The Bible says: 2 Timothy 4:18

“The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed, and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom: to Him be the glory forever”

The apostle Paul approached the end of his life in a prison cell. He could have felt sorry for himself. But instead, he encouraged his friends to trust in God, even when his own circumstances looked very dismal. How was he able to do this?

Peace is the last emotion in the world Paul should have been feeling, but the apostle was unshakably secure in his faith because of his profoundly intimate relationship with the Lord. Despite Paul’s sufferings, the one foundational truth he knew was that God’s supernatural power, wisdom, and peace—though impossible to comprehend rationally—were able to see him through the trials of life.

The same is true for you. God is with you—He is operating in you and in your situation in a manner far beyond your ability to understand. And the promise of His sovereign care—regardless of your circumstances—is all you really need to make it through whatever you’re facing. So trust Him to sustain you as He did Paul.

(The word “Duty” was unusually important in the early history of America. Its significance was repeated over and over in our country’s early days. Below is a brief history of that word in our country’s founding. Do understand it.)

The concept of patriotic “DUTY” was a well understood term by America’s founders.

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defined “DUTY” as: “That which a person owes to another; that which a person is bound, by any natural, moral or legal obligation, to pay, do or perform.”

General Washington composed a “Circular to the States,” January 31, 1782: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; yet, without presumptuously waiting for miracles to be wrought in our favor, IT IS OUR INDISPENSABLE DUTY, with the deepest gratitude to Heaven for the past, and humble confidence in its smiles on our future operations, to make use of all the means in our power for our defense and security.”

Washington directed from Newburg, New York, March 22, 1783: In justice to the zeal and ability of the Chaplains, as well as to his own feelings, the Commander-in-Chief thinks it is a DUTY to declare that the regularity with which Divine Service is performed every Sunday, will reflect great credit on the army in general, tend to improve the morals.”

General George Washington wrote to Congress from Annapolis, Maryland, December 23, 1783: I consider it an INDISPENSABLE DUTY to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interest of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them, to His Holy keeping.”

As President, George Washington issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, January 1, 1795: “It is in an especial manner OUR DUTY AS A PEOPLE, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experience.”

Washington issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving, October 3, 1789: “It is the DUTY OF ALL NATIONS to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

With the assistance of James Madison, the wording of Article 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was ratified June 12, 1776: Article XVI. That Religion, or THE DUTY WHICH WE OWE OUR CREATOR, and the Manner of discharging it, can be directed only by Reason and Convictions, not by Force or Violence; and therefore all Men are equally entitled to the free exercise of Religion, according to the Dictates of Conscience; and that IT IS THE MUTUAL DUTY of all to practice Christian Forbearance, Love, and Charity towards each other.”

Celebrating the victory of Fort Ticonderoga, Harvard President Samuel Langdon addressed the Massachusetts Provincial Congress with the message “Government Corrupted by Vice,” May 31, 1775: “Thanks be to God, that He has given us, as men, natural rights. If servants of the public forget their DUTY, betray their trust and sell their country, or make war against the most valuable rights and privileges of the people, THEY SHOULD BE DISCARDED, and others appointed in their room.”

A classic example of DUTY was British Admiral Horatio Nelson. He lost his right eye capturing Corsica in 1794, and his right arm attacking the Canary Islands in 1797.

He captured six and destroyed seven of Napoleon’s ships at the Battle of the Nile, trapping Napoleon in Muslim Egypt.

He assaulted then Copenhagen.

Horatio Nelson is best remembered for winning one of the greatest naval battles in history, the Battle of Trafalgar, OCTOBER 21, 1805: The daring 47-year-old Nelson defeated 36-year-old Napoleon’s combined French and Spanish fleets, consisting of 33 ships with 2,640 guns off the coast of Spain. One reason for the victory was the speed of the British ships, aided by their hulls being caulked with tar from Pitch Lake on the Island of Trinidad. The world’s largest natural asphalt lake, it was first discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595 in his search for El Dorado-the City of Gold.

Napoleon financed his military campaigns, in part, by selling 828,000 square miles, the Louisiana Territory, to the United States in 1803 for fifteen million dollars.

Napoleon’s ships intended to pick up 90,000 French troops waiting on the coast of France. From there they were planning to cross the English Channel and invade Britain. Napoleon’s ships were defeated by Admiral Nelson, ending Napoleon’s dreams of world conquest and leaving Britain with the undisputed most powerful navy in the world.

During the Battle of Trafalgar, ships were ripped apart by cannonade and musket shot at point blank range. Over ten thousand were killed or wounded. Admiral Nelson was fatally shot in the spine. He was carried below deck to the ship’s surgeon. Nelson’s last words were: “Thank God I have done my duty.”

Daniel Webster explained how Americans duty to defend liberty cannot be stopped if we have courage. He remarked at the Bicentennial Celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, December 22, 1820: “This love of religious liberty made up of the clearest sense of right and the highest conviction of DUTY, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with means apparently most inadequate, to shake principalities and powers.”

Charles Finney wrote in Lecture XV “Hindrances to Revival” (Revival Lectures, 1855): “Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their DUTY to the country as a part of their DUTY to God. It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation were becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics. But I tell you, He does see it, and He will bless or curse this nation, according to the course they take.”

He After 28 years of fighting slavery entrenched in the Democrat South, Congressman and former President John Quincy Adams was asked if he ever got discouraged. He responded:

“DUTY is ours; results are God’s.”

A young abolitionist Congressman from Illinois who was influenced by John Quincy Adams, and who was a pall-bearer at his funeral, was Abraham Lincoln. As the first Republican President, Lincoln challenged February 27, 1860:

“Neither let us be slandered from our DUTY by false accusations against us. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our DUTY.”

Ron

(The Muslims in the early days were about to invade Europe and conquer it. Had they succeeded the history of the world would have been changed forever. The outcome depended on one important, momentous battle. Do read my account of it and its outcome below. You need to know about the outcome of the Battle of Lepanto.)

News arrived in Europe that in 1570, Ottoman Turks under the command of Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha, captured Nicosia, Cyprus, after a 50-day siege. 20,000 captured Nicosians were executed. Women and boys were sold as slaves. The Cathedral of St. Sophia was turned into the Selimiye Mosque.

In 1571, Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha surrounded the Christians in Famagusta, Cyprus, the last stronghold of Western Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean. He promised the defenders of Cyprus that if they surrendered, they would be allowed to leave. Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha broke his promise. He flayed alive Venetian commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, and ordered the execution of all 6,000 Christian prisoners. The beautiful St. Nicholas Church was turned into the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque. The Church of Saints Peter and Paul was converted into the Sinan Pasha Mosque.

After this, the Sultan planned on attacking Rome, and from there conquer the rest of western Europe.

The Sultan’s threat was taken seriously, as centuries earlier, in 846 AD, Rome was attacked by 11,000 Muslim pirates. They sacked the city, looted the old St. Peter’s basilica, and the church St. Paul Outside the Wall, and desecrated the graves of both St. Peter and St. Paul. In response, Pope Leo the Fourth built a 39 foot high wall around the Vatican.

In 1571, with the Sultan again threatening Rome, Pope Pius the Fifth used all his influence to get the Christian states of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Venice, Genoa, Sardinia, Savoy, Urbino, Papal States, Germans, and Croatians to assemble into the Holy League. The Holy League insisted that their fleet be led by the 24-year-old son of King Charles the Fifth of Spain, Don John of Austria. Many of us believe that God, himself sent this courageous young Christian warrior to lead these Christian forces.

