The end justifies the means.

Really?

Lend an ear to modern America and this is what you will hear. You will hear it when a young person lies in order to get ahead in life. You will hear it when a father works 60 hours a week, neglecting his family in the pursuit of wealth. You will hear it when parents justify their children being taught humanism, evolution and homosexuality in the name of education. You will hear it when churches compromise with the world for the sake of the “greater good.” You’ll even hear it during election times when Christian people cast a vote for an unethical candidate because……the end justifies the means.

However, the Founding Fathers of our nation had a difference perspective than many have today. Listen to what John Adams said, “I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means.”

Men and women with a multigenerational faithfulness looked ahead, knowing full well what the cost would be to establish a nation “under God” in that “all men are created equal”. Yet, thinking about their children and children’s children they pressed onward for they knew that the end would be worth more than all the means. Are there any men and women like this today? Or are we too concerned with today to think about tomorrow? When I think about the future of this nation on the brink of disaster my heart breaks for my children and for the children that they will have. Will they be able to live in a land of freedom? Will they be able to worship God without fear? Will they live in a land of peace?

Everything in me tells me that hard times are coming. Therefore, I ask myself,

“Am I willing to sacrifice now who I am and what I do knowing that in the end it will be worth it all?”

“Am I willing to forgo all these temporal pleasures for heavenly crowns?”

“Am I willing to do what is necessary to impart to my children the eternal things of God?”

You see, for over two hundred years our country has reaped the blessings of what our Founding Fathers sowed. Yet around 50 years ago our country began to sow different seeds; seeds of rebellion against the Holy One. Now, our generation will begin to reap what has been sown these last few years. I pray that it isn’t more than we can bear. Then Enemy would have you believe that everything is fine. “Sure these are hard times but we’ll get through them, like we always have.” And while I believe that our God is sovereign and that as His child I am well loved and cared for, I also believe that without calling out to God in repentance and belief and rolling up our sleeves and doing what is necessary we will never reclaim back our land. It is no longer enough to live our lives from day to day and take our children to church. We must fight. We must fight for freedom. We must fight for the Kingdom, not with guns and knives but with the Power of God never forgetting that it is a spiritual battle that wages against us.

My husband is currently reading, “The Robbers’ Cave” written in 1887 to our children each night. (www.lamplighterpublishing.com) The story is about a young boy, Horace, who is kidnapped by a band of robbers. Last night my husband read the dialogue between the young lad and one of the captors, Raphael, who as a believer is secretly trying to help the boy. The discourse spoke to my heart and stated even truer what I am trying to say.

Horace was well versed in Scripture history, but he had only a very superficial knowledge of the Epistles of St. Paul. The glowing, fervent spirit of devotion breathing through them had found no response in his heart. He read now, almost as though they were new to him, the soul-stirring words of the apostle and martyr, proclaiming the blessed truths which he so joyfully sealed with his blood.

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”

Horace felt that the Italian at his side was not merely reading this as a chronicled address to suffering saints of old, but receiving it as a rousing call to himself, a watchword to be used on the field of battle, a command from a leader to a soldier of the cross.

“Is it true,” asked Raphael, when at last he paused in his reading – “Is it true that in your blessed land these Scriptures are open to all?”

“The poorest can have a Bible,” replied Horace.

“What a power must be wielded there for the truth!” said the Italian, laying his hand upon the open Testament. “In this country there is but a man here and there, like a picket in a hostile land, a sentinel on a post of danger, to grasp with a feeble hand the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God standing forth in a cause which, were it not the cause of the Almighty, he might well consider to be desperate but with you, how strong, how united a phalanx must hold the ground against all opposers, and go forward conquering and triumphant in the great battle that is waged on earth!”

“Of what battle do you speak?” said Horace, rather to draw forth an answer from Raphael than from any difficulty as to his meaning.

“The great battle between Truth and Error, Light and Darkness, God and Satan,” replied Raphael; “the battle in which every individual must be enlisted on one or the other side.”

“Not necessarily to take any very active part,” observed Horace, who felt as regarded himself there had been little interest, and certainly no great effort in the strife.

Raphael fixed his large, earnest eyes upon the speaker with an expression of grave surprise. “In the world’s warfare what do we esteem a soldier who shrinks from taking part in the struggle, who obeys not his leader, who deserts his banner at a period of danger?”

“We esteem him a coward,” replied Horace.

“And if he take part with the enemy?”

“He has the name, and deserves the fate of a traitor.”

“And what shall we call those who enlisted to oppose sin and Satan, are content to remain mere spectators of the strife, or who actually join the ranks of the foe?”

“Nine-tenths of the Christian world do so,” observed Horace, “and certainly look upon themselves neither as cowards nor traitors. Few consider that there is a battle to be fought at all. Men follow their own pleasure, do their own will, and doubt not but that all will be well in the end.”

“You do not think so?” said Raphael.

Horace knew not what to reply. He was too conscious that he had been describing his own state of mine, and felt that if a brave, earnest, self-sacrificing spirit of devotion be necessary to the Christian soldier, he was unworthy of the name.

Oh, how these words stuck me. How many times have I been unworthy of the name of Christ? How many times have I followed my own pleasure and did my own will believing that all will be well in the end? How many times do I forget about the battle I’m called to engage in? How the Wicked One has deceived us! May my eyes be fixed upon the eternal. May I press on for the prize of the high calling. May I stand fast in the faith and fight as a true soldier. And may I always remember, as did Adams, that it’s not the end that justifies the means but that the end is worth more than all the means!