Who Cracked the Liberty Bell?

Joseph Herrin (06-30-2012)

The Liberty Bell

As the readers of this blog post are aware, the writings found here frequently focus on parables. A parable is a story, fictional or true, where the details and actions contain a hidden message. Yahweh is quite fond of speaking through parables. From the opening pages of Genesis to the last words of Revelation, the Holy Spirit has communicated great mysteries through the form of parables. Parables were chosen in order that understanding might be imparted selectively. Yahshua the Messiah spoke in parables, and He explained the reason for it in the following words.

Mark 4:10-12
But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable. And He said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that 'Seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand...’”

“To you,” the disciples of Christ, “it has been given to know” mysteries. Others are kept in darkness. Yahweh has seen fit to show forth many things regarding the hour we now live in through the means of parables. Some of the parables appear so obvious that it is hard to imagine that people cannot perceive that there is a divine hand guiding, and a heavenly message being set forth. For example, I have often cited the fact that Miss USA fell on stage in two consecutive years at the Miss Universe Pageant. At this pageant each contestant represented a nation. While all the other national representatives kept their feet, Miss USA took a tumble.

Miss USA 2007/2008

An obvious interpretation of this event is that America is about to fall. The nation has arrived at the evening of her run as a constitutional democracy, with liberty and freedom about to fall to the ground. Even so, both of these young women, Rachel Smith and Crystle Stewart, fell during the Evening Gown portion of the competition. The night is falling on this nation. Her collapse is at hand.

It helps to have a familiarity with Biblical parables when one sets out to understand the veiled meaning of an event. I have often cited the example of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams to understand why Miss USA fell two years in a row. Pharaoh also was given parallel dreams. They occurred in pairs, and Joseph provided the reason for this.

Genesis 41:32
“Now as for the repeating of the dream to Pharaoh twice, it means that the matter is determined by God, and God will quickly bring it about.”

A more recent example of a very evident parable was observed when Christchurch, New Zealand experienced devastating earthquakes.

The details of the shaking of Christchurch were such that a very clear message came forth. Hidden fault lines under Christchurch were exposed. Churches that had appeared very solid crumbled. One detail that was played out over and over again was that the bell towers of the churches crumbled. I devoted one blog to the message contained in this occurrence.

http://parablesblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/church-bells-all-were-broken.html

Following is an excerpt from that article:

While meditating upon this event, I was reminded of the song American Pie, which the Father has been speaking much through recently. In this song there is mention of the church bells all being broken.

American Pie
Don McLean (1971)

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before,
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.

And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.

This song had some very poignant prophetic references from its very first release. The record label it was released on contained the words “Yahweh Tunes,” and “Mayday Music.”

Close-up of Record Label

This song was sung at the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama. It is certainly true that the church bells are all broken in America at this very hour. There is no more a true gospel message being sounded out across the nation. There is no declaration of man’s moral depravity, of his slavery to sin, and the death that results. Christ is no longer set forth as Yahweh’s provision to deliver mankind from sin and death. If the churches are sounding forth any message at all, it is likely to have a false ring to it. A message of prosperity, ease and comfort has replaced the clarion call to take up the cross and follow in the footsteps of the Son of God. Confusion reigns as ministers assure their church members that they will be raptured out of this world before days of great tribulation begin.

I Corinthians 14:7-8
If even inanimate musical instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone listening know or understand what is played? And if the war bugle gives an uncertain (indistinct) call, who will prepare for battle?
[Amplified Bible]

Yahweh’s message in Christchurch was clear and distinct. The church has built upon land that is undermined with great faults. She has not paid attention to the foundational matters. She has been proclaiming a message that is discordant in the ears of heaven. Truth has been replaced with falsehood, and the pure notes calling men and women to righteous and holy lives have been polluted with a message of tolerance and acceptance of even those transgressions God defines as abominations. Yahweh will shake the church and bring what she has built crashing down to the ground. He will expose her faults. What rises in place of the proud structures that once stood will be much more humble. The true flock is a little flock, and Yahweh will make a distinction among those who are His, and those who are not.

In this post I want to examine a parable found in another bell of great renown. The story of this bell contains a profound parable, and its message is relevant to the hour we live in. The Liberty Bell has become a symbol of America as a constitutional nation. The Liberty Bell was hung in Independence Hall where the American Constitution was voted on and adopted. For many years The Liberty Bell was displayed inside Constitution Hall. The Liberty Bell is readily identified by a prominent crack that is quite extensive.

