(1889), Fustel de Coulanges spells out in detail the darkness of this Christless world:As Americans we think of America as a "Land of Liberty" -- "Liberty under God."
Where did this idea of "liberty" come from?
Adherents of the religion of Secular Humanism want us to believe that everything good about America came from the minds of the Caesars and their court philosophers. But Greece and Rome gave us little -- except bad examples. These ancient empires were dominated by irrationalism and occultism. Karl Popper devoted the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies to an analysis of Plato as a mystic and a totalitarian. As many as a third of the residents of Athens were slaves. Most of the rest, while legally "free," knew nothing of liberty as we know it. War was a way of life.
Liberty is a product of Christmas and the birth of the Messiah.
The Biblical definition of "salvation" has "liberty" as its foundation.One of the blessings promised to the faithful in the Bible is "liberty."
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"Liberty" means "freedom." But "freedom from what?" In the pages of the Bible, the answer is almost always: "freedom from archists."
One of the blessings promised in Leviticus 26 is "peace," or freedom from those who bear the sword. Those who bear the sword are archists. They are also called in the Bible "enemies."
Of course, "freedom from" is always for the purpose of "freedom to" -- freedom to serve and obey the Lord.
The name "Jesus" comes from the Hebrew word Yhowshuwa', which is derived from yasha', which is the Hebrew word most frequently translated "salvation." "Jesus" means God will save. It was said of Jesus at His birth:
- Luke 1:71
- That we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all that hate us;- 74 That He would grant unto us, that we
being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve Him
[exercise dominion and build His Kingdom]
without fear
[living under our "vine and fig tree" "with no one to make them afraid" (Micah 4:1-7)]
This is what "salvation" means in the Bible.
The specific enemies Christians had in the first century were of the Jewish establishment, but I believe Jesus the Messiah will save us from our enemies today -- whoever they may be, whenever we live -- if we obey His Law (Matthew 5:17-20).
Liberty is also the product of civilization, which itself is the product of Christianity. Civilization is the reign of the Messiah. Civilization is "salvation." The heathen -- uncivilized people -- do not know liberty.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his Democracy in America, observed in Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining The Democratic Republic—Part II:
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
I have known of societies formed by the Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western States to found schools and churches there, lest religion should be suffered to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising States be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from which they emanated. I met with wealthy New Englanders who abandoned the country in which they were born in order to lay the foundations of Christianity and of freedom on the banks of the Missouri, or in the prairies of Illinois. Thus religious zeal is perpetually stimulated in the United States by the duties of patriotism. These men do not act from an exclusive [sectarian] consideration of the promises of a future life; eternity is only one motive of their devotion to the cause; and if you converse with these missionaries of Christian civilization, you will be surprised to find how much value they set upon the goods of this world, and that you meet with a politician where you expected to find a priest. They will tell you that "all the American republics are collectively involved with each other; if the republics of the West were to fall into anarchy, or to be mastered by a despot, the republican institutions which now flourish upon the shores of the Atlantic Ocean would be in great peril. It is, therefore, our interest that the new States should be religious, in order to maintain our liberties."
When Jesus came as the Messiah, He brought liberty, because He brought civilization. Before the Messiah, before Christian civilization, there was less liberty.
John Lofton has compiled some telling quotations from scholars in a previous -- more Christian -- century. What follows is from his essay:
And make no mistake about it. Regardless of what you've heard regarding the alleged greatness of the ancient, Greco-Roman, pre-Christian world, there was no real, true freedom
and/or liberty during this era. None. In his book The
Ancient City: A Study On The Religion, Laws And Institutions Of Greece And Rome
The citizen was subordinate in everything, and without any reserve, to the city; he belonged to it body and soul. The [pagan] religion which produced the State, and the State which supported [this] religion, sustained each other; these two powers formed a power almost superhuman, to which the body and soul were equally enslaved. There was nothing independent in man; his body belonged to the State and was devoted to its defense.
For example, Aristotle and Plato incorporated into their ideal codes the command that a deformed baby son was to be put to death. And in his “Laws,”¯ Plato says (and this sounds very familiar today): “Parents ought not to be free to send or not to send their children to the masters to whom the city has chosen [for their education]; for the children belong less to their parents than to the city.”¯ And in ancient Athens, a man could be put on trial and convicted for something called “incivism,”¯ that is being insufficiently affectionate toward the State! Coulanges says (emphasis mine):
The ancients, therefore, knew neither liberty in private life, liberty in education, nor religious liberty. The human person counted for very little against that holy and almost divine authority called the country or the State. It is a singular error, among all human errors, to believe that in the ancient cities men enjoyed liberty. They had not even the idea of it.
Commenting on our Lord’s God/Caesar distinction, Coulanges says:
It is the first time that God and the state are so clearly distinguished. For Caesar at that period was still the pontifex maximus, the chief and the principal organ of the Roman religion; he was the guardian and the interpreter of beliefs. He held the worship and the dogmas in his hands. Even his person was sacred and divine, for it was a peculiarity of the policy of the emperors that, wishing to recover the attributes of ancient royalty, they were careful not to forget the divine character which antiquity had attached to the king-pontiffs and to the priest-founders. But now Christ breaks the alliance which paganism and the empire wished to renew. He proclaims that religion is no longer the State, and that to obey Caesar is no longer the same thing as to obey God.
Christianity ... separates what all antiquity had confounded.... It was the source whence individual liberty flowed.... The first duty no longer consisted in giving one’s time, one’s strength, one’s life to the State ... all the virtues were no longer comprised in patriotism, for the soul no longer had a country. Man felt that he had other obligations besides that of living and dying for the city. Christianity ... placed God, the family, the human individual above country, the neighbor above the city.
