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."
LEVITICUS XXV.X (25:10) proclaim
liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants.
Psalm 119:45 And I will walk at liberty,
For I seek Your precepts.
Isaiah 61:1 “The Spirit of
the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the LORD has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
Jeremiah 34:8 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from
the LORD, after King Zedekiah had made a
covenant with all the people who were at Jerusalem to proclaim
liberty to them: Jeremiah 34:15-17 15 Then you
recently turned and did what was right in My sight—every man proclaiming
liberty to his neighbor; and you made a covenant before Me
in the house which is called by My name. 16 Then you turned
around and profaned My name, and every one of you brought back
his male and female slaves, whom you had set at liberty, at
their pleasure, and brought them back into subjection, to be
your male and female slaves.’ 17 “Therefore thus says the
LORD: ‘You have not obeyed Me in proclaiming
liberty, every one to his brother and every one to his
neighbor. Behold, I proclaim liberty to you,’ says the LORD—’to
the sword, to pestilence, and to famine! And I will deliver you
to trouble among all the kingdoms of the earth.
2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
James 1:25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty
and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of
the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
James 2:12 So speak and so do as those who will be judged
by the law of liberty.
"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).
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
(1889), Fustel de Coulanges spells out in detail the darkness of
this Christless world:
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.
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
(1899):
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.
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
and much of its social history from the Puritan Revolution of
1640- 1660, and, perhaps, less obviously, from the Glorious
Revolution of 1689.
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.”¯
* * *
This online celebration is sponsored by a non-profit, tax-exempt
501(c)(3) organization called "Vine
& Fig Tree." Our offices were destroyed by a
tornado a couple of years ago. We're requesting a $12 "cover
charge" for this party. Your donation is tax-deductible. No
donation is required to participate in the "The
12 Days of
Christmas."
If we get 100 people to donate $12, we'll be able to pay our bills
this month.
Or mail your check to
"Vine
& Fig Tree" P.O. Box 179 Powersite, MO
65731
The Program 12
Days Bringing to Mind The Most Significant Event in Human
History
Each day you'll receive an audio for your morning commute to
work, and another audio for your commute back home. The morning
audio will look at Micah's Vine &
Fig Tree prophecy, and in the evening we'll show how
that vision began to be fulfilled at Christmas two millennia ago.
Day 1 - Jesus is the culmination of thousands of years
of meticulous genealogical records preserved by "the Chosen
People," Israel.
Day 3 - Jesus will be given "the throne of his
father David."
• Luke
1:5-25 - John the Baptist prepares the way for the Messiah,
as prophesied of Elijah.
• Luke
1:26-38 - The Angel Gabriel announces the conception of the
Messiah: "And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for
ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." (Luke
1:33)
• Luke
1:39-45 - the unborn John the Baptist leaps for joy when he
encounters the unborn Messiah. Planned Parenthood attempts to
sell them both for body parts. (That last part is "not in
the earliest manuscripts.")
Mary sings a song of praise composed of Old Testament
quotations, saying that the real meaning of Christmas is good
news for the poor and lowly,
and bad news for the rich and powerful:
50And
His mercy is on them that fear Him from
generation to generation. 51He
hath shewed strength with His arm; He
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 52He
has put down
the mighty from theirthrones, and
exalted them of low degree. 53He
hath filled the hungry with good things; and the
rich he hath sent empty away.
71That
we should be saved
from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; 79To
give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death, to guide our feet into the
way of peace.
Day 6 - Matthew
1:18-25 - the Incarnation is explained to Joseph
"Jesus" means "salvation" "Immanuel"
means "God with us"
The Prophet Micah predicted
that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Jesus' parents
lived in Nazereth. Therefore God predestined
Caesar to issue a decree (probably relating to taxes) that would
bring Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem before Jesus was born. Evil
empires serve God's purposes.
An army of angels announces the birth of the Messiah to lowly
shepherds, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, And
on earth
peace to those with whom He is pleased!”
The most important family on earth could not afford the
top-level offering required by the law of Moses. They took
advantage of a provision for low-income families.
Day 10 -
• Luke
2:25-35 - Simeon had been told
he would not die before he saw the Lord's Messiah. He says Jesus
is "The One."
• Luke
2:36-38 - Anna the
Prophetess is another well-known Godly person who acknowledges
that Jesus is the Child promised by the prophets. (Christianity
offered a view of women which was quite unlike that of the
Empire that occupied Israel at the time.)
Day 11 - Wise men worship Jesus
• Matthew
2:1-8 - "Wise men from the
East" (Babylon, perhaps) knew of Micah's prophecy that the
King of the Jews would be born in Bethlehem.
When Herod got word of the birth
of a rival king, he behaved in a perfectly logical way (for
someone who wants to protect his power): he massacred all
male babies the age of Jesus. Herod recognized that Jesus was a
threat to Herod's power.
