Mayflower Pilgrims
YouTube video: https://youtu.be/ehXwF_eXHqY
We have been ministering in Europe recently and one of the places where we ministered was in England. We also had a chance to visit the coast before our next ministry commitments in Germany and France.
We were blessed to stop by the coastal town of Plymouth, made famous because it was from that very place that the Pilgrims set sail in the Mayflower in 1620 to the New World.
After a harrowing journey of several weeks crossing the Atlantic Ocean, where they experienced heavy storms and horrible seasickness, they finally made landfall off the coast of Cape Cod in a place they named Plymouth, after the town where they had sailed from in England.
It was a rough journey for those on board, most of who were believers influenced by the Reformation, known as Puritans. Many of this particular group of Puritans were Separatist Puritans who didn’t feel reform could be achieved from within the establishment Church.
They were greatly influenced by Puritan preachers in England who were emphasizing the Great Commission and thus felt the need to help spread and establish the Gospel of Christ in other parts of the world, particularly in the New World.
Because of this, they were willing to endure the suffering that came with the journey and life in the New World, and thus sustained in this first permanent colony. Other colonies had been attempted before them, such as Jamestown, but most people froze or starved to death and those previous colonies fell apart.
The Mayflower Pilgrims’ Colony became the first permanent colony and thus the reason they are looked back upon as important spiritual pioneers of what would become America.
These were Christian believers who, influenced by the Reformation, sought to extend the Gospel into the New World, as well as the freedom to worship as they desired. Furthermore, they had good relations with the Native People for many decades and many scholars say that this lasted for at least 80 years.
These first Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower declared in their Compact that they had undertaken this journey, “for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith.”
As we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, let us be thankful for the willingness and sacrifice of these believers to risk their very lives in order to spread the Gospel of the Kingdom, thus laying a rich spiritual foundation that later helped give birth to the United States of America.
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