Now live by satellite and around the world on the Internet at vcyamerica.org, here is today's Cross Talk. Welcome to this special edition of Crosstalk. This is Gordon Morris, and we have a special treat as we'll be getting information provided at a recent VCY America rally. In November of 2006, William J. Federer was the guest speaker, and William Federer is a nationally known speaker and author. President of AmeriSearch Incorporated, and is also very knowledgeable about America's biblical heritage, having published America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations. He also has a radio feature called American Minute, in which he also quotes what happened in our nation's history as it relates to our faith in God, and especially in Jesus Christ. Well, on this particular occasion, this November rally in 2006, William Federer's topic was the real story behind Thanksgiving. And he had a lot of information that probably most people have never heard before. We all know about the Mayflower, about Squanto, and about the fact that there was a Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, despite a very hard winter and a meager crop even that summer. And yet the Thanksgiving, which we hear about between the Pilgrims and the Indians, was an outgrowth of many, many years of history. of people and their faith. And so William Federer, giving us the real story behind Thanksgiving, goes back quite a ways. In fact, all the way back to the Roman Empire. Imagine back in the Roman Empire period of time. So we have the Mediterranean Sea down here. You have North Africa here. And for those that are listening by radio, I have a big map up here. You have all of Europe. And the Roman Empire controlled it all. Then they began to get overrun with illegal immigrants. They were the Ostrogoths, and the Visigoths, and the Anglos, and the Saxons, and the Jutes, and the Lombards. They were overrunning the Roman Empire, coming across the Rhine River Valley. At first they came across slow and assimilated. They would learn the Latin language, and they were working as servants in the households. As a matter of fact, so many Eastern European Slavic people came down that the word Slav took on the connotation of a servant. Today we pronounce that word slave. that's where the word came from and then after a while these Eastern European people these different tribes came so fast that they didn't have time to learn the Latin language. So they kept their own tribal languages, their German language, and their Anglo's language, and their French language, and it broke up the unity of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Rome had its military stretched all around the world, putting out global fires, fighting in the Middle East, fighting in North Africa, fighting up in Britain. Then they were having terrorist attacks. Attila the Hun was going around wiping out whole cities of 75,000 people. Meanwhile they had the whole city of Rome was on welfare. They were giving away free bread. One historian said those that live at the expense of public funds are more numerous than those that provide them. and they had to raise taxes to pay for the welfare programs and to pay for all the military expenditures. Meanwhile, they had outsourced all of their grain production to North Africa. It was the grain basket. But when the Vandals, and believe it or not, that was the name of one of the tribes that overran the Roman Empire, the Vandals, and they came through Spain, they went into Northern Africa and captured it and cut off the grain supply so Rome didn't have resources to mount a counterattack. and then the people of Rome had gotten into moral debauchery I went to school for six months in Rome and we would tour the homosexual bath houses and you know they would have jacuzzis but under the floor would be the place where they'd stoke the slaves would be down there stoking the fire to keep the jacuzzis bubbling and they had that gymnasiums and of course you think what's wrong with a gymnasium well gym is the Greek word for naked so a gymnasium was where a bunch of naked men ran around But this was Rome. They had a practice called exposure of unwanted infants, where a mother would bear a child and lay it at the father's feet. If he picked it up and inspected it and liked it, they would keep it. If not, she had to get rid of it, and would put it out in some pagan temple or out in the woods, and the early Christians would hear these babies crying and gather them up, and many of them became great preachers. So Rome was falling from the inside. A historian named Salvian in the 5th century said, the Goths lie but are chased. The Saxons are savage in cruelty but admirable in chastity. What hope can there be for the Romans when the barbarians are more pure than they? After Rome fell there was a power vacuum. And the church filled part of that in certain areas. But in other areas there was no organization. There was no government, no police, no nothing. And then the eastern part of the Roman Empire was