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I wrote this book with the title Revolution and not the American Revolution because it is my contention, and I don't really think it's debatable that the American Revolution is the only revolution in the history of the world that was successful, that did what it promised to do. They did not fail miserably the way the French Revolution did. I mean, it's an amazing thing sometimes that people are talking about the. The spirit of 76, you know, about the spirit of 1789, which was the French Revolution. That's the same spirit that gave us the Bolshevik Revolution.
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That.
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That is just a. A bloodbath of terror leading not in liberty for all, but. But leading in a dictator named Napoleon who crowns himself emperor. That's a pretty bad trade. You don't like the king and you get an emperor. I think you lose. Right? But the reason that our revolution was successful and the French Revolution was not successful, and the reason the Bolshevik Revolution is a demonic parody of a revolution and the Marxist revolutions or demonic parodies of revolution is because they forgot about God or they deliberately pushed God out of the picture. And in the course of writing my book, I didn't expect that I'm going to write a book about God's hand in American history or God's hand in the revolution, or. Or the Christian nature of the revolution. I just wanted to write a book about the American Revolution, Just a history book that you could give to anyone who's not a Marxist lunatic or actually give them three copies. But the fact of the matter is, I just wanted to write a history book, a book that tells the glorious stories of this epic narrative that led to the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world. It was not my intention to write a book that's talking about the Christian part of it, but in doing the research for this book, everywhere I looked, it becomes inescapable. It becomes embarrassing. Everywhere you look, you see that God is at the center of this project. You can't pretend that that's not true or that was just a few of them. The rest were deists. That is a vile lie, folks. And I'm here to declare it because I was shocked. I thought, you know, I'm looking at this thing critically, trying to understand what happened. And the American Revolution would have never come into reality if not for serious Christians being about God's business and understanding this idea of liberty and our rights coming from God. All of it is Christian. It's biblical, it's inescapably biblical. But they're not teaching that in schools. The mainstream media hates this stuff. If you. If you had the misfortune of seeing the Ken burns PBS story, 12 hours on the revolution, they don't get into this at all. They pretend that you could have an American Revolution, that you could have liberty, that you could even have the idea that we're all created equal without God. Where do you get the idea we're all created equal? I mean, if you believe in Darwin, if you don't believe in God, we are not created equal. There's nothing equal about us. Unless you look to the Holy Scriptures. That's where these ideas come from. All the ideas of revolution come out of the scripture, and that is inescapable. But liberal or leftist secularists have been pushing these ideas that you can get liberty and human rights and all this different stuff apart from the Bible, you cannot. There's no way that you can get it. And it's kind of scandalous that they have brazenly pushed that lie out into the American population so that many people don't know the truth of our history. You look all around the world, even in Europe today, they don't have any kind of liberty. If you put out an unpleasant meme out there on the Internet, they can arrest you. I feel like I'm making that up. I'm not making that up. This is real, and it's sick, and it's true. We need to know what we have is very special in this country. It is, in fact, unique. It is unique. Nothing in the world compares to this. And it's not because we're any better than anybody. We're the same. Human beings are the same all around the world. But we have been privileged to live in this nation, and we need to know our history. We need to know our story. It's why I wrote the book. I said, I got to write a book that says everything in one volume. And again, it's just stories. This is not about anything. It just starts with how did it begin? You know, how did it begin? After the. The British win the French and Indian war, they have doubled their empire. They've also doubled their national debt. And they go like, okay, now we got to tax the colonies to pay for some of that. That's how it all begins. And then it goes on from there. But at the heart of all of these stories are these men who understood God's idea of who we are, of what liberty is. And you need to know that that's not, again, some Christian version of our history. That is our history. And all of the men involved in the revolution, they saw it that way. And so I always hear, oh, they were deists. That's baloney. A couple of them might have been deists. I'll tell you one thing. George Washington was no deist. That man was a Christian. Most of them were Christians. Almost all of them. I should say almost all. All of them are Christians. And almost all of them had a consciousness that what we're trying to do in forming this new nation that had. It wasn't just a new nation. It was a new kind of nation in the world. What they were trying to do was a reprisal of the Sinai covenant. In other words, in their minds, we're coming out from under Pharaoh, we're coming out of Egypt, we're coming out of slavery, and we're going to be in the wilderness alone, looking to the Lord directly. They understood that idea. And this is