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Hello!

As promised, here is the next installment of what happens in Secondary Assembly; The Pledge to the Christian Flag.

Once we have prayed corporately to open our day, we do the Pledge to the American Flag. And then we follow that up with the Pledge to the Christian Flag. See below!

I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag
And to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands;
One Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again
With Life and Liberty to all who believe.

Again, why do we pledge to the American flag first? Because we live here. This is our host country. Yes, we likely have legal citizenship in the United States, but if we are Christians, we also have citizenship in Heaven. However, the laws of our land must be followed unless they (1) Demand us to DO SOMETHING that is prohibited by the Bible, or (2) Demand us to NOT DO SOMETHING that is required by the Bible.

When I was a missionary in the Republic of Panama, we actually sang the Panamanian national anthem prior to every chapel service on a weekly basis. And it made sense for us to do so; that country was graciously hosting us as Christian missionaries to an English-speaking Christian school and so we sang that national anthem…every week.

So pledging allegiance to a flag…We covered that issue in the previous post. The Christian flag is an inanimate object and so it cannot give directives for us to be allegiant to, and as such this is a literary device meaning we pledge our allegiance to what it means to be Christian.

The following line clarifies it… “to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands.” Yes, the flag stands for the kingdom of Heaven, the true citizenship of Christians, and the Savior is of course Jesus Christ.

The following line then clarifies that there is ONLY “One Savior.” That one savior is the Lord, Jesus Christ, who is God. And then we get the presentation of the Gospel that the one savior, Jesus was “crucified” and “risen” and that He also is “coming again”.

Finally, this pledge ends with the results of His “coming again” which is with “Life and Liberty to all who believe.”

Yes, Christianity is exclusive…there is ONLY one God, one Savior, one Lord…Jesus Christ. And yet, Christianity is inclusive in that Life and Liberty and Salvation are available “to all who believe.”

So each morning we participate in a repeating of the Gospel and our declaration to God, the only God, by our Pledge to the Christian Flag.

Thanks so much for reading! Next, we’ll cover the Pledge to the Bible!

Soli Deo Gloria