Thanksgiving through the Years

 

"George Washington was first in war, first in peace, and in November 1789, the first president to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving, openly acknowledging God as the source of all 'the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.'

Among the 'favors' were a Declaration of Independence that inspires us to the present day, a remarkable military victory over the most powerful nation in the world, and an ingenious Constitution of checks and balances that places 'we the people' at the center of our government.

For the next fourscore and seven years, most states honored a November date as a day of prayer and fasting, but there was no national celebration. Of the early presidents, only James Madison, in 1814 and 1815, issued proclamations."

Read Lee Edwards' entire article here at The Daily Signal.

Picture used courtesy of Pixabay

Here’s Why We Should Still Celebrate the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving

"For most American families, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with loved ones, eat delicious food, and perhaps watch some football.

But not everyone is pleased with the celebration of this holiday, and some have taken to maligning its 'originators,' the Pilgrims.

An editorial in Al Jazeera labeled Thanksgiving a 'thoroughly nauseating affair,' one that is 'saturated with disgrace.' Other articles have called the Pilgrims genocidal toward Native Americans, or argued that the original idea of a Thanksgiving feast is a 'myth.' ”

Read the entire article by Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal here.

Picture used by permission from Pixabay.

Sign up for Rhett’s e-newsletter, Faith, Family, and Freedom here

Remembering Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one holiday that avoids commercialism, brings people together, offers fantastic food, and calls us to forsake our selfishness and instead practice gratitude.  Don’t lose the spirit of gratitude.  Claim it, prepare for it, and practice the art of that holiday.

As we plan for Thanksgiving, here are a few ways to intentionally lead your family to be thankful.

1. Create a Thanksgiving tree.

Create a simple, construction paper tree with a brown trunk and several colored leaves. The goal is for every person present at our house on Thanksgiving to have five leaves.

Following the Thanksgiving meal, pass out the leaves and pens. Each person writes one thing for which they are thankful on each leaf. After a few moments, go around the table and read our leaves. They don’t have to all be spiritual or serious things. A typical year may include gratitude for health, friends, or jobs - as well as action figures and tickets to Dollywood.

Tape the tree and leaves onto a prominent wall in your house, leaving it up for several months.  It serves as a regular reminder of God’s blessings.

Remember some spiritual heroes.

Take time to teach your children about spiritual heroes - and also to take time to remember some of our own heroes in our lives. Don't just let these days float by as missed opportunities while the culture is already trying to make money off of Christmas.  Redeem this time and use it as a stepping stone into the holiday season. Spend time learning some new spiritual heroes - and being thankful for some familiar ones.

Talk around the supper table about a godly person from history.  Or, share some stories from your own pilgrimage about heroes in your life.  The website Christian History Institute is a great resource.  For several years I have used Barbara Rainey’s book Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember to teach our children about the spiritual heritage we have as Americans from the Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving.

Engage in meaningful conversation.

One educator said we live in a day of hurried loneliness.  We have hundreds of Facebook friends but not two with whom we think and share deeply.  Families rush from one activity to another.  People go to Grandma’s house, eat lunch, and then bury their heads in their phones. To some people, the idea of a family sitting down together and leisurely sharing a meal is an idea from a Norman Rockwell painting.

Dads and Moms, we must plan to make meaningful conversation happen.  The word intentionality is a great one to challenge us parents.  Without intentionality, family devotions, meaningful conversation, and disciplines of thanksgiving won’t happen.  We will just stay busy. 

This Thanksgiving, stop for a few moments and make a plan.  Ask, “How will I intentionally help my family practice gratitude the next two weeks and have some meaningful conversations?

That will produce beauty greater than the autumn leaves.