called Byzantine. And it had been weakened by a war with Iran. They were fighting Iran back then. It was called Persia, was what they called it, but that was Iran. And had been weakened. And so now we have the Western Roman Empire had fallen, the Eastern Roman Empire had been weakened, and then in 622 AD, we have a person who starts a religion by the name of Muhammad. Muhammad starts his religion in Africa, in Arabia. He couldn't read, so all he knew about Christianity was what he heard when he'd go on his camel drives. His dad died and he was raised by his uncle who was a camel driver. And so he heard about Christianity second- and third-hand. It just so happens that the area where he lived was where there were a bunch of Christian heresies. There was Nestorianism that said Jesus was all God. There was Arianism that said Jesus was all man. There was the Ebionites that said you had to be poor and had to be a Jew before you could be a Christian. As a matter of fact, Muhammad was married to his first wife by her uncle who was an Ebionite Christian priest. And anyway, Muhammad couldn't read the Old Testament. And so he heard just word of mouth. But see, they had the Old Testament, and then they had the Talmud, which was the written commentary on the Old Testament. Then they had the Midrash and the Mishnah, which were oral commentaries on the written commentaries on the Old Testament. So what he heard about the Old Testament was second- and third-hand removed. And then besides, Arabia was the seat of paganism. They had hundreds of different gods that they worshiped there in Mecca, and the most popular was the moon god whose name was Allah. And so Muhammad mixed all this together and came up with his faith. And he had it broken into two houses. There was the house of Islam and the house of war. The word Islam means submission, submission to the will of Allah. and you're going to see in a moment how this is going to tie into American history. It's a very important point. America would not be here so we got to pay attention. So Islam means submission to the will of Allah. A Muslim is somebody who has submitted and they think there will be world peace when the whole world has submitted to the will of Allah. so islam is a peaceful religion but their definition of peace is world islam when the whole world has submitted to Allah and then the other is the house of war or the house of jihad which is in the process of becoming the house of islam so they see the world as muslim and gotta be muslim The difference between a violent Muslim and a peaceful Muslim is the moderate Muslim thinks Islam will conquer the world, just not during their lifetime, so why get all bent out of shape? Get along with people, right? It's not going to happen for a long time. Well, the violent Muslim thinks that Islam will conquer the world during their lifetime, and they want to help make it happen. I sort of say there's three groups of Muslims. There are the violent ones, there are the ones who are afraid of the violent ones, and then there are the dead ones who weren't afraid of the violent ones. In other words, everybody talks about this large group of moderate Muslims, but the moderate Muslims will not speak out and condemn the violence. Why? Because every now and then one does speak out and they put out a fatwa against them and kill them. So the whole religion is held captive by the small group of violent ones. Anyway, during his lifetime, Muhammad went and waged 66 battles. He went into Quraysh. and they had, he cut off the heads of 700 Jewish men, and then sold the women and children into slaves. All along North Africa there were 700, I'm sorry, there were 250 Catholic diocese, and this is prior to the Reformation, so just about all Christians are Catholic. The Muslims wiped them all out. All of the Middle East was Byzantine, Christian, and Jewish, and in 636 AD the Muslims swept in there and conquered all of That area. And then they conquered all of Spain and held it for 700 years. Then they conquered all of Asia Minor and turned it into Turkey. You know the Muslim Ottoman Turks. How many of you read the last chapter, the last book in the Bible? The Book of Revelation, where the Apostle John writes a letter to the church at Philadelphia, to the church at Sardis, to the church at Laodicea, the Thyatira, all these different churches. Guess what? Every one of those churches was wiped out by the Muslim invading Ottoman Turks. The Muslims came in there and wiped out those churches. They had a unique way of doing it. They would capture a Christian city and take the young boys from the Christian homes and put them into the Muslim army. They called it the Deshurva, which meant the blood tax. Or, you know, they would capture an area, they'd tax everybody, oh, you gotta give us some food, and you gotta give us some of your animals, and you gotta give us your kids. And so they would collect the young boys, put them into the Muslim army. They were called Janissaries. And a Janissary was an elite fighting force. And