It has been 12 years since Rapture Ready first posted this article. I reread the article and realized everything stated within the article still holds true, and in fact, apostasy in America has only gotten worse and has multiplied significantly over the last 12 years. So much so, I felt it was worth revisiting and publishing this article once again, here in the year of our Lord 2024.
At the current rate of increasing apostasy, I am no longer sure we can preserve the United States of America much longer in the same form many of us remember from our younger days. As Christians, we can only pray for God’s Will to be done the remainder of this year and beyond.
It does seem that apostasy in America at this time may likely be a part of God’s perfect plan in His timetable for humanity going forward. It does seem it fits into the ‘end-times’ Biblical prophecies. This is another presidential election year in the U.S., and I felt it would be good to remind the voters what our country was founded upon by our Founding Fathers in 1776. A lot of younger Americans and most of the millions of immigrants into our country in recent years know nothing about the founding of our nation—and sadly—many of them likely do not care.
Apostasy in America has been increasing at a rapid rate over recent years—and that is the ‘reality’ in our nation today. The ‘myth’ of separation, as established by our United States Supreme Court over the past [six] decades, has proved to be a direct factor in multiplying the amount of apostasy we are currently faced with in America. With the above facts in mind, let’s take a brief look back into American history to see ‘why’ our current severe case of apostasy has increased so dramatically.
It’s always been a good idea to glance in the rear-view mirror of history once in a while, not merely to see where we’ve been but to be aware of potential dangers that can come at our country from all directions as we proceed forward into the future. Hindsight has perfect vision, so by looking back into our nation’s history, it gives the United States the ability to correct our current course, turn back to God, and once again pray for His Divine direction for our nation in the years to come, before our country is plagued even further from the negative effects of apostasy.
Our focus in this article is specifically on America, and the intent of the article is to show American citizens how apostasy has gradually eroded away the Christian principles our country was founded upon by our ‘Founding Fathers.’ The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and the 39 signers of the U.S. Constitution were not only a very intelligent group of men, but a large percentage of them were quite religious and very active churchgoers. The signers were members of religious denominations, mostly Christian, at a rate that was significantly higher than average for the American Colonies during the late 1700s. A vast majority of the founders embraced Biblical principles.
Before we review some of the documented words and beliefs of America’s ‘Founding Fathers’ and the role Christianity played in the establishment of our great nation, let’s first examine the definition of apostasy. Webster’s dictionary defines apostasy as a “falling away from the truth.” Christians, of course, consider ‘truth’ to mean Biblical truth. Another definition of apostasy is “the deliberate repudiation and abandonment of the faith.” The New Testament book of Jude in the Bible describes apostates as being divisive, grumblers, depraved, and worldly-minded ‘mockers’ following their own ungodly lusts.
Apostasy and its ultimate revolt and rejection of God, Jesus Christ, and Christianity by people ‘devoid of the Spirit’ will likely continue to increase and become more rampant, not only in America but also worldwide in the last days before the Rapture and the Tribulation take place.
The Apostle Paul wrote in his New Testament biblical book of 2nd Thessalonians that “unless the falling away comes first, the day of the Lord will not come.” The ‘day of the Lord’ Paul speaks of is the time when our Lord Jesus Christ comes and gathers Christians to Him in the air (the Rapture). Paul also says that the ‘man of lawlessness’ (the Anti-Christ) will then be revealed at the start of the seven-year Tribulation period. In other words, widespread apostasy is a major ‘sign of the times’ just before the Rapture of the Church (Christians) by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Now that we understand the part apostasy is playing in both the current course of human events and the part apostasy will play in the ‘last days,’ let’s review some early American history, and then you can decide for yourself as to what degree our nation has ‘fallen away from the truth,’ especially in our government and public education system. Apostasy in America today has resulted in America’s Godly heritage to become increasingly and purposely altered and rejected by corrupt apostates.
Our Founding Fathers never intended to prohibit religious activities in public places, but unfortunately, legal controversies regarding this issue led to the U.S. Supreme Court taking an 1802 written statement by Thomas Jefferson ‘out of context’ beginning with an important court case in 1962 (Engel vs. Vitale) regarding prayer in public schools, and then again in a 1963 court case (Abington School District v. Schempp) regarding Bible reading in public schools.
Jefferson had referred to a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ within a letter he had written to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. Jefferson at that time was simply trying to reassure the Baptists that no one denomination would become the official ‘national’ denomination. By using the phrase ‘a wall of separation,’ Jefferson was trying to merely impress the Baptists by borrowing the words of Roger Williams, the prominent Baptist minister who founded the first Baptist church in America in 1638. Williams’s statement as to a ‘wall’ was originally introduced by him as a one-directional wall intended to ‘protect the church from the government.’
