The Age of Revelation Author:Elias Boudinot How many times have you heard some skeptic claim that this or that non-Christian was a Founding Father of America? Thomas Jefferson is one of their patron saints, and yet he wasn't even present during the drafting of the Constitution. Of course, Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence which states emphatically that Go... more »d is the Creator and the Judge of the world. The ACLU plays down these words. Benjamin Franklin is another one skeptics love to trot out as an anti-religious Founding Father. But it was Franklin who stood up at the Constitutional Convention and quoted Psalm 127:1 as a warning to the delegates: "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." Not much is said about these remarks by Franklin.
So liberals bring out what they believe is their biggest gunThomas Paine. Paine wrote Common Sense in 1776 and used the Bible (Judges 8; 1 Sam. 8; Matt. 22:21) to make the case that Americans had a biblical right to oppose tyrannical governments. These facts are ignored by today's "scholars" and skeptics. Instead, they reference Paine's The Age of Reason as the work they claim proves America was founded on Enlightenment principles. Hogwash! The first part wasn't published until 1794. Even Paine's friends denounced him for his views. John Adams called Paine a "blackguard" who wrote out of the depths of "a malignant heart." George Washington, previously one of Paine's fiercest advocates, attacked Paine's principles in his Farewell Address (without referring to his name) as unpatriotic and subversive. But you would never know any of these facts if you sat through a history lecture on the period in a modern-day college classroom.
But here's something else you will probably have never heard: Paine's Age of Reason was thoroughly refuted by Elias Boudinot in his masterful book The Age of Revelation.« less