American Minute

[Soldier4Christ]

I did look at Project Gutenberg and didn't find it there. I only did a partial search on the internet other than that. The group that put it back in print is known as "American Vision". They have a project going right now to try to put a copy of the book in the hands of each US Senator and US Representative.

I agree, it would be excellent for every Christian and every church to have a copy of it.

[nChrist]

I also found it and was surprised with the low price for a 1,000 page plus book. It is on back order, and I didn't find a hint about when it might be available. It's been awhile since I've done any searching for "Biblical & Christian Foundations" for America. I was pleasantly surprised and found tons of outstanding material on thousands of sites.

It's been several years ago that I did weeks of work with the online version of the Library of Congress. I just found out that this has GREATLY expanded since then, and there are tons of new resources there that are still completely FREE. In fact, I think that the Library of Congress is one of the best sites on the Internet for Religious Freedom. I think it would be easy to spend weeks just skimming over the material now.

[Soldier4Christ]

The British invaded Washington, D.C. The Capitol was burned. President James and Dolly Madison fled the White House. On SEPTEMBER 1, 1814, President Madison wrote: "The enemy by a sudden incursion has succeeded in invading the capitol of the nation... During their possession...though for a single day only, they wantonly destroyed the public edifices.... An occasion which appeals so forcibly to the...patriotic devotion of the American people, none will forget." Madison continued: "Independence...is now to be maintained...with the strength and resources which...Heaven has blessed." Less than 3 months later, November 1814, President Madison wrote: "The two Houses of the National Legislature having by a joint resolution expressed their desire that in the present time of public calamity and war a day may be recommended to be observed by the people of the United States as a day of public humiliation and fasting and of prayer to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of these States, His blessing on their arms, and a speedy restoration of peace." Madison concluded: "I have deemed it proper...to recommend...a day of...humble adoration to the Great Sovereign of the Universe."

[Soldier4Christ]

3,000 Americans died when Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. 20,000 Americans and Filipinos died on Bataan's Death March, where starving prisoners were marched 65 miles in heat and jungles to a disease infested camp. Over 100,000 died retaking Okinawa and Pacific islands. Though controversial, Democrat President Harry Truman's decision in 1945 to drop the Atomic Bomb is estimated to have prevented an additional one million casualties on both sides. Earlier, on SEPTEMBER 2, 1944, a torpedo-bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire while making a run over Bonin Island, 600 miles south of Japan. The pilot headed out to sea, ejected from his burning plane and was rescued by a submarine. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, graduated from Yale, worked in the Texas oil industry and entered politics, eventually being elected the 41st U.S. President. His name was George H.W. Bush. He began his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1989, saying: "I have just repeated...the oath taken by George Washington 200 years ago, and the Bible on which I place my hand is the Bible on which he place his...My first act as President is a prayer...Heavenly Father...Make us strong to do Your work...And if our flaws are endless, God's love is truly boundless."

[Soldier4Christ]

"In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity." Thus began the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War. The Treaty continued: "It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third...and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences....Done at Paris, this THIRD DAY of SEPTEMBER, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three. The Treaty was signed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, who later became the 2nd President, and John Jay, the first Chief Justice. On January 27, 1983, declaring a National Day of Prayer, President Ronald Reagan stated: "Prayer is the mainspring of the American spirit, a fundamental tenet of our people since before the Republic was founded. A year before the Declaration of Independence, in 1775, the Continental Congress proclaimed the first National Day of Prayer as the initial positive action they asked of every colonist." Reagan concluded: "Two hundred years ago in 1783, the Treaty of Paris officially ended the long, weary Revolutionary War during which a National Day of Prayer had been proclaimed every spring for eight years."

[Soldier4Christ]

Rome fell on SEPTEMBER 4, 476AD. In the century preceding, Rome had been overrun with illegal immigrants: Visigoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Lombards, Jutes and Vandals. They at first assimilated, many working as servants, but then came so fast they did not learn the Latin Language and kept their own tribal governments. Highly trained Roman Legions moved rapidly on advanced road systems but were strained fighting conflicts worldwide. Rome had a trade deficit, having outsourced its grain production to North Africa, and when the Vandals captured that area, Rome did not have the resources to retaliate. Attila the Hun, known as the “Scourge of God” committed terrorist attacks. The city of Rome was on welfare with citizens given free bread. One Roman commented: "Those who live at the expense of the public funds are more numerous than those who provide them." Tax collectors were "more terrible than the enemy." Gladiators had provided violent entertainment in the Coliseum. There had been injustice in courts, corrupt government bureaucracies, exposure of unwanted infants, infidelity, perverted bathhouses and sexual immorality as seen in the ruins of Pompeii. 5th-Century historian Salvian wrote: "O Roman people be ashamed...Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us."

