Thursday, November 24, 2005
To All My Readers:
Today is Thanksgiving --- and we living in America have so many reasons to be thankful. We will all gather today with family and friends, stuff ourselves on turkey and other goodies, and, I pray that we will all remember to give thanks to God, who has made all of this possible.
But, how many people really know the full story of our first Thanksgiving? For most of us, we were taught that the Pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution; that the first winter was very devastating; but, their Indian friends came to the rescue, taught them how to raise corn, etc --- and they all sat down together and had a feast. That is the history I was taught in school.
Let's take a look at what led up to that first Thanksgiving. In England, in the 1500s and the early 1600s, the Christian religion was undergoing a lot of changes. On October 31, 1517, Dr. Martin Luther, a German monk, posted his "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" --- better known as Luther's 95 Theses --- on the Castle door at Wittenberg, Germany.
In 1534, King Henry VIII, of England, wanting to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she had not produced a son to be heir of the throne, and because he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his many mistresses --- had parliament pass the Act of Supremacy which recognized the king as "the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia." Henry had now thrown out the pope and his Roman Catholic church --- and declared himself to be the head of the Church of England, the Anglican Church, from which comes the Episcopalian churches of America. At this point, good old King Henry made membership in his church mandatory for everyone in England. Soon, many English people, tired of this king run church, started forming illegal Protestant church groups.
The first group, the Puritans, wanted to stay in the Anglican church, but to "purify" it, hence the name Puritan. They wanted to bring real Biblical reform back into the church and get rid of the corruption which had begun to run rampant in the church.
Then, there were the Separatists, who wanted total separation of the church from the state. They demanded that the church be free from all state control.
And, there were the Pilgrims, who only wanted to find a home where they could worship as they pleased. These are the people who came to America on the ship, the Mayflower. They formed a local government based upon a covenant they wrote aboard the Mayflower, called the Mayflower Compact, which reads, "Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; . . ." These are the people who laid the foundation for the America we now are so blessed to call home.
In 1609, the Pilgrims fled England to Holland, but found the extreme secular lifestyle there to be undesirable for raising their families.
In 1620, the Pilgrims made a contract with the Plymouth Company, of Plymouth, England, to come the Virginia colony area and settle. From there they would trade exclusively with the Plymouth Company. Although their destination was Virginia, bad weather forced the Pilgrims to make land much further north, at a place now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. After landing, in severe winter weather, at what we now call Plymouth Rock, they sat there for the next few months in crude shelters --- cold, sick and slowly starving to death. Half of the original 102 did not survive that terrible first winter.
The Wampanoag Indians, living nearby, were aware of the English but chose to avoid contact them for the time being. For the Pilgrims, the Indian population were savages which they had to be on guard against; another danger they had to survive. Now, here comes the interesting part. Samoset, a Abenaki Indian from Maine, hunting in Massachusetts, came across the growing disaster at Plymouth.
Imagine the surprise of the Pilgrims when Samoset walked into their camp and said in broken English, "Hello Englishmen" --- having learned some English from contact with English fishermen and the short-lived colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River in 1607. Samoset stayed the night, seeing their situation, and left the next morning. He soon returned with his friend, Squanto, who, to the great surprise of the Pilgrims, spoke perfect English. Samoset also introduced the Pilgrims to the Wampanoag leader, Chief Massasoit. Squanto, (his Indian name was Tisquantum) was a native of the Patuxet tribe, which lived at present-day Plymouth, and which belonged to the Wampanoag confederation of tribes.
In 1605, Captain George Weymouth led an expedition to America and wanting to take back some of the native Indians, he captured Squanto and several others. Squanto was taken to England, where he learned to speak English very well.
In 1614, he returned, as a guide and interpreter, with another expedition to the New England coastal area, where he stayed. Squanto befriended the Pilgrims, and taught them how to use manure to grow their corn, where to catch fish and eels, and acted as their interpreter and guide. Without Squanto's help, the Pilgrims would probably have had severe famine over the next year, and would have lived in constant fear of their Indian neighbors --- Indians who were actually quite peaceful, but who had been angered by the cruel treatment they received from many English ship captains.
In October 1621 the Pilgrims held a Harvest Feast. Plymouth Governor William Bradford declares the feast to give thanks to God for their first harvest. Massasoit and 90 other Wampanoag Indians are invited to join the 52 remaining Pilgrims for this three-day feast. The English serve wild turkeys, geese, and ducks. The Wampanoag bring five deer, along with lobsters, clams, oysters, and fish. The feast also includes cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, turnips, radishes, onions, beets, corn, and wild fruits. The Harvest Feast went on for three days. That, my Friend, was our first American Thanksgiving.
In 1789, President Washington, recollecting the countless blessings for which our new Nation should give thanks, declared the first National Day of Thanksgiving. And decades later, with the Nation embroiled in a bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln revived what is now an annual tradition of issuing a presidential proclamation of Thanksgiving. President Lincoln asked God to "heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and Union."
