Failed Prophecies

For this section I will use the work of Matt Slick of Christian Apologetics Research Ministry to provide a list of false prophecies of the Watchtower Organization. 

If they are the only true church and are the only true voice of God’s word, then what they say should prove to be true, especially in prophecy. When it comes to predicting the future, the Watchtower organization fails miserably. Following are some of the false predictions made over the years by the Watchtower organization. If you present these to a JW, he will probably say something like, “Those are taken out of context,” or “They didn’t claim to be the prophet of God,” or “The light is getting brighter and we are understanding Bible prophecy better now,” etc. Make a copy of these false prophecies, found in the appendix, and give it to them to check. They are right out of the Witnesses’ literature.

Remember Deut. 18:22, “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.” If someone makes a false prophecy, and they have claimed to be a prophet of God, then they are false prophets and are not to be listened to. Do the Witnesses claim to be the prophet of God? Yes, they do.

In 1972 the Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower claimed to be the prophet of God.  From a Watchtower publication: “So does Jehovah have a prophet to help them, to warn them of dangers and to declare things to come? These questions can be answered in the affirmative. Who is this prophet?…This “prophet” was not one man, but was a body of men and women. It was the small group of footstep followers of Jesus Christ, known at that time as International Bible Students. Today they are known as Jehovah’s Christian Witnesses…Of course, it is easy to say that this group acts as a ‘prophet’ of God. It is another thing to prove it,” (Watchtower,  Apr. 1, 1972, p. 197). (See Deut. 18:21.)

• 1897 “Our Lord, the appointed King, is now present, since October 1874,” (Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 4, p. 621).
• 1899 “…the ‘battle of the great day of God Almighty’ (Revelation 16:14), which will end in A.D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth’s present rulership, is already commenced,” (The Time Is at Hand, 1908 edition, p. 101).
• 1916 “The Bible chronology herein presented shows that the six great 1000 year days beginning with Adam are ended, and that the great 7th Day, the 1000 years of Christ’s Reign, began in 1873,” (The Time Is at Hand, forward, p. ii).
• 1918 “Therefore we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old, particularly those named by the Apostle in Hebrews 11, to the condition of human perfection,” (Millions Now Living Will Never Die, p. 89).
• 1922 “The date 1925 is even more distinctly indicated by the Scriptures than 1914,” (Watchtower, Sept. 1, 1922, p. 262).
• 1923 “Our thought is, that 1925 is definitely settled by the Scriptures. As to Noah, the Christian now has much more upon which to base his faith than Noah had upon which to base his faith in a coming deluge,” (Watchtower, Apr. 1, 1923, p. 106).
• 1925 “The year 1925 is here. With great expectation Christians have looked forward to this year. Many have confidently expected that all members of the body of Christ will be changed to heavenly glory during this year. This may be accomplished. It may not be. In his own due time God will accomplish his purposes concerning his people. Christians should not be so deeply concerned about what may transpire this year,” (Watchtower, Jan. 1, 1925, p. 3).
• 1925 “It is to be expected that Satan will try to inject into the minds of the consecrated, the thought that 1925 should see an end to the work,” (Watchtower, Sept., 1925, p. 262).
• 1926 “Some anticipated that the work would end in 1925, but the Lord did not state so. The difficulty was that the friends inflated their imaginations beyond reason; and that when their imaginations burst asunder, they were inclined to throw away everything,” (Watchtower, p. 232).
• 1931 “There was a measure of disappointment on the part of Jehovah’s faithful ones on earth concerning the years 1917, 1918, and 1925, which disappointment lasted for a time…and they also learned to quit fixing dates,” (Vindication, p. 338).
• 1941 “Receiving the gift, the marching children clasped it to them, not a toy or plaything for idle pleasure, but the Lord’s provided instrument for most effective work in the remaining months before Armageddon,” (Watchtower, Sept. 15, 1941, p. 288).
• 1968 “True, there have been those in times past who predicted an ‘end to the world’, even announcing a specific date. Yet nothing happened. The ‘end’ did not come. They were guilty of false prophesying. Why? What was missing?.. Missing from such people were God’s truths and evidence that he was using and guiding them,” (Awake, Oct. 8, 1968).
• 1968 “Why are you looking forward to 1975?” (Watchtower, Aug. 15, 1968, p. 494).

A JW might say that the organization is still learning. If that is so, then how can they trust what they are taught now by the Watchtower? Will what they are being taught now change also.

