The Mayflower Pilgrims

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. 

Other videos on this topic:

• Plymouth's Pilgrims and their Christian Faith
• Martin Luther and the Reformation
• The Great Awakening 
• The Reformation and Revival and America's Roots

Happy Thanksgiving! The Reformation Simplified and the Early Pilgrims of America

Video: Plymouth's Pilgrims and the Christian Faith

Direct link: https://youtu.be/xRM3-jqexe0

As big a concept as “The Reformation” may sound, it really boils down to just a simple thing, which is those back in history who had personally experienced God’s grace and wanted to share it with others! 

 

Those reformers back in the Medieval Period who experienced this amazing grace saw that it was the central theme of the New Testament. They thus wanted others to know the truth but instead were met with resistance, a stubborn refusal to listen, and persecution. 

 

Grace is inherently free: its meaning in the Bible is “unmerited favor”. This grace is given freely to us simply through faith in Christ and not by any works or any performance of our own: 

 

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

 

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28-29)

 

“My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40) (There is a long list of Scriptures like this, which speak of God’s grace and mercy which we have compiled. You can have a free booklet of them sent to you by emailing us at info@graceworldmission.org).

 

Instead of receiving that grace themselves, stubborn adherence to dead traditions and rituals that garnered lucrative donations kept the institutional Church from listening and caused them to reject the truth.

 

Jesus and the Pharisees 

 

This is a story that goes all the way back to Jesus and the Pharisees: Christ appears on the scene fulfilling prophecy after prophecy to demonstrate who He is. He first speaks the truth in love, many receive His message and mercy, but the Pharisees—who are the religious leaders of that time—are so entrenched in their traditions and rituals that they attack Him instead of listening, so Jesus must confront their wayward behavior: 

 

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13)

 

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are…” (Matthew 23:15)

 

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness…You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:23-24)

 

Jesus admonished his followers not to act like them: 

 

“All their works they do to be seen by men... They love to sit uppermost at feasts, and to have the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called Rabbi by men. But you shall not suffer yourselves to be called Rabbi. For one is your Master, that is, Christ, and you are all brethren. And call no man upon the earth your father, for there is but one your Father, and he is in heaven. Do not be called teachers, for there is but one your Teacher, and he is Christ. He who is greatest among you will be your servant. But whosoever exalts himself, shall be brought low. And he who humbles himself, shall be exalted.” (Matthew 23:5-12)

 

Jesus offered grace and mercy to all and many received Him, but the Pharisees instead stubbornly held to their traditions and rituals and wouldn’t, so He confronted their errors. 

 

This Pattern Continued Through The Bible 

 

Even in the Early Church there were already tendencies to pollute the Gospel with legalism and works of the law. There were those amongst the Pharisees who had become Christians; however, they tried to then force legalistic burdens on other Christians.

 

The Apostle Peter wouldn’t stand for it for a moment and got up at the Council of Jerusalem and laid out the truth in dramatic fashion:

 

“Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.’” (Acts 15:5)

 

Peter would have none of it and said:

 

“Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”  Acts 15:10-11 [Emphasis mine]

 

That statement: “No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.” Is what the Reformation is all about. While speaking the truth about God’s grace, the error which has been embraced and pedaled by the religious establishment must also be confronted. 

 

It is important to notice that the truth about the Gospel was more important than any seeming disruption to so-called unity, the very need for a council shows there was not perfect unity in the first place.

 

This is a microcosm of the Reformation. Just as Peter experienced God’s grace and knew it to be the truth and stood up for it, others in history stood up for it as well and became reformers.

 

Enter Paul the Apostle 

 

Paul had actually been a Pharisee himself but got saved in dramatic fashion on the road to Damascus while on the way to persecute more Christians.

 

Having experienced such amazing grace, he became the emissary of God’s grace. Having been a Pharisee, he disdained any attempt of the Early Church in any way to return to the legalism of the Pharisees.

 

The Letter to the Galatians is itself an epistle of grace that also confronts the pharisaical slide into legalism that was happening in the new church in the region of Galatia. Paul even had to straighten out his contemporary leader Peter in the letter because of Peter’s compromising on this subject.

 

Paul wrote strongly that the Galatian Christians had been saved by grace and that the way in is indeed the way on. They began in grace and must continue on in it, as it is the path to life, liberty, and revival.

