Christian Foundations in the American Colonies
Vern Peterman · Nov 23, 2003
Church History, No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826230437143

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, well, we have a fun topic here. I did a little switching from what we had anticipated last week as I began to look at it. We now have this Christian foundations in the American colonies, which I pulled up by a week. And so I think what you'll find real interesting issues to take a look at. Let's ask this question, and I want your thoughts and feedback. Is the United States a Christian nation? What's that? Today, no. Okay. All right. Doug says today, no. I see a head shaking there.

When we say Christian nation, I'm in a way asking a trick question, aren't I? Because when you say that, what do you mean? Do you mean that we have a country that is legally required to be Christian, you know, through and through? No. If you say, are we Christian in that, is everybody a Christian?

No. The answer is no. Latest statistic I read, over 100 million people in the United States do not go to church, don't attend even sort of. So it's a substantially a-religious country in great percentage anyway. Yeah, Doug. brought down his decree on Judge Moore to do with the Tenth Commandment. It's a statement that we no longer have God. We are atheists of God. Oh, wow. That's quite a statement, isn't it? Yeah. Pretty shocking stuff.

What I'd like us to take a look at here is we want to step back into history, the founding of our country, before we were even called a country. and try to answer this question and get a little more specific on the thoughts of what is our nation's background. One of the things we want to start with is just what's the New Testament's teaching. on government. And one of the things, and we actually pointed this out a few months ago when we were looking at the connection between church and government. And one of them, of course, is be subject to the government and be model citizens.

This comes out of Romans 13, 1-7. The next one, pay your taxes. We have folks that don't particularly care to do that, but nonetheless, scripture makes it clear. By the way, that Matthew 17 passage, that was a voluntary tax. It was one not required to be paid, but Jesus' response to Peter was, so that we do not offend them, we'll pay the tax. How about that? The next one, setting aside government mandate is required and justified only where the mandate is in conflict with biblical church age principles, since God is the higher authority.

Now, come here, the 13 original colonies were founded for various reasons. And by the way, if you're joining us here for the first time, that lower right corner, that's for the numbered pages. You got pages one and two, I think in this set, and then a special handout. So you should find it on there. We'll go through what some of the different reasons were for founding the different colonies. There were different reasons for different ones. Some of them were indeed religious freedom. Some of them were just simply for economic gain.

Hey, we want to do this as a business venture. Other reasons was getting out of debtors prison. We'll see which state was particularly founded based on getting out of debtors prison. So we have this thing called bankruptcy now. Right now, personal bankruptcies are setting records. But the way that it was handled in centuries past was you can't pay your debts, you go to prison. Debtor's prison. And one of the states was actually founded based on getting a bunch of people out of debtor's prison. And then finally, some fleeing the Thirty Years' War in Europe.

We talked about that extending up until 1648. One colony was founded to escape religious persecution from another colony. How about that? We'll take a look at that in a minute. And all the colonies had a dominant religious orientation. If you say, was America founded by Christians, it was substantially Christians of some category of Christendom. All of the foundings were some category of Christendom.

And we'll take a look at that here. Something else to take a look at. This is a chart that we've looked at at times past. And at the bottom here, America discovered 1492. This was, of course, the Columbus discovery. There have been some others. And then it was 1517. So think of it. It wasn't that much longer after that.

That's when Luther goes and nails his 95 theses on the door at Wittenberg. Then you have the breakup into various groups from which we now have thousands of denominations. The Plymouth colony here was 1620 and notice that the Presbyterian denomination, the Baptist denomination, and the Methodist denomination were either by that time just getting started or hadn't yet been started. So the original founders did not include the Methodists, Baptists, or Presbyterians, even though those are prominent now.

They came when? Later on. Subsequent decades and even later centuries. One of the things to take a look at too, the Anglican influence was strong because the 13 colonies were English colonies, and what was the official adopted religion the Anglican religion, okay? So what would happen at times is a religion would get established, and then if somehow that sputtered, then they would bring in the Anglican background.

