Highlight: Christianity and The Constitution

The Constitution’s Christian Worldview

Well, some of these things that people do not know, first, for example, the Constitution itself. A lot of people don't know this about the Constitution, but the Constitution has some very interesting parts into it that harken back to a Christian worldview.

For example, the President of the United States has 10 days in which to sign a law, a bill into law. So Congress, the House and the Senate, they agree, they send it up to the President. The President can veto it or he signs it into law.

And he has 10 days to make that decision. But when you read what it says, it says Sundays accepted. That means Sundays are in fact exempted from the 10 days. So the Constitution of the United States actually sets Sundays aside as a day of rest for the President of the United States.

Hmm.

Another thing is, is that at the end of it, it says this is done in the year of our Lord, 1787. So a lot of people say, oh, God isn't mentioned in the Constitution. Technically, that's correct. But if you compare the Constitution of the United States with, say, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the French Declaration of Rights of Man, they started with a brand new calendar with a new year one.

They also took the calendar and they went from a seven-day week to a 10-day week.

No kidding.

We get, yeah, we get the decimal system from the French. The everything is everything is face 10. So instead of seven days, they went 10 days. And instead of in the year of our Lord, 1787, like in the Constitution, it's a new year one.

And so the Constitution actually acknowledges the Christian calendar by making reference to in the year of our Lord. There's also a reference in there to the Declaration of Independence in that same line, which means if you go back to the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Independence does in fact mention God on several places that we're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, that God is the judge of the world.

And so while the Constitution doesn't mention God outrightly it does in fact make reference to things that you and I as Christians would immediately see. For example, on treason, you have to have two or three witnesses in order for somebody to be convicted of treason.

In payment of debt, you had to have gold and silver. These are all biblical, come from biblical law. And the fact that the Constitution is a document of enumerated powers is, again, very specific to how the Bible works.

It's not guesswork. Whatever the statement is in the Constitution, that is what the law is. It's the same thing in the Bible. Let it be written, let it be done. In the lead up to the Declaration of Independence and the lead up to the Constitution, there were national days of prayer and thanksgiving that were signed by the president.

And some of them are very specific in terms of our national sins, repentance, belief in the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ. You'll find this in all of these original documents, which by the way, are online.

George Washington, the Bible, and Public Office

And of course, they're in this book. And another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that George Washington took his oath of office with his hand on a Bible, which is not required to do. A lot of people don't realize that there was a worship service after all this took place and the inauguration of the president, swearing him into office.

Another thing a lot of people don't realize is that on the day that they passed the First Amendment to the Constitution, now keep in mind, the First Amendment of the Constitution was not original to the Constitution.

The first 10 amendments were not original to the Constitution. The Constitution was drafted in 1787. A lot of the states said, well, we like this enumerated power things, but we want some further prohibitions and certain absolutes put in there.

And so they came up with what we know today as the first 10 amendments, which is the Bill of Rights. And so on the day that they passed the First Amendment, which secularists used to try to remove everything related to God out of everything, they thank God for giving them the opportunity to meet to pass the amendment.

So it's incongruous that here they are passing an amendment that would have excluded God and thanking God for excluding him. So what the First Amendment does, it keeps Congress from interfering in the states.

And what you find in the Christian Life and Character book is a whole section on state constitutions. And if you were to go back and look at the original colonies in the constitutions, many of them were specifically Christian.

Every constitution today, all 50 constitutions in their preamble mentioned God, the sovereignty of God and so forth. There isn't a single constitution that doesn't mention God. But the state constitutions, for example, New York's North Carolina's constitution stated that you could not hold public office in the state of North Carolina, unless you believe in the inspiration of both the Old and the New Testaments.

And the First Amendment did not prohibit that. That was not canceled as a result of the First Amendment. Now, over time, those things were taken out, but North Carolina's constitution held that in there or something close to that all the way up until the midpoint of the 19th century.

Wow, that's amazing.