International Support for the American Revolution

Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to celebrate two hundred and fifty years of our independence from Great Britain We are living under The longest serving Cstitution. in history And what do we know about our founding? and what does it matter what we know First of all, we're gonna to deal with this question and many questions with one of our favorite guests. I'll get to him in a minute. But one thing we're going to deal with today and investigate today is What led the colonies, the colonists to want their independence from King George? I mean, what were their basic complaints? Hint, all that is in the Declaration of Independence. We'll talk about that Secondly, there are people out there today who are historical revisionists. They're claiming that the fifty six founders of the Declaration of Independence and our other founders, they were mostly deists How do we know they were mostly Bible believing Christians? And what does it matter that they were Bible believing Christians Aren't we supposed to be religiously neutral today And then how did these, if they were Bible believing Christians, how did they justify going to war Biblically I mean, were they supposed to throw off There' British or the British crown. W that biblical? Are you supposed to do that? Take up arms against your own government We're going to talk about that today and so much more because I've noticed that so many of us really don't know our history and it's important to know our history because Ladies and gentlemen I've been to many countries around the world. Of course America's not perfect This is the greatest country in the history of the world. We're blessed to live here. We're blessed to be here. We're blessed to have the freedoms that we have. and we just take all that for granted. And if we can continue to take it for granted We're ultimately going to lose it and we're going to lose our ability to preach and live the gospel from the United States of America if the United States of America suddenly collapses or does so in a gradual way and I think it has been. So we're going to have to deal with our history now and there's no better person to help us do that Then the great Bill Federerer, ladies and gentlemen. yes is probably our favorite guest of all time here. At least that's what you guys tell us. You love Bill Federer because he is just so knowledgeable and wise. Bill, it's always great having you on the show, happappy to fiftieth Frank, great to be with you Al a pleasure because you just have so many great stories of history how we got to where we are Let me start with the top question. Bill, set it up for us because we don't know our history What was it that made these people came over to the new land in the early sixteen hundreds by the time they get to the You know, seventeen seventies or so They're fed up with King George They want to establish their own government and throw off his shackles. Why did they want to do that Yeah, well, u one of the I like zooming out and looking at all history and so u fromrom the beginning of the invention of writing about around three thousand three hundred BC, Sumerian cuneiform on clay tablets Mesopotamia Valley U you have And a gang leader with enough weapons, we call a king or Pharoh, Caesar, Kaiser, Sultanansar. It's a hierarchical system. If you're friends with the king, you're more equal. If you're not friends with the king, you're less equal. If you're an enemy of the king you're dead. It's called treason or you're a slave And so it's a hierarchical system. that's basically a gang structure. If you're friends with the gang leader, you're in. If you're not friends, you're not. And if you're an enemy of the gang leader, you killed you or enslaved you, whatever. And so the first Gang leader King is Nimrad, Tower of Babel in the plains of Shinar, Mesopotamia, just down the mountain from Eret when Nor' Ark landed And Nimrod, according to Josephus, wanted to build a tower so high that if God destroyed the world again with a flood, he could survive on top And Nimrod said that he may be madeade everybody bake bricks and bring them or he would kill them So he's defined against God and oppressedive over me. He wanted people to fear him more than fear God. And so since the population of the world is centered there, according to most archaeologists and anthropologists and etymologists that civilization began in the Mesopotamia, between the Tigers, Euphrates Rivers And since civilization began there, and Nimrod wanted to control it in a sense, Nimrod was the first globalist He was the first one wanting to control world populations God comes down and confuses the languages and the people scatter into language groups that turn into nations Lo and behold, nations were God's invention to postpone a one world government But every generation you have some Nimrod Pharoh Caes, Kaiser, Sultans are that wants to conquer other nations and if left unchecked And if they didn't die off, they'd have been happy to keep conquering until they conquered them all You know, Till of the Hunt had an army of half a million men. Genghis Khan kills thirty million people. I mean if they hadn't died, you know, it's one common thing is all these kingdoms are ruled through fear Ultimately, the Datater King can kill you. And so that's the fear. And And so these kingdoms keep getting bigger because with the latest military advancements, kings can kill more people. So instead of cane killing an Abel with a rock, they can kill a bronze weapon, aniron weapon, a phaalx spear. the Greeks had a simimetar sword that the Muslims had, a composite bow that the Mongols had. right? These kingdoms keep getting bigger and bigger until the king of England had the biggest. The sun never set on the British emmpire. The King of England was a globalist He was a one world government guy with him at the top And America's founders decided they did not like one world government guys. And so they broke away and flipped it and made the people the king The question is where did America's founders get the idea of ruling themselves without a king And so long story short, it's ancient Israel Now when you study world history and I've written about it. Um, W the gang leader King being the norm There's this movement to want to limit his power. So you first limit a king. by his own words And that's where you have the story of, you know, Persia and there's the king and he's having a party and his wife Vashdi wouldn't come out. and he says, I'll never see her again. Later feels bad. And his advisors tell him, you can't see her again. You said you couldn't you wouldn't see her again. You can't. And so that's when they bring in, you know, all the girls and picks Eester. But I mean, he's limited by what, his own words. And then you have Daniel and the bad guys go to Darius and say, hey, nobody can pray to anybody but you for thirty days. And Darius signs off on it. And then they say, Ha, we found Daniel's praying to somebody else. You got to throw them in the lines then It says the king spent all day trying to get Daniel off the hook What was the big deal? It was his word he was limited byy his own word And then kings are limited by past kings words. and that's called traditions and customs. And so you have Cyrus a Persia lets the Jews go back and rebuild. later, the neighboring peoples stop the Jews from rebuilding. And the Jews send a message to the new king saying, hey, search through the records. and sure or not they find Cyrus's order. And the current king honors the past king's words And so all of the past Kings's words compiled turn into