Okay. Let's step through. Here's some kind of key points in the history. 1620, the Puritans land at Plymouth Rock, okay? At 1689, then the Puritans charter was revoked. How about that? Basically within a lifetime, they said, nope, you're done. And then at the same year, the Catholic dominance in Maryland was revoked. We'll take a look at that as well. English government, they said, your charter's now suspended. You're done. So they ended it just by decision there.

1740 was called the Great Awakening. One of the things that happened is after the initial founding there was sort of a deflating, a spiritual deflation that went on. And a lot of the initial passion that drove people to come across the Atlantic and found these colonies based on religious freedom, a lot of that began to fade. And so a lot of people became quite concerned. The Great Awakening was a kind of a stirring rekindling, if you will, of passion for spiritual things that came about in 1740. What happened to that Great Awakening? It also faded.

We have 1776, Declaration of Independence, and 1791, the Bill of Rights. Remember, what's the First Amendment about? One of them is freedom of speech. That's right. Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion. And that was one thing that they were reacting to, because the English would come in and they'd say, well, you can't have that religion anymore. Remember one of the things we talked about earlier, one of the things that moved Patrick Henry, the very month that he said, give me liberty or give me death, was when he saw about a dozen pastors being whipped to the bone. And I mean to the bone. One of them died. because they didn't have a license to preach.

That's one of the things that came up. We don't want that here. We don't want the government having to tell us what kind of religion we have here. We don't want people in the churches getting whipped because they aren't of some approved, permitted religion.

You've got a chart kind of like this. We passed one out earlier. You've got a chart kind of like this. This is one that's unnumbered. And by the way, Nancy, do we have any more of those? handouts here. If someone is lacking handouts, Nancy's got some more at the table there, so feel free to grab one. Because this may be a little hard to read, and that's one of the reasons for making sure that you have a handout there.

The first is Virginia, and Virginia was established basically for economic gain. That was the founding of it. They had the Virginia Company. They came in in 1606 and they basically started off, it was a business failure. And business failure basically is what collapsed it. The established religion, there was of course the Church of England because the Church of England is the one that made the charter and said you can establish this colony there. It failed and one of the things that wasn't too popular was the Indian Massacre that Occurred not too much later and that wasn't well received. Whoa. Sorry. OK. Oh boy. That's that's going on beyond nasal. Right. Wow. OK. The next one is Massachusetts.

This is one that we tend to hear a lot about because this had two charters, the Pilgrims and the Puritans, two different groups. Pilgrims and the Puritans right next to each other. And these were basically a religious freedom and actually one group of Puritans were here to establish a theocracy.

We want to talk about that in a minute. So this is the one we hear this account of the Mayflower. They came over with 102 passengers. Some years back, I went to see the Mayflower II, which was a little echoey, Roy? Okay. The Mayflower II, which was a recreation of the original Mayflower.

I was amazed because I looked at the space where these people were living. and each person had about an area the size of a sleeping bag to live on for over two months. Plus, when they arrived, they arrived at the start of winter and there wasn't any place for them to live, so a great many of them lived on the boat after that for months. In little places, again, about the size of a sleeping bag was what you got. for your personal area?

What kept you warm? Good question. I'm sure they were wondering too. The truth is they didn't have much to keep warm. They arrived there of course with some equipment, but you know to get good wood you need to have seasoned wood. You can kind of break some things that are broken down and try to use that. It was just tough going the whole time and that's why almost half didn't survive the trip in the winter.

You imagine that. You imagine going to this place. Nobody's living there, basically, other than some Indian tribes that are established. And you're going to go across this ocean, a frightening trip, arrive at the start of winter, and no real way to keep warm. Not really. And to try to just survive it. Bear with it. Deal with it. What happened is, you see, the Puritans were in this northern group, Massachusetts Bay Colony. That was the one group.