A true prophet of God won’t err in prophesying. Only a false prophet does. The Jehovah’s Witness organization, that claims to be a prophet of God, is really a false prophet. Jesus warned us by saying, “For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect — if that were possible” (Matt. 24:24).

Go to part 4 here

Background on Jehovah Witnesses

Christian Apologist Ron Rhodes writes: “The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that God personally set up the Watchtower Society as His visible representative on earth.  According to them it is through this organization and no other that God teaches the Bible humankind today.  Without the Society and its vast literature, people are said to be utterly unable to ascertain the true meaning of Scripture[1].”  According to their organization they are the one true church; the only true Christians.  If they are what they claim, what happened to the church for almost 2,000 years following the resurrection of Jesus Christ?  Why did God wait so long to rise up the one true organization?  How and when did they get started?

Charles Taze Russell was born in 1852.   He was the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1872.  During his early years he learned about the doctrines of Christianity but had difficulty in dealing with the doctrine of hell.   This doctrine inspired him to study the Bible and to investigate the scriptural support for eternal damnation.  In his studies he came to deny not only eternal punishment, but also the Trinity, and the deity of Christ.  When Russell was 18, he organized a Bible class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  In 1879 he sought to popularize his ideas on Christian doctrines.  In order to do so, he co-published a magazine and by 1884 he took control of the publication and renamed it The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom.   He then named the Bible study Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society (today known as the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society). The first edition of The Watchtower magazine was only 6,000 copies each month. Today the Witnesses’ publishing complex in Brooklyn, New York, churns out 100,000 books and 800,000 copies of its two magazines–daily!

Russell claimed that the Bible could be only understood according to his interpretations. This control over the interpretation of the Bible lays the groundwork for what we see today.  They claim the Watchtower magazine is the one true mouthpiece of God.  This kind of assertion is typical among leaders of certain aberrant religions.

After the death of Russell on Oct. 31, 1916, a Missouri lawyer named Joseph Franklin Rutherford took over the presidency of the Watch Tower Society, which was known then as the International Bible Students Association. In 1931 he changed the name of the organization to “The Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Throughout their history, many people associate Jehovah’s Witnesses with their failed prophecies.  They have been famous for predicting the end of the world and have come up short time and time again.  I will next look at some of these failed prophecies.

Go to part 3 here

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• Copyright © 2012 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania All rights reserved (1)

I am beginning a new series.  My primary objective is to equip Christians to learn how to discuss the Bible with Jehovah Witnesses.  It is likely every person reading this has been visited by a Jehovah Witness at one time or another and knowing what to say would be of value.  I will provide you with background information on the Watchtower Organization, show the differences in their beliefs, how they misquote Christian sources, give you tactics in sharing, and show you how they distort the scriptures.  Worshipping a false Jesus, the Jesus of the Watchtower Organization can have dire eternal consequences.

To help keep my teaching practical, I will share personal stories of multiple discussions I have had with Witnesses at my house or on the streets.  I will begin with some personal reflections.

After years of sharing with Jehovah Witnesses, they finally stopped coming to my house.  The primary reason was because I made a solid defense of the Bible and refuted their arguments when they came to my door.  You could say they put an X over my street address and it took three years before another Jehovah Witness knocked on my door.  Another reason they didn’t come back was my attitude.  When I first started sharing I was beaten up in discussions with Witnesses and now that I knew their arguments, I was doing the same to them.  I was satisfying my ego rather than moving them closer to Christ.  My attitude had to change.

Finally, after three years of zero visits, two gentlemen came to my house and I invited them in to talk.  Their names were Jim and Nat (short for Nathaniel).  These were two wonderful men who had come to share the truth as they knew it.  They both were gracious and well mannered.  We talked about life, family and hobbies and one of the gentlemen enjoyed the fact that I was a bicycle rider.  It gave us common ground.  They wanted to know if they could come back.  We setup a regular meeting time every Monday afternoon at 4pm.

Each week they came to my house to talk with me for nine months.  If one of them was out of town the other would bring his wife; they always came with a partner.  If they were going to be late they always called to apologize.  And they always ended our meetings on time, demonstrating respect for my schedule.

Some of you reading this may be wondering how I was able to keep them coming back for nine months (some could be asking why).  The reason was 1) I made the time to meet and kept my calendar clear, 2) I was respectful and friendly, and 3) I went slowly and didn’t share too much information.  I was in for the long run.  I knew I had time to get the truth out.  I truly wanted to see them come to Christ and believed developing a friendship relationship was the best method.

