HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS, AND HOW WE MIGHT GET OUT OF IT.

Millions of unbelievers in this country desperately need to hear the message of the Gospel. Millions of Christians need to understand the place that God has always intended for holiness to have in His children’s lives. Holy Christians are the powerful means God uses to turn people from darkness to life. Jesus emphasized this very succinctly in His Sermon on the Mount.

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith

shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and

to be trodden under foot of men.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candle-

stick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,

and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

—Matthew 513-16

Our Founding Fathers understood the crucial role that a holy Christian influence on society plays in the preservation of our country. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” His cousin, Samuel wrote, “While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” All the founders understood the indispensable need for responsible people of Christian virtue to be the preserving salt and light in America.

What our Founders and past generations of Americans understood about virtue is now largely lost among American Christians and the general public. American “Christianity” is not characterized by much salt or light. We are now to a frightening degree, given over to evil and ripe for coming under the judgment of a holy God. I am convinced that the only hope our nation has is in the intervention of God, and our only hope of this happening is for revival, beginning in individuals, to spill out into churches, and from there, into society

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths."

—Edmund Burke