"Play the man Master Ridley"

The Martyrs' Memorial stands partway down St. Giles street in the city of Oxford, England. It was built in the mid-19th century to commemorate the lives of Oxford Bishops Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. I walked right past this memorial one Saturday morning while exploring this historic and incredible city about 14 years ago with my good friend Jim Dewitt while on business in the UK.

I have to admit, I had not heard of these three men prior to that morning. These three men, sometimes referred to as “Prelates of the Church” were bishops in the Anglican Church of England. All three men were involved in the Protestant Reformation. Latimer began to preach publicly on the need for the translation of the Bible into English. This was a dangerous move because the first translation of the New Testament by William Tyndale, had recently been banned. When the Church of England moved from Anglicanism back toward the Roman Catholic Church under Queen Mary in 1553, these three men came under intense persecution.

Eventually these three men were burned at the stake right near the spot of this memorial. Ridley and Latimer first in October of 1555 and then Cranmer in March of 1556. It is interesting to note that Cranmer was executed a little over five months later because the Queen ordered these men to “recant” or take back their statements and renounce their beliefs. Ridley and Latimer refused…Cranmer on the other hand, recanted, but could not live with himself afterwards…and then recanted his recant. While preparations were being made to burn Cranmer at the stake, he asked if his right hand could be untied so that he could put that hand first into the fire. That was the hand that he had used to sign his original recant that spared him the fate of his friends five months earlier at the very same spot in Oxford.

Ok, so why the church history lesson Bob? Well, it occurs to me that we take an awful lot for granted today in the times in which we live. How many of us believers have multiple copies of the Bible around our homes? How many of you now have the Bible on an App, either for your I phone, your I pad, or your laptop? We have incredible access to the Word of God that these men and many others like them gave their lives for us to have. They gave their very lives for us to be able have the Bible in our own language. These men believed that God’s word was meant for you and I to have in order that we might come directly to God. They believed that, because they understood that the Bible contained the powerful, living, Word of God! Do we really understand what we have on those pages? If we do, we will make it part of our everyday lives, both in the practice of reading and in the practice of telling others what it says.

I think about the mindset of men like this…and I ask myself if I can measure up to them. We are called to take Christ to a world around us that is entirely hostile to the Christ of the Bible…I say the “Christ of the Bible” because many today are offering a “christ” that is foreign to the Christ of the Bible. But make no mistake about it; the world around us is hostile towards Him. Even so, we are reminded that in this world, God is always at work…He is about the work of drawing His people to Himself all the time. Our job is to be faithful to point others to Him, not knowing upon who’s hearts He is working. In a time of increasing hostility towards Christ, we must not shrink back from proclaiming the truth.

Hugh Latimer is quoted as having said to Nicholas Ridley as the fires were being lit: “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” Take the time to read about men like this…let God use these fallen but great men from history to put “steel” in our spine to engage the world around us with the truths of the scriptures.

The 233 Year Old Message to us From Colonel George Mason

As "Constitution Day" approaches on Thursday, September 17, it's a great opportunity to teach a little Constitutional history that is overlooked to the detriment of our great Republic today.

 

233 Years ago today, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention (today referred to as the Constitutional Convention) had been going over every section of every article in the final months of the Convention in 1787. 233 years ago, on a Saturday, just two days before the Convention in Philadelphia completed its work, we find a gem in the notes of James Madison, who took extensive notes just about every day of the convention. This item that I refer to as a “gem” is little known and hardly talked about today. On September 15, 1787, George Mason of Virginia (referred to in Madison’s notes as Col Mason), was alarmed that in the text of Article V (the provision for making Amendments to the Constitution), Congress would have sole power to propose amendments; Mason insisted, as he did earlier in June, that the states have authority to call for conventions. Mason explained that an oppressive Congress would never agree to propose amendments necessary to restrain a rogue, tyrannical legislature.

"Col. Mason thought the plan of amending the Constitution exceptionable & dangerous. As the proposing of amendments is in both the modes to depend, in the first immediately, in the second, ultimately, on Congress, no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive, as he verily believed would be the case.” (See Madison’s notes 15 Sep 1787).

To make sense of that, you must understand that earlier in the summer when the issue of even having an Amendment process was first brought up as a provision in the Constitution, many of the delegates thought it unnecessary. Madison’s notes record the following on June 11^th: “Col. MASON urged the necessity of such a provision [Amendments]. The plan now to be formed will certainly be defective, as the Confederation has been found on trial to be. Amendments therefore will be necessary, and it will be better to provide for them, in an easy, regular and Constitutional way than to trust to chance and violence. It would be improper to require the consent of the Natl. Legislature, because they may abuse their power, and refuse their consent on that very account…”.