Liberty Bell Crack

To understand the parable contained in this symbol of America one needs to know a little of the history of this bell. Keep in mind that Philadelphia was the Capital of the nascent nation until Washington D.C. was constructed.

In 1751, with a bell tower being built in the Pennsylvania State House, civic authorities sought a bell of better quality, which could be heard at a further distance in the rapidly expanding city. Isaac Norris, speaker of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, gave orders to the colony's London agent, Robert Charles, to obtain a "good Bell of about two thousands pound weight."
                           
We hope and rely on thy care and assistance in this affair and that thou wilt procure and forward it by the first good oppo as our workmen inform us it will be much less trouble to hang the Bell before their Scaffolds are struck from the Building where we intend to place it which will not be done 'till the end of next Summer or beginning of the Fall. Let the bell be cast by the best workmen & examined carefully before it is Shipped with the following words well shaped around it vizt. By Order of the Assembly of the Province  [sic] of Pensylvania [sic] for the State house in the City of Philada 1752 and Underneath Proclaim Liberty thro' all the Land to all the Inhabitants thereof.-Levit. XXV. 10...


It arrived in Philadelphia in August 1752. Norris wrote to Charles that the bell was in good order, but they had not yet sounded it, as they were building a clock for the State House's tower. The bell was mounted on a stand to test the sound, and at the first strike of the clapper, the bell's rim cracked...


Philadelphia authorities tried to return it by ship, but the master of the vessel which had brought it was unable to take it on board.


Two local founders, John Pass and John Stow, offered to recast the bell. Though they were inexperienced in bell casting, Pass had headed the Mount Holly Iron Foundry in neighboring New Jersey and came from Malta, which had a tradition of bell casting. Stow, on the other hand, was only four years out of his apprenticeship as a brass founder. At Stow's foundry on Second Street, the bell was broken into small pieces, melted down, and cast into a new bell. The two founders decided that the metal was too brittle, and augmented the bell metal by about ten percent, using copper. The bell was ready in March 1753, and Norris reported that the lettering (which included the founders' names and the year) was even clearer on the new bell than on the old.


City officials scheduled a public celebration with free food and drink for the testing of the recast bell. When the bell was struck, it did not break, but the sound produced was described by one hearer as like two coal scuttles being banged together. Mocked by the crowd, Pass and Stow hastily took the bell away and again recast it. When the fruit of the two founders' renewed efforts was brought forth in June 1753, the sound was deemed satisfactory, though Norris indicated that he did not personally like it. The bell was hung in the steeple of the State House the same month...


It is uncertain how the bell came to be cracked; the damage occurred sometime between 1817 and 1846. The bell is mentioned in a number of newspaper articles during that time; no mention of a crack can be found until 1846. In fact, in 1837, the bell was depicted in an anti-slavery publication—uncracked. In February 1846 Public Ledger reported that the bell had been rung on February 23, 1846 in celebration of Washington's Birthday (as February 22 fell on a Sunday, the celebration occurred the next day), and also reported that the bell had long been cracked, but had been "put in order" by having the sides of the crack filed. The paper reported that around noon, it was discovered that the ringing had caused the crack to be greatly extended, and that "the old Independence Bell...now hangs in the great city steeple irreparably cracked and forever dumb."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberty_Bell]

The remarkable history of this bell, serving as it does as a great symbol of American liberty, and replete with highly unusual events, causes me to suspect a divine hand in sending forth a message as God is wont to do. The founders of America set forth to create a government where “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were guaranteed (albeit, not to all). The framer’s of the Constitution understood that man was easily corrupted, and they sought to form a government that would resist this tendency toward corruption. One writer has summed up the key points as follows:

The Distinctiveness of the American Experiment as Laid Down by the Founding Fathers:

●    It acknowledged that individual rights are derived from a Creator.
●    It was based on enduring principles compatible with "the laws of nature and of nature's God."
●    It recognized human imperfection and that a tendency to abuse power is ever present in the human heart.
●    It restrained those in power through a written Constitution which carefully divided, balanced, and separated the powers of government and then intricately knitted them back together again through a system of checks and balances.
●    It left all powers with the people, except those which, by their consent, the people delegated to government - and then made provision for their withdrawing that power, if it was abused.
[Source: http://www.nccs.net/articles/ril71.html]

