Search The Scriptures

John 5:39
You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me,


I visited my wife's church on Sunday. The preacher spent much of his time on a passage from the Old Testament regarding, God speaking the Word.
From this he built his sermon against, those who don't believe in hell, those that don't believe in the devil, those that don't believe Jesus is coming again in a so called "Rapture" a word not even found in scripture. He continued to say he couldnt see how if God could hold the stars and the universe together for all this time, why he couldn't keep every dot, tittle and all of the written Bible in perfect order as it was inspired and written. He just doesn't believe that men could have tampered with the Word of God, or mistranslated. or made any mistakes of it's writing as it is written in his Bible. Of course, I don't know which version he chooses to read.
His entire sermon though using Jesus as the directive was based on what I call book worship rather than person worship, particularly the worship of God, or the salvation that is in Christ. Christ didn't come for us to worship the book, but the spoken word of God, as the Spirit of God speaks to each man, woman or child. I am not saying the Bible isn't the means whereby God speaks to us, but the Pastor even made the statement he wanted them to use it like a horoscope to see what God individually has in store for each one of them on a day to day basis. I don't think that is the reason we have the Bible today to turn it into our own personal messages of personal wishes, and desires.
I believe he is missing the point, it isn't about doctrines, man's traditions, creeds, or even Bible worship. If the Bible is what provides salvation then the Jews should have never rebelled time after time. To be matter of fact he took part of a passage in the Old and developed his whole sermon on the idea that God has written the Bible and it is with us - every dot and tittle as when it was first written.
It would pay that Pastor to look at his own introduction to the Bible he has, and note the words in italic, which the authors admit these words are not in the original scripture but added by them to make it more readable in the English language.
It would pay him to study the original languages to which they were written in, to find the words as they were put down.
It would pay him to realize that it is not the "letter of the word" that we need to be concerned with, it is the "spirit" of the word we must be concerned with.
It would pay him to realize there was an Old Covenant and now there is a New Covenant.
It would pay him to read these letters and passages not as if they were personally written to him, like some try to make the newspaper horoscope. These words are and all have audience relevance to the time, the culture, the people, and the body of Israel in the Old, and the body of Christ in the new, that lived then and there.
Now, am I saying the scriptures aren't for us, absolutely not, but they weren't written to us. These were real people that wrote God inspired words to the people of the times in which they lived, in their culture, in their understanding of things. He forgot or doesn't know that the scribes desperately kept to the dot and tittle of the words of Moses and the Prophets, but that didn't matter, because they too, like himself gave them a subjective meaning rather than the objective intention they were written in. They took the word of God and wrote into it, in their teaching, their own interpretations of the Old Testament and created what Jesus himself referred to as the "tradition of the elders" or as some translations read, "the traditions of men".
He forgets that they had a people who were very concerned with writing down the words just as they originally were, but yet transgressed everyone of them, then justified themselves by interpreting those words to fit their interpretation of things, rather, than a knowledge of God, they came to a knowledge they preferred to fit into their own theology.
Now the Hebrews didnt change the words of the Torah, but instead not unlike the Catholic church and the Protestant pagans, they managed to reinterpret the meaning of words and even more yet, they added a whole tradition of what it meant, eventually which became known as the Mishnah or the Talmud, they re-translated and even worse yet, taught the people to read them a certain way by their leaders, who hungered to hold power over the people. How did they get around the written word, by convincing the people these interpretations of the Law, were the secret oral tradition passed down to Moses and the Elders only- by word of mouth. Not unlike the church is convinced they are orthodox in all they teach, one only has to study early church history to find out how all this "correct teaching" came about. Through power mongering, murder, hatred and more. The facts are the facts, the powers that are and were always determined what the church was to believe. Most if very little really found in the written word. The call it orthodoxy! A misnomer for false church, false prophets and leaders who sought the sheep to follow them for the sake of gain!
They were wise enough to do such things, and managed to do so in many places, but that is the beautiful part of God's true Word, Jesus Christ, the one to whom gives us the Spirit, to know and understand scripture, it is not the words, being perfectly written that gives life, it is not the doctrines or creeds, or sacrodotal exercises of men, that give us life, but it is the story, of God's love to send one man, by speaking life into the womb of a woman named Mary and the bringing forth of Him who lived a life as a human but who listened to the DIVINE Spirit of God within Him, to direct His every thought and action.
It wasn't Jesus argument that the Old Testament had been re-interpreted by the Jews, but that they in thinking by worship of the books would give them life, as if every specific word written in them had some magic to change their hearts, no matter how they wanted to read it, no matter how they studied it, no matter how much they worshipped the Torah, they couldn't find life on those words. The law was a school master to show them there need for
Christ.
Christians cannot find life in the words alone, even if they had never been tampered with, or italicised, or added to, or taken away from or re-interpreted by man's traditions of the hierarchy and the institutional church. A man could read the Bible from beginning to end, over and over again, and yet never find the life of God, that was intended for Him. It is the Living Word that must be spoken into a man's heart, and by the Holy Spirit.
