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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT from Jimmy and Carol Owens
Jimmy and Carol Owens have changed multitudes of lives wherever they had brought their music, their lyrics, their spoken words, and themselves. They don’t travel as much these days, but the beat goes on. Their music is still lighting up nations and I doubt it will ever stop until the Lord calls all of us home. I urge you to keep going to Jimmy and Carol Owens blog and drink deeply of the great teaching there.
For this presentation of truth, I have combined 5 of their writings that powerfully blends a symphony of thought that America needs this very hour.
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LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT AND THE SECRETARY OF STATE
By Jimmy & Carol Owens, Tue Jul 21, 2015 01:37pm
We emailed this letter to the President and the Secretary of State several days before the June 30, 2015 deadline on the Nuclear Agreement with Iran.
Dear Sir,
We write you simply as concerned citizens of America.
As you seek a treaty with the government of Iran, surely you are aware of the Muslims’ doctrine calledTaqiyya, which permits them to deceive their enemies when doing so will be advantageous to Islam’s cause?
Here are some quotes from their founder himself, the prophet Mohammed:
Bukhari 3,49,857 Mohammed said, “A man who brings peace to the people by making up good words or by saying nice things, though untrue, does not lie.”
Bukhari 4,52,267 Mohammed cried out, “Jihad is deceit.”
Bukhari 5,59,369 Bin Maslama volunteered to kill an enemy for Mohammed, then said, “Give me permission to deceive him with lies so that my plot will succeed.” Mohammed replied, “You may speak falsely to him.”
Bukhari 8,78,618 Abu Bakr, the prophet Mohammed’s closest friend and adviser and first convert to Islam said, “If I make a pledge and later discover a more worthy pledge, then I will take the better action and make amends for my earlier promise.”
If deception to an enemy is advantageous to Islam, it is not a sin.
If you are aware of this, sir, how can you make an unverifiable, unenforceable agreement with any nation whose guiding religion provides that they may lie to “unbelievers?” If their first allegiance is to Allah, why should they remain true to an agreement with any other power?
We agree with you that diplomacy is better than war, but please, for the sake of all of us, don’t be deceived by those to whom dissimulation is a tenet of their religion.
This is the ultimate Catch 22: If you should require them to agree to forego Taqiyya in their dealings with you—well, you get the picture.
Just know that whatever agreement you reach with them is not worth the proverbial paper it’s printed on.
On the other hand, Sir, as you try to placate the followers of Islam, both here and abroad, what are Christians to think when your administration insists we comply with practices forbidden by ourScriptures, while labeling our freedom of religious expression as “hate speech” and pronouncing those freedoms as unlawful?
What are we to think of your leaving our faithful ally, Israel, exposed to the malevolence of their sworn enemy? Just because Iran has tempered its bellicose ranting doesn’t mean its goals have changed—first, destroy the Little Satan, Israel, then the Great Satan, America.
We call on our friends to join with us in praying for you in your crushing responsibilities.
Respectfully,
Jimmy and Carol Owens
By Jimmy & Carol Owens, Wed Jul 29, 2015 12:04pm
It’s hard for people born before World War II to realize that there is now a generation that doesn’t know that America was founded as a Christian nation. But it was, in every respect.
“A secular research institute found that Ninety-four percent of the documents that shaped the founding of the United States were based on the Bible. Among those documents, 34 percent of the contents were direct biblical quotations.” (Elizabeth Ridenour, President, National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools).
Our Christian founding has been acknowledged officially throughout our history by presidents, the Congress, and even the Supreme Court.
In 1854 the House of Representatives passed a resolution, which stated,
“The great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of the people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . . That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.”
In 1931 the Supreme Court (United States v. McIntosh) declared,
“We are a Christian people . . . according to each other the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledge with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.”
George Washington, in a 1779 letter to a delegation of Native Americans wrote:
“You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.”
While our country is not a covenant nation in the same sense as Israel, it was established as a Christian nation by covenants before God.
The Pilgrims, and the Puritans after them, suffered months on the pounding oceans specifically to establish a haven for Christian freedom and to bring the gospel to the natives on this continent.
The Mayflower Compact, signed in 1620 by the Pilgrim colonists, reads in part,
“We, . . . having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith . . . do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick. . .”
These dreams were written into the charters of all the original thirteen colonies.
Their constitutions and laws acknowledged God.
They mandated scriptural education in the public schools.
All colleges were Christ-centered.
A Christian profession was a requirement for holding public office.
Our Declaration of Independence states,
“Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions . . . we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
God is mentioned four times in our Declaration of Independence:
• Nature’s God, who entitles our equal station among the powers of earth
• Our Creator, from whom we derive our inalienable rights
• Supreme Judge of the World
• Our divine Protector, on whom we rely
During President Thomas Jefferson’s two terms, the largest church in America met every Sunday in the U.S. Capitol building, and the U.S. Supreme Court chamber served as a church every Sunday until the 1850s.