customs and traditions. Be well, this is the way it's always been done. Kings like, okay, I guess I have to do it that way. And then kings are limited by the religious class pagan cultures like in Egypt When the Pharaoh took the land away from everybody, he did not take the land away from the religious Egyptian priests Why? Because he needed them to give the stamp of approval that the Pharaoh was divinely appointed. And And so You have all these pagan cultures need a religious class to rubber stamp the king. And then they Christianized it in Europe and the pope was the one who would crown the kings. And the Pope always held off that he could excommunicate the king and take away his approval if the king didn didn't line up just right right? So so kings were limited by their words, by their past, kings words, and then the limited by the religious class. and then you have Kings need money So they have ors And these tax collectors need to be armed And so the king would let his favorites have some arms and weapons and armies to go out and collect taxes while in England You had King John And these tax collector, they were called Barons. He would just arbitrarily get rid of one, put in another. wr get take one guy's castle, give it to another. And these excuse me twenty five barons surround King John on the fields of Frunymade in twelve fifteen eighty and make him sign the Magna Carta which says, you can't arbitrarily get rid of one of us. If you do, the other twenty four will gang up on you What's the whole deal? It's limiting the power of a king And then these barons turn into the house of Lords and you got the house of the commommons, you know right? And finally America comes along and we cut the umbilical cord And we said, why put all this effort in the limited King? Let's not have one Matter of fact, let's slip it and make the people the king So a republic where you have citizens and the word citizen means co king, co ruler co sovereign Right? City means city and Zen means an inhabitant of actually comes from the Greek word Pities. So Paul P O L means it is the word for the people in the city. And so they were called polites was the citizen. And so that's where we get the word polis, like Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Pis means city. and politics is the business of the city. But that Polites word is where we get the word citizen, which where we get the word co ruler, co sovereign co king. So we pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic. for which it stands, we're basically pledging allegiance to us being char in charge of ourselves So in America, the people are the ruled and the rulers. Right It It's a rare dynamic in world history U And so the question is where did America's founders get the idea that you could have people ruling themselves without a king? They got some ideas from John Locke to treaties on goovernment, Age of Enlightenment. before that, from the Magna Carta, T in the hands of the King. before that, the Roman Republic five hundred years, Rome was a republic, SPQR, Senators Publicas Romanus no king with these six hundred senators. But before that, you had the Athenian democracy where six thousand citizens with no king. Before that, The Hebrew Republic So around four thousand fourteen hundred BC. Millions of Israelites come out of Egypt, they come into the prromised land, and for four hundred years there's no king This is literally the first instance in world history. of millions of people and no king And so it worked because every citizen was taught the law And personally accountable to God to follow it So you have an opportunity to steal. There's no king, there's no police, and then you think, God is watching me. He wants me to be fair. He's going to hold me accountable in the future. Maybe I should hesitate stealing And it creates a tiny thing in your head called a conscience. If everybody in the country believes this, you can maintain order With no k, with no police And so the verse in the Bible that everyone has memorized is love your neighbor as yourself, Leviticus nineteen eighteen You know, the verse immediately before it Cfront your neighbor directly so you will not be held accountable for their sins It's like what? Yeah, you love your neighbor and you confront your neighbor. So like a parent, you love your kid, you love your kid, But every now and then, you gotta confront your kid., you gotta correct them Well, in ancient Israel there was no king. there was no pice for four hundred years Everybody was taught the law. Everybody helped enforce the law Right So too. As you put it before, Bill on a previous program until the priests went woke Yeah, it worked until the point where everyone was doing right in their own eyes as the book of Judges ends I just want to amplify something you said a second ago because it's so important in our culture today So many in our culture today think love means approval. Love does not mean approval, ladies and gentlemen. Love seeks what's best for the loved one according to the will of God. and that requires you, as Bill just said, to sometimes confront the loved one to say, no, what you're about to do is not good. It's going to hurt you, it's going to hur others. It's against God's will. Do not do it Love does not mean approval. Love rejoices not in wrongdoing. Love rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, loveove always perseveres as Paul says in first Corinthians thirteen. So it's critically important that we understand that And so this persisted in ancient Israel and that became the ultimate model for our government today. Bill, but you're saying our government that was established two hundred and fifty years ago, this july fourth, at least the Decaration of Independence. The Constitution came later It was unique in world history is it different than say the Roman Republic? Right. so the Roman gods were fickle I mean, how could you be accountable to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, when her temple has temple prostitutes. It's like they had no concept of a just God. and they had no concept of rights from a creator The rights were given by country, the group, right? the social contract type of thing And u And so u when you have writes from a creator The purpose of government is to guarantee to you your creator given rights If there's no creator and it's just what the group agrees upon It can change. And U Well let's let's let's read that because that's part of our declaration In fact, spepeaker Mike Johnson a month or so ago was talking about that our rights come from God. and the folks over there at MS now used to be MSNBC were shocked that Johnson thinks that thinks that rights come from God and not government. Well, I guess they haven't read the Declaration of Independence because here's what it says We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed So notice ladies and gentlemen here Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence is saying rights come from God. they don't come from government. goovernments secure rights. That's what good governments do. They secure rights. according to the Apostle Paul, it would be by punishing wrongdoers. Romans thirteen. Anyway, the decearation goes on to say this that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness, prudence, indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And then it goes on the list causes that are not light, they're not transient causes that cause these Pin is to say we've had enough of the rule of King George. He is usurping our rights. In fact, a little bit further down in the declaration, it says this, The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states