Modern Pagans vs Christians
by Joel F. Hansen (Nevada)
The Preamble to the IAP of Nevada Constitution and Bylaws states that Article VII of the U.S. Constitution recognizes Jesus Christ as our Lord and this has been the focus of some discussion as to whether or not that is a misleading statement.
This debate caused me to embark on some research on the subject of calendar systems around the world and through the centuries. I was surprised to find out that, if I had been born in China, instead of being born in the year of our Lord 1944, I would have been born in the year of the Monkey, since the Chinese calendar is based upon a revolving cycle of 12 years in which the various years are named after pigs, tigers, rats, monkeys, and various other animals, and that I had the luck to be born a monkey. How inspiring.
A review of other calendars around the world shows that most, if not all of them, are religiously based. For instance, the Islamic calendar is reckoned from AD 622, the day after the Hegira or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. So, I could have been born in the year of Mohammed 1364. The Aztec calendar, in use when the European Christians landed in Mexico, is a solar calendar derived from the Mayan system of 400 BC. In the center is the head of the sun god; around it, in concentric circles, is the history of the world according to Aztec mythology. So I could have been born in the year of the sun god 2344, instead of being a monkey. That gave me a lot of comfort.
There is the Jewish calendar, which is based on the starting point of Jewish chronology, variously given as 4004 BC and 3761 BC, the date of the creation of the world as described in the Old Testament. The years in that calendar are designed A.M. which stands for anno mundi (the year of the world) and BCE (before the common era, as a replacement for BC). So I could have traced my birth back to the time of the creation of the earth, as set forth in the Bible, which was getting a little closer to what I wanted for the year of my birth.
By contrast, the Gregorian calendar, which is the one the Founders were using, was adopted all over "Christendom" (a term now lost in our politically correct newspeak) as a result of a decree by Pope Gregory XIII. It was first adopted on the continent (of Europe) and later, in 1752, was made the official calendar of England, and it remains to this day the official calendar of the United States. The Gregorian calendar is a Christian calendar, because it uses the birth of Jesus Christ as the starting date. Dates of the Christian era are designated AD (Latin anno domini, "in the year of our Lord") and BC (before Christ), thus making the birth of our Lord as the center point of all human history. The official Christian church calendar is a table containing holy days, saints' days, and festivals of the Church, with the dates of the civil calendar on which they occur. These include the fixed feasts, such as Christmas, and the movable feasts, which depend on the date of Easter. It was this calendar, the Christian calendar, to which the Founders referred when giving the date of their inspired creation, the U.S. Constitution.
Some reply, that is all fine and good, but the Founders were egocentric white males who cared nothing for these other calendars, were totally immersed in their own little American world, and would just have used "in the year of our Lord" as a matter of common practice, without thinking more about it, and certainly they weren't trying to make any statement. But what the above discussion shows is that a civilization's calendar is reflective of its values, its history, its beliefs, and its religion. Western Europe calculates its time from the birth of Christ because it was a Christian civilization. The Founders knew all of this. They were profound students of history. Their writings show an acquaintance with the philosophies of government throughout history and around the world. They knew they were Christians, and they knew that the nation they were building was founded upon Christian, Biblical principles. A close examination of the historical record will reveal that they put the words "in the Year of our Lord" into the U.S. Constitution knowingly.
The relevant paragraph in Article VII states: Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth. IN WITNESS whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names...
These men were subscribing their names to a document which was later described by Gladstone as "the greatest document ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." They knew it was profoundly important. They knew it would govern a vast land of millions of people, and hoped it would do so for a long time. They had debated, sweat blood over, edited, re-edited, compromised, and recompromised, hammered and pounded every word, sentence, paragraph, section, and article with every ounce of intelligence and inspiration that the entire body collectively possessed. These were the most dedicated patriots, the wisest leaders, the greatest minds, and the most fervent patriots America had produced, men raised up by the hand of God to accomplish this marvelous miracle. And now they had finished their work, and were proudly subscribing their names. They not only told the date from the birth of Christ, they told the date from the birth of their nation. They didn't just put down the numbers "1787" or even "1787 AD". No, they spelled it out in meticulous detail, and made sure they said that this document, one of the most important and profound in all of human history, was properly related to the God that they worshiped by declaring that it was done "in the Year of our Lord". Did they do this merely by accident? It hardly seems possible.
