Nordskog Publishing Inc.

Fear of God

THE BOOK THAT MADE AMERICA

HOW THE BIBLE FORMED OUR NATIONAny Order Shipped for only 4.95

by Jerry Newcombe
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About the Author

Jerry NewcombeJerry Newcombe, D.Min., of Coral Ridge Ministries is a professional communicator whose research and media productions have been seen by millions. He has helped shape the media output of one of the most influential U.S. Protestant churches in the twentieth century.

As senior producer for Coral Ridge Ministries television Dr. Newcombe has produced or co-produced more than fifty documentaries. He is the host of two weekly radio shows. He has been a guest on numerous television and radio talk shows, including Fox News and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. He is the author or coauthor of twenty-one books. Dr. Newcombe also holds a Master’s degree in communications from Wheaton College (1983) and a Doctor of Ministry from Knox Theological Seminary (2008). Dr. Newcombe wrote his thesis on the importance of "Preserving Our Christian Heritage" and how pastors and their congregations can pass on that heritage.

Dr. Newcombe met his wife Kirsti have two children, Annie and Eric. The Newcombes, residing in South Florida, have co-authored two books together: I’ll Do It Tomorrow and A Way of Escape.

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Jerry NordskogPublisher’s Word
Gerald Christian Nordskog

George Washington, my personal hero, and the beloved Father of our Country, was indeed “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” After the ratification of the Constitution was assured, on June 29, 1788, he penned:

No one can rejoice more than I do at every step the people of this great Country take to preserve the Union, establish good order and government, and to render the Nation happy at home and respectable abroad. No Country upon Earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means, and depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to, so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. The Great Governor of the Universe has led us too long and too far on the road to happiness and glory, to forsake us in the midst of it. By folly and improper conduct, proceeding from a variety of causes, we may now and then get bewildered; but I hope and trust that there is good sense and virtue enough left to recover the right path before we shall be entirely lost.1
Today, exactly 221 years later, America has long gone down that rocky road of folly and improper conduct, that our general of the colonial army, and first president of our nation hoped and trusted would never happen, and we are leaning toward becoming entirely lost nearing the end of this first decade of the twenty-first century. Do we, as Americans, have the good sense and virtue enough left today to recover the right path? Or are we too divided and secular a nation to recover? We have indeed greatly and sorely departed from the road to which Providence had pointed us so plainly during our colonial and founding era; regrettably it has come to pass. We appeal to the Great Governor of the Universe not to forsake us in our grievous national sins in this land. Americans all, we must repent and return to our first love, the love of Christ and His Law-Word, and love for one another.

This book will excite and cause us to remember and resurrect our roots, and give us the way back to George Washington’s vision for a United America. This was the dream and goals of all of our founding fathers, who based our nation, one nation under God, on the life-giving words and laws of the Holy Bible, that Book that Made America. We must recapture our heritage of the Christian character and government of our, the world’s first, Christian constitutional republic.

James Madison’s famous phrase in The Federalist Papers, has echoed down over two centuries of American history:

It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom: To rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.2

Verna Hall and Rosalie Slater’s 1983 Year of the Bible work affirmed, “History shows that mankind’s ability to govern itself is in direct proportion to the relationship of the individual to God, to Christ. . . . The history of the Bible and the history of American liberty are inseparable. The Bible is the source of individual liberty – salvation from sin through Jesus Christ. It is also the basis for external or civil government.” 3 As Noah Webster wrote:

It is extremely important to our nation, in a political as well as religious view, that all possible authority and influence should be given to the Scriptures; for these furnish the best principles of civil liberty, and the most effectual support of republican government.4

Chief Justice Joseph Story in expounding upon the uniqueness of our Constitution and the founding of our nation, concluded his Commentaries with this warning – which we need to heed immediately in America today:

The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its compartments are beautiful, as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been Publisher’s Word xvii reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, the people. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.5

Robert C. Winthrop, descendant of the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, one and a half centuries ago, warned the audience of the Massachusetts Bible Society:

All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.6

Our nation’s second president, John Adams, wrote this in a letter to our third president, Thomas Jefferson, on Christmas day, 1813:

I have examined all [religions], as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life would allow me; and the result is, that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.7

Dr. Jerry Newcombe, whom I thank exceedingly for allowing Nordskog Publishing the opportunity of publishing his twenty-first book (as author or co-author), has brought us in The Book That Made America a definitive work on the stupendous influence of Holy Scripture in the founding and development of our great nation, the United States of America. We must learn and recapture the godly principles that our founding fathers knew from a deep and abiding knowledge of God’s roadmap and His commandments contained in the Bible – now, more than ever. Read the author’s book, study it, and then turn to the Bible for study and application in our lives, homes, institutions, and civil government. Will we be ruled, as today, by the strong arm of man, or by the Word of God – by the Bible or by the bayonet? That decision is yours. I end this Word with a proclamation and a prayer from George Washington’s April 30, 1789, First Inaugural Address:

It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations and whose providential aids can supply every human defect. . . . In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it express your sentiments not less than my own. . . . [W]e ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternalrules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.8

Notes

Special Publisher’s Note: Numerous citations listed were taken from the monumental book, The Bible and the Constitution of the United States of America, Commemorating the Year of the Bible, 1983, Verna M. Hall and Rosalie J. Slater (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, First Edition, December 11, 1983). This book was greatly influential to me and distributed widely in my roles as Los Angeles County Chairman, Year of the Bible Committee, and as Chairman of the Southern California Constitution Education Committee, during our events: The Bible and the Constitution conferences during the bicentennial era. The Year of the Bible was declared in 1983 by Public Law 97-280 on October 4, 1982 by Joint Congressional Resolutions, signed by President Ronald Reagan.* (GCN)

  1. George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, in Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, Ed. (1930), 29:525. As quoted in The Bible and the Constitution (see above), 36.
  2. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist, A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States, Being a Collection of Essays in Support of the Constitution Agreed Upon September 17, 1787, by the Federal Convention, Number 39. (Washington & London, M. Walter Dunne, Publisher, 1901), 256. As quoted in The Bible and the Constitution (1983),
  3. Hall and Slater, The Bible and the Constitution, (1983), 3,
  4. Noah Webster, 1832, as quoted in Verna M. Hall, “Principles of Liberty Drawn from the Bible,” The Christian History of the American Revolution: Consider and Ponder (San Francisco: Foundation for American Education, 1975), 21.
  5. Joseph Story. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Abridged by the Author, Boston, 1833, 111, sec. 141. As quoted in The Bible and the Constitution, 37.
  6. Robert C. Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions, Boston, 1852. As quoted in Hall, Christian History of the American Revolution, 20.
  7. John Adams, a Letter to Thomas Jefferson, in William J. Federer, Treasury of Presidential Quotations (St. Louis: Amerisearch, 2004), 31; and Norman Cousins, ed., In God We Trust: The Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 255-56.
  8. George Washington, First Inaugural Address, in America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, William J. Federer, (Coppell, TX: fame Publishing, Inc. 1994), 651-52.