Because of this hideous tyranny, it is no surprise that self-murder (suicide) was so rampant in the ancient world. As Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn tells us in his The
Conflict Of Christianity With Heathenism
Heathenism ended in barrenness and sheer despair, and at last the only comfort was that men are free to leave this miserable world by suicide. Patet exitus! The way out of this life stands open! That is the last consolation of expiring heathenism.
And he quotes Seneca, who said that “the aim of all philosophy is to despise life,”¯ as saying, concerning the suicide option:
Seest thou yon steep height? Thence is the descent to freedom. Seest thou yon sea, yon river, yon well? Freedom sits there in the depths. Seest thou yon low, withered tree? There freedom hangs. Seest thou thy neck, thy throat, thy heart? They are ways of escape from bondage.
To which Dr. Uhihorn adds:
Can the bankruptcy of Heathenism be more plainly declared than in these words...? With what power then must have come the preaching of this word: "Christ is risen! The wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
And in a little noticed and seldom quoted passage from Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville says:
The most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece ... tried to prove that slavery was in the order of nature and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything shows that those of the ancients who had been slaves before they became free, many of whom have left us excellent writings, themselves regarded servitude in no other light.
All the great writers of antiquity belonged to the aristocracy of masters, or at least they saw that aristocracy established and expanded before their eyes. Their mind, after it had expanded itself in several directions, was barred from further progress in this one; and the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth was required to teach that all members of the human race are by nature equal and alike.
The historian Arnold Toynbee saw, accurately, the great failing of the ancient Greeks, that they “saw in Man, ‘the Lord of Creation,’ and worshipped him as an idol instead of God.”¯ And this rejection of the true God -- which similarly threatens modern Western civilization -- led to Hellenism’s breakdown and disintegration. Rejecting Gibbon, Toynbee says neither Christians nor barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire; they merely walked over a corpse.
And in his book Religious
Origins of the American Revolution
The American Revolution might thus be said to have started, in a sense, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. It received a substantial part its theological and philosophical underpinnings from John Calvin’s Institutes Of The Christian Religion
Put another way, the American Revolution is inconceivable in the absence of that context of ideas which have constituted radical Christianity. The leaders of the Revolution in every colony were imbued with the precepts of the Reformed faith.
Indeed, he adds, in early America, the Reformation
left its mark on every aspect of the personal and social life of the faithful. In the family, in education, in business activity, in work, in community and, ultimately, in politics, the consequences of the Reformation were determinative for American history.
As remote or repugnant as Puritanism may be to some, Smith says “it is essential that we understand that the Reformation in its full power was one of the great emancipations of history.”¯ He says the passage in the book of Micah about “every man... under his vine and under his fig tree... was “the most potent expression of the colonist’s determination to be independent whatever the cost... having substantial control over his own affairs. No theme was more constantly reiterated by writers and speakers in the era of the Revolution.”¯
The phrase "Vine & Fig Tree" comes from the Old Testament Prophet Micah, the fourth chapter. You can find out more about the Vine & Fig Tree Worldview on our home page:
http://VineandFigTree.Christmas
During the next 12 days, you'll see the "real meaning" of Christmas in the Bible like you've never seen them before.Many Christians today believe Jesus came to get us a ticket to heaven when we die. In the meantime, Satan rules the planet. Their story of the Bible goes like this:
In other words, Satan wins.
Pretty dismal story, isn't it?
Sure, God sent His Son, who died on the cross, so that some of the players can be forgiven for their rebellion and go home with God, but God's original purposes for man and the creation were thwarted by Satan, the ultimate victor.
Click here to listen to the "Vine & Fig Tree" worldview
Some of George Washington's favorite passages of the Bible were those that spoke of every man dwelling safely "under his own vine and fig tree." Other Founding Fathers also referred to this "Vine & Fig Tree" ideal.
(George Washington would recommend that you enroll in The 12 Days of Christmas program. He read the Bible for an hour each morning, and another hour in the evening.)
George Washington was motivated by the Vine & Fig Tree vision revealed in the Bible. Washington's Diaries are available online at the Library of Congress. They are introduced with these words:
No theme appears more frequently in the writings of Washington than his love for his land. The diaries are a monument to that concern. In his letters
he referred often, as an expression of this devotion and its resulting contentment, to an Old Testament passage. After the Revolution, when he had returned to Mount
Vernon, he wrote the Marquis de Lafayette on Feb. 1, 1784:
This phrase occurs at least 11 times in Washington's letters.
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has found more than 40 references to the “Vine and Fig Tree”¯ vision in Washington's Papers.Vine & Fig Tree is also a phrase from the prophet Micah, the idea of everyone owning property and enjoying the fruits of their labor without fear of theft or political oppression, of sitting peacefully under your "Vine & Fig Tree."
Hundreds of years before Christ, the prophet Daniel spoke of the first Christmas, the birth of the Messiah in the days of the Roman Empire. That barbaric, debauched empire was destroyed, and the Kingdom of Christ began growing like a mustard tree, like leaven, like a field (Matthew 13). The Emperor Justinian began Christianizing the Eastern Roman Empire, and in the West kings like Alfred and Ethelbert made the 10 Commandments the basis of new legal systems. The "Common Law" began, with a Christian foundation, and eventually found its way into the Constitution of the United States, "a Christian nation." From 12 dejected disciples, Christianity has spread across the world, and billions of people claim to be Christian. Though there have been ups and downs, the progress of Christianity has been undeniable -- at least to those who have been taught the facts of history.
Most Americans in the 21st century have not.
If you enroll in this Home Study Program, you will learn the story of the "Vine & Fig Tree." You will learn that the Bible says the purpose of the first Christmas was that "the knowledge of the Lord should cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14). This has been going on for 2,000 years now. This is a wonderful story that isn't being told.
And the story is really just beginning.