Both men were the authors of our Declaration of Independence.  They both died on the very same day, July 4th, exactly 50 years from the date of its signing. That God should have opened the doors of Heaven and ushered in these two devout men together on this auspicious occasion, seems to be beyond just chance.  

Ron                             

Both served in the Continental Congress.

Both signed the Declaration of Independence.

Both served as U.S. Ministers in France.

Both were U.S. Presidents, one elected the 2nd President and the other the 3rd.

 Once political enemies, they became close friends in later life.

An awe swept America when they both died on the same day, JULY 4, 1826, exactly 50 years since they approved the Declaration of Independence.
Their names were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten Declaration of Independence used the wording “inalienable rights” as seen in the copies at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, the New York Public Library, and the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston.

John Adams hand copied Jefferson’s original draft and changed the spelling to “unalienable rights” when he oversaw the printing of the Declaration on the Dunlap broadside.
The Broadway musical 1776 even has a scene portraying their disagreement over the spelling.

According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (Houghton Mifflin Co.), “unalienable” and “inalienable” both mean: “That which cannot be given away or taken away.”

John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, was the 6th President at the time and told Congress, December 5, 1826: “Since your last meeting at this place, the 50th anniversary of the day when our independence was declared, two of the principal actors in that solemn scene — the HAND that penned the ever-memorable Declaration and the VOICE that sustained it in debate, were by one summons, at the distance of 700 miles from each other, called before the Judge of All to account for their deeds done upon earth.”

John Quincy Adams wrote in an Executive Order, July 11, 1826: “A coincidence so wonderful gives confidence that the patriotic efforts of these men were Heaven directed, and furnishes a new … hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence.”

Daniel Webster stated at Fanuel Hall in Boston, August 2, 1826: “But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions.
Both had been President, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. 
It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act that they should complete that year and that then, on the day which had fast linked forever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once.
As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?”

Defending the Declaration, John Adams told the Continental Congress, July 1, 1776:  “Before God, I believe the hour has come when all that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it.

Live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and Independence forever!”

John Adams stated, June 21, 1776: “Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People … they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”

In 1819, John Adams wrote to Jefferson:  “Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation thoroughly corrupted that was afterwards restored to virtue?  And without virtue, there can be no political liberty. Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?  No effort in favor of virtue is lost.

The Jefferson Memorial has a warning from Jefferson: “God who gave us life gave us liberty.

Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial on the south banks of Washington D.C.’s Tidal Basin, are Jefferson’s words:

“Almighty God hath created the mind free.
All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.
No man shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.”

After Abigail Adams died in 1818, John wrote to Jefferson: “I do not know how to prove physically, that we shall meet and know each other in a future state; nor does Revelation, as I can find, give us any positive assurance of such a felicity.

My reasons for believing it, as I do most undoubtedly, are that I cannot conceive such a Being could make such a species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth.
If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God. This Universe, this all would appear, with all of its swelling pomp, a boyish firework.
And if there be a future state, why should the Almighty dissolve forever all the tender ties which unite us so delightfully in this world, and forbid us to see each other in the next?”

Jefferson replied, assuring Adams: “It is of some comfort to us both that the term is not very distant at which we are to deposit, in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved & lost and whom we shall still love and never lose again.”

Jefferson described Adams as:  “The pillar of the Declaration’s support on the floor of Congress, its ablest advocate and defender.”

John Adams’ last words were:  “Thank God, Jefferson lives!”

In his last letter, Jefferson reiterated his rejection of overpowering government, as he told Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826: “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them.”

Calvin Coolidge, the only President born on July 4th, stated at the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 1926:

“The principles which went into the Declaration of Independence are found in the sermons of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live.They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his ‘best ideas of democracy’ had been secured at church meetings.”

An item of interest is that five years after Adams and Jefferson died, the fifth President James Monroe, died on JULY 4, 1831.

James Monroe stated in his Eighth Annual Message to Congress, December 7, 1824:
“For these blessings we owe to Almighty God, from whom we derive them, and with profound reverence, our most grateful and unceasing acknowledgments.
Having commenced my service in early youth, and continued it since with few and short intervals, I have witnessed the great difficulties to which our Union has been exposed, and admired the virtue and intelligence with which they have been surmounted.
That these blessings may be preserved and perpetuated will be the object of my fervent and unceasing prayers to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.”

Below is a short synopsis of the life of this great man. His death went unnoticed, as he died the same day John F. Kennedy was shot.
His books are some of the most widely read in English literature, with over 200 million sold worldwide. Nearly 50 years after his death, his books continue to sell a million copies every year.  If you decide to read this about him, it will help you to know that it is written in three sections:  The first is Lewis as an atheist.  The second are thoughts about God as expressed by some of his very famous friends.  The third are thoughts of Lewis, himself after he found the Real God.

Ron

His name was Clive Staples Lewis, born November 29, 1898.

At age 19, he fought in the trenches in World War I.

After the War, C.S. Lewis taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1925-54; and was professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, 1954-1963.

Originally an agnostic, C.S. Lewis credited his Catholic colleague at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien, whom he met in 1926, as being instrumental in his coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, 1937, and Lord of the Rings, 1937-1949, which is one of the best-selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.

C.S. Lewis’ writing style was influenced by George MacDonald, a writer and Christian minister.

MacDonald’s fantasy literature pioneered an entire genre, influencing:

• Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865;
• L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, 1900; and
• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, 1937.

C.S. Lewis regarded MacDonald a”master,” stating:
“Picking up a copy of Phantastes (1858) one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later, I knew that I had crossed a great frontier.”

G.K. Chesterton cited George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872) as a book that had “made a difference to my whole existence.”

George MacDonald wrote:

• “There are things that must be done in faith, else they never have being.”
• “Faith is that which, knowing the Lord’s will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills — neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action.”
• “Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to be honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood.  Doubts must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.”
• “The principle part of faith is patience.”
• “A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear.”
• “All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us.”
• “If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, and he that does not live to God, is dead.”
• “Any faith in Him, however small, is better than any belief about Him, however great.”

C.S. Lewis was also influenced by Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s book, The Everlasting Man (1925), written in rebuttal of H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History.

                  Chesterton

Lewis explained:
“The best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.”

Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man, 1925:

“Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.  

It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ even if you only mean ‘In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.’
For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. 

But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else.”

He continued:
“I do not believe that the past is most truly pictured as a thing in which humanity merely fades away into nature, or civilization merely fades away into barbarism, or religion fades away into mythology, or our own religion fades away into the religions of the world.  

In short I do not believe that the best way to produce an outline of history is to rub out the lines.”

Again, G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man,1925:
“If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.  

A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy.  As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.”

Chesterton added:
“As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War, they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood.  

When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right.  The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.”
G.K. Chesterton continued:
“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died.  

Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

In 2021, the movie was released titled The Most Reluctant Convert — The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis.

In the movie Lewis described how he resisted believing, “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape,” as he wrote in Surprised by Joy, 1955.

How finally, in 1929, he came to believe in God:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen (College, Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.
That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.

In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, I was the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

In 1931, after a late-night discussion with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson about faith in Jesus Christ, C.S. Lewis described his deepening spiritual journey in Surprised by Joy:
“I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken.  

I was driven to Whipsnade zoo one sunny morning on one of those double-decker English buses.  When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.

Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. ‘Emotional’ is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events.  

It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.  And it was, like that moment on top of the bus, ambiguous.  Freedom, or necessity?  Or do they differ at their maximum? At that maximum a man is what he does; there is nothing of him left over or outside the act.

Among C.S. Lewis’ most notable books are:
• The Problem of Pain, 1940;
• The Screwtape Letters, 1942;
• Abolition of Man, 1943;
• Miracles, 1947; and
• The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950-1956, which includes: The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.

C.S. Lewis stated, speaking in The Oxford Socratic Club (1944. pp. 154-165):

“If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science.  

If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”

Someone who attended C.S. Lewis’ lectures at Cambridge was Oxford mathematician John C. Lennox, who stated: 
“God to me is the explanation for the miracle of existence – why there is something rather than nothing  The apostle Paul says what many pioneers of modern science believed that nature itself is part of the evidence for the existence of God.  

Indeed, faith is a response to evidence (That) clever mathematical laws all by themselves bring the universe and life into existence, is pure fiction. To call it science-fiction would besmirch the name of science.