Sign up for Rhett’s e-newsletter, Faith, Family, and Freedom here

“Not to Act is to Act” - Bonhoeffer

In 1947, Carl Henry, a key theological shaper of 20^th century evangelicalism, warned post-World War II believers that “historic Christianity risked losing cultural influence because of the church’s hesitancy to apply the gospel to ‘pressing world problems.’” Evangelicals were withdrawing from the public square, retreating into their churches instead of engaging culture. David Closson writes, “Henry encouraged Christians to engage the public square by applying the fundamentals of their faith to the full range of issues to which the gospel speaks – including government and politics.”

Even into the 1950s, the Supreme Court made decisions with the argument that America was a “Christian nation.” For more than sixty years, however, two movements aggressively pushed biblical principles and intelligent biblical reasoning to the periphery of the public square. These movements are secularism, which means living life without acknowledging God, and the sexual revolution. Both fronts shared an opposite view of reality than biblical Christianity. And both movements worked to minimize the church’s influence in just about every area of public life: education, entertainment, the media, business and government.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen politics move largely from the arena of policy issues to that of moral and spiritual matters. In most of the twentieth century, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party shared a basic, common worldview. To compare party platforms for many decades, you would find a common basic understanding about fundamental matters. However, in the twenty-first century, a massive shift occurred in worldview between parties, as the Democratic Partly largely embraced both secularism and the sexual revolution.

Albert Mohler says, “Secularization, just sociologically defined, is the decline of the influence of religion, but in the case of the United States, of historic Christian theism in the culture. And so that means that the message preached by evangelical Christians and other Orthodox communities of faith is more out of step with the direction of the culture than would have been the case in the 1950s. In the 1950s, the leadership of the [church] and the leadership of the United States and Congress or corporate America or all of us would have been seen as part of the same world. That’s not so much the case now.”

Today, instead of the church having a robust biblical and practical theology about influencing the culture, Christians often adopt the lie thought in public, “It’s not polite to talk about religion and politics.”

Adolf Hitler used a similar strategy. In the 1930s, he knew in order to advance his agenda, he must control the German church. By fear and intimidation, the Nazis scared the clergy into not speaking out about Hitler’s regime. At first people didn’t want to believe the “conspiracy theories.” Finally, by the time good people realized what was actually happening, most were too afraid to rock the boat. A few pastors and Christians, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, realized that to be faithful to God meant to speak out against the Nazi party and Hitler.

Angel Studios will release in theaters on Thanksgiving Day a movie called Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. I encourage you to view it as well as read Eric Metaxas’ companion books, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Letter to the American Church. Metaxas believes Bonhoeffer should serve as a model for Christians living in Western culture. He says, “Silence is not an option. God calls us to defend the unborn, to confront the lies of cultural Marxism, and to battle the globalist tyranny that crushes human freedom. Confident that this is His fight, the Church must overcome fear and enter the fray, armed with the spiritual weapons of prayer, self-sacrifice, and love.”

Today we’re told it’s good for a Drag Queen to hold a children’s story hour, a biological man wearing panty hose and taking hormones really is a woman, we’re wrong to insist on border laws, babies can be aborted into the ninth month, parents should have no authority if their children want to “transition” to another gender, and patriotism is a bad thing.

Politics has moved full-force into the realm of moral and spiritual issues. When politics simply deals with policy prescriptions not requiring a biblical moral judgment, the church as an organization is wise to not make official statements. However, when politics seeks to prescribe, influence, and control areas that clearly move into biblical moral and spiritual judgments, the church – and Christians and pastors – are not being faithful to our calling if we do not speak with clarity into the public square.

The German church in the 1930s kept silent in the face of blatant evil. Bonhoeffer and a remnant of Christians, however, realized that obedience meant standing up to cultural Marxism and opposing the Nazis.

In the 1800s, many churches in England and the USA were reluctant to speak out publicly against slavery. They didn’t want to get involved in politics! Some brave abolitionists arose, like William Wilberforce, who spent decades in the British Parliament working to overturn the slave industry. In the 1960s in the American South, many Christians and churches refused to get their hands dirty and rock the boat by speaking out about Jim Crow laws. A few faithful ones like Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr., paved the way for the Civil Rights movement.

