Is God Fully Gone From Europe?

Every year around Thanksgiving time in churches across America,
preachers are heard to say: "The Pilgrims brought God to these
shores". Judging by the atrocious behavior of the Pilgrims, I'd have
to say that God must have hitched a ride back to England shortly after
He arrived here.



The following text is from the introduction of
a sermon given by Robert Cushman to the Plymouth church on December
12, 1621.
http://members.aol.com/calebj/sermon.html

"And though when we came first into the Country, we were few, and many
of us were sick, and many died by reason of the cold and wet, it being
the depth of Winter, and we having no houses, nor shelter, yet when
there was not six able persons among us, and that they came daily to
us by hundreds, with their Sachems or Kings, and might in one hour
have made a dispatch of us, yet such a fear was upon them, as that
they never offered us the least injury in word or deed. And by reason
of one Tisquanto, that lives amongst us, that can speak English, we
have daily Commerce with their Kings, and can know what is done or
intended towards us among the Savages; Also we can acquaint them with
our courses and purposes, both human and religious. And the greatest
Commander of the Country, call'd Massasoit, cometh often to visit us,
tho' he lives 50 miles from us, often sends us Presents, he having
with many other of their Governors, promised, yea, subscribed
Obedience to our Sovereign Lord King James, and for his cause to spend
both strength and life."

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in late 1620,
they were ill-equipped for survival in their new homeland. Grain
brought on the Mayflower wasn't suited for planting in the rocky
American soil. Planting techniques used in England didn't adapt well
on this side of the Atlantic either. But, perhaps most devastating,
the harsh winter reduced the number of settlers by half.

Invaluable help came from Squanto, also known as Tisquantum, a
Wampanoag, who taught the Pilgrims techniques for planting and
fertilizing that were appropriate for the rugged surroundings. With
some seeds provided by Squanto, the Pilgrims planted corn, wheat, and
barley in the spring of 1621.

By fall, realizing that their first harvest of corn and barley would
be plentiful, Governor William Bradford declared a day of
thanksgiving. At the three-day feast, the 50 settlers hosted 90
Wampanoag, including their chief, Massasoit. As was the Wampanoag's
custom, they brought venison as a contribution to the meal. Not only
was this festival a way to thank the Wampanoag, but it also served to
boost the morale of the remaining settlers.

Most of the details of that thanksgiving come from a letter written by
Edward Winslow, a 25-year-old Pilgrim who was the colony's ambassador
to the Indians. From that letter, we know that Governor Bradford "sent
four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner
rejoice together." Chief Massassoit came "with some 90 men." For three
days, the Pilgrims and Indians "entertained and feasted."

"We have found the Indians very faithful in their covenant of peace
with us, very loving, and ready to pleasure us. We often go to them,
and they come to us.... We can walk as peaceably and safely in the
woods as in the highways of England. We entertain them in our houses,
and they give us venison... They are a people without any religion or
knowledge of any God, yet very trusty, quick of apprehension,
ripe-witted, just." - Pilgrim Edward Winslow, letter to a friend in
England (1621)



THE PILGRIMS


PURITAN DOOMSDAY CULT PLUNDERS PARADISE



John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony said in a
sermon preached aboard the Arabella, en route to the New World in
1630:

"to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God" - then God
"shall make us a praise and a glory, that men shall say of succeeding
plantations: "The Lord make it like that of New England!"

Shortly after this moving sermon, the Puritans dealt treacherously
with their benefactors, the Native Americans, who welcomed them and
helped them to survive their first years here.

The Puritans massacred a neighboring town of friendly Pequots in 1637,
setting fire to the village and slaughtering the villagers as they
tried to escape the flames. Some 900 men, women and children were
murdered by the same Puritans who claimed that their settlement was to
be "the model of Christian charity".

One of the Pilgrim officers of that expedition gave insight into the
Pequots they encountered:

"The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water
side, crying 'What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come
for?'. They not thinking we intended war went on cheerfully."

Historian Francis Jennings wrote of Captain John Mason's attack:

"Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have
overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not
his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will
to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and
Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."

In Howard Zinns' book, A People's History of the United States, one of
the Pilgrims on the expedition is quoted as saying:

"The Captain also said, We must Burn Them; and immediately stepping
into the wigwam....brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the
Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire."
William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, described
the carnage:

"Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to
peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly
dispatche, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed
about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying
in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible
was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweet
sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought
so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands,
and gave them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an
enimie."
Cotton Mather, one of the more odious and obdurate Pilgrim leaders,
wrote:

"It was supposed that no less than 600 souls were brought down to Hell
that day".
Mather, in his Annals of Christ in America, wrote:

"I do, with all conscience of truth,...report the wonderful displays
of His infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness, wherewith
His divine providence hath irradiated an Indian wilderness".
Indeed!

Having laid down their weapons and accepted Christianity, the Pequots
were rewarded with a vicious and cowardly slaughter by their new
"brothers in Christ".

Francis Jennings said:

"The terror was very real among the Indians. They drew lessons from
the Peqout War:(1) that the Englishmen's most solemn pledge would be
broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage; (2) that the
English way of war had no limit of scruple and mercy".


The Pilgrims justified their conquest by appealing to the Bible,
Psalms 2:8:

"Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
The use of force to take this "inheritance" was justified by citing
Romans 13:2:

"Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of
God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."
William Bradford, called a man of "more than ordinary piety, wisdom
and courage" by no less an authority on Godliness than Cotton Mather,
wrote in 1642:

"Wickedness Breaks Forth - Marvelous it may be to see and consider how
some kind of wickedness did grow and break forth here, in a land where
the same was so much witnessed against and so narrowly looked unto,
and severely punished when it was known, as in no place more, or so
much, that I have known or heard of; insomuch that they have been
somewhat censured even by moderate and good men f