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Ten Commandments Sunday?
What beliefs form the apparent understanding of those involved in the Ten Commandments Commission? Could theirs be an alliance of ignorance?
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California, USA
Delivery: 2006-05-06 22:03Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2006-05-06 22:03Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/rar/kir-10csunday.php
Big Sunday is Ready
This is the big weekend. We’ve all heard about it. Tomorrow, Sunday, May 7, 2006 will be kept by a motley collection of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews as a national observance in support of the Ten Commandments. So they say.
Who? Paul Crouch, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Richard Shakarian, Ted Haggard, Frank Wright, Gary Baur, Chuck Colson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson, Don Wildmon, among others.
I feel safer already.
If you want to find out who’s behind something, some say “follow the money.” I say, “follow the ideas.” Here then are the ideas as presented from their own website:
Recent court rulings have threatened the very fabric and foundation of our culture and faith. The Ten Commandments, which have served as the moral foundation and anchor of our great country, are systematically being removed from public places. Public displays of the Ten Commandments have been a powerful visual testimony to the fact that the United States of America is ‘one nation under God.’ Their removal from public places shows that those with a secular humanist agenda are intent on destroying the moral heritage of our nation.
Those who care about traditional values cannot passively sit by and watch the removal of the very principles that made this country great. The Ten Commandments are the heart of all moral code and must be restored to the heart of our society.
We are inviting all Christians, churches, synagogues, ministry leaders, religious bookstores and everyone who is interested in preserving traditional values to join us in a national and global movement to restore the Word of God to our nation.
The focal point of this movement is the first annual Ten Commandments Day that will be held on Sunday May 7, 2006. On this date we are calling on all who are concerned about traditional Judeo-Christian values to host celebrations in support of the Ten Commandments in their local communities. Many churches have already announced that May 7 will be Ten Commandments Day in their communities. On that day, all are encouraged to wear the Ten Commandments Pin that we have made available.
With the Ten Commandments Day, we will offer a powerful display of unity as we, with one voice, declare our unwavering support for the bedrock principles that made our country great—The Ten Commandments (http://www.tencommandmentsday.com/10CDay.html, accessed 2006-05-02 17:45Z).
On their website I also noted these items in audio:
This is one of the most powerful movements in response to the attempt of the Supreme Court Justices of America to remove the Ten Commandments from the culture and the consciousness of society... A tide is building to place this pin on every body (Charles Phillips).
The Ten Commandments were given to nation builders (Miles Munroe).
We are under the agreement that we need to tell that the word of God has to come back to the nation.... We have to bring the word of God back to the nation and we will do it. No judge is going to throw God out of the courtroom.... We need to come together, join hands, and force the issues (Ron Wexler).
Ten Commandments Still Binding
Let’s be clear. The Ten Commandments are as valid today as ever. God commands obedience to His law today as He always has. And yet, He does not force. He writes His law in the heart. Jeremiah 31:33 records God’s promise:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.
His promise is repeated in the Greek Scriptures in the book of Hebrews 8:10 and 10:16. And yet, unfortunately, there remain today those determined that in some way, the state shall bring coercive power to bear on the nation, and thus impose religious observance upon citizens at large. For our own good, these zealots are sure that they can move this nation against its will, to an improved spirituality.
It is true that there is nothing in the current voluntary “observance” of Sunday May 7, 2006 as “Ten Commandments Day” that enforces or coerces using the power of the state. But in reviewing the beliefs of the advocates of Ten Commandments Day, we are concerned. Where do they intend to take their “movement”?
Concerns About the Concerns of the Ten Commandments Commission (TCC)
Alabama Ten Commandments Display Removal
One cannot help but ask, What are the recent court rulings that it is claimed have “threatened the very fabric and foundation of our culture and faith”? One event some Ten Commandments Sunday people repeatedly refer to is the removal of the 2.6 ton Ten Commandments display from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial building and the subsequent removal of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
In a nutshell, here is what happened. Certain organizations brought suit that the display of the Ten Commandments in the judicial building represented an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by the state of Alabama. Judge Moore however insisted that in taking his oath of office, he was duty bound to uphold the law and that the foundation of all law is the Ten Commandments. A legal battle ensued and the monument was removed and placed in a closet. The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On November 3, 2003 the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and thus the decision of the Alabama State Supreme Court requiring the removal of the display prevailed.
