Do you feel discouraged, dry, and weak, as if God has disappeared and you’re merely surviving? At times, the Father allows you to face a season when you feel defeated and spiritually parched in order to draw you closer to Himself.
Although you might think the desert experiences of life would drive you farther from the Savior, but they can actually mature your faith in Him greatly, like a lost child looking for his parents, you seek Him desperately, listen intently for His voice, and long for His presence.
You also cast off anything that would hinder you from finding Him. In fact, more than likely you’ll discover that when you don’t feel the Father’s presence, it’s because you’ve unintentionally become focused on something other than Him. You are distracted and no longer drinking in His marvelous presence. He’s not your first priority, so He creates a thirst for Him in you.
So return to the Lord and enjoy Him. it may take time to rebuild your relationship, but be assured, those who seek Him “shall be satisfied” (Mathew 5:6).
Prayer: ‘Lord, I am thirsty for Your wonderful presence. Restore our fellowship and help me experience Your love, Amen’.
(We hear much about the courage and sacrifice of the founders of our Republic. However, there were others in recent years with just as much courage and sacrifice. Here is the story of four amazing ‘Men of God’ with such courage that they willingly gave their lives that four others could live. Please read about them below.)
On the frigid night of FEBRUARY 3, 1943, the overcrowded Allied ship U.S.A.T. Dorchester, carrying 902 servicemen, plowed through the dark, freezing waters near Greenland.
At 1:00am, a Nazi submarine fired a torpedo into the transport’s flank, killing many in the explosion and trapping others below deck. It sank in 27 minutes. The two escort ships, Coast Guard cutters Comanche and Escanaba, were able to rescue only 231 survivors.
In the chaos of fire, smoke, oil and ammonia, four chaplains calmed sailors and distributed life jackets:
George L. Fox, Methodist
Alexander D. Goode, Jewish
Clark V. Poling, Duch Reformed
John P. Washington, Roman Catholic
When there were no more life jackets, the four chaplains ripped off their own and put them on four young men. As the ship went down, survivors floating in rafts could see the four chaplains linking arms and bracing themselves on the slanting deck. They bowed their heads in prayer as they sank to their icy deaths.
Survivor Grady Clark wrote: “As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of Survivor the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”
The Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba was able to rescue only 231 survivors from the Dorchester:
By an Act of Congress, July 14, 1960………The Four Chaplains Medal was created:
In 1998, Congress honored them by declaring February 3rd “Four Chaplains Day.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged Protestants, Catholics, and Jews working together for liberty in his address at Madison Square Garden, October 28, 1940: “Your government is working with representatives of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish faiths. Without these three, all three of them, things would not be as easy.”
FDR stated January 31, 1938: “There has been definite progress towards a spiritual reawakening. I receive evidences of this from all our Protestant Churches; I get it from Catholic priests and from Jewish rabbis as well.”
FDR stated December 6, 1933: “Government guarantees to the churches, Gentile and Jewish, the right to worship God in their own way.”
In a Radio Address, November 4, 1940, FDR stated: “Democracy is the birthright of every citizen, the white and colored; the Protestant, the Catholic, the Jew.”
On February 3, 1951, President Harry S. Truman dedicated the Chapel of the Four Chaplains, currently located at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
President Truman
Truman said: “This interfaith shrine will stand through long generations to teach Americans that as men can die heroically as brothers so should they live together in mutual faith and goodwill.”
In 1984, the Chapel of the Four Chaplains gave an award recognizing the military chaplain team, made up of a Protestant minister, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi, who were present at the 1983 Beirut Bombing where fundamental Muslim terrorists blew up the U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 U.S. Marines.
President Reagan
President Ronald Reagan memorialized them in a speech at the Baptist Annual Convention, April 13, 1984: “On that October day when a terrorist truck bomb took the lives of 241 marines, soldiers, and sailors at the airport in Beirut, one of the first to reach the tragic scene was a chaplain, the chaplain of our 6th Fleet, Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff. He said, ‘Screams of those injured or trapped were barely audible at first, as our minds struggled to grapple with the reality before us, a massive four-story building, reduced to a pile of rubble; dust mixing with smoke and fire, obscuring our view of the little that was left.
Trying to pull and carry those whose injuries appeared less dangerous in an immediate sense than the approaching fire or the smothering smoke. My kippa was lost. (That is the little headgear that is worn by rabbis.) The last I remember it, I’d used it to mop someone’s brow. Father Pucciarelli, the Catholic chaplain, cut a circle out of his cap, a piece of camouflaged cloth which would become my temporary head-covering. Somehow he wanted those marines to know not just that we were chaplains, but that he was a Christian and that I was Jewish.”
Reagan continued quoting Chaplain Rabbi Resnicoff: “The words from the prophet Malachi kept recurring to me, words he’d uttered some 2,500 years ago as he had looked around at fighting and cruelty and pain. ‘Have we not all one Father?’ he had asked. ‘Has not one God created us all?’ To understand the role of the chaplain, Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant, is to understand that we try to remind others, and perhaps ourselves as well, to cling to our humanity even in the worst of times. We bring with us the truth that faith not only reminds us of the holy in Heaven, but also of the holiness we can create here on Earth. We have within us the power to reflect as God’s creatures the highest values of our Creator. As God is forgiving and, merciful, so can we be.'”
Reagan stated January 31, 1983: “Let us come together, Christians and Jews, let us pray together. All of us, as Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, have a special responsibility to remember our fellow believers who are being persecuted in other lands. We’re all children of Abraham. We’re children of the same God.”
President Eisenhower
On February 7, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower spoke from the White House for the American Legion ‘Back-to-God’ Program: “And we remember that, only a decade ago, aboard the transport Dorchester, four chaplains of four faiths together willingly sacrificed their lives so that four others might live.