Thomas Jefferson clearly understood this to be the case when he stated in his second inaugural address in 1805: “In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the Federal Government.”
In 1789, the same Congress that created the First Amendment approved legislation known as the Northwest Ordinance, which provided the procedure and requirements whereby territories could attain statehood in the newly created United States. Article III of that Northwest Ordinance addressed the importance of religion to the territories. This article stated: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Thus, the framers of the First Amendment felt that schools and educational systems were the proper means to encourage ‘religion, morality, and knowledge.’
On April 30, 1802, Congress passed the Enabling Act for Ohio, requiring that the territory form its government in a manner not repugnant to the Northwest Ordinance. The Ohio Constitution included the same wording found under Article III of the Northwest Ordinance, and this federally mandated requirement, and the resulting Ohio Constitution, occurred under the administration of none other than President Thomas Jefferson.
Not only did the Founding Fathers hold strong beliefs on what constituted a good form of government, they also held equally strong beliefs about what would cause its downfall. They believed that government stability is grounded in the morality of its citizens, and citizen morality is grounded in religion. When the importance of religion is diminished, so is the effectiveness of government.
Our Founders believed that religion, specifically Christianity, produced public morality, and that government could not survive without public morality. Man must be controlled by either the internal restraints provided through religion or by the threat of force and punishments from a civil authority. In a democratic-republic nation such as ours, it is imperative that religion and morality be maintained, encouraged, and promoted.
As immorality and anti-religion apostasy increases in America with each passing year, let’s consider the statements and warnings of some of our other Founding Fathers, as well as some of our early day pioneers of education in our nation.
George Washington, our first president, said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education—reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Washington also said, “True religion affords to government its surest support—it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
John Adams, our second president, said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion—our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Thomas Jefferson, our third president, said, “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 of 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; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
James Madison, our fourth president, known as the Chief Architect of our U.S. Constitution, said, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Samuel Adams, the Father of the American Revolution, said, “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.”
Adams also said, “Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcation [implanting] in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity—and in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country—in short, of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system. Neither the wisest constitution, nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”
Gouverneur Morris, who literally wrote the U.S. Constitution, said, “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.”
John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this—it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
Joseph Story, an early U.S. Supreme Court Justice, appointed by James Madison, said, “We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment, in the First Amendment, to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity, which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution.” Story also stated, “It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape.”
Benjamin Franklin, one of our Founding Fathers, said, “He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.” It was Franklin who moved that prayers be held every morning before proceeding with business at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Patrick Henry, famous for his declaration “Give me liberty, or give me death,” also said, “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 [in the United States].”
Noah Webster, a Founding Father and founder of the Webster Dictionary, has been titled ‘America’s Schoolmaster.’ The following is what Webster had to say about the relationship between government and Christianity. “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence, which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.”
Webster also said, “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”
Webster also understood that Christian principles must be inseparable from any sound educational system. Webster said, “In my view, 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 to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”
Jedediah Morse, the ‘Father of American Geography’ said the following about the importance of Christianity to education: “To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. All efforts to destroy the foundations of our holy religion ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.”
John Witherspoon, another Founding Father and educator—trained one President, one Vice-President, three Supreme Court Justices, ten Cabinet members, twelve Governors, sixty Congressmen, and others, while serving as President of Princeton University. The following is what he had to say about mixing politics and Christianity: “It is in the man of piety and inward principle, that we may expect to find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible soldier. God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.”
Witherspoon also said, “What follows from this? That he is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple [hesitate] not to call him an enemy to his country.”
Alexander Hamilton, who literally wrote much of George Washington’s Farewell Address, believed that religion and morality were indispensable supports to political prosperity. Hamilton penned these words: “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness (religion and morality).” Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”
In summary, the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear in either the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights; however, the phrase has been severely misused in our courts over the past 50 years, ever since the 1962 case of ‘Engel vs. Vitale,’ which declared voluntary non-denominational prayer in schools to be unconstitutional.
Abraham Lincoln once stated that America was “a nation under God”—but that is increasingly in question today as apostasy seems to be increasingly prevalent in all three branches of our American government, our American educational system, and in a larger percentage of our American citizenry with each passing year. For multiple examples of apostasy in America, and the world—a person needs to look no further than to read the daily news articles posted on the Rapture Ready internet website.
American citizens dare not ignore or fail to heed the warnings of our Founding Fathers any longer. ‘We the People’ need to take bold and immediate steps to reverse apostasy and the practice of ‘separation of church and state’ as found within our government. If we do not heed the warnings by our visionary founders—then we face dire consequences in our effort to preserve our nation much further into the future, a nation with freedom and liberties established by Almighty God and our spiritually inspired Founding Fathers beginning in 1776.