Prove this Let facts be submitted to a candid world And then if you read the rest of the Decaration of Independence It's basically a rap sheet against King George as to why he's been governing them like a tyrant And maybe Bill we could talk about some of those reasons. What was he doing to the colonists here? and why did they say? we need a new government Yeah, well, it goes back to John Calvin You have Reformation fifteen seventeen Martin Luther And then you had John Calvin in Switzerland. and in fifteen thirty six, he writes his institutes. And in there, he says, we are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against him, let us not pay the least regard to it What's he talking about? Well, you obey the king as long as the king is telling you to do something that lines up with God's word So think of it for a second. There's a se in the Bible of Ephesians six that says children obey your parents But What if there's a bad parent He tells the kid to sell themselves into prostitution and kill the neighbor Is the child supposed to obey that parent? No, the child obeys the parent as long as the parent's telling them to do something that lins up with God's worord So you obey the king as long as the king is telling you to do something that lines up with God's word. And when the king stops lining up with God's word, According to Jonathan Mayheew, one of the Black Rbe Regiment pastors in Boston, he says the king effectively uns himself He takes away his right to rule. just like a parent who tells the kid, Hey, you know, go sell some drugs and kill your neighbors. It's like no, he loses. and so with that concept You had John Calvin influencing covenant form of government which is a way to have order in society without a king What's the best king ever in the Bible King David Well, let's look at his sons. His oldest son, Amnon, rapes a daughter, Tamar is murdered by a son Absalom who tries to overthrow David. and then Adanijah tries to overthrow David. and then Solomon's good for a while until he marries a thousand wives and start building pagan temples. And this is the best king ever. his own sons go off rails. So the dilemma is if you could have a great king But his sons can be terrible. And in Europe, you had things like in fifteen seventy two King of Spain did not like the fact that the Netherlands had Dut reformed Protestants. And so he sends hisuke Iiron Duke of Alba in fifteen seventy two to commit the Spanish fury. He kills ten thousand Dutch reform in Antwerp, Belgium And then the same year is a bad year, fifteen seventy two. The quQueen of France, Catherine D Medici does not like the fact that ten percent of France is hugenot, Protestant, and she kills thirty thousand of these Huguenot Protestants called the Stain. Bartholomewuses Day Massacre. And so they're wrestling with what to do with Romans thirteen. Let everyone be subject to the governing authority. For there's no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exists have been established by God. It's like, Yeahah, but what if the authority that exists wants to kill you and your wife and kids? Are you supposed to turn over? Hey, here's my wife. I found her praying the wrong way And so John Calvin's teaching provided a way for people to come up with exploring how to have a government without a king. And so this was embraced by the Puritans who were the main ones, then the Dutch reformed and then the Presbyterians. And so they developed this idea in England And so in England, they actually had an American experiment from sixteen forty up until sixteen sixty, it's called the English Commonwealth So they have the civil war The Puritans win And they chop off the head of Charles the first. And so they do not have a king in England for around fifteen, twenty years And you have the parliament and they're making rules. but this has never happened before. And so you have some really strict Puritans and then some semi strict Puritans. I mean, the strict ones actually tore down Shakespeare's Globe Theatater and they outlawed Christmas. I mean, they were like super strict. And then you have other ones that are a little bit more moderate, then you have some of that were super moderate. And Oliver Cromwell was able to keep it together, But then when he dies, his son Richard couldn't keep it together turns into chaos and William Penn Sr., the dad is an admiral. He goes across the English channel, he puts King Charles II on his boat, brings him back to England and reestablishes the monarchy and the English Commonwealth experiment is over. But that teaching, that concept came to America And so we sort of had the same exact English commommonwalth, but we kept ours going. But is that sameane Puritan John Calvin teaching that was inculcated. It first came over with the pastors The pilgrims were going to land in Virginia. they get blown off course to Massachusetts and the capaptain Christopher Jones says it's too dangerous to sail, G get off the boat And the pilgrim's like Wh who's going to be in charge? There's one hundred and two of us in the boat. Nobody's been picked by the king We were going to go to Jamestown, submit to the King's government They do something unique. It's called Mayflower compact. We in your presents of God covenant ourselves together into a civil body politic. You have a little church group covenanting itself into a civil body politic group And the womb of the Mayflowers conceived the child of self government. Set a top down rule by a king and his administrators It's bottom up rued by just one hundred and two of us And so that became the model. So the King Charles I first, the one who got his head chopped off before he got his head chopped off, caused the Great Pur to migration He said, I will make them conform or I will hry them out of the land. And that's what he did. About twenty thousand Puritans from sixteen thirty to sixteen forty are leaving England and flooding it to Massachusetts and they're founding cities. And so the first Baptist church in America founded the city of Providence Rhode Island. the first congregational church founded the city of Hartford, Connecticut. You have churches founding cities So everybody's involved in church and they have a covenant form of government and everybody's involved in the city because it's the church founding the city. And the word for city is polis. and so politics is the business of the city. So everybody in church is involved in politics And that was the way it was for a century. Why? Beacause there was no gold in North America U what do we have? beaver skins, tobacco, dried fish, notot very much of a money maker like the Caribbean with gold. And so the King of England I mean, Jamestown, One winter they had five hundred die I mean America was a financial loser. And so the king sent over a royal governor and said, you got to raise your own money. And so he comes to Virginia. he gets all the landowners together called the House of Burgesses, and he says, you have to ough up money to pay me. I don't care how you do it, but you got to do it. And so they would meet. And while they're meeting, deciding the taxes of who's going to pay what, they would start talking about other things Oh we got to fix the road and we got to defend against the Indians. And as long as the Royal governor got paid, he really didn't care what else they talked about. And so it backdoored Virginia into some semblance of a representative government But it still had the kingings's representative. But in New England, it was just the covenant churches. And then around the sixteen forties they had a covenant of the four New England