How binding is the Constitution? It is only as binding as the ethics, morals and the self-imposed standards (conscience) of the men occupying the institutions it establishes. This understanding is at the center of the right reasoning expounded by John Adams as He defines the Constitution’s necessarily being meant for men exercising (not merely speaking) self-restraint founded in religious and moral high standards. Here we need to again understand the true meaning of religion as the actions in living out (exercise) what one believes. Adams also argues this from the perspective of the Constitution’s protection of private property (its accumulation being wealth.) Hereafter are his arguments.
The first is given as an address to the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798. Adams begins immediately addressing the issue of who we as a people are as a whole, followed by telling of those claiming to be sincere in these principles of self-restrained while in exercise contradicting themselves as their actions were in rioting and insolence (hostile to and disrespecting the principles.)
In his opening he also mentions these principles as what separated us from the other nations of the world whose manner and principles had and were creating desolation. He was arguing against further declining into this state of declaring faithfulness while abandoning it in practical exercise.
Adams was appealing to the conscience of these people who were straying from their principles. The reason for such appeals are to encourage a return before one lingers to long in this fallen away state and conscience becomes seared or grows cold. It is in such a fallen condition where demagogues arise, reassuring men in this state of riot and insolence, claiming the betrayal of the principle is actually its new fidelity (in a world in this last state call me infidel.)
Here is the first excerpt, with bracketed clarifications: “Gentleman, While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious [disrespecting God] policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence [of God.] But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation [imitating the manner causing desolation] towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance [lack of restraint…”]
The next passage comes after Adams has identified and is more specific to and of whom he is speaking. It is in this excerpt he specifically speaks of our Constitution being intended to give extreme allowance, liberty to those restraining themselves and therefore without need for excessive law to control them, but also telling of it being totally inadequate in restraining those not bound by a well conscience formed by exercising their religion and living up to a high moral standard. In this, and his previous comment pertaining to the manner of other nations, he affirms there is no government or law capable of containing the lawless, and therefore the only way to peace and extreme liberty is self-restraint by this means.
This last point is at the foundation of the “free exercise” clause, and when as now this exercise is first vilified, then abandoned, and finally outlawed, what can only follow is the inevitable desolation that will forever evidence our calamitous decision.
Here is the passage telling of the principled intentions as opposed to the reported condition: “In the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the Nvorld [this world age;] because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
So–when we hear politicians and preachers, through their allies in the news media or as calls from their pawns, speak of laws, rights and Constitution, and what arises by intention are riots and impious insolence, we know them by their fruit. They are all political agitators, joined forces with anarchists, either wanting to be entertained by the fires or paid to set them, and all at their core seeking to shorten the march into what their “self-defined” intellectual inciters by theory think is a communist utopia. Their lies come from a cold or nonexistent conscience are both mask and means, and freed from this boundary they willfully use their deception and their claims of devotion to good intentions as means to unreasonably bind us to what we truly believe in.
Our conclusion cannot be to combat their evil with like deception and empty evil in false claims as means to deceive (as seems to be the new way of the opposition party – fool ‘em better than the other guys – while both are seen as and proven liars.) But we must rather act boldly upon our principles, with fidelity to them in action, and doing so without ever giving credence to the clamor of those who, by evidence seen in their actions, have proven themselves willing liars in motive and tactic.
Here is the next Adams quote where he speaks of property being an unalienable right, as he then quotes several of the Commandments proclaiming them inviolable law as surely on earth as in heaven. It comes as part of a 1787 conversation in Defense of the Constitution:
“Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps [without its protection under the Constitution,] at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance [lack of restraint] of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “You shall not covet,” and “You shall not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”
This is more apparent to us now as we see the effect of both removing the only ways of self-restraint (knowing what we believe and then courageously and faithfully exercising it,) and now once it has been removed we see its effects as described, the inevitable end occurring before our eyes. This is true in each of these scenarios described by John Adam, even if denied by much lesser men of our time, and these most often also those engaged in one form or another perpetrating what he warns against.