not, again, a couple of them. They all understood this idea. In fact, Samuel Adams gives a speech, August 1, 1776. Right. So this is the day before they officially sign the Declaration of independence. It's August 1st. He's giving a speech to the members of Congress. So as a member of Congress, giving a speech to the members of Congress. And what does he say in his speech? He says, we have restored the sovereign. Capital S. The sovereign. The king. We have restored the king. What does that mean? Well, it means we got rid of the earthly King, George iii, and we have restored the true sovereign, the true king, who is the Lord of hosts. They understood this. They were explicit about this. How come we're not learning this in school? How come we're not learning this when we watch 12 Hours on PBS, they avoid this. They can't stand this idea. And what I find funny, too, is that when you tell the true story is exciting and heroic and inspiring. I hope my book is that I didn't invent the stories. I'm just telling you the true stories. It should be exciting, and you should be coming away from it thinking they should have never succeeded. But God intervened and they succeeded. And it's beautiful. And. And I say, the Ken Burns PBS version, it's kind of like if you would remake Rocky and you say, but this time, we don't want to make Rocky too much of a hero. He had some flaws. Can we focus on the flaws? It'll be more depressing. Let's do that. And you'll walk out of there and you'll be like, I don't know. I saw this movie and I don't really know who the good guy was. They both had their stories. You know, Apollo Creed, he had some good side to him. And Rocky, he had some problems. I, I get confused. It was kind of boring, but I paid the money and I had to see it. That's kind of when you take an exciting story and you just kind of focus on the gray areas and on the confusing stuff. And the story of the American Revolution, in most of our lifetimes, that version of it has been put out there that America's flawed and we're gonna focus on the flaws. We know it's flawed because we know we're flawed. Right? But you know, if we're gonna have a birthday party for you, we're not gonna focus on your flaws at the party. You know, we want to celebrate you. But leftists, But you understand, leftists in America are uncomfortable with celebrating anything because they have this Marxist view that if I celebrate something, it really means I'm putting down everything else. No, no, folks, you know, when I say God bless America, I'm not saying God damn every other nation. I'm not saying that, right? We say God bless America the way we say God bless you. I'm not cursing everybody. That, that's not you. But that's this sick kind of leftist worldview. It's a Marxist worldview. It's a zero sum game, right? Anything that's rises, everything else must go down. That's not the way God created the universe, but that's their version of things. And so we need to know the truth about American history. The truth about American history is beautiful and God is at the center. And the only good stuff about it is God is at the center, okay? Because all goodness comes from God. And so when you hear all lies, like all the founders were slave owners, that is another lie. A third of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners. One third. And let me tell you, the men who really pushed for this idea of independence were fire breathing Christians who despised slavery. They despised the idea that Georgia and South Carolina could force them to strike passages out for the the Declaration of Independence. Are you hearing that story? They don't tell you that story on pbs. They don't tell you that story in the New York Times. They want to focus on the negative. They want to pretend that, you know, the whole American thing is just a flawed, sad thing. And it is not. It is a beautiful thing. And it's not just beautiful because we say it's beautiful. If you know the stories and you know the true truth behind it, it is Inescapably beautiful. It's an idea of people saying, we want to bring God's ideas into. Into government and into create a nation that reflects God's views of things. That is the truth of the story. And again, even if you don't like it, it's the truth, right? And even if you don't want to believe it. This is how the founders themselves talked about it. And I say this in the epilogue to my book. It's called what is the Meaning of America? It's that can we understand that the people behind the American Revolution, this is how they saw it. They saw it that God providentially allowed all of these Christian dissidents to come away from persecution in Europe, to come to a new land to worship God and to want to spread his gospel. That this was God's idea in history. And that 150 years later, they decide together, 13 colonies to form a nation that is based on these ideas. And many of them, and no one greater than John Adams saw this as a moment in history ordained by God for God's purposes in history. That's how they saw it. So we can say all we want about what we think. How did they see it? What did they say? When John. When Samuel Adams says, we have restored the sovereign, he's talking to Congress. He's not talking to his Bible study group, he's talking to Congress. Everyone in Congress understood this is the narrative. We're coming out of Egypt and we're now going to look directly to the Lord. Some of you know the story George Whitefield preached up and down the 13 colonies in the 1740s and 50s and 60s. And the great Awakening caused many people's faith to burst into flame. And they understood this idea. No king but Jesus. We look to the Lord directly. We. We don't look to any man. And the governor and the king, they have to bow to the Lord just as we do. Those are radical ideas that come out of the Scripture. And so by the time you get to the 1760s and 