Columbus 1492

Today is the day in 1492 that Columbus stepped foot in the Western Hemisphere and both wrote about it and went back to Europe to tell about it. Although he was not the first here, he is credited with discovering the New World because of his many and detailed communiques.

[I’m sitting in my mom’s chair in North Platte and I mentioned to dad (age 96) that it is Columbus Day and as he is cooking breakfast he is reciting the classic poem about Columbus.  You never saw a happier crew!”  He recites it all!]

What a discovery!  Not spices and fabrics or even paper, but a vast area open for religious dissidents to flee in order to practice their faith in God free of ecclesiastical lordship.  For centuries those true believers were disenfranchised, persecuted and murdered for their insistence to worship and serve God their way.

The New World was a Godsend.  It was a breath of fresh air, a chance to serve God free of the chains of state and church (to live in a country with a wall of separation keeping the state out of the church’s life!)

There was an excitement in the air!  There was a thanksgiving to God and an anticipation of what God was going to do!

Note…

Christopher Columbus’s Trust in God

Reading secular historians, you will read how Columbus’ journey was only about a daring quest to rewrite the rules of sailing and science or motivated by greed. But read Columbus’ writings, and you will find that it was all a lesson in trust and listening to the whisper of the Holy Spirit. Later in life, Columbus wrote, “With a hand that could be felt, the Lord opened my mind to the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies, and He opened my will to desire to accomplish that project. This was the fire that burned within me. Who can doubt that this fire was not merely mine, but also the Holy Spirit who inspired me with a marvelous sense of His guidance through the Scriptures?”

The prayer of Pastor Robert Hunt given when the Jamestown pilgrims first landed in Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607:  We do hereby dedicate this Land, and ourselves, to reach the People within these shores with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to raise up Godly generations after us, and with these generations take the Kingdom of God to all the earth… and may those who come here to inhabit join us in this Covenant and in this most noble work that the Holy Scriptures may be fulfilled.

After the prayer, they read the following Bible passage: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s and he ruleth among the nations” (Psalm 22:27-28).  groupBiblestudy.com

And those on the Mayflower landing in Massachusetts in 1620 signed in agreement with these words in the Mayflower Compact:  IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and…

You and I are richly blessed by those who came seeking God’s will and a place to love and serve God and spread the Gospel.  While many back then weren’t on board with such a goal, never-the-less it was there and we are blessed by them and our God using them!