Question About the Statue of Liberty

Some time ago I wrote an essay about my surprise at facts revealed in Ken Burns' documentary on the Statue of Liberty. Along with his information I have added trends that I see in our society. It all adds up to a warning note for Christians. I have since revised the original letter. But I've kept the original date. Here then is the revised essay.

Date: October 1, 2002 Subject: PBS on Lady Liberty

In Ken Burns' Monday night PBS special on the Statue of Liberty historian David McCullough says, "Liberty is what we Americans wanted FIRST of all." But, God says we are to give the Lord God our "First Love." [Rev. 2:4-5] I wonder if our love for liberty conflicts with our love for the Lord?

Liberty is really only good and best for the righteous, and for a righteous nation. Giving sinners liberty is to open the doors to Hell.

I was moved by Ken Burns' film on the Statue of Liberty. I saw that this Statue meant much to immigrants, but less to those whose ancestral roots go back further in America. I saw that some years after it was erected the Statue slowly became a positive thing. But, today I believe that Lady Liberty has come to mean something darker in the light of eternity.

Also, in the film, if you watched, you saw the roots of the Statue of Liberty. You saw that the torch is a Masonic symbol. You heard that the artist was a Free Mason and that Free Masons have always been ecstatic about the Statue. But devout believers were not excited about it, in the early years of the Statue's beginnings.

The Masons are an organization that reverences Egyptian gods and Egyptian symbols in their teachings.

You saw that the body of the statue was modeled after the artist's mistress and that the granite base of the statue was designed after Egyptian styles. It is very important to me to note that in the Bible Egypt is a symbol of sin and darkness.

The movie pointed out that in the 1870s when the Statue was first being proposed many Americans were against it and the Christian ministers of that era cried out that it was a pagan idol. Americans were slow to accept it. Maybe that is because America had just passed through it's greatest revival and awakening just a few years prior to the Statue being put up.

In 1853 50,000 people a week were receiving Jesus Christ in a born again experience! That would be like 500,000 a week by today's numbers. The Nation was much closer to God prior to the Statue. After the Statue, the Nation began to slip spiritually. Even the great Azusa Street Pentecostal awakening in 1906 was a smaller American event than the 1853 revival with men like Charles Finney preaching across the Country. [Of course Azusa Street had far reaching and very large effects on the World as a whole.]

Things have changed, even since the making of Ken Burns' film back in 1985. Today the word "liberty" has taken on even broader meaning. Current American culture is re-defining what "liberty" means.

Groups like the American Civil LIBERTIES Union (A.C.L.U.) have fought bitter battles for "liberties" that the Founders of this Nation would be shocked to hear of:

The "liberty" to kill an unborn child
The "liberty" to have same-sex marriages
The "liberty" for pornographers to spew their contagious cancer of lust all over the nation and the world.
The liberty of prostitutes to do business and the liberty of citizens to seek the services of prostitutes.
The liberty of killers and murderers to live their full lives out in comfort with free room and board at public expense.
The liberty of consenting adults to commit fornication and adultery at will.
The liberty of citizens to have access to recreational drugs, as they are so conveniently named.
The liberty of the media to fill the land with violence, crudeness, obscenity and nauseous distortions of the truth and of history, all as a matter of free speech.
The liberty to purge United States History of it's Christian foundations, history and roots, so that, for example, today's citizens aren't allowed to know that Christian Sunday church services were held in the Capital of this Nation each week for many years!
The liberty to change our culture, to poison the culture of the past with a cancerous new culture of a dark future.
The liberty of organized robbery, where a group agrees that a few will rob all those who have entered into the agreement. And that agreement is called gambling and/or lottery.
The liberty to go to school and never hear the name of God or Jesus Christ, except as a curse in some brazen and debased assigned novel for literature class.

In America today liberty is starting to mean the right to live an unholy life and to spread that cancer of wickedness liberally, to poison the new generations!

The Statue of Liberty is quickly becoming a symbol of all these dark liberties.

I remember that our Nation began as a nation predominantly made up of those who follow the Holy Bible. Committed Christians and Jews are totally opposed to "graven images!"

A "graven image" is something that has been sculpted, carved or engraved, meaning even drawn. That's what my dictionary said! The Ten Commandments forbids us to have a graven image. In other words a statue is inappropriate for a Christian. And certain pictures or drawings are inappropriate. [See Exodus 20:3-6]. This rule of God is to keep us from falling into idol worship.

You know, the Book of Revelation says that in the last days an animated image of the Anti-Christ will be worshiped. [Rev. 13:15] Many believe that this is the Bible's way of predicting big screen TV's all over the World that will televise the charismatic one-world dictator. People will bow and worship that person of darkness as they see him on the screens.

When a beautiful person's image appears on the screen of our televisions and we are moved by their beauty we may be dabbling in idolatry and not even know it??? When we pick up Time magazine and see the photograph of an entertainer and we are moved by their glamour, we may be on the brink of idol worship???

Exodus 20:6 hints that those who break this commandment of graven images, or any of the commandments for that matter, will not have the promise of mercy. Mercy comes to those that love the Lord and keep HIS commandments. Perhaps more mercy from God would have spared us from the 9-11 disaster?? We can use all the mercy we can get.

For many years it never made much of any impression on me that the Statue of Liberty was a lady. I knew the Statue portrayed a woman....but it just never made any real difference. It was a Statue for freedom, that's all I was concerned with. But, after studying the Book of Revelation I have become uneasy about the fact that this Statue is a woman.

The Statue of Liberty sits on an island in New York Harbor, which is connected via the Atlantic Ocean to every other ocean in the world. Could this Statue be the symbol of the Woman that sits on many waters referred to in the Book of Revelation??? [See Revelation 17:1]

After 9-11 the Statue of Liberty shrine was closed. People became all pent up. They were desperate to visit the site. They were so desperate that when the venue reopened people were willing to be frisked and to leave all their traveler's bags and purses behind, on the mainland, just to get to the Statue!

Truly Lady Liberty has become a shrine, a temple of sorts. Again, I wonder if this is the pointer to the lady referred to in Revelation 17 ??

I especially wonder about this in the light of what the phrase "civil liberties" has come to mean in America. It has come to mean "a license for immorality and sin." Has Lady Liberty become something more than we ever imagined? Has she become an idol of sorts? Has she become a sign to Christians, all over the world, that this Nation is the geographic location where the Spirit of Abomination has come to reside??

clint

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