Is Jesus in the Declaration of Independence?

Note: The following is taken from "America's Primal Prayer: Is Jesus Christ the God of the Declaration; Did the Founders Dedicate the Nation to Him; Is the Constitution Woven From Christian Fabric; and Why Does it Matter?" an eBook by Michael Nedderman.

By Michael Nedderman

How would it affect politics today if the 36 percent of Christians who don't vote (about 55 million) understood that the founders, especially including Thomas Jefferson (a Trinity-believing Christian in 1776), actually intended the Declaration's four "God references" to be unambiguous references to Jesus Christ, and that their help is desperately needed to restore that knowledge?

And, what if those Christians could also be shown that the founders incorporated the Declaration's revolutionary theory of government ("one nation under [and dedicated to that] God") into the Constitution as the "American Theory of Government" (Americanism) with its integral Christ-based "Chain of Delegated Authority" (Christ creates and endows Man who delegates only "just powers" to his servants in government), which is American's "Liberty Equation" (that our rights are a gift from the Christian God)?

The concluding paragraph of the Declaration contains an unmistakable reference to Jesus Christ inserted into Jefferson's draft as a prayer by the Christians in the Second Continental Congress, the Declaration's actual author. That reference to Jesus clarifies Jefferson's less specific references to "Nature's God" and to the Creator of "all men," as well as Congress' own reference to "divine Providence" in the last sentence, with an explicit identification that Jesus Christ is the God of the Declaration to whom the entire nation, then and now, officially and perpetually prays for guidance and righteousness using his well-known biblical title, "the Supreme Judge of the world":

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America … appealing [praying] to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions …" (Bracketed comment added.)

– Congress' Draft of the Declaration

All of the Declaration's signers, even the few deists among them (actually, there were none), understood the Bible well enough to know that Jesus said of himself:

"… the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father." (John 5:22-23)

Christians understand that Jesus both judges and saves: See Acts 10:42-43, Romans 8:33-34, and James 4:12. For further substantiation of the universally acknowledged understanding among Christians that Jesus is the Supreme Judge of the world, see: John 5:26-27; Matthew 16:27; 25:31-46; Acts 17:30-31; 10:42-43; Romans 2:16; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 2 Timothy 4:1-2, 7-8; Revelation 2:18-19; 19:11-16; 20:11 through 21:8; 22:12-16, etc. The Bible is crystal clear on that point of fundamental Christian doctrine.

While prayer takes many forms, all are appeals to God. In fact, "appeal" is a synonym of "prayer," "supplication" and "invocation." The text emphasized in the quotation from the Declaration above, the "appeal" for guidance or righteousness, is clearly a prayer explicitly directed to "the Supreme Judge of the world" who, for all Christians but certainly for 1776 Christian America when the practice was to address God using a title, is Jesus Christ and no other!

Because Jesus is unquestionably the "Supreme Judge of the world," and because the words "appeal" and "prayer" are synonyms, the quotation above from the Declaration, "… appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions," could reasonably be written as "... praying to Jesus Christ for the rectitude of our intentions." Because the practice of using titles has fallen away so has the recognition of that prayer to Jesus.

It makes sense the mostly Christian signers of the Declaration of Independence intended that document's four "God references" to be unmistakable references that perpetually "confess [Jesus] before men" and therefore, by that act of national prayer, they dedicated the nation to him in that document made sacred by those references – thus, obligating Jesus to confess America "before [his] Father" (Matthew 10:32-33), which is the reason we are so blessed today. Consider the blessing, and carefully note the curse contained in Jesus' promises:

"… everyone who confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my Father. … But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father." (Matthew 10:32-33)

The continuation of that blessing, and the prevention of such a denial, depends upon those who are willing to confess Jesus (you?) by sharing and, thereby, restoring this heretofore lost knowledge of our nation's perpetual confession of Jesus "before men" ("before a candid world" – the Declaration).

Significantly, the American Theory of Government (Americanism), as it is expressed in the symbiotically linked Declaration and Constitution, cannot be changed because that Theory is set in the "historical concrete" of the Declaration and politely sealed with the term "self-evident." With the use of the term "self-evident," the founding generation is saying, even today, that anyone who disagrees is objectively, perpetually and inexcusably wrong about God, as that Christian generation understood the Ultimate Reality from, among other biblical passages, the Apostle Paul's teachings:

"… because that which is known about God is evident within them [self-evident]; for God made it [self] evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen [evident to the self], being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." (Romans 1:18-20; bracketed comments added.)

It is critically important to note that by using the term "self-evident" in the Declaration, the founders only removed the divine nature of the truths which followed from any further political, not theological, debate (i.e., that there is a God who created and endowed "all men" with unalienable rights). That is America's unamendable Liberty Equation.

As my book "America's Primal Prayer" exhaustively documents, the explicit confession of Jesus "before men" in the Declaration is clearly implicit in the Constitution's Chain of Delegated Authority and Liberty Equation. That confession and dedication of the nation to Jesus Christ has a 240-year history of not being the theocracy the hysterical left will falsely allege about the self-evident understanding presented in "America's Primal Prayer."

Michael Nedderman is a California-based writer who can be reached at [email protected].