How did Moore feel about it? He said, “God has chosen this time and this place so we can save our country and save our courts for our children.” It is apparently this decision by the Supreme Court not to review the case that TCC advocates view so negatively. One senses that this whole case is seen in a sharply exaggerated light by the TCC.
Whether the display of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama judicial building constitutes an endorsement by the state of a specific religion, an establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, may be argued. But there is something surreal about the energy and emotion that has surrounded the issue. Removing a display of the Ten Commandments hardly strikes me as threatening “the very fabric and foundation of our culture and faith.” Is our culture so brittle that the removal of a few pounds of stone from a courthouse should evoke such concern?
True, such a display has considerable symbolic significance. But let’s be honest; almost no one in “our culture” even knew the display was there before the battle over its removal hit the news feed. If some feel that secular trends are encroaching on their religious faith, and that the Ten Commandments are an important part of their religious faith, let them begin by fashioning their own lives after its principles. Rather than legal coercion let their attention to God’s law become more personal. Let them shape their lives so that when it says “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” their lives show that they uphold that value. When God’s law advocates that believers “remember” the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, let them show that that is an important value to them by observing God’s seventh day Sabbath on Saturday. When it is clear that the law is appreciated by the followers of God, that will have moral and ethical power. People will be voluntarily led to inquire why they reverence it so, and to consider making its principles the dominant theme in their life, as Jesus did in His life. That will have power.
As for “our culture” and “our faith,” who is the “our”? Judeo-Christian values were dominant in the founding of this country. But the very ideas that gave Protestantism its concern for freedom of conscience made America a place also where the rights of not only the Jew and the Christian, but of all other kinds of people—Shintos, Hindus, Muslims, animists—and unbelievers—are guarded. The United States of America is not a theocracy and was never intended to be a theocracy. It is a skewed, Pat Robertsonesque view of history that imagines early America as some kind of pure Christian model that we need today to restore.
Prayer in Schools
Another issue repeatedly spoken of by the Ten Commandments Sunday people is prayer in schools. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common in the United States for public school to open each day with mandatory prayer in the classroom. Over time, some began a practice of reading Scripture in the classroom at the opening of the day as well. However, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 mostly ended this practice, declaring that school prayer as it had been offered represented a violation of the intended separation of church and state, with similar views about state mandated Bible readings. Let’s hear excerpts from those very United States Supreme Court decisions.
Engel v. Vitale 1962 (New York).
In 1962 the United States Supreme Court heard Engel v. Vitale. Here are some powerful excerpts from the Supreme Court decision delivered by Mr. Justice Black.
We think that by using its public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents’ prayer, the State of New York has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause .... we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government .... It has been argued that to apply the Constitution in such a way as to prohibit state laws respecting an [370 U.S. 421, 434] establishment of religious services in public schools is to indicate a hostility toward religion or toward prayer. Nothing, of course, could be more wrong. The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. And perhaps it is not too much to say that since the beginning of that history many people have devoutly believed that ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.’ It was doubtless largely due to men who believed this that there grew up a sentiment that caused men to leave the cross-currents of officially established state religions and religious persecution in Europe and come to this country filled with the hope that they could find a place in which they could pray when they pleased to the God of their faith in the language they chose. And there were men of this same faith in the [370 U.S. 421, 435] power of prayer who led the fight for adoption of our Constitution and also for our Bill of Rights with the very guarantees of religious freedom that forbid the sort of governmental activity which New York has attempted here. These men knew that the First Amendment, which tried to put an end to governmental control of religion and of prayer, was not written to destroy either. They knew rather that it was written to quiet well-justified fears which nearly all of them felt arising out of an awareness that governments of the past had shackled men’s tongues to make them speak only the religious thoughts that government wanted them to speak and to pray only to the God that government wanted them to pray to. It is neither sacrilegious nor antireligious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance. [370 U.S. 421, 436]. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=370&invol=421.
