The Liberty Book: How Freedom Can & Will Be Won

By John Bona, Don Schanzenbach and William J. Federer

News reports bring to our ears daily stories of further intrusion in our lives and increased regulations too many to number. America is losing its heritage of God-given freedoms, which were originally derived from biblical teaching. We sense that our well-sung liberties are being lost to a point of no return.


 

The Liberty Book examines the Christian roots of liberty, idolatry, taxation, foundations for freedom, the right to bear arms, the great freedom documents in history, pro-life and liberty, land rights, social involvement, and more.


 


With God's help freedom can be revived. We must all work to pull America back from the cliffs-edge fall into tyranny. Our nation is again in search of genuine liberty under God. Discover what Bible-based liberty looks like and how it can be won for you and your children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Release date: Sep 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781424552900

John Bona

JOHN BONA is a firm believer in the American free enterprise system, and he calls on his thirty-plus years’ experience as an owner of Park ’N Go to shape his views and spread a message on the importance for Christians to promote religious, economic, and political liberty. In commerce, Mr. Bona has developed property and started new businesses with his sons throughout America, creating at least five hundred new jobs in the process. In his own community of Vero Beach, Florida, he has founded one of America’s most dynamic and largest annual prayer breakfasts, and he teaches the Bible on a frequent basis. John is Executive Producer of documentary films entitled Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure and Unstoppable. Monumental was released nationwide in 2012 to bring attention to America’s proven but forgotten strategy for liberty. He was active in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and produces and hosts a weekly radio broadcast called “The Story of Liberty,” which currently reaches more than one million people over the Internet on podcast, YouTube, and social media. John has been married to Carol for forty years and has four grown children and eight grandchildren.

Book preview

ENDORSEMENTS

Those playing football with our freedoms will never slow down unless we the people begin to understand the principles expounded in the Bible and The Liberty Book. The Liberty Book enlightened my mind and stirred my soul with its powerful vision.

–JIM KELLY, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback

John and Don have a true passion for the story of liberty and won’t stop until the whole world hears how to win it, defend it, and maintain it. I’m very glad they’ve given us this helpful book!

–KIRK CAMERON, actor and cofounder of the Firefly Foundation

More than once lately, I’ve delivered a speech called Losing Liberty, alarmed at the many ways our liberty has been compromised in recent years. The Liberty Book addresses not just the loss of our freedoms, but also gives biblical answers for our nation’s return to liberty. Get this book. Like me, you will hardly be able to put it down.

–PAT BOONE, composer, actor, and author

The Liberty Book imparts a vital understanding regarding God’s path to true liberty. With its constant references and biblical citations, the book is refreshing, setting it among the voices rising above the political agendas offered by too many in the world today.

–ALVEDA KING, evangelist, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.

From where I sit, I see the loss of liberty and its effects on the family every day. The Liberty Book re-engages us all in a conversation about the need to return to liberty—biblically based liberty. We must return to the spiritual roots that made our nation great. The only solutions to our spiritual malaise and shrinking liberty are found in the Holy Bible. If we wish to see a return of liberty for our families, we need only turn back to the Word of God. The Liberty Book engages our minds and spirits with Scripture and sheds light on how true liberty can be regained. This is a must-read for every family.

–TONY PERKINS, President, Family Research Council

As I read The Liberty Book, my heart was filled with hope for our nation’s future. It provides biblical solutions to the astounding loss of liberty we face in America. This book will help us make our way back to being the land of the free. The Liberty Book beautifully lays out what God’s Word teaches about human liberty and how we can make a return to our initial freedoms. This is an irreplaceable resource for every family and every person who truly cares about liberty.

–TWILA PARIS, contemporary Christian music singer and songwriter, pianist, and author

With meticulous research and compelling evidence, The Liberty Book illuminates Christian principles of liberty. Those who study it carefully and follow its principles will be equipped and will win more battles in the ongoing fight for liberty. It is my hope that this publication will awaken a desire for all nations to be blessed with freedom, security, and happiness.

–MAT STAVER, Esq., Founder and Chairman, Liberty Counsel

BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC

Racine, Wisconsin, USA

www.broadstreetpublishing.com

The Liberty Book: How Freedom Can & Will Be Won

Copyright © 2016 John Bona and Don Schanzenbach

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5289-4 (softcover)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5290-0 (e-book)

Research for this book was conducted by Jennifer Featherstone and Ericka Schanzenbach.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture verses marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Any emphases added to Scripture quotations are those of the authors.

Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail].