Like The Liberty Bell, the American form of government was flawed from the start. It was assumed that wise men, by discerning “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” could codify these laws into such a form that an utopian society could be created. Men could then live life, enjoy liberty, and pursue happiness without the interference of tyrannical leaders or the imposition of unjust laws. What the founding father’s did not perceive was the depths to which mankind is corrupt. These were not Christian men who professed themselves as disciples of the Son of God. These men were Deists, Unitarians, and many were Freemasons. Their beliefs were largely drawn from the teachings of those men they considered sages from the Enlightenment. This subject is described more fully in the writing titled The Luciferian Foundation of America.

http://parablesblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/luciferian-foundation-of-america.html

The founding fathers of America considered themselves to be enlightened ones. To live a life focused upon the pursuit of self-fulfillment, and personal happiness, was the epitome of what they imagined. Certainly, the founding father’s of America did not share Yahweh’s view of man’s sinful condition.

Romans 3:9-18
Both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one." "Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit"; "The poison of asps is under their lips"; "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

The apostle Paul, speaking of the very days in which the American nation has existed, wrote the following:

II Timothy 3:1-5
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

What type of society did the founding father’s envision evolving in a nation that is given unprecedented liberty to pursue the desires of men’s hearts? Would it be Utopia, a New Atlantis; a land of peace, prosperity, and progress in brotherly love? One need look no further than the city in which the Constitution was drafted. Philadelphia means “City of Brotherly Love.” Philadelphia is the fifth most populous metropolitan area in the United States.

Far from being an utopian city of clean streets, prosperous citizens, virtue, and brotherly love, Philadelphia is corrupt and ready to explode into anarchy. The Neighborhood Scout website lists crime statistics for the city of Philadelphia, population 1,526,006. In one year there were reported to the police 18,544 violent crimes, including 307 murders and 945 rapes. There were an additional 57,794 property crimes which included 10,796 burglaries and 7,070 automobile thefts. On a ranking of 1-100, where 100 represents the safest cities to live in, Philadelphia received a rank of 9.

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/pa/philadelphia/crime/

Such statistics hardly give understanding of the depravity of mankind witnessed in this city. Last year the Tacony Dungeon kidnapping case was revealed to the nation. Three adults were holding numerous men and women with mental and physical disabilities handcuffed and chained in a basement, some of them for years, as they collected their social security and other government benefits. Some of the captives had been horribly abused, causing the mayor and police chief to say that even a Federal prison would be too nice a place to send the offenders.

Lest some suggest this is extreme, and that it is not representative of America as a nation, let them consider that in the past forty years Americans have murdered more than 50 million babies. All of this has been done in the pursuit of personal happiness, a desire to have unrestrained sexual pleasure without responsibility or consequence.

On May 6, 1991 David Wilkerson posted a writing titled Is God Overlooking the Sins of America? Following is a portion of that writing:

I want to tell you about a certain society - one that cast God aside and consequently sunk into a pit of gross darkness. Despising the Light, this society became a magnet for every kind of evil spirit. Law and order collapsed; every man was a law unto himself. The entire society was abandoned to the devil, and no moral force remained to hinder its headlong rush into hell.


There was no honor, decency or self-respect left among them, no reverence for life whatsoever. Justice and kindness faded away, and the people were overcome with lust and licentiousness. They sneered at virtue, their consciences seared and callused. They scoffed at the fear of God and mocked righteousness.


They became totally inhospitable, possessing the heart and indifference of a beast. They had no pity for the poor. All spiritual desire was extinguished, and gross materialism and fleshly lusts became their gods. The people became totally shockproof, so that the vilest, bloodiest crimes were accepted as normal behavior.


I am actually describing two societies here: Sodom and America. We know of Sodom's terrible end - and Scripture shows us that America is fast becoming another Sodom!


Homosexual Sodomites came out of their closet and became activists, casting a demonic spell over a whole generation of men and boys. They grew politically powerful, controlling everything. Sodom became the world's gay capital, a society so vile, wicked and crazed with violence that its sins thundered throughout the heavens, filling God's holy environment with a hellish cry...


But, you say, this can't happen to us - because Sodom was born heathen and lived and died heathen. America was born Christian - and still remains Christian.


Well, let me tell you about another degenerate society - one born of God, of the seed of Abraham, a people once entrusted with the covenants and promises of Jehovah God. This story, found in Judges 19, is about the tribe of Benjamin and a little town called Gibeah.