They were seeking to establish a theocracy. Now, what do I mean by a theocracy? What's that? It's a government. God's in charge. In Scripture, where do you see a theocracy? In Israel, okay? So, hmm, what's going on here? What they're doing is trying to establish in the Americas a Christian reproduction of Israel. That's kind of a quick summary bottom line. They were trying to establish something that the Lord had in place with Israel and what ruled the Jews when they were in that theocracy. What's that?

Okay, not Rome yet. No. What's that? Law. Yes, law. And that's where the tied with Galatians comes. Okay? And that's this. Here you have these people. They're Christians. They believe the Bible. I mean, they spend lots and lots of time studying the Bible. But what they believe is that they're going to live by the law. Okay? And they're going to establish a theocracy and a government based on that principle. Then in the Plymouth colony was the Pilgrims, a different group, both of them rejecting, if you will, the British government and their manner of doing things and the British religious establishment.

This little rock that you see, there's Plymouth Rock. I was amazed, you know, go and take a look at it. It's not that big, but they've got the, you know, on the side, you can just about see it, 1620 carved on one side. That's apparently the rock that kind of is a monument to their first landing there.

Okay, what happened at the first Thanksgiving was in the following year. There was an Indian tribe there. The Wampanoag Indians, there was a small tribe that actually helped them and if it wasn't for them, probably more of them would have died. Because the Indians came in and helped them out.

And so over that next summer, they were able to get some crops in and get some things built and finally get some things established. And they did have in October, not our November tradition, but in October 1621, a three-day feast. And that is kind of the foundation of our Thanksgiving celebration that we have. Some examples, they serve wild turkeys, geese, and ducks. The Wampanoag brought five deer. So if you've got a group of people, I guess that helps feed the group. You also have lobster, clams, oysters, fish, things that they had because they were along the coastal area, right? and then various things that they had grown, and as well as wild things that they'd gone and picked. So this was the first Thanksgiving.

Now, next one down the list there is New Hampshire. This was another Puritan establishment there. This was an expansion. So we got a little arrow going up there, and it was an expansion of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One of the things you'll see, you see that little term congregational? Their means of governing was, you know, everybody votes kind of a thing. And so you'll see that name show up. That was their assumed way of operating. Excuse me a minute here. Okay. Then on to New York.

New York was established as a royal colony. One of the things that's interesting here, now you start seeing names of others than Englishmen. In this case, the Dutch. And look at what was the purpose of their founding New York? Economic gain. That's still the purpose of New York. And then the British came in and said, no, we're making this legally Anglican. Church of England.

So they established it that way. Next down the list was Maryland. Now, Maryland was a unique situation. Maryland was established as a Catholic colony, Roman Catholic. The Jesuits came in. Matter of fact, the thought is that the Jesuits were saying, hey, we've got to get some kind of foothold here. Here's the new world, and we've got to get establishment there on these colonies. So this is where they got their foothold.

So then, of course we hear of Baltimore, Maryland. Lord Baltimore was not a name but a title. And various people held it. So they'd have Lord Baltimore and then that person would die and they'd pass the name on to the next Lord Baltimore. And that was kind of the tradition. The first to carry the title here was Cecilius Calvert, and he was given the charter for this settlement in Maryland, which was initially established as a Jesuit Catholic settlement.

Later on, as we see, that got yanked. The English yanked it and said, no, you're not going to keep doing that. Well, but by old tradition, yes. The truth is that you find, as we'll see here shortly, a mixture of religions. Because before the end of that century, the English were pulling original charters. And we've seen a couple of them there, where the Puritans lost theirs, the Catholics lost theirs.

You don't have exclusive right to govern it as a Catholic or a Puritan colony. For example, the Puritans, when their charter got pulled, they had to let everybody move in. It doesn't matter whether you're Quaker or anything. Everybody moved in. So yes, there was an old tradition that way, but with the others moving in, it's largely lost.

Next we have down there Rhode Island. Look at how Rhode Island got started. Basically, Roger Williams got kicked out. He told them, you're doing several things wrong, and one of which is you're not paying the Indians for the land. And they didn't like that, so they kicked him out, so he went over and got a charter to start Rhode Island.