Abington School District v. Shempp 1963 (From Pennsylvania).
Mr. Justice Carter wrote the opinion, from which we excerpt:
Because of the prohibition of the First Amendment against the enactment by Congress of any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion,’ which is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, no state law or school board may require that passages from the Bible be read or that the Lord’s Prayer be recited in the public schools of a State at the beginning of each school day—even if individual students may be excused from attending or participating in such exercises upon written request of their parents .... It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment. But the exercises here do not fall into those categories. They are religious exercises, required by the States in violation of the command of the First Amendment that the Government maintain strict neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion .... The place of religion in our society is an exalted one, achieved through a long tradition of reliance on the home, the church and the inviolable citadel of the individual heart and mind. We have come to recognize through bitter experience that it is not within the power of government to invade that citadel, whether its purpose or effect be to aid or oppose, to advance or retard. In the relationship between man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position of neutrality. (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=374&page=203.
Several have objected to the court’s decision. But many of their objections are based on a misunderstanding. They say that the Abington v. Schempp decision prohibited activity, when it actually restrained the government from interfering either to promote or prohibit such activity.
Someone will ask, Pastor, are you aware that in agreeing with the decisions in these cases, you are agreeing with atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair who was involved in some of them? Yes, I am well aware. Nor am I ashamed. Without sharing her atheism in the least, I am thankful that the court reached the decisions that they did in upholding the rights of the individual under the Constitution of the United States. Don’t try to shame me or label me using guilt by association. I will be absolutely unmoved. I am willing to tell the truth to your face.
Problems in America Today
Make no mistake; today’s America has a fast deepening set of problems. But one wonders at the solutions some are prescribing. If we began to display the Ten Commandments not just in the Alabama judicial building, but every state and every courthouse in America, do we honestly think that would have a substantial impact on solving our problems? If we began to incorporate teacher-led prayer or Bible readings in schools across this whole nation, do you think this would have a substantial impact in solving our problems?
Prayer, of course, offered from a sincere heart, does matter. But the very freedom of religion that says the children of the Jew, the Baptist, the Catholic, the Hindu, the Muslim, are guaranteed this precious freedom means that we must refuse to allow the power of the state to be used—ever—to coerce a given kind of worship.
Our American Heritage of Religious Freedom
The United States is founded on the principle of separation of powers so that the rights of majorities and minorities are protected. That’s where our heritage of republicanism and Protestantism comes in. The United States is a democratic republic. That is, the people rule, and the government depends on the consent of the governed for its authority. We elect representatives in free elections and they serve.
The Protestant heritage says that we stand for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, concepts that arose in connection with the Protestant Reformation. And no matter how imperfectly these concepts were put into practice originally, they still are dominating features of our way of life. Hear the First Amendment of our Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (Constitution of the United States of America, First Amendment).
But today people are trying to sneak in under the theory that while the state may not establish a religion, neither need it remain neutral; that, because of long historical practice the state may offer at least vague or more general sustenance to the Judeo-Christian heritage. But when they seek to implement their view, they prefer the Bible and the Ten Commandments to all other religious expression.
Again, I believe that the Bible is an infallible revelation of God’s will. As a Seventh-day Adventist minister, I have dedicated my professional career as an ordained clergyman to teaching the continuing relevance of the Ten Commandments. I have never baptized a person who did not affirm the same. But there is a very fundamental point in play here. God gives free will to all, and they may adhere to or set themselves in opposition to His Ten Commandments if they will. They will meet their Judge one day. But the law has two tables, the first four commandments indicating man’s responsibility to God, and the last six his responsibility to his fellow man. Yes, the state may legitimately determine how it will address the last six commandments, but the first four are between man and God. It was never intended that the state risk losing her principles by crafting dramatic creative understandings in reference to these points.
By letting stand the decision to remove a 2.6 ton display from an Alabama building, by making the decisions about state-mandated school prayer and Bible reading, has the United States Supreme Court acted against our interests as citizens? Has it threatened the very fabric and foundations of our culture and faith? Has it promoted the systematic removal of the moral anchor of this country? On the contrary, it has upheld our blood bought freedoms.