Spain used gold from the New World to fit out its navy to keep the Muslim Ottomans from taking over the Mediterranean.

On October 7, 1571, the largest and most decisive sea battle on the Mediterranean and probably the whole world took place — the Battle of Lepanto off the western coast of Greece. 

The courageous Christian warrior Don John of Austria led the 212 ships with nearly 68,000 soldiers and sailors of the Holy League. A danger for the Christian soldiers fighting at sea, was that if they fell overboard, their armor would cause them to immediately sink.

Ali Pasha led the Muslim Ottoman Turks, consisting of 82,000 soldiers and sailors on 251 ships powered by thousands of Christian galley slaves rowing under the decks. This was the last major battle with rowing vessels.It took place before they had cannons abord ships, since gun powder had not been acquired from China, yet.

As the sun rose on the day of battle, the Holy League found itself at a great disadvantage, having to row against a strong wind. Don John led his men on deck in a desperate prayer, then suddenly the wind changed 180 degrees to favor the Holy League. Please know that it was no accident.

The Holy League’s ships collided into Ali Pasha’s ships. Without gun powder, they had to fight with swords and battle axes. Fierce fighting went on for hours, desperate fighting. The outcome varied back and forth. In retrospect we now know that if the Muslim forces had won, we would most probably be speaking Arabic today and worshiping Allah, for real.

Outnumbered in both numbers of ships and troops, things were not going well for the Christians. Suddenly, in an act of amazing bravery, Don John sailed his flagship Real crashing into Ali Pasha’s ship.

Suddenly the 12,000 Christian galley slaves poured out from their captive rowing stations under the decks. Now, newly free, they fought ferociously. They first killed the Muslim slave masters who had been whipping them unmercifully to row faster.

Ali Pasha was soon killed, his vessel’s crescent flag was lowered and his head was hung high in its place. This caused the Ottoman warriors to lose heart. The Ottomans lost 200 of their 230 ships.

Had the Ottomans not been defeated, they would have invaded Italy and conquered Europe.

Telling the story of the freeing of the Christian galley slaves, the famous G.K. Chesterton wrote in his epic poem, “Lepanto”: “Above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, Christian captives sick and sunless, all a laboring race repines, Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung. The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on, Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon, And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell, Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign. But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line! Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop (the rear stern deck), Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop, Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds, Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea, White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty. Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria! Don John of Austria has set his people free!”

Hilaire Belloc described the significance of the battle in The Great Heresies, 1938: “This violent Mohammedan pressure on Christendom from the East made a bid for success by sea as well as by land. The last great Turkish organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople, proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean.”

Belloc continued: “There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme would succeed. A huge Mohammedan armada fought at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth against the Christian fleet at Lepanto. The Christians won that naval action and the Western Mediterranean was saved. But it was a very close thing, and the name of Lepanto should remain in the minds of all men with a sense of history as one of the half dozen great names in the history of the Christian world.”

One of the Spanish sailors in the Battle of Lepanto was Miguel de Cervantes. He was later captured and made a slave in Algiers, North Africa. After 5 years, he was ransomed by the Trinitarian Order, returned to Madrid, Spain, and there he wrote Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha, 1605, considered Europe’s first modern novel. 

In an autobiographical passage, Cervantes wrote:  “They put a chain on me with several others marked out as held to ransom. We suffered from hunger and scanty clothing seeing at every turn the unexampled and unheard–of cruelties my master inflicted upon the Christians.  Every day he hanged a man, impaled one, cut off the ears of another, all with so little provocation. Turks acknowledged he did it merely for the sake of doing it, because he was by nature murderously disposed towards the whole human race.” 

U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts wrote in White Slavery in the Barbary States, 1853: “Algiers, for a long time was the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery, the wall of the barbarian world. And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote gives the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from Algiers.

The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience; for during five and a half years he endured the horrors of Algerine slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of about six hundred dollars.”

Thus, you now know the result of the Amazing Battle of lepanto. And as a result, we are still speaking English and worshiping the Real God, Jehovah.

Ron

—

The Bible says: Colossians 3:17

“Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

When apathy takes over, it can be difficult to get motivated. You have so much to do, but you just don’t feel like proceeding. Why have despair and boredom taken such a profound hold of you?

Many answers are possible. Perhaps you’re facing overwhelming pressures and you just want to give up. Maye you’re not where the Lord wants you. It could even be that you’re angry at yourself for where you are in life. But realize, you don’t have to allow discouragement to rule you. Instead, you can renew your passion by doing whatever is before you to God’s glory.

It is quite impossible to be where the Father wants you—doing your best and giving thanks from a grateful heart—and still be bored. So when you’re disheartened, remember reaching God’s potential for you is more about who you are than what you’re doing—it’s more about glorying Him than past mistakes or pressures.

Therefore, close your eyes, focus on Him, and thank Him for everything you can think of. He will certainly inspire you.

(Do read this true story below as related by the intended victim. It is preceded by a history of whaling which is how this man who was almost eaten got to these savage islands and was captured.)

“There she blows!” cried the lookout, sighting the great white whale, Moby Dick.

The classic book, Moby Dick, was written by New England author Herman Melville, published in 1851. In the novel, Captain Ahab, driven by revenge, sailed the seas to capture this great white whale who had bitten off his leg in a previous encounter.

In the 1956 film Moby Dick, actor Gregory Peck played Captain Ahab. Ahab finally caught up with Moby Dick in the Pacific Ocean. As fate would have it, when the harpoon struck Moby Dick, the rope flew out so fast it snagged Ahab, pulling him out of the boat. Entangled in the harpoon ropes on the side of the great whale, the revenge-filled Captain Ahab was pulled underwater several times till finally to his death.

The angered Moby Dick then sinks the Pequod. The only survivor was Ismael, who spoke a line from the Book of Job, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

Melville drew inspiration for his novel from the real life fate of a whaling ship from Nantuket, the Essex. In 1820, under the command of Captain George Pollard, Jr., the Essex chased an enormous sperm whale thousands of miles west of South America. The whale destroyed the ship, and killed most of the sailors. The remaining sailors, enduring gruesome starvation, attempted to sail their whaleboat thousands of miles to land. Only eight survived.

The story of the Essex was written down by its first mate, Owen Chase, and the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson. Nathaniel Philbrick retold the account in his award-winning book, In the Heart of the Sea (Viking Press, 2000), which was turned into a movie in 2015, directed by Ron Howard.

Whales were hunted primarily for their blubber, which was boiled down into whale oil. This was the main source of oil throughout the early 1800s. Whales were being hunted to the verge of extinction.

Fortunately for the whales, in 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled “The Drake Oil Well” on his Pennsylvania farm. Soon the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma developed which extracted oil from the earth, thus “saving the whale” from begin hunted to extinction.

Decades later, Winston Churchill switched the British Navy from burning coal to oil. Britain had limited sources of oil, such as one small oil field located in the Sherwood Forest of Nottinghamshire, and another in the British Crown Colony of Trinidad. Oil  was discovered in the Middle East, and in 1908, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was formed, which later changed its name to British Petroleum (BP).

One of the fears of sailing distant seas was being shipwrecked on an island where there was cannibalism. This was first recorded on Columbus’ second voyage, and resulted in the naming of the “Caribbean Sea.” “Caribe is the Spanish word for “piranha,” a razor-toothed carnivorous fish of South America. It was also the name given to a ferocious tribe that migrated from South America, which depopulated one island after another, cannibalizing the peaceful native inhabitants.