colonies. And they said for the propagating of the gospel, but we'll have this mutual defense. And And so New England is contrasted with Virginia because Virginia was an Anglican colony up until Lord Dunmore was chased out and Patrick Henry became the first governor. But New England was this congregational colony, series of colonies And that's where we draw our heritage of self government covenant. So the word federal is Latin for covenant Fidelis. So we have a covenant form of government. Great quote from Oz Guinness. He said covenantal ideas in England were the lost cause. They became the winning cause in New England Covenant shaped constitutionalism The American Constitution is a nationalized secularized form of covenant. Covenant lies behind Constitution And so this was the origins of New England. and then it became the origins of our covenant former government. And it goes back ultimately to ancient Israel, that first four hundred years out of Egypt before they got a king Now some of the ments in the Declaration of Indpendence Bill about what King George was doing to the colonists show that They thought they had really good grounds for throwing him off. H are a couple of them. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burn our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of deeath desolation and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and profidity scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy of a headad of a civilized nation It also talks about the fact that they're being taxed without representation. And it says he has excited, you just mentioned the Indians He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers The merciless Indian savages, well, that's a little politically incorrect, isn't it? whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished Destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions And then after stating a few more problems, they say this. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in genereral Congress, assembled appealing too the suupreme judge of the world, that would be God, ladies and gentlemen For the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crrown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved And that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine provroidence. That's God, ladies and gentlemen We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor This was signed by fifty six colonists manyany of whom paid the ultimate price for signing it which we'll get to actually in the next podcast. the great Bill Federer But before we get there, Bill, I want to ask you How do we know that these men, the fifty six signers actually were Bible believing Christians, and then I want to ask you about how did they biblically justify the idea that they were going to go to war against King George So let's let's start with some of the founders. and why do we why do we know that they're Christians and not Dists is so many so many today say? Yeah, well, u Europe was Cathic and then you had the fifteen seventeen Reformation. And then you had the Muslims invade and the king of Spain did the Pace of Augsburg of fifteen fifty five that said every king got to decide what's gonna to be believed in his kingdom. Let's just work together against this Muslim invasion because they've wiped out Christianity off of two continents And And so that gave birth to Germany being Lutheran and Sweden being Lutheran and Switzerland being Calvinist and Scotland being Presbyterian, Holland being Dutch reformed, England, Anglican. And then of course, Greece was Greek Orthodox, Russia was Russian Orthodox and Italy, beingain France offer, Poland stayed Catholic, but it was whatever the king believed, the kingdom had to believe Let's just work together against this Muslim invasion. Well, if you did not believe the way your king did, it was considered treason And you were persecuted and you fled U now one group They were sort of like a Quaker type group. There was Menno Simmons And so his followers were called Mennonites And they were nonviolent And they didn't want to get involved. so they didn't get their own country in Europe And then the king of Russia said, Hey, come over to Russia and I'll give you Menonite some land. Well, he did. It was buffer land between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. So they got overrun one time after another after another after another. And they lasted until Lenin came they were called Kulaks and Lenin wiped out millions and then many of them came to America. But if you didn't believe the way your king did in Europe, you were persecuted, you fled. And so many of them spilled over and founded colonies in America And so every colony was started by a different Christian denomination Canada was founded. So Spain controlled all the newew worldor Until fifteen eighty eight. when their're Spanish A armada Sink invading England in a hurricane They tried it again and even a third time and it bankrupted And so that made it so they couldn't defend the New worldld. And it was like an Oklahoma land rush All the countries of Europe began to rush over and settle colonies. So the French Catholics settled New France, which became Canada. Nova Scotia means New Scotland. New England, right was founded by the England. Virginia was named after the Virgin quQueen Elizabeth you had Obviously Florida was part of New Spain. But then you had Massachusetts was founded by Puritans. So where Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was Puritan. then Rhode Island was founded by Baptists And New York was founded by Dutch Reform Delaware, New Jersey were originally New Sweden, Dutch Lutheran And then they became Dutch reformed and then they were taken over by the British And And then Connecticut, New Hampshire were congregationalist And Did I mentioned Marilyn Cathic? Yeah. And then Pennsylvania was Quaker And the Quakers were tolerant, William Penn He was in the Tower of London for eight months and And then he finally got hunt and He he said force A crit Persuasion only that makes converts So he pioneered the concept of different Christian denominations living together in the same geographic area So so prior to this, the attitude in America was if you don't like our denomination, fine, start your own colony This is what I think a lot of us don't recognize, Bill is that colonies were sort of mimicking what was going on in Europe in terms of religious belief. You know, you came to a particular colony because it lined up with your religious belief And five of the thirteen original colonies, when the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, was signed in seventeen ninety one Five of the thirteen colonies, the new states their own state churches So the First Amendment did not prevent a state from having a state church. It just didn't want a federal church Uh, so It would seem to me and Obviously to people observing this if you're you're just looking at the facts that of course these people were not deists because They're They're exporting their denomination to the United States of America, the colonies, which become the United States of America And they are even establishing their own churches in these states. The churches are establishing cities within the states Am I missing something here Bill? or is it quite obvious that these people we haven't even looked at what they've said or what they wrote. We can But it would seem just on the face of things, these people are all Christians, correct Yeah, yeah. You couldn't even hold office unless you were a Christian That so just Tacking on to what you were saying. New York was Dutch reform. They