Truth Is Fallen In The Street
By Pastor David L. Brown, Ph.D.
Truth Is Fallen In The Streets. 06282015
Isaiah
59:12-15 “For our transgressions are multiplied
before thee, and our sins testify against us: for our transgressions are
with us; and as for our iniquities, we know them; 13 In transgressing
and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God,
speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of
falsehood. 14 And judgment is turned away backward, and justice
standeth afar off: for truth is
fallen in the street, and equity
[right] cannot enter. 15 Yea,
truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself
a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was
no judgment.”
God’s Prophet Isaiah lays out Israel’s spiritual
condition. Their transgressions against God had multiplied to such an extent
that they became so corrupt spiritually their justice system was characterized
as “judgment turned away backward,” meaning judgment had turned its back on
justice. Truth was disregarded and is characterized as being “fallen in the
streets.” Right or “equity” barred from entering. There was such a flagrant
disregard for truth, to the extent, that those who stood against evil and for
the truth became the target of derision, mockery and persecution (“maketh
himself a prey”). Israel’s sin, deliberate rebellion against the Lord, lying,
injustice, and persecution of those who stood for righteousness, brought God’s
wrath down upon them. God is NOT mocked!
Tragically, our nation is following the same
path that Israel followed. Over my lifetime I have seen “truth” fall in the streets
so to speak. Slowly but surely an unelected committed of nine judges (the Justices of
the Supreme Court of the United States) have thrown Biblical truth in the
street, robbed the People for their freedom of religion, taken away their liberty
to govern themselves, and have set up our nation for the Judgment of God. Let
me trace for you how, in the United States, “judgment is turned away backward, and justice
standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street.”
SCOTIS (Supreme Court Of The
United States) Decisions
· Engel
v. Vitale - "The Regents School Prayer" - 1962
The New York school system had adopted a prayer
to be said before the start of each day's classes. (I will remember my kindergarten
teacher leading in prayer when I was in school). This prayer was to help promote
good moral character of the students, spiritual training and help
combat juvenile delinquency. The Regents wrote a prayer for the schools
which had to be non-sectarian or denominational. It was so bland that it became
known to some religious leaders as the "to whom it may concern prayer." This is the Regents School Prayer - Almighty God, we
acknowledge our dependence upon thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our
parents, our teachers and our Country.
The court Warren court ignored the plainly
stated truth of the Founding Fathers that stated that religion and morality
were to be a part of our society and government and instead expelled prayer from the public schools
for the first time. George Washington said, “Religion
and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” He also said, “It is the duty of all nations to
acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful
for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” Noah Webster said, "[T]he Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather
the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that
no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the
principles of that religion have not a controlling influence."
The Supreme
Court by majority vote thumbed their noses at our Founding Father and what is
exceedingly worse, at God.
·
Murray v. Curlett "School
Prayer" - 1963
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a militant left wing
atheist with close ties to the American Communist Party, took the school board
of Baltimore to court for allowing prayer in school. The local court judge J.
Gilbert Pendergast dismissed the petition stating, “It is abundantly clear
that petitioners' real objective is to drive every concept of religion out of
the public school system.” The case went to the Maryland Court of Appeals,
and the court ruled, “neither the First nor the Fourteenth Amendment was
intended to stifle all rapport [relationship] between religion and government.”
The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Leonard Kerpelman addressed the court saying the Constitution had erected a
"wall of separation" between church and state, at which
point Justice Potter Steward interrupted, asking where this wording appears.
Kerpelman was stumped and an embarrassing silence followed. When he regained
his composure, he stated that the text was not explicit on the point but that
it had been interpreted to mean so. Actually that is NOT true. The phrase “wall of separation” was in a private
letter of Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists.
The thing that troubles me is this. Not a single
Christian organization filed a brief in support of school prayer, so the case
went virtually uncontested before the Court. The Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1
in favor of abolishing school prayer and
Bible reading in the public schools. Justice Tom Clark wrote, “religious freedom, it has long been
recognized that government must be neutral and, while protecting all, must prefer
none and disparage none.”
· Abington
Township School District v. Schempp - "Bible reading in school" -
1963
The
Pennsylvania school system complied with a state law requiring that ten
verses of Scripture be read every day. The readings were without
interpretation, comment or questions asked, and any student could request to be
excused. It was voluntary without coercion, and the Schempp girl never asked to
be excused and even volunteered to read the Bible on occasions. (This
point was not brought up when the case was before the Supreme Court.)
Yet the parents brought the case to court on grounds that it was
coercion. This case came to the Supreme Court at the same time as
the Murray v. Curlett case, and the court ruled on them together. After
these last 2 cases were decided, the court’s ruling stated that Prayer and / or Bible reading was a
violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment. In so ruling the court established a secular
religion for our school system, thus violating the "establishment
clause" of the First Amendment. And thus the First Amendment has been completely revised with regard
to religious freedom, putting the restrictions on the people and not the
government.
Noah Webster who was called the School Master of the United States
because of the use his Blue Back Speller in public schools, (the speller was packed full of Biblical principles
and biblical moral teachings) said, “The
Bible must be considered as the great source of all truth by which men are to
be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.” Yet, the
majority of nine unelected men on the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the
Bible and prayer must be excluded from our public schools. These rulings attacked our God given right to
exercise our religion publically. Public Schools became a NO GOD ZONE. Prayer
to God and Bible reading were removed from put public schools. Today, students
who bring their Bible and read them or who pray or who write papers about Jesus
Christ, the Bible and God are regularly threatened and in numerous instances, expelled.
