I said, man, I have missed this meal. And so I come in and I was asking these kids, I said, what'd you fix? Well, Brother Ricky asked your boy, Aiden, I said, what'd you fix? He said, mashed potatoes and they taste like dirt. So I go to sidekick Elijah. I said, Elijah, what'd you make? He said, mashed potatoes and they taste like dirt. So they gave me some gold box and I went home and tasted those nice potatoes. Now when I was a kid, little boy used to eat dirt. I don't never remember it tasting that bad. That's a joke. That's a joke, Aiden and Elijah. It's good. Amen. Praise the Lord. Buccaneer Mites, when they're coming back to the land, they've built the walls in 52 days record time. They've astounded all of the enemies they had and the neighboring people. The fact that they did it, all that rubbish they had to clean up, it's probably more work to clean the rubbish up than it was to build the walls. Now you got a verse here, I'll just read one verse here in verse 17. And young people, I want you to listen today. You need to hear what I got to say. I want to deal with some of American history. This is Thanksgiving time. Thanksgiving is a national holiday to no other nation but America. And it's the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving. They started it. And it's a Thanksgiving, not to Indians, it's a Thanksgiving to God. There were 90 braves that came and celebrated Thanksgiving with the pilgrims. And they were celebrating the mercy and the grace of God. There were only four families unaffected by death the first spring. And I'll mention this again, they're burying two and three a day at times. And so four families that didn't have a death in them the first year. And they're thanking God. And they're giving praise unto God. And they're giving, and I tell you what, we, none of us face these difficulties. How much praise do you get out of us? How much thanksgiving do you get out of us? And so, they were thanking God. Now the early pilgrims were converted. A lot of their offspring were not. And the pilgrims and Puritans are not the same thing. They both come from England, they both came from the Church of England, and they started the Congregationalist Church. But the pilgrims were separatists. They had totally pulled out of the Church of England, also called the Anglican Church, also called the Episcopalian Church, started by Henry the Eighth. And so they pulled out. They said it's too corrupt to purify. They call them Puritans because they wanted to stay in and purify the church. Folks, you can't purify apostasy. Apostasy. God does one thing with apostasy. He judges it and destroys it. So there's no hope for apostasy. Now that doesn't mean that all the people in the church of England were not converted. There were some were, and I don't know how many got converted because of it, but they had the book of common prayer. And a lot of the rituals they did and a lot of the material they used were great theological truths. So there's some of that could have led somebody to Christ. But in Nehemiah 11 verse 17, And Metaniah, the son of Micah, the son of Zabdi, the son of Asap, was the principal to begin the thanksgiving and prayer. And back, Bewick, the second among his brethren, and Abda, the son of Shuma, the son of Gala, the son of Jeduthun. Thank God I got through that verse. Now, what I want to talk to you about today is the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving. And that's going on right here in the Bible. The first Thanksgiving ever made was in the book of Genesis 8, when Noah built an altar. And he built an altar to give praise and thanksgiving unto God. And so, here in Nehemiah, they're thanking God. All these difficulties, they built the walls in troublous times. They built the foundation of the temple. Everything they did was in troublous times. Times of turmoil and times of trouble, just like the pilgrims. They come over here in great distress. Now, if you heard me preach that sermon on the Mayflower, I think that's within the last year, then you know the difficulties that they come here. Now, notice the Thanksgiving song was begun by the presenter. You say, what's that? Well, that's the song later. That's the master later. But what they'd done, they had a tuning fork and they pitched the music. That's like they'd done when I was a kid. Those that sing acapella, a lot of times have a pitching fork. and they would do that, everybody do that, you know, get their part in there and hum that key and they'd take off singing. So this is the season of thanksgiving and here in the nation of Israel or the, you know, Judah's that come back from the exile and they're thanking God. It's an amazing thing that the progressives have not destroyed thanksgiving in America. It seems like they're not really going after it. And as I said last Sunday, Thanksgiving presupposes that there's a God. If you're having Thanksgiving, it is a time of giving of thanks. You gotta thank somebody. Who are you gonna thank? You gonna thank the federal government? No, you gonna thank God. Federal government don't give us our rights. Our rights come from God. The government's supposed to protect God-given rights. We don't owe them nothing. As far as our rights are concerned, we owe it all to the Lord. So, the fourth Thursday of every November, has become the sanction time of giving thanks to God for his provision, his protection, and his privilege. I don't have time to read it today, but you would not believe the first thanksgiving declaration made by George