  To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it points beyond itself to a source which is non-physical and of great intelligence and power.”

Cambridge biochemist Rupert Sheldrake, author of Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation, 2009, remarked in a TEDx Talk (Whitechapel, 1/12/13) “The Science Delusion”:

“As (ethnobotanist) Terence McKenna used to say, ‘Modern science is based on the principle, “Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.  And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, and all the laws that govern it, from nothing in a single instant.”

Nobel Prize winning physicist Eugene Wigner wrote in The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,1960:

“It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here or the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.”

Frank Turek and Norman Geisler published the book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist (2004), pointing out the irrationality of believing in nothing and the rationality of believing in a Creator.  Hebrews 11:3 states:  

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were made of things which do not appear.”

English poet William Cowper wrote:
“Nature is but a name for an effect, Whose cause is God.”

Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen said: 
“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.”

In The Problem of Pain, Lewis wrote:

“The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it.  

Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil.  Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.  God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.  No doubt pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion.  But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment, it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul. Suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God.  If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.”

In Mere Christianity, 1952, C.S. Lewis wrote:

“All that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

Lewis expressed in Mere Christianity, 1952:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’  

That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

In The Screwtape Letters, 1942, Lewis wrote:
“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one, the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

In the final chapter of The Abolition of Man, 1943, Lewis warned:

“I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.”

and C.S. Lewis wrote:
• “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.'”
• “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
• “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”
• “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”

Lewis wrote:
“Christianity is a religion you could not have guessed.  

It is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up.  It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.”

In Mere Christianity, 1942, C.S. Lewis wrote:

“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine.  

A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else.  Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.  He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.  That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion.  God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing”

In the founding of our country there were several men who were deeply important.  However, you seldom hear about them, as important as they were.  One of those was John Witherspoon.  Below I have told a little about him.  Please read it if you would like to know about this man who was so involved in founding our country. Ron

John Witherspoon was a colonial pastor who signed the Declaration of Independence.

He was born in Scotland on February 5, 1723.

A descendant of Protestant Reformer John Knox, Witherspoon was educated at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and afterwards served as a Presbyterian pastor.

His writings brought him to the attention of the trustees of the College of New Jersey, who sent Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton to Scotland to persuade him and his wife, Elizabeth, to come to the American colonies.

Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton later joined John Witherspoon in signing the Declaration of Independence.

Sailing to America in 1768, John Witherspoon became the President of the College of New Jersey, which was later renamed Princeton University.

There, Witherspoon taught 12 members of the Continental Congress, and 9 of the 55 writers of the U.S. Constitution, including James Madison.

Witherspoon’s other Princeton students included:

1 U.S. Vice-President, 3 Supreme Court Justices, 10 Cabinet Members, 13 Governors, 28 U.S. Senators, 49 U.S. Congressmen, 37 judges, and 114 ministers.

John Witherspoon was elected as a delegate from New Jersey to the Continental Congress.

He declared:

“Gentlemen, New Jersey is ready to vote for independence.  The country is not only ripe for independence, but we are in danger of becoming rotten for the want of it!”

On note, is that John Witherspoon was prominent clergyman who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Clergymen were often the most educated individuals in their communities.

Whereas most Church of England ministers in America held allegiance to the King and left for England when the Revolution began, patriot pastors stayed and supported the American cause.

Patriot Pastors preached on the topics of:

self-government; government from the consent of the governed; purpose of government to secure God-given rights; rights of conscience; equality before the law; freedom to speech; freedom to assemble; freedom of press; self-defense; the right to possess and bear arms; no taxation without representation; and trial by a jury of peers, rather than a partisan, king appointed judge.

President Calvin Coolidge acknowledged in his address at the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926:

“The principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live.

They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government.

In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country.

In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies.”

Coolidge added:

“Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut as early as 1773 said in a sermon before the General Court that:

‘The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people. The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.’

This doctrine found wide acceptance among the nonconformist clergy who later made up the Congregational Church.

The great apostle of this movement was the Rev. John Wise of Massachusetts.

He was one of the leaders of the revolt against the royal governor Andros for which he suffered imprisonment.

His works were reprinted in 1772 and have been declared to have been nothing less than a textbook of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers.

That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776.

This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, and confirmed the doctrine of equality in the assertion that ‘All men are created equally free and independent.’

It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence.”

Coolidge continued:

“These thoughts can very largely be traced back to what Rev. John Wise was writing in 1770. He said ‘Democracy is Christ’s government in church and state.’

Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1773.

When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature’s God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence.”

Coolidge continued:

“In its main feature the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document.  Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man.  These are not elements which we can see and touch. They have their source and their roots in our religious convictions.

Unless the faith of the American in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth the only direction in which he can proceed is backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

The duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction.

The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty.

It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their Declaration and adopted their Constitution.

Their intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While their thoughts were found with other literature, there was a wide acceptance with the authority of the Scriptures.”

President Coolidge continued:

“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them.

The things of the spirit come first.

Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. We must not sink into a pagan materialism.

We must cultivate the reverence which our founders had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed.

John Witherspoon died near Princeton, New Jersey, on NOVEMBER 15, 1794.

John Adams described Rev. Witherspoon as:  “A true son of liberty but first, he was a son of the Cross.”

Many people think that it was the plan of God for America to be preserved.  It is for sure that such would  never have happened if not for George Washington.  He not only led the military part of the revolution but was the guiding influence for so many other important things.  When he was still young, he was exposed to death so many times, but was miraculously shielded from death.  Later in life, a famous Indian Chief, traveled many miles before he died to meet Washington.  He described how eleven times he shot at Young Washington with his very accurate rifle from “point-blank” range but how the bullets would never touch him.  He went on to relate that he had concluded that: “The Great Spirit protected Washington for Washington to do important things in his life.”   Below, you can read about many of those experiences in his younger life. Ron

In the decades prior to the Revolutionary War, tensions arose between the two largest global powers: BRITAIN, led by King George II, and FRANCE, led by King Louis XV.

Because of their alliances with other nations, fighting escalated into the first global war, the Seven Years War, or as it was called in America, the French and Indian War.

The conflict included every major power in Europe as well as their colonies from the Caribbean, to India, to the Philippines, and to Africa.

Over a million died.

It was sparked by the ambush in 1754 of a French detachment in the Ohio Valley by British militia led by 22-year-old Virginia Colonel George Washington.

During this crisis, so many people turned to Christ. The Great Awakening Revival swept through the American colonies.

A notable dissenting preacher, Samuel Davies, spread revival across racial lines and was heard by many in Virginia, including Patrick Henry, who credited Davies with “teaching me what an orator should be.”

Rev. Davies regularly invited hundreds of slaves to his home for a Bible study on Saturday evenings, their only free time, and taught them hymns and how to read.

Realizing the importance of education, Davies helped found Princeton University, and was chosen its president after Jonathan Edward’s sudden death.

In 1755, 1,400 British troops marched over the Appalachian Mountains to seize French Fort Duquesne near present day Pittsburgh.

One of the wagon drivers for the British was 21-year-old Daniel Boone.

On July 9, 1755 they passed through a deep wooded ravine along the Monongahela River eight miles south of the fort.

Suddenly, they were ambushed by French regulars and Canadians accompanied by Potawatomi and Ottawa Indians.

Not accustomed to fighting unless in an open field, over 900 British soldiers were annihilated in the Battle of the Wilderness, or Battle of Monongahela.

Colonel George Washington rode back and forth during the battle delivering orders for General Edward Braddock, who was the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in America.

General Braddock was trying to get his soldiers into a formation typical of European warfare, which tragically made them an open target for the French and Indians, who were firing from behind trees.

Eventually, every British officer on horseback was shot, except Washington.

General Braddock was mortally wounded.

Washington carried Braddock from the field.

Braddock’s field desk was captured, revealing all the British military plans, enabling the French to surprise and defeat British forces in succeeding battles at five other forts.

The terrible British losses convinced the Iroquois tribes of Senecas and Cayugas to switch their allegiances to the French.

Before he died, General Braddock gave Washington his battle uniform sash which Washington reportedly carried with him the rest of his life, even while Commander-in-Chief and President.

Washington presided at the burial service for General Braddock, as the chaplain had been wounded.