May we learn the lesson from courageous believers like Bonhoeffer, who said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."

Click here to find out more about the Bonhoeffer movie.

Sign up for Rhett’s e-newsletter, Faith, Family, and Freedom here

Images used from Angel Studios

 

Why Donald Trump and the Red Wave Blanketed the USA

Sometimes I realize the event I’m standing in looms much larger than just my corner of the world. Such was my feeling this morning after witnessing Donald Trump decisively win the Presidency of the United States.

Millions of Americans realized the dismal spiral our country was on the past four years. What we experienced into the early hours of Wednesday morning was a loud repudiation of the Leftist elites and their terrible and harmful ideas the past 4+ years.

Sixteen years ago on Election Night, President-elect Barak Obama promised that America was about to be fundamentally transformed. For much of the past two decades, hard-working Americans grew tired and irritated at this “change.”

Obama, perhaps now the Godfather of the new radicals, was mentored by Communists in the Saul Alinsky playbook. While his charm was smooth as silk, he initiated a Leftist charge. Since then, steel workers, grocery clerks, accountants, school teachers, homeschool moms, entrepreneurs and business owners from metropolitan cities to small town America have been sold a bill of goods that didn’t deliver.

And with event after society-shaking event, the common sense blue and white collar folks began to realize that in some fashion there was a little man – or several of them – standing behind a curtain. And though the Great and Powerful Oz screamed louder and louder, “Pay no attention to that man,” our concentration slowly shifted from the narrative told to us – to what was actually happening.

We’re Tired

And we’re tired of it. Weary of the illusion and over the narrative. And with the election of 2008 and subsequent years, the silent majority arose and began to speak out.

Tired of being told the United States is a fundamentally evil country. Tired of the 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, and Black Lives Matter narrative that everything hinges on racism and slavery. Tired of hearing the lie that America is fundamentally racist and systemically corrupt. We’ve realized those movements are rooted in Communist-thinking and Christianity-opposing ideologues who want to undo both America and people of faith.

(Click here to see A Biblical Response to Critical Race Theory with Meeke Addison.)

Tired of identity politics. Obama pushed this agenda like no other President until Biden. We’re over the idea that we should vote for someone just because of their skin color, gender, religion, or other identity. Identity politics gave way to the DEI tsunami, which in many ways has backfired. Kamala Harris’ campaign is a strong example of DEI gone wrong.

Tired of Leftism taking over liberalism – and the Democratic Party allowing it.

Tired of the legacy media. What’s happened in recent years has exposed the man behind the curtain. Last night’s election results proved that their ability to set the narrative has been exposed and destroyed.

Tired of the insane and immoral agenda. Leftism is not good nor godly. It is unwholesome. It hates freedom, religion, and will destroy everything that is good. It destroys. We’re appalled when some states want to allow abortion up to the ninth month – and allow a doctor to kill a baby if it is aborted live.

Tired of the government wanting more influence than the family. Incensed at the idea that if a dad and mom don’t want their nine-year-old to “transition” to the opposite sex (remember, there are only two) that the government could take the child from the parents.

Tired of the now idiocy of the Left and the Democratic Party. The same people who say, “Trust the science,” refuse to acknowledge the science in how to define gender. They have succumbed to feelings over facts. Recent years proved the Democratic Leftists no longer have a mooring on reality.

Tired of this out-of-control "woke" culture that emasculates men.

Tired of the trans-craze and men in women’s sports. We’re over being polite about allowing a girl to be pummeled in a sport by a biological male, resulting in brain injury.

Tired of redefining everything. That is nothing more than deconstructionism – one of the main weapons of the Communist Left.

Tired of the attack on free speech. 

Tired of apologizing for America, patriotism, and American exceptionalism. We believe in our flawed but great country, we place our faith in God, we stand for the flag and national anthem, we respect our elders.