It is Jesus by His Spirit that gives life, It is the overall story of the redemption of men, that give's one life, not that every single word in the book, hasn't or has been tampered with.
It is not the creed of teaching on hell or heaven, or rapture or no rapture, or devil or no devil, that gives life-
it is God through His Son Jesus Christ from which TRUE life comes.
It would pay todays evangelicals to keep the book worship out of their sermons, the building worship as if God needs a house built by men, and the worship as something you do once a week at church out of their sermons and instead focus on the life of Christ within the believer, and that true worship is not what one does on Sunday but how one lives their life in every aspect Monday through Sunday, 24 and 7, for this is worship- to love the Lord thy God with all your heart and mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. This is true worship to live that out in every aspect of life, day in and day out.
Paul made it clear time after time, if the preacher wants to put emphasis on what the Bible says and doesnt say, Paul rebuked and Stephen rebuked and even God rebuked those back in Isaiah who thought that a building held God's presence.
It would pay the Pastor to not only to stand as he says on what he thinks it says, but to stand on those things which are true and not just acceptable by the religious community.
It is like in the New Testament where it says, that there were many that believed but they wouldnt follow Jesus, for fear they would be kicked out of the Temple-- then the Bible says in very clear words for they loved the respect of men more then they did God, so they didnt' follow Jesus.
I challenge any evangelical preacher to seek Christ and not his suppositions, his taught traditions, and his religion, but to seek God with all his heart up and above all his preconceived ideas based largely on man's traditions and teachings, and He will discover the " spirit of the word which gives life".
It is very clear that the "letter of the word brings death".
It is very clear that people's trust is not to be in a book but in the living Jesus Christ. Jesus made this very clear to the Pharisees.
There He was the LIVING WORD, not the ink on tablets, not on stone, but the LIVING WORD that is written on the hearts of men.
This is the story, that God came to restore men to a place with Him, as son's and daughters, and He took the first begotten to bring about many begotten children by the spiritual life of Christ to live within them. Unless a man is spiritual he can't understand spiritual things, only carnal things. The carnal mind is at enmity with God. The fleshly mind comes up with myths, traditions, and philosphies of men, and pagans, and then re-interprets the written word to read to himself, just what they want it to read.
It pays to not just read the words in a book, but to examine, their meaning, their context, the culture and time for which it was written.
It pays to reason, God didnt give us minds to put on a shelf and be left there to just believe the word of preachers, denominations, or so called orthodoxy, God calls us to test all things- for many anti-christ have gone out into the world.
He tells us come let us reason together, He tells us to study and show ourselves worthy, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Study involves an open mind in which we let the Spirit of God give meaning without going in and reading with preconceived and taught meanings.
We need to be open to God to speak to us. The biggest problem for the Christians today is everyone has a different doctrine , a different interpretation and thus people ask like Pilate, did, "what is truth".
I can tell you the Holy Spirit is to be your only true teacher, and when the Spirit is, the doctrines and letter of the word along with the the thousands of interpretations of that will go away and it will result in only one thing- The Truth- which is Jesus Christ, not the letter of the Word, but the LIVING WORD..
Now in saying that, are you to doubt that every word written in it, is there just as God intended it to be grammatically, liguistically, culturally, theologically, the answer is YES!
You are to doubt that it is actually translated correctly, that nothing has been added, or taken away, that no interpretation is preconceived in reading it. so you will investigate, search, study, and find out what is actually there, and be taught of the Holy Spirit, as I John makes it very clear we are to do. The Pastors, priest and other hierarchy of the church world don't want you to do that, that would take away your reliance upon them versus the Holy Spirit teaching you, and to be quite honest, when you find the Truth, they will be mostly out of the jobs in the sense in the way they practice now.
They will be unable to have you worship them, seek them for spiritual guidance rather than God's Spirit within you, His gracious gift that replaces the priest of Old and you will worship in Spirit and in Truth, not in a building or under a steeple, instead you will become His people.
I put the challenge before you. I won't argue with such ignorant worship of a book, I will argue for the worship which is true toward Christ, and yes it is this book that tells of Him, not how to live, but who is alive and Who can come inside and live their life for you, through you and as you. It's about restoration from death to life, and His resurrection that brings us life here and now, and how that life will continue into eternity because of the work He did, and not we ourselves.
It is time for preachers to quit telling their congregation to worship written words but to worship the living Word, and that will change a man, to love. To love God, and His fellow men, and it will not divide, like the preachers have divided the body of Christ into a thousand different book worshippers, and if there was or is a DEVIL he must laugh in glee when he looks at the church as it is , divided in doctrines, creeds, man's traditions, and surely not fulfilling, the oneness and unity of the body of Christ as the true Ekklesia- the called out one's of God.
I close with this from Jesus words, and I beleive the Bible, by the Spirit, and by the Spirit and my studies of the Greek and Hebrew these words didnt get changed.
39"[a](A)You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;

