We Must Remember

Week 1 – America’s Godly Heritage by Pastor Mark Cowart

Did America happen by chance, or was it divine destiny? What you’ve been taught about the founding and history of this nation is not the full story. Let’s take a closer look at the Christian foundations that shaped the United States of America.

Studying America’s godly heritage has become a life-changing part of my journey. There is a great deal of original, authentic source material available to read, and it has been collected by gifted authors to make it more available to you and me. When I first read The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, it rocked my world.

Now, you are not going to find these revelations in mainstream history books. Starting about 2008, I did a deep dive into the events relative to the founding and establishment of America from 1492 to 1793, aided greatly by the book referenced above. I would recommend it.

You might wonder why you should care to study and understand our nation’s godly heritage. For one thing, there is a lot of misinformation, wrong information and missing information regarding the founding and establishment of America. This has come about through “deconstruction”, the process of rewriting history to exclude certain details.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.
Psalm 33:12 NKJV

Karl Marx, basically the founder of communism, said in his writings, “Take away the heritage of the people, and they are easily persuaded.” So, the deletion of God’s role in our history is by design, to lead the confused masses into bondage again.

The word “history” is interesting in breaking down the syllables. His-story. Essentially, the scripture in Matthew 10:29 says, “Can a nation rise without His aid?” Jesus said, “…not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.”

I had been in full-time ministry twenty years before it occurred to me just how powerful the scripture above in Psalm 33 is, with regard to my country. When I went on my first missions trip, I started to get the idea. America is the exception and not the rule.

What have come to be called “third-world countries” display poverty, spiritual darkness and just plain filth you cannot imagine. I’ve smelled odors in India that defy description. If you live in America, you are blessed above all people on the earth for many reasons.

This does not mean we are better than anyone else. I say this frequently when teaching on “American exceptionalism”, a term derived from the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, an author in early American times. We are the exception solely because of God’s blessings, and we need to understand that.

We are only 4% of the world population here, and yet we’re one of the wealthiest, most powerful nations on the planet. This is by design, and it is only by God’s hand. Over the past century, however, this history has been rewritten to deceive, beginning with our children in our schools. That has caused many to not know where we came from and not know who we are.

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? 
Psalm 11:3 KJV

Well, this is what I say to that. Let’s get busy rebuilding them. It has become part of my mission to keep this in front of the people at Church for All Nations and others who receive my teachings on the internet and other ways. The study of American history is not simply a secular venture of learning where we came from to set the record straight. It is rather a study in faith.

Our adversary, the devil, has sown a lot of confusion and contention to obscure America’s godly heritage. In recent years, we have been in a great awakening to bring this to light. My friend, David Barton has written The American Story, which is two volumes subtitled “The Beginnings” and “Building the Republic”.

This is history that can be trusted, that, I believe, every child in America should be taught. It hasn’t been scrubbed of references to our Creator’s role in the events that brought this country to be and established it. For example, Christopher Columbus, who sailed from Europe to discover this continent working for the monarchs of Spain, was a man of faith, as borne out in his own writings.

America’s founding could not have happened without the hand of Almighty God. He was called upon frequently in the writings and speeches of our founding fathers, but you have to dig for this information, as mainstream education has hidden it, lying to us by omission.

Many of the God-fearing patriots who helped shape this nation could be inducted into the “Faith’s Hall of Fame” list in Hebrews chapter 11. They were men of faith who were tested in many ways, yet they stood strong and believed God.

It was foolish for the little 13 colonies to come against Great Britain! It was impossible, it was absurd, it was ludicrous. But, in our “birth certificate”, the Declaration of Independence, they said they had a “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence”. In other words, they looked to God for the victory.

I get excited and angry at the same time when I reflect on these amazing facts. First I am blessed to see examples of how nothing is impossible to him that believes. We can overcome unsurmountable odds, no matter what we face, through faith in God. And then I get excited because I am a citizen of the United States of America!

At the same time, I am grieved and angry that we, as Americans, do not know this history.

“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about,”
– Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the U.S., 1913-1921

We need to know our godly heritage. We need to understand where we came from, our roots.

What does it mean to be a Christian nation? How can we reclaim our biblical foundation in a culture losing its way? America needs truth, because we will continue to unravel into chaos if we don’t return to that foundation.. We are in a battle of worldviews. It is time to stand for truth. It is time to remember who we are, a Christian nation.

You know, I grew up in the Bible Belt down in Texas, and we prayed in school every day. We read the scriptures and pledged allegiance to flag. It was a different era than it is now, but I wasn’t taught these things I’m telling you now regarding the “faith of our fathers”.