In a burst of extravagant enthusiasm, historian Richard Frothingham wrote in 1890,
“The spirit which actuated the United Colonies was as much from God as the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and was introductory to something great and good to mankind” (The Rise of the Republic)
We are left with the unimpeachable truth that America was founded as a Christian nation. What happened?
Thanks to America’s God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations [William J. Federer] and David Barton, Founder and President, Wallbuilders
* Some with secular agendas have called Washington a deist. Actually, he was a faithful vestryman in the Episcopal Church. Consider these quotes from him:
“What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.”
“The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”
THE WAY WE WERE . . . WHAT HAPPENED?!
By Jimmy & Carol Owens, Thu Aug 27, 2015 06:02pm
In our two previous posts, Godly Beginnings and In Their Own Words, (July 30 and August 13) we argued by the words of our founders and institutions that America was founded as a Christian nation, and that was what they intended it to remain.
If you haven’t read those posts, please go back and read the strong Christian declarations we quoted from the Congress, the Supreme Court, Presidents, and Statesmen/Founders. Look at the posts together with this one and you’ll see the connections.
Some of the 56 signers of the Declaration indeed were deists, but most were specifically followers of Christ and venerated the scriptures. At least six were ministers.
Here are some more historical notes and quotes:
Our first president, George Washington, took his oath of office with his hand on an open Bible and added his own words, “So help me God,” which have been repeated by every president since.
The new president, in what he called his “first official act,” met with the Congress in solemn prayer for the nation.
Before they began their business of governing, the first Congress met together for a three-hour prayer meeting and a Bible study.
Congress prescribed an hour to be spent on inauguration day, “designed wholly for prayer,” in which the people were enjoined to “go up and in a solemn manner, commit the new Government, with its important train of consequences, to the holy protection and blessings of the Most High.”
Christian chaplains were appointed in the Congress and the military, and Bibles were printed at taxpayer expense.
From 1836 to 1920, the one graded series of textbooks used by nearly every public school child was theMcGuffey Reader.
Here’s a quote from it:
“The Scriptures are especially designed to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus; to reveal to us the mercy of the Lord in him; to form our minds after the likeness of God our Saviour; to build up our souls in wisdom and faith, in love and holiness; to make us thoroughly furnished unto good works, enabling us to glorify God on earth; and, to lead us to an imperishable inheritance among the spirits of just men made perfect, and finally to be glorified with Christ in heaven.” (McGuffey’s Eclectic Third Reader, 1837).
How would you like to have that in your child’s public school textbook today?
George Washington wrote, (in a letter dated March 11, 1792)
“I am sure that there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States; and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.”
Thomas Jefferson’s words are engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC:
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
When the Constitutional Convention was deadlocked in 1787, Benjamin Franklin called the assembly to daily prayer, and shortly the delegates came up with the document that Gladstone was to describe a century later as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”
But as John Adams, our second president, warned,
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
History has proven Adams right. As America’s people and some of her governing officials have grown increasingly immoral and irreligious, many provisions of our Constitution and its amendments have been twisted to destroy the rights they were meant to protect.
And that twisting has increased exponentially over the past few years, aided more and more now by our own government. Persecution of Christians has begun. Most of us “have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4) but some have already paid dearly for standing up for Christ and biblical principles.
When America was born, over 99 percent of her populace called themselves Christian. We realize that we have now become a pluralistic nation, with people from other cultures and religions living together within our borders, and that accommodation must be made for free expression for all. We’re not advocating a Christian theocracy, but neither is it right for the few to be able to trample the religious freedoms of the many.
Folks, this is our fight. These hard-fought freedoms are ours. These children whose minds are being warped against the most vital things we believe in are our children, not the State’s. We must pray, but more than that—we must do whatever the Spirit of God shows us to do. And with God on our side (or rather us on his) we can prevail.
Next time someone says America was not founded as a Christian nation, show them these quotes(emphasis ours):
Patrick Henry, Founding Father (1736-1799)
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.
House Judiciary Committee, 1854
Christianity must be considered as the foundation upon which the whole rests. . . . In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity: that, in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.
House Of Representatives, 1854
The great and vital element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
U. S. Supreme Court: Church Of The Holy Trinity V. U.S., 1892
This is a religious people. . . . From the discovery of this continent until this present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. . . . These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons: they are organic utterances; they speak the voice of the entire people. . . . These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.
Abraham Lincoln, President
It is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history; that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
Woodrow Wilson, President
The Bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God and spiritual nature and need of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation. . . . America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.
Noah Webster, Founding Father (1758-1743)
The Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. . . . No truth is more evident . . . than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.
United States Congress Public Law 97-280, Oct. 4, 1982
The Bible, the Word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation. . . . Deeply held convictions springing from the Holy Scriptures led to the early settlement of our nation. . . . Biblical teaching inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
Andrew Jackson, President
The Bible is “the rock on which our Republic rests.”
Ronald Reagan, Presidential Proclamation, February 3, 1983, declaring , at the request of Congress, 1983 as Year of the Bible: “Inside its pages lie all the answers to all the problems that man has ever known.”
