Thomas Paine “WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?” Part 3
THE HIDDEN FAITH OF AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS
Thomas Paine (1736-1809)
It is crucial to recognize that the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence were not directly set in motion by the American Founding Fathers but by an Englishman named Thomas Paine. He lived in England and played a significant role in paving the way for the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence through his influential book titled “Common Sense.”
In fact, he is claimed to have been “The Father of the American Revolution” and that his virulent attacks on monarchy in his book was directly aimed at King George III of England.
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
The Marquis La Fayette, a French nobleman and military officer who volunteered to join the Continental Army, led by General George Washington, in the American Revolutionary War said “A free America without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable.”
Ultimately, La Fayette was granted the authority to lead Continental Army forces during the critical siege of Yorktown in 1781, the last significant battle of the Revolutionary War that ensured American independence.
In somewhat prophetic vein Paine wrote in his Common Sense,
“. . . nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously . . . as an open and determined Declaration for independence. . . .”
He even coined the phrase the “United States of America” in the same book. John Adams wrote: ”Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.”
This event might not have become a part of American history if Benjamin Franklin had not invited him to the United States to author a pamphlet or book about national independence. Benjamin Franklin met Thomas Paine in London in 1774 and encouraged him to relocate to America.
Furnished with a letter of introduction from Franklin, Paine embarked on his journey to Philadelphia, arriving in November of the same year. Paine’s renowned pamphlet “Common Sense,” released in 1776, significantly influenced colonists to mobilize against England and champion the cause of American independence.
Could it be that Jack Hibbs intentionally ignores the influence of Thomas Paine on Benjamin Franklin and George Washington to distance them from Paine’s strong criticism of God and Jesus Christ? This is especially significant considering Hibbs’ assertion that both American Presidents revered and adhered to Jesus Christ and his teachings.
These quotes from Thomas Paine debunk Jack Hibbs’s claim that post-1925 historical books are examples of severe revisionism. Hard-fact quotes from the mouths of figures who had a profound influence on George Washington and Benjamin Franklin can hardly be seen as revisionism.
Thomas Paine revealed his true colours on Christianity and the Word of God, the Bible, in these venomous words in his book THE AGE OF REASON BEING AN INVESTIGATION OF TRUE AND FABULOUS THEOLOGY. In the editor’s introduction (“with some results of recent researches”) he states:
“In the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a great English and American heart — Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Capet — ’Kill the king but spare the man.’ Now he pleaded, — ‘‘Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of Mankind! ” (Emphasis added).
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” Editor’s Introduction With Some Results of Recent Researches. p. 1: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
In simpler terms, he cautioned his audience against placing faith in Jesus Christ, to whom he referred as “that idol,” and emphasized not to mistake Him for the Father of Mankind. Deists reject the Trinity and recognize the Father of Humanity, a characteristic shared with Freemasonry, although there is no conclusive proof that Paine was a Freemason. Paine was born into a Quaker family.
The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God [the Father] himself and that He guides man by His inner word or “inner Light”. While Paine criticized the alliance between Church and State, his vision of an ideal Republic was deeply rooted in religion.
He believed in equality founded on the idea of every individual being a son of God the Father (without Christ Jesus). This belief drove his opposition to assertions of divine favouritism by groups like a “Chosen People,” a Priesthood, a Monarch appointed “by the grace of God,” or an Aristocracy. Paine’s concept of “Reason” can be seen as an extension of the Quaker principle of the “inner light.”
In the first chapter of “The Age of Reason, p. 22 ”The Author’s Profession of Faith” Thomas Paine writes:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” (Emphasis added).
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” “The Author’s Profession of Faith.” Chapter 1, p. 22: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
On the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, Thomas Paine wrote on pages 24-25:
“It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.
Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten ; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion.
Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds ; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene ; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand.
The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other.”
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” Chapter II ”Of Missions and Revelations,” pp 24-25: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
On page 186 Paine writes:
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and everything that is dishonorable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches us? — rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith. (Emphasis added).
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” Chapter III, Conclusion, p. 186: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
The illustrious Mr. Paine overlooked the fact that Satan anticipated and replicated the New Testament’s story of Christ’s virgin birth, instead of the New Testament borrowing from mythological figures like the gods of the Pantheon.
In contrast to Thomas Paine, who didn’t have faith in the Old Testament, Satan is an enthusiastic reader and believer in the Old Testament. Hence, he could prefigure and pre-arrange the virgin birth of Christ Jesus through mythological means.
Regarding the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, Thomas Paine wrote:
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noonday, to all Jerusalem at least.
A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world is called upon to believe it.
But it appears that Thomas did not believe in the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas. (Pages 26-27).
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” Chapter III, “Concerning The Character of Jesus Christ and His History,” pp 26-27: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
Thomas Paine may have excelled as a revolutionary figure, yet his approach would never have suited the meticulous role of a judge in a court of law, where decisions often rely on the testimony of only two or three witnesses without it being necessary to be “equal to all, and universal.” Ironically, it is his hilarious interpretation that falls to the ground and not the biblical view of witnesses in a court of law.
He continues his tirade against the Savior in denying that He ever existed:
That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent morality, and the equality of man ; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priesthood.
The accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject and tributary ; and it is not improbable that the Roman government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his doctrine as well as the Jewish priests ; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life.
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” Chapter III, “Concerning The Character of Jesus Christ and His History,” p 27: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
For Thomas Paine, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and all the others who championed Thomas Paine’s teachings, there is no hope, considering there is no hope in hell.
For those who have ears to hear, let them hear what Paul of Tarsus says in 1 Corinthians 1:18,
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. (1 Corinthians 1:18-21).
Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason” is a continuous and harsh attack on Jesus Christ and his cross. In the history of literature, there has never been such a direct and scornful attack on God the Son, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph.
Surprisingly, esteemed American heroes like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, who professed allegiance to King Jesus, according to Jack Hibbs, supported Paine wholeheartedly, despite the severe nature of his virulent attacks on Christianity and Christ Jesus.
Jack Hibbs’s accolades of these traitors of Christ Jesus as true men of God surpass conscious reason. Only demons posing as angels of light can hail these men as true Christians, even to the extent that they encouraged George Washington to read aloud to his troops Paine’s Crises Pamphlet Series at the war fronts.
To end this section on the devilish and macabre shenanigans of Thomas Paine, a couple of more quotes from his book “The Age of Reason” demonstrate how unreasonable and wicked Thomas Paine was.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind ; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
– Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason an Investigation of True and Fabulous Religion,” Chapter VII, “Examination of the Old Testament” p 34: Paris, Printed by Barrois, 1794.
It’s rather ironic that Paine, who abhorred cruelty and vindictiveness in the Bible, was the one who wielded the pen that sparked the American Revolution in 1765. Those who incite with the pen are more vicious than those who wield the sword.
He is credited on his tombstone for inspiring George Washington’s sword of victory with these words attributed to John Adams, the second president of the United States of America: “Without the pen of Paine the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.”
While lambasting the Word of God, he conveniently seemed to have forgotten that his pen slew approximately 25,534 American combatants and around 24,000 British soldiers. The population of the 13 American colonies at the time was about 2.5 million souls.
Yet, Paine had the audacity to set him above “the unrelenting vindictiveness of the Bible” and called it the words of a demon, whilst he had a direct influence on the bloody and cruel American Revolution. HYPOCRITE? Indeed, a hypocrite par excellence.
Please read:
