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Amendment No. 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances .
I grumble and gripe a lot these days concerning how things are going. I cannot say for sure if things are so bad or if I am just getting grumpy with old age. But it appears to me that the first amendment to our constitution is perhaps the easiest one of all the amendments to understand. And has the least amount of room for misinterpretation. Yet we have such instances as is one currently being challenged in Cumberland County, North Carolina. Read this paragraph from OneNewsNow.com:
. In May, attorneys for the city of Fayetteville and for Cumberland County issued memos to city and county leaders requesting that local government employees refrain from invoking the name of Jesus during prayers at official functions. Attorneys requested the ban after recent lawsuits cited a case in which the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- which has jurisdiction over North Carolina -- ruled that the invocation of Jesus at the beginning of meetings amounted to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. (OneNewsNow.com. October 17, 2007)
SO?? No individuals prayer is intended to reflect everyones views or prayers. And the constitution clearly states that there must be no law prohibiting the freeexercise of anyones religion. I realize that it does not state that there shall be no activist judges who ought to be horse-whipped for making their own rules. But it should.
Christians are faced with a dilemma, and I am not speaking of those who simply classify them selves as Christian, but those who sincerely believe the Holy Scriptures and are trying desperately to live according to their instructions. I, nor any other sincere Christian that I know of, have any desire or intent whatsoever to force anyone to leave some religion and become a Christian. But we have every right to believe in the Holy Bibles teachings, including that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Now, with that understood, look at the responsibilities one has as a Christian. Our thanks to God must be as follows: Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; (Ephesians 5:20)
And anything concerning our religious lives, doctrine, worship, etc must be as follows : And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (Colossians 3:17)
So for asking a Christian to pray without referring to Jesus is absurd and is certainly an effort to prohibit the free exercise there of his religion.
Christians are also obligated to teach others of our beliefs and why we believe them. Nowhere does it say to kill those who will not listen, nor to have them put in prison. What it does say is, And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. (Matthew 10:14)
Christians are probably (and certainly should be) the most thankful of any, that man is a free moral agent and should be allowed to accept or reject any religion he chooses. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to teach biblical truths to whomever we possibly can. And it does not make bigots of us to say that those who do not believe in Jesus are lost, according to the truths of the Bible. It doesnt make me happy to think that any human will be lost, and this is the reason we must try and convince others to study the Bible and obey its tenets.
A good example is simply this article. I feel compelled to write such but no one is required to read it or to heed it. One fellow I was discussing the Bible with told me that I had the right to be wrong. And that is a fact. But there is one thing that I know, our eternal destiny is far to serious to just pass off nonchalantly. Materialism is primarily believed and taught by those who do not wish to be subservient to an all powerful God and have convinced themselves that there is no such being.
And another severe problem that exists are those who profess to be Christians and will not study His word. Without meaning to be facetious in any sense, my favorite saying is, One cannot obey God, if they dont know what he says. And this nation is filled with those who know absolutely nothing about the Bible. Well over 50% of those polled could not name even one of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If that large a percentage dont know even one books name out of the 66 that are in the Bible, how on earth can they know what the content is or how to comply with it?
Author Biography: Joel Hendon was born September 20, 1930 near Gadsden Alabama. He attended public schools in Cherokee County, Alabama and after serving a tour of duty in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, attended Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama majoring in Business Administration. He became a Christian in 1948, and although he followed secular work as a career and retired from Allied Signal Aerospace in 1997, he is an avid student of the Holy Bible and related works as well as biblical history. He formerly produced a bi-weekly ezine. Archives are accessible at: http://piedmontcoc.com/hofarchives.htmlHe is also the author of Final Stronghold, published in 2003, available from Amazon.
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