Faith in the Fatherhood of God and the Call of God for Fathers to Cultivate a Godly Foundation

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by Joe Renfro, EdD

There is a battle going on for the soul of our land.

Outside the Courthouse of Bradford County in north Florida they have monuments with quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams showing they were not hostile to the Christian faith as various anti-religious groups have promoted, even with these anti-religious groups even putting an atheistic monument on the courthouse lawn to stand against the affirmation of the Christian religion and the Judo-Christian morality.

Ben Franklin cited the Judo-Christian statement from Psalm 127:1 that: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the labor in vain who build it.” Franklin went on to say he saw “proofs” that “God rules in the affairs of men,” and without God’s “concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building not better than the builders of Babel.”  After the constitutional convention at Franklin’s recommendation an “officiate” (chaplain) was affirmed and made official with one for the House and the other the Senate to be paid $500 each.  This was before America got so broadminded that we are now forbidding even the Chaplains in the military from praying the name of Christ!

As children back in the forties in our classrooms we affirmed in the pledge of allegiance that we were “One nation under God with liberty and justice for all.” Fatherhood and the influence of fathers was much more influential in cultivating the basic character in the education of their children.

 We were taught to reverence God and to respect his laws and directives.  We were taught that the founding fathers of our nation had respect for the Judo-Christian values and the faith handed down to them from the Bible. It seemed important for fathers to display their faith in the fatherhood of God by their fatherhood to their children, or at least the way I saw it! This is very much in contrast to the Progressivism of our day that declares we have outgrown the need to declare the affirmation respect and awe of God.

Our founding fathers were basically men of faith. In fact, of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.  Thomas Paine is very much in question, for it hard to know what faith he had.. so he did not fit into any category.  The others in varying degrees all esteemed the Judo-Christian values.  There were 54 Episcopalian 34 Anglican, 30 Presbyterian, 27 Congregational/Baptist, 7 Quaker, 6 Dutch Reformed/German Reformed, 5 Lutheran, 3 Catholic, 3 Huguenot, 3 Unitarian, 2 Methodist, and 1 Calvinist who signed at least one of the documents establishing our nation.  There were no atheists, nor member of other faiths!

Religious freedom has played a significant role in our history, and the remainder of North America. Europeans came to America to escape religious oppression and forced beliefs by such state-affiliated Christian churches as the Roman Catholic faith at that time and the Church of England. The civil unrest fueled the desire of America’s forefathers to establish the organization of a country in which the separation of church and state and the freedom to practice one’s faith without fear of persecution, was guaranteed. It was not in any way to be seen as our nation as a call to promote Anti-Christianity. The guarantee was enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution (text) as, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Christianity in America has more than 900 denominations. The U.S. was the first western nation to be founded predominately by Protestants — not Roman Catholics under the authority of the Pope. Three Roman Catholics, however, signed our founding documents. Our history as well includes the emergence of Utopian societies, religious fanaticism, and opening the door to religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Taoism, under the context of freedom of religion. But the vast majority of Americans describe themselves at least in name to the Christian religion-near sixty-five percent, although since the promotion of the liberal Progressivism most of the mainline denomination have gotten caught up in leftist political activism and have been much more concern with civil rights, that the righteousness of God as declared in the Bible.

Over the past 100 years we have Progressive education increasing grasping the minds of our children and implanting into their lives godless thinking.  Each year our schooling is pumping out millions upon millions of children and younger adults who can’t thinking for themselves, and hate God, America, and ideas that set the roots of our nation.

Looking at the FATHERHOOD OF GOD IN RESPECT TO THE ATHEISTIC FAITH is an oxymoron, a contradiction in itself. The letter “a” or alpha in Greek plus the word,”theos” come together to make the word, “no god.” Much of the atheistic thinking is that all that is, is in the material world, and since there is no empirical, observable visage of God in all of creation, God for even does not exist.  Life on our planet is totally to product of chance from the survival of the fittest.  The atheist never considers that God might have used evolution as part of his directed creation of life. The Bible say that in the beginning, God created life, but that he created heaven earth, so how on earth, with all the unfolding that follow laws of nature that were established by the law giver, and that is God defined,  But you might say they worship “evolution,” an evolution looking to the survival of the fittest, a mindless force, instead of sovereign God.

Atheists or agnostics are critical of biblical law, and there is nothing in their worldview where they can maintain anything either right or wrong, and therefore they must have an amoral value system, one without morality. They miss the great truth contained in the Scriptures that God breathed into man the “breath of life and man become a living soul,” which was God spiritual image breathed into humanity. The word “Adam” means in Hebrew, “humankind”.  This speaks to a greater truth that just a literal understanding of this.   God did not do this to other animal life! Humanity is a special creation and called to be moral creature, 

However, in respect to evolution it is interesting that Pope John Paul II who died in 2005 saw no problem with seeing that God could have used an evolutionary process in creation, but he cautioned the faithful to “remain firm on two points –that creation itself is the work of God, and human beings have another dimension beyond the physical.” God as presented the Bible is from the Hebrew word that means “the Being of Being,” The atheists not only reject the concept of God, but our spiritual obligations to Him!