Tired of being told that wanting our faith, values, and religion to influence the public square, government, and laws makes us radical “Christian nationalists.” In spite of modern attempts to rewrite our history, we know America was largely founded by Christians who expected the Bible's teachings to influence our nation. And until the 1950s it was accepted in society that America was a "Christian nation." We know that if America is not good, America ceases to be great. So we must vote our values.

Tired of the Left using fear to intimidate people who don't go along with their agenda.

Tired of excusing and supporting criminal activity, like the looting and rioting of cities in 2020 and the tearing down of statues in Orwellian nature. We’re not fooled by bad border policies, allowing criminals, drug cartels, and enemies of America to slip in and sow seeds of destruction. We’re all for legal immigrants – let’s close the wall and enforce legal immigration.

Tired of irrational fiscal policies that hurt American people. Ready to be energy-independent, realizing that energy costs drive up the cost of everything else.

Tired of being told this is about party or partisanship. Trump and Republicans swept the White House and Congress aided by the strong support of Hispanic, Jewish, black and female voters – as well as former Democrats and some secularists. This is about, as the RNC’s 2024 platform states, a return to common sense.

Tired of a weakened military and world presence.

Tired of the corruption in our government agencies like the CIA, FBI, and Department of Justice. We’ve watched a weaponized government go after Donald Trump and people who support him – while ignoring blatant criminal activity from Leftist figureheads like the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens.

And tired of the insane accusations. Just days ago, Tim Walz warned people that if Trump was elected, he would set up concentration camps and do away with further elections. The Left thrives on deception. And their weapon of warfare is to libel their opponents. And we’re tired of it. We've been told that Trump is a Nazi, facist, dictator who will create a blood bath. We're tired of the lies, and we reject them.

America Has Rejected Them

The pundits from CBS, ABC, and like-minded legacy media outlets who push identity politics are already claiming the reason Harris lost is because of race and gender. Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric. We voted on principle, policy, and party platforms. The majority rejected the dangerous policies and platform of the DNC. As Matt Walsh posted, “Last night was a total repudiation of leftism. A crushing defeat for the forces of moral insanity. America has rejected them utterly.”

In an election night that felt somewhat similar to 2016, we saw that the people have spoken. Americans voted their values.

The election broke Godfather Obama from having a fourth term.  The Daily Wire shared on Election Night that Trump was the coroner after Obama wrecked the country. And the man from Chicago – or wherever he came from – will no longer control the future of his party.

In my Bible reading this morning I meditated on the account of Israel’s crisis when the Assyrian king Sennacherib surrounded them (found in the books of 2 Kings and Isaiah). Faced with the threat of extinction, King Hezekiah, Isaiah the prophet, and the Jews had to ignore the threats and “fake news,” embrace truth, cry out to the Lord, trust His Word, stand firm, and watch Him work. The Bible says, “That night the angel of the LORD went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land” (2 Kings 19:35-36).

Occasionally, God responds to millions of prayers at a critical time, steps in, and stops a people from the brink of destruction.

Leftists, Obama, and other radicals – you can keep your change.

Sign up for Rhett’s e-newsletter, Faith, Family, and Freedom here

Read The Left - The Greatest Threat to Freedom and America.

Images used courtesy of Pexels and Pixabay

 

Why an Evangelical Pastor Will Vote for Donald Trump in 2024

 

America's future is certainly in the balance.

In 2016, an article I wrote, Why a Southern Baptist Pastor Will Vote for the Unvirtuous Donald Trump, received over 20,000 hits in one month. Various people contacted me and said, "I was on the fence, wondering if I as a serious Christian could actually vote for Donald Trump - even though I knew I couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton."

Eight years later, here we are again at a crossroads. An all-out smear campa
ign was leveled against President Trump from the day he entered office in 2017. We've seen false accusation after false accusation, including massive collusion between the Deep State, the Democratic elites, and  government agencies.