Braddock’s body was buried in the middle of the road so as to prevent it from being found and desecrated.

Shortly after the Battle of Monongahela, George Washington wrote from Fort Cumberland to his younger brother, John Augustine Washington, July 18, 1755:

“As I have heard, since my arrival at this place, a circumstantial account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed the latter. But by the All-Powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!”

Reports of the defeat of General Braddock at the Battle of Monongahela spread across the country.

A short time later on July 8, 1755 a band of Shawnee Indians massacred the inhabitants of Draper’s Meadow, Virginia.

Mary Draper Ingles was kidnapped and taken as far away as Kentucky and Ohio.

At one point during her captivity, she overheard a meeting that the Shawnee had with some Frenchmen. They described in detail the British defeat in the Battle of Monongahela at Duquesne, and how the Indian Chief Red Hawk claimed to have shot Washington eleven times, but did not succeed in killing him.

After several months, Mary Draper Ingles escaped in mid-winter, as recorded in her biography, and trekked nearly 1,000 miles back home.👍

Fifteen years after the Battle of Monongahela, George Washington and Dr. Craik, a close friend of his from his youth, were traveling through those same woods near the Ohio river and Great Kanawha river.

There they were met by an old Indian chief, who addressed Washington through an interpreter:

“I am a chief and ruler over my tribes. My influence extends to the waters of the great lakes and to the far blue mountains.

I have traveled a long and weary path that I might see the young warrior of the great battle.

It was on the day when the white man’s blood mixed with the streams of our forests that I first beheld this Chief. I called to my young men and said, mark yon tall and daring warrior? He is not of the red-coat tribe-he hath an Indian’s wisdom, and his warriors fight as we do-himself alone exposed.

Quick, let your aim be certain, and he dies. Our rifles were leveled, rifles which, but for you, knew not how to miss, `twas all in vain, a power mightier far than we, shielded you.

Seeing you were under the special guardianship of the Great Spirit, we immediately ceased to fire at you. I am old and soon shall be gathered to the great council fire of my fathers in the land of shades, but ere I go, there is something bids me speak in the voice of prophecy.”

The Indian Chief continued:

“Listen! The Great Spirit protects that man and guides his destinies — he will become the chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail him as the founder of a mighty empire. I am come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of Heaven, and who can never die in battle.”

The qualities of faith virtue and discipline were evident during this early period of George Washington’s public career as seen in his actions and correspondence.

The young Colonel George Washington wrote from Alexandria, Virginia to Governor Dinwiddie, February 2, 1756:

“I have always so far as was in my power endeavored to discourage gambling in camp, and always shall while I have the honor to preside there.”

Colonel Washington wrote from Winchester, Virginia to Governor Dinwiddie, April 18, 1756:

“It gave me infinite concern to find in yours by Governor Innes that any representations should inflame the Assembly against the Virginia regiment, or give cause to suspect the morality and good behaviour of the officers.

I have, both by threats and persuasive means, endeavored to discountenance gambling, drinking, swearing, and irregularities of every kind; while I have, on the other hand, practised every artifice to inspire a laudable emulation in the officers for the service of their country, and to encourage the soldiers in the unerring exercise of their duty.”

Washington issued the following order while at Fort Cumberland in June of 1756:

“Colonel Washington has observed that the men of regiment are very profane and reprobate. He takes this opportunity to inform them of his great displeasure at such practices, and assures them, that, if they do not leave them off, they shall be severely punished. The officers are desired, if they hear any man swear, or make use of an oath or execration, to order the offender twenty-five lashes immediately, without a court-martial. For the second offense, he will be more severely punished.”

In 1756, Colonel George Washington issued the order: “Any soldier found drunk shall receive one hundred lashes without benefit of court-martial.”

About a year after General Braddock’s defeat, Colonel Washington wrote to Governor Dinwiddie from Winchester, Virginia: “With this small company of irregulars, with whom order, regularity, circumspection, and vigilance were matters of derision and contempt, we set out, and by the protection of Providence, reached Augusta Court House in seven days without meeting the enemy; otherwise we must have fallen a sacrifice through the indiscretion of these whooping, hallooing, gentlemen soldiers.”

On September 23, 1756, Colonel Washington wrote to Governor Dinwiddie from Mount Vernon: “The want of a chaplain, I humbly conceive, reflects dishonor on the regiment, as all other officers are allowed. The gentlemen of the corps are sensible of this, and propose to support one at their private expense. But I think it would have a more graceful appearance were he appointed as others are.”

On November 9, 1756, Colonel Washington wrote to Governor Dinwiddie: “As to a chaplain, if the government will grant a subsistence, we can readily get a person of merit to accept the place, without giving the commissary any trouble on the point.”

On November 24, 1756, Colonel Washington wrote to Governor Dinwiddie: “When I spoke of a chaplain, it was in answer to yours.

I had no person in view, though many have offered; and I only said if the country would provide subsistence we could procure a chaplain without thinking there was offense in expression.”

On April 17, 1758, after Governor Dinwiddiewas recalled, Colonel Washington wrote from Fort Loudoun to the President of the Council: “The last Assembly, in their Supply Bill, provided for a chaplain to our regiment. On this subject I had often without any success applied to Governor Dinwiddie. I now flatter myself, that your honor will be pleased to appoint a sober, serious man for this duty. Common decency, Sir, in a camp calls for the services of a divine, which ought not to be dispensed with, although the world should be so uncharitable as to think us void of religion, and incapable of good instructions.”

On July 20, 1758, in a letter to his fiancee, Martha Dandridge Custis, Colonel George Washington wrote from Fort Cumberland:  “We have begun our march for the Ohio. A courier is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity to send a few lines to one whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour when we made our pledges to each other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as to another Self. That an All-Powerful Providence may keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and ever affectionate Friend.”

On January 6, 1759, George Washington was married to Martha Dandridge Custis by Rev. David Mossom, rector of Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, New Kent County, Virginia.

After having settled at Mount Vernon, George Washington became one of the twelve vestrymen in the Truro Parish, which included the Pohick Church, the Falls Church, and the Alexandria Church.

The old vestry book of Pohick Church contained the entry:  “At a Vestry held for Truro Parish, October 25, 1762, ordered, that George Washington, Esq. be chosen and appointed one of the Vestry-men of this Parish, in the room of William Peake, Gent. Deceased.”

In his diary, George Washington recorded his attendance at numerous Church and Vestry meetings.

On February 15, 1763, the Fairfax County Court recorded: “George Washington, Esq. took the oath according to Law, repeated and subscribed the Test and subscribed to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England in order to qualify him to act as a Vestryman of Truro Parish.”

Thirteen years later, General George Washington stated, July 2, 1776: “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to have any property they can call their own;  whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.

The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore to resolve to conquer or die.”

Yesterday I sent you info on Teddy Roosevelt.  What I wanted you to figure out was that Donald Trump is tough just like Teddy was.  Trump is running for President for a second time.  Roosevelt was running for President for a second time also as the candidate for Bull Moose Party.

Teddy was starting to make a speech at a political rally at this same time of the year.  This evil fellow walked up in front of the lectern and shot Teddy right in the chest. The bullet missed his heart and lodged in the back of his chest.  How tough of a dude was Teddy Roosevelt???  He walked up and finished his whole speech as his white shirt turned red from all the blood.

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Yes, you have heard stories about this man, how he stormed San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders, and how Franklin Roosevelt gained the White House on his coat tailes.  However, his whole life was so amazing and so influenced our America, that I wanted you to have the opportunity to see his whole story, as shown below:                                   Ron 

                                            

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was born October 27, 1858.

As a child, he had debilitating asthma, often waking up at night as if being smothered to death.

At 6-years-old, he watched Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession from the window of his grandfather’s mansion in Union Square, New York City.

Theodore was home-schooled as a child, becoming fascinated with animals and zoology after seeing a dead seal in a local market.

His father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was a successful New York business leader, who helped raise support for the Union during the Civil War.

Young Theodore described him:  “My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness.” 

His father took the family on trips to Europe in 1869 and 1870, and Egypt in 1872, and helped found New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At 15-years-old, Roosevelt wrote of their trip to Jerusalem:  “In the afternoon we went to the Wailing Place of the Jews.”

After being accosted by older boys on a camping trip, Roosevelt began exercising.  He became an accomplished boxer and a third-degree brown belt in judo.