 

Paul concludes that we are to live by the Holy Spirit: live a personally revived life in Christ led by His Holy Spirit.

 

Paul’s Words Revived the Body of Christ 

 

Luther and other reformers had experienced this grace and mercy of Christ and simply wanted others in the Body of Christ to know and experience it as well. The Catholic Church, however, like the Pharisees, refused the grace of God and held to its traditions instead, and so like the Pharisees was confronted with its error in the process.

 

Martin Luther had struggled under a burden of rituals and rules for a long, long, dark period as a monk and a Catholic priest himself.

 

He was weighed down under this impossible burden of trying to make payment himself for his sin through rituals of the Church and found no peace at all in the Catholic rituals prescribed to him.

 

But then the light broke forth on him. He was sent away to study the Bible as a way to rid the monastery of his onerous presence since he was a constant bother by always coming to the confessional. (Study of the Bible not being a normal part of the program for the priesthood.)

 

As he was wrestling with Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Luther began to understand that Jesus had taken on our sin on the cross and all he needed to do was believe upon Christ.

 

He says “… I then understood that through grace and sheer mercy [Christ] justifies us through faith in Him. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn…” 

 

What a heavy burden was lifted off of Luther’s back as he understood that Jesus has paid the price on the cross and one doesn’t need to be under this horrible burden of trying to pay for sin themselves!

 

There in a nutshell is what the Reformation is all about: The grace and love of God is experienced and sought to be shared, but instead the establishment, just like the Pharisees reacting to Jesus, refuse to listen!

 

The Reformation Spread and Formed Revival Movements

 

In spite of opposition from the establishment, the Reformation spread and later formed revival movements.

 

The early Puritans in the United Kingdom were a revival movement, according to historian Sydney Ahlstrom, and are directly tied to the Reformation. Grace to them was something that should be known and experienced in the heart and not mere head knowledge; they thus can be seen as early Protestant mystics. 

 

Persecution and a lack of freedom caused them to seek refuge in a new land across the sea where they could worship as they felt led; this new land came to be called America. 

 

The first sustaining colony in America—others had been attempted earlier like Jamestown and folded—was brought forth by those Puritans, Separatists, and Independents* who came across on the Mayflower. (*Separatists wanted to separate from the Church of England, while others originally wanted to purify it from within, hence the more classical name Puritan, though all three of the above mentioned were of Puritan stock.)

 

They took up the colony “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith” which they wrote in their charter upon landing at Plymouth Rock. 

 

The Great Commission indeed had been a strong theme amongst Puritan preachers of all branches of Puritan faith in England and motivated this journey of leaving all behind and going like Abraham to a land that they knew not, to be lights for the Gospel in the new world. 

 

America’s first sustaining colony was thus founded by a group of outcasts who had been touched by the Reformation and revival and who came with the goal of advancing the Christian Faith. It has been a land where revivals have taken place ever since.

 

Travel Insights 

 

While traveling through Europe on different mission trips, we have been able to visit some different sights connected with the Reformation and different reformers.

 

We have been to some of the places connected with the Reformers William Tyndale, John Knox, and Martin Luther.

 

Each of these reformers experienced God’s grace and sought to return to the Word of God as the foundation for the Body of Christ. Having experienced the grace of God personally and intimately, they desired that others should also experience this glorious grace of Christ given freely and which comes simply through faith in Christ Jesus.

 

Reflecting on that grace and these reformers, I wrote a little song called Grace Alone about their suffering, which came to me on one of those trips and made a video about it, which you can check out by clicking here. (Direct link: https://youtu.be/m7oDc--KlFk)

 

We also have a video about the Christian Faith of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock which was shot right on location in Plymouth, Massachusetts. You can check it out by clicking here! (Direct link: https://youtu.be/xRM3-jqexe0)

 

 

The Praise Report: Winter 2019

Happy Thanksgiving

We were ministering in Europe recently and were able to stop by Geneva, Switzerland, along the way and see the Reformation Wall, a feature in Geneva that shows some of the trajectory and different aspects of the Reformation.

One of them is a relief that shows the Pilgrims who came across the sea in the Mayflower and started the first sustaining colony in the New World—the previous colony attempt by others had folded due to starvation, freezing, and other hardships.