Has the removal of public displays of the Ten Commandments shown that those with a secular humanist agenda are intent on destroying the moral heritage of our nation? Or has such removal testified to well-intentioned attempts to uphold freedom of conscience and to uphold the First Amendment of the Constitution? I think it has.
And when it comes to “traditional values,” who defines them? Who is to say that Sunday observance is not a “traditional value”? Are the very principles that have made this country great the ones that the Supreme Court has upheld? Or denied? Those they have upheld!
Are the Ten Commandments the heart of all moral code and must they be restored to the heart of our society? Yes. But voluntarily, and not by the state or any coerced observance. Should we join these folks in a national and global movement to restore the word of God to our nation? Shall we, as they call us to, host celebrations on Sunday in order to make a powerful display of unity? Would we not be lending our influence to what may soon become a call for something quite different? We can, as we have been for years, stand in support of all Ten of God’s commandments, but we cannot stand side by side with those who have attacked the upholders of freedom of conscience. On the contrary, we must warn. They know not what spirit they are of.
D. James Kennedy on the Seventh Day Sabbath
Among the supporters of the Ten Commandments Sunday you’ll recall the name of D. James Kennedy. I understand that he is to preach concerning the Sabbath tomorrow on a satellite broadcast. You may be interested in what he said five years ago in another broadcast. His topic then was “The Gift of Rest.”
There is an old saying that goes, ‘As goes the Sabbath, so goes the nation,’ because when the Sabbath becomes profaned and desecrated, church attendance is ignored, the teaching of God’s holy word and His morality and spiritual life is forgotten, and the nation sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of sin.... it [the Sabbath] was changed [from Saturday to Sunday] by Christ, and by His Apostles by their example.... Did Constantine the Great change the Sabbath? Not at all. He simply recognized the day which, for 300 years, Christians had been celebrating. So, it is the first day of the week, it is the Lord’s day, it is the Christian Sabbath, it is our day of rest, our day of joy and gladness (D. James Kennedy, “The Gift of Rest,” Sermon broadcast on November 4, 2001).
God only knows what this man would do had he behind him the power of a national Sunday law.
President Thomas Jefferson on Religious Presidential Proclamations
Thomas Jefferson wrote the draft that became the Declaration of Independence. Some may or may not remember that he served as president of the United States from 1801 - 1809. In 1808 he was urged by clergyman Samuel Miller to declare a national day of fasting and prayer. I thought you might be interested to hear his response written to Mr. Miller at that time.
Sir—I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am thankful to you for having written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to refuse what I do not think myself authorized to comply with. I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the U.S. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority. But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant too that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.
I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted. But I have ever believed that the example of state executives led to the assumption of that authority by the general government, without due examination, which would have discovered that what might be a right in a state government, was a violation of that right when assumed by another. Be this as it may, every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U S. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
I again express my satisfaction that you have been so good as to give me an opportunity of explaining myself in a private letter, in which I could give my reasons more in detail than might have been done in a public answer: and I pray you to accept the assurances of my high esteem & respect (Letter To Rev. Samuel Miller from United States president Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1808 (President of the United States 1801-1809).
After Jefferson’s time, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was added and seen to enforce adherence to the First Amendment upon all the states of our Union. So the states’s rights element in Jefferson’s argument above has been obsoleted by the amended Constitution. But it remains noteworthy that Jefferson, of Declaration of Independence fame, refused even to use his office as president, to declare a voluntary day of prayer and fasting. How right he was, in urging that “Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.”
Jefferson, as all men, doubtless was flawed. But his understanding here is sound. If these zealots want to make an observance, they say, in support of the Ten Commandments, on Sunday, they may. But when the rhetoric behind their plea urges that in standing with them, one is standing against United States Supreme Court decisions that they feel “threaten the very fabric and foundation of our culture and faith,” I grow wary. They have embarked on what is an alliance of ignorance, and their ignorance may result one day, sooner than they imagine, in an establishment of religion by the state, in contravention to the very principles they think they are upholding.