Eisenhower continued: “Today as then, there is need for positive acts of renewed recognition that faith is our surest strength, our greatest resource. This ‘Back to God’ movement is such a positive act. Whatever our individual church, whatever our personal creed, our common faith in God is a common bond among us. Together we thank ‘the Power’ that has made and preserved us a nation. By the millions, we speak prayers, we sing hymns-and no matter what their words may be, their spirit is the same – ‘In God is Our Trust.'”
Another inspiring story of a Christian risking his life to save soldiers was combat medic Desmond Doss, as portrayed in the award-winning film Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Doss saved 75 soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Yet another inspiring story was that of Chaplain William Thomas Cummings, who served with the U.S. Army in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured by the Imperial Japanese and died when his unmarked prisoner ship was sunk sailing to Japan on January 18, 1945. Earlier, while serving with the American troops during the Battle of Bataan, January 7 to April 9, 1942, Chaplain Father Cummings gave a stirring field sermon in which he declared: “There are no atheists in the foxholes.”
Eisenhower repeated these words in his address February 7, 1954: “As a former soldier, I am delighted that our veterans are sponsoring a movement to increase our awareness of God in our daily lives. In battle, they learned a great truth — ‘that there are no atheists in the foxholes’. They know that in time of test and trial, we instinctively turn to God for new courage and peace of mind. All the history of America bears witness to this truth.
In the three centuries that separate the Pilgrims of the Mayflower from the chaplains of the Dorchester, America’s freedom, her courage, her strength, and her progress have had their foundation in faith.”
“I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly”
Do not miss the pivotal words in the covenant between the Lord and Abrahan: “I will.” From the beginning, God took the full responsibility for fulfilling His promise. It was up to Him to give Abraham a son and multiply his descendants.
Have you asked the Father to help you in some area? Is His answer taking longer than you expected? Does the attainment of your hope seem impossible? Don’t make the terrible mistake of taking matters into your own hands. Sarah did so by offering her maidservant Hagar to Abraham, and Israel is still suffering because of her impatience.
Rather, remember that it’s “God who accomplishes all things” for you (Psalm 57:2). Abraham’s only responsibility was to follow the Lord obediently, and the same is true for you.
So stop trying to handle everything on your own. It’s His responsibility. Trust that the Father has wondrous plans for your life and that he will bring them about.
On this one trip to Honduras, it was so very hot and humid. I worked mostly in the dental clinic, for there were always way more people needing relief from severe dental problems than we could possibly treat.
Before we go, I always ask the doctors going for the first time to go back and study some of the things that they had in medical school but have never seen in their practice in the US. On this one occasion I remember that an older man came in with advanced jungle rot. His whole foot was grossly swollen and just covered in a mass of it. The doctor came over to me and said: “Ronald, I don’t know what to do about this. I can’t do an amputation down here. What shall I do?”
I told his nurse to spray it all down with Hydrogen Peroxide and bandage it up. The old gentleman went away happy and smiling.
Also, on this trip, I was walking through the room where the ladies were finding the glasses from all those that had been donated to match the prescriptions that Dr. Youngerman had written. They were then adjusting them to fit the heads of the patients with that prescription after those glasses had been found. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed this one lady who was just standing there, quietly crying.
Of course, I asked her what was wrong, like was she ill? She assured me that she was fine, but that it had to do with this one older Hispanic lady who had just left. She said that after she had fitted the lady with her new glasses, she just stood there looking at her hands. She asked the lady if something was wrong with her hands.
Did she need to go see one of the doctors? The Hispanic lady said that her hands were fine.
She just said: “This is the first time that I have been able to see my hands in as long as I can remember.”
This just struck an emotional chord with this lovely lady volunteer from Hurst, Texas and brought her to tears.
As you might suspect, finding the optimum job for each volunteer can be a challenge. And in that heat and pressure, some folk’s temper gets the better of them late in the day.
On several trips this one guy went with us who was not mean, but just very aggressive. The other team members called him “Rambo”. I finally found just the right job for Rambo. Almost without exception almost everyone down there needs worming. It won’t last that long with the grownups, but we hope that the children will be able to stay worm free long enough for their mental facilities to develop so that they will not be impaired later in life. I learned to put Rambo out in the very front of each clinic. His job was to worm every single person coming into the clinic. It worked great, and he really “adapted himself” to the task.
But on this trip, we encountered a major catastrophe. We ran out of worm medicine with several more days to go. I rely on the doctors to furnish the particular drugs that they think that they will need. Much of the time they are able to use the samples that the drug salesmen leave at their offices. However, someone slipped up this time and did not order nearly enough worm medicine.
On this trip our pharmacist was the pharmacy director for a Sack-and-Save store in Denton, Texas. He was a real character. Some might have described him as a “real piece of work.” He told me not to worry about it, that he would take care of it. And he for sure did. He went to the one agricultural store in that town of Tela and bought a supply of cattle spray. He was good; he knew what he was doing. He diluted it down sufficiently with some organic chemicals and that became our worm medicine. It turned out to be a bright pink, and, wow, was it effective. I kid you not, for years after that I got calls from down there wanting some more of that pink worm medicine. They had never had anything so effective.
So, I kept hearing a rumor on this one trip that some of the people had found a little girl and were planning on bringing her back with us. I did not investigate and did not talk with them, but only when we got to the airport at San Pedro Sula did I see the little girl. Her mother had dressed her in her best dress, and she was just a darling girl with the most engaging smile. Her problem was that this massive growth covered the whole area of what would have been her right eye…….that whole area of her face. I guessed her to be about 9 years old.
One of the doctors with us had called his friend in Mississippi who he knew specialized in such things. The doctor in Mississippi had promised to operate on her. Other than that horrible growth, she was just the cutest thing with her very best dress on. Her name is Valentina.
She may have that growth, but her beautiful smile never left her face
I did not see her again until we got to Houston. I waited until most all of our group had gone through immigration. Then I looked way over where those huge curtains were pulled back from the floor to ceiling windows in the Houston terminal. There was this group of our people with the little girl. No one was headed toward immigration so I went over to see what was wrong.
