I have been sending you stories about absolute miracles from God concerning the founding of the United States.  Here is another one of those amazing stories:

The Battle of Bunker Hill

“Don’t Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes!” commanded Colonel William Prescott, repeating the order of General Israel Putnam, JUNE 17, 1775.

Colonel William Prescott’s men were in the center redoubt located on Breed’s Hill, in front of Bunker Hill, guarding the north entrance to Boston Harbor.

Samuel Swett wrote in his History of Bunker Hill, that as the 2,300 British soldiers advanced:

“The American marksmen are with difficulty restrained from firing. Putnam rode through the line, and ordered that no one should fire till they arrived within eight rods.  He even set up a stake in front of the patriot’s line and ordered that no one fire until the British had passed that stake.

Powder was scarce and must not be wasted. They should not fire at the enemy till they saw the whites of their eyes.  The same orders were reiterated by Prescott at the redoubt.”

Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed March 20, 1942:  “Our Army is a mighty arm of the tree of liberty.

It is a living part of the American tradition, a tradition that goes back to Israel Putnam, who left his plow in a New England furrow to take up a gun and fight at Bunker Hill.”

At the beginning of the battle, a stray musket ball from a British gun killed an American soldier, resulting in other soldiers running away.

To stop the confusion, Colonel William Prescott climbed on top of the wall of the fortification, stood upright and walked back and forth, rallying his men.  Many of those involved considered it an act of God that he could be there going up and down on top if the redout in full view of the advancing British and never receive one wound.

When British General Thomas Gage saw Prescott through his telescope, he asked a local loyalist, Abijah Willard, who happened to be Prescott’s brother-in-law, if Prescott had enough courage to fight.

Willard replied:  “Prescott is an old soldier, he will fight as long as a drop of blood is in his veins.”

Another recorded Willard’s statement as:  “As to his men, I cannot answer for them, but Colonel Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell.”

Historian George Bancroft wrote that at the redoubt in the center of battle:  “No one appeared to have any command but Colonel Prescott. His bravery could never be enough acknowledged and applauded.”

British General Gage had no respect for the rag-tag Americans, resulting in him pridefully committing the serious mistake of ordering a direct assault.

British General William Howe had intended to unleash an artillery bombardment from field pieces on the Americans prior to the British advance, but providentially for the Americans, the British brought the wrong caliber ammunition. They had six pounder cannons but nine-pound shot. As a result, British artillery was not able to soften the resistance.  This was almost inconceivable for the highly trained British army.  Again, most considered such an error to be a direct act of God on behalf of these Colonial patriots.

General Howe ordered some 2,300 British soldiers to fix bayonets, and in their wool uniforms, charge in the hot sun up the hill covered with fences and uneven rows of uncut grass.  The high, thick grass had not yet been harvested for winter hay.  There were all manner of uneven pieces of ground hidden by the grass as well as the  old fences, too.  Besides their hot, wool uniforms, the British soldiers were required to carry heavy backpacks.

The British intended to flack the Americans at Breeds Hill and attack them from the rear.  However, when they tried the flanking maneuver, they ran into all the patriots dug in on top of Bunker Hill.  So, they had to go back and use frontal attacks at Breeds Hill.  Those long lines of Red Coats were just mowed down by the long hunting rifles of the patriots.  Some regiments had only 8 or 9 men left alive out of their whole group.  The Americans had built platforms inside of their over six foot high breast-works on which to stand and fire.

In their first assault many of the British ran all the way back to the boats that had carried them across the river.

The patriots tended to shoot first at the field officers.  One British general had his whole staff wiped-out.  Eventually the Red Coats were reassembled for a second assault.  It too was repelled with great loss of life a second time.

General Howe was determined to overcome what he considered a rag-tag group of “untrained rebels”.  This third time he attacked with his troops lined up in single files and without their heavy packs.  Though they had to step over their fallen comrades, many still screaming for help.

By now, the Americans had run out of gunpowder and shot.  They did not have those long black bayonets like the British, either.  So, they were compelled to retreat.  Most of the 500 American casualties happened during the retreat.  However, the British generals wrote later that they were most impressed that the Americans did not just go running wildly away, but retreated in military order to the rear in units.

Over 1,000 British were killed or wounded in this first major action of the Revolutionary War.

There were nearly 500 American casualties, including the notable Dr. Joseph Warren.

Amos Farnsworth, a corporal in the Massachusetts Militia, made this entry in his diary immediately after the Battle of Bunker Hill, JUNE 17, 1775:  “We within the entrenchment having fired away all ammunition and having no reinforcements were overpowered by numbers and obliged to leave. I did not leave the entrenchment until the enemy got in. I then retreated ten or fifteen rods. Then I received a wound in my right arm, the ball going through a little below my elbow, breaking the little shellbone. Another ball struck my back, taking a piece of skin about as big as a penny. But I got to Cambridge that night. Oh the goodness of God in preserving my life, although they fell on my right and on my left! O may this act of deliverance of thine, O God, lead me never to distrust thee; but may I ever trust in thee and put confidence in no arm of flesh!”

The British then burned the nearby town of Charlestown.

One of the Saff Officers under General Howe wrote after the battle:  “We won the battle and we hold the ground, but a few more ‘victories’ like this one and there will be no more British Army left in the Colonies.”

Daniel Webster declared at the Bicentennial Celebration at Plymouth Rock, December 22, 1820:  “In New England the war of the Revolution commenced. I address those who saw the burning spires of Charlestown; who beheld the deeds of Prescott, and heard the voice of Putnam amidst the storm of war, and saw the generous Warren fall, the first distinguished victim in the cause of liberty. It would be superfluous to say, that no portion of the country did more than the States of New England to bring the Revolutionary struggle to a successful issue.”

This same day as the Battle of Bunker Hill, 300 miles away in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress drafted George Washington’s commission as commander-in-chief, for which he refused a salary.

Washington wrote to his wife, Martha:

“Dearest … It has been determined in Congress, that the whole army raised for the defense of the American Cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take command I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preserved, and been bountiful to me.”

Washington ended:  “I got Colonel Pendleton to Draft a Will the Provision made for you, in case of my death, will, I hope, be agreeable.”

Yale President Ezra Stiles wrote May 8, 1783:  “Every patriot trembled till we had proved our armor, till it could be seen, whether (we) could face the enemy with firmness. They early gave us the decided proof of this, in the memorable Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775). This instantly convinced us, and for the first time convinced Britons themselves, that Americans both would and could fight with great effect. Whereupon Congress put at the head of this spirited army, the only man, on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed (George Washington). This American JOSHUA was raised up by God, and divinely formed by a peculiar influence of the Sovereign of the Universe, for the great work of leading the armies to liberty and independence.”

On July 20, 1775, General Washington issued the order:  “The General orders this day to be religiously observed by the Forces under this Command, exactly in manner directed by the Continental Congress.

It is therefore strictly enjoined on all Officers and Soldiers to attend Divine Service; and it is expected that all those who go to worship do take their Arms, Ammunition and Accoutrements, and are prepared for immediate action, if called upon.”

I have written you about some amazing miracles from God before, but this true story is about one of the most amazing miracles ever to happen on American soil.

Ron

General Washington was given authority by the Continental Congress to put together 28,500 troops, though he had way fewer in his first engagement against the British. 

On March 17, 1776 he laid siege to the city of Boston where the British were encamped.  He drove the British out in the first victory of the War for Independence. 

The British sailed away to Halifax, Nova Scotia as their new base.

General Washington by now has 19,000 troops in his army. He relocated them to Manhattan Island, New York to defend the City. He knew that the British would want that city for its port and port facilities for their huge navy.

He left Boston on April 7 and got to New York on April 13.

He set up fortifications around the lower part of Manhattan, and moved almost half of his army across the East River and set-up fortifications in Brooklyn.  Fort Stirling was just west of the hamlet of Brooklyn Heights, the highest point on Long Island.

He then built three small forts along the East River since any attack was expected to come from the East River.  They were called Fort Putman, Fort Greene, and Fort Box.  They where each surrounded by deep ditches and all together had 36 cannons.

On June 29, 45 British ships arrived from Halifax and dropped anchor in Lower New York Bay.  And in less than a week a total of 130 ships were there just off Staten Island.

The island had little population, and the British decided that it would be and ideal place to locate for what would be their attempt to capture Manhattan Island and its port and port facilities.

On July 6 news reached New York that Congress had voted for Independence of the American colonies from Great Britian. 

On Tuesday, July 9, General Washington had several brigades march to the Commons of the city to hear the Declaration of Independence read to all.  After the reading a mob of men ran to Boling Green with bars and ropes and tore down the equestrian statue of King George III of Great Britain.

They severed the head of the king and put it on a spike outside of a popular tavern.  The rest of the large lead statue was melted down into musket balls.

By August 12, 400 ships including 73 major war ships were there at Staton Island and 32,000 troops were encamped there. The British king was not going to put-up with such a thing as independence of these rebel colonies.