He entered Harvard in 1876.

He was devastated in 1878 upon news of the sudden death of his father, who had told him:  “Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.”   

After graduation, he attended Columbia University Law School in New York. 

While there, at the age of 23, he wrote a significant book, The Naval War of 1812 (published in 1882).

The book was so well received that just four years later, the U.S. Navy ordered a copy of it to be placed on every ship.

The book influenced Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan to write The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (published in 1892). 

This book revolutionized naval warfare, causing not only the United States, but Britain and Germany, to improve their navies.

Roosevelt began attending meetings of New York’s 21st District Republican Association.

When 20th President, Republican President James Garfield, was assassinated in 1881, and Chester Arthur became the 21st President, Roosevelt decided to run for state assemblyman.

He won in 1882, and dropped out of law school to pursue politics.

He was reelected in 1883, and again in 1884, the same year Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected the 22nd U.S. President.   

In 1880, Theodore married Alice Hathaway Lee.

Four years later, in 1884, their daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, was born. Tragically, two days later, on February 14, 1884, Roosevelt’s mother, Mittie, died of typhoid, and later that afternoon, in the same house, his wife, Alice, died of kidney failure.

Roosevelt scratched in his diary a large black “X” with the words “The light has gone out of my life.”

Attending the Republican National Convention in June of 1884, he gave a speech in support of John Roy Lynch, an African-American former slave, recommending he be chosen as the temporary chair of the Convention.

After bitter political battles, Roosevelt retired from politics, left his baby daughter with his sister, and went to ranch in the Dakotas.

Roosevelt wrote that: “A cattle rancher had few of the emasculated, milk-and-water moralities admired by the pseudo-philanthropists; but he does possess, to a veryhigh degree, the stern, manly qualities that are invaluable to a nation.”

While there, he wrote three books: Hunting Trips of a Ranchman; Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail; and The Wilderness Hunter.

Roosevelt bought a herd and ranched for three years, till the severe winter on 1886-1887 killed most of his cattle.
He returned east and married a childhood friend, Edith Kermit Carow, on December 2, 1886, at St George’s Church in Hanover Square, London.

Together they had five children, and also raised daughter Alice from his first marriage.

In 1886, he ran for Mayor of New York City, but lost.

He wrote another book: The Winning of the West.

Roosevelt campaigned for Republican Benjamin Harrison, who won election as the 23rd U.S. President.

Harrison appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission.

In 1892, Democrat Grover Cleveland won his second term, as the 24th President, and reappointed Roosevelt to the same position.

Before the mafia came to New York, the local police “ran” the crime in their districts.
In 1894, the Mayor of New York appointed Roosevelt to the City Police Commissioners, where he became president of the board, reforming the department, cleaning out corruption, and installing telephones in the station houses.

Roosevelt was for law and order. He walked officers’ beats on the streets after midnight to make sure they were on duty.

On Sundays to make sure all stores were closed to comply with New York’s Sunday Closing Blue Laws, which were put in place to promote observance of the Lord’s day of worship.
Roosevelt was the first to bring Jews into the police force, calling them his “Maccabees.”

Journalist Jacob Riis of the Evening Sun newspaper, wrote in his book How the Other Half Lives, of the terrible conditions the millions of immigrants suffered:
“When Roosevelt read my book, he came. No one ever helped as he did. For two years we were brothers in (New York City’s crime-ridden) Mulberry Street.

There is very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads, as we all found out.

The lawbreaker found it out, and lived to respect him. For the first time a moral purpose came into the street. In the light of it, everything was transformed.”

In 1897, when William McKinley became the 25th President, he appointed Roosevelt as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

With the help of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Roosevelt built up the U.S. Navy, especially battleships.

On February 15, 1898, USS Maine exploded in Cuba’s Havana Harbor, beginning the Spanish-American War.

Roosevelt immediately sent orders for the Navy to prepare for war. Admiral George Dewey later credited this as a key factor in quick victory in the Battle of Manila Bay.

Roosevelt resigned his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and organized the first Volunteer Cavalry, “The Rough Riders,” which helped capture Cuba’s San Juan Hill.

Upon his return to New York in 1898, Roosevelt ran for Governor and won.

In the 1900 Republican Convention, he was chosen to be the Vice-Presidential running-mate for William McKinley’s reelection.

When McKinley was assassinated on September 6, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became America’s youngest President.

As the 26th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was the first President to invite an African American, Booker T. Washington, to dine in the White House on October 16, 1901.

Southern Democrat newspapers condemned him, as printed in The Memphis Scimitar:  “The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed yesterday by the President, when he invited a n…. to dine with him at the White House.

It would not be worth more than a passing notice if Theodore Roosevelt had sat down to dinner in his own home with a Pullman car porter, but Roosevelt the individual and Roosevelt the President are not to be viewed in the same light.”

 Roosevelt addressed the Long Island Bible Society in 1901:
“Every thinking man realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally — I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally — impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teachings were removed.

We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less of resolution, strive to raise ourselves.

Almost every man who has by his lifework added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, has based his lifework largely upon the teachings of the Bible.

Among the greatest men a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand.”

Roosevelt took on his era’s version of big tech globalist elites by being a “trust-buster,” breaking up monopolies, such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Account.

He exposed deep-state corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Land Office, and Post Office.

After Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle (1906), Roosevelt harnessed public opinion to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

He intervened to settle labor disputes.

On March 17, 1905, St. Patrick’s Day, President Theodore Roosevelt gave away in marriage his deceased brother’s daughter, Eleanor, to wed her fifth cousin, once removed, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Capitalizing on Theodore’s name, Franklin rose in politics to become the 32th U.S. President.

Theodore Roosevelt is considered the first “conservationist president.”

He created the U.S. Forest Service, designating:
5 National Parks;

18 U.S. National Monuments;

51 bird reserves,4 game preserves,

150 National Forests,being responsible for a total of 121 forest reserves in 31 states.

He set 230,000,000 acres under public protection and by the end of his second term established 150 million acres of reserved forestry land.

In his foreign policy, he assisted in 1904 to negotiate a Japan-Russian Treaty, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

He intervened in the First Moroccan Crisis, the Venezuelan Crisis, and settled the dispute with Britain over the Alaskan border.

He helped Panama separate from Columbia, and began building the Panama Canal.

Roosevelt argued for the protection of Jews of North Africa.

Ambassador Michael B. Oren noted in Power, Faith and Fantasy, that in Roosevelt’s negotiations with Morocco, he insisted they:
“Secure his country’s customary concerns in the area, protecting North African Jews from oppression and American merchants from unfair restrictions and fees.”

He pressured Romania and Russia to treat their Jewish populations fairly.

After a massacre of Jews in Kishinev, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, Roosevelt wrote:  “I need not dwell upon a fact so patent as the widespread indignation with which the Americans heard of the dreadful outrages up on the Jews in Kishineff.”

In 1906, Roosevelt became the first president to appoint a Jew as a Cabinet Member – Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar Solomon Straus, who owned, with his brother, the Macy’s Department Store.

He wrote to Straus: “I don’t know whether you know it or not, but I want you to become a member of my Cabinet. I have a very high estimate of your character, your judgment and your ability, and I want you for personal reasons.

There is still a further reason: I want to show Russia and some other countries what we think of Jews in this country.”

Roosevelt stated:  “To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular Church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any Church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience.

In my Cabinet at the present moment there sit side by side Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Jew, each man chosen because in my belief he is peculiarly fit to exercise on behalf of all our people the duties of the office.”

A member of the Dutch Reformed Church, Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1909:  “After a week on perplexing problems it does so rest my soul to come into the house of The Lord and to sing and mean it, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty’.  (My) great joy and glory that, in occupying an exalted position in the nation, I am enabled, to preach the practical moralities of the Bible to my fellowcountrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world.”

Theodore Roosevelt also championed a type of muscular, manly Christianity, addressing the Holy Name Society, August 16, 1903:
“I am not addressing weaklings, or I should not take the trouble to come here. I am addressing strong, vigorous men, who are engaged in the active hard work of life men who have strength to set a right example to others.  You cannot retain your self-respect if you are loose and foul of tongue, that a man who is to lead a clean and honorable life must inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not clean and honorable. A man must be clean of mouth as well as clean of life — must show by his words as well as by his actions his fealty to the Almighty.  We have good Scriptural authority for the statement that it is not what comes into a man’s mouth but what goes out of it that counts.” 