as soon as they were trained to be armies for the Muslims, and they surrounded the Sultan, they were his special guard, and as soon as they converted to Islam, they got to have a weapon. So they didn't get the weapon until they actually converted, and they all did convert. The Muslims got to wear full beards, but the Janissaries could only have a mustache. But they would put the Janissaries on the front lines to attack the next Christian city. So they were using the children of Christians to attack the next Christian city. So that way they wouldn't have any loss of life. I mean, that's a pretty good idea, right? Use your enemies' kids to attack your enemies. You know, sort of like maybe the way that Christians put their kids in public schools and then the public schools teach them stuff that is actually against what the parents believe. But finally in 1452 the Muslims conquered Constantinople. And now this is where it gets interesting. Constantinople was a city that connected Western Europe to the Middle East to India and China. and so from Marco Polo on I don't know if you remember Marco Polo Marco Polo was this Italian this guy from Italy that here's Italy and on the map Marco Polo went all the way over with his dad Niccolo and Matteo they went through Constantinople and then all the way over to China in the 1300s. Here's this Italian wandering around in China. He worked for Kublai Khan for 25 years. But he opened up trade routes from Western Europe to India and China. And this went on for several hundred years until 1452, when the Muslims conquered Constantinople, turned it into Istanbul, it cut off the trade routes. So the Western Europeans wanted to have another trade route to get to India and China, and since they couldn't go the land route, in 1492 this guy named Columbus said, I know how to get to India and China, sail west. And so Columbus would not have set sail if the land route was still there. He thought the islands he discovered were around India. So he named the inhabitants the Indians. He thought that Haiti was Japan. He thought that Cuba was the tip of China. It wasn't until his fourth voyage that Columbus finally admitted he had not found the place. But if Islam in the 1500s was peaceful, Columbus would have never set sail and America would have never been discovered. So you can sort of see how it's coming together historically wise, right? Anyway, when Columbus came to America he was a Christian and he said it was the Lord that put it into my mind I could feel his hand upon me the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies and he said all who heard my project rejected it ridiculing me but yet the Lord encouraged me with marvelous rays of illumination from the Holy Scripture and he came and set up the Spanish Main which was the Caribbean area And I won't get into it all, but the word carob is a Spanish word for cannibal because they came across so many cannibals there. It was not the paradise that a lot of the politically correct people want you to think. Columbus opened the door for the Europeans to begin to come to the New World. We're listening to William Federer as he spoke about the real story behind Thanksgiving at a VCUI rally in November of 2006. And we'll continue this message in just a moment on our special edition of Crosstalk today. We'll be also telling you how you can obtain the message from the rally much longer than we can bring you on today's Crosstalk program in either video or audio form. Stay tuned as we learn more about the real story behind Thanksgiving. Back to Genesis with Dr. John Morris, geologist with the Institute for Creation Research. Dr. Morris, did the fossils take millions and millions of years to form? Chris, we're all taught this, but in some ways this doesn't seem to make sense. We find millions and billions of well-preserved fossils such as fish showing scales and tiny bones. Yet when a fish dies, it flows to the surface or it sinks to the bottom where it's eaten by scavengers or quickly decays. In order for it to be preserved, it's got to be buried rapidly away from destructive processes. It seems obvious that fossils must be buried quickly by water action, and what can do that? I propose the great flood of Noah's day. The fossils by and large are animals that died in the flood, laid down in sediments deposited by the flood. Yes indeed, Chris, the flood is the key. It's the flood mentioned back in Genesis. To learn more about creation, get our free DVD called That's a Fact. Call us at 800-628-7640 and mention the promo code FACT. Welcome back to today's special edition of Crosstalk, Gordon Morris, as we're hearing from a man named William Federer, an expert on our nation's history in terms of its spiritual history and where we came from spiritually, not only from our own founders, but even going all the way back into history. And we're hearing about the real story behind Thanksgiving, as William Federer presented it at a VCY rally in November of 2006. He's brought it up to the point where Columbus