They had panicked. They had realized that this girl had no passport and no visa to enter the United States. No one wanted to be the person to try to take her up to immigration, so they just handed her to me.
I don’t know how to tell you what happened next. Just believe me.
At that moment this powerful rush of power or energy just invaded my body. It seemed to permeate every single cell. I suddenly felt as if I could walk through fire or even walk on water. I just took that little girl by the hand and said: “Come on ‘little darlin’ Valentina, let’s go to the Estados Unidos”. I headed straight ahead to the first open immigration station.
Ron and the Little Honduran Girl, Headed to Immigration, and notice Ron’s “miracle watch”
I had my passport out, but, of course, she had nothing, not even any ID. There behind the counter was this huge black man in his green uniform. He was not fat, he was just really huge and quit official and imposing looking. He knew why she was there. He looked down at that little girl, and she just smiled up at him. Big tears welled up in his eyes. All he could say was: “Lord bless you sir, Lord bless you sir. You all just go right on.”
He did not check my passport or anything as respects Valentina. So, we just went right on. She sat next to me on the flight to Dallas. When we got there, I took her on up to my ranch west of Denton, Texas. She really enjoyed visiting with my two daughters and my two youngest sons by the swimming pool that looks out over the prairie. They were so kind to her.
Before dark, I took her back to Carrollton to Onelia. Onelia, who is from Honduras and is a nurse with a U.S. RN degree, escorted her to Mississippi the next morning.
A few days later I called Onelia to inquire about the operation. She said that it was successful, but that the doctors told her that they estimated that the girl would have died in only 3 more weeks without that operation.
Onelia hopes to get her an artificial eye, later, some day.
On every trip that I took to Honduras, this wonderful, impressive lady went with us. Her name is Barbara Borre. She is over six feet tall and perfectly proportioned, not overweight and not skinny and very nice looking. She was one of the top Immigration Officials in the Dallas Region. Barbara just effused authority. Since her shoulders were a little wider than most women and the military way in which she carried herself made her all the more impressive looking, especially when she put on her Immigration uniform.
It was very helpful to have her on those trips, since she could tell us what we could take out of the US and what we could bring in. On every trip she worked in the Dental Clinic.
When she heard about the little Honduran girl that I have just described and how she was able to get into the US without a passport or even a visa, here is what Barbara said to me by phone: “Ronald, I can tell you with authority, that was absolutely a miracle from God!”
PS: When writing this, I became curious about whatever happened to Valentina, so I called down there to Honduras just now. They told me that she was living up in the mountains with her father and doing fine.
Memorial Day in America, as an annual observance, can be traced back to the end of the Civil War, a war in which over a half-million died. Southern women scattered spring flowers on graves of both northern Union and southern Confederate soldiers.
One of the places where it was first observed was Charleston, South Carolina, where a mass grave was uncovered of 267 Union soldiers who had died in a prison camp. On May 1, 1865, former slaves organized a parade, led by 2,800 singing black children, in which they prayed, read Bible verses, sang spirituals, and reburied the soldiers with honor as an act of gratefulness for their ultimate sacrifice which gave them freedom.
In 1868, General John A. Logan, commander of the Civil War veterans’ organization “The Grand Army of the Republic,” called for a Decoration Day to be observed annually on May 30.
An estimated 180,000 Black soldiers served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Republican abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a Decoration Day address at Arlington National Cemetery in 1871:
“We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers.”
President James Garfield’s only executive order was in 1881 where he gave government workers May 30th off so they could decorate the graves of those who died in the Civil War.
President Warren Harding
In 1921, President Warren Harding had the remains of an unknown soldier killed in France during World War I buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery.
Inscribed on the Tomb is the phrase: “HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD.”
Since 1921, it has been the tradition for Presidents to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The number 21 being the highest salute, the sentry takes 21 steps, faces the tomb for 21 seconds, turns and pauses 21 seconds, then retraces his steps.
The number 21 is explained on the U.S. Army Center of Military History website (history.army.mil/index.html): “Warriors demonstrated their peaceful intentions placing their weapons in a position that rendered them ineffective.
Rendering a salute by cannon originated in the 14th century as firearms and cannons came into use. Since these early devices contained only one projectile, discharging them once rendered them ineffective.
Originally warships fired seven-gun salutes—the number seven probably selected because of its astrological and Biblical significance. The Bible states that God rested on the seventh day after Creation, that every seventh year was sabbatical and that the seven times seventh year ushered in the Jubilee year.
Land batteries, having a greater supply of gunpowder, were able to fire three guns for every shot fired afloat, hence the salute by shore batteries was 21 guns.
Early gunpowder, composed mainly of sodium nitrate, spoiled easily at sea, but could be kept cooler and drier in land magazines. When potassium nitrate improved the quality of gunpowder, ships at sea adopted the salute of 21 guns.
The 21-gun salute became the highest honor a nation rendered.
Great Britain, the world’s preeminent seapower in the 18th and 19th centuries, compelled weaker nations to salute first. Eventually, by agreement, the international salute was established at 21 guns, although the United States did not agree on this procedure until August 1875.”
On Decoration Day, 1923, President Calvin Coolidge stated: “There can be no peace with the forces of evil. Peace comes only through the establishment of the supremacy of the forces of good. That way lies through sacrifice. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'”
The Memorial Day poem, “In Flanders Fields,” was composed during World War I, by a Canadian Expeditionary gunner and medical officer named John McCrae, who fought in the Second Battle of Ypres near Flanders, Belgium.
Describing the battle as a “nightmare,” as the enemy carried out one of the first chlorine gas attacks, McCrae wrote:
“For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off, nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds. And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way.”