chased out Lutherans Right, You had the the flushing remonstrance, right And then the Puritans of Massachusetts Chased out Quakers And then the Virginia Anglics chased out Puritans And and you had different the Tarn feathering ministers chasing them out of town and and so when the revolution starts They all had to work together against the king And that was the beginning of them tolerating each other. That why they met in Philadelphia because since Philadelphia allowed all the different denominations, you read John Adams And when he was raised in Massachusetts, his whole entire life, And it was a Puritan congregational ony And so he comes to Philadelphia and so he visits other denominations like for the first time ever. And he describes going to this church and he goes to the Catholic church. it's all the pomp and circumstance and the first English speaking Catholic church in the entire world was in Philadelphia, right St. Joseph's the first synagogue, right? And so John Adams, Now Quakers were like They were sort of like baptists without a pastor. They were a society of friends. so Ls of the Quaker societies of friends didn't even have a pastor It was just a group of Christian friends getting together and they would sit there and wait for someone to be moved upon by the Holy Spirit to give an exhortation. And and so J John Adams says we went to the Quaker meeetinghouse and we sat there for two hours, but nobody was moved upon. So we left and went down the street to the pub And But this was the first time that he experienced. And so u when they had a motion. for the So you have British Uh, they u If I can give a little background sure. Uh You have the French and Indie warar So the French had everything west of the Appalachians, the British East and they fought. It went on for decades. You had the first G Aakening revival going on during this time. It ended, but the British wanted to leave troops on American soil so that in case there was another flare up But we didn't have barracks. And so the British troops would quarter in American homes So this is like fifteen I'm sorry, seventeen fifties, seventeen sixties. Well, this would be seventeen sixty five Okay. And so you had people didn't like these soldiers because they look down the nose on the colonists. You know, you'd have an Anglican soldier in the house of the congregationalists or the baptist or the president. and they're like, And some of the soldiers would take their liberties with the girls and obviously the people did not like that. And so you had a winter and some of the soldiers u we're marching back to their bare to, you know, they're in Boston and some kids start throwing snowballs at the British soldiers with rocks in the snowballs and started hitting them. and then a crowd gathers around and they start yelling at the soldiers and it gets louder and louder. and the the captain One group said that he said fire And the other group said that he said, hold your fire But since everybody was shouting, the ones I didn't hear the hold your part. I just heard the fire And u And so John Adams actually was the attorney to defend the soldiers and he got them all off the hook except like one And then you had that people may not be familiar with It's called the Bengal famamine And so the British went on to become the biggest empire in the world. seventeen fourteen, they started a trading post in Bengal turn into a trading fort, turn into them having guns. They would give guns to one kingdom, give guns to another kingdom, stir up annimosity between the kingdoms so they'd fight each other, to weaken each other, and the British would conquer both kingdoms and disarm them. And they would do this again until the British took over all of India, a quarter of the world's population. And so they rearrangeed their economy becausecause people were growing their subsistence farming or whatever, and the British were interested in cash crops And so it was all going fine until there was a famine And since the people weren't growing their normal stapled foods ten million die Ben Gal in seventeen seventy And there's no products coming out for a long time and the British East India Company is on the verge of bankruptcy It's like the biggest company in England, one of the biggest companies in world history and it's going to go belly up. And so they ask for a government bailout the king and from parliament. And the king says, okay, but I'm not going to give you money out of my treasury. I'll just let you tax the colonies. And so that's you have a sugar tax of seventeen sixty four, a currency tax of seventeen sixty four, a stamp tax of seventeen sixty five, a Declaratory Act seventeen sixty six, the Townse revenue acts of six of seventeen sixty seven, texting glass and paint and paper. And then the cry goes up in America, no taxation without representation It's like, we don't even have a representative Then Franklin goes over to the Parliament and he's like, you don't understand the stampacks. America is a rural country It would take more money to ride a horse to a town and collect somebody stamping a letter for two cents than it would be the money you get out of it. And so James Otis is like the precursor to John Adams. He gives an address for like five hours. And against the writs of assistance. what's a writ of assistance? That was where the government could read your emails. Well, not really. I mean, but read your letters So it allowed the government to open and read a citizen's personal correspondence. It allowed the government to arrest anybody anytime anywhere on any suspicion and detain them indefinitely And so you would have the British simply coming to somebody's house and saying I'm going to confiscate all this stuff and another house and another house. And so James Otis gives his five hour address. and he says, I will, to my dying day, oppose all the powers and faculties God has given me in such instruments of slavery, on one hand and villainy, on the other as this writ of assistance. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberties And so sitting in the stands is John Adams, all five hours. And John Adams is the most popular attorney in Boston And John Adams writes after witnessing James Otis's speech, The child of indndependence was then and there born. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against the writs of assistance And so then the British passed the quQuartering Act of seventeen sixty five where they'll put their troops in your home and you got to live in the attic or the barn And then when the colonists became resistant, the British sent over a commander in chief, Thomas Gage to Boston And he outlaws meeting houses Be they would have a building in the middle of town. where they would have church And that's also where they do their city business. The word synagogue means meeting house. That's where the rabbi would teach the law and that's where they do their city business in the same building And Edmund Burke wrote of Gage's ob He says, An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue that another Englishman should be put into slavery. So it's like, okay, you're sending an Englishman over to the colonies to force them to give up their English rights And so they outlawed town haall meetings And then you have The Boston massacre in seventeen seventy, where they fire into the mob, killing five people and wounding others. One of the ones killed was Crispus Adds. He was a black man. So he's the first martyr in the cause of the revolution Then seventeen seventy two, you have the ahead of the Massachusetts Congress H his name of doctr. Joseph Warren And he's the one who sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride. and then he was later killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. But Joseph Warren said, If you perform your part, you must have the strongest confidence in the same Almighty being who protected your pious and venerable forefathers that he'll still be with you. May our land be a land of liberty until the last shock of time will bury all the empires in the world in one common indistinguishable grave and Then you have seventeen seventy three, the T Act And so tea was the most popular drink in America. And you had tea shops and the British U not only cut They allowed the British East India Company to sell directly to the customer and cut out all these shops. put him out of business. And so that's when you have the the Boston Tea Party with Samuel Adams and his guysu dressed as Indians underneath the Liberty tree and they throw three hundred and forty two chests of East India tea into the harbor. And the King and Parliament don't like that. And so they decide to blockade Boston's harbor until they pay it all back They have the intolerable coercive acts And And so the king keeps tightening the screws and tightening the screws. And then you have on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre at seventeen seventy four And John Hancock who was one of the wealthiest merchants in Boston.. He has one of his ships seized by the British British tax Dara Wine And so there was a boatload of it coming over. And when John Hancock's boat comes into the harbor, it's only half full. And so the British said, Well, nobody sends a half full ship over. so you must have had somebody unloaded before you came to the harbor so you could skip on the taxes. So the British confiscated his entire ship And And so John Hancock then begins to call for a well trained militia And u then You have a spy named Dr. Benjamin Church. And he is cozying up to the British, but yet he's there with the Americans and lo and behold He is seen coming out of the British generenal's house And this person witnesses them talking like their're buddies and then he would be basically be somebody that would come along the Americans and say, Ohh, I'm going to help you. And so we had this situation going on in the colonies, John Hancock Um than is the president of the Continental Congress at the time they do the Declaration of Independence. So when they're blockading Boston's Harbor june first, seventeen seventy four, Thomas Jefferson in the next colony over, a couple colonies over is Virginia. And Thomas Jefferson reuces day of fasting and prayer for Virginia to go into effect on january excuse me, june first, seventeen seventy four, the very day Boston's harbor is going to be blockaded And so the whole Virginia legislature is doing this day of fasting and prayer. George Washington writes in his diary, wentent to church, fasted all day And so you have The Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore. views this day of fasting as a protest against the king because it's the king blockading the Boston's Harbor. So he cancels The Virginia legislature. He says, you're all fired. go home Well, they don't go home. They go down the street in Williamsburg T Raleigh Tavern And in the back room They decide to have continontinental Congress The First Continental Congress meeting september first, seventeen seventy four And and so that's when they meet And they have a motion to open with prayer and Rutledge, the delegate from South Carolina and Jay, the delegate from New York U object And John Adams writes. He says, we were so divided in our religious sentiments that we could not join together in the same act of worship And Sam Adams stands up and he goes, I'm no bigot. I can hear a prayer of any man of piety who at the same time is a patriot friend of our nation And so they get Reverend Jacob Buchet come over from Christ Church in Philadelphia. He opens with prayer and then he breaks out into an ex temporary prayer. And John Adams says it stirred the bosom of every man there. He says there were tears in the eyes of the Quakers and Washington was on his knees and this pray mining went on for a long time. and they had gotten word that New York was being invaded. And he writes that the psalm that they had read according to the Anglican book of Prayer was Psalm thirty five. and it says, fight those, O Lord, who fight against us. And so John Adams writes about all this to his wife, Abigail. And so this is the beginning of our country. Now, they were all Christians of different denominations Most of them were Anglican about a good third The next biggest was congregational from New England. And then you had a couple Baptists, a couple Lutherans, one Catholic signed the Declaration of Independence. And you had Ben Franklin. Now Ben Franklin was raised Presbyterian And he was from Boston He was like fifteenth of seventeen children, I think. And he remembers reading in his dad's library, all these religious books And he says they were polemics poleamic is a written argument. And it was all over doctrine. And at the time you had the old light versus the newew light doctrine The old lights were the Calvinist. And they had a great plan, a covenant plan of how to rule without a king. But after century it got a little dry And they taught this plan accademically and intellectually Yale and Harvard. God has a plan for your life, your marriage, your family, church, your government, find out what the plan is put in place. And some took it the next step. and said God in his infinite wisdom already knows who's going to wind up in heaven. So don't even bother preaching the gospel. Whoever's supposed to get saved, they'll get saved. Wh we're supposed to get. And it became this cesaraara, you know, fate type of thing. and people would just hear sermons dissecting. so Ben Franklin, you know, after he apprenticed for his brother and then ran away and then went to Philadelphia and then he Ben Franklin was going to the first Presbyterian church. Philadelph And they got a new pastor who was a new light So George Whitfield was a new light And he said, it's more than a plan You have to have an experience with Jesus And when you do, your life will change and you won't do worldly things anymore bars and brothels and government. And so you had some say it's not only a personal experience, it's only person experience and that's where you get this idea that I'm not going to be involved in politics. I'm just going to enjoy my own personal relationship with God and I care less about what kind of country I'm leaving my kids So that's the origins of these churches today they say, I don' want to get involved in politics and I'm hier than you are becausecause I don't care about what kind of country I'm leaving my kids. Well, the Muslims are coming in and voting one hundred percent, but that's a whole notother talk. Anyway back to Ben Franklin. So there's a Samuel Helmpill is a newew light preacher. and Franklin said he was a great preacher, but a lousy writer. so I lent him my pen. and Franklin wrote a half a dozen really good scriptural articles and published them in the Pennsylvania gazette and you read them, they're all on fire, solid, evangelical things. But then when Samuel Hempill gets voted out, pastor Ben Franklin drops out of church And his autobiography s said, the new pastor came by my house and I said I agreed to go back to church and I actually went five Sundays in a row And all he did was dissect the finer points of our doctor. and he says, I have to admit, the concept of predestination was unintelligible to me. And he says and he says, I wish his sermons