So, now General Washington had almost half of his army over on the east side of the East River on Long Island.  To defend New York it would be necessary to defend Brooklyn, and any attack upon Brooklyn would obviously be from across that little strip of ocean that was called the East River.

However, the brilliant General Howe in charge of all British forces had a secret plan that was totally unexpected.  He had decided to ferry a contingent of troops and artillery down the coast of Long Island and attack the Americans from their rear

On August 22 at 5:10 AM 4,000 British troops left Staton Island under the command of Generals Clinton and Cornwallis in special flat-bottomed boats and headed down the coast of Long Island to come on shore at Gravesend Bay.  And by noon 15,000 troops had landed on shore with 40 pieces of artillery.

Washington believed that the main objective of the British was still to take Manhattan only. So, he had a total on only 6,000 troops in Brooklyn under the command of General Israel Putman.

Eventually the British sent Hessian mercenaries for reinforcements, bringing their total to 20,000 troops.

The British plan of General Howe was to head west and attack the Americans from their rear, not from the direction they had expected.  He sent General Grant with 4,000 British troops and some Hessians for a frontal assault on the American positions. Then he and General Clinton would make an all night march through an unguarded pass to attack the American’s flank.

On the night of August 26 Clinton led a crack brigade of light infantry with fixed bayonets.  Cornwallis followed with 8 battalions and 14 artillery pieces.  General Percy followed them with more men and artillery pieces.  In total they stretched out for 2 miles, and as a diversion they left their camp fires burning so the Americans would not know of their secret night march.

Eventually they reached a popular spot on Long Island called Howard’s Tavern.  Old man Howard’s son says he was awakened by a soldier standing by his bed.  When he got downstairs there was his father with General Howe and 4 other British officers in the bar room.  General Howe wore a Camlet cloak over his General’s uniform.  He asked for a glass of liquor which was promptly served to him.

Howe said:  “Show me the way over Rockaway Path around the pass.”  Tavern owner Howard explained that “we belong to the American side.”  To which Howe replied: “That is alright, stick to your country and your principes, but Howard you are my prisoner and must guide my men over the hills.”  Howard made more objections.  Then Howe explained: “You have no alternative.  If you refuse, I shall shoot you through the head.”  That settled the question.  By dawn, the British were through the pass and approaching the American positions.

The first shots fired in the Battle of Long Island were by American pickets from Samuel Atlee’s Pennsylvania Regiment upon British soldiers who were foraging in the watermelon patch near the Red Lion Inn.      

At about 1:00 PM on August 27 as 300 British troops approached the Red Lion Inn, American troops fired on the British. After about two fusillades they retreated on up the Gowanus Road.

Brigadier General Samuel Parsons and Col. Atlee were stationed farther up the road and slowed the British.

General Stirling had now been warned.  He had a total of 1,600 troops under his command.  Stirling placed Atlee’s men in an apple orchard on the south side of Gowanus Road.  General Parsons wrote:  “Atlee received the enemy’s fire and gave them well directed fire from his regiment which did great execution, and then retreated to the hill.”

On the highest ground where Brookland Heights got its name there were several hills.  One of them was the highest and came to be known as “Battle Hill”.  The British tried to outflank the Americans be taking this hill.  The Americans tried to prevent the British move, sending troops under Parsons and Atlee to take the hill.  The British got there first but the Americans were able to dislodge them in fierce fighting. Battle Hill was the site of especially brutal fighting, with the Americans inflicting the highest number of casualties among British troops during the entire Battle of Long Island.

Still, this was not yet the center of the British main attack.  They were still planning on outflanking the Americans.  At 9:00 General Howe fired his signal guns and the Hessians started their bombardment.  And the main British army came at the Americans from their rear.  Heavy casualties mounted on both sides.  Hand to hand fighting followed, with the Americans swinging their muskets and rifles like clubs to save their own lives. It was later claimed that those Americans who surrendered were bayoneted by the Hessians.

Sullivan, despite all the chaos, managed to get most all his men down to the East River.

The main contingent of the Americans was now under attack from three sides.  All seemed hopeless for escape.  Then a contingent of Maryland troops under Gist came down and threw themselves at the British attacking from the rear.  They became known in history as the “Maryland 400” though they did not number quite that many.  Stirling and Gist led them in attacks against overwhelming numbers of British numbering over 2,000 and supported by two cannons.  They actually attacked twice.  Their heroism allowed the remaining Americans to escape.  Fewer that a dozen of the “Maryland 400” made it back to American lines.  By now General Washington had made it to the battlefield from Manhattan and was observing from a nearby hill.  As he watched the brave attacks of the Marylanders he reportedly said: “Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.”

Howe then ordered his troops to halt the attack.  He knew that he had the Americans trapped totally on the land side, and he assumed that the Royal Navy had control of the East River side.  He knew that he would lose a huge number of troops against the Americans dug into trenches.  He decided to wait them out or annihilate the whole bunch the next day, pushing them against the river, or maybe General Washington would realize his position was hopeless and surrender.

What happened next is considered one of the greatest miracles that God has ever orchestrated on American soil.  The British dug trenches right up to the Americans.  They could hear each other talking. 

General Washington sent couriers across the East River and to all the people in the area with boats and sloops, and asked for their help. 

During the night they evacuated two-thirds of the entire army and all of their arms and powder and cannons.  It is confirmed that not an oar creaked, not a sound was heard.  God just slapped everything into silence.  But now it is about to get daylight and the one-third still there will be annihilated for sure.

What happened next has never been seen before and never since.  A fog descended upon the East River so dense that nothing could be seen and so thick that it muffled all sounds.  General Washington stepped onto the last boat to leave and was the last man to cross.

They had kept their camp fires burning all night to deceive the British.  And when that fog lifted, the British could not believe that not a single American was left on that side of the East River.

It is said by historians that both sides of the conflict acknowledged that this was a divine act of God.  And General Washington ordered that a day of prayer and thanksgiving be celebrated by his entire army.

I have been sending you stories about the amazing men who founded our country who you probably neve heard of. Here is another one of them. No take note of him.

Ron

Justice James Kent

“Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity, tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government” – Justice James Kent

Chief Justice James Kent explained in People versus Ruggles, 1811, what made OATHS effective: “In Taylor’s case the court said, that Christianity was parcel of the law, and to cast contumelious reproaches upon it, tended to weaken the foundation of moral obligation, and the efficacy (effectiveness) of Oaths.”

This view was held by President and Commander-in-Chief George Washington, who stated in his Farewell Address, September 19, 1796: “Let it simply be asked where is the security for prosperity, for reputation, for life, if the sense of RELIGIOUS obligations desert the OATHS, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice?”

Yet this is exactly what Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James announced September 17, 2014, that the U.S. Air Force OATH need no longer include the mention of GOD.

James Kent was appointed Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court by New York Governor John Jay in 1804.

At that time in early U.S. history, the New York Supreme Court was more influential than the United States Supreme Court. This was due in part because New York City had been the capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790, and it was the largest city in the nation.

From 1793 to 1798, James Kent served as the first professor of law at Columbia College in New York, which was the oldest institution on higher learning in the state, being founded in 1754 as King’s College.

Kent is considered the premier jurist in the development of the legal practice in the United States, known for compiling Commentaries on American Law, 1826-1830.

Earlier in his career, 1796-1797, James Kent was as a member of New York’s Legislature where he opposed a regulation requiring African Americans own property before they could vote.

Kent was responsible for enunciating what would become the Cherokee doctrine, where American Indian peoples were considered sovereign nations.

After his death, James Kent was elected to the American Hall of Fame, 1900.

Named for him are:

Kent County, Michigan;

Kent City, Michigan;

Chicago-Kent College of Law;

Columbia Law School’s Kent Hall

Chancellor Kent Professorship at Columbia Law School;

Chancellor Kent Professorship at Yale Law School.

A bronze statute of Chancellor James Kent is in the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building.

Chief Justice James Kent wrote in People versus Ruggles, 1811: “In the case of Rex versus Woolston the court said whatever strikes at the root of Christianity, tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government.

The same doctrine was laid down in the late case of The King versus Williams.The authorities show that blasphemy against God, and contumelious reproaches and profane ridicule of Christ or the Holy Scriptures are offenses punishable at common law’ because it tends to corrupt the morals of the people, and to destroy good order. They are treated as affecting the essential interests of civil society.

We stand equally in need, now as formerly, of all the moral discipline, and of those principles of virtue, which help to bind society together.  The people of this state, in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity, as the rule of their faith and practice; and to scandalize the author of these doctrines is not only, in a religious point of view, extremely impious, but, even in respect to the obligations due to society, is a gross violation of decency and good order.”

Chief Justice Kent continued:  “Nothing could be more offensive to the virtuous part of the community, or more injurious to the tender morals of the young, than to declare such profanity lawful.

To use the words of one of the greatest oracles of human wisdom – Lord Bacon, ‘profane scoffing doth by little and little deface the reverence for religion; and who adds, in another place, ‘two principal causes have I ever known of atheism, curious controversies, and profane scoffing. Things which corrupt moral sentiment, as obscene actions, prints and writings, and even gross instances of seduction, have, upon the same principle, been held indictable.”