Cannibalism occurred mostly in the Pacific Islands. British Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii in 1778. Soon after, whaling and navy ships stopped there. Some of their muskets and small swivel cannons were stolen or were bartered to natives.

With the help of these, King Kamehameha won his battles to conquer and unite all of the Hawaiian Islands. His wife, Queen Ka’ahumanu, ended human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. She changed the kapu-taboo religion and replaced it with Christianity brought to Hawaii by American missionaries.

The story of how missionaries arrived in Hawaii begins in 1807, when the American whaling ship Triumph left Hawaii for New England. Two Hawaiian boys had stowed away aboard the ship, Henry Opukahai’a and Thomas Hopu. Through their movement to New England, they heard the Gospel and converted to Christianity. Their stories inspired Hiram and Sybil Bingham to begin a missionary movement to the Pacific islands in 1820.

In 1822, African-American Betsey Stockton went to Hawaii on the second ship of Christian missionaries, being the first single female missionary sent out from America. Betsey was the teacher at the very first mission school in Hawaii for common people.

In 1840, the whaling ship Acushnet left New England. On board with the crew was the young Herman Melville on his first whaling voyage. Herman Melville, born August 1, 1819, was the grandson of a Boston Tea Party “Indian.” At the age of 12, his father died. His mother raised him, inspiring his imagination with biblical stories.

The Acushnet, after a year and a half at sea, visited the Marquesas Islands in the Southern Pacific. The Marquesas Islands are considered by some as the remotest place in the world. They were first visited by American Maritime Fur Trader Joseph Ingraham in 1791, who named them Washington Islands.

At the Marquesas Islands, Herman Melville and his friend, Toby, jumped ship from the Acushnet, and deserted. They climbed up high into the island mountains to avoid being arrested and carried back to the ship. His friend, Toby, injured his leg in a fall. They unfortunately fell among the cannibals there, where Melville and his friend were given sumptuous food and were befriended by a beautiful tribal maiden. Tribesmen adamantly forbade them from trying to leave the village. They had “other plans” for them.

(Yes, that is the Herman Melville that later wrote Moby Dick.)

Just before a big native feast, Melville’s friend, Toby, suspiciously disappeared. Melville was not allowed to be at the feast. Afterwards, when Melville inquired about his friend’s whereabouts, the tribesmen quickly changed the subject, leading Melville to suspect he was eaten.

When a small boat piloted by a passing native providentially came close to shore, Melville fought his way into the water and climbed into it, barely escaping with his life. He wrote of the experience in his first book, Typee (1846), concluding: These disclosures will lead to ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands.”

When Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led mutiny on the HMS Bounty, April 28, 1789, Captain William Bligh sailed for two months in a small life boat 3,500 miles from Tahiti past the Fiji Islands to Kupang, Indonesia, writing in his journal that they dared not to stop at any land along the way out of fear of being eaten by cannibals.

In 1853, a native Hawaiian, Samuel Kauwealoha, sailed as a Christian missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands where he planted churches and started schools.

Another missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands was James Kekela. In 1864, James Kekela rescued an American seaman from death at the hands of hungry cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. In gratitude, Abraham Lincoln sent James Kekela an inscribed gold watch.

Robert Louis Stevenson related the story in his book, In The South Seas when he visited the Marquesas Islands in 1888-89: “During my stay at Tai-o-hae a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu. On board of these was Samuel Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in Hawaii. He entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, James Kekela, a missionary in the great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa.

It appears that shortly after, a kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver arrived. The boats of an American whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Jonathan Whalon, in the hands of the natives.

The captive, with his arms bound behind his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to James Kekela.”

Robert Louis Stevenson continued relating the story of Mr. Whalon’s rescue from the cannibals: “In return for his act of gallant charity, James Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum of money, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch.

From his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue by James Kekela, I give the following extract. I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion:

‘When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these benighted people. I gave my boat for the stranger’s life. It became the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages who knew not Jehovah.”

The New York Times published the article “Lincoln and the ‘Cannibals'” by Jeffrey Allen Smith, Feb. 25, 2014: “The American whaling ship Congress from New Bedford, Mass dropped anchor. Sailors lowered two longboats loaded with trade goods, and a small detachment of men led by the first officer, Jonathan Whalon, rowed toward the beach in Puamau Bay.

Foolishly, Whalon went ashore alone with the Marquesans. Once well inside the tree line, the Paumau men seized Whalon, stripped him of his clothes and bound him. Tribal members reportedly pinched him, tweaked his nose, bent his fingers back over his hands, menacingly swung hatchets at him and eventually began building a fire with which to cook him. A Hawaiian missionary improbably named Alexander Kaukau (Kaukau is Hawaiian pidgin for “food” or “to eat”) and Bartholomen Negal, a local German carpenter, tried and failed to dissuade Mato, the Paumau chief, from killing Whalon.

Fate interceded with the arrival of another Hawaiian missionary, James Kekela, the first Hawaiian ordained as a Christian missionary and Kaukau’s senior. He had fortuitously just returned from a neighboring island to reports of a ‘white man is about to be roasted.'”

The New York Times article continued: Kekela donned his black preacher’s jacket and, with only his Bible in hand, set off for Mato’s village. The negotiations were tense, and at one point Kekela declared he would trade ‘anything and everything he possessed’ for the sailor’s release. Ultimately Kekela purchased Whalon’s freedom with much less: his black preacher’s jacket and his prized whaleboat.

Kekela returned Whalon to the waiting Congress, which sailed to Honolulu, where tales of ‘cannibals’ capturing an American sailor and Kekela’s heroics prompted the American minister to Hawaii, James McBride, to write a note to Secretary of State William H. Seward. McBride’s letter, dated Feb. 26, 1864, detailed the harrowing events in the Marquesas and requested that Seward ‘show to the world we have tender regard for each one of our number, and that we highly, very highly, appreciate such favors.’

Taking almost a month to make its way across the Pacific, the letter arrived on Seward’s desk by April 18, 1864. Three days later Seward replied that he had submitted McBride’s account of the rescue to Lincoln and that the President had ‘instructions’ for the diplomat. McBride was directed to ‘draw on this department for five hundred dollars in gold’ to purchase presents for Whalon’s rescuers.

On Feb. 14, 1865, McBride sent gifts to the Hawaiian missionary Kaukau, the German carpenter Negal and even the young Marquesan girl who warned the sailors in the two long boats. He gave Kekela two new suits and a gold Cartier pocket watch with the inscription, ‘From the President of the United States to Rev. J. Kekela For His Noble Conduct in Rescuing An American Citizen from Death on the Island of Hiva Oa, January 14, 1864’.

Kekela wrote a seven-page letter of thanks in Hawaiian, retelling of how he saved ‘a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten’. The heartfelt prose in Kekela’s letter to Lincoln moved many, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote in his book In the South Seas: ‘I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion.'”

Robert Louis Stevenson recorded the words of James Kekela: “(The Gospel) was planted in Hawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is love.”

James Kekela concluded: Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come. How shall I repay your great kindness to me? Thus David asked of Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States. This is my only payment—that which I have received of the Lord, love-(aloha).'”

Ron(Do read this true story below as related by the intended victim. It is preceded by a history of whaling which is how this man who was almost eaten got to these savage islands and was captured.)

