“and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.” 1 John 4:3
Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo famously asserted, “Our rights do not come from God.” The greater conversation indicates that Cuomo believes that our human rights come from the government. Their source is human and not divine, they are based upon the benevolence of the state rather than the mercy of God. Ted Cruz, during his Presidential campaign, declared a very different view: “Our rights do not come from man, they come from God Almighty.”
Herein lies the crux of the struggle in America - and throughout the world - and it exposes the primary doctrine of the anti-Christ spirit that is as John declared “in the world already.”
Set aside, if you will, all of the political rhetoric; the impassioned debates regarding abortion, gun-control, sexual identity and practice, capitalism vs Socialism, diversity, racial politics and the like. It is a smokescreen designed to mask the real debate: Who is in charge?
Our founders believed, in a simple statement: That extended to all men everywhere, are three inalienable human “rights.” The right to be alive, the right to be free from domination by other men, and the right to pursue the things that they perceived to bring them happiness. They believed that government itself has no rights; but is granted by men the inherent responsibility of protecting them from forces and influences that would deny any man of the rights given to him by a gracious God. Men are essentially released by God to a life of self-government, guided by ancient and holy principles, unfettered by the weight of burdensome, external government regulation. Truly moral men are not controlled by a police force; they are rather policed by moral principles engraved upon their hearts.
John Adams: “.....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 moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Robert Winthrop, Speaker of the U. S. House, "Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet."
Those who oppose these ideas; who stand in resistance to the idea that God is the giver of all human rights, assert instead that government, not Providence is the giver of rights. Absent anywhere in the discussion is the idea of inalienability. In other words, that which is extended by the government can also be withdrawn by the government. Government is not the guardian of God-given and non-negotiable rights. It is rather the source of rights.
We hear much about “rights” today - the RIGHT to healthcare, the RIGHT to sexual orientation, the RIGHT to taxpayer funded welfare…...but, there is little about “Life, Liberty, & the (personal) Pursuit of Happiness.”
An entire generation of unborn children have been systematically denied the right to life. They have been, by the state, deemed to have no rights; despite the fact that they have beating hearts, operational kidneys, functioning nervous systems, and fully functioning brains. (These life-avowing functions must be present, or they would have no value on the market for human organs). There is no longer any right to life here, because the government has withdrawn it as these children are not considered to be a part of the “all men” as delineated in our Declaration of Independence.
Persons of conviction or conscience regarding certain practices are systematically denied their liberty, as the government seeks forced compliance and agreement to ideologies and preferences that are abhorrent to their moral sensibilities. The right to make a living, and often at risk to personal freedom, the government has decreed that while men may have liberty, the liberty of some is greater than the liberty of others. Anyone who takes a principled stand against issues and practices that contradict their own moral values are summarily punished in both courts of law and courts of public opinion.
The pursuit of happiness envisioned by our founders did not include living as a dependent upon the hard work of others; demanding a monthly check in the mail as some sort of entitlement, expecting others to provide me with a quality of life that makes me “happy.”
The pursuit of happiness envisioned by our founding fathers did not include the right to burn down, loot, and destroy any business or home that represents disagreement with my view of the world. It did not envision persons being attacked and beaten in the streets for holding contrary views of morality or decency.
The pursuit of happiness envisioned by our founders was in expectation that I would pursue my own happiness, and that the government would protect that pursuit - ensuring that no one prevented me from seizing the opportunities afforded by living in a free society.
Listen to the words of former Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio: “If I had my druthers, America would be a totalitarian state (“a very, very powerful government, including a federal government”) wielding total power over every facet of people’s lives ( “involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality”) in accordance with the communist dictum of “in accordance to their needs”. At the city level, the totalitarian state would “determine which building goes where, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be”.
This is not a vision of the government protecting our “inalienable rights,” but the government assigning itself sovereignty, extending and withdrawing whatever rights it determines to be in the interest of the state.
Charles de Montesquieu - “There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” I have from time to time modified Montesquieu’s statement to read: “There is no tyranny so great as that tyranny imposed upon a people for their own good.”
Tear away the veil; blow away the smokescreen and what you have is this: The government given to us by our forefathers was a government based upon three fundamental, God-given rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is the government that is internal and bottom to top. The government that is being foisted upon this generation is based upon the will of the state, external, and top down. It is the Government of the Creator God given to set men free opposed by the Government of the Antichrist spirit that seeks to enslave and control.
"To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of
men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism
and religious dogmas."
G. Brock Chisholm, co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health,
former director of UN World Health Organization
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