Visiting the Reformation Wall 
in Geneva, Switzerland.
(Check out this short video 
we filmed right at Plymouth Rock 
where the Pilgrims first landed:

https://youtu.be/xRM3-jqexe0)

These early settlers on the Mayflower were part of a movement in England that came out of the Reformation. Known as Puritans, they sought to return to the New Testament. They were a revival movement that was outside the camp in England as they felt that Christ must touch the heart; mere head knowledge alone, nor just knowing a bit of doctrine, wasn’t sufficient, Christ must fill the heart.

As they landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, they laid out a few things, including that they were taking on this endeavor "for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith." On a previous trip a little while ago, we were able to visit the very place where they landed. The museum at the site talks about the good relations they had with the Native Peoples in that time, and in fact how they were helped by them. It was duly noted that these early Pilgrims and their faith and endurance, were something to be thankful for in that early seminal history of America….
Happy Thanksgiving!

England

We ministered first in London, England after stepping out in faith to make the journey across the pond.

Ministering in London, England, 
where we experienced the Holy Spirit 
filling and encouraging as we 
shared about John Wesley.

(Check out the video we’ve done 

on revivalist John Wesley: 

 https://youtu.be/Hh4m6oSKvyM)

The Lord met us in power as we ministered! We had been visiting a few sights connected with John Wesley, the English revivalist from the 1700’s while in London and other places, and incorporated insights from that into the messages we shared. We experienced people getting very blessed from this insight, receiving encouragement, renewal, and empowering for evangelism in their own lives, as well as a few who surrendered their hearts to Christ! Praise God!

Divine Appointment in Cornwall

In fact, while visiting a site connected to John Wesley’s ministry in Cornwall, we had a divine appointment with a fellow believer who volunteered now and then at the site, and had actually been called in unexpectedly that day.

Talking with her, we found out she was going through, and had been through, some heavy trials in life, including with her health. She responded positively when we asked if we could pray for her.

As we prayed, tears streamed down her face as the Holy Spirit touched her and ministered to her. You could clearly see she was buoyed by the touch of the Holy Spirit upon her. Her whole countenance had changed and brightened when we finished praying.

We were also able to help her with closing up and putting some heavy things away, which she appreciated. She then helped us by going in front in her car and guiding us to find our way back out to the main roads out of this tricky little maze-like area. Many of Cornwall’s roads are ridiculously narrow with huge hedges on each side—they were built for medieval carts, not cars—you can get a good scare from oncoming traffic, as well as getting lost really easily. We all got mutually blessed by the Holy Spirit leading us to step out and minister to her that day.

France

We ministered in various places in France, including the Loire Valley, in Tours, in Marçon, and in Paris.

We ministered in various places 
in France and were blessed to 
experience renewal, healing, 
deliverance and divine appointments.

The Holy Spirit moved powerfully in the different meetings and churches we ministered at, with people getting filled and refreshed in an awesome way and with some powerful manifestations of the Holy Spirit, as well some healing and some making decisions for Christ!

In fact, a young man in the Loire area was powerfully baptized in the Holy Spirit in a dramatic way, the Holy Spirit filled him very powerfully and continued moving on him well after the meeting was over; he was greatly renewed as were others who testified to that as well. We experienced some very powerful deliverance take place too in different meetings by those who felt heavy oppression come off their lives as we prayed and ministered to them. A man testified he was set free from heavy burdens weighing him down and was filled with joy by the Holy Spirit as we prayed for him, as were others. Gloire a Dieu!

Divine Appointment in Paris

We also had a divine appointment in Paris, one with a worker at a place we stayed at. We were talking with her and sharing and she turned out to be a believer from another area originally. We ended up praying for her right there in the hallway, and she got powerfully touched and renewed—living in France as a Christian can be very tough spiritually!

Spain

We had a blessed time ministering in Barcelona, Spain, as we shared about the Reformation and grace in a few different meetings. We had a powerful visitation of the Holy Spirit as we ministered. In fact, a young girl just 11 years old got powerfully filled with the Holy Spirit in a very radical way: the Holy Spirit had begun to touch her and when I began to pray for her, it was like a wave of love and power just flooded her, knocking her to the ground where she just soaked up His presence for a good long time!

Ministry in Barcelona, Spain, where we 
shared about the Reformation and grace, 
something the Holy Spirit showed us 
the country is in much need of.