THERE IS THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD FROM THE JUDO-CHRISTIAN FAITH.  I John 3:1 says:  “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” Praise God!

In the Old Testament, the metaphor of God being a Father was very common.  Many Scriptures point to this. But in particular, God made a promise to David about his son Solomon, “He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son…”, which points to the coming Messiah, God’s unique Son, Jesus Christ. 

In the 27 New Testament books in every single book except 3rd John it either mentions God is a Father, Jesus is a Son of God, or we are sons of God. For example, in Matthew 6:9 Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who is in Heaven”. In Revelation 21:6 we have the precious promise that, “He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

In an entertaining illustration I once saw had a chimp with the Origin of the Species in one hand and the Bible in the other. The Chimp scratched his head and said, “I wonder whether I am my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”   “What distinguishes mankind from other primates.”  The huge gap between the comprehension of humanity and other primates is so immense, it is only explainable by saying God has uniquely formed us.

WE WERE CREATED IN HIS IMAGE, RATIONAL AND SPIRITUAL CREATIONS, TO BE IN COMPLETE HARMONY WITH HIM-WHAT WE MIGHT CALL SPIRITUAL GENETICS YOU COULD SAY. Yes, God spoke, and he is still speaking and with speak eternally.

THERE IS A PROBLEM AND THAT IS THE ELEMENT OF SIN—THE MARRED IMAGE. SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG.  THAT ELEMENT OF SIN HAS INFECTED THE HUMAN RACE.  SO WE ARE CALLED TO SPIRITUALLY HAVE A BLOOD TRANSFUSION-TO BE BORN AGAIN IN CHRIST.

The Bible teaches we were made to be remade new creations into God’s family.  God being our Creator does not make us his children anymore than it makes the earthworm a child of God. God wants us to know we are his children, not just animals that evolved by natural selection and survival of the fittest by random chance, but individuals particularly called to be in God’s family, ordained to fellowship with him from the foundation of the world.  When we come to know Christ, we can realize God has especially recreated us to be his children, born again into his family.

The Israelites knew God as their father in special way, for they were his covenant people.  Psalm 103:13 says, “He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic to those who reverence him.”  The old covenant was by the law, while the new covenant in Christ is by grace.  Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son, came to earth to live, teach, die, and rise again for our redemption. He did that which was beyond us, fully revealing the image of God’s perfection in life to redeem us into God’s family.  God opens to us the reality of faith. It is through revelation we can know God personally as our Heavenly Father.  When one is born-again, regenerated, he or she can affirm personally that God is their Father. God’s call is to personally know this!

The image of God in each of us has been defaced and marred by sin.  In our natural state because of sin, we are unable to know God as our Heavenly Father.  The reformed doctrine of the “total depravity” says that our state is naturally such that we are completely separated from a relationship with God because of sin.  The focus on the “reformed doctrine” means it is a doctrine evident fully from the word of God the Bible, not the tradition of the Church.  It is a fact plainly taught in the Scriptures that we each in varying degrees mess up and displease our Heavenly Father.  James 2:10 says: “For whoever keep the whole law, and yet offends in one point, he is guilty of all.”  That destroys all our personal credibility!

THE THEN IS NOW OR IS NOW AS THEN?  In John 10:22-30 the Lord Jesus referred to God as his father three times in those eight verses.  The setting of this event was on Solomon’s Porch at the Temple in Jerusalem, during the Feast of Dedication or Festival of Lights.

 Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian ruler, had conquered the Jews back 170 years before Christ.  He had attacked Jerusalem and slaughtered 80,000 Jews.  Many others were sold into slavery. He stole the temple money, and made it illegal to have a copy of the Ten Commandments or circumcise Jewish children.  He changed the temple chambers into sexual brothels.   It almost sounds like some of the movements in modern day America!  But Jesus was here at this place teaching that God was his Father and calling people to come to know him as their father as well.

OUR NATION IS AT A CROSSROADS.  Realizing the FATHERHOOD OF GOD matters, not just personally as our source of salvation, but also God’s guidance of the founding of this nation.    WE DESPERATELY NEED TO GRASP THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, our personal Lord and Savior and his teachings and guidance in all the influences at this time.  

We have turned the education of our education system in America and the Western world over to progressive propaganda, and we need to BACK TO RESPONSIBILITY OF GODLY FATHERHOOD IN THE EDUCATION OF OUR YOUTH, WHICH IS A DEFINITE NEED IN OUR LAND.