He added:

“Every man here knows the temptations that beset all of us in this world. At times any man will slip. I do not expect perfection, but I do expect genuine and sincere effort toward being decent and cleanly in thought, in word, and in deed. I expect you to be strong. I would not respect you if you were not. I do not want to see Christianity professed only by weaklings; I want to see it a moving spirit among men of strength.”

 Roosevelt continued:

“I should hope to see each man become all the fitter to do the rough work of the world and if, which may Heaven forfend, war should come, all the fitter to fight. I desire to see in this country the decent men strong and the strong men decent.”

He added: 

“There is always a tendency among very young men to think that to be wicked is rather smart; to think it shows that they are men. Oh, how often you see some young fellow who boasts that he is going to ‘see life,’ meaning by that that he is going to see that part of life which it is a thousandfold better should remain unseen!

I ask that every man here constitute himself his brother’s keeper by setting an example to that younger brother which will prevent him from getting such a false estimate of life. 

Example is the most potent of all things. If any one of you in the presence of younger boys, and misbehave yourself, if you use coarse and blasphemous language before them, you can be sure that these younger people will follow your example and not your precept.

It is no use to preach to them if you do not act decently yourself. 

The most effective way in which you can preach is by your practice The father, the elder brothers, the friends, can do much toward seeing that the boys as they become men become clean and honorable men.” 

Roosevelt concluded:

“I have told you that I wanted you not only to be decent, but to be strong. These boys will not admire virtue of a merely anemic type. They believe in courage, in manliness. They admire those who have the quality of being brave, the quality of facing life as life should be faced, the quality that must stand at the root of good citizenship in peace or in war. 

If you are to be effective as good Christians you must possess strength and courage, or your example will count for little with the young.

I want to see every man able to hold his own with the strong, and also ashamed to oppress the weak. I want to see him too strong of spirit to submit to wrong. I want to see each man able to hold his own in the rough work of actual life outside, and also, when he is at home, a good man, unselfish in dealing with wife, or mother, or children.

Remember that the preaching does not count if it is not backed up by practice. There is no good in your preaching to your boys to be brave, if you run away.”

After his Presidency, he helped William Howard Taft to be elected the 27th President.

Roosevelt then led a Smithsonian safari in Africa in 1909.

He then traveled to meet world leaders, from Egypt to Austrian-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, England’s King George V.

In St. Louis, Missouri, 1910, Roosevelt was the first person who had been President to fly in an airplane.

At a campaign speech in Milwaukee, October 14, 1912, a saloonkeeper shot Roosevelt in the chest. As the bullet did not hit any vital organs, Roosevelt stood back up and finished his speech, with blood staining his shirt.

 On June 28, 1914, Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, beginning World War I.

As America was preparing to enter the War, the New York Bible Society published a pocket New Testament and Book of Psalms in 1917 to be handed out to all the U.S. soldiers, with Theodore Roosevelt writing the introduction:

“The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah’s verse (Micah vi. 8):
‘What more does the Lord require of thee than to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’

DO JUSTICE; and therefore fight valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub on this earth.

LOVE MERCY; treat prisoners well, succor the wounded, treat every woman as if she was your sister, care for the little children, and be tender to the old and helpless.

WALK HUMBLY; You will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Saviour.
May the God of justice and mercy have you in His keeping.-(signed) Theodore Roosevelt.”

 During World War I, Roosevelt’s son Quentin was pilot in Europe, but was tragically shot down and killed July 14, 1918.

Theodore Roosevelt died less than six months later, on January 6, 1919, at the age of 60.

Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall stated:  “Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

The End

In commemoration of this important day, below are the thoughts expressed by some of the most famous leaders and thinkers of our country on the Revolution and the resulting Declaration of Independence.  I hope they are very meaningful to you! Ron 

38-year-old King George the Third ruled the largest empire that planet earth had ever seen – “on which the sun never sets.”

He was a one-world government globalist, with him at the top, ruling through mandates.

President Ronald Reagan declared May 9, 1983:
“The Founding Fathers understood that only by MAKING GOVERNMENT THE SERVANT, not the master, only by positing SOVEREIGNTY in THE PEOPLE and not the state, can we hope to protect freedom.  In 1776, the source of government excess was the crown’s abuse of power and its attempt to suffocate the colonists with its overbearing demands. In our own day, the danger of too much state power has taken a subtler but no less dangerous form.”

Twenty-seven abuses of King George the Third were listed in the Declaration of Independence, signed JULY 4, 1776.
These abuses included:

A two-tiered justice system:
“He has made judges dependent on his will alone.”

Weaponizing bureaucracy:
“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Imposing martial law:
“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.”

Targeting political opposition:
“For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury.

For establishing an arbitrary government.

For altering fundamentally the forms of our governments.”

Turning law enforcement and military against his own subjects:

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt 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 death, desolation, and tyranny.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring other inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

33-year-old Thomas Jefferson’s original rough draft of the Declaration also contained a line condemning slavery, as the King of England was part owner of the Royal African Company: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN  should be bought and sold.” 

Unfortunately, a few delegates from southern states objected to this line.  Since everyone was in a panic as the British were invading New York and the city was in flames, and since the Declaration needed to pass unanimously, the line in Jefferson’s original draft condemning slavery was tragically set aside.

John Hancock, the 39-year-old President of the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration first, reportedly saying “the price on my head has just doubled.”

Next to sign was Secretary, Charles Thomson, age 47.

70-year-old Benjamin Franklin said: “We must hang together or most assuredly we shall hang separately.”

When the King infringed upon people’s GOD given rights, the founders went above the King’s head, appealing in the Declaration directly to God as the author of individual rights:
“Laws of Nature and of NATURE’S GOD.”

“All Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights”

“Appealing to the SUPREME JUDGE OF THE WORLD for the rectitude of our intentions.”And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

The line “all men are created equal” fundamentally changed government, as kings did not believe everyone was created equal. They believed they were created extra special. It was called “the divine right of kings,” namely, that the Creator gives rights to the king and he dispenses them at his discretion to whoever he wishes.
The Declaration of Independence bypassed the King, declaring that the Creator gives rights directly to each individual person.

Many of the 56 signer’s sacrificed their prosperity for their posterity.
Of the signers:

11 had their homes destroyed;

were hunted and captured;

7 served in the military;

9 died during the war.

27-year-old George Walton signed, and at the Battle of Savannah was wounded and captured.

Signers Edward Rutledge, age 27, Thomas Heyward, Jr., age 30, and Arthur Middleton, age 34, were made prisoners at the Siege of Charleston.

38-year-old signer Thomas Nelson had his home used as British headquarters during the siege of Yorktown. Nelson reportedly offered five guineas to the first man to shoot into his house.

Signer Carter Braxton, age 40, lost his fortune during the war.

42-year-old signer Thomas McKean wrote that he was “hunted like a fox by the enemy, compelled to remove my family five times in three month.”

46-year-old Richard Stockton signed and was dragged from his bed at night and jailed.

50-year-old signer Lewis Morris had his home taken and used as a barracks.

50-year-old signer Abraham Clark had two sons tortured and imprisoned on the British starving ship Jersey.

More Americans died on British starving ships than died in battle during the Revolution.

53-year-old signer Rev. John Witherspoon had his son, James, killed in the Battle of Germantown.

60-year-old signer Philip Livingston lost several properties to British occupation and died before the war ended.

63-year-old signer Francis Lewis found out that the British plundered his home and carried away his wife, Elizabeth, putting her in prison. The British wanted to make an example of her, so they denied her a change of clothes, a bed, and gave her nothing but the most meager food. She was treated so harshly that she died shortly after being released.

65-year-old signer John Hart had his home looted and had to remain in hiding, dying before the war ended.

41-year-old John Adams wrote:  “Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”
Regarding on the day the Declaration was signed, John Adams wrote to his wife:  “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary Festival.

It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by SOLEMN ACTS OF DEVOTION TO GOD ALMIGHTY.

It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”

Gustave de Beaumont, a contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote in Marie ou L’Esclavage aux E’tas-Unis, 1835:  “I have seen a meeting of the Senate in Washington open with a prayer, and the anniversary festival of the Declaration of Independence consists, in the United States, of an entirely religious ceremony.”