And he continues: “The free, equal, and undisturbed, enjoyment of religious opinion is granted but to revile, with malicious and blasphemous contempt, the religion professed by almost the whole community, is an abuse of that right.  Nor are we bound to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet or of the grand Lama for this plain reason that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors.”

Chief Justice Kent stated further:  “It is sufficient that the common law checks upon words and actions, dangerous to the public welfare whose morals have been elevated and inspired with a more enlarged benevolence, by means of the Christian religion. Though the constitution has discarded religious establishments, it does not forbid judicial cognizance of those offenses against religion and morality punishable because they strike at the root of moral obligation, and weaken the security of the social ties.”

“The – New York – Constitution declaring that ‘the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, should for ever thereafter be allowed within this state, to all mankind was never meant to withdraw religion in general, and with it the best sanctions of moral and social obligation from all consideration and notice of the law.

To construe it as breaking down the common law barriers against licentious, wanton, and impious attacks upon Christianity itself, would be an enormous perversion of its meaning. The proviso guards the article from such dangerous latitude of construction, when it declares, ‘the liberty of conscience hereby granted, shall not be so construed as to excuse ACTS OF LICENTIOUSNESS (sexual immorality).'”

Chief Justice Kent added: “Christianity, in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is not unknown to our law.  The statute for preventing immorality (Laws, vol. 1. 224. R. S. 675, s. 69, et seq.) consecrates the first day of the week, as holy time, and considers the violation of it as immoral.

This was only the continuation, in substance, of a law of the colony which declared, that the profanation of the Lord’s day was ‘the great scandal of the Christian faith.’

The act concerning OATHS, (Laws, vol. 1. p. 405., 2 R. S. 407, s. 82) recognizes the common law mode of administering an OATH, ‘by laying the hand on and kissing the Gospels.”

Chief Justice Kent concluded: “Surely, then, we are bound to conclude, that wicked and malicious words, writings and actions which go to vilify those Gospels, continue, as at common law, to be an offense against the public peace and safety.  They are inconsistent with the reverence due to the administration of an OATH, and among their other evil consequences, they tend to lessen, in the public mind, its religious sanction.”

Addressing the topic of oaths, President Calvin Coolidge told the Holy Name Society in Washington, D.C., SEPTEMBER 21, 1924:  “More than six centuries ago there was much ignorance, much wickedness the common people appeared to be sunk in hopelessness. The speech of men was too often profane and vulgar, until the earth rang with the tumult of those who took the name of the Lord in vain. The foundation of this day was laid in the formation of the Holy Name Society.  It sought to rededicate the minds of the people to a true conception of the sacredness of the name of the Supreme Being.  It was an effort to save all reference to the Deity from curses and blasphemy, and to restore the lips of men to reverence and praise.”

In affirmation of Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Coolidge continued: “This is the beginning of a proper conception of ourselves, of our relationship to each other, and our relationship to our Creator. Human nature cannot develop very far without it.

The mind does not unfold, the creative faculty does not mature, the spirit does not expand, save under the influence of reverence.  It is only by a correct attitude of mind begun early in youth and carried through maturity that these desired results are likely to be secured. It is along the path of reverence and obedience that the race has reached the goal of freedom, of self-government, of a higher morality, and a more abundant spiritual life.  He who gives license to his tongue only discloses the contents of his own mind.  By the excess of his words he proclaims his lack of discipline.”

Coolidge added: “The worst evil that could be inflicted upon the youth of the land would be to leave them without restraint and completely at the mercy of their own uncontrolled inclinations.  Under such conditions education would be impossible, and all orderly development intellectually or morally would be hopeless.  I do not need to picture the result. We know too well what weakness and depravity follow when the ordinary processes of discipline are neglected.”

President Coolidge continued:  “The very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence asserted that they proposed ‘to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.’  And as they closed that noble document they again revealed what they believed to be the ultimate source of authority by stating that they were also ‘appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of their ‘intentions.’

When finally our Constitution was adopted, it contained specific provision that the President and members of the Congress and of state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officials, should be qualified for the discharge of their office by OATH or affirmation.  By the statute law of the United States … such OATHS are administered by a solemn appeal to God for help in the keeping of their covenants.”

Coolidge added:  “I scarcely need to refer to the fact that the Houses of Congress, and so as I know the state legislatures, open their daily sessions with prayer.  The foundation of our independence and our Government rests upon basic religious convictions.  Back of the authority of our laws is the authority of the Supreme Judge of the World, to whom we still appeal for their final justification.”

Coolidge stated further:  “All liberty is individual liberty. The principle of equality is recognized. It follows inevitably from belief in the brotherhood of man through the fatherhood of God.  When once the right of the individual to liberty and equality is admitted, there is no escape from the conclusion that he alone is entitled to the rewards of his own industry.”

President Coolidge concluded: “It seems to me perfectly plain that the authority of law, the right to equality, liberty and property, under American institutions, have for their foundation reverence for God.  If we could imagine that to be swept away, these institutions of our American government could not long survive.”

You have heard that the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” was written by the captain of a slave ship.  That is about all that most of us have ever heard other than the words of the song.  However, if you would like to know the rest of the story, I have provided it here below:

And as you remember the song starts out………..

“Amazing grace!

How sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.”

These were the words of John Newton, a former slave ship captain, who died December 21, 1807.

At age 11, his mother died and he went to sea with his father.

Young John Newton fell in love with Mary Catlett while on shore leave, but overstaying his visit, he missed his ship’s departure.

In 1744, he was caught by a “press gang” and dragged onto the ship HMS Harwich where he was forced to be a sailor.

Newton tried to desert but was caught, stripped to the waist and flogged with 8 dozen lashes.

John Newton later wrote in a letter:  “Like an unwary sailor who quits his port just before a rising storm, I renounced the hopes and comforts of the Gospel at the very time when every other comfort was about to fail me.”

His reckless behavior caused him to be traded to a slave ship.  Being a continual problem, Newton was intentionally left on a slave plantation in Sierra Leone, West Africa in 1745.  There, the African slave dealer, Amos Clowe, made Newton a slave of his wife, Princess Peye, an African duchess, where he suffered abuse and mistreatment.

Years later, Scottish Missionary David Livingstone mentioned John Newton and the Muslim Arab slave traders’ shocking treatment of African slaves (Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, London, October 1857):  “It was refreshing to get food which could be eaten without producing the unpleasantness described by the Rev. John Newton, of St. Mary’s, Woolnoth, London, when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the West (Africa)”

Livingstone continued:  “A party of Arabs from Zanzibar were at a village in the same latitude as Naliele town. The Arabs mentioned they disliked the English, ‘because they thrash (criticize) them for selling slaves’. I ventured to tell them that I agreed with the English, that it was better to let the children grow up and comfort their mothers when they became old, than to carry them away and sell them across the sea, and there were many explanations of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing it must be to God to see his children selling one another.”

Livingstone described the Arab Muslim slave trade as “a monster brooding over Africa.”

Lord Baden-Powell gave the account in The Downfall of Prempeh (1896) of the cruel African Ashanti King who sold captured Africans into slavery, even for human sacrifice: “The main reasons for the expedition: To put an end to human sacrifice; To put a stop to slave trading and raiding. Every tribe in the neighborhood of the Ashanti lived in terror of its life from the king, who had on several occasions destroyed, one after another, tribes which had sough our protection. In England we scarcely realize the extent to which human sacrifice had been carried out by the Ashanti. On the death of a king the custom of washing the grave involved enormous numbers of sacrifices.  Then sacrifices were also made to propitiate the gods when war was about to be entered upon or other trouble was impending.  Victims were also killed to deter an enemy from approaching the capital; sometimes they were impaled and set up on the path, with their hand pointing to the enemy and bidding him to retire.  At other times the victim was beheaded and the head replaced looking in the wrong direction; or he was buried alive in the pathway, standing upright, with only his head above ground, to remain thus until starvation or — what was infinitely worse — the ants made an end of him.

In no part of the world does slavery appear to be more detestable than in Ashanti. Stop human sacrifice, and you deal a fatal blow to the slave trade.”

In 1748, John Newton was finally rescued from Africa but continued his immoral life in the slave trade, hatefully deriding Christians with blasphemy that shocked even sailors.

He wrote in 1778:  “How industrious is Satan served.  I was formerly one of his active under-temptors and had my influence been equal to my wishes I would have carried all the human race with me. A common drunkard or profligate is a petty sinner to what I was.”

In 1747, Newton was on the slave ship Greyhound.  The ship was caught in a storm so terrible that he was convinced they would sink.  He prayed for the first time in his life.  Someone gave him a copy of Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ and the Bible, which he began to read.

Newton continued in the slave trade for a time, but endeavored to treat slaves humanely.  Newton finally left the slave trade, married Mary Catlett in 1750, and moved to Liverpool, where from 1755 to 1760 he worked as a surveyor of tides.  He wrote:  “I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be, but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be.”