Finding one of his friends killed, McCrae helped bury him along with the other dead in a field. Noticing the field covered with poppy flowers, he wrote:
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. if ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.”
Notable individuals who fought in World War I include:
Sergeant York
Sergeant Alvin York, who single-handedly took out 35 machine guns and captured 132;
John J. Pershing, General of the Armies;
Douglas MacArthur, Brigadier General;
George S. Patton, tank commander;
Leonard Wood, future Army Chief of Staff;
Harry S Truman, artillery officer and future 33rd President;
Harry S Truman
Eddie Rickenbacker, commander of 94th Areo Squadron;
Quentin Roosevelt, a pilot, son of President Theodore Roosevelt, was shot down and died;
Charles Whittlesey, commander of the “Lost Battalion” behind lines;
Frank Luke -“balloon buster”
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin, composer of “God Bless America”;
Edouard Izac, naval office captured on a U-Boat, who escaped;
Henry Johnson of the “Harlem Hellfighters”;
Dan Daly, Marine Sergeant charged and captured machine gun nests;
Ernest Hemingway, author of A Farewell to Arms;
J.R.R. Tolken, British author of The Lord of the Rings
C. S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis, British author of The Chronicles of Narnia.
One soldier was Orval William Epperson.
Born on a rugged Ozark farm near Anderson, Missouri, he fought in France, being assigned to the 338th Machine Gun Battalion 88th Division.
Upon returning to America, he married Therese DeBrosse, and had three children: Joan, Orval Wilford, and Tirzah, whose mother was a famous author.
Billy Epperson
Orval and Therese’s only son was Orval Wilford “Billy” Epperson.
He served in World War II as a bombardier on a B17 Flying Fortress, 525th Squadron, 379 Bomb Group A.P.O. 550 (#0-768946). 23-year-old “Billy” Epperson flew from Camp Crowder in southwest Missouri to Kimbolton, England. He had written a Mother’s Day note to his mom, tied it with a handkerchief to a small weight and dropped it from the plane as it flew over his hometown of Neosho, Missouri.
Billy’s B-17
A neighbor got it and brought to his mother, who lived at 344 S. Hamilton. Little did either know that that would be the closest they would be again, as Billy was shot down by the Nazis over the English Channel near Holland on July 9, 1944.
His name is on the monument near Omaha Beach, at the Cimitière Amèrican de Normandie (in Colleville-sur-Mer, France) at the Killed in Action Wall (“Tablet of the Missing”).
On June 6, 1944 President Franklin Roosevelt offered a D-Day Prayer, which is now part of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., thanks to the effort led by Chris Long of the Ohio Christian Alliance, as documented in his book For Their Honor:
“My fellow Americans: I ask you to join with me in prayer: Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization. Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. We know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.”
The Tomb
In 1958, President Eisenhower placed soldiers in the tomb from World War II and the Korean War. In 1968, one hundred years after the first observance, Decoration Day was moved to the last Monday in May. In 1971, Decoration Day was renamed “Memorial Day.”
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan placed a soldier from the Vietnam War in the tomb. DNA test later identified him as pilot Michael Blassie, whose A-37B Dragonfly was shot down near An Loc, South Vietnam. He had graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970, and prior to that, graduated from St. Louis University High School in 1966.
IIn 1998, Michael Blassie’s remains were reburied at Jefferson Memorial Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri.
Cemetery in St. Louis
In 2000, Congress passed The National Moment of Remembrance Act (Public Law 106-579), whereby on each Memorial Day, at 3:00pm, citizens should pause for a moment of prayer: “Congress finds that it is essential to remember and renew the legacy of Memorial Day, to pay tribute to individuals who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the United States. Greater strides must be made to demonstrate appreciation for those loyal people whose values, represented by their sacrifices, are critical to the future of the United States, and to encourcitizens to dedicate themselves to the principles for which those heroes of the United States died. A symbolic act of unity to honor the men and women of the United States who died in the pursuit of freedom and peace as a day of prayer for permanent peace.”
Memorial Day grew to honor over 1.3 million service men and women who gave their lives defending America’s freedom in every war.
Revolutionary War (1775-1783) 25,000;
Barbary Wars (1801-1805; 1815) 45;
War of 1812 (1812-1814) 20,000;
Mexican-American War (1846-1848) 13,283;
Civil War (1861-1865) 625,000;
Spanish-American War (1898) 2,446;
World War 1 (1917-1918) 116,516;
World War 2 (1941-1945) 405,399;
Korean War (1950-1953) 36,516;
Vietnam War (1955-1975) 58,209;
Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) 258;
Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan (2001-2014) 2,356;
Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2012) 4,489; and
subsequent wars against Islamic terrorism, securing our borders, and in Ukraine.
At the Memorial Day Ceremony, May 31, 1993, President Bill Clinton remarked: “The inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier says that he is ‘Known but to God.’ But that is only partly true. While the soldier’s name is known only to God, we know a lot about him. We know he served his country, honored his community, and died for the cause of freedom. And we know that no higher praise can be assigned to any human being than those simple words. In the presence of those buried all around us, we ask the support of all Americans in the aid and blessing of God Almighty.”
Charles Michael Province, U.S. Army, wrote the poem: “It is the Soldier, not the minister Who has given us freedom of religion. It is the Soldier, not the reporter Who has given us freedom of the press. It is the Soldier, not the poet Who has given us freedom of speech. It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer Who has given us freedom to protest. It is the Soldier, not the lawyer Who has given us the right to a fair trial. It is the Soldier, not the politician Who has given us the right to vote. It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”
Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary stated in its definition of “MEMORIAL”: “That which preserves the memory of something. A monument is a memorial of a deceased person, or of an event. The Lord’s supper is a memorial of the death and sufferings of Christ.”
Memorials are important in Scripture. The Lord told Moses in Exodus 12: “Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel: In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house. Your lamb shall be without blemish. And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and execute judgment and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you. And this day shall be unto you a MEMORIAL throughout your generations, an ordinance for ever.”
