We hear dire warnings in regards to “restoring the Covenant,” but what is this American Covenant?
The declaration was an “Appeal to Heaven,” a petition to God for divine assistance to bring the principles and tenets set forth in the Declaration of Independence into fruition. As Benjamin Franklin stated, our requests and “prayers … were heard, and they were graciously answered.”
The Declaration of Independence is a covenant document that joins member states together under a common frame of government. On a deeper spiritual level, the Declaration of Independence is a spiritual covenant between a people and their God. To state this concept of the spiritual covenant with God another way, America consists of separate sovereign independent member states that voluntarily joined under a covenantal framework of government as “One Nation Under God. “They,” the American people, as John Quincy Adams stated “were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. They were bound by the principles which they themselves had proclaimed in the declaration.”
Adams further explained, “Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity, narrated in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronounced against the people, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your posterity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their adherence to, or departure from, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven in the Constitution of the United States. Lay up these principles, then, in your hearts, and in your souls … teach them to your children … cling to them as to the issues of life—adhere to them as to the cords of your eternal salvation.“
The blessings of the Covenant involve national protection, liberty, justice, and well ordered and happy society, and national prosperity. When a people and nation are following and living in harmony with God’s Laws and Commands they will be “blessed in what they do.” This is the basis, spiritual foundation, and the truth of American Liberty.
But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
— James 1:25 (The Law of Liberty)
Along with the blessings of liberty, so too comes obligations for each generation to renew this covenant and pass it on to the next generation. This must involve the education of the youth (and adults since many were not taught in school) on their obligations to God and the Christian Biblical principles of liberty and freedom. We (the American people) have the free will and choice to live in obedience to God’s Laws and Commandments and enjoy God’s blessing. Conversely, if we reject God’s Laws and live in disobedience, then we will suffer the unenviable consequences of our actions.
Note 1: The war for independence was not a revolution, but a counter-revolution in order to restore the moral order in society.
Note 2: Earlier covenants with God in North America were at Cape Henry in 1607. “We do hereby dedicate this Land … the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to raise up Godly generations after us, and with these generations take the Kingdom of God to all the earth. May this Covenant …” Also with and the pilgrims with the Mayflower Compact in 1620 “for the Glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith…” and others.