Seeing through their duplicity...

He saw through their duplicity... A continuing series on the separation of Judeo-Christian religion and American civil government. Faith Fellowship Church...PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013; Terry Dashner In Luke's gospel, chapter 20 and beginning with verse 20, there is an interesting story recorded. The NIV Bible reads, "Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. So the spies questioned him: "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" "He saw through their duplicity and said to them, "Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription is on it?" "Caesar's," they replied. He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." The key to understanding this story is stated in the following verse. "They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent." (Verse 26, NIV) Although this story has been used by some to support the notion that religion and civil government should be separate, I don't think the spies who were sent to trap Jesus were interested in "separation of church and state." As a matter of fact to the Jew of the first century, the thought of the Jewish civil government separating from the Law of Moses was anathema. The spies wanted to trick Jesus into saying something by which they could condemn him publicly. The joke was on them, however. Jesus' answer astonished them and moved them to silence. When I here statements by groups such as the ACLU wanting to separate religion from the civil government, I'm suspicious. I think, based upon their history, they aren't really concerned for the good of our Constitution and civil government. I think they have a hidden agenda. My prayer is that other Americans will see through their duplicity. I think their real intentions are to elevate the civil government of municipalities, counties, states, and the nation above the Judeo-Christian heritage of this nation. I don't think they want separation, I think they want to abolish religion period. Although the First Amendment clearly says that the government shall not abolish the free exercise of religion, they still try desperately to purge American civil government from any semblance of the Judeo-Christian religion. The nineteenth century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once said, "History teaches us that man learns nothing from history." Have we forgotten our world history? Each civilization that chose to forget God came to its end abruptly. What about America's history? Noah Webster said, "The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." Again, Joseph Story (1779-1845), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court said, "The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahomedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution (the vice and pest of former ages), and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age..." The argument by Thomas Jefferson who coined the phrase "separation of church and state," was not meant to separate civil government from the Christian philosophy but to keep the national government from endorsing one "sect" or one Christian denomination over another. That would have established a state sponsored church such as England had and would have created rebellion in the young nation; therefore, Jefferson--and rightly so--concerned himself with the power of one influential denomination overshadowing the civic affairs of the nation and not with separating American civic government from Biblical standards of righteousness. Why would anyone be against righteousness and justice? To be continued... Keep the faith. Stay the course, America. Jesus' government shall never end (Isaiah 9:6-7). Pastor T.