November 18, 2020 … Lou and Elizabeth Caverly
At a time so precarious now in America, with the November 4th Presidential election in dispute amidst hundreds of affidavits of voter fraud and illegality, we Christians must not lose hope or faith. Most of us are familiar with the broad outline of the Pilgrims’ history. We know they left England and sailed to Plymouth after a stay in Holland. Yet their actual story is filled with improbabilities, with the strong hand of God guiding them and helping them to settle in the New World.
The men and women who are known today as the Pilgrims came from a small village in central England named Scrooby. They were “Separatists” who wanted their church to be separate from the Church of England. Since church membership and attendance were required by that church, the members of the Scrooby congregation were soon met with persecution, leading to fines and imprisonment for some. In order to attain religious freedom, they decided to emigrate to Holland, where such freedom was the norm. We, too, are seeing the beginnings of Big Tech, Google, Facebook and Twitter total censorship – persecution of Christians surely soon to follow. All the Trumpers are now being cast off social media. What’s more, lists of them are being compiled for Bidenites to marginalize and persecute – no jobs for Trumpers!
The Pilgrims’ first two attempts were failures. So, we must not get discouraged by present widespread media and Democrat Party lies and BLM-Antifa viciousness. On one occasion, the captain of the ship the Pilgrims had chartered betrayed them to authorities. (A license was required to leave England and they were unable to obtain one.) On their second try, the men had been separated from the women. The ship carrying the men was swept out to sea in a storm and it took two weeks for the men to be reunited with their wives and children. All those who lost their jobs during COVID cuts can know the Pilgrims suffered greatly, too.
Their third attempt was a success and the Scrooby immigrants landed in Amsterdam. They soon moved to the Dutch city of Leyden. They remained there for about eleven years. Although they found the religious freedom they had sought, many of them were forced to take menial jobs. They were disturbed to find their children prematurely aging due to the strains of work. The young people were also beginning to assimilate with the Dutch and lose their English spiritual heritage. So, the Pilgrims decided to move once again, this time to the New World. Just as we Christians today in America cannot bear to see the Satanism of the left – changing our youth into “woke” puppets and pushing the murder of the unborn babies.
The Pilgrims’ faith in God is shown in the words of one of their leaders, William Bradford, when the time came to depart from Leyden: “So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.” We, too, must look to God and have faith He is in control.
In 1620, the voyage did not go as well as planned with the two ships, the Speedwell and the Mayflower. The Speedwell leaked so badly it had to be left behind. As a result, only about 102 of the people were able to make the voyage. These included both the original separatists from Scrooby (referred to by the Pilgrims as “Saints” and others (they called “Strangers”). When the Mayflower was about halfway to America, it encountered severe storms that caused a main beam of the ship to crack. This, in our opinion, is just where we are as Christian citizens of America right now. BLM-Antifa chaos in cities all summer, and now evil in control with election lawlessness. Our Constitution, like the Mayflower beam, is starting to crack. Instead of causing the Pilgrims to turn back to England, a large iron screw was found and used to reinforce the beam – a harbinger of early “American ingenuity.”
The Mayflower finally arrived at Provincetown on Cape Cod. Delays, including the leaks on the Speedwell, led to the late arrival of the Pilgrims in mid-November of 1620. By the time they explored the area and decided on a permanent home at Plymouth, it was December, not an auspicious time to establish a new settlement.
The first winter at Plymouth was called “The Starving Time” by the Pilgrims. About half of the original 102 immigrants had died by the time it had ended. Yet God did not abandon the Pilgrims. Two Indians, Samoset and Squanto, befriended the Pilgrims. By Divine Providence, both of them could speak English, having been taken to England aboard earlier ships. They advised the Pilgrims on how to plant and fertilize crops and helped establish peaceful relations between the Pilgrims and the native Indian tribes, a peace that would last as long as that first generation of Pilgrims survived.
Like the 70 million – largely Christian – Americans who voted for Trump presently protesting the tyranny of a stolen election, the Pilgrims, too, had many challenges to face. The investors who had loaned them money to make the voyage were insistent that the funds be paid back quickly, in spite of the Pilgrims initial poverty. Yet the colony grew and prospered as they trusted God’s Providence to provide for them. The Plymouth Colony was eventually absorbed in the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Today, visitors can see the reconstructed Pilgrim village at Plymouth and the replica of the Mayflower. We, too, need not fear for the ultimate future of our country and its Constitution, if we humble ourselves and turn back to Jesus Christ. Man and time can stand in awe of how God helped this small group of His devout followers persevere, so that their descendants three centuries later can see Plymouth Rock, reputed to be the place where the Pilgrims first stepped on the shore of Plymouth. Most of all, all of us their descendants can learn how the same faith and hope of the Scrooby Pilgrims, blessed by Almighty God, can be ours, today.
