Your Defense of Your Faith - #376 - JCSM's Weekly Devotions

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Welcome to the new readers of this message! Here is your Devotion, A Moment of Introspection, JCSM's Challenge, the Word of the Week, a faith-builder from "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained," and the Quotes of the Week. Have a fantastic week and God bless you!

1 Peter 3:15 "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear."

2 Timothy 2:15 "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

2 Timothy 4:2 "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching."

Colossians 4:5, 6 "Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one."

Insight: Are you ready, willing, and able to defend your faith? Get the right answers to the tough questions, so you can lead others to Christ. If someone asks you something that you can't answer, promise to find the answer, go and get it, then tell it to them. How else will you win a questioner to Christ?

Prayer: "Thank you for giving us many reasons to believe. Help us to recall them and to articulate them. Praise You for being good. Thank you for being faithful to us. We praise You for your inerrant Word. Help us to read it, understand it, and apply it. Bring those with questions to us. Let us lead them to You. Thank you for those that ask honest questions because they are seeking the truth about You. Thank you for the opportunities that You give us to help people find You. In Jesus' name, Amen."

Joseph Story (1779-1845), a U.S. Congressman, 1808-9, was appointed in 1811 as a Justice to the United States Supreme Court by President James Madison ("The Chief Architect of the Constitution"). Being the youngest person ever to serve in that position, Joseph Story continued on the bench for 34 years, until his death in 1845. He was instrumental in establishing federal supremacy, Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1816, and in establishing the illegality of the slave trade in the Amistad case.

A professor at the Harvard Law School, 1821-45, Joseph Story wrote tremendously influential works, including: Bailments, 1832, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833, Equity Jurisprudence, 1836, and A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840, in which he stated:

"We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment [in the First Amendment] to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence that the framers of the Constitution)....

"Probably, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the Amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship.

"Any attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation." - 1833. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 (reprinted NY: Da Capo Press, 1970), Vol. III, p. 726, Sec. 1868, and p. 727, Sec. 1869. See also Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (MA: Marsh, Capen Lyon, and Web, 1840; reprinted Washington, D.C.; Regnery Gateway, 1986), p. 314, Sec. 441, p. 316, Sec. 444. David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 32, 79-80. "Our Christian Heritage," Letter from Plymouth Rock (Marlborough, NH: The Plymouth Rock Foundation), p. 5.

In Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833, Vol. III, Justice Joseph Story declared:

"It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. - 1833. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 (reprinted NY: Da Capo Press, 1970), Vol. III, p. 726, Sec. 1868, and p. 727, Sec. 1869. See also Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (MA: Marsh, Capen Lyon, and Web, 1840; reprinted Washington, D.C.; Regnery Gateway, 1986), p. 314, Sec. 441, p. 316, Sec. 444. David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 79-80. "Our Christian Heritage," Letter from Plymouth Rock (Marlborough, NH: The Plymouth Rock Foundation), p. 5.

In 1844, case of Vidal v. Girard's Executors, Justice Joseph Story delivered the United States Supreme Court's unanimous opinion:

"Christianity... is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public....

"It is unnecessary for us, however, to consider the establishment of a school or college, for the propagation of... Deism, or any other form of infidelity. Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country....

"Why may not laymen instruct in the general principles of Christianity as well as ecclesiastics.... And we cannot overlook the blessings, which such [lay]men by their conduct, as well as their instructions, may, nay must, impart to their youthful pupils.

"Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation in the [school] - its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?

"What is there to prevent a work, not sectarian, upon the general evidences of Christianity, from being read and taught in the college by lay teachers? It may well be asked, what is there in all this, which is positively enjoined, inconsistent with the spirit or truths of the religion of Christ? Are not these truths all taught by Christianity, although it teaches much more?

"Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?" - 1844. Vidal v. Girard's Executors, 43 U.S. 126, 132 (1844), pp. 198, 205-206. David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), pp. 62-63. William W. Story, Life and Letters of Judge Story, Vol. II, Chap. XII. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 434.

In his commentary of the First Amendment's original meaning, Justice Joseph Story clarified:

"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 [denominations] and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government." - Judge Brevard Hand, in Jaffree v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, 544 F. Supp. 1104 (S. D. Ala. 1983). Russell Kirk, ed., The Assault on Religion: Commentaries on the Decline of Religious Liberty (Lanham NY: University Press of America, 1986), p. 84. Gary DeMar, The Untold Story (Atlanta, GA: American Vision, Inc., 1993), p. 113.

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