The Seventh Day Sabbath—Not Sunday, is Ten Commandments Day
The Bible says that God made the seventh day, His Sabbath day, on the seventh day after creation. For 145 years, since our founding in 1861, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has upheld the Ten Commandments. Every seventh day, on Saturday, according to the Protestant heritage of letting Scripture and not tradition and certainly not political alliances of convenience (and not on the Roman Catholic institution of Sunday observance) be our guide, we have marked the continuing authority and validity of God’s law by observing the fourth commandment of that law.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it (Exodus 20:8-11).
I see no evidence that their recent interest in “upholding” the Ten Commandments been leading this group of mostly evangelicals and Catholics, mostly Sunday-keepers, into a renewed interest in observance of God’s seventh day Sabbath. I have to ask: Is this movement of God?
Don’t misunderstand. We have no hard word against those who have participated in this movement. On the contrary, we commend every desire to do right, to see morality held high here in the United States of America and in all other places. To all who truly respect God’s law, I can only say with you, bravo and amen. But I am wary of those who today feel they must force the issues—and who seem not to understand the most fundamental freedoms we live by.
Showdown
When we read the book of Revelation, we see an end-time deception based on the use of force. Consider the care with which God leads us.
In first Kings 18 we see a showdown between true and false prophets. God calls Israel to the showdown. It is 850 false prophets to one true prophet. The challenge is, whichever God answers by fire will be acknowledged as the true God. The false prophets are permitted to make the attempt first. Nation assembled and watching, they try all day to bring fire down, failing miserably. God is intervening. He will not permit them to kindle their fake fire.
But after they have failed and their religion is shown false, God’s one lone prophet, Elijah, goes up, constructs a humble altar, offers sacrifice, and God sends fire from heaven. God met the people where they were, and gave them evidence.
In Revelation the story is different. A false religious movement backed by the state employs force. An assembly of apostate Protestants gains sufficient influence over the state to cause the enforcement of false worship.
The early church corrupted herself as she left God’s principles and incorporated heathen rites and false doctrines. She then forsook God’s Spirit and power. But church must go on. Unwilling to relinquish her power, she maneuvered to gain the support of the state. The end result was the papacy, a church that controlled the power of the state and employed it to further her own ends. If the authority of the United States is to be used to form an image of the beast, then the situation must develop so that the religious power will so control the civil government that the church will be enabled to employ the authority of the state.
In Revelation, the fire that appears to come from heaven is a false fire. It is not from God. It is a working of counterfeit miracles. Unlike the event at Mount Carmel, in the end, God permits the false prophet to prevail.
And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name (Revelation 13:11-17).
Our time together today is gone. One sermon only has so much space, and this we have exhausted. No time remains (in this message) to expound the passage just read. We will do it soon but in another message. For now, we limit ourselves to the following observations.
Seventh-day Adventists have for a century and a half taught that this second beast, ultimately, one day, would be the United States, hijacked by the degenerated forces of Protestantism. We have been led by Bible prophecy to expect that this great land will repudiate the basic principles upon which she was founded, and deny religious liberty to those who cannot conscientiously surrender their conviction about these very Ten Commandments and the seventh day Sabbath. We understand that one day, public pressure will influence the legislative branch of this country to call for the enforced observance of a national Sunday law. Then you can understand why our eyes turn sober when we see what we today see. What would it take, in today’s world, to move from a voluntary Ten Commandments Sunday, to an involuntary one?
Herein rests my concern. You see, the Roman Catholic Church, which some are so unconcerned about today, has never relinquished her claim to supremacy. When the heirs of American Protestantism seek to bring the observance of Sunday, and Protestant churches accept a sabbath of Rome’s creating, while they at the same time reject the biblical Sabbath, they admit Rome’s authority over them. They may claim that Sunday observance is linked to the early apostles and practices, but no matter the argument they make, they are ignoring the very principle that separates them from Rome. You see, the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants. But Protestants are hard to be found these days.
And Rome smiles.
May God watch over us, and may His law written in our hearts mark us as His children; followers of Jesus. GCO
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