There is no hell. That should give them plenty of hope. According to the big man.
It is sorely disconcerting that we have a generation, maybe more than one, of young adults coming into voting age (or already there), that eschew the wisdom that was the foundation of our legal/governance system.
They have, in large part, thrown away their belief in God, and definitely have not made a commitment to accept God’s Lordship over them.
From that, flows all of their other decisions and the resultant ignorance/disagreement of/with the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the purpose of our Government (protection of God-Given Individual rights), morality at the base level, and any obedience of the Laws of God.
As a result, their lives are lived from the perspective of their utter and complete selfishness.
Unless God blesses us with a Holy-Spirit drive ACTUAL revival, we are doomed.
1 But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him.
2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens
to the righteous and the wicked,
to the good and the evil,
to the clean and the unclean,
to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice.
As the good one is, so is the sinner, and
he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.
3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.
So close. He blew it in the last paragraph The government does not give or protect our freedom. If the SON sets you free you will be free indeed. Regardless of what any government does.
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Some of the colonies, like Virginia, had established churches paid for out of taxation, but imposed by the colonial legislature. Thomas Jefferson considered the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom to be one of his greatest accomplishments, but that happened after the Revolutionary War was over.
The colonists had a fit over the Quebec Act in 1774, partly because it guaranteed freedom of religion to the Catholic majority in Quebec.
The judge needs to do more research.