America is a test. It has been from the beginning. We have our theory, and we are conducting our experiment: Can government of the people, by the people and for the people long endure?

About 249 years ago, we declared the results of the previous experiment. That effort had produced the greatest empire in world history—and it was tyrannical and unjust. With this result freshly in mind and the summaries of previous such experiments near at hand, we instituted new government, laying its foundation and organizing its powers in such form as to us seemed most likely to effect our safety and happiness, most likely to produce a more perfect union, justice, tranquility, defense, welfare, and the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

“Seemed,” “to us” and “most likely” acknowledge the inescapable probability of failure, but we proceeded. The experiment would have aborted immediately—yet it received repeated injections of miracles clearly calculated to prolong its endurance. To the miracles of North American geography and resources was added the inexplicable nexus of great men of intellect and character existing in the same place at the same time with the same cause. To these were added the battle miracles at Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, Yorktown, New Orleans, Gettysburg, Midway, Normandy; miracles of population; miracles of economics, industry and invention; miracles affecting the armaments of the enemy and the aim of the assassin.

That this nation and its current president endure is due entirely to such miracles. The preceding leaders had intentionally choked almost out of existence its miraculous history and its unprecedented power and wealth. The experiment almost ended in infamy. Yet the deception, persecution, prosecution, oppression, extortion, arrest and attempted murder was overpowered, again, by miracles, and this man returned to power.

Immediately he took action: at the border, in schools, in the military, in the economy, vis-à-vis China, Russia, Europe, Israel, Iran, Syria and beyond. His rhetoric is putting issues thought “untouchable” into play. He has wielded power as to him seems most likely to effect our safety and happiness.

The presidency has been infused with vigor and force—but the miracles are dissipating. Ugly underlying realities are coming into view, not only to agents viewing top secret documents but to anyone watching the president talk about receiving a 747 as a gift. The nation devoted to human freedom is making deals with regimes devoted to human subjugation. Deals designed to enrich Americans are empowering anti-American forces. The city on a hill is not only marred from attacks by terrorists but polluted by tolerance for and cooperation with terrorists.

All the advantages of time, knowledge, location, climate, agriculture, science, protection and miracles have led us to this time and place. It’s time to recognize the truth.

Americans should acknowledge what our experiment has become, what we have become. As another of our presidents said in 1863: “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”

Upon the millenniums of experiments in human government, we have added our own. We have sought life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and found that even government of the people, by the people and for the people, aided by unbroken mercy and miracles, is destructive of these ends. Even in the most advantageous and miraculous possible instance, we the people have utterly failed to establish a government for the people.

The outcome of the experiment, and of all experiments in human governance, proves a truth we must accept: Human beings lack the capacity to govern human beings.

The first experiment in human governance occurred when our first parents took that prerogative out of their Creator’s hands and chose self-government, in such form as to them seemed most likely to effect their safety and happiness. They observed, hypothesized and experimented. That started the course of human events, and not even the best days of the best experiment in human government reversed that error.

Only the Creator, nature’s God, divine Providence, the Supreme Judge of the world, can govern human beings. Only God can rule us.

Those who adopt such a declaration of dependence hold these truths to be self-evident that we are, and of right ought to be, the subjects of our Creator, the children of our Father, the dependents of His miraculous providence. We acknowledge the laws of nature and of nature’s God and the truth that repentance toward God is the only way for a nation to endure, the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

We see the final results of the American experiment, the Eden experiment, and every cohort in between. We can see what America’s founders aspired to see but could not: The last best hope of mankind is the Kingdom of God. Fondly do we hope. Fervently do we pray.