How American Preachers Incited Revolution

I want to post an article here because I want people to realize the part that the organized church has always played in the politics of America. I want to talk about at a later date, the influence of ideas that still play the largest part to American foreign policy today and war. There will be many that will disagree, and that is the wonderful thing about being a Christian is if we have love for one another, we can disagree- agreeably. So, news for the next few weeks will probably encompass a lot of my interpretation of these events, where they originate from, and how a lie is continually propagated on the American Christian. The organized church has only since the 1800's began to believe these things, and it all started with men by the last name of Darby and Scofield. Let me tell you right now, I am not a premillenialist, nor do I believe in the physical restoration of the physical kingdom of Israel as a promise unfulfilled but fulfilled now as of their occupation of 1949. Israel recieved the promise land in the physical, many times but lost it because of their unbelief. I strongly believe that the Zionist are playing politics with a twist of the truth of what Jesus was trying to tell the Zionist even back when He walked this earth, and because of the concepts popularized by two men and in the 1800's and the most recent series of books written on the "Last Days" we are as a nation being led by the nose into the present circumstances we find ourselves. I won't say more, as there are pages that can be written by my how I came to these conclusions. I am not anti-semitic nor do I have a hatred for any race of people. I do believe truth needs to be told, now my truth may not be yours but perhaps you haven't really given thought to these things and because of the popularity of books like "The Rapture" and Armageddon, etc, by Bruce Larson and his co-writers, we have become even more enamored with these ideals of the physical and American Christians may be missing the whole point of Revelations and Christ's soon coming return. Anyway, for those that do want to say something about the churches influence in the forming of this country, this will give them ammunition, but in truth, the purpose of this story is to show how the church can influence political changes and propagate something it believes in. Perhaps the fault today, to the problems we have as Americans can be laid at the foot of Pre-Millenial, DISPENSATIONAL stories and teachings that continue to be propagated by the organized churches preachers.
You have every right to disagree, but don't let it change our love for one another.
This is a copied article from Christianity Today- Church History. It wasn't written by me. I think it will reveal the strong influence preaching had on the Revolution of 1776. I have a differing opinion as to whether it was Christian belief or not.

How Preachers Incited Revolution
Angry colonists were rallied to declare independence and take up arms because of what they heard from the pulpit.
By Harry S. Stout

No turning back.
At the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) Americans suffered 441 casualties and the British 1,150. Though a strategic victory for the British, English nerve was shaken, the colonists were emboldened, and any hope for peaceful reconciliation was lost.

It's 1775. The year 1787, with its novel constitution and separation of church and state is a long 12 years away. At the moment, you and your friends are just a bunch of outlaws.

You've heard the debates in Parliament over taxation and representation; you've seen British troops enforce royal supremacy at the point of a bayonet. Your king, George III, and Parliament have issued a declaration asserting their sovereignty in "all cases whatsoever" in the colonies. You are, at least in New England, a people under siege with British troops quartered in Boston. You've dumped tea into Boston's harbor in a fit of rage and had your port closed.