(Check out our video on the 

beginning of the Reformation here:

https://youtu.be/WDr66ITavlI)

There were also some new believers there who we got to know; they had just recently come to Christ and were also powerfully filled with the Holy Spirit in a very dramatic way, getting deeply touched by God’s love as the Spirit of God immersed them and overwhelmed them in His grace and love. There were many others who got filled with the Holy Spirit for the first time also, along with some who surrendered their hearts to Christ! We had many share how blessed they were and how much they needed that message of God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, gloria a Dios!

Ministry at a Conference in Riverside

Ministering in Riverside on faith and 
the Holy Spirit and in San Diego.

We were blessed to minister at a conference on faith and the Holy Spirit as the main speakers in Riverside before this EuroMission trip. The Riverside INV Church invited us and specifically said they were desiring for people to be filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We were fully up for that!

We preached, shared, and prayed for people at a number of back-to-back meetings and workshops, who came from a couple different congregations.

It was a blessing to experience the Holy Spirit filling, empowering, delivering, and setting free, and healing many people inside and out through the power of Christ’s glorious Holy Spirit who comes to heal brokenness and set captives free! Glory!

The leaders also brought up some of the younger kids to receive prayer, and they also were ministered to by the power of Spirit at the last service. In fact, there were some young girls of about 12 the Lord touched in a powerful way that had their hands in the air and tears streaming down their faces; the Lord filled their hearts and they shared they had never experienced anything like this before, hallelujah!

Southern Border Region and The High Desert

We ministered out in the High Desert area of Hemet at the end of the summer. We have previously done a lot of PrayerFests in this area with our friends Jeff and Jeanette, where we introduce those who haven’t had a Charismatic background to the filling and empowering of the Holy Spirit. On this particular occasion, we ministered at a special meeting at their church where the Lord filled a number of people, including some young kids, with the power of the Holy Spirit.

It was an outdoor meeting that had us sharing and then praying for people out on the lawn of the church into the warm summer night! It was a service that combined the congregations together, having the Hispanic congregation join the service so that Mercedes and I were ministering together with myself speaking and her interpreting—like we so often do—and then praying for people. The Lord filled many in a powerful way and there were a few that also raised their hands to surrender as well as rededicate their lives to Christ, praise God!

We have been ministering down in the Southern Border region in different meetings recently as well.

We experienced some being filled with the Spirit, as well as people receiving Christ, and many receiving physical healing in these particular meetings, including those who testified to receiving healing in the back, shoulder, and necks, right as we prayed for them. In fact, one lady shared how her back was healed in a meeting when we prayed for her, and then she hurt her back again overdoing something. So she found out that we were ministering in another place in the area, and came and got prayer again and got healed again! Praise God, His mercies are new every morning!

Canada

Blessed time in Victoria, Canada, where 
we were stoked to cover some of the 
ground where our old friend 
Harald Bredesen used to minister!

We had a powerful time ministering in Victoria, Canada in the summer! The Holy Spirit was moving and we received testimonies of healing, including back issues healed amongst other things, praise God! Our son Patrick and a friend experienced a person receive healing right when they laid hands on them.

We also saw the Holy Spirit powerfully renewing many people in a deep way, one young lady who was overcome and fell over when we prayed for her shared how renewed and revived she was; in fact she had never really fallen over before, but realized now it was the overwhelming love and power of God coming over her.

We were blessed to talk to some believers up there who remember the days when our old friend and mentor Harald Bredesen used to minister in Victoria! We were also blessed to experience some divine appointments while taking a little time to hike and surf up there. A lady we ran into while out hiking was telling us about some of her trials; she didn’t have a charismatic background, but got an introduction when we prayed for her! Reminded me of old times with Harald when out on prayer walks together! Hallelujah! 


We really appreciate your prayers and support!

Bryan, Mercedes and Patrick Marleaux

Plymouth's Pilgrims and Their Christian Faith

FOLLOWING THE REFORMATION TRAIL

Using some airline miles we were able to start our last trip off by going first to the East Coast of the US for just a small extra fee—“you’re using miles we must charge you something.”

I kept thinking, “I can't believe we got all the way across the country for just 15 bucks, wow, not a bad deal!"

So we were able to stop in New England and see some historical places along the way as we started on our latest mission trip to Europe before we ministered in Scandinavia, England, and France.