Each day along the way, we will compare these historical accounts
of Christmas with Micah's Vine
& Fig Tree prophecy predicting:
The message of the angels to the shepherds on the first
Christmas:
And this is the sign unto
you: Ye shall find a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and
lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a
multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory
to God in the highest, And peace
on earth among men with whom He is
well pleased. Luke
2:8-15
His lord said unto him, `Well
done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful
over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter
thou into the joy of thy lord.' Matthew
25:21
The Vine & Fig
Tree Worldview
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:
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:
God created planet earth;
God put man on earth to be a good steward, and transform the
Garden of Eden into the City of God;
Satan tempted man;
Man rebelled against God, choosing to be his own god instead;
Satan now controls the world;
Jesus came to pay the penalty for this rebellion;
Things are going to get worse and worse;
Since Satan and man are not playing God's game by God's rules,
God is soon going to take his cosmic football and go home.
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.
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:
"At length my Dear Marquis I am become a private
citizen on the banks of the Potomac, & under the
shadow of my own Vine &
my own Fig-tree."
This phrase occurs at least 11 times in Washington's
letters.
"And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man
under his vine and under his fig
tree" (2 Kings 18:31).
Peter Lillback, author of a 1,000-page
study of Washington's life and thought,
has found more than 40 references to the “Vine
and Fig Tree”¯ vision in Washington's Papers. "Vine
& Fig Tree" is the original "American
Dream."
The phrase occurs a
number of times in Scripture. These references are visual
reminders of the Hebrew word for salvation,
which means
• peace,
• wholeness,
• health,
• welfare, and
• private property free from pirates and princes.
When today's Americans hear the word "salvation,"
they usually think about going to heaven when they die. When the
writers of the Bible used the word "salvation,"
they wanted you to be thinking about dwelling safely under your
own Vine & Fig Tree
during this life -- much
more often than they wanted you to be thinking about what
you'll be doing in the afterlife.
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.
You're invited to celebrate the
Twelve Days of Christmas.
Join our online party and accomplish the following over the next
12 days:
read the historical accounts of the birth of Jesus Christ
discover "the real meaning of Christmas" by
comparing the Gospel accounts of Christmas with a neglected Old
Testament prophecy (Micah 4:1-7).
The "real meaning of Christmas" is:
Peace on Earth (Luke 2:14).
Everyone dwelling securely under his own Vine
& Fig Tree (Micah 4:1-7).
Jesus is the Christ
("Christ" means "messiah,"
or "anointed King").
What we've already witnessed:
The prophet Daniel predicted
that during the Roman Empire, a rock would crush the empire and
turn into a mountain
and fill the whole earth. Jesus is the Rock. He has been
reigning for 2,000 years, ever since He rose from the dead and
ascended to the right hand of the Father. His Kingdom is the
Mountain, it's filling the earth, and the planet is being
progressively Christianized. Before He rose from the dead, He
had 12 dejected and confused disciples. Today over two
billion people claim to be followers of Christ. The
empire that executed Jesus soon collapsed under its own depravity.
Christians began Christianizing the world. Early kings like
Ethelbert made the Ten Commandments the foundation of the "common
law" legal system in Europe. At one time the United
States Supreme Court declared that America was "a
Christian nation." "Western civilization" is Christian
civilization. There have been ups and downs, but the
progress cannot be denied. The Mountain is filling the earth.
Controversy:
Christ's Kingdom advances peacefully through works
of service, not the
sword. A non-military, "pacifist"
Messiah was not the kind of Messiah expected by most Jews 2,000
years ago. (Nor by many Christians today.)
There are two groups that oppose this concept of Christmas:
"Premils"
"Pinkos"
"Premils" are "pre-millennialists" who
believe the "millennium" (described by Micah 4 and
other passages) cannot take place until after a Second Coming
of Christ, when Jesus returns and sets up a strong, military, "police-state"-style
centralized government, with armed believers dispatched from a
throne in Jerusalem to put down unbelievers. "Premils"
believe Christmas only secured for believers a ticket to heaven when
they die, or a ticket on "the
Rapture" if they live that long. Not global
transformation.
"Pinkos" are those who believe that Jesus is not
King enough to bring about the "millennium"; we need
strong centralized government for that. Pinkos
call us "anarchists."
During the next 12 days, we'll find out why the
Premils and the Pinkos are both wrong, and why you and I can and
should work to bring "Peace on Earth" so that everyone can
dwell prosperously and securely under their own Vine
& Fig Tree.
For more about the "Vine
& Fig Tree" vision, see our
home page.
to an analysis of Plato as a mystic and a 
,
has found more than 40 references to the “Vine
and Fig Tree”¯ vision in Washington's Papers.