FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHER

FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHER

Joshua 24:17
for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, who did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we passed.

You have to really stretch the truth to take The Lord out of the history of our nation. Not only were the original settlers looking for a place to practice there faith and establish “a city on a hill”, the earliest of settlers believed the Bible and tried to form a culture based on its teachings. After about one hundred and fifty years from the time of the first permanent settlement in New England, our thirteen colonies were in state of spiritual lethargy. In 1734 the first wind of the Great Awakening began to blow at Jonathan Edwards’ church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Four years later, George Whitefield came to the colonies to preach Christ. What started in 1734 in one church became a raging fire spread by the likes of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. By 1770, when Whitefield went to be with The Lord, revival had effected thousands of colonists and “one nation under God” was about to be born. Whitefield’s life obviously effected the colonies, his death touched at least one lost soul and birthed a new church movement. Check out this quote from Forgotten Founding Father by Steven Mansfield.

“He was buried in Newburyport, in the Presbyterian church where he had often preached. There was mourning, in Massachusetts and around the world. Funeral orations filled the cathedrals of the English-speaking world. In slave quarters and Indian huts, at sea and in the squares of a thousand cities and towns, news of his passage filled the air with weeping the like of which had not been heard since Whitefield preached of the Good News of God’s love.
Yet some gave a higher tribute. A sailmaker in Portsmouth named Benjamin Randall had heard Whitefield…and hated him. At noon on the day of the great preacher’s death, the town crier went about Portsmouth shouting, “Whitefield is dead. Whitefield is dead.” The words thundered into Randall’s soul. Falling on his knees, he cried aloud “Whitefield is dead, Whitefield is in heaven, but I am on the road to hell.” Shaken, the young man yielded his heart to God where he knelt. In time, he would preach the gospel himself and launch the Free-Will Baptist Movement. But on this day, September 30, 1770, he was but a first answer to Whitefield’s lifelong prayer:
“Let the name of Whitefield die, that the cause of Jesus Christ may live.”

Just think about it, thirteen unrelated rebellious colonies all experienced something together that gave them a common identity. You won’t see this in the secular history books but it is true none the less. The common experience these early Americans had was the touch of God. The Great Awakening not only awakened and converted individuals, it also birthed a national identity. God’s original purpose for those puritan settlers was about to come to fruition, the world was about to see “One Nation Under God”.