In 2020, we were slammed with event after event with massive implications. It didn't take long, however, for many people to realize we were being played. There were too many stories given to us by the legacy media, echoed by the elites - whether that be in D.C. or Hollywood - and wondering if we were moving into full-forced Orwellian days. Somewhere, there was a loud voice like Oz the Great and Powerful saying, "Don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain."

I wrote the article, 7 Lies Americans are Believing, in 2020. Within 30 days, it had been viewed more than 40,000 times. African American Thomas Sowell, American economist and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institute, said, "Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.” 

Deception has become billion-dollar business. We live in days of corruption, where many of the basic institutions and organizations we should be able to trust have betrayed us. 

Leftism - America's Greatest Threat

The last four years, we've lived through several significant events – civilization changing events – that leave millions of Americans with more questions than answers. We don’t trust the full narrative from parts of the legacy media. And we’ve realized much of traditional legacy media props up the agenda and narrative of the Left.

And, in case you're in the dark, just to be clear, the Left thrives off of deception. It has historically, with past miserable movements like Stalin's Russia, Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Nazi Germany, - or the present trajectory of the Leftists who have taken over America's Democratic Party.

American politics the past 100+ years primarily had conservatives and liberals. Both groups loved America, generally showed respect to other people, championed free speech, loved religion, and believed in God and country. Today, we have a whole new breed, however, of Leftists who are aggressively trying to takeover the nation.

Dennis Prager writes, Prager writes, “In a nutshell, liberals build; conservatives build; leftists destroy.”

Today the Left is the single biggest threat to America, religion, and freedom.

And that is why I will gladly vote - for a third time - for Donald Trump to be my next President.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich does an excellent job explaining how Karl Marx’s destructive philosophies have slowly but steadily become a serious threat to the United States. See his article Three Generations of Brainwashing are Paying Off for the Left.

The hard Left that embrace Marx’s ideology gradually took over much of the academic world, and students who had been taught systematic falsehoods then took those falsehoods into their jobs. Reagan again said, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.”

David Lane writes, “There are very real consequences to having allowed secularists - those in rebellion against God - to imbue the minds of America’s youth with their profane propaganda for the last 75 years.”

Some voices claim we should feel guilty for supporting Donald Trump. Democratic leaders have called people like me "deplorable" and "garbage." They call Trump "Hitler." It's interesting how the man who has done the most in recent years to return America to oppose a totalitarian state is the one they label a dictator. He has terrified the Deep State for eight years.

Though one candidate and one party cannot fix all of our problems nor usher in any kind of utopia, they can move the needle towards good or toward evil. 

Yet it's estimated that 51 million evangelicals may sit out this election because they feel they can't vote for either candidate. My friend and former colleague Lee Weeks writes, "“Not voting in order to ‘keep our hands clean’ is a form of pietism, not Christianity. [The Book of] James is clear that if there is good that we can do, we should. To not do the good we can, is sin.”

Here are seven specific reasons I will gladly vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election:

1. It's the Economy

The Biden-Harris years devastated the American economy. Prices have skyrocketed and middle class families are struggling. Under President Trump, American experienced the greatest economy in decades. Donald Trump is primarily a businessman, not a career politician. He understands how to build things and what is needed to make prosperity happen.

This includes unleashing American energy again. Under Trump, American became the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. One of President Biden's first acts was to stop the Keystone Pipeline from completion. On November 5, 2020, mortgage rates were 2.75% and gas was $1.80.

No, the economy is not everything. But as I wrote in another article, when your house is on fire, you have to do something about it or lose the house.

2. The RNC Platform

A person who votes for a candidate simply because of liking or not liking that particular candidate is actually voting immaturely. I'm not voting for someone to be my grandfather, Sunday School teacher, civic club president, pastor of a church, nor president of a Bible college. I'm voting for someone to lead this country. We must practice discernment.