In America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations,  Newton wrote:  “Afflictions quicken us to prayer.  It is a pity it should be so; but experience testifies, that a long course of ease and prosperity, without painful changes—has an unhappy tendency to make us cold and formal in our secret worship.  But troubles rouse our spirits, and constrain us to call upon the Lord in good earnest—when we feel a need of that help which we only can have from His Almighty arm.  Afflictions are useful, and in a degree necessary, to keep alive in us—a conviction of the vanity and unsatisfying nature of the present world, and all its enjoyments; to remind us that this world is not our rest, and to call our thoughts upwards, where our true treasure is, and where our heart ought to be.  When things go on much to our wish, our hearts are too prone to say, ‘It is good to be here!'”

While in Liverpool, Newton met the evangelistic preacher George Whitefield and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.  He was inspired to become a minister and taught himself Greek and Hebrew.  Newton was turned down by the Anglican Archbishop of York, but persisted and was eventually ordained in 1764.  He was assigned to the village of Olney, Buckinghamshire, where he humbly proclaimed the saving power of Christ.

In 1767, poet William Cowper moved to Olney, and with his help, Newton composed songs for their weekly prayer meetings.  William Cowper wrote in the poem “Winter Walk at Noon,” 1785:

“Nature is but a name for an effect,

Whose cause is God.”

Newton and Cowper’s songs were first published in 1779 in a collection titled “Olney Hymns.”  The Olney Hymns include:

“Oh! for a Closer Walk with God,”

“God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” and

“There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” which has the lines:

“The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away

Wash all my sins away,

Wash all my sins away;

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.”

This is a reference to God, being just, judges every sin, but being love, He provided the Lamb to take the judgment for our sins, washing them away.

Revelation 1:5: “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood.”

Isaiah 53: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent. He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. The Lord makes his life an offering for sin. My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

John Newton moved to London in 1780 to become rector of St. Mary Woolnoth Church.  He counseled:“God could have over-ruled every difficulty in your way, had he seen it expedient. But He is pleased to show you, that you depend not upon men—but upon Himself. He who has begun a good work in you, is able to carry it on, in defiance of all seeming hindrances, and make all things (even those which have the most unfavorable appearances) work together for your good.”

Newton continually preached against slavery and published his ghastly experiences in the slave trade in 1788.  On John Newton’s tomb, and on a church plaque, is written:

“John Newton, Clerk,

once an infidel and libertine,

a servant of slaves in Africa,

was, by the rich mercy

of our Lord and Saviour

Jesus Christ,

preserved, restored, pardoned,

and appointed to preach the faith

he had long labored to destroy.”

Many influential leaders in England attended John Newton’s services.  In 1795, a famous British member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, came to have a living faith in Jesus Christ through the help of Newton.

Wilberforce initially wanted to become a preacher, but Newton persuaded him to serve God by fighting slavery in the British Parliament, as Britain was the world’s largest slave trader in the 19th century.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan wrote in “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation” (The Human Life Review):  “Prayer and action are needed to uphold the sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be possible to accomplish our work of saving lives, ‘without being a soul of prayer.’ The famous British member of Parliament William Wilberforce prayed with his small group of influential friends, the ‘Clapham Sect,’ for decades to see an end to slavery in the British empire.”

Eric Metaxas wrote in his post, “Break Point: Wilberforce and the ‘Necessary Evil'” (July 26, 2018):  “After his dramatic conversion to Jesus Christ in 1785, the heretofore unfocused Wilberforce made three consequential decisions that ended up changing the world:  first, stay in politics, at a time when conventional wisdom held that politics was too dirty a business for Christians;  second, work for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain; and, third, work for moral reformation in society.”

Wilberforce wrote in his journal:“My walk is a public one. My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.  A man who acts from the principles I profess reflects that he is to give an account of his political conduct at the judgment seat of Christ.”

Fighting the entrenched, deep-state slavery interests for 11 years, Wilberforce wrote: “So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trades wickedness appear, that my own mind was completely made up. Let the consequences be what they would; I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition. ”Parliament finally passed an act abolishing the slave trade in 1807, but it took 26 years to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire.

President Reagan wrote:  “Wilberforce led that struggle in Parliament, unflaggingly, because he believed in the sanctity of human life.  He saw the fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed slavery just before his death.”

John Newton wrote:  “Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.  This is faith: a renouncing of everything we are apt to call our own and relying wholly upon the blood, righteousness and intercession of Jesus.  If you once love Him, you will study to please Him.  Whoever is truly humbled — will not be easily angry, nor harsh or critical of others. He will be compassionate and tender to the infirmities of his fellow-sinners, knowing that if there is a difference — it is grace alone which has made it! He knows that he has the seeds of every evil in his own heart. And under all trials and afflictions — he will look to the hand of the Lord, and lay his mouth in the dust, acknowledging that he suffers much less than his iniquities have deserved.”

Considered the most popular Christian hymn ever, John Newton’s words are:

“AMAZING GRACE!

How sweet the sound

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears reliev’d;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already come;

‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease;

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who call’d me here below,

Will be forever mine.”

---

I am sending you an edited version of this special story again since the huge number of people in China who are reading these storis did not get to see it.

Dr. Edward Teller

I have already alluded to Dr. E.V. Hill’s insight into how God works. Remember, Dr. Hill said that God decided to do His work only through people. As Dr. Hill put it: That was the dumbest thing God could have ever done. Dr. Hill said: “That is God’s Plan A. Heain’t got no Plan B.”

In that context it is my contention that God used Dr. Teller’s brilliant mind and background to protect America and its people, even with all of Dr. Teller’s faults. He was born in Hungary to an affluent Jewish family. It was there where he was influenced for the rest of his life by the horrors he saw in Communist dictatorships. He then moved to Germany where he was also influenced for the rest of his life by the horrors he saw in Nazism, The National Socialists Party. He finally got to the United States. He was one of the first to sound the alarm over Germany’s work to produce an atomic bomb.

He drove the car for Leo Szilard, his boyhood friend in Hungary, when those two brilliant physicists went to Long Island to Albert Einstein’s cottage and secured the letter from Einstein to FDR that caused Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project for the US to produce an atomic bomb first.

By the time the war started, he was a respected professor at George Washington University, but left in the spring of 1943 to move to Los Alamos where he was recruited to work on developing the atomic bomb.

All along, Dr. Teller saw the possibility of a much greater bomb by using atomic energy to compress and ignite a large mass of tritium or deuterium to cause fusion. He is thus considered the father of the Hydrogen Bomb even though the brilliant mathematician Stanislaw Ulam actually worked out the detailed calculations for it. Dr. Teller was obsessed that the US produce the hydrogen bomb before the Russians did at the start of the Cold War.

Dr. Teller’s mind was just amazing, and he managed to keep it very clear and active until he died at age 95 in 2003. He did this by getting hyperbaric oxygen treatments every month from a doctor in Dallas. I have studied hundreds of x-rays and their dates that prove that proper hyperbaric treatments will also cause bones to heal in a matter of days instead of weeks. It does the same for severe bruises and many other ailments. The National Football League finally started using it to heal their players more quickly.

On my lunch hour I used to go up to Dr. Maxfield’s clinic and visit. He would show me x rays of former patients, file after file. Their dates showed how bones healed amazingly fast. One that I remember vividly was of a high school student from Canada. He was the goalie on his school’s hockey team. They were to play for their Province’s championship game, but he broke his arm in their final playoff game. His father knew about Dr. Maxfield and hyperbaric treatments from his mining company. One of his father’s key foremen had a broken bone that just would not heal. The foreman was sent down to Dallas and the hyperbaric oxygen treatments healed the bone quickly.

So, the father sent his son down to Dallas for those treatments before their Championship game in two weeks. Dr. Maxfield told the boy’s mother that he thought the boy would be able to play. However, when she went into the doctor to have the boy’s cast cut off, the doctor said: “What in the world do you mean. I just put that cast on a few days ago!” She called back to Dallas to ask what to do. Dr. Maxfield told her to go down the street to another doctor, and not say anything other than to just cut the cast off.

The boy did play, though I did not hear whether they won the championship or not.

Another time I was there at the clinic and stopped to visit with this older woman. She was just fussing and fussing. I asked her what was wrong: “You are supposed to feel great when your treatment is finished.”

She said: “Oh, I do, my leg is completely healed.”

“So, what are you fussing about?”

Then I looked down and her other leg was completely gone. She was fussing because she would still have it if she had known about hyperbaric oxygen treatments. And I said: “You were smoking too much weren’t you.” She hung her head and said: “Yes.”

It consists of being in a chamber for about an hour at 2 ½ atmospheres of pressure in a pure oxygen environment. It just saturates the body and one’s brain with healing oxygen. Where the football players use a fairly large chamber, Dr. Maxfield used a glass tube just large enough to hold Dr. Teller’s prone body. My 2nd oldest son used to go with me when Dr. Teller was getting treatments. Raymond would bolt the end on the chamber down, and then unbolt it when Dr. Teller’s treatment was finished. They could have used much higher atmospheres of pressure, but it was found the 2 ½ was sufficient and that higher pressures caused no better results.