Washington. It was incredible, and even by Abraham Lincoln, and by some of the presidents we had. What Washington Lincoln said, Have they called for national repentance and forgiveness of sin because of all the good that God had done for us that we deserve Him honor and praise. Now notice in Nehemiah 11 and verse 17, the Bible says the principal, that's the principal's the procurator, he was the one that began the Thanksgiving. Look at that, Devin, an article. Not Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving. Boy, this thing was set apart. I believe they planned a while for this. They went after about this with great deliberation. The time of Thanksgiving, a specific time, a designated time. When, like I said in Sunday school, you contemplate, you reflect, you meditate on the things that you should be thankful for. Well, if you do that, it's gonna take you a while. But notice the events of this book are the details of the prophecy that was given in Daniel 9.25. Now, therefore, understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, and the Messiah, the Prince, shall be seven weeks, three score, and two weeks, the streets shall be built again. and the wall even in tribulous times. So, the book of Nehemiah is a book of prophecy. It's a book of prophecy coming true. If Christ is gonna come and walk on streets, streets gotta be built. If Jerusalem's gonna have any kind of safety, they gotta have walls. If they're going to have a place to worship, they've got to have a temple. So they did all this, prepared all of this in tribulous times, in times of pressure, distress, anguish, anxiety. That's what they done. As they built the wall, they had a sword in one hand and a Trowel in the other hand, as they put those rocks on top of each other. But a time of great opposition, Sanballat and Tobiah, even some of the children of Israel were bringing about God's judgment. Boy, they were scorned. They were pressured. They were ridiculed. Even had in the camp of Israel, some of those had money. And some of those in great need, they were lending money to their brother. Jews are supposed to never charge interest on money. Not in the Old Testament. Now, that wouldn't be so today. That's when they was an Old Testament nation. That's called usury. And they were charging excessive interest rates. And it was tearing up the unity of the people. And Nehemiah had to rebuke that. Then there was a famine, a shortage of the bare necessities. And then you had Judah, they got in cahoots with the businessmen of the land. because they were interested in making money. They wasn't interested in the temple. They wasn't interested in walls. They wasn't interested in God blessing the people. But when you come to chapter 11, you've got the people from the country moving into the city. Now, if you're gonna have a great city, you gotta have people. Nobody lived there. Why? No walls. So, Nehemiah had to build the walls so Jerusalem could be populated. You gotta have people there. You gotta have a government there if it's to be the capital city. So, nobody wanted to move there. So they had a lottery. And 10% of all the people out in the country moved to the city. That's how they populated the city, from a lottery. And it's 10% of the overall population that came to live in Jerusalem. So they completed the work in 52 days. That was unbelievable. in chapter 6, 15, so the wall was finished. In the 20 and fifth day of the month Elu, in 52 days, that's September the 25th, Nehemiah 8, 14, and they found written in the law, which the Lord commanded by Moses, the children of Israel should dwell in booths, that's Feast of the Tabernacle, in the Feast of the seventh month, the seventh month is October, Nehemiah 9.1, now on the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fastened sackcloth and earth upon them. That verse tells us on October the 24th, the children of Israel assembled themselves. Is it not interesting that a lot of these men and their father, and their grandfather, and their great-grandfather, their names are mentioned in some of these chapters. I tell you, it matters to God who keeps the faith and passes on the Word of God. So, in Nehemiah 1, 17, the day of Thanksgiving is appearing here in these troublous times. That's when the thanksgiving in the Plymouth Rock took place. Troubulous times. Boy, you think about all those men lost their wives. Wives lost their husbands. Families lost their children and they had been in persecution. They had been in England where the state church mandated. mandated that you obey them and their beliefs was outlawed. In other words, the separatists were outlawed from England. During this season of Thanksgiving that we celebrate every year, we're to think back on why the pilgrims came to America. They came here, folks, not to make money. They came here for religious liberty. And that's the only reason they come. Did you know that of the first 500 settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, that took place in 1608, or 1607, do you know that the first year, that settlement, they lost 440 out of 500 people. Do y'all know that? Our schools ain't teaching none of this stuff no more. Not unless it's Christian school. and the suffering they went through. Jamestown never had the blessing of God on it, but Plymouth Rock did. And though they had hardships, God's gonna do miraculous things. And I wanna give you some of the providential interventions of God in this little colony, how they got to America. It is astounding how God provided for