A Levite came to Gibeah to take home his runaway concubine. The girl's father found the Levite camping on the streets late at night, and he begged him to come to his house because the streets were not safe.


Unsafe streets in a small town? This was a dwelling of Benjamites, children of once-valiant soldiers of the Lord who had marched under Jehovah's banner. This was once a godly place where children frolicked in the streets, and the praises of God were constantly on the lips of its citizens.


But now another spirit had arisen - a spirit from hell that had taken control. Gibeah had become the homosexual capital of the Benjamites, a hotbed of perverted lust. And now a foreboding spirit of violence hung over the town.


The children were no longer safe on the streets. God's name was no longer praised, but cursed. This society, born in the heart of God and carried for so long in His loving arms, was now ruled by murderous Sodomites. And - as it happened in Sodom - a homosexual spirit had risen up to trample what was holy...

David Wilkerson goes on to describe the events I wrote about in the previous blog I posted. The Benjamite’s sins had risen to heaven and God judged them. Nearly the entire tribe was wiped out, with only 600 men surviving and fleeing to the Rock of Rimmon. Surely, the Spirit is testifying through the Rockrimmon fire in Colorado that a similar judgment is at hand for this nation.

http://www.parablesblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/rockrimmon-message-from-colorado-fires.html

David Wilkerson continues:

A Dallas father recently traded his four-year-old son for a $40 hit of crack. When the mother rescued her boy the next day, the father became angry and violent. Imagine - a boy's life for a single fix! Yet the father, now facing prison, showed no regrets.


In March, a Brooklyn woman and her teenage daughter kidnapped and murdered 19 year-old Raquel Montano so they could steal her three-year-old baby. The mother-and-daughter team bludgeoned Raquel, suffocated her, put her in a pushcart, left it at a gas station and set her body on fire.


Picture that horrible scene - then witness the mother and daughter as they were indicted: nothing but hardness, coldness, indifference.


America has become sick! I can't believe that God is not angry, that He is overlooking it all! I received a note recently from a well-known evangelist, saying, "Don't speak against America. Her best days are ahead. God is pleased!" Beloved, that is exactly what the Bible says the false prophets will claim in the last days!


Almost daily, we hear of bloody, senseless mutilations across the nation. New York City does not even shed a tear when the Daily News reports:


"Baby found in plastic bag near Fulton Street in garbage can..."


"19-year-old socialite discarded, wrapped in rug - lying on top of garbage pile outside wealthy East Side apartment house..."


"Police discover parts of four-year-old girl stuffed in suitcase, left in hallway of Bronx apartment house, set on fire..."


How can we parade proudly about our victory at war when our public schools are turning into disgraceful sex-abuse centers? The New York Post reported on March 20: "School Sex Shocker! Probe finds shocking sex abuse in schools. Millions victimized nationwide. One in five girls abused before age 16..."


Teachers, custodians, superintendents, security guards - every level is involved in abusing our children. An executive assistant of a Bronx school board lured a thirteen-year-old boy to his apartment to watch porno movies and have sex. The American Association of School Administrators was shocked to find out that one in seven boys have been abused by school personnel.


Today we see the sad, frightened faces of millions of innocent children who have been raped by men, forced into incest by their own parents, and seduced by teachers, preachers and priests. You can't tell me God is smiling on America! You can't say our holy, just Lord will sit by as millions more of our children are plundered, raped and destroyed.


Has America reached the flash point of God's judgment? Are we already like all past societies that permitted the rise of a dominant, defiant homosexual spirit? I wonder if angels are already walking our streets, aghast at the speed at which we're racing toward hell...


Beloved, God's judgment is already in motion. You can read it in the headlines. Consider the following:


On February 14, USA Today reported two big stories on the same page. The first read: "San Francisco Takes Steps Towards Homosexual Matrimony." On Valentine's Day, dozens of gay couples walked arm-in-arm down the steps of City Hall to be legally recognized as a union. One lesbian said, "At last, the world will know how much we love each other."


The other story read: "California Cursed By Drought: Water rationing coming to California... five straight years of drought... reservoirs bone dry..." The drought threatened the state's entire agricultural economy. Governor Pete Wilson stated, "This stubborn drought is a biblical curse." Rain has since come to California - but the drought is not yet over.


A March 26 headline read: "Rain Drought - Twin Threats to Much of USA." Who is sending the rain in some places and drought in others? "And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city" (Amos 4:7). God is behind it all!...