As I mentioned, his mind was just amazing. I would spend time with him at Dr. Maxfield’s place on Lake Kiowa near Gainesville. We would discuss different potential business projects that Dr. Teller had thought up that he wanted me to pursue.

On one occasion after his treatment he wanted a good hamburger. We decided to take him to a county club in Dallas where the chef made great ones. I had three books with me that I wanted Dr. Teller to read and give me a report on rhetorical physics and its implications on his next trip to Dallas for his treatments a month later. He went on up ahead with his doctor and my son and I followed along behind in my Suburban. Much to my amazement, when we arrived at the country club he had devoured all three books and gave me the analysis before lunch.

General Lemay kept our country safe during the Cold War with manned aircraft. As the age of rockets carrying nuclear bombs dawned, Lemay thought we should still keep some manned aircraft as a safeguard. We did with the B-1 bomber that flies under enemy radar and the new stealth bomber. But the Russians could still target every one of our ICBM rockets and every one of our aircraft on the ground, and all our ships with rockets, and every one of our aircraft carriers with a first strike by their rockets. I have been told by analysts at the CIA that they most likely would have done so except for one thing………our Trident Submarines.

The “cream of the crop” in our navy seeks to enter the Trident Program. They get their new Trident sub and then go out and shoot one Trident missile for practice. Then in a few days they submerge for 89 days and get totally lost. The Russians don’t have a clue where they are.

With the help of Dr. Teller and his friends I have been allowed to go down on those Tridents. You stand in the War Room and look down through that long sub with 12 Trident missiles on each side. The sailors sleep between the missiles. I have talked to the weapon’s officer. He said he could only tell me that each of the 24 missiles could travel over 10,000 miles. Each one has 7 to 8 independently targeted war heads. When I asked the weapon’s officer how he would deploy those war heads, he said that he could lay a star pattern over the whole Moscow area.

When I wanted to get some idea of just how destructive a hydrogen weapon would be, I was told that just one detonated at 2½ thousand feet would blow a hole in the ground 500 feet deep and 12 miles across, with all of that material blasted into the air with its deadly fallout. And not even counting the blast effects way on beyond the 12 miles. Yet, the Russians never dared touch us because of those Trident subs.

Each Trident has two devices that just barely fit into their torpedo tubes. One was sitting right there in the War Room since it was too big to fit most anywhere else. If the officers on the Trident think they may have been discovered, they can send out one of these devices. They are so designed to perfectly simulate a Trident sub. In this way the real sub can have a high chance of getting lost again.

To shoot their one practice missile before submerging for 89 days, they liked to do so in a few hours after the launch of one of our Space Shuttles. All the cameras and tracking devices are set-up down range to track the flight of the Shuttle. So, the tracking of the Trident missal can just be used by them, also.

Every sub has a tender or fairly large ship that stays on the surface in the general area of the sub’s location. It has all kinds of provisions and safety devices in case of an emergency on the sub. I have been on those tenders. I have never seen such elaborate showers as they have. They are to wash down any sailors who may have been exposed to the nuclear material that powers the sub.

Also, with the help of Dr. Teller and his friends, I was allowed to go out on the tender ship to observe a Trident shoot its one practice missile. That morning we were in the VIP area with the astronaut’s families and the technical officers for the Shuttle launch. It is an amazing sight.

Then that night after it was totally dark, we went out with the submerged sub.

Just off Cape Canaveral the Russians keep an observation ship permanently moored there. It is not huge, but it has all manner of electronic listening and observation devices all over it. As our tender went out, the Russian ship pulled up its anchors and went out with us.

The tender has a wide, curved bridge or war room almost the whole width of the ship. It was lit only with the eerie red light that they use for night operations. It is a great place to observe, but I wanted to get outside in the front on the main deck of the ship to watch. On that deck was one of the sophisticated camera cages from Hollywood where the photographer sits in the cage that tilts in any direction to film the missile launch and track it on camera.

It got quite tense as the time for the missal shot approached. It blasts from 300 feet down up into the air where it ignites and zooms off into space. I wanted to know if I would be able to get a picture of it; and was told not to worry. I would totally be able to. As the time approached for the shot, there were two helicopters sweeping the area to make sure there were no stray craft around. I was fascinated to see them shine their powerful search lights down onto the Russian ship and the Russian ship shine its powerful lights back up at the helicopters.

Just before the missal blasted out of the ocean, a sailor and I saw this little red streak shoot up from the Russian ship. Then we saw all these flairs going up from what appeared to be from the surface of the water. It was so dark that we could not tell for sure. We, along with most everyone else assumed the flairs were part of the operation.

Wow! That missal lit-up everything. Since there were no clouds, you could follow its bright glow far off into the distant sky.

Later we learned that one of the helicopters had gone down. It did not just crash; it had slowly settled down to the surface of the water in the pitch dark. Those flairs that the sailor and I saw were distress signals from the three officers in the helicopter. No one had taken notice of them since everyone was concentrating on the missile shot.

Eventually we went over and picked up the three officers who had been in the front of the helicopter. However, the three airmen who had been in the back of the helicopter were no-where to be found. We searched all around, but they were not found. Since the helicopter had settled down onto the water gently, we were sure they had not been injured.

We were supposed to go back to the port at Cape Canaveral, but we spent the whole rest of the night looking for them. We did find the helicopter floating just below the surface and pulled it onboard. We then spent the whole next day navigating in ever-widening squares searching for the three airmen.

I visited with an engineer from a contracting company who was onboard. His company made the covers or seals that covered the tops of the missals when their outside shields are opened. He was sad about not finding the airmen, but he was thrilled that we were able to recover the several pieces of those seals. He had never been able to retrieve them before. I helped him put them back together on the deck. They fit together like the slices of an orange.

That afternoon, the sailor and I were hauled in and admonished to never breathe a word of what we had seen just before the missal shot. We knew that those Russians had shot down the helicopter; and had for sure captured the three airmen. So far as I know, they were never heard from again.

Late that afternoon we finally went back into port. As we passed by that Russian observation ship which was anchored back there again as it always is, I had heavy mixed feelings.

As the Bible states in both the Old and New Testaments: God is involved in the affairs of nations. Time and again this has been proved by the affairs of this nation.  Here is another of those occasions………………

Ron

The morning of December 7, 1941, Rev. Peter Marshall addressed the midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, class of ’42.   At the last minute, he set aside his prepared remarks and preached a prophetic message, “Go Down, Death.”   Within an hour after he finished, news of Imperial Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor spread across the nation.   Peter Marshall stated:   “I am one of those who believe that there are some principles worth fighting for and worth dying for, if need be.”

Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall stated:   “The trouble with our time is that when we can’t believe there is anything left to us worth dying for, then we’re not sure there’s anything worth living for either …   God permits war in order that we might see what sin really is.”   “War forces us to examine the very foundations of life itself.”   “What man refuses to learn in times of peace, God teaches him in times of war.”

Peter Marshall commented on the socialist tactic of “deconstruction” (20 Centuries of Great Preaching Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):   “Then there dawned the day when … with our higher education came a debunking contest.   This debunking became a sort of national sport … It was smarter to revile than to revere … more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate.   In our classrooms …. no longer did we laud great men – those who had struggled and achieved. Instead, we merely … ferreted out their faults.   We decided that it was silly to say God sent them for a special task … They were merely … ‘products of their environments’ …   Our debunking is … a sign of decaying foundations of character to the individual and in the national life.”

At the age of 25, Peter Marshall emigrated from Scotland, arriving at New York’s Ellis Island in 1927.   Members of his Sunday School class paid his way to seminary in Atlanta, where he graduated in 1931.   Rev. Peter Marshall pastored a small church in Covington, Georgia, then preached at Atlanta’s Westminster Presbyterian Church.

There he met Catherine Wood, a student at Agnes Scott College, and they married.   Catherine Marshall’s book on Peter’s life, A Man Called Peter, was turned into the movie.

IIn 1937, at the age of 35, Peter Marshall became pastor of Washington, D.C.’s prestigious New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the same church where Dr. Phineas Gurley was pastor during Lincoln’s presidency.     Rev. Peter Marshall stated (20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):   “I have come to know Lincoln better – the heart and spirit of the man – since I met him in the tradition of this church I now serve in Washington, than ever I knew him in history books.     Soon after assuming this pastorate, I happened one day upon an old safe, little used, in the church basement.   Fascinating minutes of session meetings were there, dating almost back the year the church was born – 1802.

