I want to begin this message with a few quotes from sources we all should know but seldom remember.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  "So God created man in His [own] image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." – Genesis 1:26-28 

“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.” – G.K. Chesterton (English writer)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – Declaration of Independence (Not to be separated, given away, or taken away; inalienable: "All of them . . . claim unalienable dignity as individuals") 

“It is impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible.” – George Washington as he retired from being President. 

“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 their liberties are the gift of God?” – Thomas Jefferson

Our freedoms are the gift of God, not of government. It is not the state that grants us “unalienable rights”, it is God! This concept is opposed to Socialism of every kind, of Communism, of Islam (a political system). That is why these philosophies can never guarantee our freedoms!

If the life of an individual amounts to no more than a brief flicker in history, then the perpetuation of the state, society, or empire becomes the overriding political concern. This was Hitler’s philosophy, and it is the driving ideological force behind communism. Inherent in collectivist political systems is the idea that the interests of the individual must be subordinate to the supposed (and I stress the word ‘supposed’) interests of the whole. This is also the driving thought behind socialism as well. We begin to hear phrases like “national purpose”, “world government”, and “it takes a village” – ideas completely at odds with what America’s founders had in mind.

But if, on the other hand, the span of civilizations amounts to less than a blink of an eye in comparison to the eternal life of a person, then the protection of God’s most valued creation, the individual, becomes the primary function of government!

John Quincy Adams, our 6^th President stated “that from the beginning Americans connected in one indissoluble band the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” It is what Supreme Court Justice John Marshall meant when he declared the United States to be a “government of laws and not men.” What ‘laws’ was he talking about? Was he talking about the laws that men make? No! He was referring to the so-called “Higher Law” which is only found in the Bible.

The great revolutionary organizer, Samuel Adams, defines it this way; “The right of freedom being a gift of God Almighty … the rights of the colonists as Christians … may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver … which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.”

Today, the Democrat political platform is full of socialistic philosophy which is opposed to what God created and what our founding fathers envisioned. So-called “liberalism” is not liberal at all. It is simply theft - taking from one to give to another, and all at the cost of slavery. Slavery because it steals wealth from those who have earned God’s blessings (it is God who gives the power to get wealth – Deuteronomy 8:18) and slavery because it removes self-reliance and responsibility from those who receive it.

Let us not be like Esau who sold his birthright for a pot of stew! When politicians promise you what only God can give – watch out!