Who will you turn to now for direction? There are no presidents or vice-presidents, no supreme court justices or public defenders to call on. There are a handful of young, radical lawyers, like the Adams cousins, John and Samuel, but they're largely concentrated in cities, while you and most of your friends live in the country. In many colonies, including Massachusetts, there are not even elected governors or councilors—they have all been appointed by the British crown and are answerable to it.

Where you turn is where you have habitually turned for over a century: to the prophets of your society, your ministers.

The American Revolutionary era is known as the "Golden Age of Oratory." What school child has not heard or read Patrick Henry's immortal words, "Give me liberty or give me death"? Who has not seen reenactments or heard summaries of Ben Franklin's heroic appearance before a hostile British Parliament?

Yet often lost in this celebration of patriotic oratory is the key role preaching played in the Revolutionary movement.

TV, INTERNET AND MORE
A few broad statistics can help us appreciate more fully the unique power the sermon wielded in Revolutionary America.

Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!

The pulpits were Congregational and Baptist in New England; Presbyterian, Lutheran, and German Reformed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and Anglican and Methodist in the South. But no matter the denomination, colonial congregations heard sermons more than any other form of oratory. The colonial sermon was prophet, newspaper, video, Internet, community college, and social therapist all wrapped in one. Such was the range of its influence on all aspects of life that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.

Eighteenth-century America was a deeply religious culture that lived self-consciously "under the cope of heaven." In Sunday worship, and weekday (or "occasional") sermons, ministers drew the populace into a rhetorical world that was more compelling and immediate than the physical settlements surrounding them. Sermons taught not only the way to personal salvation in Christ but also the way to temporal and national prosperity for God's chosen people.

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God's. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist, to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God's providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors. Colonial congregations saw themselves as the "New Israel," endowed with a sacred mission that destined them as lead actors in the last triumphant chapter in redemption history.

Thus colonial audiences learned to perceive themselves not as a ragtag settlement of religious exiles and eccentrics but as God's special people, planted in the American wilderness to bring light to the Old World left behind. Europeans might ignore or revile them as "fanatics," but through the sermon, they knew better. Better to absorb the barbs of English ridicule than to forget their glorious commission.

For over a century, colonial congregations had turned to England for protection and culture. Despite religious differences separating many colonists from the Church of England, they shared a common identity as Englishmen, an identity that stood firm against all foes. But almost overnight, these loyalties were challenged by a series of British imperial laws. Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765 and running through the "Boston Massacre" of 1770, the Tea Act of 1773, and finally, martial law in Massachusetts, patriotic Americans perceived a British plot to deprive them of their fundamental English rights and their God-ordained liberties.

In the twentieth-century, taxation and representation are political and constitutional issues, having nothing to do with religion. But to eighteenth-century ears, attuned to lifetimes of preaching, the issues were inevitably religious as well, so colonists naturally turned to their ministers to learn God's will about these troubling matters.

TYRANNY IS "IDOLATRY"
When understood in its own times, the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event. This is especially true in New England, where the first blood was shed.

By 1775 the ranks of Harvard- and Yale-educated clergymen swelled to over600 ministers, distributed throughout every town and village in New England. Clergymen surveyed the events swirling around them; by 1775 liberals and evangelicals, Congregationalists and Presbyterians, men and women—all saw in British actions grounds for armed resistance.

In fact, not only was it right for colonists to resist British "tyranny," it would actually be sinful not to pick up guns.

How did they come to this conclusion? They fastened on two arguments.

First, they focused on Parliament's 1766 Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had sovereignty over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." For clergymen this phrase took on the air of blasphemy. These were fighting words not only because they violated principles of representative government but even more because they violated the logic of sola Scriptura ("Scripture alone") and God's exclusive claim to sovereignty "in all cases whatsoever."

From the first colonial settlements, Americans—especially New England Americans—were accustomed to constraining all power and granting absolute authority to no mere human being.

For Reformed colonists, these ideas were tied up with their historic, covenant theology. At stake was the preservation of their identity as a covenant people. Not only did Parliament's claims represent tyranny, they also represented idolatry. For colonists to honor those claims would be tantamount to forsaking God and abdicating their national covenant pledge to "have no other gods" before them.

