Posted on 11/20/2012 1:47:47 PM PST by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
It never ceases to amuse – if not infuriate – how often atheists claim as one of their own much-revered historic figures who happen to make the news for some reason or another.
So it was when Neil Armstrong went to be with the Lord this past August.
So it was when Albert Einstein’s so-called “God Letter” went on auction last month.
And so it is now with Abraham Lincoln.
The nation’s 16th president is the subject of a new motion picture, helmed by Stephen Spielberg, the Oscar-winning director, with the screenplay penned by Tony Kushner, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner.
The Great Emancipator also is the subject of a new book, “Lincoln’s Battle with God: A President’s Struggle with Faith and What it Meant for America,” authored by Stephen Mansfield, who has previously produced several New York Times best-sellers.
If you check out some of the atheist web sites, with names like Atheist Empire and Positive Atheists, they insist that Lincoln was a non-believer, a “freethinker.” And to support their contention, they trot out second-hand quotes attributed to the rail-splitter.
“The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession,” Joseph Lewis, claims Lincoln said.
“The unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them,” Lincoln reputedly wrote to Judge J.S. Wakefield.
Now I do not rule out entirely that Lincoln may have spoken or written those words at some point in his life, although there is no hard evidence to that effect. Nor do I rule out the possibility that Lincoln struggled with his faith at some point in his life, as many of us have.
But I am absolutely convinced the great president, who saved the Republic following the Civil War, died a true believer.
Otherwise, he couldn’t have written the spirit-filled words he spoke in his second inaugural address, which followed Civil War, and which Lincoln delivered one month before his assassination:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Mansfield, the author, writes, “The truth is that Lincoln was, in fact, a religious pilgrim.” I take that to mean that, as a young man, the future president was a religious skeptic, but grew strong over time in his walk with God.
He may even have been like Saul of Tarsus, who actually denounced Christians before being struck blind on the road to Damascus; who was transformed into the Apostle Paul, a servant of Christ.
Interestingly, Kushner, the scriptwriter, who actually describes himself as “an agnostic,” said that working on the Lincoln movie led him to believe that a higher power must have been involved in Lincoln’s life.
“Every once in a while,” said Kushner, “in politics and history, you get this sneaky feeling that somebody shows up at a historical moment when they’re really needed…
It’s eerie that they show up out of nowhere: They seem to be the perfect person for the task, like somebody must be designing this. And there’s no example like this in American history as great as Lincoln showing up when he did.”
Kushner is right. Abraham Lincoln was the perfect person for the task set before him. And I believe the scriptwriter’s suspicions also were right. That the nation’s 16th president did not show up on the scene by accident of history.
There was, indeed, somebody designing that. And that somebody was God Almighty.
Paine was an antagonist to the founding. Essentially an anarchist. He distrusted all government.
It’s not certain that Lincoln personally wrote the letter to Mrs. Bixby. Some think John Hay was the actual author. Mrs. Bixby had two sons killed in the war but apparently three survived the war. She is alleged to have been a Confederate sympathizer and a madam, and supposedly she destroyed the letter from Lincoln after receiving it. The fate of the original copy is unknown.
You can say that again:)
While not necessarily being adverse to such things as affirming the people’s “acknowledging and adoring an overruling providence” (as in his First Inaugural Address, [3]) and expressing the need for “the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old,”[4] in his second inauguration, yet together with James Madison, Jefferson carried on a long and successful campaign against state financial support of churches in Virginia. It is Jefferson who created the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut.
Following the Revolution, the Church of England in America was disestablished. It reorganized as the Episcopal Church in America. Margaret Bayard Smith, whose husband was a close friend of Jefferson, records that during the first winter of Jefferson’s Presidency he regularly attended service on Sunday in a small humble Episcopalian church out of respect for public worship. This was the only church in the new city, with the exception of a little Catholic chapel. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives, a custom had not yet begun while he was Vice President, and which featured preachers of every Christian sect and denomination.[11] In January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a “crowded audience.” Throughout his administration Jefferson permitted church services in executive branch buildings, which were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary, and because he believed that religion was an important support for republican government.[12]
Henry S. Randall, the only biographer permitted to interview Jefferson’s immediate family, recorded that Jefferson “attended church with as much regularity as most of the members of the congregation - sometimes going alone on horse- back, when his family remained at home,” and that he also “contributed freely to the erection of Christian churches, gave money to Bible societies and other religious objects, and was a liberal and regular contributor to the support of the clergy. Letters of his are extant which show him urging, with respectful delicacy, the acceptance of extra and unsolicited contributions, on the pastor of his parish, on occasions of extra expense to the latter, such as the building of a house..”[13]
In later years, Jefferson refused to serve as a godparent for infants being baptized, because he did not believe in the dogma of the Trinity.[14] Despite testimony of Jefferson’s church attendance, there is no evidence that he was ever confirmed or was a communicant.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_religion (which i helped to edit)
Did did indeed work to make the Bible conform to the God of his own liking, but he did not remove all supernatural from it.
No supernatural acts of Christ are included at all in this regard, while the few things of a supernatural nature (or possibly so) include receiving of the Holy Spirit,[11] angels,[12] Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood,[13] the Tribulation,[14] the Second Coming,[15] the resurrection of the dead,[16] a future kingdom,[17][18] and eternal life,[19] Heaven,[20] Hell[21] and punishment in everlasting fire, the Devil,[22] and the soldiers falling backwards to the ground in response to Jesus stating, “I am he.”[23] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible#Content
Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865. 16th President from 1861 to 1865; led his country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization) — It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord...
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced be some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. (Proclamation for National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer; http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/ProclamationNationalFastDay.html)
• Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulties. (A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, James D. Richardson, editor [Published by Authority of Congress, 1899), Vol. VI, p. 11, from his First Inaugural, March 4, 1861])
• That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature for themselves. (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, editor [New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1953], Vol. I, p. 8, from his "Communication to the People of Sangamo County," March 9, 1832)
• [Attributed] As a ruler I doubt if any president has ever shown such trust in God, or in public documents so frequently referred to Divine aid. Often did he remark to friends and to delegations that his hope for our success rested in his conviction that God would bless our efforts, because we were trying to do right. To the address of a large religious body he replied, "Thanks be unto God, who, in our national trials, giveth us the Churches." To a minister who said he hoped the Lord was on our side, he replied that it gave him no concern whether the Lord was on our side or not "For," he added, "I know the Lord is always on the side of right;" and with deep feeling added, "But God is my witness that it is my constant anxiety and prayer that both myself and this nation should be on the Lord's side." (Rev. Matthew Simpson, D.D, May 4, 1865, Funeral address, Methodist Episcopal Church, Springfield, Illinois; http://beck.library.emory.edu/lincoln/sermon.php?id=simpson.001)
Anyway I read The Killing of Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly. I read it this whole weekend. It starts on April 1 1865 to April 29 1865. I highly recommend reads like a great novel.
Lincoln went ahead with the civil war because Jesus, in The Bible, said that a house divided cannot stand. For him to use this saying from Jesus to go ahead with the Civil War had to mean that he had the utmost of respect for The Bible and the words of Christ.
But you probably won't.
It's too easy to just repeat slogans.
Revisionist history bump!
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