by Dan Jones
We have just celebrated the Fourth of July with parades and food and festivities and fireworks.
We make a pretty big deal out of our country’s birthday celebration, and rightfully so, but what of July 5?
Now that we’re back at work and the candy wrappers along the parade route are swept up, what now?
I was listening to Focus on the Family on Kinship Christian Radio about lunchtime on the Fourth when Jim Daly was talking about the aftermath of the Declaration of Independence.
He explained the just eleven years after that famous document was signed, the country appeared to be falling apart. A group called the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia from May to September of 1787 to decide whether to try and fix what was wrong with the system of government the founders had come up with, or scrap it all together and start over.
After it was over, it is said a women came up to Benjamin Franklin and said, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Franklin replied, “A republic, madam –if you can keep it.”
Thousands of years before that, the prophet Samuel had warned the people of Israel that their desire to be ruled by an earthly king would result in them being slaves to that king. (1 Samuel 8:10-22)
Nonetheless, the people of Israel insisted on a king and the LORD gave them what they wanted.
Of course, they ended up in exactly the situation Samuel had predicted.
That was followed by thousands of years of all kinds of people (not just Israel) being enslaved and subjected to various kings.
One of those kings was named George III and it was against his empire the American colonists declared their freedom with the following words:
“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
They were, and are, powerful words. In the context of the times, they were radical, treasonous words.
Equality among men? Rights derived from God rather than the king? That government derives its power from the consent of the governed?
Surely, those in power at the time must have thought the colonists insane.
By all normal standards, they were. In signing the Declaration of Independence, every name on that document was a traitor to the crown. They risked losing all they had, their very lives, and the lives of their families –and many of them did.
King George III was outraged by the Declaration and declared “never to acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal.” The King wanted to “keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse”.
Eventually he had to relent, and the Treaties of Paris were signed in 1782 and 1783, under which Britain surrendered and acknowledged the independence of the United States of America.
In 1785, King George III declared, “I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.” (Thus proving the political double-speak and “spin” are by no means a modern concept.)
And from that day onward, we have dealt with conundrum of July 5. Having declared our freedom, we must now strive daily to keep it.
Today’s Praise
“We recognize no sovereign but God, and no king but Jesus!” (A cry of defiance from the Revolutionary War.)