Saturday, February 7, 2015

Saturday, December 05, 2009 "What Kind of America . . ."

"What Kind of America . . ."
I came across a couple of Presidential quotes this week that I find interesting. The first one is interesting because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. In 1944 then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made this national appeal:
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“I suggest a nationwide reading of the Holy Scriptures during the period from Thanksgiving Day and Christmas . . . . Go to . . . the Scriptures for a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure of true greatness as this nation has achieved.” - - - - Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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President Roosevelt is honored as one of our greatest Presidents, but it is not his policies that I am here writing to support or criticize, that’s for another time. It is the link between our American culture and the Holy Scriptures that here come to view.
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Here we have a President, our only President elected for more than two terms, and he publicly suggests to our whole nation that we should all read the Holy Scriptures during these Holiday seasons. He did so without a national outcry from the media.
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What kind of America was this? President Roosevelt directly linked the greatness of this nation to the principles that were derived from these eternal truths found in the Holy Scriptures. By acquainting ourselves with these Scriptures he suggested we would have a renewed and strengthened understanding of that greatness.
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This was a strange America indeed! Today our government does not recognize any such link and many of our people have become unaware of and even hostile to such a suggestion. Yet if it is possible that this link exists and we gradually reject it, are we not rejecting the very principles that gave us birth and sustained us in difficult times before?

Perhaps this was just a strange period in our history? That brings on the next interesting quote. Let's go back in history for about a hundred more years and check out our American culture. President Zachary Taylor (again I’m not writing here supporting or criticizing the policy, but the link in our culture) stated concerning scripture:
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“The Bible is the best of books and I wish it were in the hands of everyone. It is indispensable to the safety and permanence of our institutions. . . . Especially should the Bible be placed in the hands of the young. It is the best school book in the world. . . . I would that all people were brought up under the influence of that Holy Book.” - - - - President Zachary Taylor.
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What kind of America was this? Why didn’t the ACLU and Americans United cry out? Oh yea, they didn’t exist yet! All we as Americans had for a guide then was the Constitution, wonder we ever made at all! Thanks to the now existence of the ACLU and American United we can’t even have a Bible in our schools much less read it in public buildings.
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Wonder why we would ban reading in our schools the book our ancestors call the “best school book in the world”? What kind of America did our ancestors live in? We are banning it and the reading of it, and they were wishing it were in the hands of everyone, especially the youth! We view it as a threat and they viewed it as an indispensable safety and permanence of their institutions! What kind of America did they live in?
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Do you suppose they would ask us, their posterity, “What kind of America are you living in?”
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Do you suppose we should be asking them, “What kind should we be living in?”
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May God bless each of you,

David

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