Life {re}Defined

In my first posting on The Truth Of Religious Liberty, I explained the relationship of religion to the founding of America, as well as the series of events which led to religious liberty in America. Now let's fast forward and discuss the greatest threat to religious liberty in the history of the human race; ironically the threat is being perpertrated by the religious because we are ignorant of the history and mechanics of religious liberty.

First please read this article titled "Churches to defy IRS on sermons" and then my followup below...

Ever since I read the American Consitution and subsequently became an American citizen, I have been flabbergasted as to why church groups and other religious organizations are violating Divine Law by incorporating themselves as 501c3 tax-exempt religious organizations, and with good reason. I am going to give you those reasons and then I am going to ask you to bring this information to the attention of those church group and religious organizations with whom you are affiliated.

Back in the early 1950's Senator Lyndon B. Johnson finally had enough of the church's significant influence on shaping public/government policy and so he set out to silence his nemesis, the church. He did so in 1954 by giving the church a financial advantage by adding them to section 501c3 of the tax code.

This gift from Johnson is -debatedly- the worst curse placed upon the church in America, because it comes with strings attached -dangerous strings. Churches who become 501c3 corporations make themselves entities/persons/children of a civil government, grant jurisdiction of themselves to that government, exist solely at the discretion and pleasure of that government, and are subject to the whims and will of that government; they become creatures of the State instead of God. Since 1954 more and more restrictions are being placed upon what these church groups can say against anything that the government declares is legal or allowed without threatening that precious tax-exempt status.

Church groups are unwittingly selling out to 501c3 because they either don't know better, or because "everyone else is doing it", or upon the advice of attorneys and CPAs, or out of greed or selfish ambition. All of these reasons would cease to exist if churches were to simply take God seriously, become knowledgeable, employ wisdom, and seek reliable Godly advice instead of unreliable secular advice. Instead, our own seminaries and Bible colleges are espousing the 'virtues' if not the 'necessity' of 501c3.

Now here is the kicker: the IRS has always recognized that according to the American constitution, church group are by their very nature, automatically tax-exempt and tax-deductible.

Go the the IRS website via Google and research the following for your self...

1: The First Amendment to the American COnsitution states that Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the FREE exercise thereof.
2: IRS Publication 557 acknowledges and states that churches, interchurch organizations of local units of a church, conventions or associations of churches, or integrated auxiliaries of a church, such as a men's or women's organization, religious school, mission society, and youth groups are automatically tax-exempt and tax-deductible.
3: IRS Code § 508(c)(1)(A) uses the mandatory exception rule from 510c3 for: churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches.
4: IRS Publication 526 also states that a donor can deduct contributions only to qualified organizations and that to become a qualified organization, most organizations OTHER THAN churches and governments must apply to the IRS

In the words of Steve Nestor, IRS Sr. Revenue Officer (ret.):"I am not the only IRS employee who’s wondered why churches go to the government and seek permission to be exempted from a tax they didn’t owe to begin with, and to seek a tax deductible status that they’ve always had anyway. Many of us have marveled at how church leaders want to be regulated and controlled by an agency of government that most Americans have prayed would just get out of their lives. Churches are in an amazingly unique position, but they don’t seem to know or appreciate the implications of what it would mean to be free of government control." ...

Have we learned nothing from the Bible? Have we learned nothing from history?

[to be continued]