"Live Free or Die" stamped upon license plates and is the New Hampshire, State Motto.
What a declaration, "give me liberty or give me death", a statement made by Patrick Henry, to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.
Many millions of Americans gather today to Commemorate the ultimate sacrifice, thousands and thousands of men and women gave in the "Cause of Freedom."
We would do well to ask ourselves what is this freedom that would be the cause of such devotion. Is it a political ideal, a kind of high philosophy of life, Freedom from serfdom, tyranny, oppression?
Freedom as an egalitarian goal where we all get the same, equality of outcome. Freedom to pursue a happy hedonism, an unbridled pursuit of pleasure without any prudish judgment to restrain?
Freedom from the restraints and bondage of Moses and his commandments of condemnations?
What call to freedom would cause men and women to sacrifice hearth and home and sign away all they had, all they were, all they ever hoped to be, for such a sacred duty in that epoch of history?
No, those who came to this land of liberty did not come with the goal of winning liberty so they could then turn it for an occasion of their flesh being satiated...never.
Those men and women came to find a place where they were free to serve God according to the dictates of their conscience. Freedom to herald the Gospel and advance the Kingdom of God. They came to experience the restraint of the devils' world of pleasure and play, for the freedom of inner constraint afforded by the Power of the Gospel and the indwelling Holy Spirit.
John Adams one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the second President declared, this Constitution of a Representative Republic is fit only for a Christian people and is totally unfit for any other.
Why? Because it provides too much freedom for the ungodly, a government by the people, for the people and, of the people who are ungodly will unleash that freedom on their flesh, that will ultimately destroy us.
Today as we remember those who have laid down their lives in pursuit of true freedom, let us also sense the deep gravitas of a debt we owe them. Let us honor them by girding on the Light and fight for the Liberty our founders envisioned and they shed their blood for, to NOT perish from the earth.