Then by the time the convention reached its final days in mid September, the Amendment provision had been added as Article V, and the provision had two methods; the national legislature (Congress) could propose Amendments and the states could request that Congress propose specific amendments. However, both methods were left in the hands (power) of the national legislature, that’s what Mason meant when he referred in the first quote above as “both the modes to depend, in the first immediately, in the second, ultimately, on Congress”. Mason had objected to this back in June and now as the convention drew to a close, he rose to his feet to forcefully object with his reasons stated above (“It would be improper to require the consent of the Natl. Legislature, because they may abuse their power, and refuse their consent on that very account”). Madison’s notes of 15 Sept tell us that Mason’s motion was accepted and the language was changed in order to require [mandate] Congress to call a convention upon application of 2/3 of the states.

It is noteworthy to point out that this process does not call for a Constitutional Convention; the language specifies calling a convention for the purpose of “proposing amendments”…to the existing Constitution…it would still require 3/4ths of the states (38) to ratify any amendment proposed in this convention.

We owe George Mason and the other framers a huge debt for this...they had the foresight to understand first of all, that we needed an orderly process in which to amend our Constitution (“regular and Constitutional way than to trust to chance and violence” – Mason 11 June). Secondly we owe them a huge debt for recognizing and understanding the depravity of man and the extremely intoxicating effects of years of power in the hands of the same people (hence a need for term limits) and that these power intoxicated occupants of the United States Congress would “abuse their power, and refuse their consent” (Mason 11 June) to any amendments that would “injure” themselves and return powers never intended for the national legislature or any of the other branches for that matter, they would never take steps to return that power on their own to the rightful owner, the states/people (“no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive” – Mason 15 Sep).

The least we can do as citizens of this great nation today, citizens that do not seem to want to be bothered with taking the time to understand the underpinnings of their liberty, the least we can do is take the time to understand what the framers of this amazing document did for us. When the framers agreed on September 15^th, 1787 to change the text in Article V, they in effect were telegraphing a message to us in 2018, a message to us showing us the way back inside the fence of the Constitution, a way back to what Thomas Jefferson called the “chains of the Constitution”.

Some Christian Worldview thoughts on Independence Day 2018

There is much debate today about whether or not the men who assembled at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 had the biblical authority to formally enter a state of rebellion against their Romans 13 governing authority who lay across the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Most people never read this part of the Declaration of Independence:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

These words reveal to us that these men most certainly did not take what they were doing lightly. Their words indicate that they not only didn’t take it lightly, they reminded us that experience showed that most of the time the people would suffer long and hard before trying to “right things.” History shows us that the founders in this era most certainly did long suffer before arriving at this point and had exhausted every means before them.

Without going into a long discourse of the meaning of the applicable passage in Romans 13 pertaining to civil government, suffice it to say that the command “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom 13:1) is no more of an absolute command than is the command for a wife to be subject to her husband (Eph 5:22). It is a general command. Using Romans 13 to prove a tyrants’ claim that Christians must give absolute and total submission to civil government is like using Ephesians 5:22 to prove that a guy can beat his wife into submission.

There is much more that can be said concerning the proper interpretation of the Romans 13 civil government passage but for the purposes of this article/blog/post I’ll leave it with the mention that Romans 13:1-4 ranks among the most misinterpreted and ripped out of context passages in scripture. Verse 4 is hardly ever read when this is taught and is the verse that gives us context. It is the verse that exposes part of God’s design for civil government, the fact that civil government under God’s design is for the good of people. The founders understood this:

“That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”. (See Deuteronomy 1:13 for God’s design of self-government).

Civil government under our founding charter is designed to perform a very limited and God ordained function.

Today, some of my conservative friends are too quick to repeat the part of the Declaration that explains the need for the founders rebellion:

“whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…”

Let us remember that these men had exhausted all other recourse. For decades they had petitioned the crown for redress and were met with nothing but more tyranny. They had no recourse under a “rule of law”.

That is not the case today. When the framers of the United States Constitution met in Philadelphia in the hot summer of 1787 to revise America’s first governing document (the Articles of Confederation) they completely understood the tyranny that they had come from under the crown of England. They designed a system of federal civil government that would place all of the government under a “Rule of Law” rather than the Rule of Men. Understanding the biblical doctrine of the depravity of man, they designed a system of separating and dividing powers. They instituted mechanisms of redress for the people and the states to affect change if defects in the governing document were discovered. They gave us an incredible document in our United States Constitution, a system of government closely aligned with biblical precept and truth under which liberty could flourish and potential government tyranny could be checked.

The United States Constitution, although an incredible document, is not perfect. It never has been perfect. It was designed by fallible men. Thank God for the prescience and wisdom of these men to insert a lawful, peaceful mechanism under which to affect change when defects were discovered. Indeed, we fixed the defect a defect in the life and liberty that was to be protected; the 13^th Amendment made human enslavement unconstitutional. We fixed another liberty defect with the 18^th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

Today, we have all kinds of lawful recourse built into our system of civil government that the founders did not have. They had no recourse under the Rule of Law. We do. How dare we use rhetoric advocating going outside the Rule of Law before exhausting all recourse under the Rule of Law?

Article V of the Constitution directly empowers the people acting through their state legislatures to affect change to the federal government. It’s time we understand and embrace the lawful, peaceful, and constitutional recourse given to us by the framers.