John Adams continued in his letter to his wife: “You will think me transported with enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.”

When 54-year-old Samuel Adams signed the Declaration, he said: “We have this day restored THE SOVEREIGN to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.”

34-year-old James Wilson signed the Declaration. He later signed the Constitution and was appointed to Supreme Court by George Washington. 
James Wilson stated in 1787: “After a period of 6,000 years since creation, the United States exhibit to the world THE FIRST INSTANCE of a nation … assembling voluntarily and deciding that system of government under which they and their posterity should live.”

Senator Daniel Webster stated in 1802: “Miracles do not cluster, and what has HAPPENED ONCE IN 6,000 YEARS, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”

John Jay was President of the Continental Congress, 1778-1779, and later nominated by George Washington to be the First Chief Justice of Supreme Court. John Jay wrote in 1777: “The Americans are THE FIRST PEOPLE whom Heaven has favored with an opportunity of choosing the forms of government under which they should live. All other constitutions have derived their existence from violence or accidental circumstances. Your lives, your liberties, your property, will be at the disposal only of your Creator and yourselves.

“Yale President Ezra Stiles, 1788: “All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one: and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.”

At the time of the Revolutionary War, nearly every other country on Earth was ruled by a king.

Dr. Pat Robertson wrote in America’s Dates with Destiny, 1986: “On September 17, 1787, the day our Constitution was signed, monarch the absolute Ch’ien Lung, emperor of the Manchu (or Ch’ing) Dynasty, reigned supreme over the people of China. Revolts were put down by ruthless military force.

In Japan the shogun (warriors) of the corrupt Tokugawa chamberlain Tanuma Okitsugu exercised corrupt and totalitarian authority over the Japanese.

In India, Warren Hastings, the British Governor of Bengal, had successfully defeated the influence of the fragmented Mogul dynasties that ruled India since 1600.

Catherine II was the enlightened despot of all the Russia’s.

Joseph II was the emperor of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary.

For almost half a century, Frederick the Great had ruled Prussia.

Louis XVI sat uneasily on his throne in France just years away from revolution, a bloody experiment in democracy, and the new tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte.

A kind of a constitutional government had been created in the Netherlands in 1579 by the Protestant Union of Utrecht, but that constitution was really a loose federation of the northern provinces for a defense against Catholic Spain.

What was happening in America had no real precedent, even as far back as the city-states of Greece. The only real precedent was established thousands of years before by the tribes of Israel in the covenant with God and with each other.”

President Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1903: “In NO other place and at NO other time has the experiment of governmentof the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE, been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country.”

President Calvin Coolidge stated in 1924:  “The history of government on this earth has been almost entirely rule of force held in the HANDS OF A FEW. Under our Constitution, America committed itself to power in the HANDS OF THE PEOPLE.”

A King has “subjects” who are subjected to his will.

The word “citizen” is Greek, and it means a co-ruler, a co-regent, a co-king.

America’s founders, for all their faults, gave a present to all future citizens, namely, each person gets to be king of their own life, and all citizens together are the co-kings of the country!

A republic is where the people are king, ruling through representatives.
America is a republic where WE THE PEOPLE get to rule ourselves.When someone protests the flag, what they are effectively saying, is, that they no longer want to be king.

They protest this system where they participate in ruling themselves.
They want someone else to rule their life.

President Ford stated in Rock Hill, South Carolina, October 19, 1974:  “What they don’t tell us when they propose all these benefits that they are going to give you from our Government, that a government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take from us everything we have.”

Ronald Reagan opened the Ashbrook Center, Ashland, Ohio, May 9, 1983:  “From their own harsh experience with intrusive, overbearing government, the Founding Fathers made a great breakthrough in political understanding. They understood that it is the excesses of government, the will to power of one man over another, that has been a principle source of injustice and human suffering through the ages.

“John Adams wrote in his notes on A Dissertation on Canon & Feudal Law, 1765:  “I always consider the settlement of America as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

John Jay noted in 1777:  “This glorious revolution distinguished by so many marks of the Divine favor and interposition and I may say miraculous, that when future ages shall read its history, they will be tempted to consider a great part of it as fabulous.  The many remarkable events by which our wants have been supplied and our enemies repelled are such strong and striking proofs of the interposition of Heaven, that our having been hitherto delivered from the threatened bondage of Britain ought, like the emancipation of the Jews from Egyptian servitude.”

Franklin Roosevelt stated in 1939:  “Rulers increase their power over the common men. The seamen they sent to find gold found instead the way of escape for the common man from those rulers.

What they found over the Western horizon was not the silk and jewels of Cathay, but MANKIND’S SECOND CHANCE, a chance to create a new world after he had almost spoiled an old one. The Almighty seems purposefully to have withheld that SECOND CHANCE until the time when men would most need and appreciate liberty.”

Ronald Reagan stated 1961:  “In this country of ours took place THE GREATEST REVOLUTION that has ever taken place IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Here for THE FIRST TIME in all the THOUSANDS OF YEARS of man’s relation to man, the founding fathers established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the GOD-GIVEN RIGHT AND ABILITY to DETERMINE OUR OWN DESTINY.”

Donald Trump stated July 3, 2020:  “Each of you lives in the most magnificent country in the history of the world.

Our Founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity.

No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America. And no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.

It was all made possible by the courage of 56 patriots who gathered in Philadelphia 244 years ago and signed the Declaration of Independence.

They enshrined a divine truth that changed the world forever when they said: ‘All men are created equal’

Our Founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights, given to us by our Creator in Heaven. And that which God has given us, we will allow no one, ever, to take away. Ever.

Seventeen seventy-six represented the culmination of thousands of years of western civilization.

Trump explained the left’s “identity theft” of America’s history:

“And yet there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure.

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.

Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing.”

He added:

“One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.
This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.”

Trump spoke further:

“We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life.

In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.

If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.

Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.

They are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions.

Our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains.

Their radical view of American history is a web of lies — all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.

No movement that seeks to dismantle these treasured American legacies can possibly have a love of America at its heart.

No person who remains quiet at the destruction of this resplendent heritage can possibly lead us to a better future.”

He continued:

“The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society.
It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination, and exclusion.

We will not be silenced. We declare that the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth.

Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and we understand — that these values have dramatically advanced the cause of peace and justice throughout the world.

We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed.
Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God.
We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture. We only kneel to Almighty God.”

President Trump concluded:

“Those who seek to erase our heritage seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country, and that we feel for each other.

Their goal is not a better America, their goal is the end of America.

Our opponents would tear apart the very documents that Martin Luther King used to express his dream, and the ideas that were the foundation of the righteous movement for Civil Rights.

It is time for our politicians to summon the bravery and determination of our American ancestors.

It is time to plant our flag and protect the greatest of this nation, for citizens of every race, in every city, and every part of this glorious land. For the sake of our honor, for the sake of our children.

Americans must never lose sight of this miraculous story. We will raise the next generation of American patriots.”

British Edwardian writer G.K. Chesterton stated in “What is America”:  “America is the ONLY NATION IN THE WORLD that is founded on creed.

That creed is set forth in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice.

It certainly does condemn atheism, since it clearly names the CREATOR as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.”

Calvin Coolidge stated July 5, 1926:  “THE PRINCIPLES which went into the Declaration of Independence are found in THE SERMONS of the early colonial clergy.

They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the Divine image.”
Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863:  “Our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Henry Cabot Lodge, who filled the role of the first Senate Majority Leader, warned the U.S. Senate in 1919:

“The United States is the world’s best hope.

Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.”

In the Gospel of Mark and in the other gospels, Jesus told of the great persecution that would happen to those associated with Him and His Spirit.  Unfortunately, it is still happening.  Below is a brief history of that persecution for you to review:

Ron

The Christian church was born into persecution from an anti-Christian one world government — the Roman Empire.

Eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred, with the 12th, John, being reportedly thrown into a boiling pot of oil, but miraculously survived.

Jesus said in Acts11:8: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost

is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

 The word “witness” in Greek is “martyr.”