New Jersey is another one. And what you see there is more expansion, and also religious freedom that's involved in the founding of that state. And another thing that you'll see several of is royal colonies. Basically, it's a way to get the English well established there. They'd send over a contingent of Englishmen, they'd have an English charter, and it's just a way to get the English established in the New World.

That was what it was all about. Next one down is Delaware and largely economic gain. It was a religious background. Notice it was a very religious background. but largely economic gain. And then North Carolina, economic gain again, largely Anglican. And then South Carolina, some element of religious freedom from the French. We'll talk about that in a minute. Largely, again, economic gain.

And then Pennsylvania. Now, Pennsylvania is a different story. I see Brian shaking his head. OK. Yes, Pennsylvania is a different story. And one of the reasons, look at the groups that you see there. Kind of a different category of groups. Some of them you don't find elsewhere. The Mennonite Brethren. By the way, that's not Plymouth Brethren, but Brethren groups. OK, then Amish. And then here's one.

How many of you have ever been to a Schminkfelder church? It's hard to go to Pennsylvania now and find one of those. Schrenkwald was a fellow who was associated with Luther, and then he kind of turned mystical, and he said, let's not observe the Lord's Table until we can all agree what it means. Luther didn't like that idea and so kicked him out.

So anyway, that's the group and a number of them came to the United States and this is where they settled. Pennsylvania is about the only place where there's any residual people of that group. You also have the Moravians which you see elsewhere there. So there's several unique groups in Pennsylvania. A strong Quaker element as well.

And one of the things we point out is William Penn, the name of the state, of course, you're coming after that. William Penn's father had been owed a lot of money. He was an admiral. His father was an admiral. And so one of the things, apparently he got a lot of promise pay. We'll pay you later. Okay. And so eventually they had to come up with some way to repay him. So they'll say, well, we'll give you a big chunk of land in the new world.

So that's what William Penn got as kind of the inheritor of the estate there. And so hence the name, you know, William Penn. And then he made a deal with the Indians and went and what part of what's now Philadelphia, that little insignia that's hanging from the paper that he's holding is now the part of the symbol for the University of Pennsylvania. So they kind of carried on the tradition there.

And finally, Georgia. This is the one that was relief from debtors prison. The debtors' prisons were overflowing because England was going through tough times and people just couldn't keep up with their debts. And so what do they do? They just put shiploads of them and send them over to Georgia and say, you make it. That's basically how the place got started. And again, because it's the Church of England was the one that sent them over, being part of the British government, that's what got established. All right, now, something else. See, here's the Anglican patterns that you see in the States. Then notice the contrary ones. You've got those that are anti-Anglican or some other group from England that are established there.

You've got several Dutch reform groups that have come in. And the one exception to that on the bottom there is the French Huguenots. The French Huguenots were basically Calvinistic Frenchmen. So instead of being Dutch Reformed, they're like French Reformed.

So similar background. And then finally got the Lutheran groups coming in there. Several of those. Look where they're from. You got a couple Swedish and another German. And a number of those coming from the Religious Freedom group in Pennsylvania, right below the Lutherans there, are also German.

So think about this now. You've got this country founded, and can you say that they're Christians? Substantially, yes. What kind of Christians are we talking about? What are they teaching is the rule of life. Yeah, substantially law. Not entirely, but substantially law is what's behind them.

By the time we come up to this period where we have the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, a century and a half has gone by since Plymouth Rock. A century and a half has gone by since the Puritans and the Pilgrims first came over. That's a lot of time. For us to compare it, it would be like the middle 1800s. to now. So a long period of time has gone by.

One of the things we've got to remember is that a lot of the people that came over later, because by the time we're talking the Revolutionary War era, the Declaration of Independence, about three million Americans, a great many of them thought themselves still as British subjects.

The European Enlightenment era had come into place and so what's going to happen there What do they believe? They believe that the universe is fundamentally rational. This is the Enlightenment era that has come in from Europe, that has filtered over into the colonies. The universe is fundamentally rational.