Memorial is mentioned in Joshua, chapter 4: “When all the people were clean, they passed over Jordan. Joshua called twelve men out of every tribe. And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder. That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?
Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, and these stones shall be for a MEMORIAL unto the children of Israel for ever.”
In his Memorial Day Address, May 31, 1923, President Calvin Coolidge said: “Settlers came here with mixed motives. Generally defined, they were seeking a broader freedom. They were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance to the principle of self-government. It has been said that ‘God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness.'”
Coolidge was citing an Election Sermon given in Boston, April 29, 1669, by Massachusetts Governor Judge William Stoughton, who described the Puritans fleeing persecution in England to settle in the New World.
Judge Stoughton
“God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.”
Henry W. Longfellow used a similar line in his classic Courtship of Miles Standish:
Longfellow
“God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.”
This was explained further in Benjamin Franklin Morris’ classic The Christian Life and Character of The Civil Institutions of The United States (1864): “The persecutions of the Puritans in England for non-conformity, and the religious agitations and conflicts in Germany by Luther, in Geneva by Calvin, and in Scotland by Knox, were the preparatory ordeals for qualifying Christian men for the work of establishing the civil institutions on the American continent. ‘God sifted’ in these conflicts ‘a whole nation that He might send choice grain over into the wilderness’; and the blood and persecution of martyrs became the seed of both the church and the state. It was in these schools of fiery trial that the founders of the American republic were educated and prepared for their grand Christian mission. They were trained in stormy times, in order to prepare them to establish the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty and of just systems of civil government.”
Concluding in his Memorial Day Address that America’s republic is worth preserving, President Calvin Coolidge stated May 31, 1923: “They had a genius for organized society on the foundations of piety, righteousness, liberty, and obedience of the law. Who can fail to see in it the hand of destiny? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence?”
Douglas MacArthur told West Point cadets, May 1962:
General Douglas MacArthur
“The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training-sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those Divine attributes which his Maker gave when He created man in His own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of Divine help which alone can sustain him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.”
(This was one of the cruelest times in modernhistory. The Barbary Pirates were sending Europeans and even Americans to their slave markets. It finally was put to an end with U.S. ships and the amazing U.S. Marines Do read about it.)
For centuries, tens of millions of Africans were sold at Islamic slave markets from Timbuktu on the Niger River, where the canoe meets the caravan, to Khartoum, to the Zanzibar coast on the Indian Ocean.
In addition, over a million Europeans were captured and sold at Muslim slave markets in Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia and Libya. Catholic Orders, such as the “Trinitarians” or “Mathurins,” would collect alms and ransom slaves.
Notable ransomed were in 1607, St. Vincent DePaul, and in 1580, Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote de La Mancha, 1605, who wrote: “They put a chain on me. I passed my life in that bano with several other(s) marked out as held to ransom. We suffered from hunger and scanty clothing. Nothing distressed us so much as seeing … unheard of cruelties my master inflicted upon the Christians.
Every day he hanged a man all with so little provocation. Turks acknowledged he did it merely for the sake of doing it.”
Modern-day charities ransoming Christians from slavery in Africa and South Asia include ‘Exodus 51’ and ‘Christian Solidarity International’, supported by Eric Metaxas.
In 1588, English and Dutch privateers defeated the invincible Spanish Armada.
Privateers captured Spanish ships of gold and brought their treasures back to Queen Elizabeth’s England. In 1604, King James I made a peace treaty with Spain banning English piracy, issuing a “Proclamation to Repress All Piracies and Depredations upon the Sea.”
This essentially left privateers unemployed. Some became lawless pirates, finding ports for their stolen goods along the Barbary coast. A few even became accursed “renegado,” or Christians turned Turk, sharing their superior sailing skills with Muslim maritime marauders and directing ships, called corsairs, to attack North Atlantic trade.
In 1617, 800 corsairs took 1,200 captives from Madeira, Portugal and sold them in the Muslim slave markets.
In 1625, corsairs sailed up the Thames River and raided England, taking many Englishmen slaves to the Morroco slave markets.
Giles Milton wrote in White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves, 2004, describing how Pellow was captured at age 11 and escaped 23 years later.
The coast of Cornwall was raided with 60 villagers captured at Mount’s Bay and 80 at Looe, and carried away as slaves.
They attacked Lundy Island in Bristol Channel and raised the standard of Islam, and by the end of 1625, over 1,000 English subjects were taken to the slave markets of Morocco.
That same year, Pilgrims in Massachusetts sent beaver skins and dried fish back to England for trade, but their ship was captured by Turkish pirates. Pilgrim Governor William Bradford wrote in History of the Plymouth Settlement, 1650: “They were well within the English channel, almost in sight of Plymouth. But. there she was unhapply taken by a Turkish man-of-war and carried off to Saller, Morocco, where the captain and crew were made slaves. Now with the ship taken by the Turks all trade was dead.”
In 1627, Ottoman Algerian pirate Murat Reis the Younger raided Iceland and carried away 800. One captured girl was made a concubine in Algeria but was ransomed by Denmark’s King Christian IV.
In 1631, Algerian pirates herded “The Stolen Village” of Baltimore, Ireland, onto ships. Only two ever returned. Thomas Osborne Davis wrote in “The Sack of Baltimore,” 1895: “The yell of ‘Allah!’ breaks above the shriek and roar; O’ blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore.” Des Ekin wrote in The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates (2008): “Here was not a single Christian who was not weeping and who was not full of sadness at the sight of so many honest maidens and so many good women abandoned to the brutality of these barbarians.”
An Maiden being given to the Sultan
The History of Barbary and its Corsairs, 1637, recorded that in 1634, Trinitarian priest Pierre Dan went to Algeria and witnessed “piteous” Irish families split apart at slave markets, never to see one-another again.
Joseph Wheelan wrote in Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 2004: “As soon as Europeans fell into the raiders’ hands, the captives were stripped of their clothes, given rags to wear, and either were put in irons or made to work on the ships.
Handsomest male slaves were usually chosen as palace pages, and the prettiest women were sent to Constantinople as gifts to the sultan. The rest were auctioned in the slave markets, where buyers examined the prisoners as they would any domestic animal.”
Kidnapped Englishman Francis Knight wrote in A Relation of Seven Years of Slavery under Turks of Algiers, 1640: “I arrived in Algiers, that city fatal to all Christians and the butchery of mankind.”
The Sultan of Morocco was Moulay Ismail. He had a harem of 500, mostly captured European women, who bore him a record 1,042 children. He had 25,000 white slaves build him a palace at Meknes. Moulay Ismail was described by John Windus in A Journey to Mequinez, 1825: “His trembling court assemble, which consists of blacks, whites, tawnies and his favorite,Jews, all barefooted. He is known by the color of the habit that he wears, yellow being observed to be his killing color; from all of which they calculate whether they may hope to live twenty-four hours longer.
He (rides) out of town attended by fifteen or twenty thousand blacks with whom he diverts himself—by throwing—the lance, knotted cords for whipping.”
Abolitionist Republican Senator Charles Sumner wrote White Slavery in the Barbary States, 1853: “The Saracens, with the Koran and the sword, potent ministers of conversion, next broke from Arabia, as the messengers of a new religion, and pouring along these shores. Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery, the wall of the barbarian world.”
In November 12, 1644, the Massachusetts General Court, as recorded in The Pirates of the New England Coast, 1630-1730, stated: “Turkish pirates meaning the Algerines, were a constant danger to shipping in trading with Spain.”
In 1669, Captain William Foster sailed the Dolphin out of Charlestown, Massachusetts, and was captured by Barbary pirates.
John Hull, first mint-master of Massachusetts Bay, recorded: “October 21, 1671, We received intelligence that William Foster, master of a small ship, was taken by the Turks as he was going to Bilboa, Spain, with fish.”
Cotton Mather wrote in Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702: “There was a Godly gentleman of Charlestown, one Mr. Foster, who with his son, was taken captive by Turkish enemies.” Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, “the Apostle to the Indians,” led his congregation in prayer that Moroccan Prince Moulay Rashid would release Foster.
Mather wrote: “Much prayer was employed, both privately and publicly, by the good people here, for the redemption of that gentleman. But we were at last informed, that the bloody Prince, in whose dominions he was now a slave, was resolved that in his lifetime no prisoner should be released. The distressed friends of this prisoner now concluded, our hope is lost! Upon this, Rev. Eliot, in some of his next prayers, before a very solemn congregation begged: “Heavenly Father, work for the redemption of thy poor servant Foster, and if the Prince which detains him will not dismiss him as long himself lives, Lord, we pray thee to kill that cruel Prince, and glorify thy self upon him.”
Shortly after, April 9, 1672, Prince Moulay Rashid fell from his horse and died in Marrakesh at the age of 42.
Cotton Mather added: “The poor captive gentleman, Foster, quickly returns to us that had been mourning for him as a lost man, and brings us news, that the Prince which had hitherto held him, was come to an untimely death, by which means he was now set at liberty.”
A Symbol Born in Battle – Long before it became a gleaming piece of every Marine Officer’s dress uniform to this very day, the Mameluke sword was earned in the heat of combat—not on American soil, but halfway across the world, in a desert kingdom where Marines proved their mettle and wrote the lines of their legendary Anthem (“To the stores of Tripoli”).
The year was 1805. The young United States was locked in a brutal conflict with the Barbary pirates of North Africa. American merchant ships were being attacked, their crews captured and held for ransom. The solution? A daring mission that would take US Marines deep into enemy territory, farther than they had ever gone before.
Led by a Marine officer named Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, a detachment of Marines set out from Alexandria, Egypt. With a group of fellow Marines and a mixed force of Arab allies, they began a grueling 600-mile march across the desert toward the city of Derna, on the coast of modern-day Libya. Derna was highly fortified along the coast to repel any attack from the sea, for they figured no attack could possibly come from that formidable desert.
It was a bold and risky operation—outnumbered, undersupplied, and deep in unfamiliar terrain. But on April 27, 1805, O’Bannon and his Marines stormed out of the desert for the Battle of Derna. Against the odds, they seized the heavily fortified city in the name of the United States. It was the first time the American flag was raised in victory on foreign soil, and it would be a defining moment for the Corps.
And it stopped that horrible slave trade forever. God bless those brave U.S. Marines!
“Ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.”
Do you find that knowing God’s will feels like a constant struggle? Do you weigh the pros and cons of your decisions, look for signs of His direction, but then continue to wonder if you’re truly making choices that honor Him?
Friend, understanding God’s will for your life is not as ambiguous as you may think. The Lord wants you to obey Him—He eagerly seeks to diredt your path. So when you’re walking with Him, He provides the wisdom you need for every step.
But how do you ensure you’re staying in close fellowship with the Father? First give yourself to Him completely, undertanding that you are His beloved child and He would never steer you wrong. Second, refuse to be conformed to the world’s standards or follow its strategies to achieve your goals. Third, be transformed by allowing the Holy Spirit to change the way you think.
Finally, trust that the God who saved you is able to teach you the way you should go. He will not fail you. Trust Him.
“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
What is it that consumes your thoughts today? What holds the utmost place of prominence in your life? Your answers will say a great deal about what’s truly important to you.
But He warned, the frustrations and discouragement you face often have more to do with what you’re pursuing than anything else. Perhaps you desire to be loved or respected—to be appreciated and accepted for who you are. Maybe you yearn to feel whole, safe, or free from burdens. So you chase the goals, objects, and people who seem to answer your profound need.