70s, the Americans, they're aware of this stuff. So when the British try to come in and say, we want to govern you again, or we're going to reassert our rights in the thirteen colonies, they say, no, you can't do that. We bow to the Lord. We don't bow to an earthly king, and we are free. We are free. And we do not take that idea lightly. We're not cynical. The Americans were a part of the research for the book. What I was amazed by is to see The Christian nature of the thirteen colonies, how strong this was and how it did inform what they were doing and how the culture was. Was profoundly Christian. And I sometimes people say, well, again, that was a few people. It's not a few people. In fact, the idea of the Sinai covenant, this idea that we are, our rights come from God and we're going to leave an earthly king and we're going to look directly to the Lord as they did in Sinai, as the Israelites did. That was true of everyone in the Congress, understood that narrative. And the least religious in Congress, we'd say, well, maybe Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, both of those men were asked to design a seal for the new nation. Benjamin Franklin comes up with the image of Moses in Sinai overseeing the parting of the Red Sea. Can you imagine? This is Benjamin Franklin. If you come up with an image that crystallizes, what is this new nation? His image, Benjamin Franklin, is Moses overseeing the parting of the Red Sea and Pharaoh drowning. That. That's Benjamin Franklin coming up with an image from the Old Testament to represent America. What does Thomas Jefferson say? People say, well, he wasn't a true Christian. Okay, what does he say about who America is? He says his image that he wanted on the seal is the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness following the pillar of fire and the cloud. That's Thomas Jefferson. They all got the memo. This was America. This is what we're doing. This was not some little group of Christians and the rest were deists. That's a lie. And if you learn nothing else from my book, it's just that those are lies that have been pushed on us by leftists who. They just are uncomfortable with these ideas. We've even heard recently, you know, members of Congress and the Senate, dumbfounded by the idea that our rights come from God. It's. How bad could things get that you have members in the Senate? I mean, we know they're corrupt and stupid. We already knew that. But to admit publicly they're applauding that. To admit publicly that you don't understand the concept that our rights come from God, that is so embarrassing. I cringe and in embarrassment, but that's where we are. How do you get to this place in America? Well, it's by not teaching this stuff for 30 or 40 or 50 years or by the mainstream media pushing these ideas that America is flawed and we're not founded on ideas from God and whatever all these lies. George Washington, how many times have you heard, oh, he's a deist. I know that. They mention it in the Ken Burns documentary. But I mean, I've heard this endless times. Oh, he was a deist. He was a deist. That is absolutely preposterous, untrue, ridiculous. What does George Washington do? The first thing he does when he is given the reins of power as the commander in chief of the Continental army, he goes to Boston to take charge. He strictly orders all of his officers in his orders of the day that your men, I don't want swearing, drinking, gambling. I want them to attend divine services on Sunday. They must do this. Why would he do that? Now I'll tell you why. Because they all bought into this idea of covenant. I mentioned the Sinai covenant. In other words, that we need God's favor in this war. If God does not bless our efforts in this sacred cause, we will lose. So we want to curry favor with God by behaving in a way that honors him. That's he's. We're obedient to him and we're not just some army. We want God to smile on our cause and we beseech him, the King of Glory, to smile in our cause. And we will comport ourselves in a way that God will see we're serious, that we want to honor him because we're serving him in what we're doing. We're not just fighting some war. The British were on the opposite side of the equation. The British sneered at the faith of the Americans. They sneered at the Americans as Christian as they were. And I saw this in all my research and it's in the book. The British were. It's kind of like if you think of the Hollywood elites governing, you know, the congregation of this church, their views, they speak the same language, they live in the same country. They are not only having different views from you, they sneer at your views. They think you're just a bunch of ignorant religious hypocrites. And I know three of you here are, but I'm not going to. I'm not talking about you, you know who you are. But the point is that they can't even imagine that people would be dumb enough to believe that stuff. They sneer at it. The British sneered at the faith of. One phrase they use is the Bible faced Yankees. They just mocked the faith, especially in Massachusetts Bay Colony, that all these Puritans going to church and all concerned about the Sabbath, they mocked it. But not only did they mock it, not only were they cynical and corrupt. The British elites I'm talking about, but when the war started, the way they fought the war again, I was doing My research, I was amazed. I had never heard about this, but they were barbaric. First of all, if you have a worldview that doesn't include God, you're going to be barbaric. Why would you be kind and generous and gracious and civil and merciful? Why, if you are. If God is not part of the picture, you're all about power. You're all about crushing the weak. And. And that the Americans would dare to assert themselves in that way, we will crush you. And we have the biggest army and navy in the world