It can be understood through the use of reason alone. What does that exclude? God. And scripture. So, focus on empirical observation, the use of reason, and systematic doubt. How about that? Skeptical. Unless you can show me, it isn't. Kind of the Missouri philosophy. Unless you can show me, it doesn't exist. Authority is not to be preferred over experience. So, rejection of scripture.

That belief began to be prominent among the intelligentsia of Europe. Now that's coming over to the United States. So now you've got these people that started off looking for religious freedom and they were Bible-believing even if we would have a real issue with them about their looking for establishing law. Now, you look at what's going on and a lot of the people that are bringing thoughts over from Europe are bringing over this Enlightenment-era philosophy. They said, if you can show me, I'll believe it. But I'm not going to believe anything from the Bible. I don't believe in anything revealed. Was this all Western Europe or was it Europe as a whole? Largely Western Europe.

If you think of it, a lot of these people are coming from Britain or the continent and there was some interaction between those as well. So by the time we get to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, a lot of this thinking is infiltrating people's thoughts.

Okay, so the question, were America's founding fathers Christians? So, one of the things there, most of the early settlers were basically Bible-believing. That is, if you ask them, is the Bible the word of God? They would say yes. They would say yes. That was the character of most of the early settlers. They would say, yes, the Bible is the word of God. They were often Calvinistic or Lutheran. They were amillennial. They didn't believe that Christ was going to come back onto the earth. They interpreted a lot of scripture allegorically. And they were also very law-oriented.

Many of them were Anglo-Catholic. That is the Anglican background. The Anglican Church, remember, had only been established the prior century as a breakaway from the Catholic Church when the colonies were first founded. So they were still very Catholic in their background, just broken away from the Pope.

And then there were some of a mystical or a pietistic persuasion. What do I mean by that? They're looking for revelation apart from Scripture. They're looking for things to be revealed apart from Scripture. Now, something else. We showed this last week. Those of you who are joining us from the Galatians class, we showed this last week because we looked at the interaction between Jews and Christians over the centuries. And we came up with this chart.

Nancy can get you a copy of that if you don't happen to have it. But one of the things we wanted to point out was a lot of the people who were establishing the 13 original colonies were of this group here. They weren't Jews, but they were establishing things based on legalism, based on law. So, Christians, yes, a very legalistic perspective on what Christianity means. Now, the leaders of the nation were increasingly deistic.

Deistics accept the natural revelation that's described in Romans 1, 19 and 20. You know what I'm talking about there? Because in Romans 1, 19 and 20, it says, for what can be known can be known through the creation, right? You can know things about God through the creation. What can you know about God from the creation? What kinds of things? He is almighty. You say, wow, this is an amazing world. This takes a mighty God. Yes. What else can you know about God from just looking at the creation? You see love, but maybe even that there might be some question. You might see some examples of something that might look pretty severe. Illness and death. What else can you know?

Yes, orderly. And that was something that they looked at. As a matter of fact, think about the time things were getting established here. Here Newton was coming up with laws of the universe, mathematical formulas that described how the planets orbited around the sun, things of that sort. So yes, orderly. Anything else? The heavens declare the glory of God. Yes, the heavens declare His glory.

Can you tell from looking at the creation that God sent Jesus Christ to the earth. Can you tell that? Can you tell from looking at the creation that we are desperately in need of a Savior? No. See, it is things revealed in Scripture that go way beyond what you can tell from the creation.

This is where the deists lose it because they believe in natural revelation. They'll say, I'm glad to believe in a God because it sure looks like there's one. And I can reason my way towards a God. But they reject revealed truth. And they don't realize that the human mind has limitations. Paul makes that clear in 1 Corinthians 2. Instead, they believe there is a God based on natural revelation, but they reject the Bible. One of the deists, and you might recognize the name, Thomas Paine, said, I would not dare insult a creator by attaching his name to that book.