To combat that parents have to engage a lawyer to fight for their child’s 1st
Amendment rights.
·
Roe v. Wade - 1973
This is the Supreme Court decision overturning a Texas interpretation of
abortion law and making abortion legal in the United States. Roe v. Wade attacked our God-given right-to-life and has shifted our nations focus
from being a life focused culture to a death focused culture. Proverbs
8:35-36 “For whoso
findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD. 36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his
own soul: all they that hate me love death.” Innocent blood has been shed! 50
million babies have been murdered by abortion in this nation. Our nation has
sown to the wind and is reaping the whirlwind.
Now we come to the most recent
abominable Supreme Court ruling -
· Obergefell v. Hodges - 2015
This ruling decreed that so called “same
sex marriage” (an oxymoronic phrase) must be recognized in all 50 states of
these United States.
Our Governor Scott Walker said, “I believe this Supreme
Court decision is a grave mistake. Five unelected judges have taken it upon
themselves to redefine the institution of marriage, an institution that the
author of this decision acknowledges ‘has been with us for millennia.'”
In fact, God established
marriage in Eden. We read in Genesis 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave
his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they
shall be one flesh.”
Justice Clarence Thomas said that the court’s “decision threatens the religious liberty
our Nation has long sought to protect.” The First Amendment to the
Constitution guarantees “the free exercise” of religion—which is not confined
to “worship” that takes place within a religious building, but engages all
aspects of a person’s life. “Aside from undermining the political processes
that protect our liberty, the majority’s decision threatens the religious
liberty our Nation has long sought to protect,” Thomas said in his dissent.
“In our society, marriage is not simply a
governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well,” said Thomas.
“Today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter. It
appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly
as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and
endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples…The majority appears unmoved
by that inevitability,” Thomas concluded.
Justice Antonin Scalia declared that this
Supreme Court has become a “threat to American democracy.” Here
is the quote. “I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to
American democracy,” Scalia said. “This practice of constitutional revision by
an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant
praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted
in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the
freedom to govern themselves.”
I would make
this observation as well. Traditional marriage. Biblical Marriage is the
backbone of society. Marriage unites a man and a woman as husband and wife so
that the children will have both a father and a mother. Further, Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and woman are distinct
and complementary and the biological
fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children fare
best with a mother and a father. Redefining marriage to make it a genderless institution
fundamentally changes marriage: It makes the relationship more
about the desires of adults than about the needs—or rights—of children. It
teaches the lie that mothers and fathers are interchangeable.
Please
understand, while the Court changed the
definition of marriage, THERE ARE A NUMBER OF THINGS THAT HAVE NOT CHANGED.
1.
GOD IS STILL ON THE THRONE.
2.
GOD’S TRUTH ABOUT MARRIAGE HAS NOT
CHANGED.
3.
THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTS 5:29 HAS NOT
CHANGED - “we ought to obey God rather than man.”
4.
MAN’S NEED FOR SALVATION HAS NOT
CHANGED SO WE WILL CONTINUE SHARE THE GOSPEL.
The Psalmist poses this question - “If the foundations be destroyed,
what can the righteous do?” Psalms 11:3
I have an answer. We need to keep on
keeping on for the Lord. We need to stand for the TRUTH of God’s word even when
the world stands against us. That is what we did when abortion was legalized. Abortion
is STILL sin. It is murder, the shedding of innocent blood. So called “same sex
marriage” is an abomination to almighty God! Yet, I DO know this. When a sinner
turns to Jesus Christ that sinner gets saved and that sinner’s life changes. We
need to seek to win them to Christ.
Turn to 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not
inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with
mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you:
but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of
the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
Western Civilization is rotten to
the core and moving rapidly toward God's impending Judgment. I am reminded of
the words that are written on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial - “God
who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when
we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot
sleep forever.” – Thomas
Jefferson
We need to redouble our efforts to reach them with the Gospel. When a
person is really saved his or her life changes.
As a side note, I like what Governor
Walker said -
“Recognizing that our Founders
made our Constitution difficult to amend, I am reminded that it was first
amended to protect our ‘First Freedom' - the free exercise of religion. The
First Amendment does not simply protect a narrow ‘right to worship,' but
provides broad protection to individuals and institutions to worship and act in
accordance with their religious beliefs. In fact, the Wisconsin constitution
explicitly protects the rights of conscience of our citizens. I can assure
all Wisconsinites concerned about the impact of today's decision that your
conscience rights will be protected, and the government will not coerce you to
act against your religious beliefs.
“I
call on the president and all governors to join me in reassuring millions of
Americans that the government will not force them to participate in activities
that violate their deeply held religious beliefs. No one wants to live in a
country where the government coerces people to act in opposition to their conscience. We will continue to fight
for the freedoms of all Americans.”
Christians; It is up to us to hold God’s
Standard high. First teach them to our children and grandchildren. The
government schools will try to undermine biblical values and morals. The
entertainment media will continue of offer their perverted view of sex and
morals. Our Government will bring it power to bear against us who know and
teach the truths of the Bible. WE MUST STAND FOR THE ENDURING WORDS OF GOD!
“If thou faint in
the day of adversity,
thy strength is
small.
Proverbs 24:10
