Quantitatively, the Bible is the most quoted/cited source among our founding documents. In an article published in The American Political Science Review (1984), 3,154 documents dealing with the founding of our country were studied. These documents date from 1760 to 1805. Thirty-four percent cite the Bible; 8.4% cite Montesquieu, 7.9% cite William Blackstone, and 2.9% cite John Locke.
I do not claim to be an expert on the influence of the Bible on America’s founding. For that, I invite you to purchase any of Dave Miller’s books or DVDs on that topic (apologeticspress.org).
But, there were several books that were influential in the development of our government and many of those books leaned heavily on the Bible and its teachings. In The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, author Vishal Mangalwadi highlights some of those ways. I will briefly point out three…
THE LAW WAS TO BE WRITTEN AND SUPREME:
We all know that Moses is the one who gave God’s law to the nation of Israel. While it is God’s law, it is frequently referred to as the Law of Moses. The law was given to the nation of Israel after they had spent a few centuries in slavery in Egypt. God brought them out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea on dry ground and assembled the nation around Mt. Sinai. The law of Moses was designed to regulate their civic life as well as their spiritual lives while strongly emphasizing the latter.
If Israel were to follow the Law of Moses as God intended, they would have remained in a close relationship with God and He would have guaranteed their freedom from all foreign oppression, all foreign invaders, all economic calamity. When you walk with God, He keeps you out of trouble or brings you through the trouble stronger than before.
THE RULE OF ELDERS
God gave the family of Levi to Israel to be their priests, to care for the sacrifices in the tabernacle and to teach the people the law of God. At one point, Moses was overwhelmed with the leadership responsibilities (Numbers 11:10-17).
This event formalized the leadership of Israel under her own representatives, the elders of the nations of Israel. Moses did not make these men elders. They were serving as elders while the Israelites were in Egypt (Exodus 3 & 4). Remember, when God sent Moses to Egypt, he had to persuade the elders to accept his leadership. It is only here in Numbers 11 that Moses gives them a formal, official leadership role in Israel.
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This idea of representative leadership from among the people laid the foundation for the church of Jesus Christ. When the church needs leadership, we seek out from among ourselves men who are already godly men, who are already serving in commendable ways, and we appoint them as representatives to guide us in our work and worship of God.
This very principle is what motivated our own Founding Fathers to not set up a country governed by popular vote or the will of the majority nor to set up a leadership based on heredity, kings, emperors, etc.
THE DIVISION OF POWER:
When God set up the nation of Israel, He appointed the religious leaders to come from the family of Levi. The Levities became the family of the priests. But under the same law, when God began making plans for His people to have a civil ruler, a king (Deut. 17:14-20), He said that king would come from a different family, from the family of Judah (Gen. 49:9-10).
Thus we have the inherent division of power and a system of checks and balances in the Law of Moses. When both the Levites and the kings came to be corrupted, God raised up prophets in order to hold both those offices in check and hold them accountable to the written word of God.
It is just the same way today in the church. The elders rule over the local congregation of Christians, chosen by the Christians themselves. They are to teach us and guide us. They hire a preacher to assist them in teaching the congregation. But the congregation also has access to the same word of God so that the church can hold the eldership accountable to God and the preacher himself. It is division of power and our Founding Fathers saw all of this in the word when they set up our own government.
The Bible has led the development of the greatest nation man has ever created. Let’s keep that development moving forward by keeping our roots in the Word of God.
–Paul Holland
