IFA Contributing Writer Rich Swingle takes to the stage at Rededicate America as Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon.<\/p>\n
On the stage of the Museum of the Bible during Rededicate America<\/span>, as Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, I bellowed a motto of the War for Independence: \u201cNo king but King Jesus!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I posted the phrase on social media, and a friend from high school called its veracity into question, so I did a little digging.\n<\/p>\n I was introduced to the phrase by David Barton, founder of WallBuilders<\/span>, which holds a very impressive collection of original documents from our founding era. In an interview with Pat Robertson<\/span>, Mr. Barton said, \u201c\u2026that motto, \u2018No king but King Jesus\u2019 was a big part of the Revolution.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Here are some of the arguments he made:\n<\/p>\n The motto that was often used \u2014 it showed up in the Vermont Legislature \u2014 It was built actually on what Jefferson and Franklin had proposed as the national motto, which is, Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. That\u2019s based on Acts four and five, where the Apostles said, \u201cWell, do we obey God? Do we obey man? We think we\u2019ll obey God.\u201d North Carolina\u2019s currency had a picture of a crown with an X over it, and it had a Bible under it, and it said, \u201cThe Bible is our law.\u201d\n<\/p>\n The phrase may have been inspired when, on April 18, 1775, a British soldier told John Hancock, John Adams, and other Sons of Liberty to \u201cdisperse in the name of George the Sovereign King of England.\u201d Mr. Adams replied, \u201cWe recognize no sovereign but God, and no king but Jesus!\u201d\n<\/p>\n Slate conceded<\/span> \u201chistorical references to it being said by Presbyterians\u2026\u201d before discounting its popularity:\n<\/p>\n But it was the Enlightenment, not Revelation, which was the underlying philosophy of the founders. While Jefferson was a member of the Anglican Church, he, like Washington, Adams, Madison, and Franklin, was a Deist.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n By definition (Merriam-Webster), Deists deny \u201cthe interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Is that what our founders believed?\n<\/p>\n Twenty-nine of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence attended colleges established to produce pastors<\/span>.\n<\/p>\n One of the signers, Samuel Adams, spoke from the steps of what would soon be known as \u201cIndependence Hall\u201d the day before the engrossed version of the Declaration was signed on August 2, 1776. He said, \u201cThis day we have restored the Sovereign to Whom alone men ought to be obedient.\u201d As I put it in my monologue, \u201cThe Israelites rejected God as their king when they begged Him for a man, but we rejected a man and chose the Lord!\u201d\n<\/p>\n Later in the speech, Samuel Adams said, \u201cThe hand of heaven appears to have led us\u2026\u201d Sounds like interference from the Creator to me.\n<\/p>\n Thomas Jefferson, who put together the first plan of public education for what\u2019s now Washington, D.C., where he is said to have never missed a church service in the Capitol rotunda while President, recommended the same curriculum he had as a boy: The Bible. To that, he added the hymns of Dr. Isaac Watts. When he was Governor of Virginia, he called for a day of Thanksgiving and Prayer on December 9, 1779, not something one might do if he expected no interference from the Creator.\n<\/p>\n The President of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, also called for Thanksgiving when he served as Governor of Massachusetts. One year, he concluded with this prayer directive: \u201cThat all may bow to the Scepter of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, and the whole Earth be filled with HIS Glory.\u201d\n<\/p>\n In his first inaugural address as President, George Washington \u2014 who had bullet holes in his coat and horses shot out from under him<\/span> \u2014 said:\n<\/p>\n \u2026 it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. \u2026\n<\/p>\n No wonder he chose the \u201cAppeal to Heaven\u201d flag to be flown from the ships of our first navy.\n<\/p>\n Benjamin Franklin may well have been the most secular of our founders, but \u2014 as portrayed in A Great Awakening<\/span> \u2014 after partnering with Rev. George Whitefield to publish when and where he\u2019d be speaking, Dr. Franklin helped Rev. Whitefield share the Gospel with as many as 80% of our colonists<\/span>.\n<\/p>\n When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was at loggerheads, Dr. Franklin addressed George Washington, who served as president of the Convention:\n<\/p>\n \u2026how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. \u2014 Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.\n<\/p>\n I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth \u2014 that\u00a0God\u00a0governs in the affairs of men.\u00a0And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [H]is notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without [H]is aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that \u201cexcept the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.\u201d I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without [H]is concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel\u2026\n<\/p>\n I therefore beg leave to move \u2014 that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service. \u2026\n<\/p>\n So, who were the Deists?\n<\/p>\n And who\u2019s to tell whether our soldiers yelled, \u201cNo taxation without representation\u201d \u2014 expressed in the 17th of the Declaration\u2019s 27 grievances \u2014 or \u201cNo king but King Jesus\u201d more often?\n<\/p>\n As Mr. Barton said of the latter, \u201cIt was the motto of the Revolution, and that\u2019s established.\u201d\n<\/p>\n I believe one of the reasons people want to undermine the Christian foundations of our nation is so people can live like in the days of the judges:\u00a0<\/span>In those days\u00a0there was\u00a0no king in Israel;\u00a0everyone did\u00a0what was\u00a0right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).\n<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a soul who wants the government to establish a Church of America. Before escaping to our shores, the British government imprisoned 20 Pilgrims because they wanted to worship God alone and not the Church of England. Neither do we want to be governed by a Church of Paganism.\n<\/p>\n Our founders knew that morality needed to flourish.\n<\/p>\n In his best-selling book, Revolution, Eric Metaxas quotes<\/span> Samuel Adams in a letter to a friend, May of 1776:\n<\/p>\n I have long been convinced that our enemies have made it an object, to eradicate from the minds of the people in general a sense of true religion & virtue, in hopes thereby the more easily to carry their point of enslaving them.\n<\/p>\n Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration, preached on May 17, 1776, 250 years before our nation was rededicated to the Lord<\/span>. It was a Friday, and the First Continental Congress had called for it to be a day of solemn Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer. Rev. Dr. Witherspoon preached that day:\n<\/p>\n Nothing is more certain, than that corruption of manners makes a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual\u2026\n<\/p>\n Eleven years later, his student, James Madison, led the way in framing our Constitution. He said:\n<\/p>\n We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.\n<\/p>\n Rich Swingle has presented in 42 nations on six continents, mostly with his own one-man plays. Rich and his bride Joyce Swingle have 41 \u201cscreen children\u201d from film, stage, and audio drama projects. At Rededicate America, Rich also portrayed Rev. John Bacon, who welcomed the Sons of Liberty to Old South Meeting House, where they planned what would be known as The Boston Tea Party.\u00a0The Swingles\u2019 home mission is New York City. www.RichDrama.com<\/span>.\u00a0Photo Credit: Matt Marzorati on Unsplash.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IFA Contributing Writer Rich Swingle takes to the stage at Rededicate America as Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon. On the stage of the Museum of the Bible during Rededicate America, as Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, I bellowed a motto of the War for Independence: \u201cNo king but King Jesus!\u201d Do you want state prayer alerts? \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[958,481,374,10114,5335],"class_list":["post-30416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-prayer","tag-cry","tag-jesus","tag-king","tag-rallying","tag-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Do you want state prayer alerts?<\/h4>\n
Were our founders Deists?<\/h2>\n
Why does it matter?<\/h2>\n
Post your prayers for our nation to turn away from tyranny and back to our Judeo-Christian roots\u2026<\/h4>\n