But friend, these misplaced priorities will rob you of peace, energy, and joy. It is God alone who deserves the highest place of honor in your life. Do you spend time with Him daily, seeking His face and deepening your intimacy with Him? Do you pursue Him with greater passion than everything else?
If not, you will be disappointed. Nothing is as wonderful or worthy as He is. And nothing can satisfy your soul as He will.
Do you desire a release from the stress you’re experiencing? Do you wish something would quiet your fears or give you a fresh perspective on your struggles? If so, meditating on the Word of God can revolutionize your life.
The Father wants you to relate to Him—to be quiet before him so He can speak to you and teach you His ways. Unfortunately, you will miss His activity, direction, and intervention in your circumstances if you don’t take the opportunity to listen to Him and know Him through His Word.
Of course life is busy and you may think you don’t really have time to sit in His presence. But realize that when you forfeit your relationship with God, you lose much more than just time. You miss His joy, peace power, love, and wisdom—and even the very purposes for which you were created.
Friend, the Father loves you intimately—with a depth that can never be measured. So spend time with Him and give Him the opportunity to have you all to Himself. You’ll surely find all that you’ve been longing for.
(Below is the history of the first settlers in Canada and the first Europeans to see and explore the Mississippi River as recorded in their own words. All were initially motivated by the desire to take the Gospel to the native Indians.)
In 1535, Francis I, the King of France, sent explorer Jacques Cartier to find a “northwest passage” to China, but he only got as far as the impassable rapids on the Saint Lawrence River, which are named La Chine, because he though China was just on the other side.
Cartier also named the land “Canada,” which was the Iroquois name for “settlements,” of which the two main ones on the St. Lawrence River were Stadacona (Quebec City) and Hochelaga (Montreal Island).
France began seriously colonizing Canada 70 years later, during the reign of Good King Henry IV, who sent over Samuel de France Champlain. Champlain officially founded Quebec City in 1608, and continued to explore and colonize Canada.
When King Henry was assassinated in 1610, his son, Louis II and his Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu, continued sending French Catholic missionaries to Canada.
One French missionary was Isaac Jogues, who taken prisoner by the Iroquois in 1641. He was treated very badly, but finally managed to escape. He wandered till he found some Dutch fur traders who helped him make his way back to Quebec. From there, he was able to sail back to France. However Isaac Jogues later returned to America to continue his missionary work, where he was eventually killed.
Many more French missionaries came. Some were killed, but many more witnessed to the Indians there.
These courageous missionaries inspired Père Jacques Marquette, (“Père” is French for “Father”), who arrived in Quebec from France to be a missionary among the Native Americans.
In 1673, Frontenac, the Governor General of New France, commissioned Père Marquette to explore the unknown Mississippi River. Marquette traveled with French explorer Louis Joliette by canoe along the west coast of Lake Michigan
They canoed to Green Bay, up the lower Fox River, across Lake Winnebago, and up the upper Fox River. Marquette and Joliette then portaged their canoes two miles through marsh to the Wisconsin River, where their two Indian guides abandoned them, fearing “river monsters.”
Marquette and Joliet canoed the Wisconsin River to present-day Prairie du Chien, where they entered the Mississippi River.
Being the first Europeans to explore the northern Mississippi, Jacques Marquette gave his account of their voyage as translated:
“We first came to the Folle Avoine (Menominee). I entered their river to go and visit these people to whom we preached the Gospel in consequence of which, several became good Christians among them.
I told them of my design to discover those remote nations, in order to teach them the mysteries of our holy religion.
They did their best to dissuade me from this task. That I would meet nations who never show mercy to strangers, but break their heads without any cause.
They also said that the great river was very dangerous, full of horrible monsters, which devoured men and canoes together; that there was even a demon, who swallowed up all who ventured to approach him.”
Marquette continued: “I thanked them for the good advice that they gave me, but told them that I could not follow it, because the salvation of souls was at stake, for which I would be delighted to give my life; I scoffed at the alleged demon; that we would easily defend ourselves against those marine monsters.
After having them pray to God, and giving them some instructions, I separated from them.”
Very large fish could have existed in the Mississippi River, as up to this point in time, it had never been commercially fished.
As recent as February 14, 2011, fisherman Kenny Williams of Vicksburg, MS, caught an alligator gar on the Mississippi River that “measured 8 feet, 5 inches long, weighed 327 pounds, and was 48 inches around,” and had a double row of razor sharp teeth. (FoxNews.com, 2/21/11; FieldandStream.com 2/23/11) “Officials with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks (MDWFP) said it could be the largest alligator gar ever caught.”
Then after leaving these first Indians, they paddled south down the Mississippi, along the shores of present-day Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, to just below where the Arkansas River enters the Mississippi. They hesitated going further for fear of entering dangerous Spanish Territory.
Map of the voyage that Marquette and Joliette took on the Mississippi River
From the intersection with the Arkansas River, they turned back north to visit the several isolated Indian tribes along the Mississippi.
Père Jacques Marquette continued their Voyage, and it is recorded in their own words in French of that day and translated in the English of that day: “Here we are at Maskoutens. This word may, in Algonquin, mean ‘the Fire Nation’— which, indeed, is the name given to this tribe.
No sooner had we arrived than we, Monsieur Joliet, and I, assembled the elders together; and he told them that he was sent by Monsieur our Governor to discover new countries, while I was sent by God to illumine them with the light of the holy Gospel. He told them that, moreover, the Sovereign Master of our lives wished to be known by all the nations; and that in obeying His will I feared not the death to which I exposed myself in voyages so perilous.
He informed them that we needed two guides to show us the way; and we gave them a present, by it asking them to grant us the guides. To this they very civilly consented; and they also spoke to us by means of a present, consisting of a mat to serve us as a bed during our whole voyage.”
Père Marquette related another account: “On the 25th day of June we perceived on the water’s edge some tracks of men, and a narrow and somewhat beaten path leading to a fine prairie. We stopped to examine it; and, thinking that it was a road which led to some village of savages, we resolved to go and reconnoiter it.