For comparison, it is instructive to look at another revolution which was occurring about this same time in Europe, the infamous French revolution. While the rallying cry of the Americans had been "No King but King Jesus", the rallying cry of the French Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", did not mention the name of Deity. And it is little wonder. The French revolution was an anti-Christian revolution. Its leaders were either Deists (God wound up the universe like a great clock and then forgot about US) or they were avowed atheists. Their founding document, their equivalent of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution rolled into one, was written by Maximilien Robespierre, a fanatical devotee of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a man whose ideas formed the basis for the philosophies of modern socialist tyrants and philosophers such as Adolph Hitler and Karl Marx. When Robespierre took control of the French government, he proclaimed as the official religion "The Cult of the Supreme Being" which was based on Rousseau's theory of Deism. In Paris, all churches were closed and the radicals began actively to sponsor the revolutionary religion known as the "Cult of Reason."
Is it any wonder, then, that the date of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Declaration Droits de L’Homme) has, appearing prominently printed in its title, the date, listed as simply "1792." There is no AD, there is no "in the year of our Lord," and no reference to Jesus Christ can be found anywhere in the document. This is not surprising in the least, when we realize that in October of 1793 the Jacobin government abolished the traditional Christian calendar and replaced it with the "Republican" calendar (seems fitting, doesn't it?), which substituted for the traditional dating system such dates as the "Ninth Thermidor". It was this Deistic, atheistic, anti-
Christian, even paganistic government which instituted the infamous "Reign of Terror" in which thousands of innocent people were guillotined. In Paris alone, 2639 people were beheaded. This revolutionary government ended with the guillotining of Robespierre himself. The chaos which resulted ended in the ascendance of Napolean Bonaparte as the dictator of France.
Why did our Founding Fathers not sponsor a reign of terror? Why, in their Declaration of Independence, did they say that men were "endowed by their Creator" with certain unalienable rights emblazoned in the glorious Bill of Rights? Arid why did they enshrine the right to worship God freely as the first of these unalienable rights emblazoned in the glorious Bill of Rights? And why did they, unlike Robespierre, state in no uncertain terms that their greatest work, the Constitution of the United States of America, was created "in the Year of our Lord" one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven ... ?
The answer of course is that the American revolution was a Christian revolution, whose soldiers' battle cry was "No King but King Jesus!" Although the secular historians have tried to delete this fact from our history, it is there for anyone to see who will study the historical record. George Washington issued the following order during the War for Independence: "The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man, will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country." John Adams declared, "The Christian religion is, above all the Religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of Wisdom, Virtue, Equity, and Humanity." In 1785, James Madison, later to become the Father of the Constitution, rose to speak against a bill in the Virginia legislature, declaring that he was opposed to it because "the policy of the bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity." And Benjamin Franklin (sometimes accused of being a Deist) proclaimed: "Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world."
And where are we now? Our children now take "Spring Break" instead of Easter Vacation, and they are off for a two week "Winter Break" instead of Christmas vacation. The secularization and paganization of our calendar goes hand in hand with the secularization of every element of our society, from the removal of the Ten Commandments from our classrooms to the outlawing of Nativity scenes from public parks, to the decrees that prayers and Bibles are to be removed from our classrooms and replaced with sex education and condoms.
The calendar is not exempt. Recently a judge in Florida ordered that the letters AD were not to be written on any date of any document filed in his court, because some people appearing before him might not believe that this is the "year of the Lord." Notice how he put that: The year of the Lord, not the year of our Lord. That is no more a mistake than is the fact that the founders stated it properly as the Year of our Lord.
Yes, Article VII of the U.S. Constitution does acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Lord of this Land, and it acknowledges Him as "OUR Lord". Well, who is the "our" referred to? It can be none other than those referred to in the preamble, which states: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." In other words, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the people of the United States, by the very words of the Constitution itself.
If we Independent Americans don't fight to maintain Jesus Christ as "Our Lord", as the Lord of this Land, who will? If we don't acknowledge that the Founders put His name in the Constitution on purpose? who will? And if we cave in to the onslaught of the pagans and secularists against all of our Christian institutions, including our calendar, who won't?
The language in our Preamble is precisely on point. "The Founders of Our Nation stated that the United States Constitution was 'Done In Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven. . .' thus acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Lord of "We the People of the United States" and as the God of this land.
I hope and fervently pray that we can maintain the memory of freedom in the hearts of the people of this country, that they may know that "where the Spirit of Christ is, there is liberty", and that we, the Independent Americans, may ever hold aloft the torch of liberty, which is enlightened from above by the light of Christ. May God bless our land forever, and may His Son ever be Our God and Our Redeemer.
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http://www.usiap.org/Viewpoints/Culture/CultureWar/ModernPagansVsChristians.html