The Original American Dream
I thoroughly enjoyed the Wednesday night Patriotic Rally. Many thanks to the following people who wonderfully helped us produce the multi-media presentation: Bill and Susan Findley, Cindy Briner, Josh, Rebekah, and Cindy Messick, Robert Painter, Barbara and Sean Pope, Jerry and Debbie Howell, Jeff Patrick, Stephen Bertrand, and C.J. Pomeroy.
This past week has been a patriotic one for most of us. It has been a good week to re-evaluate our roots. Some may wonder if we, over two hundred years removed from our beginnings as a nation, are more acutely aware of God’s providence. Some may wonder if we read into history our Christian bias. Allow me to take you back 219 years ago and see for yourself.
In a major address before the Assembly of Connecticut in 1783, Ezra Stiles, then president of Yale, reviewed the fact that America could not account for victory over England. Only a supernatural power could take near disasters time and time again and suddenly turn the tide toward victory in our favor. Please read carefully the words of Stiles:
“In our lowest and most dangerous state, in 1776 and 1777, we sustained ourselves against the British army of sixty thousand troops, commanded by…the ablest generals of twenty-two thousand seamen in above eighty British men-of-war. Who but a Washington, inspired by Heaven,” asked Stiles, “could have conceived the surprise move upon the enemy at Princeton that Christmas Eve when Washington and his army crossed the Delaware? Who but the Ruler of the Winds,” he asked, “could have delayed British reinforcements by three months of contrary ocean winds at a critical point of the war? Or what but ‘a providential miracle’ at the last minute detected the treacherous scheme of traitor Benedict Arnold, which would have delivered the American army, including George Washington himself, into the hands of the enemy?”
On the French role in the Revolution he added, “It is God who so ordered the balancing interests of nations as to produce an irresistible motive in the European maritime powers to take our part…”
Then the president of Yale seemed to view the future with remarkable clarity, as if looking directly into the twentieth century:
“We shall have a communication with all nations in commerce, manners and science beyond anything heretofore known in the world…”
“The English language…will probably become the vernacular tongue of more numerous millions that ever yet spake one language on earth.”
“Navigation will carry the American flag around the globe itself…”
From the Scriptures he saw today’s modern high-speed travel between continents and the world’s explosion of technology. Declared Stiles, “That prophecy of Daniel is now literally fulfilling. ‘There shall be a universal traveling to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased’ (Daniel 12:40). This knowledge will be brought home and treasured up in America, and being here digested and carried to the highest perfection, may reblaze back from America to Europe, Asia and Africa and illumine the world with truth and liberty…”
But even then, Stiles warned that the entire American system, good as it was, would prosper only as men, not merely nominal Christians (Christians in name only), make it work. In view of God’s hand in the long string of events that had produced a new nation with new freedoms, Stiles concluded, “The United States are under peculiar obligations to become a holy people unto the Lord our God.”
These words from 1783 are as current as though written today. Truly Ezra Stiles had the original American dream. May God help us to realize it’s more than hot dogs, apple pies and cars in a two-car garage. Thank God for America, the land of dreamers!
- Pastor Pope -