Take a fast freedom final.

Study a map of the world keeping in mind where freedom has flourished and you’ll find wherever the Bible has traveled it has carried freedom’s holy light, breaking bondages and setting people free.

Why not?

The central figure of this inspired Book promised freedom to His followers: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” He said (John 8:32). And while He was not engaged in launching a political movement, this leader of men knew that free people spread freedom wherever they go.

These humble hearers of the great emancipator of souls were without political power but higher hands were guiding them and this enabled the pioneers of true freedom to accomplish great things without the politically powerful of their time being able to take credit for the results. We need to remember this when the wrong side appears to be winning big battles and freedom seems to be in jeopardy.

Communities and nations are changed by changed people.

Columnist Cal Thomas said it well: “Fixing social ills does not begin in the halls of Congress or the Supreme Court, but in individual hearts.

“Government can’t go there. God can. But if God’s servants prefer government to God, or seek to attach God to political parties and earthly agendas, they are doomed to futility.”

Faith and freedom are happy companions and flourish together.

In 1778, at the meeting of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin made a motion that the convention should not proceed without an opening prayer each day. Explaining the reason for his motion, he said:

“I have lived for a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?

“We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that ‘Except the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it’ (Psalm 127:1). I firmly believe this and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall proceed no better than the builders of Babel.”

We must get back to the basics; to the source of freedom.

General Omar Bradley once wrote: “We have too many men of science and too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

“Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light,” wrote Samuel Francis Smith in “America.” And if the “holy light” of personal freedom goes out freedom will also be extinguished.” Returning to the faith of our fathers may be the only way of retaining freedom for ourselves and our children. What are we going to do about it!