A Declaration of Dependence ~ By Greg Laurie

In this outstanding article by Greg Laurie, posted on July 11, 2009 at wnd.com, I read the following:

On the Jefferson Memorial are these words from Thomas Jefferson: "God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." Whenever there is an outbreak of violence somewhere in our nation, people scratch their heads and wonder why. The media interview the so-called experts who offer their opinions. Meanwhile, the Bible offers its own assessment of the problems of man. It doesn't say we are all victims, as some would assert. It doesn't say we all have diseases, as others would tell us. It doesn't say that we are merely dysfunctional. It says that the heart is desperately wicked (see Jeremiah 17:9). We have sin inside of us. That is why we do the things that we do. Because of this, we need to realize that no politician is going to save us. No act of Congress will turn America around again. The answer to our nation's problems is not political; it is spiritual. We need to turn back to God, because although we have forgotten him, he has not forgotten us. A study was done of the world's great civilizations. It looked at various nations that have come into prominence and then disappeared into obscurity. It noted that every nation has an average cycle of 200 years, and each one of the nations went through the following sequence: from spiritual faith to great courage, from great courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back to bondage. We need to get back to God. We need to get back to the God who sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sin. We need to get back to the true and living God who can save America (emphasis my own). [Read the entire column]