them. Well, how did God provide for those Jews in the day of Nehemiah, Ezra? Jos was son of Josedek, the high priest. He put in the heart of Cyrus the Great to finance the trip. He released anybody that wanted to go from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. He gave them safety and he gave them finance. He gave them the permission to take all the wood out of the forest of the, listen, the media Persian empire is a worldwide empire. They control the world. God gave Cyrus a vision and told him to build him a temple at Jerusalem, but Cyrus couldn't do it. He wasn't a Jew. And he sent all those people, about 50,000 volunteered. God stirred up the heart of Cyrus. God stirred up the heart of the leaders, God stirred up the heart of the people, and just a very small percentage of two and a half million people were willing to go back through the trebulous times, through all the hardship, and all the difficulty, to build a temple, to build the streets, and to build the wall. And in the days of our forefathers, there was just a few people willing to cross the Atlantic ocean to come and start a colony of people where they'd have religious liberty and freedom so that this great nation could come to reality. I'll tell you one thing, God bless those people. Time of pressure. Can you even imagine the pressure that was on Nehemiah and was on our forefathers that come to this great country? Well, let me get down to the pass a lot of this stuff and get down Nehemiah 6, 15 again. The wall was finished in 52 days in the month of September the 25th. And they found written in the law, which the Lord commanded by Moses, that children of Israel should dwell in booths that unread that. Now in the 24th day of the month, the children of Israel are assembled together. So God's given these dates, God's given the, even gonna give the year, or we're gonna find out what the year was that they done all this. What I'm trying to say, there's great effort being made to obey God. It's gonna take a great effort in our day. to stay right, to not get distracted, to not get full of unbelief, to not quit. If there's ever been an hour, God's people need to step up, it's right now. Our country needs us. Having a bunch of idiots up in Washington, D.C. ain't gonna fix nothing. They can't fix it, because they're the problem. God's people can pray mercy so that it don't get so bad it can't be fixed, and that God judges us. As a result, these separatists made a covenant. They met in the very home of William Brewster before they left England. These little separatists, these early believers, met together and made a covenant with God and a covenant with one another that they will stand for the Word of God at all cost and the testimony of Jesus Christ. So the children of Israel have done the same thing. I'm talking about a parallel here that happens in the Word of God. What day? Let me just read you this right quick, because I've got so much I've got to skip. Always prepare 10 times about more than I got time to preach, or at least twice. And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their father. They stood up in their place and read the book of the law of the Lord, their God, one fourth part of the day and another fourth part and confess and worship the Lord, their God on the day of thanksgiving. Listen to this young people. They had a 12 hour worship service, 12 hours. They stood, they heard the law, they heard Deuteronomy read. They read that whole thing. They read the law of God. They recited to them what God demanded, what God wanted them to obey, and how they could be blessed in those troublous times, and let them know of all the providential care of God. Have God done miracle after miracle to preserve them, to establish them, and bring them back to the land of Jerusalem. Is that not what Thanksgiving's for? To remember God's interventions in your life. to remember the miracles in your life, to remember the times that God has so intervened and showed himself mighty on your behalf. Now, what happened in Nehemiah 9.38 says they made a sure covenant and right it, and the princes Levites and the priests sealed unto it. What's that mean? That means when they made that covenant with God, they signed their names under the covenant. What'd they do with the Declaration of Independence? They signed their name under the Declaration. What did the pilgrims do when they made that covenant in the house of William Brewster? They signed their names beneath to commit themselves. That's what church membership's about. It is to commit yourself to a congregation. That's what it's for. It's a covenant. You make a covenant with those people who are gonna stand for God, the Word of God, the truths of God, and the Great Commission. So they signed their names, they coveted to walk in the purity of the gospel, in the word of God. Later on, November the 11th, 1620, when they're in the territory of Cape Cod, they're out from under the jurisdiction of the British Empire or of England. and they make a self-governing charter called the Mayflower Compact, and they sign their names below that compact. If you're not willing to sign onto it, you ain't committed. You ain't committed. Boy, that's committed. Here's what the Mayflower Compact says. This is when they first left the Mayflower for they ever set foot on the soil of Massachusetts. Here's what they wrote and we're gonna live by. Having underwritten for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. Stop right there and gag all progressives. have an