“There she blows!” cried the lookout, sighting the great white whale, Moby Dick.

The classic book, Moby Dick, was written by New England author Herman Melville, published in 1851. In the novel, Captain Ahab, driven by revenge, sailed the seas to capture this great white whale who had bitten off his leg in a previous encounter.

In the 1956 film Moby Dick, actor Gregory Peck played Captain Ahab. Ahab finally caught up with Moby Dick in the Pacific Ocean. As fate would have it, when the harpoon struck Moby Dick, the rope flew out so fast it snagged Ahab, pulling him out of the boat. Entangled in the harpoon ropes on the side of the great whale, the revenge-filled Captain Ahab was pulled underwater several times till finally to his death.

The angered Moby Dick then sinks the Pequod. The only survivor was Ismael, who spoke a line from the Book of Job, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

Melville drew inspiration for his novel from the real life fate of a whaling ship from Nantuket, the Essex. In 1820, under the command of Captain George Pollard, Jr., the Essex chased an enormous sperm whale thousands of miles west of South America. The whale destroyed the ship, and killed most of the sailors. The remaining sailors, enduring gruesome starvation, attempted to sail their whaleboat thousands of miles to land. Only eight survived.

The story of the Essex was written down by its first mate, Owen Chase, and the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson. Nathaniel Philbrick retold the account in his award-winning book, In the Heart of the Sea (Viking Press, 2000), which was turned into a movie in 2015, directed by Ron Howard.

Whales were hunted primarily for their blubber, which was boiled down into whale oil. This was the main source of oil throughout the early 1800s. Whales were being hunted to the verge of extinction.

Fortunately for the whales, in 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled “The Drake Oil Well” on his Pennsylvania farm. Soon the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma developed which extracted oil from the earth, thus “saving the whale” from begin hunted to extinction.

Decades later, Winston Churchill switched the British Navy from burning coal to oil. Britain had limited sources of oil, such as one small oil field located in the Sherwood Forest of Nottinghamshire, and another in the British Crown Colony of Trinidad. Oil  was discovered in the Middle East, and in 1908, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was formed, which later changed its name to British Petroleum (BP).

One of the fears of sailing distant seas was being shipwrecked on an island where there was cannibalism. This was first recorded on Columbus’ second voyage, and resulted in the naming of the “Caribbean Sea.” “Caribe is the Spanish word for “piranha,” a razor-toothed carnivorous fish of South America. It was also the name given to a ferocious tribe that migrated from South America, which depopulated one island after another, cannibalizing the peaceful native inhabitants.

Cannibalism occurred mostly in the Pacific Islands. British Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii in 1778. Soon after, whaling and navy ships stopped there. Some of their muskets and small swivel cannons were stolen or were bartered to natives.

With the help of these, King Kamehameha won his battles to conquer and unite all of the Hawaiian Islands. His wife, Queen Ka’ahumanu, ended human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. She changed the kapu-taboo religion and replaced it with Christianity brought to Hawaii by American missionaries.

The story of how missionaries arrived in Hawaii begins in 1807, when the American whaling ship Triumph left Hawaii for New England. Two Hawaiian boys had stowed away aboard the ship, Henry Opukahai’a and Thomas Hopu. Through their movement to New England, they heard the Gospel and converted to Christianity. Their stories inspired Hiram and Sybil Bingham to begin a missionary movement to the Pacific islands in 1820.

In 1822, African-American Betsey Stockton went to Hawaii on the second ship of Christian missionaries, being the first single female missionary sent out from America. Betsey was the teacher at the very first mission school in Hawaii for common people.

In 1840, the whaling ship Acushnet left New England. On board with the crew was the young Herman Melville on his first whaling voyage. Herman Melville, born August 1, 1819, was the grandson of a Boston Tea Party “Indian.” At the age of 12, his father died. His mother raised him, inspiring his imagination with biblical stories.

The Acushnet, after a year and a half at sea, visited the Marquesas Islands in the Southern Pacific. The Marquesas Islands are considered by some as the remotest place in the world. They were first visited by American Maritime Fur Trader Joseph Ingraham in 1791, who named them Washington Islands.

At the Marquesas Islands, Herman Melville and his friend, Toby, jumped ship from the Acushnet, and deserted. They climbed up high into the island mountains to avoid being arrested and carried back to the ship. His friend, Toby, injured his leg in a fall. They unfortunately fell among the cannibals there, where Melville and his friend were given sumptuous food and were befriended by a beautiful tribal maiden. Tribesmen adamantly forbade them from trying to leave the village. They had “other plans” for them.

(Yes, that is the Herman Melville that later wrote Moby Dick.)

Just before a big native feast, Melville’s friend, Toby, suspiciously disappeared. Melville was not allowed to be at the feast. Afterwards, when Melville inquired about his friend’s whereabouts, the tribesmen quickly changed the subject, leading Melville to suspect he was eaten.

When a small boat piloted by a passing native providentially came close to shore, Melville fought his way into the water and climbed into it, barely escaping with his life. He wrote of the experience in his first book, Typee (1846), concluding: These disclosures will lead to ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands.”

When Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led mutiny on the HMS Bounty, April 28, 1789, Captain William Bligh sailed for two months in a small life boat 3,500 miles from Tahiti past the Fiji Islands to Kupang, Indonesia, writing in his journal that they dared not to stop at any land along the way out of fear of being eaten by cannibals.

In 1853, a native Hawaiian, Samuel Kauwealoha, sailed as a Christian missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands where he planted churches and started schools.

Another missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands was James Kekela. In 1864, James Kekela rescued an American seaman from death at the hands of hungry cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. In gratitude, Abraham Lincoln sent James Kekela an inscribed gold watch.

Robert Louis Stevenson related the story in his book, In The South Seas when he visited the Marquesas Islands in 1888-89: “During my stay at Tai-o-hae a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu. On board of these was Samuel Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in Hawaii. He entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, James Kekela, a missionary in the great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa.

It appears that shortly after, a kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver arrived. The boats of an American whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Jonathan Whalon, in the hands of the natives.

The captive, with his arms bound behind his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to James Kekela.”

Robert Louis Stevenson continued relating the story of Mr. Whalon’s rescue from the cannibals: “In return for his act of gallant charity, James Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum of money, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch.

From his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue by James Kekela, I give the following extract. I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion:

‘When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these benighted people. I gave my boat for the stranger’s life. It became the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages who knew not Jehovah.”

The New York Times published the article “Lincoln and the ‘Cannibals'” by Jeffrey Allen Smith, Feb. 25, 2014: “The American whaling ship Congress from New Bedford, Mass dropped anchor. Sailors lowered two longboats loaded with trade goods, and a small detachment of men led by the first officer, Jonathan Whalon, rowed toward the beach in Puamau Bay.

Foolishly, Whalon went ashore alone with the Marquesans. Once well inside the tree line, the Paumau men seized Whalon, stripped him of his clothes and bound him. Tribal members reportedly pinched him, tweaked his nose, bent his fingers back over his hands, menacingly swung hatchets at him and eventually began building a fire with which to cook him. A Hawaiian missionary improbably named Alexander Kaukau (Kaukau is Hawaiian pidgin for “food” or “to eat”) and Bartholomen Negal, a local German carpenter, tried and failed to dissuade Mato, the Paumau chief, from killing Whalon.

Fate interceded with the arrival of another Hawaiian missionary, James Kekela, the first Hawaiian ordained as a Christian missionary and Kaukau’s senior. He had fortuitously just returned from a neighboring island to reports of a ‘white man is about to be roasted.'”

