On November 11, 1620, the Mayflower was anchored off the coast of Cape Cod. One hundred two passengers including thirty-four children had crossed the ocean from England. Of the passengers, sixteen men, eleven women, and fourteen children were Pilgrims, having been associated with the Separatist church in Scrooby, England. Refusing to conform to the Church of England, they had first sought religious asylum in Leyden, Holland.

Before leaving the Netherlands, the Pilgrims had knelt on the dock to ask God’s blessing on their voyage, and now William Bradford recorded, “Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven.”

Forty-one men aboard the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact, sixteen of the signers, were Pilgrims, this was the first time in recorded history that free men covenanted together to form a civil government.

The Pilgrim men then wrote up a compact, now known as the Mayflower Compact, and presented it to the rest.

The compact read:  Having undertaken, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid, and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony. Unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign King James of England  A.D. 1620.

Fast Forward

On the morning of April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. Dissatisfaction with British rule among the colonial Americans had been increasing for several years. But, after the Intolerable Acts were passed in 1774, war was inevitable. The Continental Congress appointed George Washington (1732–1799) commander of the Colonial army. The next year, the new nation formally declared independence from British rule. After six years of war, the British surrendered to the American forces at Yorktown, and the United States of America emerged. Battle of Yorktown, Oct 17, 1781 Britian was defeated,

 AT THE BEGINNING OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT in democracy,

the Founding Fathers adopted several stances, accepted by few today, that were deeply indebted to the Judeo-Christian heritage. This is not to say that the Founding Fathers were all Christians. Many weren’t; they were vague deists. But among these biblical assumptions was the belief that human beings are not naturally good and have potential for enormous evil.

Because of that, when the Fathers constructed their political system, they never appealed to “the wisdom of the American people” or similar slogans common today. Frankly, they were a little nervous about giving too much power to the masses. That is why there was no direct election of the president: there was an intervening “college.” Only (white) men with a stake in the country could vote. Even then, the branches of government were to be limited by a system of checks and balances, because for the Fathers, populist demagoguery was as frightening as absolute monarchy.

Certainly one of the great advantages of almost any system of genuine democracy (genuine in this context presupposes a viable opposition, freedom of the press, and largely uncorrupted voting) is that it provides the masses with the power to turn out leaders who disillusion us. In that sense, democracy still works: government must be by the consent of the governed.

We should be concerned not only about the America of today, but about the America of tomorrow.

 The primitive heritage has so dissipated today that politicians from all sides appeal to the wisdom of the people. Manipulated by the media, voting their pocketbooks, supporting sectional interests or monofocal issues, voters in America and other Western democracies do not show very great signs of transcendent wisdom.

Worse than that, we labor under the delusion (indeed, we foster the delusion) that somehow things will be all right provided lots of people vote. Our system of government is our new Tower of Babel: it is supposed to make us impregnable. The Soviet empire totters; other nations crumble into the dust, some destroyed by civil war, tribal genocide, grinding poverty, endemic corruption, Marxist or some other ideology. But, Not us. We belong to a democracy, “rule by the people.”

The fact that America is still a surviving superpower has bred more than a little arrogance. Countless pundits have argued, reasonably enough, that the moral indifference to presidential lying is to be attributed to a strong economy more than to anything else. So how far and how long will God let us go if there is not broad and deep repentance?

The LORD reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment. He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice” (Ps. 9:7–8).

Hear the voice of Scripture: “Arise, O LORD, let not man triumph; let the nations be judged in your presence. Strike them with terror, O LORD; let the nations know they are but men” (Ps. 9:19–20).

ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING EVIDENCES of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

It’s almost a universal belief among Americans that we should be able to do whatever we want—so long as we don’t hurt anybody. I grew up in America, and one of the most sacred words of American ideals is the word freedom. In America, our freedoms include the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

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Instruction is needed

Psalm 78:1 “Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:”—that is, truths from yesterday that your fathers have known—“which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children” (Psalm 78:1–6).

we’ve seen some things happen today in our generation. We’ve seen the implosion of Soviet communism. We’ve seen the iron curtain come down. We’ve seen communism become a relic of the past in most places. Do you feel more secure today than you did then?  Seven more deadly demons have come to America.

American was placed into the bosom of our Founding Fathers by Almighty God. America did not just happen. America was the gift of Almighty God. But, that American dream is about to become a nightmare.

Now, God had blessed the nation Israel, and God had delivered them from the gnawing and tormenting chains of slavery, and God had brought them into a good land. And, God gave them a law, God gave them a land, God gave them a Lord. But, what they did was to defile the land, deny the Lord, disobey the law, and judgment came to them. Now, Asaph, the Psalmist, is giving some instruction to a nation like this,

We Need to Review our History

In verses 4-6: “We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done”—that is, we need to show our children what God has done. 4-6

The humanist educators have your children, the generation to come, in their mind.

a professor in Educational Psychiatry at Harvard University, said: “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill, l because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.”

He said, “It is up to you teachers …”now, he’s talking to educators now, “It’s up to you teachers to make all these sick children well, by creating the international child of the future.”

There is a systematic seduction of children today.

A child came in and said, Mother, you remember that vase that we used to have, the one that was handed down from generation to generation? Well, this generation just dropped it. I’m afraid that we have a generation that is in danger of dropping the faith

What is the history of America? The revisionists have tried to take it away from us.

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed.

 Now, in 1778, James Madison, who is the architect of our federal Constitution, the fourth President, said this—and we’ve heard this quotation many times. I want to give it to you again: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future … upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves … to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” That’s the architect of the Constitution that said that. Now you can’t even post the Ten Commandments on classroom walls.

On April the 30th, George Washington, in his inaugural address, said this: “My fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction”—that means His blessing—“may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes.”

What he’s saying is, “Look, we can’t do it without God.”

In December 1820, Daniel Webster said—and I quote, “Let us not forget the religious character of our origin.

On July 4, 1821, John Quincy Adams said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principle of Christianity.”

On July 8, 1845, President Andrew Jackson said the Bible is “the rock upon which our Republic rests.”

In 1952, the Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, said, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

    We Need to Renew Our Memory

  It is so easy to forget, verse 7. Why do we do this? “That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments: and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God. The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his law; and forgat his works, and his wonders that he had shewed them” (Psalm 78:7–11).

Here God is saying, “Don’t forget.” Review your history. Renew your memory, renew your memory. Don’t forget how easy it is to forget the blessings of Almighty God.

The Bible says here that, “The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle” (Psalm 78:9). Now, Ephraim was the dominant tribe. It may have been the strongest, the most numerous, but they were defeated. They had excellent military equipment. They were carrying bows, but they were defeated. Why? They forgot.

America today is suffering from spiritual amnesia. We have failed in history. We have those today who want to rewrite our history.

  We Must Reclaim our Legacy

 Verses 78; 59- 61: “When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel:”—now, remember Israel, His chosen people—“so that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand.”

 Not only is God our only hope; God is our biggest threat.