Cover design by Chris Garborg at www.garborgdesign.com

Interior design and typesetting by Katherine Lloyd at www.theDESKonline.com

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

Foreword

by William J. Federer

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Where Liberty Begins

Chapter 2

When Liberty Is Lost: Taxation

Chapter 3

Building Liberty: The Puritans in America

Chapter 4

Securing Liberty: The Duty to Bear Arms

Chapter 5

Securing Liberty: Civil Disobedience and Righteous Resistance

Chapter 6

Financial Liberty: Money in a Free Society

Chapter 7

Restoring Liberty: Liberty Man Oliver Cromwell

Chapter 8

Taking Dominion: Liberty and Land

Chapter 9

Guarding Liberty: Protecting Life

Chapter 10

Blueprint for Liberty: Learning from the Freest Nation in History

Chapter 11

The Story of Liberty: Its Path and Promise

Appendix A

Must We Always Obey the Government? A Commentary on Romans 13:1–7

Appendix B

When the Love of Money Makes Us Socialists

Notes

About the Authors

About the Cover Art

The National Monument to the Forefathers

FOREWORD

by William J. Federer

The Liberty Book is a much-needed look into the true biblical foundations for liberty. It explores the principles needed for any nation to become free and prosperous. The Liberty Book rediscovers the underlying ideas that inspired liberty so uniquely within Christian nations. John Bona and Don Schanzenbach understand that there is no liberty without the application of biblical law and teaching brought to bear on society. It is rock-bottom building on these biblical precepts that draws nations out of bondage into full-orbed freedom. Nations that are suffocating in the mire of humanist laws and socialist tyranny can recover by turning to the God of the Bible and implementing His perfect law of liberty.

Our nation’s liberty is rare. Five or six thousand years of written records reveal that the most common form of government in world history is monarchy. Beginning with the fall in the garden, selfishness infected human nature. Cain killed Abel, followed by kings attacking kings. From Nimrod and the Tower of Babel through centuries of pharaohs, emperors, caesars, czars, sultans, khans, and communist dictators, power inevitably concentrated into the hands of one person—a king. And all a king is, in a sense, is a glorified gang leader.

Instead of seeking a king, however, some of our founders ultimately looked back to ancient Israel and its law, which contained wisdom every nation could wisely employ. It took nine states to ratify the United States Constitution. After eight had, New Hampshire was in line to be the ninth. It stalled at its ratifying convention until Harvard President Samuel Langdon gave an address on June 5, 1788, titled The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States. After this address, New Hampshire’s delegates voted to ratify the US Constitution.

Claude Fleury wrote: The Israelites were perfectly free. They enjoyed the liberty cherished by Greece and Rome. Such was the purpose of God.¹ Furthermore, E. C. Wines wrote: Another of those great ideas, which constituted the basis of the Hebrew state, was liberty. … The Hebrew people enjoyed as great a degree of personal liberty as can ever be combined with an efficient and stable government.²

Ancient Israel’s unique system was dependent upon the Levites and priests teaching the law. When they neglected teaching God’s law, every man did that which was right in his own eyes³, immorality and domestic chaos resulted, and the people begged for a king to restore order. The prophet Samuel cried, and the Lord told him, They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.⁴ Israel got King Saul, who shortly thereafter killed most of the priests. Saul wanted the king to be the final word on all things, while the priests represented God’s word and God’s law.

Harvard President Samuel Langdon stated in his address Government Corrupted by Vice, dated May 31, 1775: The only form of government which had a proper claim to a divine establishment, was so far from including the idea of a king, that it was a high crime for Israel to ask to be in this respect like other nations; and when they were thus gratified, it was rather as a just punishment. This is a warning to every nation that if the consciousness of God is removed and people yield to their unrestrained selfish passions and lusts, there will be domestic chaos, mob violence, smashing of windows, and looting. In this crisis, people will beg for a strong leader to restore order, likely one who will send militarized police down the street, going house to house collecting guns. Yes, order will be restored, but when the dust settles, the country will have given up ruling itself and will be ruled by a king. Could this nation be just one national crisis away from being fundamentally transformed from a republic into a dictatorship?

For our republic to last, we must learn from ancient Israel and return to the God of the Bible. I wholeheartedly encourage you to read The Liberty Book: How Freedom Can & Will Be Won, by John Bona and Don Schanzenbach. You will be challenged and inspired to make this country great again!

–William J. Federer

Author of twenty books, including America’s God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations

PREFACE

A great battle is raging in the world today. All seems serene while looking out our front windows, but that apparent peace is deceptive. The enemies of liberty are tirelessly working to overthrow long-standing laws that are protecting our freedoms. Many assume their freedom is a privilege, not a right, and have never considered the question in these terms before. Most people believe liberty is a gift from the civil government and may be rightly controlled by that authority, and many civil government officials are happy to agree with this, treating citizens’ liberty as fungible.

Liberty is often traded for imaginary security. Most elected representatives are slow to help us against accumulating abuses or actively opposing reform. They essentially agree that liberty comes from government and may be eliminated by their own authority. The very people appointed to protect our freedom violate our trust and the covenant that binds us. When those who hold office no longer serve but oppress, they contend against Scripture and our founding documents.