Now comes the sermon, and again feel free as is your right to ignore my freely exercising what I believe, and believe because I have looked for myself and have seen the LORD is true.
At the LORD’s direction I am going to post the last three chapters of Amos. They tell of the decline of God’s people as their national leaders become corrupt and their church became idol worshippers. Into the midst of this people, led by those blinded minds deadened by self-created confusion, the LORD calls Amos away from following this crowd, and sends him to speak truth to these powers.
The name Amos is from the Hebrew word ‘amas, literally telling of his bearing the burden of his people, as if carrying it to delivery. Chapter 7 begins by telling of Amos seeing what had grown, after the prior growth was harvested at the hand of these corrupted leaders, and is now left to the locust and total desolation. This is depicting the fall of Jacob, as patterning God’s people still in rebellion by ignorance, before they realize who it is they are in fact wrestling with and become Israel.
It is our pattern, and this is the message of our deliverance and rising to this realization. The culmination is told of in Amos 9:10 & 11, and in the context we’ve been discussing of our becoming one, Jacob now defined as the whole house of David, united as one as it was under David. This unity is the breach repaired as we inherit what is there defined as Edom (Esau), and the heathen, who are called by the LORD’s name (the dead in Christ.) It is all those who in name claim they are God’s, while in actions they are opposing His plan and will. This is why the chapter ends telling of this growth being plowed under, and of these corrupted high places melting as the new wine now flows from the place of Higher power.
Amos 7
1 Thus has the LORD God shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.
2 And it came to pass, that when they had made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O LORD God, forgive, I beseech you: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.
3 The LORD repented for this: It shall not be, says the LORD.
4 Thus has the LORD God shewed unto me: and, behold, the LORD God called to contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part.
5 Then said I, O LORD God, cease, I beseech you: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.
6 The LORD repented for this: This also shall not be, says the LORD God.
7 Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the LORD stood upon a wall made by a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand [to measure the condition compared to the original form He had built it.]
8 And the LORD said unto me, Amos, what see you? And I said, A plumb-line. Then said the LORD, Behold, I will set a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel [so they will know it has become a desolation:] I will not again pass by them any more:
9 And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel [the house of God where they had set their idol in God’s places] sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.
11 For thus Amos says, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land.
12 Also Amaziah said unto Amos, O you seer, go, flee you away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there:
13 But prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king’s chapel, and it is the king’s court.
14 Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdsman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit:
15 And the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and the LORD said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.
16 Now therefore hear you the word of the LORD: You say, Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not your word against the house of Isaac.
17 Therefore thus says the LORD; Your wife shall be an harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you shall die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.
Amos 8
1 Thus has the LORD God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
2 And he said, Amos, what see you? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
3 And the songs of the temple shall be howling in that day, says the LORD God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place [as it is his day;] they shall cast them forth with silence [the silence as preparation to hear the LORD.]
4 Hear this, O you that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,
5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?
6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? [Asking when will the LORD’s interruption of their gain by deception end, so they can get back to the same corrupted evil ways.]
7 The LORD has sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.
8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwells therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood [this flood of waters from on high;] and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.
9 And it shall come to pass in that day, says the LORD God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:
10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
11 Behold, the days [have] come, says the LORD God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD [as it has been:]
12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Your god, O Dan, lives; and, The manner of Beersheba lives [all the places of false worship and corruption;] even they shall fall, and never rise up again.
Amos 9
1 I saw the LORD standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword [of my mouth:] he that flees of them shall not flee away, and he that escapes of them shall not be delivered.
2 Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:
3 And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them:
4 And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.
5 And the LORD God of hosts is he that touched the land, and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood of Egypt [the overwhelming waters (word) crashing upon them.]
6 It is he that builds his stories in the heaven [creates the ways to ascend by rightly dividing the waters,] and has founded his troop in the earth; he that calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.
7 Are you not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? Says the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?
8 Behold, the eyes of the LORD God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, says the LORD.
9 For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.
10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The [our own] evil shall not overtake nor prevent [hinder] us.
11 In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:
12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, says the LORD that does this.
13 Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that sows seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.
14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.
15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, says the LORD your God.