One place we visited was in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims from the Mayflower ship landed in 1620 and started the first sustaining colony in the New World.

A couple of other colonies had been attempted, one in Jamestown that ended with most of the colonists starving or freezing to death and the colony folding. There was also another attempt  at a colony by the French actually, at a Protestant colony called Fort Caroline in what would later become the area of Florida.

That French colony was planted and financed by an influential French Protestant Huguenot sympathizer. However, rabid Spanish Catholic fanatics got wind of it, and led by Don Pedro Menendez De Aviles, they went in and put to the sword and massacred every last person, including women and children.

So, one was facing some pretty stiff odds to attempt another colony: possible starvation, death by freezing, or massacre, none being attractive prospects. That, along with the dangers of crossing the Atlantic, surely would give one pause about leaving the homeland to go and found a new place to live in a wild land across the sea.

Persecution, however, was increasing against those who were fully embracing the Protestant Reformation in England.

The English Church had made some reforms: First under Henry the VIII, but especially under his son Edward when he took the throne; however, when Bloody Mary rose to power, she returned with a literal vengeance back to Catholicism and had Protestants hunted down and executed. Included in her massacres was the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, amongst many others.

The country would turn back Protestant under her half sister Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, but her successor King James from Scotland was indifferent to reform. Even though he had authorized a new translation of the Bible into English, King James was no friend of the Puritans and had no tolerance for them, even though many were beginning to win seats in Parliament.

Those, like the Puritans, who wanted a full reformation, found themselves on the outs (the word Puritan came from their desire to purify the church back to New Testament design).

So, in spite of the grim prospects, the Mayflower set off from England in 1620 after its occupants had tried Holland for a time as a refuge from persecution. These Puritans, Separatists, and Independents aboard the Mayflower, were products of the Protestant Reformation and were under threat as Reform-minded believers in England, who wanted a full Reformation and not half measures.

They were part of the Reform movement, which was a return to biblical faith that was going on in Europe in their day, sparked originally by the influences of people like Martin Luther in Germany. It is remarkable what a chain of events were set in motion when that little unknown monk in Germany named Martin Luther found peace with God and set out to communicate about that. The History Channel recently said in a program on the Reformation and its worldwide impact “without Martin Luther and the Reformation there simply would be no America.”

The Reformation’s influence finally came across the channel to England and grew with William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, and others on England’s soil, when those reformers were touched by the Holy Spirit and given revelation of the Gospel.

The Puritans had been a revival movement in England that was sparked by the Reformation. They held to the main principles of the Reformation: salvation by faith through grace, through Christ alone, the Scriptures as the sole authority for matter of faith—no pope nor priest had the right to contradict God’s word.

The Puritans, however, also felt that Christ must touch the heart; mere head knowledge alone about God was not sufficient in their view. Mere cerebral acquiescence to a set of doctrines could not substitute for the reality of experiencing God’s touch in the heart. As stated by historian Sydney Ahlstrom, they could be seen as some of the early Protestant mystics.

They sought to purify and return the church back to a New Testament model like in Acts. There were those Puritans that wanted to reform from within the English Church, and those that wanted to separate (Separatists) or be completely independent (Independents). All of these Puritans though, sought as they put it, to “avoid the errors of popery in the new world.”

Like most movements and denominations, they did get formal later in their history; however, early on, they were vital, alive, and revived!

Those that came across the Atlantic were heavily influenced by the Puritan preachers in England and their focus on the Great Commission.  They were thus inspired and willing to face starvation and brutal winters even with the knowledge of how miserably those before them had suffered and how so many had died.

They were taking quite the huge step of faith. Imagine leaving everything to go to a desolate wilderness where most before you had either starved, or frozen to death, or been massacred.

A quick look at the winter Boston experienced last season with all that snow dumped every few days will give you an idea of just how rough it really could get. We happened to grab a few waves in Maine, and man, that is some very cold water and air over on the East Coast of America and that was not even in winter!

The Puritans came in spite of all the dire prospects, moved by the Great Commission and the hope for freedom to worship as they desired. Another large group of Puritans came across later to what would become Boston, as well as other areas a decade later, making up large parts of the population of the early colonies.

Thus, the Puritan revival movement and its influence loomed large in the early colonies. Their influence would continue to be visible in later revivals through people like Jonathan Edwards in the Great Awakening. Benjamin Franklin himself would be baptized in a Puritan church in Boston.