Americans face an unprecedented attack on our hard-won liberties. We see it in the news every week: federal, state, and city laws continuously contradict and erode our First Amendment right to free speech. Licensing, permitting, or banning of firearms has become so common that we hardly remember or even consider the God-given liberties guaranteed in our founding documents (in particular, the Second Amendment). Laws against searches of vehicles at random police stops, taxation abuses, and more convince us that liberty is becoming utterly lost in our nation.

For over a decade now, under civil forfeiture laws, government agents permanently seize supposedly suspicious private property and then rarely go to trial. Authorities assume the guilt of the accused without trial and punish the criminal citizen without the burden of proof. Applying biblical principles in the public square would cure this sinister ill. Because we have abandoned God’s law as a system of moral right, we now suffer the great indignities of a sin-fed, humanist system of injustice. Returning to a biblical morality constitutes the only true means to restore liberty in our land.

Many Christians in our day exude a sense of hopelessness, persuading themselves that everything must get worse until the Antichrist appears and defeats the final remnant of the church. Perhaps you have succumbed to this pessimism yourself. But, as Christians, we need not be so downhearted. When we view history through a biblical lens, we look forward with more hopeful eyes. We confidently insist that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters fill the sea.¹ And Jesus said that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, for the conquering church takes the attack to hell, not the other way around.²

We are reminded that someday we will not need to say to our neighbor, Know the Lord, for every person will know Him.³ We take great confidence that the government rests on Jesus’ shoulders,⁴ which means that God assures our ultimate victory in Christ.⁵ According to the clear promise of Scripture, we believe in a victorious church in the last days, expecting unbounded progress of the kingdom and its advancement. History is moving toward greater freedom, not toward tyranny and defeat.

THE FREEST NATION ON EARTH

Born in the early 1950s, we both grew up in a different era. The American work ethic brought prosperity to those who were willing to work, and their productivity supported an even stronger economy. It is no coincidence that the greatest amount of economic prosperity in history has existed where Christianity has had the most prominent influence. Biblical ethics produce individual character toward what we know as self-government.

Once a nearly unquestioned acceptance, Americans have perceived themselves as the freest nation on earth. Not only that, but we have viewed ourselves as the protectors of liberty across the world. No other modern nation has left its people as unfettered as America. We were the country that fought a great war between the states, which freed the Southern slaves. Twice we rescued Europe from the ruin of world wars. The power of the United States’ military predominantly beat back the Communists in Korea. It was our unmatched might that executed the only real-world check on communist Soviet expansionism. And we stood stalwart against the Russians in a decades-long Cold War, risking what politicians called mutually assured destruction.

At home, the requirement to read the accused the Miranda warning marked us as a nation that extended its concern over unjust incarceration to an unheard-of precedent. However, we may view that particular practice, the Miranda prescription derived from our conviction that, at least at some level, we must protect the liberty of everyone, even a manifestly criminal class. In 1966, the same year Miranda debuted, Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act, which marks a turn in American self-perception.

Both laws, while protecting individual liberties, were reactions to an unsettling conviction that our vaunted freedoms were quickly evaporating. Our trust in the central government to defend Americans from enslaving forces began to shrink. The emergence of the Me Generation illustrated on nightly television a wholesale collapse of trust in the American system. Widespread riots in the streets marked our transition from John Winthrop’s city on the hill to the city dominated from the Hill in Washington, DC.

A CITY ON THE HILL

When Puritan John Winthrop preached about the city on a hill to the future Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1630, he connected that thought to the Articles of our Covenant. He noticeably referred to the common consent in early America that our civil government was covenanted with God and each other for blessing or cursing. Blessing and liberty, and cursing and slavery, are the rewards of God that are bestowed on nations, which comes primarily from Deuteronomy 28. The Liberty Bell enshrines the expectation of liberty by Americans with a quote from Leviticus 25:10: Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. Cast in 1752, the Liberty Bell captured the still living idea that liberty echoes in history only as a blessing that comes from God. It was not engraved with a quote from a founding father; it was lettered with a phrase from Leviticus, marking the bell as a Christian symbol. Expressing the heart of a nation, the Liberty Bell yet lingers as an immutable witness to our former philosophical estate.

The God-fearing philosophical estate that began in ancient Israel acquired its evangelical zeal at the ascension of Christ. Having been told to disciple the nations, it took the early church about four hundred years to push the outward power of the Roman Empire from its throne of tyranny. Overcoming the ancient dominion and beginning to raise the foundations of Christendom in its place required four centuries, and for institutional liberty to become established required another twelve hundred years.