would produce more good works than that you actually do. So Franklin was into starting hospitals and libraries and medical. I mean, he was like doing all this stuff and en Franklin, absented himself from divine service He was never anti Christian. He wrote letters to George Whitfield saying, how I wish you and I could start a colony on the Northern Ohio River and thereby show the Indians a better sample of Christians than we commonly see in our Indian traders. I mean, that's like writing to the billy Gram of the day saying Hey, you and I can really show these Indians how Christians should act. And then he Prince All of George Woodfields sermons. So he was a friend of the gospel, but he began to do what was called political religion It was Reizing the usefulness of the Christian faith. keep order in society And so if we're going to have a country without a king who rules through fear and can threaten to kill you, for us to have a country without a king, we need to have a moral populace with self control That's where you get John Adams' quote Constitution was made only for im moral and religious peoples wholly inadequate for the government of any other and Thomas Jefferson even used this when he sent Lewison Clark out west to the Indians, and he thought a way to the Indians to not be violent is to go through the New Testament and pull out all the verses of Jesus talking about loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, blessing those they cursing you. And he called it a book of ethics for use amongst the Indians. Sometimes they call it Jefferson's Bible, but he called it a book of ethics for use amongst the Indians But he said, lookook, if you give them the whole Bible, they'll get stuck in Joshua wiping out the tribes in the promised land. And he says, we don't to sort of skip past that and just get to the New Testament. But they saw the ethical usefulness of Christian teaching compared to you know Jefferson say, I read all the ancient and modern philosophers on religion. He read the Qan, He had a uran. He says, But out of all of them, the ethics of Jesus are by far the best. And he says, if the whole world would follow Jesus' teachings, it would all be Christian by now. And of course, Jefferson fought the Barbarary pirate Wars against the Muslims and he had to read the ran to find out what's in this book that makes him want to kill us, you know. And when Jefferson became president, he actually used federal tax revenue to build churches for them up in Michigan Yeah Kaskaskian. Yeah, the Kazkaskian Indiian. So The kind of stuff that you hear out there, Bill, about these were all DSs is just total nonsense And even if Jefferson was a deist, certainly the Decaration of Independence is not a deistic document. You don't have Supreme Judge of the worldld in divine Providence because deism by definition, thinks God created the world and then left it and isn't concerned about the affairs of men. Of course Ben Franklin at the Constitutional Convention with his famous prayer says, God governs in the affairs of men. That's not a deistic statement. So these men definitely were Christians. You know, I was just watching a presentation by our mutual friend David Barton It was great. We love David on this bill. and he said his son Tim goes to a lot of college campuses and there's a famous picture It's in the it's in the rotundra of the Capitol, a painting, you know, of their their all at the signing of the Decaration of Independence, the fifty six signers And he said his son Tim goes to college campuses and he has a gift card that he says, I'll give anybody here gift card if you can name five of the people in this picture And everyone gets Jefferson and everyone gets Franklin Very few go beyond that. He said, My son, Tim has had the same gift card for nine years He's never given it to anyone because nobody at these major colleges, these major universities can name more than two of the founding fathers. yet they're all sure that they were all deists How can you How can you be sure they're all Ds when you don't even know who they are So I mean know it's ridiculous. My wife and I put together a series of books called Miracles in American History. so we go through. So two months before the same Continental Congress did the Declaration of indndependence They had a day of fasting and prayer That was unanimously passed. And here's an excerpt. We recommend the seventeenth of may, seventeen seventy six to be observed as a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer to confess and bewail our maniful sins and transgressions and by sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease God's righteous displeasure and through the merriits and mediation of Jesus Christ. Otain, pardon and forgiveness And so this is unanimous through the mediation of Jesus Christ. And so they rush a copy of this proclamation of fasting to George Washington. He's in New York. This is after the Battle of Bunker Hill and the British are filling up the harbor with their ships. And Washington says Congress having ordered a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, humbly to supplicate the mercy of the Almighty God that it would please himim to pardon all am manenable sins, the general commands all soldiers to pay strict obedience to the orders of the Continental Congress, that that they may incline the Lord and give her a victory to prosper our arms And then Washington appoints chaplains to every regiment And he says the the the general wants every officer and man to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier. defefending the dearest rights and liberties of our country And so this was a given I mean, you know, I've studied numbers and polling And they, you know, the They didn't have polling back then, but you can look at the numbers and the types of the churches in every area. Anglican terian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Dutch reformed congregationalist there were seven So at the time of the founding ninety eight percent of the country was Christian. Three million people, ninety eight percent. Protestant One cent Catholic. Only thirty thousand Catholics in a country, three million people Catholics were only allowed in three colonies, originally, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York The first Catholic church in Virginia was seventeen ninety five Why seventeen ninety five? Why not earlier? Because it was an Anglican colony. They didn't allow the other denominations, right? They did allow the Presbyterians like west of the Blue Ridge Mountains to sort of be a buffer between them and the Indians and everything. And then at the time of the founding U tenth of a percent Jewish, three thousand Jews in a country of three million people. There are only seven synagogues in the entire nation. But it was one hundred percent Judial Christian And the Jews got involved in the revolution, which was a rare thing Because after they were scattered, after the dispersion, they had a rabbi Samuel in Babylon, Persia. And he said, look, our goal is to stay alive. God said, prray for the country that you're in, that it may prosper and you'll prosper with it. And so he came up with a phrase, the law of the land is the law So whatever country you're in, just live by the laws of that country and then do your Jewish stuff privately at home or in your own neighborhood. They call the neighborhood the ghettos In many countries, they wouldn't allow the Jews to live outside of their neighborhood, so they had to live there, which allowed their rabbi to be in charge and it preserved their culture for two thousand years until Napoleon changed it and let