Coming across the Atlantic, these Puritan Pilgrims, contrary to what you may have been taught in school, actually sought to advance the Gospel in the new world and spread the Christian faith.

In fact their written statement on the Mayflower, which they called a Compact that they drew up and signed aboard the Mayflower declared that they were undertaking the new colony: “…for ye glorie of God and advancement of ye Christian faith…”

“…advancement of ye Christian faith…” is pretty straightforward. The earliest settlers came here and founded the first sustaining colony as believers with a prophetic intention that it would work in God’s design as a place that would advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That original purpose and prophetic intention still remains over this land in spite of all the attack to undermine, and obscure, and blind people, from that truth. 

Through the Holy Spirit’s power we are still to carry that prophetic intention forth and see this land, that has experienced so much revival in the past, be revived again!

Video: Plymouth's Pilgrims and their Christian Faith
Direct link to video: https://youtu.be/xRM3-jqexe0
(We shot this video on location in Plymouth, MA.
It is packed with some good information. Check it out!)

Merry Christmas and Many Blessings for 2015!

We were invited to a very unique Christmas experience this year.  Our friends Jeff and Jeanette took us way up a mountain to a small apple farm, where in the rustic farmhouse, theater actors did a reenactment of a Christmas meal from the early American Colonies. It was a well-recreated scene with period costumes and the food of a 1774 Christmas-time meal, though it didn’t taste that old :) along with music of the era played on an Irish bouzouki, harpsichord, and fiddle. 

You were transported back to those early days of an emerging nation hoping to find its way in the world. The shaky legs of a nascent republic were strengthened by the Word of Christ, which would undergird and give guidance as independence was sought and attained not far down the road.

It was a fun and blessed time that night as we spent the early part of the evening in a Tomahawk-throwing contest. Then later we were challenged to give speeches/toasts. I gave one tying together how the colonies were formed out of refugees of the Reformation, such as Separatists, Independents, and Puritans, who, being pushed to the fringes of society in England under persecution, made their way across the sea to the New World. Those early believers saw a duty to the Great Commission and came specifically to plant the Gospel in the new land. These roots connected all the way back to Martin Luther who came back to the Gospel as he read the New Testament, and thus the early Pilgrims were committed to planting that Gospel here.  

We have already been working on a video on that very subject so it was a blessing to share some of that insight. We were also touched when the owner of the farm, who also is one of the chief actors playing Patrick Henry, came over and said how refreshing it was to hear a speech that was so informed of our history and the roots of the Reformation in the formation of our nation. That was quite the honor to have him come out of his way and say that. He in fact posted about my speech on his Facebook page that night as well.

A little later in the evening, Patrick our son was asked, out of the 50 or so people there, to read aloud in front of everyone,  the first 14 verses of Luke’s Gospel chapter two where it shares the Christmas narrative, as they would do back in the Colonies.  Patrick did a great job especially as a youngster reading in front of a mostly adult crowd, something which can be quite intimidating for anyone.  The fact that he was reading from a Bible that was actually an antique and was printed over two hundred years ago which has S’s that look like F’s added to the challenge which he met very well.

It was a blessed time and a reminder of how the early colonists, against all odds but with God’s help, were able to lead the way to the formation of a new nation, a nation that has had a specific role in spreading the Gospel throughout the world:  America would become the biggest missionary-sending country in the world in time, even surpassing England who held that honor for quite a while.  

It is also a reminder that Christmas is about the coming of Christ who Himself came on a mission to seek and save the lost and pay for our sins once for all on the cross. The Gospel is about Christ coming and taking on our sin that we might have eternal life.

Praise God, Christ came and was born of a virgin in a stable and went to that cruel Roman cross that you and I might have life.  Let us remember this central point as we celebrate Christmas this year, in the midst of all the shopping, toys, meals, and rushing around, let's keep it right there in the front of our mind, that He came that we might have eternal life!  

Merry Christmas! Bryan, Mercedes and Patrick Marleaux

We encourage you to watch our video "Why Christ Came," a very clear and necessary message articulating the Gospel. Direct link: http://youtu.be/kScrCWnBDH0

To hear how the early Pilgrims to America were tied to the Reformation, listen to this program: Reformation to America.