John Adams on faith and our nation

by Dan Grubbs

On June 21, 1776, John Adams, in discourse with other founding fathers, was a valiant defender of the notion that our faith and our nation are vitally linked. In my opinion, John Adams was the greatest American of all time, more so than the great patriot, George Washington. According to Adams, we cannot have a United States of American in our constitutional form, without the morality that comes from our Christianity. Note his quote from this date:

"Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand."

On Oct. 11, 1798, Adams addressed the young army reminding them for which they fight. He tells them they are defending a nation that can only stand if it is comprised of moral and religious people. He reminds the army that our Constitution cannot guide a people who are led by human passions. He said:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human
passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or
gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes
through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Therefore, it is incumbent on all of us as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, to remember that it is not government that will save this nation, but people who are obedient to the only and true living God. The greatest political act we can perform is to witness to a nonbeliever because their eternal soul and our nation depend on it.

Dear ones, it will not be legislation that rights this nation, nor governmental stimulus of any form. It will only be, can only be, by the our strict proclamation of the Gospel and lives lived by the guiding of the Holy Spirit ... lives lived in humility before our almighty Heavenly Father.

I'll leave you all with a longer quote from Adams explaining his rationale for establishing a holiday to celebrate the inextricable link between our nation and our God (emphasis added).

"I have thought proper to recommend, and I hereby recommend accordingly, that
Thursday, the twenty-fifth day of April next, be observed throughout the United
States of America as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting and prayer; that the
citizens on that day abstain, as far as may be, from their secular occupation,
and devote the time to the sacred duties of religion, in public and in private;
that they call to mind our numerous offenses against the most high God, confess
them before Him with the sincerest penitence, implore his pardoning mercy,
through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions, and that
through the grace of His Holy Spirit, we may be disposed and enabled to yield a
more suitable obedience to his righteous requisitions in time to come; that He
would interpose to arrest the progress of that impiety and licentiousness in
principle and practice so offensive to Himself and so ruinous to mankind; that
He would make us deeply sensible that "righteousness exalteth a nation but sin
is a reproach to any people" (Proverbs 14:34)"

Oh, for men like Adams today.