produced a biblical or a secular covenant, all of which prove the latter to be the case. However, probably the simplest means of doing so is to compare the Constitution’s Preamble with the covenants we find in the Bible, such as the one made by King Josiah and his subjects:

And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of YHWH … and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both the small and the great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of YHWH. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before YHWH, to walk after YHWH, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant. (2 Kings 23:1-3)

If only the framers had made such a covenant and the people had stood by it. How different America would be today. If we are ever to bequeath to our children an America that is truly Christian, it is this covenant and form of government to which we must return.

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End Notes

1. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989) p. 551.

2. YHWH (most often pronounced Yahweh) is the English transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, the principal Hebrew name of the God of the Bible. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read online, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*

3. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973) pp. 4-5.

4. There is no morality outside of Yahweh’s morality, as codified in His laws. Any legislation not in agreement with Yahweh’s law is legalized immorality. Non-Christians often warn Christians to keep their morality out of politics. This is simply because non-Christians prefer their own morality (immorality) to Christian morality.

5. Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. “Theocracy” (1828; reprint ed. San Francisco, CA: The Foundation for American Christian Education, 1967).

6. Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, s.v. “Theocracy” (New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 2000) p. 1356.

7. Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1971) p. 33.

8. Gary DeMar, “Defining Terms: Theocracy,” 26 February 2007, <http://americanvision.org/1629/defining-terms-theocracy/>.

9. All Scripture is quoted from the King James Version unless otherwise noted. Portions of Scripture have been omitted for brevity. If there are questions regarding any passage, please open your Bible and study the text to ensure it has been properly used.

10. Where the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) – the four Hebrew characters that represent the personal name of God – has been unlawfully rendered the LORD or GOD in English translations, I have taken the liberty to correct this error by inserting YHWH where appropriate. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read online, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*

11. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137; 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803).

12. PBS, Bill Moyers Journal, 4 January 2008.

13. Kenneth S. Kantzer, “Summing Up: An Evangelical View of Church and State,” Christianity Today (April 1985) p. 58, quoted in Dennis Woods, Discipling the Nations: The Government Upon His Shoulder (Franklin, TN: Legacy Communications, 1996) p. 140.

14. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Nature of the American System (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1965/2001) p. 7.

15. Ibid., p. 54.

16. Ibid., p. 82.

17. Ibid., p. 87.

18. Ibid., p. 88.

19. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973), pp. 5-6.

20. David Barton, Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 2005) p. 337.

21. John Witherspoon, “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh, United Kingdom: J. Ogle, 1815) vol. 7, p. 70.

22. Because man is finite, he is prone to imperfections. As a result, early American history does provide examples of digression from Yahweh’s laws (the Salem witch trials, the Mary Dyer case, etc.) among those professing to keep them. This does not change the general intent of the early Americans to live and be ruled by Yahweh’s law.

23. John Fiske, The Historical Writings of John Fiske, 12 vols. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1902) vol. 6, p. 155.

24. Mark A. Beliles, Douglas S. Anderson, Contending for the Constitution: Recalling the Christian Influence on the Writing of the Constitution and the Biblical Basis of American Law and Liberty (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 2005) p. 95.

25. John Clark Ridpath, History of the United States, 4 vols. (New York, NY: The American Book Company, 1874) vol. 1, p. 181.

26. Richard Mosier, The American Temper (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1952) p. 44.

27. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: NY: The Colonial Press, 1899) vol. 1, pp. 36-37.

28. John Cotton, quoted in Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) lib. 8, p. 20.

29. Jeremy Belknap, John Farmer, The History of New-Hampshire (Dover, NH: George Wadleigh, 1862) pp. 42-43.

30. William Holmes McGuffey, McGuffey’s Sixth Eclectic Reader (New York, NY: American Book Company, 1879) p. 225.

31. John W. Welch, “Biblical Law in America: Historical Perspectives and Potentials for Reform,” 30 September 2002, <http://www.contra-mundum.org/essays/theonomy/WEL1.pdf>.

32. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1987) pp. 5-6.

33. Ibid., p. 7.

34. Ibid., pp. 12-13.

35. Ibid., pp. 18-19.

36. Ibid., p. 24.

37. Ibid., p. 28.

38. Ibid., p. 6.

39. Ibid., pp. 124-25.

40. Ibid., p. 131.

41. Thomas Hall erred concerning a connection between Judaism and Puritanism and should have instead used Hebraism. Judaism or Talmudism, a corrupt and blasphemous religion brought back from Babylon to Judea, has little to do with Hebraism of the Old Covenant. Chapter 10 of God’s Covenant People: Yesterday, Today and Forever provides documentation conclusively proving that Hebraism and Judaism are two different and adversarial religions. God’s Covenant People may be read online, or it may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $14 donation.*

42. Thomas Cumming Hall, The Religious Background of American Culture (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1930) pp. 184-85, quoted in Gary DeMar, America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, Inc., 2008) pp. 83-84.

