Five Pillars of the Fourth of July.

By Ron Boehme | July 2, 2025 |

The “Twelve Day War” is over and the world is safer from nukes. The “Big Beautiful Bill” passed the Senate and should help many Americans. And the U.S. Supreme Court shut down “judge shopping” in a landmark case.

Yet, a communist–Zohran Mamdani–could be the Big Apple’s next mayor if New Yorkers don’t wake up. And in the past two weeks, three close friends passed away. I prayed with two just before they entered “paradise.”

What an up-and-down world we live in.

As you celebrate the American Independence this year, please soothe your national and personal concerns with five rock-solid pillars of the Fourth of July.

Five Pillars of the Fourth of July

In God We Trust

There is no understanding July 4th outside of faith in God (the nation’s motto).

Thomas Jefferson, probably one of the least religious of our founding fathers was correct when he said:

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be sure once we have removed the conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

The resounding answer is NO.

The God of the Universe “favored the undertaking” of the Pilgrims, established Christian self-government in many of the early colonies, led the colonial founders to resist and defeat tyranny from Great Britain–and worked many miracles to allow the United States to become a uniquely established nation on Judeo-Christian principles of government.

As opposed to the atheistic and bloody French Revolution, the American Revolution was a revolution in biblical principles that God providentially empowered.

There is no understanding American Independence without faith in God. He is its true Author.

The Bible

The USA, one year short of our 250th birthday, is still a young nation by historical standards. It cannot be understood outside of its founding book–the Bible. It was the most read book in the America colonies. It was published by the government during the War for Independence. American pioneers and frontiersmen were known to carve out new territories with “the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.”

George Washington, the father of our nation, said these poignant words about the Bible in his farewell address to the nation in 1796:

“It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible. Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, our religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that our national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Constitutional scholars and political historians at Georgetown University assembled 15,000 writings from the Founding Era (1760-1805). They counted 3154 citations in these writings, and found that the book most frequently cited in that literature was the Bible.

The writers from the Foundering Era quoted from the Bible 34 percent of the time. Even more interesting was that about three-fourths of all references to the Bible came from reprinted sermons from that era.

America’s freedom had one primary handbook–the Bible. We need to its eternal wisdom in 2025.

The Declaration of Independence

This amazing document–whose signing and ratification we celebrate on July 4th–is the founding charter of the American national experience. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, with help from John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman, it contains these immortal words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Read these vital truths out-loud during your 4th of July gathering. Discuss their contents and meditate upon their meaning.

They are both keys to our past and stepping stones toward our future.

The U.S. Constitution

The US Constitution is the political expression of biblical ideas. It is America’s handbook for Christian self-government that, according to W. Cleon Skousen, created The 5,000 Year Leap in bringing freedom and dignity to human society.

Here are some of our founders on the greatness of the United States Constitution:

George Washington: “The adoption of the Constitution will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it…The Constitution approaches nearer to perfection than any government hitherto instituted among men.”

Benjamin Franklin: “The Constitution was in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omniscient, and beneficent Ruler in whom all inferior spirits ‘live and move and have their being’” (a quote from Acts 17:28).

John Adams – “The Constitution is the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen…I have repeatedly laid myself under the most serious obligations to support the Constitution…What other form of government can so well deserve our esteem and love?”

Benjamin Rush – “the hand of God was employed in this work (ratifying the Constitution) as that God had divided the Red Sea to give passage to the children of Israel or had fulminated the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai.”

James Madison –The happy union of these states is a wonder; their Constitution is a miracle; their example the hope of liberty throughout the world. Woe to the ambition that would meditate the destruction of either!” Happily for America, happily we trust for the whole human race, the founders of the nation pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution that has no parallel in the annals of human society…They formed the design of a great confederacy which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.”

If you don’t have a pocket “Constitution” to study, get one. Ponder it’s simplicity and beauty. And commit to “improve and perpetuate it.”

Freedom

The biblical reference inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, well known to the early American colonists, is Leviticus 25:10:

“Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan” (New Living Translation).

When one submits to God through faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit produces freedom in the human heart which leads to morality, self-government (self-control), and thus limited civil government to manage human affairs.

These biblical engines of success made the United States an exceptional nation: Faith in God, freedom, morality, strong families, hard work, small government, personal security, and prosperity.

The current administration wants a rebirth of liberty in America that makes us a “city on a hill.”

(For a good libertarian take on American Independence, please read John Stossel’s The Secret Sauce That Made America.)

This Independence Day, don’t just sit around eating hotdogs and watching the fireworks. Remember these five pillars: