Last night I was watching the History Channel. There was this program about the history of the United States. They were showing the founding of Jamestown (1607) in Virginia and Plymouth Colony (1620) in Massachusetts. The narrator said that ten percent of the population of the United States can trace their ancestry to the fifty people that survived the winter of 1620-21 at Plymouth Colony. Sounds like a mustard seed of faith in God: the Lord blessing and multiplying the work of His faithful saints--or the Lord working through his saints.
The Pilgrims that came on the Mayflower from England to America wanted relgious freedom--freedom to worship God. Ten percent of the population of the United States would be thirty million people who can trace their ancestry to the Mayflower and Plymouth Colony.
"Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first . . ."
*****
A Journey to the New World:
The Diary of
Remember Patience Whipple
Mayflower, 1620
October, 1620
“The reason for our journey is our religion. You see, we are not the Pope's people nor the King's really, but God's people. We are Saints of the Holy Discipline. ‘Saints’--for short. That is what all of us English who went to Holland are called. And if we go to this New World, free from old King James and all the fancy church rituals that are not to our way, we can worship as we want. You see, we believe that the church is in our heart and not in a building. So tis our hearts that lead us.”
A Journey to the New World
That's a really beautiful excerpt. Seems that most of the journeys in human history were taken in search of truth, freedom, and God.
ReplyDelete"So tis our hearts that lead us."
I remember well how I discovered Remember Patience Whipple's book. I was hitchhiking through Wyoming maybe in 2001 or 2002 and I got dropped off in Sheridan, Wyoming. The VA Hospital has a shelter, so I stayed there one night. Whipple's book was there at the shelter and I read it that day. It was very inspiring.
ReplyDeleteThe lives of Whipple, the English Quakers of the 1600s, John Milton, John Wesley--they inspire me and give me strength.
Live free or die. Obey the Lord or be a slave.
It was obviously a book you were meant to read. Many have come before; not all saints are recognized by history, or by Western tradition.
ReplyDelete"Obey the Lord or be a slave."
Yes, yes, and yes.
And by obeying the Lord, we are obeying Ourselves. When the Kingdom of God comes to us, the core of ourselves becomes unseparable from God, and we live truth as surely as it lives in us. :)
I wondered about your last name "Beveridge"--it sounded English. There was a lot of Christians who were persecuted in England in the 1500s and the 1600s and a lot of those people came to America.
ReplyDeleteI think it is fascinating that your ancestors came to America before the Pilgrims that came to Plymouth Rock in 1620. I have met a few people who said that their ancestors came across on the Mayflower. I worked for a guy back in New Hampshire back in the 1980s; his last name was Pond and his ancestors came across on the Mayflower.
We need to keep America open to persecuted Jews and Christians, so that they can come here and live where there is no Sharia Law and Muslim Slavery.
My earliest ancestor from Ireland came across in the 1850s. My earliest German ancestor came across in 1870.
I saw a TV program (it might have been the History Channel) where they thought that King Solomon used Phoenician ships to bring gold from the mountains of Peru. They might have sailed from the west coast of Africa to South America, go up the Amazon River and head to the mountains of Peru. The west coast of Africa is not that far from South America--it is a shorter distance than Europe is to North America.
ReplyDelete