… Among these were some pew rental books, and I flipped open to a page with the inscription at the top: ‘A. Lincoln.’   The annual rent of the pew was fifty dollars a year, and the notations of payments began in March, 1861, and continued until the President’s assassination four years later …”

Marshall continued:   “Upon coming to Washington, Mr. Lincoln had sought the advice of a member of his cabinet on the choice of ‘a suitable church home’ for himself, his wife, and his three boys.   One of his stipulations was that it had to be ‘a clergyman who holds himself aloof from politics.’   The President’s choice was Dr. Phineas Gurley of this church.     As the clouds of Civil War gathered, increasingly, Mr. Lincoln sought the friendship of the clergyman.   He liked to attend the mid-week prayer meetings by sitting on the other side of a glass-topped door, with the door ajar.     On nights when the President would be deeply disturbed by the horror of Americans having to fight fellow-Americans, he would sometimes send a messenger to fetch Dr. Gurley.

… Later, Dr. Gurley was to tell how the two of them would walk up and down the south portico of the White House – up and down, all through the night talking … praying until dawn flushed pink in the eastern sky.   For here was a man on the horns of that terrible dilemma: he believed that a nation divided could not stand … that the Union was worth saving … yet he loathed war, all of it from Fort Sumter to Appomattox …”

He continued:   “In the end, according to Dr. Gurley who knew Lincoln so well, Lincoln found no way except the route of faith in God:   ‘After being near him steadily and with him often for more than four years,’ Dr. Gurley said,   ‘I can affirm that God’s guidance and mercy were the props on which he humbly and habitually leaned; that they were the best hope he had for himself and for his country. ……He recognized and received the truth that God is the governor among the nations, and that our only hope, in the President’s own words, was — to humble ourselves … confess our national sins, and pray for clemency and forgiveness.'”

Marshall added:   “The biographers who have rather desperately tried to prove that Abraham Lincoln was an unbeliever, have ignored Dr. Gurley’s testimony.  …..The minister was present when Willie Lincoln died in the White House, and received from him the little iron bank containing pennies which the little boy asked him to give to the Sunday school.   He was there in the tiny hall bedroom in the red brick house on Tenth Street, keeping an all-night vigil with the leaders of the nation, as the President lay dying.   As daylight broke and the faint breathing died away, the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, broke the stillness with words which were almost a sob, “Now he belongs to the ages.”   Then he asked Dr. Gurley to pray.”

Marshall concluded:   “The nation needed prayer more than ever – without Lincoln.   That was the note of the eulogy in the East Room which Dr. Gurley delivered, ‘It is by his steady confidence in God that he would speak to us today. His message would be: Cling to liberty and right, battle for them, bleed for them, if need be, but most important, have faith in God …’

As the Bible states in both the Old and New Testaments: God is involved in the affairs of nations. Time and again this has been proved by the affairs of this nation.  Here is another of those occasions………………

Ron

The morning of December 7, 1941, Rev. Peter Marshall addressed the midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, class of ’42. At the last minute, he set aside his prepared remarks and preached a prophetic message, “Go Down, Death.” Within an hour after he finished, news of Imperial Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor spread across the nation. 

Peter Marshall stated: 

“I am one of those who believe that there are some principles worth fighting for and worth dying for, if need be.”

Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall stated:

“The trouble with our time is that when we can’t believe there is anything left to us worth dying for, then we’re not sure there’s anything worth living for either

 …God permits war in order that we might see what sin really is.” 

“War forces us to examine the very foundations of life itself.”

“What man refuses to learn in times of peace, God teaches him in times of war.”

Peter Marshall commented on the socialist tactic of “deconstruction” (20 Centuries of Great Preaching Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):

“Then there dawned the day when … with our higher education came a debunking contest. This debunking became a sort of national sport

 … It was smarter to revile than to revere … more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate.   

In our classrooms …. no longer did we laud great men – those who had struggled and achieved.

Instead, we merely … ferreted out their faults.   

We decided that it was silly to say God sent them for a special task … They were merely … ‘products of their environments’ 

…..Our debunking is … a sign of decaying foundations of character to the individual and in the national life.”

  At the age of 25, Peter Marshall emigrated from Scotland, arriving at New York’s Ellis Island in 1927.

Members of his Sunday School class paid his way to seminary in Atlanta, where he graduated in 1931.Rev.

Peter Marshall pastored a small church in Covington, Georgia, then preached at Atlanta’s Westminster Presbyterian Church. 

There he met Catherine Wood, a student at Agnes Scott College, and they married. Catherine Marshall’s book on Peter’s life, A Man Called Peter, was turned into the movie.

In 1937, at the age of 35, Peter Marshall became pastor of Washington, D.C.’s prestigious New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the same church where Dr. Phineas Gurley was pastor during Lincoln’s presidency.

Rev. Peter Marshall stated (20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):

 “I have come to know Lincoln better – the heart and spirit of the man – since I met him in the tradition of this church I now serve in Washington, than ever I knew him in history books. 

Soon after assuming this pastorate, I happened one day upon an old safe, little used, in the church basement. Fascinating minutes of session meetings were there, dating almost back the year the church was born – 1802.

   … Among these were some pew rental books, and I flipped open to a page with the inscription at the top: ‘A. Lincoln.’ The annual rent of the pew was fifty dollars a year, and the notations of payments began in March, 1861, and continued until the President’s assassination four years later …”

Marshall continued: “Upon coming to Washington, Mr. Lincoln had sought the advice of a member of his cabinet on the choice of ‘a suitable church home’ for himself, his wife, and his three boys. 

One of his stipulations was that it had to be ‘a clergyman who holds himself aloof from politics.’ The President’s choice was Dr. Phineas Gurley of this church.

 As the clouds of Civil War gathered, increasingly, Mr. Lincoln sought the friendship of the clergyman. 

He liked to attend the mid-week prayer meetings by sitting on the other side of a glass-topped door, with the door ajar. 

On nights when the President would be deeply disturbed by the horror of Americans having to fight fellow-Americans, he would sometimes send a messenger to fetch Dr. Gurley.  

… Later, Dr. Gurley was to tell how the two of them would walk up and down the south portico of the White House – up and down, all through the night talking … praying until dawn flushed pink in the eastern sky. 

For here was a man on the horns of that terrible dilemma: he believed that a nation divided could not stand … that the Union was worth saving … yet he loathed war, all of it from Fort Sumter to Appomattox

…”He continued:

“In the end, according to Dr. Gurley who knew Lincoln so well, Lincoln found no way except the route of faith in God: ‘After being near him steadily and with him often for more than four years,’ Dr. Gurley said, ‘I can affirm that God’s guidance and mercy were the props on which he humbly and habitually leaned; that they were the best hope he had for himself and for his country

… He recognized and received the truth that God is the governor among the nations, and that our only hope, in the President’s own words, was — to humble ourselves … confess our national sins, and pray for clemency and forgiveness.’

“Marshall added: 

“The biographers who have rather desperately tried to prove that Abraham Lincoln was an unbeliever, have ignored Dr. Gurley’s testimony

 …..The minister was present when Willie Lincoln died in the White House, and received from him the little iron bank containing pennies which the little boy asked him to give to the Sunday school. 

He was there in the tiny hall bedroom in the red brick house on Tenth Street, keeping an all-night vigil with the leaders of the nation, as the President lay dying. As daylight broke and the faint breathing died away, the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, broke the stillness with words which were almost a sob, “Now he belongs to the ages.” 

Then he asked Dr. Gurley to pray.”  

Marshall concluded: 

“The nation needed prayer more than ever – without Lincoln. That was the note of the eulogy in the East Room which Dr. Gurley delivered, ‘It is by his steady confidence in God that he would speak to us today.

His message would be: Cling to liberty and right, battle for them, bleed for them, if need be, but most important, have faith in God …’

SEPTEMBER 16, 1620, according to the Gregorian Calendar, 102 passengers set sail on the Pilgrims’ ship, Mayflower, with the blessings of their separatist pastor, John Robinson. Their 66-day journey of 2,750 miles encountered storms so rough the beam supporting the main mast cracked and was propped back in place with “a great iron screw.” One youth, John Howland, a servant of John Carver, was swept overboard by a freezing wave and barely rescued.

His descendants include: Signer of the U.S. Constitution Nathaniel Gorham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Jane Austin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Bush, Sarah Palin, Humphrey Bogart, and Alec Baldwin. Howland was described in colonial records as a “godly man and an ardent professor in the ways of Christ.”

The Mayflower intended to land in Virginia but was blown off-course to Massachusetts. With the weather too dangerous to sail any more so Captain Christopher Jones insisted the Pilgrims disembark.

With no “king-appointed” person on board with authority to take charge, the Pilgrims had a question – who would be in charge?

They did something unique. They gave themselves authority and created their own “covenant” government — The Mayflower Compact. They had a charter to found a colony way farther south, but not at Plymouth.  This Compact that they constructed abord ship as their governing authority eventually became the model for our U.S. Constitution.  It was the first instrument for founding a government from “The People”….. A Republic, as opposed to a government under a King.

This Compact was first proposed by their Pastor Robinson and modeled on the Covenants as described in the Bible.

Pastor Robinson is prominently depicted kneeling in prayer in a painting in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda -The Embarkation of the Pilgrims.

Of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, Governor William Bradford wrote: “Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.”