The New York Times article continued: Kekela donned his black preacher’s jacket and, with only his Bible in hand, set off for Mato’s village. The negotiations were tense, and at one point Kekela declared he would trade ‘anything and everything he possessed’ for the sailor’s release. Ultimately Kekela purchased Whalon’s freedom with much less: his black preacher’s jacket and his prized whaleboat.

Kekela returned Whalon to the waiting Congress, which sailed to Honolulu, where tales of ‘cannibals’ capturing an American sailor and Kekela’s heroics prompted the American minister to Hawaii, James McBride, to write a note to Secretary of State William H. Seward. McBride’s letter, dated Feb. 26, 1864, detailed the harrowing events in the Marquesas and requested that Seward ‘show to the world we have tender regard for each one of our number, and that we highly, very highly, appreciate such favors.’

Taking almost a month to make its way across the Pacific, the letter arrived on Seward’s desk by April 18, 1864. Three days later Seward replied that he had submitted McBride’s account of the rescue to Lincoln and that the President had ‘instructions’ for the diplomat. McBride was directed to ‘draw on this department for five hundred dollars in gold’ to purchase presents for Whalon’s rescuers.

On Feb. 14, 1865, McBride sent gifts to the Hawaiian missionary Kaukau, the German carpenter Negal and even the young Marquesan girl who warned the sailors in the two long boats. He gave Kekela two new suits and a gold Cartier pocket watch with the inscription, ‘From the President of the United States to Rev. J. Kekela For His Noble Conduct in Rescuing An American Citizen from Death on the Island of Hiva Oa, January 14, 1864’.

Kekela wrote a seven-page letter of thanks in Hawaiian, retelling of how he saved ‘a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten’. The heartfelt prose in Kekela’s letter to Lincoln moved many, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote in his book In the South Seas: ‘I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion.'”

Robert Louis Stevenson recorded the words of James Kekela: “(The Gospel) was planted in Hawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is love.”

James Kekela concluded: Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come. How shall I repay your great kindness to me? Thus David asked of Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States. This is my only payment—that which I have received of the Lord, love-(aloha).'”

Ron

(As far as we know Clara Barton personally experienced more deaths of people and also their miraculous recoveries than any person in human history. There is no telling how many hundreds and hundreds of young men and also women she held as they said their last words and breathed their last breath. Do read below the story of this amazing woman.)

When Clara Barton was ten-years-old, her older brother, David, fell off the roof of a barn during barn-raising in Massachusetts.

The doctors had given up hope on him, but Clara helped nurse him back to a full recovery.

He became a Captain and served as Assistant Quartermaster for the Union Army during the Civil War.

In 1839, at the age of 17, Clara Barton earned her teacher’s certificate.

She taught for 12 years in schools in Canada and West Georgia.

In 1852, Clara Barton moved to Bordertown, New Jersey, where she opened the first free school in the state. Under her leadership, it grew to over 600 students.

In 1855, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she was hired as the first woman clerk at the U.S. Patent Office. During Democrat President James Buchanan’s administration, Clara was fired because of her “Black Republicanism .” When Republican President Abraham Lincoln was elected, Clara Barton was rehired at the U.S. Patent Office as a copyist.

Soon after the Civil War began, there was a riot in Baltimore, Maryland, April 19, 1861, with the first blood of the war shed. Forty wounded Union soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Militia were brought by train to Washington, DC., then transported to a makeshift medical unit in the unfinished Capitol building.

Clara Barton volunteered to care for the wounded soldiers, recognizing many of them as they were from her home state, with some even having been her students. On her own, she worked with Ladies’ Aid societies to collect and distribute medical supplies for the care of wounded soldiers.

In 1862, she received permission to work with the Army on the front lines. Once, after attempting to carry a wounded soldier off the battlefield of Antietam, September 17, 1862, Clara Barton wrote: “A ball had passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through the sleeve and passing through his chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest. I have never mended that hole in my sleeve. I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat?”

Clara Barton was present at some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War: Battle of Manassas, Battle of Cedar Mountain, Second Battle of Bull Run, Battle of Antietam; and Battle of Fredericksburg.

The National Park Service recorded that Clara Barton first visited Chatham or “Lacy House” in early August 1862, bringing food and hospital supplies to help “her boys.” She returned during the Fredericksburg Campaign, December 1862. Clara Barton helped care for the wounded soldiers of both sides that were brought into the house.

A physician requested her help in the city, which required her to cross a pontoon bridge over the river. As she stepped off, an officer offered his hand. Suddenly a shell passed under their arms, tearing away part of her skirt and his coattail. The wounded officer later died.

Clara Barton set up a soup kitchen at the Lacy House, which became a makeshift hospital for the Union 2nd Corps. With doctors too busy to keep medical records, Clara wrote in her diary the names of the men who died and where they were buried. Her diary is at the Clara Barton National Historic Site in Maryland.

On December 13, 1862, the day of the heaviest fighting, Clara was in the doorway of the Lacy House when an exploding shell severed a soldier’s artery. She applied the tourniquet that saved his life. Crossing the river again, a Union provost marshall thought she was a civilian and volunteered to escort her to safety, but looking at the thousands of Union soldiers, she politely declined the offer saying she was the best protected woman in the world.

When a shell struck the door of the room she was in, “she did not flinch, but continued her duties” assisting the doctors. The next two weeks at Chatham, Clara saw “hundreds of the worst wounded men I have ever seen,” occupying every room of the house. They “covered every foot of the floors and porticos” and stair landings. A man “thought himself rich” if he laid under a table where he would not be stepped on. Clara saw five men stuffed onto four shelves of a cupboard. Others shivered in the cold muddy yard on blankets, waiting for someone inside to die so they could be brought in. Clara set up a soup kitchen in a tent in the yard to help them.

The Library of Congress has the letter Clara Barton wrote to her cousin from the Head Quarters of the 2nd Division, 9th Army Corps-Army of the Potomac Camp near Falmouth, Virginia, December 12th, 1862, 2 o’clock a.m.: “My dear Cousin Vira: Five minutes time with you; and God only knows what those five minutes might be worth to the many-doomed thousands sleeping around me. It is the night before a battle.

The enemy, Fredericksburg, and its mighty entrenchments lie before us, the river between — at tomorrow’s dawn our troops will assay to cross, and the guns of the enemy will sweep those frail bridges at every breath. The moon is shining through the soft haze with a brightness almost prophetic. For the last half hour I have stood alone in the awful stillness of its glimmering light gazing upon the strange sad scene around me striving to say, ‘Thy will Oh God be done.’ The camp fires blaze with unwanted brightness, the sentry’s tread is still but quick — the acres of little shelter tents are dark and still as death, no wonder for us as I gazed sorrowfully upon them. I thought I could almost hear the slow flap of the grim messenger’s wings, as one by one he sought and selected his victims for the morning sacrifice. Sleep weary one, sleep and rest for tomorrow’s toil. Oh! Sleep and visit in dreams once more the loved ones nestling at home.”

