Reading, Slavery, & Governments

Christian History “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4:6

Prior to the Civil War, Southern Democrat slave-holding states had laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read, making it easier to control illiterate, uneducated people.

The Democrat- controlled North Carolina Legislature passed an Act in 1831 stated: “Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion … Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina … That any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within the State to read or write … shall … be fined not less than one hundred dollars.”

Frederick Douglass, the Republican advisor to Abraham Lincoln, had been born a slave in Baltimore, Maryland. He told the story that one day, when he was about 12 years old, his master’s sister-in-law, Sophia Auld, was teaching him the alphabet. When her husband found out, he yelled at her, adamantly forbidding it, saying that if slaves could read, they would grow discontent and desire freedom, then run away. Frederick Douglass considered this the “first decidedly anti-slavery lecture” he had ever heard, causing him to be determined to read all the more.

Douglas wrote in his autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History (1881) of being caught attempting to read a newspaper. It was snatched away from him with a scolding. Douglass learned to read from neighborhood white children, and from carefully observing the writings of men he worked with.

Many Islamic countries limit the education of girls and women, which contributes to them being subservient. Centralized control of education through state-approved standardized curriculum is the situation in socialist and communist dictatorships.

Totalitarian tactics is to intentionally make education complicated so students lose interest in academic achievement and do not develop critical thinking skills. Emphasis is instead placed on behavior modification. Students are systematically conditioned to reject the values of their parents and embrace the values of the state.

Plato wrote in his Republic, 380 BC: “Kings … will set in order their own city … They will … take possession of the children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents and train in their own habits and laws. Children will be taught ‘noble lies’… We want one single, grand lie which will be believed by everybody.”

Ancient Israel was the first nation where there were millions of literate people and no king. Israelites were taught to read God’s Law, and to be individually accountable to God to follow His Law. They had unprecedented individual liberty. They existed this way for four centuries in what is referred to as the Hebrew Republic.

Montesquieu, who greatly influence the founding fathers of the United States, wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, 1748, that the “spring” (i.e. motivation) for a republic is virtue: “It is the nature of a republican government that … the people … should be possessed of the supreme power … One spring more is necessary, namely, virtue … The politic Greeks, who lived under a popular government, knew no other support than virtue.”

Richard Henry Lee, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, and President of the Continental Congress, wrote to Colonial Martin Pickett in 1825: “It is certainly true that popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.”

When examining the types of government, they all exist on the spectrum of power, with TOTAL GOVERNMENT on one side, and NO GOVERNMENT on the other side. On the total government side – power is in the hands of one person who rules through fear. On the no government side, there is anarchy – “every man doing what is right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25).

On the total government side – power concentrates through elite favoritism and corruption. But for there to be to be little government control, without anarchy – power will be separated among the people and order maintained by citizens having virtue and internal morals. But the only way a citizenry can every have virtue and internal morals, is if it’s laws and culture embraces God and His Ten Commandment, starting with the first Comment, which the Lord God says – “to not have any other gods before Me.”

Did you know in early America, no atheist or agnostic could be a witness in any law case. They figured if such persons did not believe they would ever give account to God, they cannot be trusted to tell the truth today. That is why many on the Left today who reject the Lord Jesus Christ, have no problem NOT telling the truth.

Did you know cities in America had virtually no police forces for the first 300 years! Police forces only started around the beginning of the 20^th century, synonymous with the slow decline of true Christian citizenry and culture. And today, this has fallen off the cliff, and many churches are not much more than Christian social clubs… and crime is exploding.

Madison stated on June 20, 1788: “No theoretical checks … can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical (illusional) idea.”

Yale President Ezra Stiles addressed Connecticut’s General Assembly, May 8, 1783: “A discourse upon the political welfare of God’s American Israel … Our system of … civil polity would be imperfect without the true religion … From the diffusion of virtue among the people of any community would arise their greatest secular happiness. Israel’s decentralized form of government allowed for maximum individual liberty.”

E.C. Wines wrote in Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews: “Another of those great ideas, which constituted the basis of the Hebrew state, was liberty … The Hebrew people enjoyed as great a degree of personal liberty, as can ever be combined with an efficient and stable government.”

The utilitarian ethics of atheistic socialism and communism do not give inalienable rights.

​The National Socialist Workers Party which controlled Germany enacted a Penal Code, October 10, 1933, stating: “No life still valuable to the state will be wantonly destroyed.”

Pol Pot, whose Communist Khmer Rouge killed millions in Cambodia in 1975, stated: “To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.”

The Allah of the Qur’an does not give inalienable rights to kafir infidels, but permits sharia Muslims to lie, steal, rape, and kill them in various instances.

This situation of individual rights, liberty, and self-rule can only work with the God of the Bible.

The Bible states that all men and women are equal — made in the image of the Creator — and that one should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The U.S. District Court, in Crockett v. Sorenson, (W.D. Va. 1983), stated: “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS have had immeasurable effect on Anglo-American legal development … A basic background in the Bible is essential to fully appreciate and understand both Western culture and current events.”

Dr. Billy Graham stated in accepting the Congressional Gold Medal, May 2, 1996: “We have lost sight of the moral and spiritual principles on which this nation was established — principles drawn largely from the Judeo-Christian tradition as found in the Bible …  But there is hope! Our personal lives can be changed … The Scripture says, ‘You must be born again’“.

National salvation come only with honoring God – if instituting and carrying out His national civil Law (1Tim. 1:8-11). Eternal personal salvation comes only with – being “born again”.