In God We Trust—or Not
For people who doubt there is a war against God and Christianity in America, here is something to disabuse them of that notion. Last year, U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) sponsored a bill (H.R. 2070) to place a plaque at the World War II memorial in Washington, DC, bearing the words U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt prayed with the nation on June 6, 1944, the morning of D-Day.
The proposal seemed reasonable enough. After all, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words to the invasion forces are etched in stone at the site. You might say the proposal corrects the oversight of neglecting the president’s words.
What appeared to be a given with representatives of the American people in both houses of Congress received a “not so fast” notice by the Obama administration’s Bureau of Land Management. Director Robert V. Abbey said the prayer would “intrude” on the monument and “dilute this elegant memorial’s central message.” Furthermore, he said, the prayer would detract from the memorial’s purpose to honor American troops in World War II and “commemorate the participation of the United States in that conflict.”
An excerpt of President Roosevelt’s “intruding” petition to the Almighty includes the following:
Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free suffering humanity. . . . Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace— a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.
At stake in this all-too-familiar attempt to throw God out of every aspect of our public life is the future of generations of Americans to come. When those of us who remember a different America are off the scene, our children, grandchildren, and their children will be doomed to dwell in a godless, pagan wilderness.
The administration’s recent mocking of the House of Representatives’ vote to consider legislation reaffirming the words In God We Trust as the national motto speaks to the heart of what we can expect in days to come.
Make no mistake. We are fully engaged in an all-out revolution to refashion America into a godless, humanistic, pseudo paradise that obliterates the past. Among the warning signs is the upturn of anti-Semitism in America. A recent survey confirms that 133 anti-Jewish incidents were reported in New York City alone in 2010. In addition, an Anti-Defamation League survey discovered that 15 percent of Americans, nearly 35 million adults, hold deeply anti-Semitic views—up 3 percent from 2009.
There are those who will argue otherwise; but to Bible-believing Christians, a foundational aspect of America’s success has been its fundamental, historic hospitality toward the Jewish people. When Emma Lazarus penned, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” in her poem “The New Colossus,” later inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the call was to her Jewish brethren and to the masses of stifled Gentiles yearning to breathe the free air of the New World.
God-fearing freedom produced the greatest nation in the history of humanity. Are we now willing to stand aside while it is demolished brick by brick, to be replaced by who knows what? Perhaps by a spiritually dead, morally compassless, neosocialist idiocracy?
Most notable is the pervasiveness of the anti-God aggression. It is not limited to America but is widespread throughout the Western world—evidence of the conflict’s true nature. This is a spiritual war—a Satan-God issue that is precisely spelled out in God’s Word:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).
When Scripture admonishes us to be discerners of the times, we should not take it lightly. It is God’s call to action. In the end, the battle is for the soul. And for that fight, believers come armed with the right stuff—the simple message of the gospel, committed to us 2,000 years ago: Jesus born, crucified, risen, and coming again. “And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). No matter how others see it, we are on the victory side.