In a classic sermon on the subject of resistance entitled A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Boston's Jonathan Mayhew, a liberal(he favored Unitarianism), took as his text Romans 13:1-6, in which Paul enjoins Christians to "be subject unto the higher powers." The day he picked for this sermon was portentous—it came on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, when Anglican ministers routinely abhorred the Puritan revolution, and Puritans routinely kept silent. Mayhew would not keep silent.

For centuries, rulers had used this text to discourage resistance and riot. But circumstances had changed, and in the chilling climate of impending Anglo-American conflict, Mayhew asked if there were any limits to this law? He concluded that the law is binding only insofar as government honors its "moral and religious" obligations. When government fails to honor that obligation, or contract, then the duty of submission is likewise nullified. Submission, in other words, is not unlimited.

Rulers, he said, "have no authority from God to do mischief. … It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors God's ministers." Far from being sinful, resistance to corrupt ministers and tyrannical rulers is a divine imperative. The greater sin lies in passively sacrificing the covenant for tyranny, that is, in failing to resist.

Who determines whether government is "moral and religious"? In the Revolutionary era, the answer was simple: the individual. There were no established institutions that would support violent revolution. Ultimate justification resided in the will of a people acting self-consciously as united individuals joined in a common cause. Where a government was found to be deficient in moral and spiritual terms, the individual conscience was freed to resist.

AMERICA: A NEW HEAVEN
Clergy in the Revolutionary era reminded people not only what they were fighting against, namely tyranny and idolatry, but also what they were fighting for: a new heaven and a new earth.

Many early American settlers arrived believing they were part of the New Israel, that they would be instruments for Christ's triumphant return to earth. Interpretations varied on whether the last days would be marked by progressive revelations and triumphs (the "postmillennial" view), or whether they would be marked by sudden judgments and calamities (the "pre millennial" view), or some combination thereof. But all agreed the present was portentous, and American colonists were going to play a direct role in the great things looming.

Wars, first with France and later with England, accelerated these millennial speculations. In fighting against England and George III, people felt they were at once fighting against the Antichrist in a climactic battle between good and evil, tyranny and freedom.

Freedom and liberty (like individual) were both political and religious terms. They helped not only preserve fundamental human rights but also sustain loyalty to Christ and to sola Scriptura. So closely intertwined were the political and religious connotations, it was virtually impossible for colonists to separate them.

In his 1776 sermon on The Church's Flight into the Wilderness, Samuel Sherwood examined the prophecies in the Book of Revelation and concluded that American Christians were the "church in the wilderness," nurtured in a faraway hiding place and raised to battle and defeat Antichrist. He argued that the powers of Antichrist were "not confined to the boundaries of the Roman empire, nor strictly to the territory of the pope's usurped authority." Rather, they extended to all enemies of Christ's church and people. He concluded that England's monarchy "appears to have many of the features and much of the temper and character of the image of the beast."

In only slightly more secular terms, the greatest pamphlet of the Revolutionary era invoked this millennial imagery. Thomas Paine's Common Sense was the runaway bestseller of the American Revolution. In time Paine would be unveiled as a wild-eyed deist, and worse, an atheist. But you couldn't guess that from Common Sense. It read like a sermon. Paine knew his audience well, and he knew what biblical allusions would bring them to arms.

His sermonic pamphlet begins by berating George III as the "royal brute" of England, noting that monarchy, like aristocracy, had its origins among ruffians who enforced their "superiority" at the point of a sword. Then they masked this brute coercion with the trappings of refined culture and regal bearing. Nevertheless, "How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!" He then identifies the monarchy with tyranny, and tyranny with idolatry and blasphemy. Paine traces in elaborate detail Israel's "national delusion" in requesting a king as did other nations, and God's subsequent displeasure at a "form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven."

From scriptural precedent, Paine, the revivalist of revolt, concludes, "These portions of Scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the Scripture is false."