The traditional histories are:

Peter preached in Rome and was crucified upside down c.66 AD;

Andrew preached in Asia Minor, modern-day Greece and Turkey, before being crucified on a sideways “Saint Andrew’s Cross” around 60 AD;

Thomas preached east of Syria, Parthia, and possibly India, and was pierced through with spears by four soldiers in 72 AD;

Philip reportedly preached in Egypt, Carthage in North Africa, and Asia Minor. After converting the wife of a Roman proconsul in Phrygia, he was arrested and cruelly put to death in the city of Heliopolis around 80 AD;

Matthew preached in Parthia, Persia and Ethiopia, where he
was reportedly stabbed to death in the back in city of Nadabahl
in 74 AD;

Bartholomew, according to tradition, preached in India, Armenia, Ethiopia and Southern Arabia, before being skinned and martyred in the 1st Century AD;

James, the son of Zebedee, also know as “James, the greater,” was arrested by Herod Agrippa, and beheaded by the Romans in 44 AD;

James, the son of Alpheus, also known as “James, the younger,” is said to have ministered in Syria, where he was stoned and clubbed to death in 62 AD;

Thaddaeus, or Jude, preached in Asia Minor and Greece, till he was crucified in Beirut or Edessa around 65 AD;

Simon the Zealot reportedly preached in Persia, Mauritania, on Africa’s west, and possibly England, before being crucified in 74 AD;

Matthias preached in Syria, where he was burned to death.

The first martyr was Stephen, as told in the Book of Acts, chapter 7: “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.

 But Stephen, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven.  And said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God’.  They cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.

Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’

Saul converted and became the Apostle Paul, who preached in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire, till he was beheaded in Rome in 66 AD.

James the Just, also known as “James, brother of the Lord,” was one of the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem till he was martyred in 62 AD.

In 155 AD, Polycarp, a disciple of John, was ordered to deny Christ or die.

Polycarp responded:  “Eighty and six years have I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?”

Josh McDowell explained the significance of the Apostles being martyred in his best-selling book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1972).

The book was updated (2017) with his son and co-author, Sean McDowell, who stated:  “The apostles spent between 1.5 to 3 years with Jesus during His public ministry.  Although disillusioned at His untimely death, they became the first witnesses of the risen Jesus and they endured persecution; many subsequently experienced martyrdom, signing their testimony, so to speak, in their own blood.  Their willingness to die, indicates that they did not fabricate these claims; rather, without exception, they actually believed Jesus to have risen from the dead lending credibility to their claims about the veracity of the resurrection, which is fundamental to the case for Christianity.”

Jesus foretold persecution in the Gospel of John, chapter 15:  “You are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you … If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.  He who hates Me hates My Father also.”

The Book of Revelation, with chapter 12, stated:  “Now is come the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”

It was a criminal act for Christians to assemble.

 If the government caught Christians meeting together, they were subject to being arrested and killed.

This resulted in Christians meeting in caves carved underground called “catacombs.”

Emperor Diocletian’s persecution was the worst.

When Diocletian lost battles in Persia, his generals blamed it on the army’s neglect of worshiping the Roman gods.

Diocletian ordered all military personnel and government employees to worship the Roman gods.

This order forced Christian soldiers to either go out of the military or into the closet.

After purging Christians from the military and government, Diocletian surrounded himself with anti-Christian advisers.

In 303 A.D., he consulted the Oracle Temple of Apollo at Didyma, which told him to initiate a great empire-wide persecution of Christians.

Diocletian revoked the tolerance issued a previous Emperor Gallienus in 260 A.D., and then used the military to force all of Rome to return to worshiping pagan gods.

What followed was a decade of the worst and most intense persecution of Christians to that date.

Diocletian had his military go systematically province by province forbidding church gatherings, arresting church leaders, burning scriptures, destroying church buildings.

He ordered the beautiful new church at Nicomedia to be torn down.

Christians were deprived of official ranks, lost their jobs, imprisoned, had their tongues cut out, were boiled alive, and even decapitated.

From Europe to North Africa, thousands were martyred. The faithful cried out in fervent prayer.

Finally, Diocletian was struck with an intestinal disease so painful that he abdicated the throne on MAY 1, 305 A.D..

The next emperor, Gelarius continued the persecution, but he too was struck with the intestinal disease and died in 311.

Emperor Constantine defeated Emperor Maxentius in 312 A.D. at the Battle of Romes’ Milvian Bridge.

In 313 A.D., Constantine issued the Edit of Milan, ending the persecution of Christians.

Commenting on Roman persecutions was Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the Democrat Party’s candidate for President in 1896, 1900, and 1908.

William Jennings Bryan, in his speech, “The Prince of Peace,” (New York Times, September 7, 1913), stated:
 “I can imagine that the early Christians who were carried into the Coliseum to make a spectacle for those more savage than the beasts, were entreated by their doubting companions not to endanger their lives.

But, kneeling in the center of the arena, they prayed and sang until they were devoured.”

Bryan continued:

“How helpless they seemed, and, measured by every human rule, how hopeless was their cause!

And yet within a few decades the power which they invoked proved mightier than the legions of the Emperor, and the faith in which they died was triumphant o’er all the land.

They were greater conquerors in their death than they could have been had they purchased life.”

It takes courage to walk in faith:  Joshua 1:9: “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

The Book of Revelation 21:8 lists cowards as the first ones thrown in the lake of fire:  “But the cowardly (fearful), unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

The Center for Studies on New Religions found that in 2016, over 90,000 Christians courageously kept their faith, even though they were murdered, 30 percent of whom were at the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Open Doors UK & Ireland CEO Lisa Pearce reported: “Persecution levels have been rising rapidly across Asia and the Indian subcontinent, driven by extreme religious nationalism which is often tacitly condoned, and sometimes actively encouraged, by local and national governments.

If a Christian is discovered in Somalia, they are unlikely to live to see another day.

 North Korea is at the top of the list of countries persecuting Christians, followed by nations practicing sharia Islam.  

China has increased targeting Christians and demolishing churches.”

Catholic News Agency reported:  “All top 10 countries with the worst persecution of Christians are in Asia and Africa. Somalia ranks second on the list, followed by Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Eritrea.

More Christians were recorded as killed (in Pakistan) for their faith in 2016 than any other country.”

Open Doors reported that in 2016:  Islamic fundamentalism is responsible for persecution of Christians in 35 of the top 50 countries;

Pakistan is 4th in persecution, worse than northern Nigeria;

Sudan is the 5th worst persecutor of Christians, with President Omar al-Bashir proclaiming, “Now we can impose sharia here”;

Christians are killed in crossfire in Yemen, Syria and Iraq;

Hindu nationalists have caused India to reach its highest level of persecution, battering churches;

Laos, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Bhutan increased persecution;

Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka has put the country among the top 50 persecutors;

Turkish President Erdogan used a suspicious coup to eliminate opposition and increase persecution of Christians, moderate Muslims and non-Islamists.

President Ronald Reagan commented on the courageous Christians who suffered persecution in the Roman Coliseum at the National Prayer Breakfast, February 2, 1984:

 “This power of prayer can be illustrated by the story that goes back to the fourth century, the monk (Telemachus) living in a little remote village, spending most of his time in prayer.

 One day he thought he heard the voice of God telling him to go to Rome.  Weeks and weeks later, he arrived at a time of a festival in Rome.

He followed a crowd into the Coliseum, and then, there in the midst of this great crowd, he saw the gladiators come forth, stand before the Emperor, and say, ‘We who are about to die salute you.’

 And he realized they were going to fight to the death for the entertainment of the crowds.

He cried out, ‘In the Name of Christ, stop!’ And his voice was lost in the tumult there in the great Colosseum.”

Reagan continued:

“And as the games began, he made his way down through the crowd and climbed over the wall and dropped to the floor of the arena.

Suddenly the crowds saw this scrawny little figure making his way out to the gladiators and saying, over and over again, ‘In the Name of Christ, stop!’

 And they thought it was part of the entertainment, and at first they were amused.  But then, when they realized it wasn’t, they grew belligerent and angry.”

Reagan added:

“And as he was pleading with the gladiators, ‘In the Name of Christ, stop!’ one of them plunged his sword into his body.

And as he fell to the sand of the arena in death, his last words
were, ‘In the Name of Christ, stop!’

And suddenly, a strange thing happened.

The gladiators stood looking at this tiny form lying in the sand.

 A silence fell over the Colosseum.

 And then, someplace up in the upper tiers, an individual made his way to an exit and left, and the others began to follow.