Clara continued: “They may yet live to dream of you, cold lifeless and bloody, but this dream, soldier, is thy last, paint it brightly, dream it well. Oh northern mothers, wives and sisters, all unconscious of the hour, would to Heaven that I could bear for you the concentrated woe which is so soon to follow, would that Christ would teach my soul a prayer that would plead to the Father for grace sufficient for you. God pity and strengthen you every one. Mine are not the only waking hours, the light yet burns brightly in our kind hearted General’s tent where he pens what may be a last farewell to his wife and children and thinks sadly of his fated men. Already the roll of the moving artillery is sounded in my ears. The battle draws near and I must catch one hour’s sleep for tomorrow’s labor. Good night, dear cousin, and Heaven grant you strength for your more peaceful and less terrible, but not less weary days than mine. Yours in love, Clara.”

Clara Barton’s patriotism came from her father, who served in the Army under General “Mad Anthony” Wayne. She wrote of helping soldiers: “What could I do but go with them, or work for them and my country? The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.”

Toward the end of the war, Clara noticed that thousands of letters were piling up for soldiers, with no one responding. She contacted President Lincoln’s office and was given permission to set up an office at 437 1/2 Seventh Street, in Northwest Washington, D.C., to search for missing soldiers.

During the Franco-German War, 1870-1871, Clara Barton went to Europe where she worked with Henri Dunant, founder of the International Red Cross. Dunant was the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association).

Inspired by Henri Dunant’s International Red Cross, Clara Barton established the American Red Cross Society, MAY 21, 1881, serving as its head until 1904.

Clara Barton stated: “An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness. I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them. I am well and strong and young — young enough to go to the front. If I cannot be a soldier, I’ll help soldiers.”

During the Spanish-American War, 1898, Clara Barton helped in hospitals in Cuba. She wrote: “In time of peace we must prepare for war, and it is no less a wise benevolence that makes preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure to accompany war.”

President William McKinley stated regarding Clara Barton in his Second Annual Message, December 5, 1898: “It is a pleasure for me to mention in terms of cordial appreciation the timely and useful work of the American National Red Cross, both in relief measures preparatory to the campaigns, in sanitary assistance at several of the camps of assemblage, and later, under the able and experienced leadership of the president of the society, Miss Clara Barton, on the fields of battle and in the hospitals at the front in Cuba. Working in conjunction with the governmental authorities and with the enthusiastic cooperation of many patriotic women and societies in the various States, the Red Cross has fully maintained its already high reputation for intense earnestness and ability to exercise the noble purposes of its international organization, thus justifying the confidence and support which it has received at the hands of the American people.”

President McKinley continued: “To the members and officers of this society and all who aided them in their philanthropic work the sincere and lasting gratitude of the soldiers and the public is due and is freely accorded. In tracing these events we are constantly reminded of our obligations to the Divine Master for His watchful care over us and His safe guidance, for which the nation makes reverent acknowledgment and offers humble prayer for the continuance of His favor.”

President Woodrow Wilson mentioned the Red Cross in his Proclamation of a Contribution Day for the aid of stricken Jewish people, January 11, 1916: “Whereas in the various countries now engaged in war there are nine millions of Jews, the great majority of whom are destitute of food, shelter, and clothing; and have been driven from their homes without warning, deprived of an opportunity to make provision for their most elementary wants, causing starvation, disease and untold suffering; and Whereas the people of the United States of America have learned with sorrow of this terrible plight of millions of human beings and have most generously responded to the cry for help. Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States … do appoint and proclaim January 27, 1916, as a day upon which the people of the United States may make such contributions as they feel disposed for the aid of the stricken Jewish people. Contributions may be addressed to the American Red Cross, Washington, D.C., which will care for their proper distribution.”

Opening the Second Red Cross Drive in New York City, President Woodrow Wilson stated, May 18, 1918: “Being members of the American Red Cross a great fraternity and fellowship which extends all over the world this cross which these ladies bore here today is an emblem of Christianity itself. When you think of this, you realize how the people of the United States are being drawn together into a great intimate family whose heart is being used for the service of the soldiers not only, but for the long night of suffering and terror, in order that they and men everywhere may see the dawn of a day of righteousness and justice and peace.”

On December 8, 1918, in an appeal of support for the American Red Cross just a month after the fighting in World War I had ceased, President Woodrow Wilson stated: One year ago, twenty-two million Americans, by enrolling as members of the Red Cross at Christmas time, sent to the men who were fighting our battles overseas a stimulating message of cheer and good-will. Now, by God’s grace, the Red Cross Christmas message of 1918 is to be a message of peace as well as a message of good-will.”

Her very last disaster mission brought her to the Texas coast.

In September 1900, Galveston faced one of the city’s worst hurricanes. Destruction and casualties abounded. Although Clara was in her 80s, she just had to be there. Clara Barton arrived on site and worked as a member of the Central Relief Committee, the team tasked with leading the recovery mission. They say that with all her experience with disasters, she was of enormous help.

Clara worked to distribute supplies for the recovery efforts. This included boots on the ground, and $120,000 in financial assistance. During her time in Galveston she also helped to acquire supplies to rebuild homes and established an orphanage for victims of the hurricane.

When asked about being in Galveston to help in her 80s, Clara iterated her favorite saying……….”You must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it” and “I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it”.

On May 1, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt greeted the chairman of the American National Red Cross, Norman H. Davis, in Washington, D.C.: “The great International Red Cross organization, founded 76 years ago by the amazing Clara Barton to bring mercy to the battlefield. I am confident that whatever may be the problems which intensification of warfare may bring, the American people will respond to any appeal for funds when the Red Cross deems it necessary to call upon them for additional aid.

By such response we can aid in sustaining the spirit and morale of those in distress abroad until the happy day we all pray for, when hostilities shall cease.”

Ron

The Bible says: James 4:12 NLT

“You don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.”

Have you talked to the Father about the desire burning in your heart? You don’t have to be embarrassed or think what you yearn for is too insignificant for His notice. God cares about you, and He’s interested in what concerns you. But you’ll miss His blessings if you refuse to open your heart to Him fully.

So talk to God as a friend—share your inmost hopes and desires with him. The more specific you are about your goals and longings, the better you can see Him working in your situation.

The Father may say yes to your request immediately or He may instruct you to wait for His perfect timing. He may also show what you’re asking for doesn’t fit His plan for your life and that He has something much better for you.

Although God may not always answer in the way you think He will, the most important thing for you to understand is that He is willing and waiting to respond. So talk to your heavenly Father and be assured—He loves you and He’s listening.

Carl Sandburg was one of America’s most popular, “down to earth” literary authorities and poets of modern times. He deeply loved God and America. However, he was greatly concered about what the young people of America were being taught. I have recorded here what others thought on the same subject. Also, here I have recorded some of his most popular sayings and writings for you to review, appreciate, and enjoy.                                                    Ron

In an interview with Frederick Van Ryn of This Week Magazine (January 4, 1953, p. 11.) The great poet, Carl Sanburg stated: “I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.”

Carl Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, to Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad.

After 8th grade, Carl Sandburg left school, borrowed his father’s railroad pass, and traveled the country as a hobo.

Carl Sandburg volunteered for military service, was sent to Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and then attended college on a veteran’s bill.

Carl Sandburg wrote children’s fairytales, called Rootabaga Stories, and mused of his wanderings in American Songbag.

Once he was hosted for a gathering of poets by Katherine Lee Bates, daughter of a Congregational minister, who wrote the lyrics of America the Beautiful.

Carl Sandburg wrote in Remembrance Rock (1948, ch. 2, p. 7): “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

He continued his pro-life remarks: “A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo and plants, don’t compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable.

A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn’t know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.”

Carl Sandburgi, in 1926, wrote Abraham Lincoln-The Prairie Years, and in 1939 he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The War Years, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1959, Sandburg was invited to address Congress on Lincoln’s birthday.