From that inception, we have abandoned both the theological foundations and the understanding of the heart that birthed our people in moral liberty in only ten generations. We have allowed our elected officials to deny and overthrow the ancient covenant of the people and God, thus inheriting a dethroned liberty. Yet we see a grand reawakening. In a world less hostile than that of the apostles and yet still in desperate need of reconstruction, ours is the time and we are the people to rebuild. Our labors are not in vain. The coming rebirth of Christendom’s liberties will decidedly and certainly arrive. This we seek in unflinching expectation.

FORWARDING THE ETERNAL CAUSE OF LIBERTY

We purpose in this book not only to inform but to encourage. We have chosen a variety of topics surrounding the issues of liberty. Some are short teachings that make explicit the nature of the battle, while others are stories told to inspire courage and wisdom to live as if victory is already ours. Our approach here seeks to examine Christian liberty as a faceted gem, and each direction of inquiry discovers beauties previously unrealized.

The ideas found in these pages are old. We have merely assembled, applied, and pressed forward the history of the eternal cause of Christian liberty. Jesus announced, He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord,⁶ as His first public message in Nazareth. This encapsulated the work the Savior came to do—He arrived intending to set at liberty the captives. We, the human race, were enslaved to sin and hell, but Jesus came to free us from the infernal chains of eternal damnation first and foremost. But Jesus also came to free us from the moral, cultural, mental, emotional, and legal fetters riveting generations in hopeless servitude.

The gospel of Christ has, over the centuries, built a civilization that has freed more people in more ways than anything that came before it. It is superior to any philosophy that may yet arise because biblical civilization is based on everlasting truth. No other philosophy or system may rightfully make that claim. Christianity will always lead captives toward greater freedom—whether that is political, philosophical, or religious freedom—than any other view of civilization. In His transcendent and holy wisdom, only God through His provision of biblical faith saves or defeats the enemies of liberty, and only He truly sets the enslaved free.

INTRODUCTION

If you are reading this book, then you are demonstrating that you care about liberty. It could be that you served in the military, or for other personal reasons you have been thinking about liberty as of late; or maybe you have just grown increasingly concerned about the government’s chipping away of our personal freedoms. While there are many books cataloging government abuses, most of them do not dig to the root of the problem. By that we mean there are not many discussing the biblical, spiritual, and moral foundations for liberty—what they are and how to return to them. This book takes us on a different path to discover the true nature of some of our most sacred ideas.

There are endless opinions about the importance of liberty today; there are plenty of discussions about fearing the loss of our freedoms. We know a guy who has a room filled with rifles—you know, just in case. Others are setting up their hideaway in a foreign nation as insurance against a tyrannical government that is growing too aggressive. This book, however, is not advocating that. It is not a call to arms; rather, it is a call to begin thinking and acting in the ways God has instructed with respect to our freedoms. This is a distinctively Christian look at what liberty is and how we can pursue it.

We are asserting that liberty is only derived from God at its foundation, and that it is only through Christ that true liberty is increasingly achievable—it doesn’t come from the government, nor in the final end, can it be taken away by the government. It is the Christian religion that brings liberty to the world, thus demonstrating what biblically based liberty looks like. Our purpose is to assist the restoration of liberty to our once free nation.

DEFINING GOD-GIVEN LIBERTY

What do we mean when we use the term liberty? There is plenty of talk about how we can be free, or how we might regain our freedom given our current governance today. We have engaged with the libertarian crowd on this core question, but libertarians cannot answer it biblically, nor do they try. Furthermore, what is sad is that most Christians cannot give an answer that is rooted in biblical thought; many have never even considered the question before. Many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, desire liberty, but few can tell us what it actually is.

Christian writers have weighed in on the topic of liberty for centuries. One such writer says, Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts—the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.¹ And Martin Luther, the famous Reformer, said, One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ.² Even though quotations like these abound, there is almost nobody who is telling us what Christian liberty is, at least not precisely.

We are offering our definition of liberty here, which we are confident is biblically sound. We define biblical liberty as the freedom to obey God in everything, with no coercion into disobedience for any reason whatsoever. Not only that, but true freedom allows us to do all the good we can under God’s law. One of the main ideas when discussing liberty from a biblical perspective is whether or not anyone is trying to keep us from obeying the laws of God. Is the government asking us to do something that is contrary to the morals and standards God has given us in His Word? If so, then our God-given liberty is being compromised.

For example, the reigning civil authorities sought to prevent Peter and John from preaching the gospel, thereby attempting to restrict their freedom in Christ. The authorities said, But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.³ Then they called in Peter and John and commanded them not to teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied: Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.⁴ They were not going to be kept from obedience to God by any rules set up by the civil authorities. No civil government could rightly keep them from doing the things God had commanded them to do. They were truly at liberty.

Likewise, when the friends of Daniel were told that they must worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden idol, they replied that their God would deliver them, but even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.⁵ When these righteous men were commanded to disobey God, they simply refused. And God protected them from the king’s punishment. But even if He had not protected them from the wrath of the