I am a huge fan of relational apologetics [to make a defense of Christianity].  I love to make friends with people who don’t agree with me and are willing to get into spiritual conversations.  I often tell people, I learn much more from people who don’t agree with me as opposed to those who do.  This is why I try to love all Jehovah Witnesses who will talk with me.  They care so much about me they are willing to spend their time sharing what they believe.  And I care so much about them I am willing to spend months to share my beliefs.

My goal is to teach you to love the Jehovah Witness at your door and help move him or her towards a relationship with Jesus Christ.  I will begin with some background information on the Watchtower Organization.

Go to part 2 here

The following was written by James Warner Wallace founder of the apologetic organization “Please Convince Me.”  He provides excellent answers for anyone making the claim the Biblical writers were biased. 

Objection: There is insufficient non-Christian historical evidence to substantiate that Jesus lived. All the supposed eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus were Christians. They cannot be trusted because they were biased.

The Answer Lies in the Eyewitnesses Themselves
While there are ancient non-Christian sources (Josephus, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Tacitus, Mara Bar-Serapion, and Phlegon, to name a few) who describe the existence of Jesus and the life of those who came to follow him, the best and most thorough eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus are the New Testament Gospel accounts of Matthew, John and Peter (written through his scribe, Mark). The testimonies of these eyewitnesses are often disregarded, however, on the basis that they were written by “biased” Christians. But the Gospel authors are reliable according to the current standards we use to determine the validity of eyewitnesses:

The Eyewitnesses Didn’t Start Off With a Bias
None of the three authors started off as disciples of Jesus. While John and Peter were disciples of John the Baptist, they clearly expressed doubt about the identity of Jesus and this doubt is recorded in the Gospels. In addition, Matthew was a tax collector and knew nothing about John the Baptist’s teaching. The eyewitnesses didn’t start off with a bias.

The Eyewitnesses Only Became Christians in Response to What They Saw
While it is true that the Gospel writers eventually became believers, it is illogical and irresponsible to disregard their testimony. Imagine that two witnesses observe a liquor store robbery. They recognize the robber (from their neighborhood) and later tell police that it was John Smith. Both started off without a bias when they entered the liquor store. But as a result of what they saw, they now hold the position that John Smith is a robber. One could say that they are now biased; after all, they now hold a distinct view. But it would be illogical to disregard their testimony and demand a new set of witnesses who don’t hold a belief that John Smith is the robber! The belief of the witnesses was shaped by what they saw, NOT by what they believed BEFORE the robbery occurred. In a similar manner, the eyewitness Gospel writers formed a conclusion based on what they observed.

The Eyewitnesses Are Reliable in Other Areas
The Gospel writers record more than the life of Jesus. Their account of First Century life in Palestine is geographically and historically accurate in areas that have nothing to do with Jesus. The Gospel of Luke (and Book of Acts), for example, have been tested by many skeptics, only to survive as remarkably accurate historical records.

The Eyewitnesses Had Little to Gain by Lying
One thing is for sure, the eyewitnesses all went to their graves (most in a dreadfully painful way) without recanting their eyewitness testimony about Jesus. The witnesses never gained anything in the way of money, sex or power from their testimony, and there is NO ancient record that records anything other than hardship and martyrdom for these eyewitnesses. They clearly stood by their observations in spite of the liabilities.

The Gospel eyewitnesses are reliable in spite of the fact that they eventually became Christians. They were not biased; they were simply convinced.

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Today Christians worldwide will celebrate God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.  Here is an excellent illustration to help capture what Jesus does for us.

A Great Debt.  Who Can Pay? By: Gregory Koukl

Harry Ironside used to tell about a young Russian soldier. Because his father was a friend of Czar Nicholas I, the young man had been made paymaster in one of the barracks.

The young man meant well, but his character was not up to his responsibility.  He took to gambling and eventually gambled away a great deal of the government’s money as well as all of his own.

In due course the young man received notice that a representative of the czar was coming to check accounts, and he knew he was in trouble.

That evening he got out the books and totaled up the funds he owed.  Then he went to the safe and got out his own pitifully small amount of money.  As he sat and looked at the two he was overwhelmed at the astronomical debt versus his own small change.  He was ruined!  He knew he would be disgraced.

