From: David Brown
Invitation for Day of Prayer and Fasting
If you are one of the many who is
concerned about the United States of America and the direction of our nation, I
would like to ask you to join with the people of all denominations in Eastern Jackson
County to test the theory that history can repeat itself.
When Abraham Lincoln issued Proclamation
97, designating April 30, 1863 as a National Day of Prayer, Fasting and
Repentance for this nation to return to God, history records that the very next
day, May 1, 1863, a series of events took place which affected the strategy of
the Civil War. By July 1, 2 & 3, 1863, the North had won major battles at Gettysburg
and Vicksburg, turning the tide of the war.
Do you feel we, the people, are
in need of unity and a return to God’s Providence? If your answer is yes, mark
your calendar for Sunday January 17, 2021, and join us for a Day of Prayer,
Fasting and Repentance. Let this be a day for all citizens who love these United
States to ask for God’s help in healing our land. (II Chronicles 7:14)
If we truly are to be one nation
under God, then we should make every effort to recognize that to be God’s
people we have to act like God’s people in promoting unity, love and peace. We,
too, struggle with these difficult times in Eastern Jackson County, but we plan
to observe Sunday January 17, 2021 as a day of unified prayer, fasting and
repentance. Please join us. We need you!
A Call to Godly Submission and Unity for America
The freedoms and Christian values of the United States of America
and its Constitutional Government are under attack. We must stand against this
onslaught to remove our freedoms that have been purchased by the blood of too
many brave souls who thought more of freedom for their posterity than they did their
own lives. Now is the time to stand up. What can we do? This is nothing new to
our American experience. There is precedence. We only need to look to our history
books to discover how we can successfully address this.
In 1863, the Union forces who were dedicated to keeping the United
States unified and to also provide freedoms to all Americans through the
abolition of slavery, found themselves locked in an armed conflict that was
feeling like a quagmire. The abolition movement had been building for decades
and the polarization of politics during the 1850s had created a tense
environment. The United States was hoping that this new Republican Party President
would be the one individual who could mend the fences between the Union and the
Secessionists; to restore some sense of unity. Lincoln’s early speeches expressed
the positions he was elected to promote, but he wanted to present these changes
in a manner that would allow the South a pathway to unity if they so desired. They
did not; the momentum of the division was too great.
When Lincoln was unable to halt the militarization of the political
movements, many naively believed that the war would soon end when the righteous
and powerful armies of the North finally engaged those ignorant rag-tag armies
of the South. But the only thing that ended was peace. From the first shots
fired at Fort Sumpter in April of 1861 until the early months of 1863, there
was no sense of momentum developed by either the North or the South. The nation
had now endured two full years of men dying with a growing population of widows
and orphans. The war was at a stalemate and something needed to change. Finally,
the wisdom and best efforts of man had been exhausted and the mourning among the
public created the realization that there must be intervention from Heaven.
After April 30, 1863, the Union
forces experienced a remarkable turn of events. The very next day, General Stonewall
Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire at Chancellorsville. Over the
next two months the Union Army had a series of twelve victories including the
surrender of a Confederate Army to General Grant at Vicksburg. The Battle of
Gettysburg took place on July 1-3, 1863 and the Union victory there ended General
Lee’s advance into the North. The war was finally turning to the advantage of
the North. Later that same year came the Emancipation Proclamation that freed
the slaves.
While the last battle of the
Civil War was not fought until April of 1865, the national day of humiliation,
prayer and fasting observed on April 30 of 1863 is clearly a turning point for
the United States of America. The North began its march toward victory once it
had repented and submitted its fortunes to Almighty God. Theirs was a righteous
battle for freedom and unity. They openly acknowledged their sins and called
upon their God for His mercy and intervention as they strove to restore national
unity and peace.
The battle to suppress freedom
and Christian values within our society has been waging for decades. Slowly and
subtly the laws and statutes that reflected a Christian perspective have been
erased from our governments, and even the enforcement of remaining laws is eroding
as elected officials refuse to enforce the laws on the books. How can we reverse
this erosion and outright subversion of the public good?
Proverbs 16:3 “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.”
It is a two-pronged attack. First,
“Commit thy works unto the Lord.” We must unify in our submission
to God and His purposes for the United States of America. He established this
nation and it is He that will see that its righteous destiny is accomplished.
But if we want this in our day, then we must submit to Him. We must repent in a
unified call for Heaven’s intervention, even as our ancestors of 1863 fell
before God in unison to petition His forgiveness and grace. Let us agree to
do this on Sunday January 17, 2021. Let us fall before our God in humility,
prayer and fasting. Let us acknowledge that all we say and do from this day forward
will be committed to His purpose of unity and peace; being of one heart and one
mind.
By the President of the
United States of America.
A Proclamation.
Whereas, the
Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and
just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has,
by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for
National prayer and humiliation.
And whereas it is the
duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling
power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet
with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to
recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all
history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
And, insomuch as we know
that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments
and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity
of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted
upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national
reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest
bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and
prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation
has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious
hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened
us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that
all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our
own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to
feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the
God that made us!
It behooves us
then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national
sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in
compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I
do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of
April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do
hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary
secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and
their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the
humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being
done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by
the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high,
and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and
the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy
condition of unity and peace.
In witness whereof, I
have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be
affixed.
Done at the City of
Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the
eighty seventh.
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