On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving and, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. The holiday we know today as Thanksgiving was recommended to Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent New Hampshire magazine editor. Her letters to Lincoln urged him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." The proclamation set apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." Abraham Lincoln declared the first true national autumn Thanksgiving for Thursday, November 26, 1863, recognizing a long-standing New England tradition of placing the holiday on the fourth Thursday in November. He did it partially to help soothe the national mood, which was weary of the Civil War. He declared Thanksgiving again for November 23, 1864.
In 1865, his successor, Andrew Johnson, declared a Thanksgiving for December 7, 1865, and presidents traditionally declared a Thanksgiving for every autumn since. Andrew Johnson was the first to give government employees the day off, making it a legal holiday.
In 1941, Congress passed a bill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it, that fixed the date as the fourth Thursday in November. FDR attempted to move the holiday to the third Thursday in November, but Congress enacted a law to fix the date at the fourth Thursday in November, thus making it an "official" holiday.
On November 26, 1941, FDR signed the bill. That, my Friend, is the day you and I celebrate as Thanksgiving --- and this brief history shows, without a doubt, that Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving, since 1621 --- by thanking God for the many blessings He has given to us. The Pilgrims thanked God for bringing them an English speaking Indian who helped them survive;
President George Washington declared that we should give thanks for the many blessings God had brought upon our new Nation; President Lincoln declared we should ask God to "heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and Union."
Today, we should be doing the same. We should be giving thanks to our God for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us. And we should be praying that He will heal the wounds of our nation --- the abortion wounds, the attack on Biblical marriage wounds, the wounds inflicted by the Liberal atheistic fanatics in their attempt to remove all vestiges of God from our nation --- and restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purpose --- Abe Lincoln's way of saying, "Lord, in Your time. You make all things beautiful, in Your time" --- and we know that He will make America back into "America the Beautiful," in His time.
I thank God for the beautiful family He has given me; I thank Him for blessing my family with good health; and I especially thank Him for my Wife and Son he has blessed me with..
I pray that you and your family will have a glorious Thanksgiving --- and that He will continue to bless you and your family throughout the holiday season and the coming year. God bless, have a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving day,
Evangelist Chip Broome
Thanksgiving Day Prayer
Heavenly Father, on Thanksgiving Day
We bow our hearts to You and pray.
We give You thanks for all You've done
Especially for the gift of Jesus, Your Son.
For beauty in nature, Your glory we see
For joy and health, friends and family,
For daily provision, Your mercy and care
These are the blessings You graciously share.
So today we offer this response of praise
With a promise to follow You all of our days.
If you died today would you go to heaven?
Want to know for sure
http://www.needgod.com
But, how many people really know the full story of our first Thanksgiving? For most of us, we were taught that the Pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution; that the first winter was very devastating; but, their Indian friends came to the rescue, taught them how to raise corn, etc --- and they all sat down together and had a feast. That is the history I was taught in school.
Let's take a look at what led up to that first Thanksgiving. In England, in the 1500s and the early 1600s, the Christian religion was undergoing a lot of changes. On October 31, 1517, Dr. Martin Luther, a German monk, posted his "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" --- better known as Luther's 95 Theses --- on the Castle door at Wittenberg, Germany.
In 1534, King Henry VIII, of England, wanting to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she had not produced a son to be heir of the throne, and because he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his many mistresses --- had parliament pass the Act of Supremacy which recognized the king as "the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia." Henry had now thrown out the pope and his Roman Catholic church --- and declared himself to be the head of the Church of England, the Anglican Church, from which comes the Episcopalian churches of America. At this point, good old King Henry made membership in his church mandatory for everyone in England. Soon, many English people, tired of this king run church, started forming illegal Protestant church groups.
The first group, the Puritans, wanted to stay in the Anglican church, but to "purify" it, hence the name Puritan. They wanted to bring real Biblical reform back into the church and get rid of the corruption which had begun to run rampant in the church.
Then, there were the Separatists, who wanted total separation of the church from the state. They demanded that the church be free from all state control.
And, there were the Pilgrims, who only wanted to find a home where they could worship as they pleased. These are the people who came to America on the ship, the Mayflower. They formed a local government based upon a covenant they wrote aboard the Mayflower, called the Mayflower Compact, which reads, "Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; . . ." These are the people who laid the foundation for the America we now are so blessed to call home.
In 1609, the Pilgrims fled England to Holland, but found the extreme secular lifestyle there to be undesirable for raising their families.
In 1620, the Pilgrims made a contract with the Plymouth Company, of Plymouth, England, to come the Virginia colony area and settle. From there they would trade exclusively with the Plymouth Company. Although their destination was Virginia, bad weather forced the Pilgrims to make land much further north, at a place now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. After landing, in severe winter weather, at what we now call Plymouth Rock, they sat there for the next few months in crude shelters --- cold, sick and slowly starving to death. Half of the original 102 did not survive that terrible first winter.