At last the young soldier determined to take his life.  He pulled out his revolver, placed it on the table before him, and wrote a summation of his misdeeds.  At the bottom of the ledger where he had totaled up his illegal borrowings, he wrote:  “A great debt!  Who can pay?”  He decided that at the stroke of midnight he would die.

As the evening wore on the young soldier grew drowsy and eventually fell asleep.  That night Czar Nicholas I, as was sometimes his custom, made the rounds of the barracks.  Seeing a light, he stopped, looked in, and saw the young man asleep.  He recognized him immediately and, looking over his shoulder, saw the ledger and realized all that had taken place.

He was about to awaken him and put him under arrest when his eye fastened on the young man’s message:  “A great debt!  Who can pay?”

Suddenly, with a surge of magnanimity, he reached over, wrote one word at the bottom of the ledger, and slipped out.

When the young man awoke, he glanced at the clock and saw that it was long after midnight.  He reached for his revolver to shoot himself.  But his eye fell upon the ledger and he saw something that he had not seen before.  There beneath his writing:  “A great debt!  Who can pay?” was written, “Nicholas.”

He was dumbfounded.  It was the Czar’s signature.  He said to himself, “The czar must have come by when I was asleep.  He has seen the book.  He knows all.  Still he is willing to forgive me.”

The young soldier then rested on the word of the czar, and the next morning a messenger came from the palace with exactly the amount needed to meet the deficit.  Only the czar could pay, and the czar did pay.

We compare [God's righteousness] with our own tawdry performance, and we ask the question: “A great debt to God!  Who can pay?”  But then the Lord Jesus Christ steps forward and signs His name to our ledger:  “Jesus Christ.”  Only Jesus can pay, and He did.

Thanks Greg Koukl for sharing this illustration of God’s grace on your Stand to Reason web site.  Who can be saved?  Only those individuals who place their trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.  Today would be a great day to do just that.

Romans 5:6-11 (NASB) For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. ¹⁰ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. ¹¹ And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

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This is an excellent article by Chuck Colson[1] (prison ministries and Breakpoint) explaining how the recent Senate vote on religious employers violates the Bill of Rights.

The Leading Edge of Tyranny March 05, 2012

Last Thursday, the Senate rejected by a 51-48 vote a bill that would have permitted religious employers to refuse to cover medical services that violated their moral and religious convictions.  Have they even read the Bill of Rights?

Now strange things happen when issues are politicized, I know that. That’s not shocking. What is shocking — and downright shameful — is the deceitful way supporters of the Administration’s mandate have framed the issue.

They say this is all about protecting women’s access to contraception. This is, folks, the biggest red herring I’ve seen in politics. It’s garbage, and they know it. Shame on them. Nobody is saying they shouldn’t have access to contraceptives. Any woman can go to virtually any drug store and purchase them. Even drugs that induce abortion. As I told you last week, these things are even available in vending machines now!

How dare Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington say that this is about “curtailing rights to access that women already have”! That’s a bold-faced misrepresentation of what’s going on here, and she and her colleagues know it.

The media is no better. The New York Times opined that the measure would have “crippled the expansion of preventive health care in America.”  What hogwash!  And the Times is even furthering the lie that pregnancy is akin to tuberculosis: a disease that needs to be prevented. Then the Times went on to accuse the Republicans of a relentless effort to “deny women access to essential health services.”  Give me a break!

Even worse, this intentional and vicious misinformation campaign is working. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds that 63% of Americans support requiring insurers to cover contraception, while 33% oppose.  How sad is it the American public is so easily duped.

Folks, women’s access to contraception is not the issue here. They have it. In spades. What’s really going on is that the Obama Administration wants women to have access to FREE contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. It’s an ideological imperative for them. And such niceties as the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom just don’t matter in comparison.

Where does this end? I’m an 80-year-old man who has to take aspirin for his heart. Should the government pay for the aspirin I need? If they don’t pay for it, would they be denying my access to aspirin?  Come on.

If the Obama Administration has the votes to mandate free contraception, well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. But the Administration and its allies do not have the right to violate the First Amendment — to force religious organizations to pay for procedures or drugs that violate the tenets of their faith.

That’s why we have the Bill of Rights: to protect our fundamental freedoms. As Senator Orrin Hatch said, “When we start going down this road, beware. . . That’s when tyranny really begins. Those of you who vote against this amendment are playing with fire.”  He’s right.