America can read of its own destiny - and doom - by simply blowing off the dust of historical accounts of God's dealings with other nations who continued in their sin. Romans 1 shows clearly why God's wrath is going to be poured out. This passage tells how homosexual lust tramples the truth, debauches society and brings down God's wrath.


AIDS


It is also time we faced the truth about AIDS. I feel I need to say this to you precious workers who minister to AIDS afflicted people: You have no right to preach Christ to them until you see their disease as God sees it - as a penalty for raging lust. "God gave them over to degrading passions... receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error" (Romans 1:26-27, NAS).


There can be no white-washing of AIDS. Like it or not, the Bible calls it the due penalty of sin. No, it isn't the due penalty for innocent babies or those who got AIDS through blood transfusions - but for homosexuals who flaunted their sins. It is a curse straight out of Leviticus 26.


The church has but one message for homosexuals and lesbians. It is the same message we preach to addicts, alcoholics, and all who are enslaved by sin: "You must be set free - and only Christ can do it!"
[Source: http://www.tscpulpitseries.org/english/1990s/ts910506.html]

It is sad that the voice of one of Yahweh’s clarion bells of truth has been silenced. David Wilkerson died a year ago. Where are the churches and ministers who will sound forth the truths of God? Where are those who fear God more than man? Twenty-one years ago David Wilkerson wrote of the judgment of America due to her unrestrained immorality. Now the President of the United States, the highest office in the land, has become the chief promoter of both abortion without limits, and unfettered and openly celebrated homosexuality. The fire at Rockrimmon was truly a message, as is the drought and heat that is searing the nation as I write this.

Yesterday, Washington D.C. had temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. Record heat is being recorded across wide swaths of the nation. On top of this, a massive storm bringing hurricane force winds knocked out power to over 5 million people last night in these same areas that are experiencing record breaking heat. Today the same heat has returned to these areas, and millions must endure it without power to run their air conditioners.

As more than one saint has noted in correspondence to me recently, the NBA championship between the Oklahoma Thunder and the Miami Heat contained another parable for this nation. Any way you look at it, America is in for stormy days. The Heat triumphed, and quickly on the heels of their victory the nation is enduring record breaking heat and tremendous fires.

I believe Yahweh cracked The Liberty Bell from the very first time it was struck. He was testifying that the sound produced by men being given liberty to follow the passions of their souls would produce only a discordant sound in His ears. Even after the bell was repaired, it sounded with such a jarring and unpleasant sound that it was compared to two coal scuttles being banged together.

Coal Scuttle
(A bucket for carrying coal.)

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1970,  commented on what he observed in the nation of America.

"Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people..."

The Liberty Bell is a symbol of America. The sound of her abominations has arisen to the heavens. She is under judgment. Seeing that there is no repentance, no repudiation of the immorality she has chosen, nor sorrow over her transgressions, the judgments of God will fall with even greater severity.

If Sodom had a bell, would not America’s Liberty Bell be a fitting symbol for that wicked city? Did not the leading men of Philadelphia those years ago invite God’s judgment when they inscribed their bell with words from His holy scriptures as if Yahweh were Himself putting His blessing upon the works of their hands?

I am reminded of another time when Yahweh caused the works of man’s hands to crack.

I Kings 13:1-5
Now behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of Yahweh, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. He cried against the altar by the word of Yahweh, and said... "This is the sign which Yahweh has spoken, "Behold, the altar shall be split apart and the ashes which are on it shall be poured out.'" Now when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, "Seize him." But his hand which he stretched out against him dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself. The altar also was split apart and the ashes were poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of Yahweh.

Who cracked The Liberty Bell? Yahweh did. He was sending forth a message that men granted free reign to choose the course their souls dictated would end up in absolute spiritual poverty and in the depths of moral depravity. Such is the social fabric of America today. It is a filthy garment, detestable to the heavens.

As America’s leaders stand and deliver speeches about celebrating homosexuality, does not the sound of man’s liberty reach the heavens with great dissonance? America has let man’s freedom ring. Now the sounds of her freedom are fleeing away. Soon the liberty and freedom of America will be a thing of distant memory.


Heart4God Website: http://www.heart4god.ws    

Parables Blog: www.parablesblog.blogspot.com    

Mailing Address:
Joseph Herrin
P.O. Box 804
Montezuma, GA 31063