I have to share another posting with you today. It comes from the Senior Pastor, Ray Jones, of the Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Dothan, Alabama.
Here is his letter:
On the day following the recent election, I shared a letter at our Wednesday evening service that I wrote to my daughter and her fiancée to help give them some perspective. Since then I have received so many requests for a copy that I have decided to reprint it here… please know as I said on Wednesday, this is my letter to my daughter and it may not represent your thoughts, but at the request of many here it is…
November 7, 2012
Dear Karis and Luke,
Today we all awoke to another one of those moments in a nations destiny that may forever change our life and the generations to come. The affects may be a ways out, but they will certainly come. During my 53 years of life, I have watched our nation move further and further away from the very principles upon which it began. I have seen it steadily move from defining what is right and wrong based upon the moral absolutes of a Judeo-Christian standard, to defining what is right and wrong based upon the subjective opinions of the cultural ideologues. Its like America has become Romans 1. I am reminded of Judges 17:6 that says, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
The French Historian of the 1800’s Alexis De Tocqueville who visited America to discover what made her great said it was her churches, because they produced both industry (a work ethic) and morality (a transcendent basis for right and wrong). He also said… “In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.”
I have lived long enough to watch our nation move to a place of less and less personal responsibility and more and more dependence upon the government to feed, clothe and medicate us from our birth until our death. We have become much like Israel had become in Isaiah 28:15 “Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter.'”
British lawyer Alexander Tyler who lived in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s said, “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.” And our founding father Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” He went on to say, “Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.” Both the words of De Tocqueville and Franklin now seem eerily prophetic.
It is hard to understand how a president can preach personal discipline and personal responsibility to the multitude, as this one does, while enabling with, policy and practice, a greater and ever increasing kind of dependence upon the government to take care of irresponsible behavior such as sexual promiscuity, covered by abortion; by creating more government jobs to make unemployment numbers look better and thus adding nothing to the economy but actually further draining it; by expanding food stamps and welfare to more than 50 million people without any stipulation or motivation to work, and essentially demanding those that do work must pay the bill; and by relaxing illegal immigration in order to increase the party’s support. And this all to the great joy of both this administration and its party because of the dependence it creates upon them and thus the power it enables in them.
In my life I have studied a bit about socialism and have visited in several socialistic nations and I can tell you socialism never ends well… look at Greece right now.
Yet, these things should not surprise us, we were told to expect it in 1 Timothy 4 and 2 Timothy 3. With all that being said, here is what I really want you to know. It is that, this afternoon I have prayed for the two of you and for your future, that God’s grace, mercy and favor would rest upon you. That no matter what your future may hold, that you would hold on to God. God has always preserved a remnant… He may be giving us the government we deserve, but that doesn’t mean He is not still on His throne or that His moral standards have changed. So look to Him, you’ll never be disappointed, as it says in Psalm 34:5 “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.” Keep on walking right even if the world goes mad!
I may not be a rich man by this world’s standards, but I am immensely rich because of the trust that God has placed in my life… a wonderful church family, a wonderful wife and two treasures, you and Luke. No one is prouder of their daughter and son to be than I am! I love you both and I leave you with these words from 3 John 1:4 “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
Love You,
Dad
A good evening my Friends,
Kathie
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