God Has Property Ownership Of America

This post is the sixth of a nine-part series highlighting a specific topic from each chapter of Dr. Marshall Foster’s The American Covenant – The Untold Story, a book documenting the foundation of America on Biblically based principles. A vital portion of the sixth chapter of this book references property ownership; whoever determines how we use property is lord over us.

Dr. Foster gets straight to the point in the first paragraph of the chapter:

“If we do not settle this issue and settle it soon, what is left of our estates, our families, and our religious liberty will be confiscated by humanist State.”
The American Covenant – The Untold Story

The humanist State sees man as sovereign. They have devotion to man over God believing man has power and control. However, the founders did not establish America on that point of view.

Pilgrims, after fleeing England to Holland over religious differences with their king, then spent eleven years studying Biblical principles regarding self and civil government acknowledging God, not man, as owner and controller of all things.

God owns all.

1 Corinthians 6:20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Those who came and pledged a covenant with God in 1620 on the Mayflower docked off the shore of America wholly believed God is the owner of all property. As per the original definition of property by Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary that property includes, :

The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying, and disposing of a thing; ownership. In the beginning of the world, the Creator gave to man dominion over the earth, over the fish in the sea and the fowls of the air, and over every living thing. This is the foundation of man’s property in the earth and all its productions… The labor of inventing, making, or producing any thing constitutes one of the highest titles to property… It is one of the greatest blessings of civil society that the property of citizens is well secured.
The American Covenant – The Untold Story

The Pilgrims founded this country with the true understanding that God is sovereign over all things…including man…including property. They acknowledged that man, created by God, is to follow the ways of Christ and in doing so labor, invent, and possess such things so that all property gives glory to God.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Not just our founders but others such as philosopher John Locke in 1689 wrote of man being the property of God, not of man:

For Men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker: all the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by His Order and about His business, they are His Property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during His, not one another’s Pleasure.
The American Covenant – The Untold Story

Locke, a man whose opinions are held in high esteem, also wrote of man using his God given body to labor and create his property with his own hands through nature.

Another to write of the importance of property was James Madison the “Father of the Constitution.” He wrote, as Marshall Foster explains, “a succinct and penetrating analysis of property from the Christian point of view.” Madison’s writing in his essay titled “Property” explained, “a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.”

Of greatest importance in the minds of our founders was property ownership. They esteemed this idea because in England and other earlier monarchies property ownership was limited or often dictated.

Thankfully, to God be the glory the Pilgrims gave God all the glory and acknowledged His ownership over all things – and America prospered under those beliefs. May America remember our true history, not veer away, so she may continue to prosper under God’s ownership.