the Jews live everywhere. And it was good on one side because they had the freedom, but on the other side, it de emphasized the role of the pastor. So that's when you get some. But anyway, But the Jews wouldn't get involved in politics. because the next town over might have a different king and if you're getting involved, you'd be fighting your own relatives. And so they wouldn't get involved in the politics or the military of whatever town they were in And so as a result, they were held suspect by everybody Well, you're not helping us, Maybe you're helping the other side And then in Europe, since they had their own neighborhoods, whenever there was something bad, they would blame the Jews There's a plague. It's the Jews fault there's a famine it's the Jews fa. And they would, you know, do these sporadic killings and pograms and chase them out. They'd go from one country to another to another to another But they didn't get involved in politics in any of those countries until they came to America And that's when you had Hyam Solomon use his own personal credit. to borrow money and give it to George Washington because the of Dlaration broke us from Europe, but we didn't have a government. We had a Articles of Confederation, but it gave zero power the central government zer. So Washington had no way of having taxes. So it was up to the thirteen colonies to voluntarily donate money to Washington But they were fighting their own battles and own militias. And so Washingt was always short of money. But here's this Jewish financier, Hayam Solomon, and he's raising money Another chapter that people often overlook is when the French Um We're getting into the war. The King of Spain, Carlos U the third set up a front company in Paris Rodrigo, Hartrez and company. The King of Spain was funneling millions of dollars through this French front company to America supplies and arms and uniforms and rifles and gunpowder. R? I mean, millions of dollars so the King of Spain financed the American Revolution for the first two years The enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing. They' Yeah to take on Britain. Yeah. because the Spanish wanted the Straight of Gibraltar, rightight? And it was a ten year war where the Spaniards were trying to get back the Strait of Gibraltar from the British And so they um But the Spanish were capturing British ships headed toward America with supplies. I mean, they were like and then you had the Royal Governor of New Spain is Barnardo de Galveves And he raises an army of Spaniards from Cuba in Puerto Rico in Costa Rica and he defeats the British at Pensac Cola, at Baton Rouge, at Nachz. And he drives the British out. yet he lets ships supplying Americans go up through the Mississippi River, Louisiana, up to the Ohio to supply Washington And then you had the ladies of Havana. So when Rosionbu's coming over finally the French Navy, they stop off in Haiti looking for money But there's no money. And so he snd his Geral Lafayette Havanah And when the ladies of Havana heard that Lafayette was on his way to help George Washington, they donated their jewelry, their candelabras, their silverware, twenty eight million dollars. Wow. The gold and silver. And so Washington was had the British cornered to Yorktown, but he was out of money. and his soldiers were like leaving and he's like Almost this victory but is almost going to be losing it. But then Rosenbo brings this big chest of gold and silver from the ladies of Havannah with a note that the American mother's son shall now be born as slaves I wish you knew more about history, Bill, because if so, this would have been an interesting show, but it's fabulous as always And we're only halfway through, ladies and gentlemen. this Friday, we're gonna do part two where I think we've established pretty securely that these men were Christians and they relied on Bible for a lot of what they put in our documents. In fact, Bill, you have you have several books on this topic we can get into. The next show, we're going to deal with, okay, who were these founders And what happened to them? Because at the end of the decoration, as we read earlier, it says that we rely on the protection of divine Proidence. We mutually pledged each other, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. Did they really have to pledge their lives and their fortunes in their sacred honor? Yeah, you're going to be shocked to learn what happened to some of the men that signed the Declaration of Independence U and that should tell us in this day that we always have to defend freedom Evil is always on the march. If we don't stop evil, evil will overrun us. as Edmund Burke, it's attributed to him anyway famously said, The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing We just can't sit here and do nothing. We have to defend the freedoms that have been established in our founding documents. If we do not, eventually they will go away. And so Bill, it's been a fascinating discussion I love everything you know about this topic and we're going to come back next show and continue By addressing those questions, before we do, tell our listeners your website and a book or two that they might get to read further Well, thank you, Frank. One of the books is called Miracles in American History. and it's thirty two stories at times in our country's past where there's crisis. they pray things turn around during the Revolution, rivers rising, fogs coming in. just exciting stories. The website is American Minute Also mentioned, Beill, I've had this book for a long time. You wrote it many years ago. It's a collection of quotations from the history of our leaders, even up to the more modern day It's God and country. some I don't have the title in front of me. What is the name of that book? Yeah, It's called America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Qotations. So it's eight hundred and forty five pages arranged alphabetically. So Abigail Adams at the front and Booker D. Washington is at the back, has all the end notes. so you can quote it with confidence. But it's just a great resource Focus on the family sold hundreds of thousands of copies of it. and I've had many congressmen and senators tell me that they've used it on the floor of Congress. Even the Supreme Court cited it by name in two thousand three. There was a city of Greece, New York Oping with prayer in Jesus name, ACLU Sues and the Jice Anthony Kennedy said Nothing wrong. our continental Congress opened with prayer in Jesus' name. Here's the prayer and then it gives the source W. Feder, America's Godten countountry. And it's like, you know, my friends that write history books, you know, Jerry Newcb in Florida and he's like, how did you get the Supreme Court to mention your book by name in the decision? It' like Divine Providence. That's how you did the hard work and it's paid off. So check out those two resources. In fact, we'll put them in the show notes, ladies and gentlemen. so you can just click on them and get them. Don't forget AmericanMinute. com You get an email from Bill almost once a day on so much of our history. Eespecially if you have kids, you ought to be able to teach them this. they need to know this because if we don't Kn the past. We're going to be doomed to repeat history bad history. We have to know what really happened and what we have to do to defend the truth. So tune in this coming Friday for part two of Our celebration of the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the foundounding of our nation, how it happened What happened and what we need to do now. and Lord Will and then we'll see you here then next time. God bless