Folks, tell your friends, your neighbors, and your legislators that women already have complete access to contraception — and to say otherwise nothing is a deliberate misrepresentation of what’s going on.

Make no mistake: What we are witnessing is indeed the leading edge of tyranny.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, February 7, 2012, that California’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage in California to one man and one woman, violated the equal protection rights of gays and lesbians. Now, a forthcoming appeal could pave the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage as early as next year.  The following was written by Archbishop Jose’ H. Gomez to bring some clarity to this issue.

The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Decision on Proposition 8

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

The court’s decision reflects a basic confusion about what marriage is and what marriage is for, and about why the government has an interest in promoting and strengthening marriage.

Marriage, in every culture and every age, has been recognized as the lifelong union of a man and woman for their own well-being and for the creation and nurturing of children.

Our government has a vital interest in promoting marriage for two reasons. First, because marriage is the foundation of society. Second, because government has a duty to promote the well-being of children, who have the right to be born and raised in a family with both their mother and their father.

This debate over marriage is not about equality or about the needs of individuals. It is much bigger than that. It is about the nature of the human person and the nature of society.

The government has no competence and no authority to “redefine” marriage or “expand” its definition to include other kinds of relationships. To do that is to say that marriage no longer exists. And this would have grave consequences for children and for the common good of our society.

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This is an excellent article explaining how and why the birth-control mandate Obama is attempting to force upon religious organizations is illegal.

Birth-Control Mandate: Unconstitutional and Illegal[1]

By David B. Rivkin Jr. & Edward Whelan   February 15^th, 2012             The Wall Street Journal

Last Friday, the White House announced that it would revise the controversial ObamaCare birth-control mandate to address religious-liberty concerns. Its proposed modifications are a farce.

The Department of Health and Human Services would still require employers with religious objections to select an insurance company to provide contraceptives and drugs that induce abortions to its employees. The employers would pay for the drugs through higher premiums. For those employers that self-insure, like the Archdiocese of Washington, the farce is even more blatant.

The birth-control coverage mandate violates the First Amendment’s bar against the “free exercise” of religion. But it also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That statute, passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and by a 97-3 vote in the Senate, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. It was enacted in response to a 1990 Supreme Court opinion, Employment Division v. Smith.

That case limited the protections available under the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion to those government actions that explicitly targeted religious practices, by subjecting them to difficult-to-satisfy strict judicial scrutiny. Other governmental actions, even if burdening religious activities, were held subject to a more deferential test.

The 1993 law restored the same protections of religious freedom that had been understood to exist pre-Smith. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that the federal government may “substantially burden” a person’s “exercise of religion” only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person “is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering” that interest.

The law also provides that any later statutory override of its protections must be explicit. But there is nothing in the ObamaCare legislation that explicitly or even implicitly overrides the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The birth-control mandate proposed by Health and Human Services is thus illegal.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama in a press conference on the contraception mandate on Friday.

The refusal, for religious reasons, to provide birth-control coverage is clearly an exercise of religious freedom under the Constitution. The “exercise of religion” extends to performing, or refusing to perform, actions on religious grounds—and it is definitely not confined to religious institutions or acts of worship. Leading Supreme Court cases in this area, for example, involve a worker who refused to work on the Sabbath (Sherbert v. Verner, 1963) and parents who refused to send their teenage children to a public high school (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).

In the high-school case, the Supreme Court found that even a $5 fine on the parents substantially burdened the free exercise of their religion. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, employers who fail to comply with the birth-control mandate will incur an annual penalty of roughly $2,000 per employee. So it is clearly a substantial burden.

Objecting employers could, of course, avoid the fine by choosing to go out of business. But as the Supreme Court noted in Sherbert v. Verner, “governmental imposition of such a choice puts the same kind of burden upon the free exercise of religion as would a fine imposed against” noncompliant parties.

The birth-control mandate also fails the Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s “compelling governmental interest” and “least restrictive means” tests.

Does the mandate further the governmental interest in increasing cost-free access to contraceptives by means that are least restrictive of the employer’s religious freedom? Plainly, the answer is no. There are plenty of other ways to increase access to contraceptives that intrude far less on the free exercise of religion.

Health and Human Services itself touts community health centers, public clinics and hospitals as some of the available alternatives; doctors and pharmacies are others. Many of the entities, with Planned Parenthood being the most prominent, already furnish free contraceptives. The government could have the rest of these providers make contraceptive services available free and then compensate them directly. A mandate on employers who object for religious reasons is among the most restrictive means the government could have chosen to increase access.