So, did he believe in God? Yes. Did he believe in the God of the Bible? No. This is deism, and it began to be more prominent. Deists believe in God, but they do not believe so as to be saved. Why not? What does it take to be saved? It takes the Savior. And here was the question. That was what the Philippian jailer asked Paul, right? And what did Paul respond? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

The deists do not. The deists do not. Because that's revealed truth from Scripture, not revealed in the creation. So they reject it. So, are they theists? Yes. Do they believe such as to be saved and to be Christians? No. Okay? Difference there, isn't it? One of the other things that we point out, no growth teachings. No growth teachings.

This is law-based. It's assuming that the Church replaces Israel. See, the thought of many was that the Church replaces Israel and this America is the new Israel. This is the Promised Land. See? We're going to the Promised Land. So now, given that as the background, what have they got? It's law-based, there's nothing to grow on, spiritually. There are no identification truths, nothing that says we've been identified with Christ. They were not taught that. That wasn't included.

Instead, it was often teaching that the Church replaces Israel, America is the new promised land, that whole idea. Even to the point, what were the Jews to do to the people that were in Canaan? Many of them were given commands to destroy. And so there were many people that took that as license to do that to the Indians. That that's what they need to do because after all we are replacing Israel and this is the new promised land.

One of the things to be careful of, how many of you have seen tapes and books saying America is a Christian nation and really pushing that? Have you seen that? If you see that, the truth is what they're going to do is they're going to bring various quotes that bring in theism, even quotes from some that will sound like, you know, hey, this is a Christian nation. The problem is this. First of all, that's only a partial representation. Do they believe in God? Yes.

But there were also some problems with what was believed in some of the early founding fathers, and some things that they didn't know correctly. And so one of the difficulties that we run into is there are those who are pushing this as, we're a Christian nation idea, but their orientation is this. They're still going back to this idea that the Puritans had, we're going to establish a theocracy here. We're going to establish this as a Christian nation as if that's what Christians were called to do. Which really brings into the question, what are Christians called to do? This aspect is true because largely a lot of history is getting to be almost areligious. They don't even talk about it.

And that's not true. And it is correct to balance that out, isn't it? That's correct. But there are those who have an agenda, and that agenda is that they want to come in and establish America as a theocracy under law. And we want to be careful that we don't get sucked into that. One of the other questions that really comes into focus here is that scriptures teach that we're a heavenly people, not an earthly people. As believers in the church age, we are a heavenly people. And we've been going through this in Philippians.

But Ephesians 2.6, the Lord raised us up with him, Christ, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We are a heavenly people. And certainly scripture has things to say about how we live here on planet earth and how we live in this country. And do we have great blessings as a nation?

Yes, we most certainly do. We have freedoms that this world has rarely known. Even great many of the people around the world today do not have the freedoms that we enjoy. We certainly have prosperity in great parts. But the reality is we must never lose sight.

As the Church of Jesus Christ, we are a heavenly people. We are seated with Christ. That's the spiritual truth that's primary here and now. And then in Philippians, we saw this not too long ago, our citizenship is in heaven. Paul uses the specific word from the Greek there. Our citizenship is in heaven. We live here. but our citizenship is there. Okay? We live here, but our citizenship is there. Spiritually speaking, that's what I'm looking to. As he also points out, as we await a Savior from there. Okay?

We're awaiting a Savior from there, not because we made this place the kingdom of God on earth. Okay? not because we try to establish this as a Christian nation or take over the world as Christians. And finally, in Colossians 3.1, Therefore, if ye have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Now, as you think through this process here, How, you know, here we are, I asked a question earlier, is this a Christian nation? And I got some response that no longer, or I think Helmut said, yes, we substantially are. There are a great number of Christians in this country. This isn't a Hindu country, you know, it's not established as something else. How should Christians live now? What should we be seeking to do?

Yes? Just keep warm? Yes. Gail? We need to be real careful, real discerning, don't we? Yes. It would be possible to get real skeptical and negative about our founding, and that would be out of balance, wouldn't it? But it's also important to be discerning. What else? Yes, Josiah.