has discovered the new world, making it possible for colonists to start coming to our shores. And we'll pick up the story in just a moment. We do want to take time, however, to let you know that the entire message, which is well over an hour long, is available on either audio or video form for a donation to VCY America. You can obtain a CD version in audio and you can obtain a DVD video version of this rally which includes the maps that he showed and other visual information. Just give us a call at 1-800-729-9829 during regular office hours to let us know you're interested in a recording in either video or audio form of the William Federer Rally of November 2006. And now we return to the real story behind Thanksgiving as we learn how Europe came to the point where it could begin sending colonists to the shores of what is now the United States. Now all of Europe was Catholic. And in 1519 is when Martin Luther started the Reformation, and then princes would start fighting. One prince would say he's Catholic, and another one would say he's Lutheran, and they had all these wars. Finally, in 1555, they passed the Peace of Augsburg. Augsburg was a city in Germany. And it's an interesting peace because it has this phrase in there. kurios et regio, kurios et religio which means whose is the reign, his is the religion so it set up this idea in Europe that whatever the king believed the kingdom had to believe and so Europe began to break into different religions so Germany was mostly Lutheran, Switzerland was Calvinist, Holland was Dutch Reformed Sweden was Swedish Lutheran. The Greece was Greek Orthodox. Russia was Russian Orthodox. Spain and Italy and Portugal and Poland were Roman Catholic. England was Anglican. Scotland was Presbyterian. So in each country, the king decided what was going to be believed in his country. That was the thought. Whatever the king believed, the kingdom had to believe. Who was the first main group that settled in North America? The Puritans, I was okay, I'll give you that question. So, who were the Puritans? Well, it's important to remember, the Puritans were members of the Church of England, which was started by Henry VIII. Well, his advisors suggested that if he really wanted to break with Rome, he should stop using that old Latin Bible and get himself an English Bible. Then people would look to England for their spiritual heritage. So for more or less political reasons, Henry VIII spread the English Bible around the country, thinking this will solidify my break with Rome. But something unexpected happened. People began to read it. And compare what was in this Bible to this king divorcing and beheading his wives and being over the church and the corruptions that were involved. And so this group wanted to purify the Church of England. So they were nicknamed the The Puritans, well, the king didn't think he needed any purifying thank you, so he persecuted them. A couple kings later was Charles I, and he hired an archbishop, an Anglican archbishop by the name of William Laud, L-A-U-D. And William Laud sent spies into all the churches to make sure the pastors were following the official Anglican liturgy. And if they weren't, they were arrested. Well, guess what? All the Puritans lost their jobs. They were purged from academia. They could no longer teach at Oxford or Cambridge. I mean, William Penn was expelled from Oxford for having a Bible study in his dorm room, rather than going to the Anglican chapel service. And they began to persecute these Puritans. Well, there was another group that said, we're not even going to bother trying to purify the Church of England. We're going to separate ourselves. They believed that the state government should not control the church government. They wanted it separated. And so this group of separatists would meet in secret, in barns, in basements, by candlelight. And we call these separatists the Pilgrims. They heard that there was a little bit of freedom in Holland. These separatists were in Holland for nine years. and as the years clicked by they saw their children beginning to learn the language and the looser morals of the Dutch youth and then they heard rumors that Spain was thinking of attacking Holland which would put them in harm's way and so they decided to flee again and at first they were going to go to British Guyana believe it or not and then somebody said well there's too many tropical diseases in that area and it's too close to the Spanish main remember I told you about the Spanish main the area of the Caribbean the first settlement in North America was at Fort Caroline, Florida. These were French Protestant Huguenots, that's what they called them, some guy named Hugo, and so they called them Huguenots, not astronauts, it was Huguenots. Anyway, these, in 1565, they had a settlement there by the St. Johns River, which is today around Jacksonville, Florida, for about two years, until the Spaniards found out about it, and they came there and captured them, and made a little truce with them, and then after