undertaking for the glory of God, an advancement of the Christian faith, an honor of our king and country, a voice to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presence solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another covet and combine ourselves together in a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends of foresaid. What are they counting to do? To promote the ends of foresaid. What are the ends of foresaid? What did they say before? The advancement of the Christian faith. That's their number one reason. I'm not talking about the strangers, I'm talking about the pilgrims. The unconverted were called the strangers, but the converted were called the pilgrims. They get that from first Peter, talking about pilgrims and strangers. Now the haters of God in this nation, they may deny this nation was founded on the word of God, but they can't change the truth of it. They can't change the fact of it. And any honest minded person cannot study the history of this country and see God at every turn when it got established. Now what Nehemiah said, don't forget what our forefathers went through. Don't forget the hardships we went through. That's what the pilgrims are going to do. Don't forget Thanksgiving. Don't forget what this has cost us. Don't forget how God has intervened. before they were coming to America, while the first settlements being established at Jamestown, Virginia, 20 years after the Roanoke fiasco of Roanoke, North Carolina, the lost colony, as the first settlers were coming to Jamestown, Virginia, 1608, the pilgrims went to Holland. Now the captain that they hired to take them to Holland sold them out. And he told the authorities in England, in London, what they were about to do. And then some of these men were put in jail. They were arrested. They finally got out and they escaped to Holland. In Holland, the fiscal persecution stopped, but the culture was ungodly. It was destroying their children. Now, before they found fiscal persecution, And when they went to Holland, they found spiritual warfare. It was a worldly and ungodly culture, fleshly lust, which warth against the soul. 1 Peter 2, 11 is where the pilgrims, as I said, took their name. They're known as separatists. So what happens is you got the Spanish Inquisition. And the Catholics, now if that offends you, read history. Catholic Spain is going around the world killing everybody that won't submit to Catholicism. They went all over Mexico, all over South America, and they put the sword to people's throats and said, is the mass the literal body and blood of Christ? If they said it symbolically, they killed them. Boy, that New Testament evangelism. I thought we were supposed to get people saved, not send them to hell. So the Spaniards are threatening an invasion of Holland. They knew that whatever they suffered in England was Sunday school picnic compared to what those Catholics would do to them. They'd wipe them out. So they've got to flee again. They've got to find a place to go. They can't go back and live in England. They've been banished from there. What are they going to do? Well, what they did do to find religious liberty, they're willing to travel 3,000 miles of absolute difficulty and extreme conditions to have a place where they could raise their children in the culture that they produce and serve in the God that they believed in. Do you understand? This is not a pleasure ride. This is not some good luck lollipop cruise ship. This is death. As I said, before travel comes from the word travail. And everybody, before you get on a ship, you make out your will, because you're probably gonna die, or you got a good chance of it. They were assured pain, hardship that involved, of course, they were on the ocean in the Mayflower 66 days. Like the days of Nehemiah, trubulous times. They chartered two ships, one's called the Mayflower, one's called the Speedwhale. They start out of England, cross the Atlantic Ocean. They've already had to work on the speedway at one time, cause it's leaking so much water. They get out there a waves on the ocean and it starts leaking so bad, they got to turn back, go back. Therefore, haul. They didn't have much room as it was. And they packed 102 passengers. on what we would call right below the top deck in the cargo area, the size of a tennis court. 102 people were there 66 days and rarely even got to come up because of the winds and the storms. And they got to use the bathroom. Let's just get graphic here. They didn't take a bath for 66 days. They're living in those conditions. And their bread's got worms in them. And they're drinking that old sickening water. And they're out there in those hurricanes, and that ship going up and down. And they got seasickness. And they're all down there on top of each other. Now I'm talking about hardship like we ain't never imagined. And they did it to get to America. On top of the 102 passengers, there were at least 30 crew members. They stayed at the front of that ship. And the problem with them, where they had to stay was always cold and it was always wet. I don't know how in the world they ever got anybody to do those jobs back in them days. July of 1620, they set sail, but they run into a problem. Again, the speed whale is not seaworthy. So they gotta go back. They're throwing them back even further into the season of the hurricanes. I mean, this is insanity what they're doing. But they got nowhere to go. God put them in the vice and God made it to where they had to do what they did. and they were