On October 25, 1961, Sandburg was invited to the White House by John F. Kennedy.

In his Complete Poems, for which he won a Pulitzer, 1951, Carl Sandburg wrote: “All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel. It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine. I might paraphrase: ‘If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.'”

In his poem Prayers of Steel, Carl Sandburg wrote: “Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations. Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike. Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together. Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders. Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

Sandburg wrote: “God, The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so for the break of the game and the first play and the last. Our prayer of thanks.”

Sandburg wrote in “Washington Monument by Night” (Slabs of the Sunburnt West, 1922): “The Republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

Carl Sandburg wrote: “When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.”

Sandburg’s statement is similar to Pulitzer Prize winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote in an op-ed titled “Folly’s Antidote” (The New York Times, January 1, 2007):  “History is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. ‘The longer you look back,’ said Winston Churchill, “the farther you can look forward. I believe a consciousness of history is a moral necessity for a nation.”

John F. Kennedy wrote in the Introduction to the American Heritage New Illustrated History of the United States (1960): ):  “History, after all, is the memory of a nation.  Just as memory enables the individual to learn, to choose goals and stick to them, to avoid making the same mistake twice – in short, to grow – so history is the means by which a nation establishes its sense of identity and purpose. History, after all, is the memory of a nation. Just as memory enables the individual to learn, to choose goals and stick to them, to avoid making the same mistake twice – in short, to grow – so history is the means by which a nation establishes its sense of identity and purpose.”

Harvard Professor George Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense (Vol. I of The Life of Reason, 1905): “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Judge Learned Hand wrote: “The use of history is to tell us past themes, else we should have to repeat, each in his own experience, the successes and the failures of our forebears.”

Aristotle, in his book Rhetoric (4th century BC), called this “deliberative rhetoric,” using examples from the past to predict future outcomes: “The political orator is concerned with the future: it is about things to be done hereafter that he advises, for or against.”

Lord Acton wrote in 1877: “The story of the future is written in the past.”

Patrick Henry stated March 23, 1775: “I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.”

Edmund Burke wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790: “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”

Cicero stated in Ad M. Brutum, 46 BC: “Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.”

J. Edgar Hoover warned in the introduction to Edward L.R. Elson’s book, America’s Spiritual Recovery, 1954: “We can see all too clearly the devastating effects of secularism on our Christian way of life. The period when it was smart to “debunk” our traditions undermined high standards of conduct. A rising emphasis on materialism caused a decline of “God-centered” deeds and thoughts.”

Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall stated: “Along with our higher education came a debunking contest a sort of national sport. It was smarter to revile than to revere more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate. Debunking is a sign of decaying foundations.”

Socialist historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1980) has been one of the primary works “debunking” America’s heritage.

An exposé revealing Zinn’s manipulation of the facts has been written by Mary Garbar, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America (2019).

Zinn’s tactic was one of deconstruction, a type of “gene-replacement therapy” for a culture, which uses a “Drive–Neutral–Reverse” methodology to ideologically undermine a nation. The first step is to separate students from their country’s past by portraying the founders of the country in a negative light, ignoring the fact that the founders gave them a system which provides for maximum individual liberty and opportunity; then students are in a neutral phase of being “open-minded”; finally, the students are indoctrinated with a whitewashed socialist-sharia cancel-culture future.

President Donald Trump stated July 3, 2020: “The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions. Our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains. The radical view of American history is a web of lies — all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition. No movement that seeks to dismantle these treasured American legacies can possibly have a love of America at its heart. No person who remains quiet at the destruction of this resplendent heritage can possibly lead us to a better future.”

Will & Ariel Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization, 1967: “History is an excellent teacher with few pupils.”

The Durants wrote in The Lessons of History, 1968:  “Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

Reagan warned the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, March 30, 1961: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Carl Sandburg died July 22, 1967.

At his 85th birthday party (6 January 6, 1963, Sandburg had stated (The Best of Ralph McGill: Selected Columns, 1980): “Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”

President Ronald Reagan stated in his State of the Union Address, January 25, 1984: “Each day your members observe a 200-year-old tradition meant to signify America is one nation under God. I must ask: If you can begin your day with a member of the clergy standing right here leading you in prayer, then why can’t freedom to acknowledge God be enjoyed again by children in every school room across this land? America was founded by people who believed that God was their rock of safety.”

Reagan concluded:

“I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it’s all right to keep asking if we’re on His side. The famous Carl Sandburg said………….

‘I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair. I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.'”

Ron

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The Bible Says: Psalm 33:12

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord”

Our nation is always in need of prayer. In good times and bad, whether at war or at peace, during seasons of overflowing abundance or great need, it’s always important for us to intercede for our country.

Why? First because our fellow citizens need to accept Jesus as their savior. if we desire for our nation to be characterized by godly families, wise and capable leaders, and strong communities, then we need to pray our countrymen will enthrone the Lord to their homes and hearts.

Second, we need the Father’s favor and protection against threats and terrorist attacks, natural disasters, epidemies, and economic downturns. If we wish for our country to remain safe, productive, and strong, we will need God’s divine provision.

So today, kneel before the Lord, seek His face, repent from your sins, and ask Him to bless the nation. Only the Lord can truly transform our country . And He has promised to do so when we ask according to His will and act in obedience to Him (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Ron

After the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest from May 1804 to September 1806, meeting natives tribes along the way.

Several years later, in 1831, three Nez Perce Indians and one Flathead Indian, traveled 2,000 miles, all the way from the Oregon Territory to St. Louis, Missouri, looking for the “Book to Heaven.”

Bishop Rosati wrote in the Annals of the Association of the Propagation of the Faith, December 31, 1831: “Some three months ago four Indians who live across the Rocky Mountains near the Columbia River (Clark’s Fork of the Columbia) arrived at St. Louis. After visiting General Clark who, in his celebrated travels, has visited their country they came to see our church and appeared to be exceedingly well pleased with it.

Two of our priests visited them. They made the sign of the Cross and other signs which appeared to have some relation to baptism. The sacrament was administered to them.”

William Walker, who was the first provisional governor of the Nebraska-Kansas Territory, gave an eye-witness account. His account was printed, March 1, 1833, in the Christian Advocate & Journal and Zion’s Herald of New York, a Methodist Episcopal publication which at the time had the largest circulation of any periodical in the world: “Immediately after we landed in St. Louis, on our way to the west, I proceeded to Gen. Clark’s, superintendent of Indian affairs. While in his office he informed me that three chiefs from the Flat-Head nation were in his house, and were quite sick, and that one (the fourth) had died a few days ago. They were from the west of the Rocky Mountains. Curiosity prompted me to step into the adjoining room to see them, having never seen any, but often heard of them. I was struck by their appearance. The distance they had traveled on foot was nearly three thousand miles to see Gen. Clarke, their great father, as they called him, he being the first American officer they ever became acquainted with”

Walker continued: “Gen. Clark related to me the object of their mission, and, my dear friend, it is impossible for me to describe to you my feelings while listening to his narrative. (They had heard) the white people away toward the rising of the sun had been put in possession of the true mode of worshiping the great Spirit. They had a book containing directions how to conduct themselves in order to enjoy his favor and hold converse with him; and with this guide, no one need go astray, but every one that would follow the directions laid down there, could enjoy, in this life, his favor; and after death would be received into the country where the great Spirit resides, and live for ever with him. Upon receiving this information, they called a national council to take this subject into consideration. They accordingly deputed four of their chiefs to proceed to St. Louis to see their great father, Gen. Clarke, to inquire of him.”