 And in the dead silence, everyone left the Colosseum.

That was the last battle to the death between gladiators in the Roman Colosseum.

 Never again did anyone kill or did men kill each other for the entertainment of the crowd.”

 Reagan ended:

“One tiny voice that could hardly be heard above the tumult. ‘In the Name of Christ, stop!’

It is something we could be saying to each other throughout the world today.”

I am sure that you have heard about Dr. Albert Schweitzer.  Most people only know that he was a medical missionary to Africa.  That is true, but there is so much more to know about him and his life and especially his thoughts on things such as abortion and God.  If you would like to know about those things concerning this amazing man, I have compiled some of them for you below:  Ron      

Albert Schweitzer was born January 14, 1875, in a village in Alsace, Germany.

The son of a Lutheran-Evangelical pastor, he won acclaim at playing the organ.
He earned doctorates in philosophy and theology.

 Schweitzer was pastor of St. Nicholas Church. He was also the principal of St. Thomas College and a professor at University of Strasbourg.
Then, at age 30, his life changed.
He read a Paris Missionary Society article of the desperate need for physicians in Africa. To everyone’s dismay, he enrolled in medical school and became a medical missionary.
In 1912, he married a nurse, Helene Bresslau.
The next year they traveled to west central Africa, and founded a hospital in the jungle village of Lambarene, Gabon.

After first using a chicken hut as their medical clinic, they erected a hospital building of corrugated iron in 1913.

In the first 9 months they saw over 2,000 patients.
World War I started, and the conflict between France and Germany went global, reaching into Africa. The Schweitzers were arrested and put under French military supervision, then taken to a prison camp in France.
After the war, they moved to Alsace-Lorraine, a border area between France and Germany, where their only child was born, a daughter, Rhena.
Saving their money, Helene stayed back with their daughter, Rhena, and Albert returned to Gabon in 1924.

Traveling back and forth several times, they rebuilt the hospital.

They served uninterrupted throughout World War II, being joined by additional staff.

The patients they treated suffered from:• malaria,• fever,• dysentery,• severe sandflea bites,• tropical eating sores,• leprosy,• crawcraw sores,• sleeping sickness,• yaws (tropical infection of skin & bones),• nicotine poisoning,• necrosis,• heart disease,• chronic constipation,• strangulated hernias, and• abdominal tumors.
He helped Mbahouin tribes and pygmies who lived in fear of cannibalism.
Albert Schweitzer spoke in Europe and in 1949 visited the United States.
He was very frugal, for instance, once he was asked “Why are you traveling in the 4th class?” He replied “Because there is no 5th class.”
Once on a train two schoolgirls asked him, “Dr. Einstein, will you give us your autograph?”  Not wanting to disappoint them, he signed: “Albert Einstein, by his friend Albert Schweitzer.”
 His daughter, Rhena, became a medical technician and married an American doctor, David C. Miller, who was serving at the African hospital — Albert Schweitzer Hospital.
Albert Schweitzer joined Albert Einstein in warning the world of the dangers indeveloping nuclear weapons.
In 1952, Dr. Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He used the prize money to build a leper colony.

Schweitzer embraced a pro-life philosophy, explaining:

“For months on end, I lived in a continual state of mental agitation. Without the least success I concentrated even during my daily work at the hospital on the real nature of the affirmation of life and of ethics.  I was wandering about in a thicket where no path was to be found. I was pushing against an iron door that would not yield.In that mental state, I had to take a long journey up the river.  Lost in thought, I sat on deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal concept of the ethical that I had not discovered in any philosophy. I covered sheet after sheet with disconnected sentences merely to concentrate on the problem.
Two days passed.  Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase:  ‘Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben’ (‘Reverence for Life’).
The iron door had yielded. The path in the thicket had become visible.”
Schweitzer’s words stand in contrast to utilitarian cultures and political party platforms advocating euthanasia, organ harvesting, honor-killings, and abortion: Those that were being so advocated by Hitler and the Nazis.
 At the beginning of World War Two, The New York Times reported October 10, 1933, on the utilitarian views of socialized medicine in Germany:
“NAZI PLAN TO KILL INCURABLES. The Ministry of Justice explaining the (Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party) intentions to authorize physicians to end the sufferings of the incurable patients.
The Catholic newspaper Germania hastened to observe: ‘The Catholic faith binds the conscience of its followers not to accept this method’.  In Lutheran circles, too, life is regarded as something that God alone can take.  Euthanasia has become a widely discussed word in the (Third) Reich. No life still valuable to the State will be wantonly destroyed.”
Similar to Nazis, in recent times utilitarian governments give hospitals financial incentives for administering experimental gene therapies, ventilator treatments and expensive pharmaceuticals, with little or no regard for conscientious objections, while refusing alternative treatments. Such governments even have schools groom children into questioning their sex and then steer them into experimental surgeries which result in higher risks of suicide.
In contrast to these utilitarian views and financially incentivized treatments, Dr. Schweitzer stated:
“Ethics is nothing other than Reverence for Life. Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil.”

In declaring National Sanctity of Human Life Day, President Trump stated January 22, 2018:

“Reverence for every human life, one of the values for which our Founding Fathers fought, defines the character of our Nation. Today, it moves us to promote the health of pregnant mothers and their unborn children.”

Schweitzer’s attitude was in agreement with the original Hippocratic Oath, which, up until recent times, was taken by all medical practitioners:
“I swear … I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgement, and I will do no harm or injustice to them.
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
In purity and according to divine law will I carry out my life and my art.”

Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote in Indian Thought and Its Development, 1935:
“The laying down of the commandment to not kill and to not damage is one of the greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind.”

Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote in Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, 1931:
“The world-view based on reverence for life is, through the religious character of its ethic of active love and through its fervor, essentially akin to that of Christianity.
What Christianity needs is to be filled with the spirit of Jesus Christ, to become living, intense, a religion of love which it was meant to be.
Since I myself am deeply devoted to Christianity, I seek to serve it with fidelity and truth.
I hope that the thought which has resulted in this simple, ethical-religious idea — reverence for life — may help to bring Christianity and thought closer to each other.”

Schweitzer’s life has been portrayed in numerous documentaries and films, including the 2009 movie Albert Schweitzer-A Life for Africa.”
Many groups work to raise awareness of crimes against life, and endeavor to protect it.
VOICE OF THE MARTYRS documents crimes committed against Christian minorities in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Turkey, Palestine, Uzbekistan, South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS reported that 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY estimated that every year 100,000 Christians, 11 every hour, die because of their faith.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER reported in 2012 that Christians faced discrimination in 139 countries, nearly 3/4s of the nations in the world.
THE GLOBAL WAR ON CHRISTIANS (Random House) author John Allen stated that followers of Jesus are “indisputably the most persecuted religious body on the planet.”
CHRISTIANOPHOBIA: A FAITH UNDER ATTACK (Eerdmans) author Rupert Shortt reported from Nigeria to the Far East, Christians are targets of violent human rights abuses and intimidation: “in a vast belt of land from Morocco to Pakistan there is scarcely a single country in which Christians can worship entirely without harassment.”
OPEN DOORS USA estimated 100 million Christians are persecuted globally each year, mostly from Islamic extremism. Open Doors president David Curry said: “Tactics used by the Islamic State are being adopted and used in Africa.”

After reading these tragic reports, one is challenged by a sermon of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, January 6, 1905:
“Our Christianity — yours and mine — has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated.  For every person who committed an atrocity someone must step in to help in Jesus’ name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless”
He continued:
“When you speak about missions, let this be your message:  We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers.  We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night.”
After his wife died, Schweitzer continued to work in Africa till he died at the age of 90. Overcoming innumerable difficulties, he once wrote:  “One day, in my despair, I threw myself into a chair in the consulting room and groaned out:  ‘What a blockhead I was to come out here to doctor savages like these!’.
Whereupon his native assistant quietly remarked:’Yes, Doctor, here on earth you are a great blockhead, but not in heaven.'”

Before he died, Dr. Schweitzer wrote:
“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

I thought that you would like this “trivia” announcement:  The summer solstice is tomorrow, the longest day of the year and announcing the real summer.  What is so interesting is that it is the earliest that it has happened in over 200 years.  The last time that it appeared so early, George Washington was president of the U.S.

Ron