Though half died that first bitter winter, Governor William Bradford wrote: “Last and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations … for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his article “American Civilization, published in The Atlantic Magazine, April, 1862: “America is another word for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race.”

At the Bicentennial Celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Secretary of State Daniel Webster stated December 22, 1820: “There is a … sort of genius of the place, which … awes us. We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was laid; where the hearths and altars of New England were first placed; where Christianity, and civilization … made their first lodgment, in a vast extent of country … ‘If God prosper us,’ might have been the … language of our fathers, when they landed upon this Rock … ‘We shall here begin a work which shall last for ages … We shall fill this region of the great continent … with civilization and Christianity …'”

Webster continued: “The morning that beamed … saw the Pilgrims already at home … a government and a country were to commence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion … Our ancestors established their system of government on and religious sentiment … Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion free and unmolested; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing upon which we can pronounce more confidently … than of the inestimable importance of that religion to man …”

Webster added a rebuke to pastors who refuse to address politics: “The African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt … If there be … any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it … I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust …”

Webster reflected further: “Whoever shall hereafter write this part of our history … will be able to record no … lawless and despotic acts, or any successful usurpation. His page will contain no exhibition of … civil authority habitually trampled down by military power, or of a community crushed by the burden of taxation … He will speak … of that happy condition, in which the restraint and coercion of government are almost invisible and imperceptible …”  

Webster concluded his Plymouth Rock address: “Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.”

(My good friend, Marshall Foster stayed at my ranch with me many, many times.  Together, we made many plans and proposed many Christian projects.)

Marshall Foster of the World History Institute wrote in “A Shining City on a Hill,” February 27, 2013:  “Four hundred years ago the conflict between tyranny and liberty was red hot …When King James died in 1625, his son Charles the First ascended to the throne with the arrogance of a Roman emperor.  He was the quintessential ‘divine right’ monarch. He declared martial law and suspended the rights of the individual …

The king’s inquisitors at his ‘Star Chamber’ in the tower of London used torture techniques to ‘discover the taxpayer’s assets’ …

A turning point in public opinion took place on January 30, 1637. Three prisoners were locked down in the pillory in London before a huge crowd…… These men included a Puritan minister, a Christian writer and Dr. John Bastwick, a physician.

What was their crime?  They had written pamphlets disagreeing with the king’s religious views. The sheriff began by branding the men with red hot irons on the forehead with an S.L. for seditious libel …”

Dr. Foster continued:

“The tyranny of the king … finally aroused the Christian sensibilities of the people. They would no longer tolerate burnings or mutilations for matters of conscience on religious views …

The persecutions drove tens of thousands of liberty loving believers to follow the Pilgrims to New England where they laid the foundation for the world’s most biblically based nation.”

I have written you before about the amazing men who signed the Declaration of Independence and founded our Country.  By signing that Document, they pledged opposition to the greatest empire on earth with the largest and most powerful army and navy. To form a Republic in opposition to such powerful forces was very dangerous and also seemed impossible.  However, they had something on their side that Great Britain did not…..The Mighty God of the Universe.  Of that small group, many you have heard about, but some of the most important ones, you probably have not.  One of those was Dr. Benjamin Rush.  Here is his story:

Dr. Benjamin Rush had studied medicine in Philadelphia, then in Europe under the world’s foremost physicians, and then returned to Philadelphia in 1769.

Though his practices were archaic by today’s standards, he is considered by some as the “Father of American Medicine” for his work on staff at the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he opened the first free medical clinic.

He was among the first to recognize alcoholism as a disease and began to promote temperance.

Dr. Rush wrote the first textbook on mental illness and psychiatry, recommending treatment with kindness, earning him the title “Father of American Psychiatry.”

He was a member of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.

His wife was Julia, was the daughter of Richard Stockton, also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Paine consulted with Dr. Benjamin Rush when writing his stirring pamphlet Common Sense.

Rush helped write Pennsylvania’s Constitution and was as a member of the Pennsylvania State Convention which ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

He was Treasurer of the U.S. Mint.

Rush helped found Dickinson College to train physicians, and the Philadelphia Dispensary.

During the dread summer of 1793, Dr. Rush stayed in Philadelphia battling the disease of Yellow Fever which killed thousands.

He was the first to recognize that yellow fever was not contagious, leading to the later discovery that it was spread by mosquito bites.

Dr. Rush and other founders, including George Washington, donated to Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Dr. Benjamin Rush supported ending slavery prior to the Revolution, forming a Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

Perhaps Dr. Benjamin Rush’s most beloved contribution to American history was in 1812 encouraging John Adams to write to Thomas Jefferson, breaking the silence which had existed between them for years due to earlier political differences.

A proponent of public education for young women as well as men, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote his Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1786: “I proceed … to inquire what mode of education we shall adopt so as to secure to the state all of the advantages that are to be derived from the proper instruction of the youth; and here I beg leave to remark that the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid on the foundation of religion.

Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament … Its doctrines and precepts are calculated to promote the happiness of society and the safety and well-being of civil government.

Dr. Rush founded a Sunday School Union and the Philidelphia Bible Society.

He wrote in A Plan for Free Schools, 1787:  “Let the children … be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is the most essential part of education.”

Rush wrote to Jeremy Belknap, July 13, 1789: “The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual means of extirpating (removing) Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote in an essay, “A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a School Book: ” included in his 1798 work, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical: “The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life. It should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.”

Rush wrote in Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798:  “I know there is an objection among many people to teaching children doctrines of any kind, because they are liable to be controverted. But let us not be wiser than our Maker If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into all the world would have been unnecessary. The perfect morality of the Gospel rests upon the doctrine which, though often controverted has never been refuted: I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.” He added: “Vicarious” is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as: “suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another: substitutionary.”

Dr. Rush stated: “Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”

He wrote his Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1786: “A Christian cannot fail of being a republican … for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self-denial, and brotherly kindness which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy. A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teaches him that no man ‘liveth to himself.’ And lastly a Christian cannot fail of being wholly inoffensive, for his religion teaches him in all things to do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush explained in Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798: “Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in proportion as mankind adopts its principles and obeys its precepts, they will be wise and happy. In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them.

We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible. For this Divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism.”

On July 9, 1788, in a letter to Elias Boudinot regarding a parade in Philadelphia, Dr. Benjamin Rush stated: “The Rabbi of the Jews locked arms of two ministers of the Gospel was a most delightful sight. There could not have been a more happy emblem.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote:  “I have been alternately called an Aristocrat and a Democrat. I am neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power … will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. HE alone who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.”

Rush died in Philadelphia on April 19, 1813, and was buried in the yard of Christ’s Church.

John Adams wrote: “Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my dear Sir, another of the co-signers of the Independence of our country. A better man than Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest. I know of no Character living or dead who has done more real good in America.”

Memorials to Dr. Benjamin Rush stand on Navy Hill in Washington, D.C., and near the Harvard Square Library.

During his final illness, he wrote to his wife:  “My excellent wife, I must leave you, but God will take care of you. By Thy glorious resurrection and ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, blessed Jesus, wash away all my impurities, and receive me into Thy everlasting kingdom.”

The subject of “abortion” is very much in the news and on social media so much the time.  Some say that until a baby is born, it is just a blob of tissue.  Others say that it is a person from the very act of conception. It is going to be very important in our coming election. It may decide the election of many elected offices, even the Presidency.   Thus, it seems important for each of us to form an accurate opinion on the subject.  What standard should we use for that opinion.  Those of us who are Christians should probably use the Bible (God’s Word) as our primary reference. I hope that the following words will be helpful to you in forming that opinion for yourself:

Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, was in Mary’s womb from the Annunciation, when the Angel announced to her, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus” and she responded, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” The Angel continued: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” At that very moment, she conceived. This is the foundational Christian doctrine called the Incarnation, when “the Word became flesh.” and she responded, “Behold thehandmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

The Gospel of Luke continued  with anotheraccount confirmingthat a child in the womb was alive: “‘And behold, yourkinswoman Elizabeth in herold age has also conceived a son; and this is thesixth month withher who was called barren’ …When Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb.”

Other Scriptures testify that a baby in the womb is a living person: Genesis 25:21-23  “And Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.”

Jeremiah 1:5  “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as  a prophet to the nations.”

Isaiah 49:1,5  “The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name … he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him.”

Psalm 22:10  “Thou art my Godfrom my mother’s  belly.”

Galatians 1:15 “He who had set me apart before I was born, andwho called me byhis grace.”

Psalm 139:13-15  “You did form my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother’s womb … you knew me right well; my  frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret.”

Abortion became legal in all nine months of pregnancy on JANUARY 22, 1973, with the Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

Norma McCorvey, whowas the “Jane Roe” in the Roe v.Wade suit, wasinterviewed 23years later by USAToday.She stated that once, while employed at a

clinic when no one was in:  “I went into the procedure room and laid down on the table … trying to imagine what it would be like having an abortion … I broke down and cried.”