So the Lord is calling out a church now. We have sharing of the gospel to do now. And among those in the church, we are to be building up the body of Christ. There is no command in the church age to go establish Christian nations, per se. or try to take over the government, as some have.

Roy? Yeah, in other words, a lot of the thought is that either we replace Israel, or that we are Israel, and they don't make the distinction. Yeah, and that's a caution for Christians, that there are those who think that our main charge as Christians is to take over the country. They think that's what we're supposed to be doing. That Christians are supposed to take over the country and that that's what it's all about. And then we go in there and establish Christian laws and force people to be Christian. And there are those that are pushing that. So, real important.

Any other thoughts, questions, comments, surprises, shock? Yeah, Gail? Yeah, what happened is they were established as English colonies under English charter and in English control, but sometimes the people that they would get to move there would be from other countries. Yeah, well, as a matter of fact, here's another interesting impact.

Several of them you notice were Dutch reformed. The series of political moves was like this. People who went first to, excuse me, eventually went to the colonies, went first to Holland. Yeah, a number of them went to Holland first and then found that this isn't working. And then went over to the New World. So a number of them, they were English, but left from Holland in order to head over there. And so you had kind of a mixed influence there. So they would be going from Holland, but actually be British originally. So there was more British influence than what you would see just looking at the chart just by that alone. And matter of fact, that's part of my family background. I had someone back there on my mom's side.

He was an Anglican pastor in Colchester. He said, this isn't biblical. And he went to Holland and he said, this isn't good either, and he went to Massachusetts. And that was the middle 1600s. And that was a part of the pattern, that people would often leave, not go directly from England over, but go from England to Holland and then over. The British did not control all the immigration to America.

It was a money-making deal too. Sure, and that's the thing. People could get there once it was established. People had a charter. People could come there from other places, so there wasn't really good control over it in that sense. If somebody wanted to go there, they could. Part of it, too, is who are you going to get who is willing to go there?

There were various groups that tried to start colonies earlier than the Pilgrims and Puritans and didn't succeed. The Huguenots, for example, tried to establish a colony in Florida in the 1500s, and they all died off. So there are examples of that, but largely it was under British control and increasingly under British control. And that was a part of what the American Revolution was about, is rejecting the British control as they tightened the noose and they yanked people's charters when that wasn't in keeping with what the British had in mind. Any other questions, comments, thoughts? Yes.

I think it's also important to note that in the end times, the church could have been dark. So clinging to a Christian nation, clinging to the idea that basically we've embraced a lot of the church, but we've not embraced the idea of Christianizing the world. Yeah, it's a sign the Lord is coming.

Once we lose sight of the fact that we are a heavenly people, and we're awaiting a Savior from there, who's not going to immediately come here and just make things nice because everything is so great, but will take us back, take us out. And so that message doesn't jive with the idea that we're going to make this a Christian nation. A real important point. The make this a Christian nation idea is actually not spiritual. Because it's contrary to the teaching of scripture that we are a heavenly people.

Real important distinction. And that perspective is one that if people don't get clear, it actually will inhibit their spiritual growth. Islam is really pushing the idea to make the whole world Latin. Yeah, that's a very much similar idea. We're going to force people, by the sword or whatever, we're going to force people to be of some particular spiritual or religious persuasion.

Scripture in the New Testament, that's never promoted. What we see instead is... Be subject to the government, but we're not going to find our hope in trying to make the government this way or that. Paul never said, try to take over the Roman government.

Okay? It's a good thing he didn't. Okay. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the marvelous truths that we have, that indeed our hope is in you. We have a citizenship in heaven. What a wonderful thing that is. We thank you for the blessings and freedoms that we have. And Lord, Well, we thank you for that. We thank you even more for the blessings that we have in Christ in which we have already been blessed in the heavenly places. We thank you for our citizenship. In Jesus' name, Amen.