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Woodrow Wilson said:
“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about…”
(1913. Robert Flood, The Rebirth of America (Philadelphia: The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986), p. 12)
Where did earlier generations get the idea we are to know our history? Why did our ancestors place so much emphasis on knowing our history? Could our present decline be rooted in the “national amnesia” so prevalent across our land?
While it may be a shock to some; America’s Founders got the idea they must communicate to their children the story of where they came from—right out of the Bible. It was the Pastors who taught the importance of remembering our history. They pointed out such commands by God as the one in Deuteronomy 32:7, which states:
“Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.”
Those early American Pastors realized that if we knew history well, we would see the over-ruling Providence of God: That God was in control of every event in this life on earth. That would establish that He was working a plan in this world, and that we were a part of that plan. This would give our lives meaning and purpose. It would establish the fact that we’re important to Him; not a chance meaningless accident between the accidents of birth and death—as evolution teaches us.
And, if we study history carefully, it becomes obvious that individuals have been the channel through which God has worked His plan: His-story. Thus, every life is of immense importance to Him. Unlike what humanism teaches, you don’t have to be a part of a group to be important. That very fact inspires us to great accomplishment.
Emma Willard was a well-known historian of the early 1800s; she noted the hand of God in our history when we wrote,
“In observing the United States, there is much to convince us, that an Almighty, Overruling Providence, designed from the first, to place here a great, united people.”
(Willard, Emma. History of the United States or, Republic of America. McDowell-Beliles, “The Providential Perspective” (Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, P.O. Box 6759, Charlottesville, Va. 22906, Jan. 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 2.)
The Pastors understood we must not fail to teach each generation the plan of God for America as well as the plan of God for their individual lives. They knew satan’s schemes would try to disconnect us from our past so we’d not know we were part of a great line of people God had called to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, beginning with our own children. One of them, Reverend A.W. Foljambe summed it up well. He wrote,
“The more thoroughly a nation deals with its history, the more decidedly will it recognize and own an over-ruling Providence therein, and the more religious a nation it will become; while the more superficially it deals with its history, seeing only secondary causes and human agencies, the more irreligious will it be.”
(Rev. A. W. Foljambe, Jan. 5, 1876)
Does that explain why it was planned to remove the acknowledgement of God’s workings in our history: why it was removed from the textbooks in our schools? Should we do what Nehemiah said to do when the destruction of his nation was threatened?
“And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.” (Nehemiah 4:14)
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.