and we will crush you. That was their attitude. But not only that, the way they fought, they were barbaric. Americans would surrender and they would bayonet them to death. The prison ships, the Americans who were taken prisoner. It was virtually a death sentence. It's too gruesome to talk about the way the British hired Hessian mercenaries and Native American mercenaries. Why? Because they knew that the Native Americans and the Hessians had no compunction about terrorizing civilian populations. And there's much more, worse stuff that I won't talk about. But we had a different story. The Americans said, no, we want to honor God, including in how we fight. And Washington was very strict with his officers. We will never stoop to what the British will do. That barbarism, what they have been doing. We will never stoop to that. We will treat our prisoners and the people that surrender to us. We will give them quarter. We will treat them with mercy as we would want to be treated with mercy. Yes, there are prisoners, but we will treat them in a way that shows that we believe that. That they have dignity because they're made in God's image. But the British had a completely different view. And the British, as I say, they were famously sinful and dissolute. The head of their armies, the counterpart to George Washington, General Howe, he was known everywhere to have a mistress while he has a wife in England, he had a mistress here. It wasn't a secret. Everyone knew. Everyone knew. This is how the British officers took behave. They do as they like. It was exactly the opposite in Washington's army. And why? Again, because Washington and our side knew we have to honor God. We have to honor God with our virtue. We have to honor God in how we fight. We're the good guys. We don't do what they do. It's not about just winning. We believe if we honor God, he will give us the victory. But we don't want to win any other way. That is the heart and soul of America. That is the heart and soul of how we came into being 250 years ago. And that is who we have always been. Anytime we've strayed from that, we suffer. Anytime we stray from that, God does not bless us. But when we honor God, he blesses us. And that's the only way we can make America great again is by honoring the Lord. Because that's how America was great from the beginning and has been great when we've honored God and we've looked to him and not to man. So the question is always, you know, do you trust the Lord enough to do that? Do you trust the Lord enough not to do what the other guy is doing, but to say, I'm gonna do what God called me to do, and God will have my back. I don't need to worry. Right? You get a lot of pastors from pulpits preaching. In a way, they're worried that they're gonna lose a big tither in the back row, so they don't talk about this issue or. Or that issue. Well, let me tell you something. You don't have a pastor like that. Your pastor will say what he thinks God wants him to say, and God will bless him. And he's obviously blessed this church. And that is. That is the question for every single one of us. Are you living your life that way, in covenant with the Lord that you say, I want the Lord to bless me, so I'm going to obey. Now, a lot of people would say, oh, that's works righteousness. That's not works righteousness, folks. That is living out your faith, okay? Because you know, you can't earn your salvation, but you want the Lord to bless you. You want the Lord to walk with you through your difficulties and difficult marriages and difficult things in your family and difficult stuff in business. We all have trials and difficult stuff. You want the Lord to walk with you, then you need to honor him in how you live. If there's any sin in your life, get rid of it yesterday. Otherwise, God will not walk with you, because he cannot walk with somebody who does not acknowledge him in all their ways. And that's a fact that the Lord, he says to us, I will not force you to obey me, but if you obey me, if you love me, I will be with you. And the fact of the matter is that that is how the American soldiers and the American elites fighting this war, they knew this was true. They knew we have to honor God or we cannot win. And time and time again, miracles happened. Washington wrote of it over and over again. He Says, I've seen God's hand. He knew that they should have lost, but that if you're fighting a sacred cause, if you're doing what you think God called you to do, you cannot fail. Even if you fail, you win. So the point is, Washington understood this. And there came a moment in 1777. So this is in the middle of 1777. The British armies had taken Philadelphia. Finally, they got Philadelphia. And so Congress gets out of there because they've been in Philadelphia. They get out of there, and they're hiding in New York or Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And John Adams talks about a gloomy aspect, things are looking bad. And once again, Samuel Adams preaches a sermon. And he says to his fellow members of Congress that we have honored God in how we have fought. We have honored God in what we've been doing. We will continue to honor God, and we are involved in a sacred cause for God's purposes, and we all know this. Therefore, good tidings will soon arrive. Imagine having that kind of faith to say, like, I know good tidings will arise. God will not let us down because we have honored him, and we will not cease from honoring him. So he makes this statement, and we've all heard people kind of make statements, right? Christians make statements, you know. Well, the fact of the matter is he knew. He knew he had the discernment from the Holy Spirit to know that we have honored God. God has called us to this battle. God has called us to this conflict. And he says good tidings will soon arise. He says this in the summer of 1777. A few weeks later, they