We therefore left our two canoes under the guard of our people, strictly charging them not to allow themselves to be surprised, after which Monsieur Joliet and I undertook this investigation—a rather hazardous one for two men who exposed themselves alone to the mercy of a barbarous and unknown people.
We silently followed the narrow path, and, after walking about two leagues, we discovered a village on the bank of the river, and two others on a hill distant about half a league from the first.
Then we heartily commended ourselves to God, and, after imploring His aid, we went farther without being perceived, and approached so near that we could even hear the savages talking. We therefore decided that it was time to reveal ourselves. This we did by shouting with all our energy, and stopped without advancing any farther.
On hearing the shout, the savages quickly issued from their cabins, and having probably recognized us as Frenchmen, especially when they saw a black gown—or, at least, having no cause for distrust, as we were only two men, and had given them notice of our arrival—they deputed four old men to come and speak to us.
Two of these bore tobacco pipes, finely ornamented and adorned with various feathers. They walked slowly, and raised their pipes toward the sun, seemingly offering them to it to smoke—without, however, saying a word. They spent a rather long time in covering the short distance between their village and us.
Finally, when they had drawn near, they stopped to consider us attentively.
I was reassured when I observed these ceremonies, which with them are performed only among friends; and much more so when I saw them clad in cloth, for I judged thereby that they were our allies. I therefore spoke to them first, and asked who they were. They replied that they were Illinois; and, as a token of peace, they offered us their pipes to smoke.
They afterward invited us to enter their village, where all the people impatiently awaited us.”
On their return trip up the Illinois River (a tributary of the Mississippi), Jacques Marquette founded a mission among the Illinois Indians.
The next year, caught by a winter storm, Jacques Marquette and two companions erected a rough log cabin near the shore of Lake Michigan. A monument erected by the Illinois Society Daughters of Colonial Wars is inscribed: On DECEMBER 4, 1674, Père Jacques Marquette, S.J., and two voyageurs built a shelter near the mouth of the Chicago River. They were the first Europeans to camp here, the site of Chicago.”
In 1675, just prior to his death, Père Jacques Marquette preached to several thousand Indians, as written in an account by Father Claude Dablon of the Society of Jesus, 1678: “Five hundred chiefs and old men, seated in a circle around the father, while the youth stood without to the number of fifteen hundred, not counting women and children who are very numerous, the town being composed of five or six hundred fires.
And especially he preached to them Christ crucified, for it was the very eve of the great day on which he died on the cross for them, as well as for the rest of men.”
Father Dablon continued the account of Marquette with the Illinois tribe:
“Three days after, on Easter Sunday he celebrated the holy mysteries the first ever offered there to God in the name of Jesus Christ. He was listened to with universal joy and approbation by all this people, who earnestly besought him to return as soon as possible among them.
He set out amid such marks of friendship from these good people that they escorted him with pomp more than thirty leagues of the way, contending with one another for the honor of carrying his little baggage. After the Illinois had taken leave of the father, filled with a great idea of the Gospel, he continued his voyage.”
On May 18, 1675, being weakened by dysentery, Père Jacques Marquette died at the age of 37.
In 1895, the State of Wisconsin placed a statue of Père Jacques Marquette in the U.S. Capitol Statuary Hall.
Marquette explained what motivated him: “The salvation of souls was at stake, for which I would be delighted to give my life.”
(So now you have seen how the upper half of the Great Mississippi River was first explored. And it was done by a dedicated Frenchman whose sole motivation was to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Native Indians in his long black robe.)
Ron
In 1895, the State of Wisconsin placed a statue of Père Jacques Marquette in the U.S. Capitol Statuary Hall.
Marquette explained what motivated him:
“The salvation of souls was at stake, for which I would be delighted to give my life.”
Marquette had founded Sault Ste. Marie, the first European settlement in Michigan, and the town of St. Ignace.
Named after Marquette are:
• rivers in Wisconsin and Quebec, • mountain in Michigan,They afterward invited us to enter their village, where all the people impatiently awaited us.”
On their return trip up the Illinois River, Jacques Marquette founded a mission among the Illinois Indians.
The next year, caught by a winter storm, Jacques Marquette and two companions erected a rough log cabin near the shore of Lake Michigan.
A monument erected by the Illinois Society Daughters of Colonial Wars is inscribed:
“On DECEMBER 4, 1674, Père Jacques Marquette, S.J., and two voyageurs built a shelter near the mouth of the Chicago River. They were the first Europeans to camp here, the site of Chicago.”
In 1675, just prior to his death, Père Jacques Marquette preached to several thousand Indians, as written in an account by Father Claude Dablon of the Society of Jesus, 1678:
“Five hundred chiefs and old men, seated in a circle around the father, while the youth stood without to the number of fifteen hundred, not counting women and children who are very numerous, the town being composed of five or six hundred fires. The father explained to them the principal mysteries of our religion, and the end for which he had come to their country; and especially he preached to them Christ crucified, for it was the very eve of the great day on which he died on the cross for them, as well as for the rest of men.”
Father Dablon continued the account of Marquette with the Illinois tribe:
“Three days after, on Easter Sunday … he celebrated the holy mysteries … the first ever offered there to God … in the name of Jesus Christ …
He was listened to with universal joy and approbation by all this people, who earnestly besought him to return as soon as possible among them …
He set out amid such marks of friendship from these good people that they escorted him with pomp more than thirty leagues of the way, contending with one another for the honor of carrying his little baggage …
After the Illinois had taken leave of the father, filled with a great idea of the Gospel, he continued his voyage.”
On May 18, 1675, being weakened by dysentery, Père Jacques Marquette died at the age of 37.
Marquette had founded Sault Ste. Marie, the first European settlement in Michigan, and the town of St. Ignace.
True Texan Tales 