43. C. Gregg Singer, A Theological Interpretation of American History (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964) p. 13.

44. Ibid., pp. 13-14.

45. Ibid., p. 18.

46. Ibid., pp. 18-19.

47. Mosier, p. 70.

48. Singer, pp. 24-25.

49. Ibid., pp. 32-33.

50. Mosier, p. 70.

51. Singer, p. 35.

52. Mosier, pp. 69-72.

53. Ibid., p. 74.

54. Ibid., p. 79.

55. Nicolas Lehman, The New Republic, quoted in Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966) p. 1.

56. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966) p. 71.

57. Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions: Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838,” Abraham Lincoln Online: Speeches & Writings, <http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm>.

58. Gary DeMar and Peter Leithart, The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press and Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1988) p. 300.

59. Not everyone claiming to be a Christian has been properly instructed in the biblical plan of salvation. Mark 16:15-16; Acts 2:36-41, 22:1-16; Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 2:11-13; and 1 Peter 3:21 should be studied to understand what is required to be covered by the blood of Yeshua and forgiven of your sins. For a more thorough explanation concerning baptism and its relationship to salvation, “Baptism by the Scriptures” and “Fifty Objections to Baptism Answered” may be read online, or the book Baptism: All You Wanted to Know and More may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for free.

60. Woods, p. 25.

61. Ibid., pp. 134-35.

62. I hope the reader is not so gullible as to believe that Clinton and Obama are Christians. However, for any one who might be inclined to believe that George W. Bush is a Christian, please listen to our three-part audio series entitled The War in Iraq II: Unfinished Business, which presents sufficient evidence to convince any honest person that Bush is far from Christian. These three messages may be listened to online.

63. James Hutson, “James Madison and the Social Utility of Religion: Risks vs. Rewards,” James Madison: Philosopher and Practitioner of Liberal Democracy, Library of Congress <http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/hutson-paper.html>.

64. Benjamin Rush, “An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments Upon Criminals, and Upon Society,” Read in the Society for Promoting Political Inquiries, convened at the house of His Excellency, Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, in Philadelphia, March 9, 1787, <http://english2.byu.edu/facultysyllabi/KLawrence/RUSH.punishments.pdf>.

65. Donald S. Lutz, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” The American Political Science Review (March 1984) pp. 189-97.

66. Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (1981), in The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, 5 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1982) vol. 5, p. 426.

67. John Cotton, Moses His Judicialls (1636), quoted in Worthington Chauncey Ford, John Cotton’s Moses his judicialls and abstract of the laws of New England (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson and Son, 1902) p. 11.

68. For anyone interested in identifying contemporary Jacob Israel and Esau Edom, the book The Mystery of the Gentiles: Who Are They and Where Are They Now? may be read online, or it may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 69363, for a suggested $10 donation.*

69. Benjamin Franklin, John Bigelow, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin in Twelve Volumes, 12 vols. (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904) vol. 11, p. 380.

70. James Madison, The Federalist, No. 46, p. 217.

71. Ibid., No. 49, p. 334.

72. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 22 (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1888) p. 135.

73. George Washington, Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols. (New York; NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892) vol. 13, p. 297.

74. James Monroe, “Views of the President of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements,” 4 May 1822, <http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles20.html.>

75. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865) vol. 4, pp. 292-93.

76. David Barton, The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 2005) p. 344

77. Horace Greeley, quoted in Robert Michael, A Concise History of American Antisemitism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005) p. 87.

78. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Charles Jarvis (1820), The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., 12 vols. (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904) vol. 12, p. 163.

79. Herb Titus, The Common Law, Lecture #2, 1998.

80. Herb Titus, “God, Man, Legal Education & Law,” Disc 1, God, Man, & Law: The Biblical Principles (Powder Springs, GA: The American Vision, 2007).

81. Ibid.

82. Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, s.v. “justice” (New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 2000) p. 720.

83. Augustine, De Civ.Dei, IX:4.

84. Yeshua (yay-shoo'-ah) is the English transliteration of our Savior’s given Hebrew name. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read online, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*

85. In the side columns of John Cotton’s An Abstract of the Laws of New England as They are Now Established (London, 1641), he printed the Scripture references upon which New England’s laws were based.