[Soldier4Christ]

Just five days after Princess Diana was killed, Mother Teresa died SEPTEMBER 5, 1997. The daughter of an Albanian grocer, she joined an order at age 18 and began working in the slums of Calcutta. Starting the Missionaries of Charity, which care for the blind, aged, lepers, crippled, and dying, Mother Teresa stated: "I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene...I serve because I love Jesus." A Nobel Prize recipient, 83-year-old Mother Teresa spoke to 3,000 attendees, including President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore at the National Prayer Breakfast, February 3, 1994: "I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself, and if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" Mother Teresa continued: "Please don't kill the child...give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child."

[Soldier4Christ]

Born SEPTEMBER 6, 1757, his father died before he was two-years-old and his mother died when he was twelve, leaving him to inherit their fortune. At fourteen-years-old, he joined the French Military and, at age 16, became a captain. He married Marie Adrienne Francoise de Noailles, whose family was related to King Louis XVI. At 19, against the King's wishes, he purchased a ship and persuaded several French officers to accompany him to fight in the American Revolution. Washington appointed him a major general. His name was Marquis de Lafayette. He fought at Brandywine, endured the freezing winter at Valley Forge, saw action at Barren Hill and Rhode Island. He returned to France and, along with Franklin's efforts, secured troops and supplies for the American cause which helped force Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown. Nearly fifty years later, after having lived through the French Revolution, Lafayette was guest at a ceremony at Bunker Hill, Massachusetts, along with 200 Revolutionary Veterans. Secretary of State Daniel Webster spoke: "God...has allowed you to behold the reward of your patriotic toils; and He has allowed to us...in the name of the present generation...in the name of liberty to thank you!"

[Soldier4Christ]

The Journals of the Continental Congress record: "Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 7, 1774, 9 o'clock a.m. Agreeable to the resolve of yesterday, the meeting was opened with prayers by the Rev. Mr. Duche'. Voted, That the thanks of Congress be given to Mr. Duche'...for performing divine Service, and for the excellent prayer, which he composed and delivered on the occasion." Rev. Duche' had prayed: "O God of Wisdom...direct the counsel of this Honorable Assembly...that the scene of blood may be speedily closed...that Truth and Justice, Religion and Piety, prevail..." John Adams wrote: "Reverend Duche'...read the 35th Psalm... After this...unexpectedly to every body, struck out into an extemporary prayer, which filled the bosom of every man present. I must confess, I never heard a better prayer." The Library of Congress printed on an historical placard of Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia: "Washington was kneeling there with Henry, Randolph, Rutledge, Lee, and Jay, and by their side there stood, bowed in reverence the Puritan Patriots of New England... 'It was enough' says Mr. Adams, 'to melt a heart of stone. I saw the tears gush into the eyes of the old, grave, Pacific Quakers of Philadelphia.'"

[Soldier4Christ]

On SEPTEMBER 8, 2005, President Bush declared a Day of Prayer and Remembrance: "Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters in our Nation's history and has caused unimaginable devastation and heartbreak throughout the Gulf Coast Region... Communities...decimated... Lives...lost...Hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans are suffering great hardship." President Bush continued: "To honor the memory of those who lost their lives, to provide comfort and strength to families of the victims...I call upon all Americans to pray to Almighty God and to perform acts of service." Bush concluded: "Across our Nation, many selfless deeds reflect the promise of the Scripture: 'For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in.'" Also on SEPTEMBER 8, in 70 AD, Jerusalem fell. Historian Josephus recorded a million died as the Roman army laid siege. For centuries, many wished to pilgrimage there, including Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln recalled the President's last words in Ford's Theater: "He said he wanted to visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footprints of the Savior. He was saying there was no city he so much desired to see as Jerusalem."

