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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Hilmar von Campe

International Author and Speaker
Posted June 7, 2004

Will it be a Nation Under or Against God?
Just Words Without the Music?

On May 21, 2004 President Bush spoke at the Lousiana State University commencement ceremony stating: "Freedom is the gift from the Almighty to every man and women in this world." He urged the students to "avoid moral relativism and be skeptical when they hear comments that truth is relative." Since God Almighty is truth there could be no God if truth were relative.His commandments are absolute and the same for everybody regardless of religion, race or nation. In a relative world, the definition of sin would be subject to human whims. Furthermore, the crucifiction and death of Jesus Christ, who defined himself as a messenger of truth, would have been an exercise in futility. Relativism would take away the foundation of the American Constitution and destroy the reason for the nation's purpose: to spread freedom across the globe, which ultimately is the motivation for our soldiers who are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Chief Justice of the Albama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, was removed from office by his Republican collegues with the help of the Republican governor and attorney general. He had placed a monument with the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court Building to point out that God is the source of our laws. A federal judge had unconstitutionally given him the order to remove the monument, applying the Nazi philosphy that God has no saying in the rules of society.

The Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church in Montana is subject to a legal complaint by gay rights activists because it hosted a meeting on church grounds in support of a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage. According to the complaints Planned Parenthood, PRIDE and the Montana Human Rights Network consider morally perverse sexual practices to be constitutional and the moral battle by Christian churches for the preservation of the Christian family, the core of our society, as unconstitutional.

There is more at stake than the tax excempt status for the Montana church of Pastor B.G. Stumberg. At stake is the direction of American society, the meaning and the preservation of freedom.There are two opposing ideological forces at work in America. There is no middle ground, and only one will prevail in the long run: either un-American pagans who are out to subvert the moral order upon which America became the leader of the free world, a truly unique society as well as the richest nation on earth, or a Christian minority, that fights thousands of heroic individual battles to maintain the moral order of God, but that has no common ideology. The godlless, who call themselves also Americans, are the ones who attack, Christians remain on the defense and are loosing ground. For as long as I have been in America I have been pointing out that you can't win a war on the defense - and war it is. It needs an offensive concept, that embraces all of humanity, and a strategy: an ideology. But nobody wants to listen.

There is a third group, but I wouldn't call it a force - the comfortable majority of people, most of whom go to church on Sunday, but then are only concerned with themselves and on a regular basis cut corners to achieve their personal goals. Jesus spoke of them when he said, "…I could wish that you were either cold or hot. But since you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I intend to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelations 3;15)

A nation under God is not a nation where 90% of the people say that they believe in God but don't keep His commandments. A nation under God means a society with political, legal, and social structures, which reflect God's commandments, with leaders who do not seek themselves but the truth and justice of their creator. Laws, which allow gay marriages, abortion, women in combat, throwing God out of government and schools, with government financing godless institutions and activities, to mention only a few aberrations, are as lawful as were the Nazi laws, that I had to live under. These reasons for such laws in a democracy are politicians, who have no absolute moral standards and seek re-election before God. That leads to manipulation of power for one's own benefit and the more values are outlawed this way the bigger becomes the mess we are in. Church-going America with silent pastors is on the road to become a nation against God.

Two movies showed me the power of the film industry and what Hollywood could do to bring America and mankind to sanity. Troy paints a compelling picture about what drives a pagan society. Even though the Trojan War happened more than 3000 years ago the message is relevant today. Society at that time was by no means primitive. Cultured, intelligent and well meaning people were in charge of the Trojan kingdom, but their moral and intellectual structures were locked into this world with false concepts of life, honor and self-fabricated gods, leaving everybody without a compelling reason to live. Achilles defined the reasons for war: land, power or glory. The King of Argos, Agamemnon, leader of the hostile Greek army, made it clear that his reason for the war was his own glory. Misery and death of others as a consequence of his war did not concern him.He was out for himself and that was the only thing that mattered.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ shows convincingly what is missing in pagan society: In the first place the linking of life and society in this world with eternity, thus giving people and nations a purpose. Jesus' motives are not selfseeking but rather his father's will, even though he knew that it mean it meant his own suffering and death, for the life of others. He demonstrates what it costs to obey and trust God's power regardless of any human power. When he is close to breaking down under the weight of the wooden cross, when it seems that his strength must have come to an end and his personality is close to destruction, he states "I shall make everything new!" On that promise rests our future, our liberty, the existence of free society, faith for our children. Christ wants and will make our sin-ridden, greed driven society new from top to bottom. The only legitimate power in this world is the power of God. He works through men and women with pure motives, which is not the same as human manipulations by religious people.

Humanity stumbled along from war to war, from destruction to destruction, from hope to desperation, from futility to futility until the experiment America was born - a nation built by Christians on biblical truth, developing a society meant to be an example for the whole of the world. But we keep stumbling along. Are we that example? Could it be that we have the words but not the music? And if that is so, what are you going to do about it?

© Hilmar von Campe 2004 Reprinted with Permission

Hilmar von Campe: "I had thought that as a soldier I was fighting for my country, but I came to realize that in reality I was fighting for the immoral purposes of a bunch of gangsters." Hilmar von Campe lived through the years of Nazi power and brain-washing in Germany as a former member of Hitler's Youth and a Wermacht Soldier in the German Army under Hitler. Hilmar's testimony and wealth of inside stories are fascinating, including his escape from a prisoner of war camp in Yugoslavia. As a graduate of the University of Hamburg, he has traveled the world investigating political and social conditions of the countries he visited, where he was even kidnapped by the Communist leaders of the Bolivian Mineworkers Union. Hilmar von Campe was listed in the 1992 "International Who’s Who of Intellectuals." and is the Author of four books. Contact: Hilmarvc@cs.com; www.voncampe.com