I very seldom listened to anything the muslim who used to be in the white house had to say as I know he is an inveterate liar and nothing he says can be trusted. He did say something that I heard about on the news that I did find interesting however, even though he apparently said it only for the reason of disrespecting the nation. What he said was, and I quote, "America is no longer a Christian nation."
To begin with, and he should know this too, this nation is NOT America, but the United States of America. Big difference. Then if you take a real serious look at this nation from it's very founding until today, you will see that in fact it has NEVER been a truly Christian nation, so the "no longer" part of that statement is also incorrect.
I will explain why I say that.
Number one, and the foremost reason, is that in order to be a "Christian," you must first be a follower of "Christ." Christ is a word that has been mangled from the Greek language where it appears as christos and is pronounced "kreest-os." It first appears in English versions of scripture in Acts 11:26 (below):
-
And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. (KJV)
In fact the Greek word christos means "anointed" and so it should have been translated. The Ibriy (erroneously Hebrew) word mashiach means the same thing and it too has been garbled (in Daniy'el 9) into Messiah. In all other occurrences in scripture it has been properly translated as a form of "anoint." A much better rendering of the verse above is seen in The Sacred Scripture of Yahuwah, Restored Names Version (below):
-
And when he had found him he brought him to Antiochia. And it was that for a whole year they gathered together with the assembly and taught a great crowd. And the disciples were first called followers of the Anointed in Antiochia. (RNV)
Number two is that this nation has always called on and worshipped an entity they called "God" which is NOT the name of our Creator but in fact is one of those pagan deities about whom He said he did not want to hear their names come from our mouths (see Shemot [Exodus] 23:13). Our Creator's name is Yahuwah (yah-hoo-WAH) as rendered from the Tetragrammaton (yod-heh-waw-heh) and it literally means I AM THAT I AM, or the Self-Existent. He gives that as His name almost 7,000 time in scripture and says that He is ONE and will not share His divinity with any other eloah (translated as "god" in most English versions). I show proofs of this in several articles on my web page, www.considerthis.net.
Number three, and one that is so easily checked out that I wonder why so very few have seen it, is that the name of His Son and our Savior is not and never could have been Jesus. The letter "J" did not come into the English language until after 1500 CE and even then it was pronounced as an "I" for a long time. Eventually the guttural J sound came into vogue and standard usage, but it was never a part of His name (see the articles "Yahushua vs. Joshua vs. Jesus" and "The Missing J".
The first English speaking European settlers on this continent called the One they read about in scripture "Easoos" (ee-a-soos) as that is the name they found in their 1611 KJV. There it was spelled IESUS as the name was carried over from the Latin Vulgate of Jerome. If you looked at the article about His name that is referenced in the paragraph above you have seen how His name was corrupted from Yahushua. If you have not I recommend that you take a few minutes to do so now. By using the fake names for our Father and His Son we are denying them as our Creator and Savior.
Immediately after the formation of the government (1794) of the nation there were several instances of the government decreeing taxes and the people resisting. One of these is called the Whiskey Rebellion fomented because George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, declared that there would be a tax levied on all makers of whiskey to raise money to retire the foreign debts created in the fighting of the war erroneously called The American Revolution (in fact that war was nothing more or less than a civil war by any definition used then or now). When most of the whiskey makers resisted and refused to pay the tax Washington sent the army to collect. There were an undetermined number of casualties, notably at least two on the side of the resistance and one army soldier.
Had the United States been formed as a true "Christian Nation" the government would never have allowed that event to occur. First the government would have found a way to pay the debt down without forced taxes, and secondly the people would have paid the taxes as followers of the Anointed are instructed to do in scripture.
Since that first unchristian event how many more have been perpetrated by the members of the United States Government against a people that are truly powerless to stop them, regardless of what level office they have been elected or appointed to? Many more than a library full of books could hold should they all be written down. You can "vote the rascals out" if you think that will help, but all you do is put new rascals in their place and business continues as usual. Greed, corruption, lawlessness, it all continues unabated in federal, state, county, city, at all levels of government, whichever one you wish to talk about. Look around and see if that is not true.
Then there was that travesty erroneously called the America Civil War. By any dictionary you choose to use, that war does not qualify for that term. It was a war of northern aggression, plain and simple. The South had duly and legally seceded from the United States as was their right under the Constitution, and Lincoln decided that they could not do that because he would lose "his" cotton tariffs that funded 90% of his government. His decision pitted Baptist against Baptist, Methodist against Methodist, Lutheran against Lutheran, and etc. Now every one of these mentioned and other not mentioned denominations believed themselves to be in the "body of Christ," thereby making them "Christian" according to their definition. The northern battle song even called on "the Lord" to help them overcome the "enemy."
Think about this very carefully. If any of these men on either side had truly been "Christian" could they have taken up arms against other members of the brotherhood?
If your answer to the above question was anything but a resounding NO then I suggest you rethink your faith. Check scripture to see if you really are in the body of the Anointed, our Savior and Master, whose name is Yahushua. Remember that He said the brotherhood would be known by the members' love for each other. That kind of lets out murder, pillaging, and rapine such as occurred in that war, does it not? He also said that if you love Him you will obey His commandments. How many have?
So there you have it. The United States of America is not now nor has it ever been a nation that followed the Anointed, therefore the title "Christian" cannot be truthfully and honestly applied to it.
Buck Castleberry
buck@considerthis.net