On ABC’s World  News Tonight, Norma McCorveysaid:”I think abortion’swrong. I think what I did with Roe  v. Wade was wrong.”

Proverbs 6 states: “The Lord hates … hands that shed innocent blood.”  Nothing is more innocent than a baby who has never sinned.

2 Kings 21 “Manasseh … sacrificed his own son in the fire … The Lord said … ‘Manassehking of Judah hascommitted these detestable sins …Therefore … I amgoing to bringsuch disaster’ …… Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood thathe filled Jerusalem from end to end.”

2 Chronicles 33:33 “Manasseh… did that whichwas evil in the sight of the Lord, like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out

before the childrenof Israel.”

What about the pastors and church members who think they are being more spiritual by not getting involved politically to end abortion?

Leviticus 20 ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner… who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death … If the members of the community close

their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molek … I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off.”

It will be a rude awakening for those who think they are holier-than-thou by not getting involved to stop the killing of innocent life when they wake up to find by their silence they are giving consent to sin and will be judged! The manytranslations of Proverbs 24:11-12 make it clearthat God will judge those who do nothing to stop the killing of the innocent: “Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death; don’tstand back and let them die. Don’t try to disclaim responsibility by saying you didn’t know about it. ForGod, who knows all hearts, knows yours, and he knows you knew! And he will reward

his deeds.” (TLB) “Don’t fail to rescue those who are doomed to die.  Don’t say, ‘I didn’t know it!’ God can read your mind. He watches each of us and knows our thoughts. And God will pay us back for what we do.” (CEV)

“If you see someone on their way to death or in danger of being killed, you must do something to save them. You cannot say, “It’s none of my business.” The Lord knows everything, and he knows why you do things. He watches you, and he will pay you back for what you do.” (ERV) “If you excuse yourself, saying, ‘Look, we didn’t know anything about this,’ doesn’t God, who knows what you are really thinking, understand your motives? Isn’t your Protector aware of why you aren’t protecting the innocent? Will He not repay you in kind?” (VOICE)

In other words, folks, a just God will judge a nationwhich knowingly allows the unjust killing of the innocent. If God does not judge, His silence would be giving consent to the sin, and if God gives consent to sin, He is no longer a just God. He would be denying His just nature — He would be denying Himself. And 2nd Timothy 2:13 states: “God cannot deny Himself.” He will judge a nation that does not repent ofsins.

An individual believer is saved by believing that Jesus took the judgement for their sins upon the cross, but whatabout a nation?  Colonel George Mason, a foundingfather from Virginia,stated at theConstitutionalConvention, August22, 1787:”As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the nextworld, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain ofcauses and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.” He added that national sins: ” … bring the judgment of Heaven on a country.”

When Cain killed Abel, the Lord asked him: “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.” If the blood of one innocent person, Abel, cries out for judgement, how deafening is the cry from 60 million innocent unborn babies killed in the United States since 1973, in addition to an estimated one billion abortions globally?  Populations of western countries are declining, due, in part, to the attitude of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, who wrote in Woman and the New Race (chapter 5, “The Wickedness of

Creating Large Families,” 1920): “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it” Sanger stated: “No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child … without a permit.”

Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, was President and Leader if it for two reasons:  So that defective people in the US would not pass on their defects to others, and primarily so that Black People would not become a large part of the US population.  So, the largest ethnic

group affected by abortion are African-Americans, as nearly 20 million black babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade.

Kevin McCray is President of Every Black Life Matters. Supporters held up a sign at the March for Life, 2020, which read: “Black Lives Matter – Even in the Womb.”

Alveda King, niece of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., founded the National Black Pro-Life Coalition.  Alveda King told CNSNews.com (Dec. 5, 2016): “Abortion is … designed for population control … The numbers are higher in the African American community, so that’s certainly black genocide …… We also discovered that once black people are made aware of the genocidal eugenics by abortion that the community will speak out.”

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger stated: “The purpose of the American Baby Code shall be to provide for a better distribution of babies … and to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit. Feeble minded persons … and others found biologically unfit by authorities … should be sterilized or, in cases of doubt, should be so isolated as to prevent the perpetuation of their afflictions by breeding.” Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race. (“Morality and Birth Control”, February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.)

 Sanger was quoted in “Apostle of Birth Control Sees Cause Gaining Here” (The New York Times, April 8, 1923, p. XII):  “Birth control is

… cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective

stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

In 1926, Margaret Sanger spoke to a KKK group, as cited in her Autobiography, (1938): “Always to me any aroused group was a good group and

Therefore, I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing.”

She stated in a radio interview on WFAB Syracuse, February 2, 1924 (“The Meaning of Radio Birth Control,” April 1924, p.111): “Just think for a moment of the meaning of the word kindergarten — a garden of children … In this matter we should not do less than follow the example of the

professional gardener. Every expert gardener knows that the individual plant must be properly spaced, rooted in a rich nourishing soil, and provided with sufficient air and sunlight. He knows that no plant would have a fair chance of life if it were overcrowded or choked by weeds … If plants, and live-stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more … A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds.”

Margaret Sanger’s address to the New History Society, New York City, January 1, 1932, was summarized in “A Plan for Peace,” April 1932, pp.107-108: “Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic … and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924 … Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring … Insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents, by pensioning all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization … Give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.”

Sanger stated in Pivot of Civilization (1922, chapter 12, “Woman and the Future”): “We are informed that the psychological examination of the drafted men indicated that nearly half – 47.3 per cent. – of the population had the mentality of twelve-year-old children or less – in other words that they are morons … Our ‘overhead’ expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism.  No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded ‘captains of industry,’ financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst.”

So, folks, Planned Parenthood does most all of the abortions in the United States.  Now you know what is founder and “guiding light” thought about the subject and why she started it in the first place.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote inhis concurringopinion of Box v.PlannedParenthood ofIndiana andKentucky, May 28,

2019: “In a report titled ‘Birth Control and the Negro,’ Sanger and her coauthors identified blacks as ‘the great problem of the South’ — ‘the group with “the greatest economic, health, and social problems”’ — and developed a birth-control program geared toward this population.

She later emphasized that black ministers should be involved in the program, noting, ‘We do not want wordto go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who canstraighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of theirmore rebellious members.’”

A statement printed in Sanger’s pamphlet The Woman Rebel 914: NY, National Archives): “Birth control appeals to the advanced radical

because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of

Christianity no less than capitalism.”  ………….. So, there you have the purpose and creed of the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Justice Thomas continued in his opinion: “Some black groups saw ‘family planning as a euphemism for race genocide’ and believed that

‘black people were taking the brunt of the ‘planning’ under Planned Parenthood’s ‘ghetto approach’ to distributing its services. ‘The Pittsburgh branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,’ for example, criticized family planners as bent on trying to keep the Negro birth rate as low as possible’ … These observations echo the views articulated by the eugenicists and by Sanger decades earlier: ‘Birth Control of itself … will make a better race’ and tend ‘toward the elimination of the unfit.'”

The US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton as a national law and left it to each individual state whether it should be the law in that state.  So, it now is “the Law” in some states and not in others.

President Reagan addressed the March for Life, January 22, 1985: “I’m convinced, as I know you are, that our responsibility to the 12^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton must be to rededicate ourselves to ending the terrible national tragedy of abortion.”

President Donald J. Trump addressed the thousands who gathered for the annual March for Life, January 20, 2018: “The March for Life is a movement born out of love … You love every child, born and unborn, because you believe that every life is sacred, that every child is a precious gift from God. We know that life is the greatest miracle of all. We see it in the eyes of every new mother who cradles that wonderful, innocent, and glorious newborn child in her loving arms … Because of you, tens of thousands of Americans have been born and reached their full, God-given potential – because of you. As you all know, Roe vs. Wade has resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws anywhere in the world.  The United States, it’s one of only seven countries to allow elective late-term abortions, along with China, North Korea, and others. Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be torn from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong; it has to change.”

President Trump continued his March for Life address: “Americans are more and more pro-life. You see that all the time. In fact, only 12

percent of Americans support abortion on demand at any time. Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.

Trump concluded: “Today, I’m announcing that we have just issued a new proposal to protect conscience rights and religious freedoms of

doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. So important. I have also just reversed the previous administration’s policy that restricted states’ efforts to direct Medicaid funding away from abortion facilities that violate the law. We are protecting the sanctity of life and the family as the foundation of our society … That is why we march. That is why we pray. And that is why we declare that America’s future will be filled with goodness, peace, joy, dignity, and life for every child of God.”

Ronald Reagan wrote in his article, “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation,” The Human Life Review, 1983: “Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should be slaves … Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion.” Proverbs 13:22 states: “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” America’s founders cared about their “children’s children,” called “posterity.” The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, 1787, states: “We the people of the United States, in order to … secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”  If the Constitution is to “secure the blessings of liberty” to “our posterity,” then the unborn need to be protected.

On January 14,1988, President Reagan asked that personhood” be recognized for the unborn: “The well-being and future of our country demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land.”  Psalm 127:3: “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward.”