“ Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” as Thomas Payne wrote, yet “we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

America’s Millennial and Z generations appear thus far not to appreciate freedom’s ‘ dearness’. For all they know, freedom is free. They may soon learn the true cost of independence. Human nature does not change. It is today as it was twenty centuries ago. History, therefore, constantly repeats itself.

Using their experience with tyranny to good purpose, the 17th-century Founders established checks and balances to separate powers within a constitutional framework. They were anxious to prevent any branch of the new government from grabbing power away from the others. Biblically literate, they recognized that natural man cannot act contrary to his corrupted nature. Without God as the source of standards for governance, freedom becomes precarious.

Scripture teaches that sin carries to the third and fourth generation [1], unless broken by spiritual regeneration. The Founders placed a premium on Biblical education among youth. They doubtlessly understood that natural man acting against his corrupted nature is just as improbable as water flowing uphill, to paraphrase A.W. Pink.[2]

Secularists deny the fact that America’s Founders established the Bible as the ‘ principal text’ in public education. Fisher Ames, author of the first Amendment and formulator of the Bill of Rights, warned in 1789: “ We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We’re starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. … We’ve become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children containing fables and moral lessons. … We are spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text of our schools.”

Millennial and Z generations have yet to experience the consequences of losing the pitched battles taking place in America’s streets. The assertion that it is nothing more than the political fight between Democrats and Republicans creates a completely false narrative. In reality, the battle for the Soul of America involves two distinctly antagonistic religions: Secularism and Christianity. The former presumes man’s fundamental goodness, whereas the latter maintains that “man is deeply flawed in mind and will, inclined to evil, imperfect in knowledge.”[3]

As long as secularists control the cultural mountains of influence, America will continue her downward spiral. The ongoing profanation of the culture provides unequivocal testimony to that. Millennial and Z generations ultimately will either return the nation to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or face profound consequences. For, as the Hungarian theologian Adolph Saphir noted, “There is no safety in distance from God.”[4]

Unless Christians start bringing Biblical values outside of the church building into the public square, spiritual deflation and collapse is only a matter of time. America is on the verge of learning something that can be learned in no other way: “Notwithstanding all our blowing, the fire will not burn without the Lord.”[5]