Paine then went on to echo ministerial visions of a new millennial age. With unmitigated confidence, Paine reiterated John Winthrop's 17th-century Puritan vision of America as a "city upon a hill." But unlike Winthrop, Paine's millennial city was modeled on republican principles (rather than hierarchical)and religious toleration (rather than state-enforced conformity). With words certain to thrill, he likened the colonists to a young tree on which small characters were carved, characters of liberty and freedom. In time this tree would grow huge, and with it, the characters boldly would proclaim the birth of a new adventure in freedom that would be seen throughout the world.

Many colonists were fearful that, if they failed, their leaders would be hung as traitors and the people enslaved in tyranny. But Paine exulted, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom. … How trifling, how ridiculous do the little paltry cavillings of a few weak or interested men appear when weighed against the business of a world."

With rhetoric like this, Paine fused the liberal Mayhew's defense of resistance with an evangelical-like appeal to passion. It is not surprising that liberals and evangelicals united in "the business of a world."

VOICE OF HOPE AND COURAGE
No minister studied the rapidly unfolding events against scriptural teachings more closely than did Concord's 32-year-old minister, William Emerson(grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson). For a long time, his world had been dominated by local concerns and salvation preaching. But all of this changed in March and April 1775, when all the members of his congregation were propelled into what he termed "the greatest events taking place in the present age."

By March, Emerson and other Concord patriots knew that British spies had infiltrated their town and informed General Thomas Gage of a hidden armory and munitions supplies stocked by the local "Sons of Liberty" (a secret society of radicals). Many believed Gage was planning a preemptive strike on these supplies, and they feared for their lives. At a muster of the Concord militia on March 13, Emerson preached a sermon on 2 Chronicles 13:12: "And behold, God himself is with us for our captain. … O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper" (KJV).

Never would he deliver a more momentous sermon. He had it within his means to promote or discourage an almost certainly violent call to arms. What was he to say? What was God's will for his American people?

With obvious agitation, Emerson began his sermon with the somber note that recent intelligence warned of "an approaching storm of war and bloodshed." Many in attendance would soon be called upon for "real service." Were they ready? Real readiness, Emerson explained, depended not only on martial skill and weaponry but also on moral and spiritual resolve. To be successful, soldiers must believe in what they were fighting for, and they must trust in God's power to uphold them. Otherwise they would scatter in fear before the superior British redcoats.

What were the men of Concord fighting for? In strident political terms that coupled the roles of prophet and statesman, Emerson argued for colonial resistance. For standing by their liberties and trusting only in God, the American people were "cruelly charged with rebellion and sedition." That charge, Emerson cried, was a lie put forward by plotters against American liberty. With all of the integrity of his sacred office behind him, Emerson took his stand before the Concord militia:

"For my own part, the more I reflect upon the movements of the British nation … the more satisfied I am that our military preparation here for our own defense is … justified in the eyes of the impartial world. Nay, for should we neglect to defend ourselves by military preparation, we never could answer it to God and to our own consciences of the rising [generations]."

The road ahead would be difficult, Emerson cautioned, but the outcome was one preordained from the beginning of time. Accordingly, the soldiers could go forth to war assured that "the Lord will cover your head in the day of battle and carry you on from victory to victory." In the end, he concluded, the whole world would know "that there is a God" in America.

On April 19, the mounting apprehensions became fact as 800 British troops marched on Lexington and Concord to destroy the patriot munitions. At Lexington, Gage's troops were met by a small "army of observation," who were fired upon and sustained 17 casualties. From there the British troops marched to Concord. Before their arrival, the alarm had been sounded by patriot silversmith Paul Revere, and militiamen rushed to the common. William Emerson arrived first, and he was soon joined by "minutemen" from nearby towns. Again a shot was fired—the famed "shot heard 'round the world"—and in the ensuing exchange, three Americans and twelve British soldiers were killed or wounded. America's colonial war for independence had begun.

Words like Emerson's continued to sound for the next eight years, goading, consoling, and impelling colonists forward in the cause of independence. The pulpit served as the single most powerful voice to inspire the colonists.

For most American ministers and many in their congregations, the religious dimension of the war was precisely the point of revolution. Revolution and a new republican government would enable Americans to continue to realize their destiny as a "redeemer nation." If time would prove that self-defined mission tragically arrogant, it was not apparent to the participants themselves. With backs against the wall, and precious little to take confidence in, words like those of Mayhew's, Emerson's, and Paine's were their only hope.

Harry Stout is Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale University. He is author of The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford).