As Pandemic Lingers, America Needs God – Just Like It Always Has

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Surge Summary: Too often, people only turn to God in times of genuine, personal crisis. Meanwhile, their dependence on Him is absolute, all the time. Nation’s dependence on him is absolute as well. But the United States has effectively made atheism its national religion.

by David Lane

History records that the third Asiatic cholera pandemic was at its deadliest in 1854, as it spread through 1852-1859 and devastated Asia, Europe, North America and Africa.

Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), England’s 19th-century “prince of preachers,” began his first year of ministry that same year, 1854. Psalm 91:7 would become his rhema: “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.”

He chronicled:

I had scarcely been in London 12 months, the neighbourhood in which I laboured was visited by Asiatic cholera, and my congregation suffered from its inroads. Family after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost every day I was called to visit the grave. I gave myself up with youthful ardour to the visitation of the sick, and was sent for from all corners of the district by persons of all ranks and religions. I became weary in body and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me. A little more work and weeping would have laid me low among the rest; I felt that my burden was heavier than I could bear, and I was ready to sink under it.

As God would have it, I was returning mournfully home from a funeral, when my curiosity led me to read a paper that was wafered up in a shoemaker’s window in the Dover Road. It did not look like a trade announcement, nor was it, for it bore in a good bold handwriting these words: ‘Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.’

The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying in a calm and peaceful spirit; I felt no fear of evil, and I suffered no harm. The providence that moved the tradesman to place those verses in his window I gratefully acknowledge, and in the remembrance of its marvellous power I adore the Lord my God.

Through the 17th to 19th centuries, American political leadership regularly issued proclamations calling for national days of humiliation, fasting and prayer, “to implore God’s merciful interposition.” America was established by Christians who relied upon the living God. Neither atheists nor agnostics or skeptics had anything to do with our nation’s foundation.

Shortly after the beginning of the War of American Independence, the first National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer was issued for July 20, 1775. The Second Continental Congress of March 16, 1776, issued a second National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer for May 17, 1776, as “to have people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed with a solemn sense of God’s superintending providence, and of their duty, devoutly to rely, in all their lawful enterprises, on His aid and direction.”

Many of us do not turn to God until we become overwhelmed with misfortune or tragedy, and that appears true collectively for our Nation. It took the 1861-1865 Civil War for the USA to emphasize God in public. President Abraham Lincoln declared two National Days of Prayer, on Aug. 12, 1861, and March 30, 1863. He also had the Mint release the first coins with the inscription In God We Trust in 1864.

On April 17, 1952, President Harry Truman signed a bill proclaiming the National Day of Prayer into law in the United States. President Reagan amended the law on May 5, 1988, designating the first Thursday of May each year as the National Day of Prayer. The National Day of Prayer this coming year will be Thursday May 5, 2022 (read more at this link).

Modern man, however, has come to a place where a “solemn sense of God’s superintending providence” no longer exists, with culture, public square and public education entirely devoid of reliance “on His aid and direction.” We might attend church on Christmas or Easter, ask Him for the right parking spot, ask the pastor to bless our marriage or new home, but we really want divine help just to get our own way. We don’t mind calling for help in getting things done, provided we can keep our own views and live our own lives. We want His help, not His holiness.

The radical Warren Court developed from Oct. 5, 1953, to June 23, 1969, the doctrine, dogma and ideology of secular religion, with the state possessing all the hallowed hallmarks of divinity in being infallible, all-knowing, almighty, all-seeing and all-wise. In contrast to the biblical position in Psalm 51:5 that man is “brought forth in iniquity,” man was now held to be “ethically good.”

In the early 1960s the secularists hammered the last nail in the coffin by removing prayer (Engel v. Vitale, 1962) and the Bible from public education (Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963) after 300 years of America’s meteoric rise.

In his lone dissent, Justice Potter Stewart (1915-1985) rightfully pointed out that the Abington School District v. Schempp decision didn’t lead “to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.” Even The Wall Street Journal was able to recognize that secular atheism was now “the one belief to which the state’s power will extend its protection.”

So here we are; the state has become America’s god, and thus must have its prophets and priests, among them Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is unable to overcome his problems with truthfulness.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was the first to question Fauci’s veracity in a Dec. 30, 2020, opinion piece. “Anthony Fauci … acknowledged that he selectively lied to the American public about the coronavirus and what was needed for our national recovery. I am sure that Dr. Fauci—the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—made the decision to mislead with nothing but good intentions. However, let’s be clear about what he was doing: [he’s] lying to the American people in order to manipulate their behavior.”

Last week, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, launched the second salvo toward Fauci’s sullied character by formally requesting a criminal investigation by Attorney General Merrick Garland into Fauci’s lying before Congress and alleged COVID cover-ups.

Fauci has mastered all facets of lying: omission, commission, denial, fabrication, minimization and exaggeration.

God places a premium on honesty:

— “I can’t stand liars, but I love your Law” (Ps. 119:163, CEV).

— “A righteous man hates lies, but a wicked man brings shame and disgrace” (Prov. 13:5, NHEB).

This brings us to President Biden, who, while pontificating about unity, splits up the nation in victims and villains with his absolutist, peremptory COVID mandates. And while claiming that “we must have a fundamental respect and faith in each other and in this nation,” he promises to “run over” or “get out of the way” any governor or official who disagrees with him.

In the current president and the director of the NIAID, we seem to have a matching pair, birds of a feather.

Gideons and Rahabs must stand.

The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge

Originally posted here.

Image: By Harley Pebley – Flickr: Prayer for USA, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32754317

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.

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