IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the
thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty; Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.



EGYPT – Kamilia Gaballah, a Coptic Christian, was granted custody of her 14-year-old twins, Andrew and Mario, by an Egyptian court on June 15. The boys turned 15 on June 24. Gaballah has fought with her ex-husband, Medhat Ramses Labib, for the custody of the boys in more than forty different cases since he converted to Islam and abandoned her in 1999. In October 2008, the Appeal Court of Alexandria granted custody of the boys to their father despite the fact that Egyptian law grants custody of children to mothers until age 15. The year prior, Labib changed the religious affiliation on the twins’ birth certificates from Christian to Muslim without their consent. While the court granted Gaballah custody, it also ruled the boys must be identified as Muslims on their national identification cards.
YEMEN – Nine international relief workers, all Christians, were abducted on June 12. Three
of those kidnapped, all women, were murdered a short time later. The bodies of two German nurses in training, Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald, and a South Korean, Eom Young-sun, were discovered in Noshour Valley. The remaining hostages, German physician Johannes Hentschel, his wife Sabine, their three children, and an unidentified British engineer, are reportedly still alive.
One of my all-time favorite movies is the 1981 Paramount feature, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The hero of the film, Indiana Jones, is an adventurer and professor of archaeology. While lecturing, he quips to his students, “Archaeology is about facts, not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is down the hall.” There exists a contemporary myth which asserts scientists are concerned only with facts while philosophers and theologians are preoccupied with meaning. As a theologian, I am obviously a theist – one who believes in the existence of a transcendent, eternal divine being who is the ultimate origin of the universe. As such, I am decidedly not a naturalist – one who believes that blind chance and natural causes alone are sufficient to explain everything that exists. Theism and naturalism are competing worldviews which are unable to concede any ground to the other. As science historian William B. Provine of Cornell University, an avowed atheist and staunch evolutionist, has rightly observed, if naturalism (e.g., Darwinism) is true as he contends, then there is absolutely no ground for theism, no absolute foundation for morality, no ultimate meaning of life, and no free will [“Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics” in Science, Technology, and Social Progress (Research in Technology Studies), ed. Steven L. Goldman (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press; London; Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1989), 253-67].
The Taochuan Village Christian Church in Shaanxi Province, China, has been targeted by communist authorities for advocating justice for peasants in the village. On June 5, authorities issued a public notice declaring the church had been abolished. Three members of the congregation – Ms. Xu Fenying, Ms. Liu Caili, and Mr. Huang Shumin – were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses by officers on June 14 for “engaging in illegal religious activities.” Their personal property (books) were also confiscated and they were fined. The three were shown on Luonan County television being escorted in handcuffs to the police station. On June 18, three officers went to the home of Zhang Mialo, where they interrogated her and then summoned her to the police station. The following day, when she went to the station as ordered, she was given a five-day sentence.
The Nepal Defense Fund (NDF), a militant Hindu group, has threatened to bomb ten Christian homes in Nepal if all Christians do not leave the nation by July 10. R. P. Manali, the supreme commander of the NDF, has demanded for Nepal to be declared a Hindu state. He has also declared that Christians should not be permitted to worship in the land and that the NDF and other Hindu groups will “fight the government” if foreign missionaries are permitted into the nation. NDF was responsible for the bombing of a Roman Catholic Church building in Kathmandu on May 23, which took the life of three people and wounded fifteen others. Last year, NDF mutilated and murdered a Roman Catholic priest. The group has also claimed responsibility for other church bombings in the past. Please pray for Christians in Nepal who face increased persecution, especially with the date for the threatened bombings looming.
Many Southern Baptists are quite optimistic about the future of the denomination following this year’s annual meeting. Messengers to the yearly convention overwhelmingly approved authorization for SBC president Johnny Hunt to appoint a Great Commission Resurgence Task Force to determine how “Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.” The task force will present its findings and recommendation next year at the convention in Orlando. The GCR approval has produced a great deal of optimism.
Morris Chapman, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, gave his report this morning (June 23). The report, entitled, “The Great Commission Resurgence”, contained two great pearls of wisdom which were unstrung by a rant denouncing Calvinism (and in highly ignorant fashion). The pair of powerful points made by Chapman, in my opinion, were these:
Over 700 people attended the Conference of Southern Baptists Evangelists meeting on June 21 in Louisville, Kentucky. The meeting featured Johnny Hunt, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Ergun Caner, president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Caner preached on “Engaging the Last Days’ Culture,” emphasizing the importance of theological education and the impact divinity graduates can have on secular culture. Caner noted in the home locale of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that if an individual toured any of the SBC’s seminaries or affiliated colleges, “You run into this great cadre, this fired-up army of kids who are ready to charge hell with a water gun. They have not yet learned to be cynical or skeptical or sarcastic. . . . They’d crawl on their hands and knees on broken glass to tell someone about Jesus. . . . We have an entire generation of kids who know more Bible, memorized more verses and are more fearless than any other generation in history.” Ironically, he failed to mention that “those who are worse than Muslims” (e.g., Calvinists) are many of those making up this cadre of seminary and college students. Caner also noted there “are more people interested in Christianity than ever in history” on secular campuses. In this, he failed to mention that one of the reasons secular campuses are being impacted positively by the Christian message is due very largely to the ministries of Reformed stalwarts such as John Piper and Mark Driscoll, and student ministry groups such as Reformed University Fellowship.