December 2012 Articles

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December Just Rambling

Shortly after mailing our November, or Thanksgiving, issue of Ag Trader USA, I received an email with excerpts from two of President Lincoln’s speeches on God and Thanksgiving. One is from a Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day, and the other is an excerpt from President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation. I realize that Thanksgiving has already passed, but we as a people and nation should continuously celebrate in our hearts and minds our thanksgiving to God. Especially during this holiday season, whether it be Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year, I find President Lincoln’s words so fitting. As you read this proclamation, think about our country—seriously think about it. Thomas Edison said, “Five percent of people think; ten percent of people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” I don’t know exactly what capacity Mr. Edison was speaking of when he made this statement, but it seems to be becoming more relevant every day. We seem to be becoming a following society rather than a thinking society. We follow after politically-correct ideas every day which are in many instances contrary to God’s Word. A nation that was founded on Christian principles is rapidly turning its back on God. Read President Lincoln’s words below. Was he turning his back on God?
An excerpt from Lincoln’s Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day: It is the duty of nations as well as of men to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subject to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins; to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand, which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
And from Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation: It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United State, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
I think you will agree that Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, did not turn away from God. He embraced God for himself and this great nation. He knew that without God’s Word, he nor this nation could remain strong. Mr. Lincoln apparently read James 1:5-6, which states: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, and with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.” Our nation is becoming more and more like the sea being tossed by waves that contradict God’s Word. Let us remember that God will provide the last wave. 2 Peter 2:10-11 tells us that “the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” Mark 13:31-32 states that “heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” In Romans 14:10-12, God tells us that “we all shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then, each of us shall give account of himself to God.” Let us as a people and a nation follow Abraham Lincoln’s example by heeding God’s words during this holiday season as well as every day of our lives.