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The little boy tugged at the young man’s coat sleeve. “How far is it to America?” he asked, “Will we soon be there?” “No, lad,” the man replied, “It will take many days to cross this huge ocean.” The little boy gazed briefly across the ocean to the west. Then, unaware of the risks of such a voyage, he ran to find his friend to tell him this ship, the Mayflower, would be their playground for a long time. The young man continued to gaze across the vast ocean. His thoughts drifted back twenty years—to the time he had first met these people he was now a part of.
He remembered the wonderful meetings they had in their homes in England. For the first time in his life he had felt accepted, really accepted. These people were genuine, somehow he just knew it. Though others were saying this group were bigots who thought they were the only ones who were right and that they had “gone off the deep end” with their religion, he knew the truth. These people were real. They people didn’t claim to be perfect. They readily admitted that they too were capable of selfishness. But the unique thing about them (that so set them apart from those who were against them) was that they had entered into an agreement to help each other not give into selfishness by letting their friends point it out to them. And the way they did it seemed safer to him than living the way his relatives did. Because they recognized their own bent toward selfishness, they didn’t trust their own thoughts alone. They had agreed to compare their thoughts about another member’s actions to what the Bible said about those actions. Those who were critical of them certainly didn’t live that way. As he had considered their agreement (which they called their “Covenant”) he had come to recognize this was the safest way to live on this earth and had decided that—no matter what anyone said—he would cast his lot with this group, who now referred to themselves as “Pilgrims”. The years had brought them much hardship, but also much maturity. The peace they enjoyed was worth all the difficulties of living in a world system which was against their Covenant.
They had felt its sting both in England and Holland. In England, the government and the church were fused together. The leaders in the state church used governmental authority to keep people from reading the Bible for themselves. The Pilgrims believed God wanted men to learn what He wrote for them in the Bible. Thus, eventually these Pilgrims had been forced to leave England and flee to Holland. In Holland the government did not keep them from worshiping anyway they wished. However, they encountered great difficulty another way. Holland’s economy was controlled by the government—in other words they had socialism in their economic system. After several years of struggling financially under this oppressive system, they had finally decided to trust all into the hands of their heavenly Father and make the dangerous voyage to America—with their families.
In America they would be the government. They would create an educational system which would teach the Gospel and every academic subject from the Gospel. They would create an economic system, the one the Bible teaches, called Free Enterprise. They would create the form of government God gave to Moses in Deuteronomy, known as a Biblical Republic. The rest is history. The Spirit of God through their lives filled these three institutions and developed the greatest nation in the history of the world.
At this thanksgiving, shouldn’t we be thankful to Jesus Christ, as they were, for what He did through them? Shouldn’t we be willing for Him to restore this nation to what He originally created it to be? Shouldn’t we be willing for Him to do that work—through us?
Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.