willing. And they said, the hand of God's on us, we're gonna trust him, and whatever happens, happens, we're leaving all of our livelihood, we're leaving all of our future, it's in the hand of God. That's why they done what they did. So they left September 6th, that's my daddy's birthday, September 6th. So they leave September 6th, 1620, right in the middle of hurricane season. That's why they had to stay in the cargo deck of the ship known as the twin decks, T-W-E-E-N decks. There wasn't enough oxygen there. Folks, I can't even imagine, my mind is trying to imagine being there just one day, just 24 hours in that dark, damp dungeon. Children in there crying. People can't rest. Nowhere to lay down. Hardly no privacy whatsoever. And in the middle of all that is a baby born named Oceana. Can you imagine the hardship of this? This twin deck was five and a half feet of headroom. Again, about the size of a tennis court, 102 people staying there. Now, I don't have time to get into all this, but they had to batten hatches. So there they were cramped almost the entire 66 days staying below the decks because they had to. Because the waves were sweeping over the top of that, nobody could get up there. just day after day after day of waves coming over the Mayflower. One of the storms was so massive that the main mass was cracked. Now, if that thing goes down, they are gone, because they can't motivate, they can't guide it. If you're in a ship that is determined on wind and sails, you can't go nowhere if you don't have the mast holding up the sail. So, in the providence of God again, there was somebody who had a jack screw. Now what that is, that's something like you can jack up a house with, jack screw. And it might've been a part of a print bridge, they're not exactly sure. But they were able to take another log and secure that mast so they could get all the way to Cape Cod. They reinforced it. The Mayflower had been a cargo ship that hauled wine and the seepage of the wine into the planks of that ship, sanitized it, and that alcohol would kill the germs, or they would all die coming over here. They didn't get the diseases. There's one man died, William Button. And William Button was the one that antagonized, made fun of these pilgrims. I mean, wouldn't let up on them, mocking them. He said, I'm looking forward to throwing your puke stocking carcasses over this ship when you die. And he was the only one that died. but God struck him with a disease. He's only in his early 20s and he cut out of here. So that wine made a disinfectant from the disease and the germs. That's how they got over here. So halfway through the voyage, man, it's looking like they ain't never gonna get there. So they're headed to Northern Virginia. Jamestown, Virginia, is off the coast, but they're headed north, northern part of Virginia. Won't be up close to New York now, on up that direction. Now, what happened was, these big massive storms throwed them off course. So they're not gonna go to northern Virginia. This is God, friend. This is God. What happened was, there were men on that ship. the captain and the crew that had been bribed to take that ship up to the Hudson River. If they had went there like they tried to in Northern Virginia, the Hosselinians there would have killed every one of them. But God took them up to Cape Cod, up to Plymouth Rock. You know the story, the rest is history. God intervened. Folks, I know some of y'all's heard this before, but if this bores you, You got a problem. This is God's hand. God's in every bit of this stuff. God built this nation off of this. Off the backs of 39 or 40 people that love God more than their own life and cared about the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they live for it. November the 11th, 1620, they found themselves on what is today Cape Cod. or the coast of Massachusetts. This is God's design. Man, it's unbelievable. I've told this story, I never get tired of hearing it. Cotton Mather, born in 1663, was one of the greatest historians outside of William Bradford that gave a journal and account of all that happened. Cotton Mather wrote a book on the great works of Christ. And he told about all these interventions of God in that early colony. How they got here, how God preserved them for years through miracles. The miracles of God's providence in his intervention. He tells that about a year or two before the pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, a plague swept through a hostile Indian tribe. We know that tribe as the Pachuacs. and killed 95% of that tribe. And you say, why? Because they killed every white person they could find. They were probably the most barbarous of all the tribes. A few years before the pilgrims came, the Patuxet Indian tribe had kidnapped a French fisherman. See, the French Europeans came to Cape Cod years before the pilgrims, and they would fish it. and take all that salted fish back to Europe. So they, what they did, they kidnapped, captured this Frenchman. And they began to torture him. And he knew they were gonna kill him. And he pronounced the curse of God on that Indian tribe. Now listen to this. It's just a couple years before the pilgrims came. He cried out to God and told his persecutors that the God of the Bible is gonna judge you. He said, in fact, He's gonna kill you because your hostility, your barbaric and savage ways. He said, then God will bring a people to this land that will obey Him and follow Him. The Patuxet Indian tribe mocked him and said, God cannot kill us. But he did. 95% of them. But before the tribe died, they cleared out that whole area, cultivated it, it was ready for planting, had corn already hidden in the ground for planting crops. I'm telling you, God has a way of intervening in things, and when he does, he really does. In the spring of 1621, the Lord brought an Indian into their life. Can you imagine that day, old Squanto come walking up, asking for a beer, and said, welcome. Speaking English, speaking good English. What story behind him? He's of that Petuex Indian tribe. But before they died, he got kidnapped. He got kidnapped by the English several years before then. He was taken to England and taught Christianity and taught the English language. He got his freedom from slavery. He comes back to Cape Cod where his people had been, found all of them about dead. And he come back right before the pilgrims got there. And one day he come up, talking to them and speaking English. And God would use him to preserve the lives of these people. Are y'all seeing God's hand in all this? This is astounding. How that every turn, you look like there's gonna be wiped out. And right before they all died, God would do something and preserve them. So, William Bradford kept a record of all this. Governor of the Plymouth Colony for over 30 years. He wrote several books and one being of Plymouth Plantation. Here's what he said about Squanto. He said he continued with us and was our interpreter and a special instrument sent of God for our good beyond our expectation. Now, they brought grain, they brought wheat. All the seed they brought wouldn't grow in the rocky Massachusetts soil. It died. He taught them how to plant peas, barley, and corn. Corn being the mainstay. He taught them how to fish for eel. and other fish. He taught them how to trap game. He taught them how to use their skins to make clothes, because they were woefully unprepared. He helped them negotiate a 50-year treaty that was not broken with the Wampanoag Indians. And when Massasoit, he's the chief of them, when he died, his son Philip came to power and did not honor what his daddy did for 50 years. And he got the King Philip War. I don't know if you know about that. That's all those Indians killed all them settlers and vice versa. But these pilgrims would face great hardship upon their arrival. When they got here, it's wintertime. They don't have time to build a house. They don't have nowhere to live. If the Mayflower captain had not had mercy on them and stayed the spring, they had all died. They would have died of the elements. How'd you like to go out cutting down trees in the snow? trying to build houses. The first thing they built was a common house where they could worship God and have a place where the people could meet together. They barely survived that first winter. It was so harsh. One of the harshest winters on record was the year they come. And it seems like all the elements are all against them, but then God preserved them. See, that is the miracle of God when he builds a nation. In the first three months, half of their company would die, especially in January and February. History records Bradford said they were infected with scurvy and other diseases. Sometimes two or three would die a day. Now they were terrified at all times of attacking Indian tribes. They didn't know that God was gonna preserve them. All the time they was worried about being attacked. So those two or three that would die every day, Brother Terry, they'd have to go out at night in that icy ground and bury their dead at nighttime. Folks, we can't even imagine the hardship of that hour. They'd left all they had in England and lost about everything they had left when they got to America. These were trubulous times. Boy, spring came, sunshine came, break and all the deaths. That's when God sent them Squanto, man. But this thing was so bad that the merchants from England and London that financed the trip, they signed a contract of seven years. And here's what they done. They signed a contract that for seven years, the merchant men will get half of everything they grow. And they also set up a system. And by the way, the first ship load of goods they sent back to help pay off the debt got, it got seized by pirates and all their goods were stolen. November of 1621, after the first modest harvest, all the stress, all the pressure, all the death, all the threats of starvation, they're gonna thank God. That's faith. They're gonna thank God in the midst of all that adversity. Now, friend, that's faith. That's deep faith. That's faith like probably none of us ever experienced, because we've never had to. They're gonna hold a three-day Thanksgiving feast, and the Wampanoag Indians are gonna come, and their chief Massasoit, 90 of them are gonna come. Jerusalem was the Thanksgiving day. October 24th, 445 B.C., the Bible emphasizes a time of great gladness. General, or governor rather, William Bradford was the principal to begin the first Thanksgiving and offer up the first Thanksgiving prayer. After three days of games and eating, they rejoiced and the Indians went their way. But though Squanto taught them how to sow the seeds of corn, they had some seeds that was about going to wipe them out. It's called the seeds of socialism, collectivism. William Bradford tells us the story behind that. The pilgrims signed a seven-year contract on July the 1st, 1621. The contract stated that the pilgrims were to pull everything they had together, all their resources, all their harvest, all their goods for the