House Judiciary Committee Report, March 27, 1854
Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect [denomination]. Any attempt to level and discard all religion would have been viewed with universal indignation.
But as we hear of Shemitahs and signs in the heavens, as nations rage and rattle nuclear swords at us, as our morality and our economy break down, as racial divides widen, as demon-driven terrorists terrorize and destroy, many are asking:
IS AMERICA FACING JUDGMENT?
We love America. We don’t profess to be prophets, but we are studiers of the scriptures and observers of the times. We are sensing again a groundswell of the Spirit, warning, through his pastors, teachers and prophets, of correction to come unless our nation’s course is reversed.
America still has much good going for her. We are the most generous giving and missionary sending nation in the world. But on some other fronts we are in a state of rapid and alarming moral disintegration.
Surely everyone has noticed:
The unusual frequency and intensity of disasters in the last few years
The dangers we face from fanatical enemies
Our seemingly unsolvable economic troubles
The rapid decay of righteousness and spirituality
The increasing persecution, even by our government, of those who stand for godliness
Are these signs that America is coming under the judgment of God?
There are those who would say, “No, God is nice. He wouldn’t do anything like that.”
But before they bet their souls on that, they should consider that he has done it before and promises to do it again when nations forsake him.
In Jeremiah 18: 7-10 [NLT] God says:
If I announce that a certain nation is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I had planned. And if I announce that I will build up and plant a certain nation or kingdom, making it strong and great, but then that nation turns to evil and refuses to obey me, I will not bless that nation as I said I would.
Believers today are beginning to ask—has judgment begun? We have to say, it’s possible. If not, the decisions our country makes in the near future may bring us to the tipping point.
In Deuteronomy 32 God, speaking of a nation that he has birthed, nursed, fed, led, and protected, and knowing that after Moses’ death they will turn away from him, dictates through Moses these chilling words:
I will hide my face from them . . . for they are a perverse generation. . . . I will heap calamities on them . . . in their homes terror shall reign. . . . They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be! How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight . . . unless the Lord had given them up?[verses 20-29 NIV condensed)]
And sure enough, they ended up in punishment, destruction and captivity again and again.
We’re not saying—we’re asking—are we there yet? Are these more and more frequent and destructive calamities the beginnings, the withdrawal of the heavenly hand of protection, the warning shots, the raising up of the chastening rod?
In a nuclear age, with Islamic terrorists and rogue nations sworn to our destruction, shouldn’t the church reconsider our ways, call out in repentance and intensify our witness, by word and deed, to call our nation back to the Rock on which it was founded?
There is hope. God is slow to anger and full of mercy, but his patience will not wait forever.
By Jimmy & Carol Owens, Tue Oct 06, 2015 01:56pm
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw
Confirm thy soul in self-control
Thy liberty in law!
(America the Beautiful, vs. 2
Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929)
That’s one of the verses that gets left out. Most of us didn’t even know it was there.
Do nations and cities have souls, as the song suggests?
Well, that depends on what you mean by soul. If we accept the dictionary definition of soul as “the moral and emotional nature—the vital principle which moves and animates all life,” the answer is yes.
Every city and country has a unique emotional and moral character, or ethos, that shapes its politics, its art and its trade.
So how does God respond to this animating moral character of a nation? It’s a straight-forward proposition: God protects and blesses a God-honoring nation and withholds his blessing from, or curses, a sinful one. (see Jeremiah 18:7-10 and Deuteronomy 28).
The ultimate punishment of a rebellious nation doesn’t happen overnight.
As we look back at the rise and fall of nations, we see the pattern over and over again. God lets the rebelliousness go on, with increasing warning signs, until it reaches a point of no return, then acts swiftly to stop it.
He promised Abram (Abraham) that he was going to give his descendants the land occupied by the Amorites, but the time was not yet.
He said “The sin of the Amorites has not reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:16 NKJV).
We don’t know what God considers the “full measure” of any nation’s sin, or how high our nation’s sin gauge has risen in his eyes.
But there comes a time when the gauge reads FULL, and God sorrowfully says “Enough!” and gives the nod to an avenging angel or summons a fierce foreign power to carry out the sentence.
The question for us as a nation is: is our tank filling or emptying, and what must we do about it?
Now punishment, when it comes, doesn’t always mean direct fire and brimstone from heaven. Sometimes God may simply remove his protective covering from a nation that he once shielded but which has become rebellious (see Isaiah 22:8: “Then God removed the protective covering of Judah.”) and let sin flourish unrestrained until the culture degenerates to the point of self-destruction.
Or what if He removes a nation’s covering at a time when it is surrounded by its enemies? In light of the recent history of our nation, and the present state of the world, that is a frightening prospect.
Turn to the Lord, America
Turn to the Lord again
Don’t make the Lord your enemy
Still he wants to be your friend
(Turn to the Lord, from Heal Our Land,
by Jimmy and Carol Owens) © Fairhill Music)
An Open Letter To The President of the United States from Jimmy and Carol Owens
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT from Jimmy and Carol Owens