God bless,
Kathy
Transcribed
and edited from:
Sunday 6:00 PM July 3, 2016 Livestream Broadcast
Sunday 6:00 PM July 3, 2016 Livestream Broadcast
Kathie
Davidson:
In a
couple minutes, we are going to worship and praise God and what we don’t know,
what we have not heard was when the Declaration of Independence was ratified,
and signed and they found that July 4th was going to be a holiday,
John Adams said, You know what we need to do? We need to spend July 4th
fasting and praying and praising God. So we are going to do what John Adams
wanted.
When we
were in prayer this afternoon, Doyle asked me, “Do you have anything to say
tonight” and I said “No” and we started praying and God started talking and it
was wonderful and I want to share it with you.
I’m going to do something that is not normally
done: I’m going to put church history and American history together, because
they are parallel and you will see that.
I want
to begin by sharing with you the second sentence of the Declaration of
Independence. Tomorrow in America it is the 4th of July; we
celebrate our Independence Day.
The Declaration
of Independence was ratified (voted on) on July 2nd, on July 4th
they signed it—this is the day we decided to celebrate.
The
second sentence in the Declaration of Independence, a huge document, that did
something that history had never seen before said:
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator…
And you
say that our forefathers did not believe in God.
…with certain unalienable Rights,
(certain rights that
you cannot take away) that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
Life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness—that is what our Continental congress voted on, to
ratify the Declaration of Independence and what we were telling England was:
“We’re done with ya, we are done with you. We have our own country and this is why: because we have certain rights given to us by our creator and we’re going to follow those rights.”
“We’re done with ya, we are done with you. We have our own country and this is why: because we have certain rights given to us by our creator and we’re going to follow those rights.”
Now,
what you weren’t taught in high school, what you weren’t taught in elementary
school, was, that in the middle of this, from 1720 to 1770 America was in a
huge revival; look it up in your church history. What happened was in 1720, one hundred years
after the Pilgrims showed up, the preachers in 1720 realized that the children
of all those people came across for religious freedom, to worship God as they
saw fit, the children weren’t doing what their parents were doing. And they
realized their children weren’t interested in God. All their children were
interested in was money and land—sound familiar? Their children wanted
prosperity, that’s where their hearts went.
So they
started to pray and preachers started to preach and a revival broke out. If you
remember the name, Jonathan Edwards, he was one of the first evangelists in
America. Jonathan Edwards started preaching an interesting series of sermons:
justification by faith alone. You know what I preached this morning?
Justification by faith alone. That kind of made me happy when God showed me
this.
But, Jonathan
Edwards was one of the first evangelists and huge crowds started coming, huge
crowds started listening and huge crowds started believing. He said in one
meeting, 300 people were born again and that was just the beginning.
Then a
little later on, we had another evangelist by the name of George Whitfield. I
don’t know if you knew about George Whitfield but he came up in the time of the
Revolution and George Whitfield had huge crowds come to him. This is in the
1700s and he would have 32,000 people show up to hear. George Whitfield had a
friend, Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin
Franklin never publicly said that he was born again but Benjamin Franklin
became a good friend of Whitfield and actually, he began publishing Whitfield’s
books for him. They would meet and they would talk, and Benjamin Franklin made
a wonderful statement. He said after Whitfield would minister in a town, in his
town, he couldn’t believe the change in the people. We are talking thousands
changing, thousands being born again. Ben Franklin said the change was amazing;
he said he would walk down the street in the summertime and peoples’ windows
would be open and he could hear people in their homes reading the Psalms out
loud. Does that familiar?
Revival
in America, and do you know what Whitfield preached? The gospel. He said to the
people, “You must get back to the gospel; you must walk in the gospel,” that’s
what Whitfield preached.
Now in
the middle of this, we end up starting a revolution. We end up having a
preamble to the Declaration of Independence that says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal…” Where did that come from? It came from the revival. Who sent the
revival? Our heavenly Father sent the revival. Our Father sent the revival.
Why? Why did we have a revival? It was called the Great Awakening. Why this revival in the United States and why did
It bring out the Declaration of Independence? Why did America escape from Great
Britain? Why did America now have their own country?
Back to
the preamble:
“We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.
Go with
me to 1 Timothy 2:
1 I exhort
therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and
giving of thanks, be made for all men;
2 For kings,
and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life
in all godliness and honesty.
Does
that sound like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Do you see what
that bible brought us? It brought us the Declaration of Independence and not
only that, it brought us the Constitution. And do you know what the First
Amendment in the constitution is? Freedom of religion. Freedom to meet together,
freedom to have the religion that you believe, freedom to walk in your
conscience obeying God, freedom to walk in the gospel—that we may have life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Do you
see how those two things parallel? Do you see how that revival brought this? Do
you see how God talked to our forefathers? Do you see how they heard this? And
do you see how it showed up in our Constitution and out Declaration of
Independence?
Yes,
these men did believe God.
Go with
me to John 10:10. Life, liberty, a pursuit of happiness—I know there are other
documents, but you are talking about men that listened to people preaching the
gospel for sixty years. Our forefathers heard them, John Adams heard them,
obviously Ben Franklin did, Thomas Jefferson did; they heard these ministers,
they were in their churches, they heard the gospel preached. And what does John
10:10 say?
The thief cometh not, but for to
steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and
that they might have it more abundantly.
Do
you see that out of that revival, God gave us a country and gave us the freedom
to walk in the gospel? Do you see that
through the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, we as a people
were given the freedom, the freedom to walk in the gospel? Now who gave us that
freedom? The heavenly Father, and where did we get it? We got it through the
gospel.
America,
America, you were given your freedoms to obey the gospel, to walk in the gospel;
the freedom to meet together, the freedom to read that bible, the freedom to
walk in the Holy Ghost and now you want to give it up. You want to give it up
for Obama Care, you want to give it up for Social Security, you want to give it
up for food stamps when you could have had what Jesus said, “that you might have life, and have it more
abundantly.”
You
know what America? There is a people here that are going to go on and they are
going to walk in the gospel and they are the people of God and they are going
to stand up, they are going to be the Church that Jesus brought, the Church
that Jesus made and someday that Church is going to go be with Him in heaven.
Amen.