benefit of all. Socialism. Everything was put in a common house. Nobody owned property. Nobody owned a house. Nobody owned their food. It was all put together. It was all in a collective socialistic system and every settler got one share. All profits, all benefits gained by profit or trade, working, fishing. Working hard, working extra was of no reward for it all went in to one common place. All their goods, all their furniture, all their tools, everything they had was owned by everybody. This almost destroyed them. Cause when you take away incentive and capitalism, you got death. After seven years, their meat, their drink, their apparel, all their provision were to come from the common stock for seven years, half of it given to the merchants in London. That produces shortages and near starvation. You know why? Because a single man ain't gonna work himself to death to feed everybody else's family. It's welfare. This ain't gonna work. Governor Bradford said socialism bred confusion, discontent, and discouraged hard work. He said the very thought that the women would have to wash the clothes of other men. And the women have to fix food for other men. And the women have to work for other men. They say it's a form of slavery. That's what socialism is. That's when the government owns everything. That's when everybody's dependent on the government and all of the piglets are sucking on the sow. And the government gets everybody dependent on it so they can control how you think. And if you don't think right, they cut you off. Sure about that, policeman? in Virginia, got fired for privately donating $25 to the defense fund of Kyle Rittenhouse, got fired for supporting the defense of another American, that is Russia. That's red China. I hope he sues them for everything they got. The sad part is the taxpayers will have to pay it. And buddy, he's got his lawyers. But the very idea that you could do that to control how people think, even an athlete, a multimillion dollar athlete, doesn't even have the freedom in America to say what they think no more if it don't line up with the progressives and with these college elite people and all these liberals. That's what was happening here in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Bradford said lawlessness abound. He said much was stolen by nighttime and socialism produced thieves and criminals out of good and decent men. That's what socialism does. Because a man will do what it takes to feed his family. The pilgrims came together to discuss the dilemma. They referred to socialism. Bradford did as a kind of slavery and misery. The very thing the squad and the progressives are trying to shove down the throat of America is what almost destroyed. this colony of Plymouth. Governor Bradford said the system, this system can't work because it violates the Word of God. That's what he said. Governor over 30 years. He said that man would think that he can come up with a system better than God's system. The Bible teaches free enterprise system. The Bible teaches free markets. Listen to Ecclesiastes 3.13. And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of his labor. It is the gift of God. Did you get that? I don't know if you ever meditated on that verse, you need to. That is free markets and free enterprise, freedom and liberty to own property and to decide if you spend your money, how you spend your money, if you save your money, how you save your money, if you invest your money, if you start a business. Also, every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of his labor. It is the gift of God. Enjoy the fruit of one's labor is to decide what to do with it. Please ask these 519, every man also to whom God. you rescued me because 2,000 years ago on a cross of wooden crops, a Roman cross of execution, Christ died in our place. Salvation's a gift of God. You say, well, I can't obtain it. Yeah, exactly, you can't obtain it. God's got to give it. And God brings us to the point where we humble ourselves and he gives it. Now, Lord, we're gonna finish that sermon that started last Sunday morning tonight on we love him because, I love the Lord because, and I'll get into more of that then. All the reasons, man, I'm telling you, he delivered us and he set us free. Well, I'll tell you what, when I first started preaching, I hadn't been preaching long. I got to study the history of America for some reason. It just intrigued me. I mean, the Christian history. Got to preach them. Caught intervening in Valley Forge, George Washington, Revolutionary Army. The miracle of all this stuff. One third of the American colonists was for the war. One third was against the war. One third was neutral. We had to fight a war with our own people selling us out to the British. Just incredible. The greatest standing army in the world and a bunch of turkey shooters, squirrel hunters, defeated them. You know why? Because they outlasted them. wouldn't give up. Boy, I mean, listen, George Washington lost every single battle of 1776. Tens of thousands of his soldiers were taken and put on those hail ships off the coast, off the shore of New York. in Princeton, and beat those German mercenaries at Trenton, and then won at Princeton, and it bred life in the American forces. Cause victory always does. Boy, we need hope today. You know where I got hope? Nowhere it come from. I know how it got started. I know God's preserved it. If He wants to let this nation stand a while longer, He'll preserve it again. Let's pray to that end. Have your bowed eyes closed.