We all need to get ahold of this. One of the things brought out in the book, The Light and the Glory, is that it’s not just the problem of knowing the truth about our founders and where we came from as a nation. The fact is that God’s hand has been upon us anyway. We have had a lot of mercy. But, essentially, we have lost the vision of our forefathers.

Where there is no vision, the people perish…. Proverbs 29:18a KJV

Where there is no vision (no redemptive revelation of God), the people perish. Proverbs 29:18a AMPC

When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. 
Proverbs 29:18a NLT

Where there is ignorance of God, crime runs wild; but what a wonderful thing it is for a nation to know and keep his laws. Proverbs 29:18 TLB

Are we seeing that today? We are witnessing lawlessness in our country that was inconceivable only a decade ago. We’ve lost the vision of our founders. America is not an accident or an afterthought. We have the most incredible, beautiful history. God planned for America to come into being for one reason, to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everybody within this land and to the ends of the earth.

We are also witnessing a great awakening right now through the teaching of historians like David and Tim Barton. And, in The American Story, we learn that revival always occurs around the revisiting of history!

For example, during the reign of young King Josiah, a backslidden Israel was turned back to God by the reading of God’s Word when it was uncovered in the neglected temple. And the young king rent his clothes and said, “You mean this is who we were? This is our history?” And he called the people back to God. (II Kings chapters 22-23)

This is history and government, not “politics”. Government is eternal. There will always be government.

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder.
Isaiah 9:6 NKJV

So, what has happened is Christians have shied away from government, thinking of it as politics (a dirty word to some), and they have taken the light with them. We are to be salt and light in this world. Absence of light is darkness. If you don’t have salt, things decay. The Christians pulled out of the mountain of government, out of the sphere of ruling this nation, and darkness set in. Now, we are having a great awakening, a revival of the sidelined church.

God knows the end before the beginning. When Peter stood up on the Day of Pentecost and said, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16 NKJV), he was revisiting history. We are trying to do a futile thing if we don’t understand our godly heritage. We have a destiny as a nation yet to be fully realized.

A nation without God's guidance is a nation without order. - Proverbs 29:18 (Good News Translation)

In recent decades, our nation has been increasingly steered away from God’s Word under the guise of “separation of church and state” as a constitutional principle. When you study the origins of this country, you can see how foolish that idea really is. There would be no state without the church. In searching historical documents, we find out, for example, that Pastor Robert Hunt landed in Virginia Beach in 1607 and prayed a covenant prayer, dedicating the nation to God. He covenanted that we would take the Gospel to everyone in these shores, and then, together with England, we would take it to the ends of the earth.

Why must we search such documents to study and understand America’s founding? First of all, it is essential to knowing who we are today. For example, Bill Federer tells us in his book, Three Secular Reasons Why America Should be Under God, that the three branches of our enduring form of government – the executive, the legislative and the judicial – came out of the Book of Isaiah in the scriptures.

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.
Isaiah 33:22 KJV

From this passage it was revealed to the founders the separation of powers that would be entrusted to men in this country’s governance. I have talked to people who know the Old Testament well but didn’t realize that connection. We have a lot of ground to make up in realizing and teaching to upcoming generations the rich godly heritage of this nation that is ours. America is a miracle nation. Our purpose is tied to knowing our history. Indeed, to deny God’s part in the founding of America is to reject the founding of this country altogether.

In writing The Light and the Glory, the authors worked to learn about the founding of this nation from the founders themselves. They read and studied the original writings of these men to discover the origins of this wisdom. And now they work to share their discoveries.

David Barton speaks in law schools. He says that out of most student groups he encounters, at most four names of the signers of the original U.S. Constitution are known by anyone. These are people who are basically going to be defending the constitution of this country in their future careers, yet many of them have not actually read it and have no knowledge of its true origins.

Simply put, if there were no Bible, there could be no United States of America. We find ourselves in this state of ignorance regarding our true history, because our public education system has shifted to promoting indoctrination into a godless worldview. Our so-called history has been scrubbed of the elements that reveal God’s hand in it.

Pray this over your life:
Father, I pray that you would flood my heart with light concerning this nation, the U.S.A., and your strong hand upon it from its beginning. Bring us, your chosen people, back to a full awareness of our destiny in your plan, that we may experience revival in a continued great awakening to our nation’s godly heritage. Thank you, Lord, for all you’ve done in building this nation and all that you will do in the fulfillment of its purpose.