86. John Adams, draft of a Newspaper Communication, circa August 1770, quoted in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams, The Second President of the United States (Boston, MA: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1850) p. 250.

87. John Milton, quoted in Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth (Powder Springs, GA: American Vission, 2005) p. 61.

88. James Bruggeman, epilogue to Christian Duty Under Corrupt Government: A Revolutionary Commentary of Romans 13:1-7, by Ted R. Weiland, 2nd ed. (Scottsbluff, NE: Mission to Israel Ministries, 2006, 2nd ed.). Christian Duty Under Corrupt Government may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $7 donation.*

89. Lysander Spooner, No Treason, No. 6., The Constitution of No Authority, <http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm#.>

90. Patrick Henry, Ralph Ketcham, ed., “Speeches of Patrick Henry (June 5 and 7, 1788),” The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2003, 2nd ed.) pp. 200-08.

91. Chuck Baldwin, “Save The Planet? How About Saving The Republic?,” <http:// www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2008/cbarchive_20080730.html> 30 July 2008.

92. Spooner, “No Treason, No. VI., The Constitution of No Authority,” <http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm#.>

93. Timothy L. Hall, “Religion and the New Nation: 1781-1819,” Religion in America (New York, NY: Facts on File, Inc., 2007) American History Online <http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?>.

94. Alexander M’Leod, D.D., “The Character, Causes, and Ends of the Present War” (1815), quoted in Rev. D. M’Allister, “Testimonies of Religious Defect of the Constitution,” Proceedings of the Fifth National Reform Convention to Aid in Maintaining the Christian Features of the American Government, and Securing a Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, Feburary 4, 5, 1874, With a History of the Origin and Progress of the Movement (Philadelphia, PA: Christian Statesman Association, 1874) p. 46.

95. T.P. Stephenson, Corresponding Secretary of the National Association, “History of the Movement to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” Proceedings of the National convention to secure the religious amendment of the Constitution of the United States: Held in New York, Feb. 26 and 27, 1873 (New York: John Polhemus, Printer, 1873) p. ix.

96. John M. Mason, D.D., ed. Ebenezer Mason, 4 vols., The Complete Works of John M. Mason, D.D. (New York, NY : Baker and Scribner, 1849) vol. 3, p. 53.

97. Harry Elmer Barnes, History and Social Intelligence (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopt, 1926) pp. 347-48.

98. Kramnick, pp. 34-35

99. Although Franklin did propose prayer at the Constitution Convention, such did not make him a Christian. He was a deist and even an antichristian. His intimate friend Dr. Joseph Priestley wrote the following regarding Franklin: “It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin’s general good character, and great influence, should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done so much as he did to make others unbelievers.” Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of Joseph Priestley (London, UK: H.R. Allenson, 1904) p. 58.

100. Robert Yates, “Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787,” Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention 1787, Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1838 (Hawthorne, CA: Omni Publications, 1986) pp. 197-98.

101. Benjamin Franklin, quoted in William Templeton Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, (London, England: Henry Colburn, 1818, 3rd ed.) p. 195.

102. James Madison, E.H. Scott, ed., Journal of the Federal Convention (Chicago, IL: Albert, Scott & Co., 1893) p. 260.

103. Mark A. Beliles, Douglas S. Anderson, Contending for the Constitution: Recalling the Christian Influence on the Writing of the Constitution and the Biblical Basis of American Law and Liberty (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 2005) p. 17.

104. Ibid., p. 3.

105. Gary DeMar, “Ding, Dong the Law is Dead (With Apologies to Frank Baum),” Biblical Worldview (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, March 2003) vol. 19, num. 3, pp. 3, 4.

106. R. Kemp Morton, God in the Constitution (Nashville, TN: Cokesbury Press, 1933) p. 71.

107. Gary DeMar, America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, Inc., 1993) pp.78-81.

108. Morton, p. 72.

109. DeMar, p. 87.

110. Benjamin F. Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, Inc., 2009, originally published 1864) pp. 296-97.

111. Gary DeMar, “Chipping Away at the Historical Record,” 22 June 2010,< http://americanvision.org/2872/chipping-away-at-the-historical-record/?utm_source=Vision+to+America+Announcements&utm_campaign=10e1fe7f69-Vision_to_America_Announcements_6_22_2010&utm_medium=email>.

112. Timothy Dwight, quoted in Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966) pp. 105-106.

113. Humanist Manifesto II, <http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II>.

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