The mandate also fails the “compelling government interest” test. Given the widespread availability of contraceptive services, and the far less restrictive other ways to increase their availability, the government can hardly claim it has a “compelling” interest in marginally increasing access to birth control by requiring objecting employers to join in this effort.

The “compelling interest” claim is further undercut by the mandate’s exclusion, for purely secular reasons, of employers who offer “grandfathered” plans. These are employer-provided plans that existed at the time ObamaCare was enacted and can continue to operate so long as they do not make major changes. They cover tens of millions of enrollees, according to a recent estimate by Health and Human Services.

In an effort to rally its base in the upcoming November election, the Obama administration seems more interested in punishing religiously based opposition to contraception and abortion than in marginally increasing access to contraception services. It is the combination of the political motive, together with the exclusion of so many employers from the mandate, that has profound constitutional implications. It transforms the mandate into a non-neutral and not generally applicable law that violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

In short, the birth-control mandate violates both statutory law and the Constitution. The fact that the administration promulgated it so flippantly, without seriously engaging on these issues, underscores how little it cares about either.

Mr. Rivkin, who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, represented the 26 states in their challenge to ObamaCare before the trial and appellate courts. Mr. Whelan served in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush and is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Go to part 6 here

I am continuing to post articles by various religious leaders weighing in on this issue of our government’s current policies limiting our religious liberties.  The following was a Breakpoint article[1] by Chuck Colson.

The First and Foremost Freedom

I’ve been talking a lot lately about the Obama Administration’s relentless attempts to restrict religious freedom.  You know by now that the Catholic bishops have strongly rejected the president’s so-called “accommodation” to exempt religious organizations from paying for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.  Good for the bishops. What the president outlined changed nothing: religious organizations will still have to provide insurance that covers services that violate their religious beliefs, even if they don’t have to pay for them directly.

Now why does this matter? Why is it really such a big deal? The Administration is hoping you will think this is all about contraception, which not many people, even the majority of Catholics, care that much about. But this is not about contraception. This battle is all about religious freedom—the first and most important of all our freedoms.

As Christians, we know that freedom is the natural condition of human beings because we were created in God’s image. God, who enjoys perfect freedom, respected Adam and Eve’s freedom in the garden.  Even the Deist Thomas Jefferson, author of Virginia’s statute of religious freedom, wrote that “Almighty God hath created the mind free.” Jefferson rejected “all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations.” And he recognized that although “the Holy Author of our religion” had the power to constrain freedom, He chose not to. And to restrict religious freedom was a “departure from” God’s plan.

Our founding fathers—even those who weren’t Christians—believed, as I do, that without freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, all of our other freedoms aren’t worth the paper they are written on. If government can dictate what we may or may not believe, or how we may or may not live out our beliefs, then we are no longer a free people.  I say this not just because I am a Christian: I say it as a student of the American founding. I can plainly read what the founders said. James Madison, the fourth president and “father of the Constitution,” believed “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence”—and not by the “dictates of other men” or by “Civil Society.”

It’s shocking that the leaders of our nation so callously disregard our history, our heritage, and our rights. We must not remain silent. We must speak out—reintroduce our neighbors and our leaders to the foundational beliefs of the American Experiment.  Okay, governments do restrict and do deny freedom of religion. But those that do are not called free democracies. They are called authoritarian dictatorships, which is exactly what we will be living under if we lose this fight.

Go to part 5 here

The following was written by Francis Cardinal George, the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago. In this letter is an opportunity to send an email to your state representatives opposing this action.  I did this and encourage others to follow suit.  This letter was addressed to the Catholics of his diocese:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: I write to you concerning a most serious matter that negatively impacts the church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Jan. 20 that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the administration has seemingly ignored the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. As a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics must be prepared either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens because of their religious beliefs. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. All that has been built up over so many years in our Catholic institutions should not be taken away by the stroke of an administrator’s pen.

This order reduces the church to a private club, destroying her public mission in society. In generations past, the church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.

Therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible.

Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the administration’s decision.

A letter similar to this is being sent to their people by diocesan bishops around the country. I thank you for your consideration of this unprecedented challenge to religious liberty. You and your families are in my prayers; please keep me in yours.

Sincerely yours in Christ, Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. Archbishop of Chicago

Go to part 4 here