The Wampanoag Indians, living nearby, were aware of the English but chose to avoid contact them for the time being. For the Pilgrims, the Indian population were savages which they had to be on guard against; another danger they had to survive. Now, here comes the interesting part. Samoset, a Abenaki Indian from Maine, hunting in Massachusetts, came across the growing disaster at Plymouth.
Imagine the surprise of the Pilgrims when Samoset walked into their camp and said in broken English, "Hello Englishmen" --- having learned some English from contact with English fishermen and the short-lived colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River in 1607. Samoset stayed the night, seeing their situation, and left the next morning. He soon returned with his friend, Squanto, who, to the great surprise of the Pilgrims, spoke perfect English. Samoset also introduced the Pilgrims to the Wampanoag leader, Chief Massasoit. Squanto, (his Indian name was Tisquantum) was a native of the Patuxet tribe, which lived at present-day Plymouth, and which belonged to the Wampanoag confederation of tribes.
In 1605, Captain George Weymouth led an expedition to America and wanting to take back some of the native Indians, he captured Squanto and several others. Squanto was taken to England, where he learned to speak English very well.
In 1614, he returned, as a guide and interpreter, with another expedition to the New England coastal area, where he stayed. Squanto befriended the Pilgrims, and taught them how to use manure to grow their corn, where to catch fish and eels, and acted as their interpreter and guide. Without Squanto's help, the Pilgrims would probably have had severe famine over the next year, and would have lived in constant fear of their Indian neighbors --- Indians who were actually quite peaceful, but who had been angered by the cruel treatment they received from many English ship captains.
In October 1621 the Pilgrims held a Harvest Feast. Plymouth Governor William Bradford declares the feast to give thanks to God for their first harvest. Massasoit and 90 other Wampanoag Indians are invited to join the 52 remaining Pilgrims for this three-day feast. The English serve wild turkeys, geese, and ducks. The Wampanoag bring five deer, along with lobsters, clams, oysters, and fish. The feast also includes cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, turnips, radishes, onions, beets, corn, and wild fruits. The Harvest Feast went on for three days. That, my Friend, was our first American Thanksgiving.
In 1789, President Washington, recollecting the countless blessings for which our new Nation should give thanks, declared the first National Day of Thanksgiving. And decades later, with the Nation embroiled in a bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln revived what is now an annual tradition of issuing a presidential proclamation of Thanksgiving. President Lincoln asked God to "heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and Union."
On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving and, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. The holiday we know today as Thanksgiving was recommended to Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent New Hampshire magazine editor. Her letters to Lincoln urged him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." The proclamation set apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." Abraham Lincoln declared the first true national autumn Thanksgiving for Thursday, November 26, 1863, recognizing a long-standing New England tradition of placing the holiday on the fourth Thursday in November. He did it partially to help soothe the national mood, which was weary of the Civil War. He declared Thanksgiving again for November 23, 1864.
In 1865, his successor, Andrew Johnson, declared a Thanksgiving for December 7, 1865, and presidents traditionally declared a Thanksgiving for every autumn since. Andrew Johnson was the first to give government employees the day off, making it a legal holiday.
In 1941, Congress passed a bill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it, that fixed the date as the fourth Thursday in November. FDR attempted to move the holiday to the third Thursday in November, but Congress enacted a law to fix the date at the fourth Thursday in November, thus making it an "official" holiday.
On November 26, 1941, FDR signed the bill. That, my Friend, is the day you and I celebrate as Thanksgiving --- and this brief history shows, without a doubt, that Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving, since 1621 --- by thanking God for the many blessings He has given to us. The Pilgrims thanked God for bringing them an English speaking Indian who helped them survive;
President George Washington declared that we should give thanks for the many blessings God had brought upon our new Nation; President Lincoln declared we should ask God to "heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and Union."
Today, we should be doing the same. We should be giving thanks to our God for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us. And we should be praying that He will heal the wounds of our nation --- the abortion wounds, the attack on Biblical marriage wounds, the wounds inflicted by the Liberal atheistic fanatics in their attempt to remove all vestiges of God from our nation --- and restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purpose --- Abe Lincoln's way of saying, "Lord, in Your time. You make all things beautiful, in Your time" --- and we know that He will make America back into "America the Beautiful," in His time.
I thank God for the beautiful family He has given me; I thank Him for blessing my family with good health; and I especially thank Him for my Wife and Son he has blessed me with..
I pray that you and your family will have a glorious Thanksgiving --- and that He will continue to bless you and your family throughout the holiday season and the coming year. God bless, have a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving day,
Evangelist Chip Broome
Thanksgiving Day Prayer
Heavenly Father, on Thanksgiving Day
We bow our hearts to You and pray.
We give You thanks for all You've done
Especially for the gift of Jesus, Your Son.
For beauty in nature, Your glory we see
For joy and health, friends and family,
For daily provision, Your mercy and care
These are the blessings You graciously share.
So today we offer this response of praise
With a promise to follow You all of our days.
If you died today would you go to heaven?
Want to know for sure
http://www.needgod.com