[Soldier4Christ]

In 1769, the first Spanish missions were founded in California by Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra, whose statute is in the U.S. Capitol Statuary Hall. In 1822, Mexican Emperor Augustin Iturbide took California away from Spain and in 1833, Santa Anna's Vice President, Gomez Farias, took all mission property away from the Church with the Mexican Secularization Act. Attempting to explain this, the U.S. Board of Land Commissioners reasoned: "The Missions were intended...to be temporary...It was supposed that within that period of time the Indians would be sufficiently instructed in Christianity and the arts of civilized life." In 1849, the year the U.S. acquired California, workers building a sawmill for John Sutter on the south fork of the American River, discovered gold. Soon prospectors, called "Forty-Niners," arrived and California became the 31st State on SEPTEMBER 9, 1850. Its Constitution, which prohibits slavery, stated: "We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom...do establish this Constitution." On May 23, 1862, President Lincoln restored the mission lands taken by the Secularization Acts: "I grant unto the...Bishop of Monterrey...in trust for the religious purposes...the tracts of land described in the foregoing survey."

[Soldier4Christ]

The Son of one of the Boston Tea Party "Indians," he graduated from Harvard and eventually became Massachusetts Speaker of the House. At age 32, he was appointed the youngest Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served 34 years and helped establish the illegality of the slave trade in the Amistad case. His name was Joseph Story, and he died SEPTEMBER 10, 1845. A founder of Harvard Law School, Justice Joseph Story stated in Vidal v. Girard's Executors, 1844: "Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?" Appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison-the person who introduced the First Amendment, Justice Joseph Story commented on it in his Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840: "At the time of the adoption...of the Amendment...the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State." Justice Story continued: "The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects."

[Soldier4Christ]

In 1683, over 138,000 Muslim Ottoman Turks surrounded Vienna, Austria. For two months they starved the 11,000 Hapsburg-Austrian defenders. Sultan Mehmed IV sent a message to Austrian King Leopold I: "Await us in your residence...so we can decapitate you." Secretly, the Polish King Jan Sobieski gathered 80,000 Polish, Austrian and German troops and on SEPTEMBER 11, 1683, led a surprise attack causing the Turks to flee in confusion. Upon entering the abandoned Turkish tests, there were found bags of beans - coffee beans - revealing how the Turks could fight day and night. Shortly after was opened the first Vienna coffeehouse and coffee subsequently spread across Europe. Whereas Jan Sobieski was looked upon as the "Savior of Western Civilization" from Muslim Turks, the humiliated Muslim army beheaded their general Mustafa Pasha and sent his head to the Sultan in a velvet bag. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his 1916 book, "Fear God and Take Your Own Part": "From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Jan Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact it...could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor."

[Soldier4Christ]

He was President of the American Bar Association, Chief Justice of Michigan's Supreme Court and dean of the University of Michigan Law School. His name was Thomas Cooley and he died SEPTEMBER 12, 1898. The first Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, Cooley's commentaries shaped American law. He declined offers to teach at Hastings College of Law, University of Texas, Johns Hopkins University, Boston Law School, University of Pennsylvania and Cornell Law School. In his General Principles of Constitutional Law, 1890, Cooley wrote: "It was never intended by the Constitution that the government should be prohibited from recognizing religion, or that religious worship should never be provided for in cases where a proper recognition of Divine Providence in the working of government might seem to require it, and where it might be done without drawing an invidious distinction between religious beliefs, organizations, or sects." Thomas Cooley continued: "The Christian religion was always recognized in the administration of the common law of the land, the fundamental principles of that religion must continue to be recognized in the same cases and to the same extent as formerly."

[Soldier4Christ]

Just weeks after the British burned the U.S. Capitol, they set out for Baltimore. On the way they caught an elderly physician of Upper Marlboro, Dr. William Beanes. The town feared he would be hanged, so they asked a young lawyer, Francis Scott Key, to sail with Colonel John Skinner under a flag of truce to the British flagship TONNANT and arrange a prisoner exchange. Concerned their plans of attacking Baltimore would be revealed, the British placed Francis Scott Key and Col. Skinner under armed guard aboard the H.M.S. Surprise, then on a sloop where they watched the night of SEPTEMBER 13, 1814, as Fort McHenry was bombarded. The next morning, "through the dawn's early light," Key saw the flag still flying. Elated, he penned the Star-Spangled Banner, which states in the 4th verse: "O! thus be it ever when free men shall stand, Between their loved home and the war's desolation; Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n-rescued land, Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; And this be our motto, 'In God is our trust!' And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"