William Walker wrote further of being at William Clark’s home in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1831 and meeting the Nez Perce and Flathead Indians: They arrived at St. Louis, and presented themselves to Gen. Clark the latter was somewhat puzzled being sensible of the responsibility that rested on him; he however proceeded by informing them that what they had been told by the white man in their own country, was true. Then went into a succinct history of man, from his creation down to the advent of the Savior; explained to them all the moral precepts contained it he Bible, expounded to them the decalogue (ten commandments). Informed them of the advent of the Savior, his life, precepts, his death, resurrection, ascension, and the relation he now stands to man as a mediator—that he will judge the world.

The published account of the Nez Perce and Flathead Indians visiting St. Louis inspired Dr. Marcus Whitman. In 1835, he went with missionary Samuel Parker to minister to Nez Perce and Flathead Indians in Idaho and Montana.  

The next year, Marcus and his newly-wed wife, Narcissa, left Massachusetts and become missionaries to the Indians of Oregon and Washington. Accompanying them were Presbyterian missionaries Henry and Eliza Spalding. This made Narcissa and Eliza the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.

President Warren G. Harding, in dedicating the Oregon Trail Monument, July 3, 1923, recounted how Dr. Marcus Whitman traveled, clad in buckskin breeches, fur leggings and moccasins, an) episode took place within these walls. Seated at his desk was, John Tyler, tenth President of the United States. Facing him was the lion-visaged Daniel Webster, Secretary of State. The door opened and there appeared before the amazed statesmen a strange and astonishing figure. It was that of a man of medium height and sturdy build, deep chested, broad shouldered, yet lithe in movement and soft in step. He was clad in a coarse fur coat, buckskin breeches, fur leggings, and boot moccasins, looking much worse for the wear.

It was that of a religious enthusiast, tenaciously earnest yet revealing no suggestion of fanaticism, bronzed from exposure to pitiless elements and seamed with deep lines of physical suffering, a rare combination of determination and gentleness – obviously a man of God, but no less a man among men. Such was Marcus Whitman, the missionary hero of the vast, unsettled, unexplored Oregon country, who had come out of the West to plead that the state should acquire for civilization the empire that the churches were gaining for Christianity.”

Harding continued: “The magnificence of Marcus Whitman’s glorious deed has yet to find adequate recognition in any form. Here was a man who, with a single companion, in the dead of winter (1842), struggled through pathless drifts and blinding storms, four thousand miles, with the sole aim to serve his country and his God. He was pushing grimly and painfully through this very pass on his way from Walla Walla to Fort Hall, thence, abandoning the established northern route as impassable, off to the South through unknown, untrodden lands, past the Great Salt Lake, to Santa Fe, then hurriedly on to St. Louis and finally, after a few days, again on the home-stretch to his destination, taking as many months as it now takes days to go from Walla Walla to Washington.”

Harding continued:  “It was more than a desperate and perilous trip that Marcus Whitman undertook. It was a race against time. Public opinion was rapidly crystallizing into a judgment that the Oregon country was not worth claiming, much less worth fighting for; that, even though it could be acquired against the insistence of Great Britain, it would prove to be a liability rather than an asset. Webster before had pronounced Oregon ‘a barren, worthless country, fit only for wild beasts and wild men’; Whitman turning to the President Tyler added beseechingly: All I ask is that you will not barter away Oregon or allow English interference until I can lead a band of stalwart American settlers across the plains. For this I shall try to do!’ The just and considerate Tyler could not refuse. ‘Doctor Whitman,’ he rejoined sympathetically, ‘your long ride and frozen limbs testify to your courage and your patriotism. Your credentials establish your character. Your request is granted!'”

Harding added: “Whitman a few months later (1843) had completed an organization of eager souls, and led the first movement by wagon train across plains and mountains along this unblazed trail. What a sight that caravan must have appeared to the roaming savages! And what an experience for the intrepid pioneers! More that two hundred wagons, bearing well-nigh a thousand emigrants, made up the party. They traveled by substantially the same route that Whitman had taken when he first went out to Oregon; from a rendezvous near what is now Kansas City they moved due northwest across northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska to the Platte River; followed the Platte to the middle of what is now Wyoming, thence crossing the mountains by way of the Sweetwater Valley and the South Platte; and from Fort Hall, following the well-known route, roughly paralleling the Snake River, into Oregon.

The difficulties of the trip, involving beside the two hundred wagons, the care of women and children, and of considerable herds of live stock, were such that its successful accomplishment seems almost miraculous. But stern determination triumphed and the result was conclusive. Americans had settled the country and in the end the boundary settlement was made on the line of the forty-ninth parallel, your great Northwest was saved, and a veritable Empire was merged in the young Republic. Never in the history of the world has there been a finer example   of civilization following Christianity. The missionaries led under the banner of the cross, and the settlers moved close behind under the star-spangled symbol of the nation.”

Harding acknowledged the missionaries by name: “Among all the records of the evangelizing efforts as the forerunner of human advancement, there is none so impressive as this of the early Oregon mission and its marvelous consequences. To the men and women of that early day whose first thought was to carry the gospel to the Indians—the Lees, the Spauldings, the Grays, the Walkers, the Leslies, to Fathers DeSmet and Blanchet and DeMars, and to all the others of that glorious company who found that in serving God they were also serving their country and their fellowmen—to them we pay today our tribute; to them we owe a debt of gratitude, which we can never pay, save partially through recognition such as you and I have accorded today.”

Unfortunately, when an outbreak of measles occurred, several Cayuse Indians died. The mission was blamed and the Whitmans, along with 11 others, were massacred.

President Harding concluded his Oregon Trail tribute by acknowledging: My appreciation both as President of the United States and as one who honestly tries to be a Christian soldier, of the signal service of the martyred Whitman.”

The State of Washington placed the statue of Dr. Marcus Whitman in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

In 1856, Mother Joseph led five missionaries to the Pacific Northwest where they founded: 11 Hospitals, 7 Academies, 5 Indian schools, and 2 Orphanages.

The State of Washington placed a statue of Mother Joseph in the U.S. Capital.

Chief Moses befriended Missionary Henry Spalding and was educated at a Presbyterian mission school. Chief Moses traveled to Washington, D.C., where he met with President Rutherford Hayes.

In the Wind River area of Wyoming, Shoshone Chief Washakie (whose father was a Flathead), learned to speak French, English, and numerous native languages. Around 1840, he united the Shoshone tribes. He became friends with fur trappers and explorers, such as Kit Carson, John Fremont, and Jim Bridger. At the urging of Jim Bridger, who became his son-in-law, Chief Washakie attended councils and signed treaties with the U.S. Government, preserving the existence of the Shoshone.

Missionary John Robert translated the Bible into Shoshone and Arapahoe, and with the help of Chief Washakie, founded a Christian boarding school. In 1897, Chief Washakie was baptized as a Christian in the Episcopal faith. His statue is in the U.S. Capital.

In 1859, Oregon became the 33rd state to join the Union. The original Oregon State Constitution stated: “Bill of Rights, Article I, Section 2.:

All men shall be secure in the Natural right, to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences.”

Ron

• 7 academies,
• 5 Indian schools, and
• 2 orphanages.

The State of Washington placed a statue of Mother Joseph in the U.S. Capital.