get the amazing news, the good tidings from Saratoga, that Burgoyne's army was crushed at Saratoga. We had an outrageous victory. The kind of a victory that changes everything. The whole war changes. The French say it looks like the Americans are going to win. We will join them. And I think you know how the war ended. Yes, I think you know that we ended up having a country. We only kept it for 20 or 30 years, but it was a good ride. Here we are, by the grace of God, 250 years later. Good tidings will soon arise. So I want to tell you there's a lot of fun stuff in the story of America. I've tried to include all the fun stuff in my book just because I think we need to know these fun stories. There's one crazy story of Ben Franklin and John Adams spent a night together in the same bed in a small room. You know, you read stuff, you think that's one of these apocryphal stories. It's not. John Adams writes all about it. They argued about whether to keep the window open. I mean, the whole thing is. It's hilarious. There's a lot of funny stuff that humanizes these figures. You realize these were real men. These were not demigods. Except for George Washington. He was definitely a demigod. No, I mean, it is kind of amazing, actually, when you get to know these are people, just as we are people. And frankly, the Lord wants us to be inspired by their stories. Not to say, well, they were different people. They were giants in those days. And we're just, you know, regular folks. No, no. We're supposed to look back and we're supposed to. To be encouraged and be inspired by the stories from the American Revolution. We're supposed to honor those lives and those stories by not only knowing them, but by trying to live it out in our own lives. Every one of us has an assignment from the Lord. Every one of us has an assignment, and the Lord's asking us to obey him, to covenant with him. The Lord, I'm going to obey you, and I'm going to walk with you. That's why we're here, folks. That's why. And I don't mean in church. I mean, that's why we're on this planet. And if you miss it, what a pity. And there are many who missed it. There were many during the time of the revolution. They said, which way is the wind going to blow? We don't want to side with the Patriots. We don't want to suffer. You know, we just want to. We just want to be fine. We just don't really want to invest anything in this. And there were many who foolishly sided with the British, but those who understood that what we're doing is God's idea, this is a holy cause, that. And this is a beautiful thing, and this is a moment in history where we get to be alive and potentially create a nation based on these ideas. That's never happened before. And today we revere them. And we should revere them, but we should emulate them. We have to know these stories. And, you know, you don't have to read my book, but it wouldn't kill you to buy three or four copies, I'll tell you that right now. But the point is, we are responsible for this information. And so I say to people, if you have the book, and you're like, well, I don't know if I want to read a big book. Well, first of All. Most people tell me it's easy reading. Praise God. I'm glad to hear that, as the author. But I'm also here to tell you you have a responsibility for this information. This is not for history buffs. This is for Americans. If you're an American, you need to know this stuff. And so I. And I say this to you simply to say that I think this is the Lord's will for America right now, that we revisit our story so that we can continue this story, so that we can continue to fight the revolution in our time and fight for liberty and stand for God as He has called us to do by his grace. God bless you. God bless America.
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O say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hail at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O' er the ramparts we watched Were so gallantly streaming and the rockets red glared the bombs burned Sing in air Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there O sing does that star spangled banner yet wa. O' Er the land of the free and no longer break. The grave.
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Amen. Amen. Praise his name. I'll leave you with Psalm 33:12. Blessed is the nation Whose God is the Lord. May our nation experience another great awakening, another great revival. May it begin with us. May we never take for granted our freedoms. Thank you very much, Martins. Thank you very much, Eric Metaxas. The book Revolution. I'm going to read it on vacation. Although. Although I need about 13 vacations to read it. But I. But I hear it's easy reading, so that's what I'm going to be doing. But seriously, pick up your book, everybody, and order it. You'll be blessed by it. Let's pray together. Father God, we just thank you for the freedoms we enjoy here in America. We celebrate 250 years of our freedoms, our independence. Lord, we give you praise for the greatest freedom we have in Christ, to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. We pray for another great revival across our nation. We pray for our president, we pray for Congress, all those who are in elected leadership roles, that you would give them wisdom, that you would be their counselor, that you would bless them and use them for your glory. And we thank you, Lord, for all the many men and women who've laid down their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy. May we never take for granted, Lord, what we have here in America. We hear time and again from people who have come from other countries. You have no idea what you have here in America, Lord, May we understand it and appreciate it. And may we give you glory, praise and honor for it. It's in Jesus name we pray all God's people said Amen. Amen. God bless you, everybody.