Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: June 12, 2008 - # 8824 - Title: Fathers Day – The Faith of my Father(s) (821)

This coming Sunday, Father’s Day, will see bundles of ties given as a token of appreciation by children to their fathers. My father now belongs to the ages so, rather than ties, I will pay a tribute to the faith of my father (1899), and to the faith of his father (1859) and to his father’s fathers’ (1821) faith. And by going back far enough I can ponder the Faith of my Heavenly Father, the author of all freedom and liberties.

These ancestors were men of faith and courage and made up the fabric of America as it was being slowly woven to become a beacon of freedom to the worlds enslaved. My ancestral fathers began immigrating to America in the early 1700s. Many fought in the Revolutionary War, in the Civil War, and in the wars to end all wars, WW I and II. They came to this country to find the freedom denied them in their native lands of Scotland, England, Ireland and Germany. And here they found that freedom they desired.

Their faith was in their God, He who led them out of captivity, similar to how the ancient Israelites were led out of slavery by Moses. They then became a part of America’s restoration of freedom process patterned after the laws given to Moses to govern ancient Israel. The early immigrants in Connecticut and Rhode Island’s patterned their initial constitutions after the pattern found in Deuteronomy. Those two constitutions later became patterns for America’s Constitution in 1787.

The tombstones of these ancestors reflected their faith. In searching for my ancestors I have read many of the verses enshrined on their tombstones. Those remembered include: “She’s gone to worlds above where saints and angels meet, to realize our Savior’s love, and worship at His feet.;” or, “Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live;’” or this for a two year old daughter, “On earth this little flower grew. Admired and lovely to the view, but though on earth is seen no more; she blossoms upon a fairer shore.” Their faith in God was unshakable, founded on their Rock of Salvation. They then created a government based on the laws of nature’s God, their Rock, a government that has since veered off course and is now mired in the sifting sands of secularism and environmentalism.

            Having lived over a third of the 232 years since America was born on July 4, 1776 I have seen many changes. Most of the changes made until Johnson’s Great Society were intended to help America “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and [allow most Americans] to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity;” and were established on the principles of freedom the Founders found in the Bible.

But changes since the sixties, such as the removal of God from our classrooms and governmental institutions, are, in my opinion, leading Americans back to the form of government the Founders separated from in 1776, Ruler’s, Law. These changes have encouraged larger and larger segments of America to ignore the Moral Laws of God thinking they would become free only to find out they often become slaves to their own physical appetites, then easily led into a more severe form of slavery, slaves to their government.

 No nation or individual can ignore the laws of nature and Nature’s God and remain free for long.  Life does not operate that way, sooner or later the piper must be paid.

These thoughts brought to mind Robert Browning ‘ditty’ titled the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Browning’s poem tells of a people in 1500 Europe whose town was overrun with rats. The Piper ‘promised’ the people to rid their city of the rats for a thousand gilders but when the mayor reneged the Piper blew three notes (sound bites) and the children all followed the Piper and were led away. 

            Today America is more sharply divided then ever. It’s scary when the government, like the rats in Hamelin, is so ‘infested with corruption’ that even my grandchildren are traumatized and hypnotized by the melodic words and promises of ‘change’ that they are willing to follow someone, anyone, who promises to rid the government of that corruption. They haven’t been taught that America’s freedoms were founded upon ‘the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God’ and that these ‘promises of change’ only lead to secularized socialism which is in effect simply another form of demeaning slavery.

            Take time to remember your father this Sunday then take an additional moment to remember the faith of your ancestral fathers, and remember it was they who paved the way, with hard work and sweat, for your standard of living today. Don’t throw those standards away based on the promises of a Pied Piper.