Covenants are viewed as the most sacred and binding of deals—an oath that's never to be broken. America's earliest settlers made a covenant with God to serve and proclaim Him throughout the earth. These days, however, Americans appear to have forgotten this covenant and that can have dire consequences.

Christian leader Dutch Sheets explained to CBN News how God's relationship with us is set by sacred covenant.

This author of Giants Will Fall said, "It's even what He based our salvation on: 'I'm coming to bring a new covenant through Jesus. The shedding of His blood ratifies this covenant.' It is a binding together that in Him is unbreakable."

America Began in Covenant

Early English settlers also wanted their new land to share such a binding covenant with God. Christian historian Eddie Hyatt, author of The Great Prayer Awakening of 1857-58, said those who came to Jamestown starting in 1607 put it in their Virginia Compact.

"To propagate, to expand the gospel, the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and to take the gospel to people who were 'lying in darkness and had no knowledge of the one true God.' They said that was the reason they had come," Hyatt stated.

The Pilgrims arriving in Massachusetts stated the same in 1620. Jerry Newcombe, author of The Book That Made America, paraphrased what they wrote down: "'Having undertaken a voyage for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.'"

Newcombe explained of the Pilgrims and Puritans who followed, "They came for God as opposed to coming for gold."

Hyatt says John Winthrop, leading 700 Puritans to Massachusetts in 1631, said it like this: "'Others may come to the New World for wealth and furs.' He said, 'We have another goal, another end. We have entered into an explicit covenant with God to be His people in this New World.' And they wanted to be that city on a hill. They wanted to be a model of Christianity for the rest of the world to see."

David Barton of Wallbuilders said as these early settlers wrote out their covenants, "They were very cognizant of the fact that we answer to God. We need to get God at the center of what we do. If we do, He'll bless us. If we don't, we're in trouble."

These Covenants Became Models for the US Constitution

These early covenants pledged the signers to each other and to obeying the laws they'd form with God's guidance.

As Newcombe put it, "This was something that would bind each man and each person to the whole community as an agreement under God."

According to historian William Federer, such compacts became the model for the U.S. Constitution, whose authors were also very much guided by their Christian faith.

The writer of AmericanMinute.com stated, "George Washington at the beginning of the Constitutional Convention, he said 'the event is in the hand of God.'"

How Has America's Constitution Lasted So Long?

"They saw the Constitution as being a very religiously based document," said Barton. "It was also a very covenantal-based document. We made a covenant. The Constitution is a covenant of these states."

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