The following is from a presentation I gave at the memorial service for Archie Preston Jones (1942-2024) that was held at Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia, where my wife and I attend and where Archie and his daughter are members. You can read Archie’s obituary here.
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Archie, actually Dr. Archie Jones, and I were in the same line of work. We liked to examine and evaluate worldview claims and put them to the test in terms of the Lordship of Christ, their historical veracity, and their biblical foundation. Archie was a master at it.
God calls each of us to service. Because we are one body, we are made up of different needed parts. That’s a good thing. We would be as useful as a centipede if we were all legs. We need the talents and gifts of others in the body of Christ.
God imparts to each of us particular gifts. Those gifts are shaped and molded over time. God has a purpose in imparting these gifts for the greater good and the work that needs to be done in God’s kingdom. Archie had a gift of focused discernment in spotting the dangerous weaknesses in our nation’s history, weaknesses that continue to pose a threat to the nation.
Archie’s specialty was our nation’s rich Christian heritage and the governing structures in God’s Providence that shaped our nation. How was it put together? What documents secured our tenuous freedoms and what they meant? Archie knew them better than most. He put that knowledge on the line. But he did not keep his deep knowledge to himself.
It’s a shame that those of you who only got to know Archie in his declining years never got to witness the breadth and depth of his knowledge and unrivaled sense of humor. They were both remarkable. And when Archie examined the subject, it was thorough. Some might call it overwhelming. I brought an example of it for you to see. It’s a copy of his 1991 doctrinal dissertation “Christianity and the First Amendment: The Truth About the Religion Clauses of the Constitution.” It’s nearly a thousand pages. (American Vision is planning to publish this extraordinary work when finances become available.)
His book The Gateway to Liberty: The Constitutional Power of the Tenth Amendment is more than 265 pages. Archie was not just a critic, a mere examiner of opposing views. He offered practical and workable remedies on how to fix what was wrong.
The Gateway to Liberty
This humble volume will help those who are on the front lines of the great conflict between the advocates of arbitrary, unlimited government and limited, constitutional government; and it will help inform Americans of the historical, foundational, and essential importance of our Tenth Amendment to constitutional government, the rule of law, and freedom for all Americans.
Buy NowI met Archie more than 40 years ago, around 1982. With the founding of the Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell in 1979 and the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Christians became a noticeable voting bloc. But did Christians understand the relationship between God and government? For the most part, they did not. Biblical government is not solely political. It is first ethical and applies to all areas of life in terms of self-government under God, family governments, church or ecclesiastical governments, and civil governments all under the sovereign government of God.
I decided to enter the fray with the first volume of a three-volume set called God and Government. Why three volumes? Because of Archie Jones. I sent the first draft to Archie. He read it over, offered suggestions, and I implemented them. He also recommended that I cover additional topics. That became volume two. I sent volume two to Archie, he read it, made suggestions, and recommended that I cover additional topics. I did not send him a copy of volume 3. If I had, I’d most likely be working on volume 40 today! The three-volume series is now in a reformatted single volume.
One more example. Many years ago, Archie made a facsimile copy of the 831-page book The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States that was published by Benjamin Franklin Morris in 1864 at a time when there was no way to search original documents electronically. Archie passed it on to Dr. Gary North who passed it on to me. I’m still in possession of it.
I used it in a debate with some ACLU attorneys on a local PBS station in Atlanta. They were wide-eyed when I showed it to them. I told them that until they answer the material found in this book, they do not have a case for their understanding of the role the Christian religion played in the founding of America. Copies of the book had disappeared from our nation’s libraries. I only got to see an original a few years ago when I saw two in the library at Wallbuilders.
The following image was sent to me by an American Vision supporter who saw a copy of the book in President James Garfield’s library:
Archie wrote the Foreword when American Vision reformatted and reprinted it. The book is driving atheists crazy on Facebook.
Christian Life and Character
Organizations like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have done their best to ignore the content of the massive compilation of original source material found in this book. If Americans ever become aware of the facts assembled by the author in this historic encyclopedia of knowledge, arguments for a secular founding of America will turn to dust.
Buy NowI will always be grateful for Archie’s friendship and his generosity and willingness to share his information and expertise with me and to others. All anyone had to do was ask and Archie would open his treasure chest of knowledge of our nation’s rich Christian heritage and share it.
I can honestly say, that without Archie’s advice and help more than 40 years ago, neither I nor American Vision would be what they are today.
(The picture below is from a few years ago at the Fight, Laugh, Feast Conference: From left to right: Gary DeMar, Judy Schneider, Michael “Mickey” Schneider, Jennie Jones, Archie Jones. Archie was a member of Mickey’s church in Florida, and my wife and I were members of St. Paul Presbyterian Church in Clinton, Mississippi where Mickey pastored when I was a student at Reformed Theological Seminary. Many students from RTS attended and Dr. Greg Bahnsen taught Sunday School.)
