America, Prepare To Receive A Harvest
Jeff Culver
218-847-5213
Detroit Lakes Assembly of God
On the 4th of July, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence. Usually, the current American way is not to celebrate the foundations of our land, or even, really, the Independence our forefathers fought, sacrificed and died for. BBQ’d Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, steaks, you name it, it goes on the grill. Baseball games, parades, family, fireworks and potato salad all mixed into a day of festivity. Our celebration of today has grown tremendously from the early days of our nation. A few early celebrations were:
• In 1777, thirteen guns were fired, once at morning and again as evening fell, on July 4 in Bristol, Rhode Island. Philadelphia celebrated the first anniversary in a manner a modern American would find quite familiar: an official dinner for the Continental Congress, toasts, 13-gun salutes, speeches, prayers, music, parades, troop reviews, and fireworks. Ships were decked with red, white, and blue bunting.
• In 1778, General George Washington marked Independence Day with a double ration of rum for his soldiers and an artillery salute. Across the Atlantic Ocean, ambassadors John Adams and Benjamin Franklin held a dinner for their fellow Americans in Paris, France.
• In 1779, July 4 fell on a Sunday. The holiday was celebrated on Monday, July 5.
• In 1781, the Massachusetts General Court became the first state legislature to recognize Independence Day as a state celebration.
• In 1783, Moravians in Salem, North Carolina, held the first celebration of Independence Day in the country with a challenging music program assembled by Johann Friedrich Peter. This work was titled "The Psalm of Joy".
• In 1791 was the first recorded use of the name "Independence Day".
• In 1870, the U.S. Congress made Independence Day an unpaid holiday for federal employees.[1]
• In 1941, Congress changed Independence Day to a paid federal holiday.
The residents of Vicksburg, Mississippi, celebrated Independence Day for the first time since July 4, 1863, when the Siege of Vicksburg ended with a Union victory during the American Civil War.
Long before our nation declared it’s independence from the British Empire, the foundations of our land were laid by a hearty, simple-faced, plain speaking, earnest, honest and hardworking group of misunderstood people called the Puritans. The majority of the frameworks, structures, institutions and belief systems in our land came directly from the Puritan belief system. To understand why they came, what they believed was their purpose, and what they were trying to build is to understand why America is what it is today. And to understand the Puritans, you have to understand their faith. In the Puritan world, everything revolved around the idea of “covenant.” Covenant with God, covenant with man. This was the foundational concept of Puritan culture. The two foundational scriptures in this concept are:
Deut. 7:9
Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments;
Dan. 9:4
And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, "O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments,
The theology of the Puritans echoed this revelation of covenant, and was called “Covenant Theology.” In an era when a man’s word was worthless, both to Monarch and the common man, God had revealed to those who sought Him the reality of “God who keeps His covenant…” Often when revelation comes from God to a group of people in a corrupt culture, this revelation becomes an almost exclusive concept of God, and to the Puritans, this was certainly true with the idea of covenant. God had revealed Himself as the One who keeps His Word, the One who does not lie (Heb. 6:18), the One whom you can trust and believe and rely upon, because He had given His word. They believed God still made covenant humanity in their day, and they acted upon it.
A Brief Synopsis of Covenant Theology: (Also known as “Federal Theology” or Federalism)
Covenant Theology emphasizes the concept of covenant in-between the Godhead and from God to humanity. There are three major covenants:
1. Covenant of Redemption, between the three members of the Trinity, in which Jesus was appointed to be the redeemer of humanity.
2. Covenant of Works, made in Eden between God and Adam, which states obey and live, disobey and die. Adam chose disobedience and death.
3. Covenant of Grace. Promised blessing for all who believe in Jesus. All subsequent (from Covenant of Works) covenants with humanity are based on this covenant. There are six covenants between God and man that are based upon the Covenant of Grace.
a. Adamic Covenant Gen. 3:15
And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
b. Noahic Covenant Gen. 9 (sealed by the rainbow and the promise never to flood the earth again.)
c. Abrahamic Covenant Gen. 12, 15, 17
d. Mosaic Covenant Ex. 19-24, Book of Deut.
e. Davidic 2 Sam. 7 (Establishing David’s linage as the linage of Messiah)
f. New Covenant Jer. 31:31 "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah--
The Lord’s Supper (Communion) and Water baptism were considered the seals of the New Covenant, and became the accepted Ordinances of the Church in most Protestant denominations.
A brief understanding of our forefather’s view of the concept of covenant as central to a relationship with God and relationship with their fellow humanity helps us to understand the foundation of this land. The Puritans truly felt called by God to a new land and to a Divine Destiny. Today, this idea of “Manifest Destiny” is considered a foolish thought at best, an arrogant W.A.S.P. thought that justifies genocide, land theft, broken treaties and every form of xenophobia at worst. Our misunderstanding of Divine Destiny is causing us to miss our destiny as a nation. Jer. 29:11 (NIV) For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
God clearly destines plans for nations. This is a clearly stated principle throughout scripture. And the Puritans believed from the bottom of their hearts that God had called them to be a sort of “New Israel”, a group of people living in obedience to God, in covenant relationship with God, a nation that was a light to the nations. The purpose for the founding of the United States of America was to be a witness to the nations of God and His covenant relationship with humanity through faith in Jesus Christ. Samuel Fisher, in his book “Testimony in Truth” (1679), wrote “Let Israel be…our glass to view our faces in.” In 1673, Urian Oakes, the President of Harvard wrote “If we lay all things together, this our Commonwealth seems to exhibit to us a specimen, or a little model, of the Kingdom of Christ upon Earth…”
In the Puritan mind, this call was to be worked out in terms of their Covenant with God and their covenant relationship with each other. So every early document that they wrote, from the Mayflower Compact to their various declarations written over time, to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights must be understood only through the concept of Covenant relationship.
In light of the fact that God does in fact make covenant with humanity throughout the ages, and in light of the fact that God is a God who does not lie, not even once, I have spent this extended time laying the foundation for the very simple word God has laid on my heart. Without an understanding of the foundational principles behind the founding of our nation, it would not make sense. I believe that a very large part of the sermons, purported prophetic declarations of the doom of our nation, declarations of unavoidable, inevitable judgment and disaster in the near future are based on a fundamental lack of understanding of the covenantal nature of God. Our founders made a covenant with God, and God is not mocked.
Gal. 6:7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
This is a simple truth, God is not mocked. You will reap what you sow. When I hear this passage thundering from pulpits across our land, it is always solely connected to the sins of our land, which are many. But for the past two years, I have heard the Lord seemingly asking me a question,” What else has America sown?” This question has caused me much thought.
What else HAS America sown?
The United States has sown the gospel in more places than any nation in history. From Adoniram Judson to the tens of thousands of missionaries currently serving overseas today from the many denominations in our land, the United States of America has consistently sown, and continues to sow the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every tongue, tribe and nation under heaven. No other nation on earth has sown the Gospel as we have. Our nation was founded in a covenant relationship with God to be a light to the nations. We have in fact been that. Our nation has in fact been a light to every language group, people group and culture under heaven. We have, as a nation, fulfilled the Great Commission.
AMERICA, PREPARE TO RECEIVE A HARVEST!
You will in fact reap what you have sown. America, you have sown the gospel, you will reap the gospel. America, God remembers the covenant your forefathers made with Him, and He is faithful to perform that which He has promised.