Each party releases a platform - about a thirty page document outlining their agenda. 70-80% of a time, candidates stick to their party's platform once elected. The 2024 RNC Platform is a welcome change, with such promises as the following (the actual platform includes twenty commitments):

Seal the border

End inflation

Make America the dominant energy producer in the world

End the weaponization of government

Make our military the world's strongest

Large tax cuts for workers

Cancel the electric vehicle mandate

Cut funding for schools pushing radical gender ideology

Keep men out of women's sports

3. The Border and the Migrant Invasion

I can explain to a nine-year old why, if he builds a fort in his backyard and plays "war" with his friends, he must secure and defend his fort. The Bible is clear that borders are good and worth protecting.

The insanity of allowing the massive amount of illegals to enter our country in the past four years is mind-blowing. With open borders comes an easy influx of illegal substances, like fentanyl from drug cartels and other countries, criminal gangs, and people who hate America who are specifically sent here to cause destruction.

America has always welcomed immigrants who come legally. We should return to that stance.

4. Renewing the Pillars of American Exceptionalism

Donald Trump and the RNC understand the things that made America the greatest nation in the world. This includes the following areas:

Rebuild cities and restore law and order

Replenish police departments and restore common sense policing

Care for veterans

Combat antisemitism

Honor American history and patriotism

Restore American beauty and our national treasures

5. Government of, by and for the People

Leftism always works to create a "Big Brother" government, where the government tells everyone else what to do. In recent years, we've witnessed an incredible overreach of governmental power, including using the government's agencies to punish those with whom those in power disagree. 

The RNC understands that parents and the family are the primary caretakers, influencers, and decision-makers for their children. Unlike some Democrat-run agendas, like California and Walz's Minnesota, children who want to transition to another gender can be taken away from their parents if the parents challenge the transition.

Here are just a few of the commitments from the RNC for stopping the Left's radical plan to weaponize government:

Stop the out of control "wokeness" in government and its weaponization

Dismantle censorship and protect free speech

Defend religious liberty

Oppose late term abortions

End left-wing gender insanity

Ensure election integrity

Support schools that focus on excellence and parental rights (not woke ideology)

Promote universal school choice

Teach fundamentals, not Leftwing propaganda in schools

Oppose dangerous, anti-Christian and anti-American ideologies like Critical Race Theory.

In 2020, Albert Mohler wrote, "In the protection of liberty, religious liberty is fundamental. President Trump has corrected many of the infringements on religious liberty caused by the policy mandates of previous administrations. He has made religious liberty an American priority at home and abroad. Under his administration, the Department of Justice and the Attorney General have defended religious liberty. President Trump even extended conscience protection to those whose worldviews are not explicitly religious."

6. Standing for Moral and Spiritual Values

In recent years, politics has moved from the arena of policies to the arena of moral and spiritual values. For decades, both the Democratic and Republican parties shared the same basic worldview. Today, those worldviews are radically different.

As Pastor Rusty Guenther writes, three influences pressing in to our society - including influencing the church and family - that matte are as follows. These are not "political" issues - they are moral and spiritual:

Secular humanism

Marxism in the state

The LGBTQ woke agenda

The Democratic Party has caved to each of these outside agendas. If the Leftists have their way, there will be a continued radical transformation of America until America is no longer recognizable.

7. A Return to Common Sense

The Left ignores common sense. The same people who claim "follow the science" completely ignore the science when it comes to defining gender. Biden's Supreme Court nominee could not even answer what a woman is. Whether it comes to the borders of our nation, how to handle illegal immigration, tax cuts, building a strong economy to elevate people out of poverty, or protecting and restoring the rights of parents, keeping men out of women's sports, America desperately needs a return to common sense.

I care too much about biblical values, our American heritage, the future of our country, and the legacy I will leave to my children, grandchildren, and future generations, to not vote in this election for President Donald Trump.

See my article, Biblical Values, Politics, and Voting

And see Voting for a Platform, Not a Person

See Christian Nationalism, Evangelicals, and the Left

Sign up for Rhett’s e-newsletter, Faith, Family, and Freedom here

Images used courtesy of Pixabay and Pexels

Painting courtesy of Matthew McGahee