UF00083775_00017.pdf

UF00083775_00017.txt

UF00083775_00017_pdf.txt

loI{/3Y .

This is a homecoming for me. I will not say whether I come home
as a traveler from his.journeys or as a prodigal son, or both but I am
in either case grateful for your invitation. and for your welcome.

When the concept or this great spiritual retreat was first incarnate
in a meeting in Haines City. I was among those blessed to be there. God
has been good to me.

John Grant asked me to tell you about Christ in my life--how He has
moved in the affairs of which I have been a part, and i tried to write such a
speechubut it would not flow.

Another thought kept getting in the way. It had its genesis 10 years ago
when the Congress voted to take prayer out of the schools. You may have
approved of that-~many Christians did--but I think it was a milestone in the
long progress by which the moral deterioration of this country is being
advanced.

Children must have a standard to live by. I must have a standard to live bv.
I must have a spiritual certainty to which I can cling. and i cry out against
the law which says the children of this land shall be raised in a moral and
spiritual vacuum.

We contemplate the challenge to our faith-we watch the decline in Sunday
School attendance-re sense that the Church to which we came for guidance
is being supplanted in its role of moral leadership by secular forces--
and we act as if we don't know why.

Our newsmedia about our problems. The catalq or our crimes is too

horrible to comtemplate. Our prisons are so full we can imprisongo more.

Io I

Our mental hospitals are Over-flowing with people who cannot face life as
they see it. Moral decadence seems to spread like gangrene over the
social and economic and political order.

Our national power ewes the rest of the world. Our individual and
collective wealth is beyond the wildest dreams of a score of a year ago.
Our scientific comptence has no apparent limits. And our spiritual life
withers away.

We .

We need an HEW! We need the United Fund! We need the pad charitable
foundatiorui But. more than all of these things we need an Amos abroad in
this land.

Amos said: "He showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall
built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said
to me. "Amos, Vittorio you see? And i said. "A plumb line." Then the
herd said. "Behold I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people p
israel: i will never again pass by them:. . "

In so many areas of our lives--in so many hours of our lives--in so many
activities of our lives. Gods plumb line is ignored. If our young people want
to live together in defiance of God's laws. that's not sin--that's their life
style. in this age of great wealth we reason that if we had more. the cause
of sin would he banished from the earth. There is no crime so revolting
that we cannot attribute it to failure of society.

Nowhere in our rationalization is there a place for the thought that our
troubles compound because we ignore the Bible, because we worship at the

feet of golden calves--yet surely each one of us must know that we shall

pay the price for our conduct as surely as ever israel did.



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Amos saw God holding a plumb line. He still holds it! And this crooked
world we are building, using as a level whatever clever social or political
device is popular at the moment. will fall unless we rebuild it according to
the plumb line all of us can see-the Bible.

Nations come and gouldeas sweep across the intellectual community and
seep down to people at all levels. and then are gone--but there are certain
things that never change:

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS!
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT!
THE LO RDS PRAYER!
It is still wrong to steal.
It is still wrong to lie.
It is still wrong to commit adultry.
It is still wrong to worship at the feet of graven ims ges.
There is a great deal in the Bible that is difficult to understand. The most

learned theologians can argue its meaning" and so can the least learned laymen--

A.-
but for every man there are enough simple truths in the Bible to provide Aplumb

lines for us all. Yet by some strange twist of thinking we have contrived that
a government which recognized first of all the divine origin of the rights of men
has made it illegal to tech their children from whence these rights spring.

We Americans pride ourselves upon being a just people. Justice is a proposi-

tion implicit in our national history and existence--it is instinct in our national

C\\ov e stV

I could conceive of

4

America without the State of Florida; I could not conceive of America without.

justice as a purpose and goal.

-4-

Not "justice" as a product of power. 1! power alone were the fountainhead
of justice the strong would always rule, and the weak be crushed: the laborer
would still be on his knees: the slave would still wear his chains.

But "justice" as Moses understood it--the product growing out of the
commitment of a people to the statutes and ordinances of God. Justice as
Amos understood it: "IA justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as
a mighty stream. "

America has taken its stand as a nation governed not by men--men who for
the moment wield power -but by laws; laws which are the embodiment of our
concept of justice. They protect the weak from the strong, not because the weak
command. but because it is right--and justuso to do: because it is God's will so
to do.

For what is justice if it is not the naked assertion of power. Either there
is some immutable. unchanging standard toward which we groper-some standard
which exists not because of us but in spite of ussome rule binding not just upon
the helpless but upon every individual, and upon the state itself--or there is no
justice.

Either there is a standard above us, after which we try to pattern our laws,
or there is only power: in the army, in a police force. in a guerilla band. in
a mob--to make whatever laws. whatever standards of justice serve the purposes
of the moment.

This is no hypothetical, or purely philosophical, proposition. in China today.
in Russia. there are laws. and they are whatever the men in power from time to
time say that they are--whstever seems to serve at the moment ir vagrant

purposes. There is no standard by which to measure those laws except convenience.

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expedience. Justice for them is not a goal--it is a tool.

That's what the Magna Carta was about. The nobles were no longer
willing to accept as law whatever one man from day to day might decree
it to be. They wanted justice, embodied in laws. Their understanding of
justice was not very enlightened. but they groped toward it.

That's what the Declaration of Independence was about:

"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 to secure these rights

governments are instituted among men. . "

Almost that could have been plucked from Deuteronomy. It springs from
Moses. and from the mind of God. Yet by some strange mental perversion

we have concluded that. although justice is our national goal. our children
may not be exposed for the greater portion of their waking heurs to the source
and the ideal of justice.

How can a child understand the idealism o! the Declaration of Independence
If he does not know the Bible? If he does not know the Biblewhat can he
conclude other than that the Declaration of Independence is a fraud.

How shall the children of this nation understand Lincoln? Was he a tool
or demagogue when he expressed the wish "that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom. ?

What shall they conclude about Washington. who in his first inaugural address
expressed the conviction that "it would be peculiarly improper to omit. in this
first official act. my fervent supplication to the Almighty being. who rules over

the universe. . who resides in the councils of nations. . "

.. a -

The keystone in the great arch of our liberties which has distinguished
this nation from all others is the concept of justice under God, because justice
without God would be like freedom without choice, or muscle without mind.

1ka 4 *4

Have you read 991 ArchiEIagg. m you found "justice without God".
There you find the story or this incredibly courageous man who 10ved his
country. who believed in its system. but who struggled in vain to find any
standard by which he could guide his life other than the ever changing priorities
of the persons in power to whom he from time to time was subject.

The rules that g0vern our lives. individually and as parts of society. are
either expressions of power, or expressions of principle. it they are
expressions of principle, as we Americans claim that they are, they must be
either the product of contemporary learning. changing with each new discovery.
or the product of eternal and unchanging truths. God told Amos that he held a
plumb line by which people could live. and Amos reported that the people must
either live by that plumb line or perish.

We Christians have a vast responsibility. Against all the secular forces
of the world--against all the claims for scientic method--against all the
attractions of great wealth- -we have to point out God's plumb line. and lead
people by our example and witness back to devotion to His statutes and
commandments as set forth in His Holy Word.

"Behold" said Moses, :1 set before you this day a blessing and a curse:

A blessing if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God. .

And a curse if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God. . "




PAGE 1

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