Retrieving our Land for Christ
Pastor Dr. John-Paul Lotz
Recently we celebrated 4th of July and remembered our Declaration of Independence from the British crown. Its tyranny, its excessive taxation, and its monarchial audacity were all rejected in favor of democracy. But where did democracy come from? Did we gain it from the Greeks? Or perhaps, to our shame, from the French? In reality, the answer must be neither. Even though there were many founding fathers who had the seeds of secularism in them due to their embrace of philosophical rationalism and the corrupting influence of freemasonry, the ethos of the founders of the American Republic was deeply indebted to the first Great Awakening. In the 1740s inspired preachers like George Whitfield and John Wesley preached to thousands up and down the eastern seaboard in these onetime British colonies. From Boston to Savannah great crowds of people heard these and other evangelists proclaim a gospel of new birth and transformation in Jesus Christ. Indigenous preachers like Jonathan Edwards and Freulynghousen preached to their congregations from the scriptures and oversaw a generation of young people repent of their sins and commit their lives more thoroughly to following Jesus Christ according to the Bible.
That generation that came to Christ in the 1740s who at the time were in their teens and 20s came of age in the 1760s and 70s and put their faith into religious expression in ways that made the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence possible. It has become vogue in some circles to claim that the founding fathers of the American Republic were all Freemasons or secularists like Benjamin Franklin and were not really Christians after all. However, this fails to grasp the reality on the ground. Many colonists assumed the basic truths of Christianity and a significant minority of the American colonists we’re deeply religious and had been influenced by the great awakening a generation beforehand. We have to remember that America was also founded by the pilgrims who were at best baptistic and at worst congregationalist, and that when they landed on Cape Cod they made a compact on the Mayflower, a covenant by which they committed this nation and themselves to God. Something similar happened here in Virginia at First Landing where an Anglican priest committed this land to almighty God and prophesied that this country would send generations of missionaries to the rest of the world.
As we consider the bleak state of our national identity as it has eroded in recent times, we need to remember that it was formed and fashioned by a mighty work of the Holy Spirit, and that any attempt to rebuild or regain the past that has been lost with human efforts- whether they be legal or political- is doomed to fail. What America needs most is not a conservative president or a republican Congress but a powerful renewal of the Holy Spirit, a third Great Awakening by which this nation is once again transformed by the power of God. It is to this end that we should pray! We should earnestly pray that God would have mercy on us bring repentance to our people and pour out the power of his Holy Spirit in a new and transformative way that really and truly makes America not only great again, but one that makes America Christian again. Put this on your prayer list as we watch the demons rage, and hear the pagan howl, and see our enemies move. We may not have the power to stop them, but in Christ, we have the authority to resist them, rebuke them, and, in Jesus’ powerful Name, remove them!