the men surrendered they said, oh, we don't have to keep faith with heretics, and so they killed them. They killed 300 men, chopped off their heads, and they took the women and children captive. And so when the separatist pilgrims heard about this story, they said, we don't want to go anywhere near where Spain is, let's go to Virginia. So in 1606 is when Virginia was first started. It was a business colony, basically. It was an investment company. There was the London, you know, the Virginia company, the New England company, they wanted to have businesses trade. I was just up in Maine earlier this year, and they were telling me about the Pine Wars, and Maine was the place where the British got the masks from those long pine trees that they used in all their ships. See, so they saw this as a resource. Anyway, these pilgrims had intended to go to Virginia. And then the pilgrims prayed and decided to leave. They had a church. They were a church. Now it's interesting, when they were in Holland, they had their own little Bible church. The churches in England had the king as the head. Even the Puritans saw themselves still within the Church of England, but they were sort of like trying to purify it. But these separatists were over in Holland. They had their own little church, so they came up with a church government, where they would vote for who was going to be their pastor. They all had an equal say. They would pray. They would fast. They would work together as a body. So they learned some things that would help them later. An interesting story, they first had a boat called the Speedwell, but the Speedwell didn't speed well. And they took off and it began leaking. Now, the old wooden boats were wood ribs put together and they would caulk them. They'd try to stick some wax or something. But if the captain, like, let the wind blow the sails too hard, it would separate the seams and water would come in. And they think that's what happened, that this captain didn't want to go over to the New World, and so he sort of did this on purpose, because every time they brought the ship back and looked at it, where they hold candles up trying to see, they couldn't see any holes. Anyway, time was clicking by. The pilgrims were eating half of the supplies that they were going to use once they got to the New World. So they had to switch to the ship called the Mayflower. But now they're sailing later in the season, and there's more storms. So they leave in September. It's a 65-day journey before they finally come to the New World, but they're caught in all these storms. The storms were so bad that the pilgrims were confined to the between deck, a four-foot space with no windows. Could you imagine that for over a month of time, being in this little four-foot space with babies crying? And there was one sailor that was making fun of the pilgrims, calling them psalm singers and puke stockings, because they would always sing psalms and they were always throwing up. And this sailor suddenly caught ill and died. And so the other sailors didn't speak bad about the pilgrims after that. At one point in time, the storm cracked the main beam that was holding up the mast. And one of the pilgrims had a printing press, one of those old rudimentary things with a printer screw. And they stuck it under there and they screwed it back in place and propped the beam back up. And one time, this young man was so tired of the smell, if you can imagine the smell in there, I mean, that he decided to go topside to get some fresh air. And he did, and was thrown overboard, and luckily his arm caught a rope, and they pulled him out of the freezing North Atlantic, and he survived, but he never went topside again. Anyway, I'm pretty sure his name was John Howland, but he was the ancestor of many leaders in America, including George W. Bush. So the Mayflower finally made it to the Americas, but it was blown off course. They were supposed to land in Virginia and be under the Virginia government and walk in and say, OK, we're going to just submit to your government. But they were blown off course. And the time was clicking. It was already into November. And the captain said, that's it. We don't have time to go anyplace else. You're going to stay here. And so they get off the boat. But before they get off, they say, wait a second. There's no government for us to submit to. So they decided to come up with their own government. And they called it the Mayflower Compact. This is the first government document written in the New World. Now, I've read through all the charters of all the states. And I actually put together a book called The Original 13. And I have read through every charter of every colony, every state constitution of the 13 states and all the amendments up to the present. And wherever they mention God or faith or Christianity, I put it in here. It's an amazing book when you see the history of each of the 13 states. So when these pilgrims came across, every other charter says King Charles I grants permission for you to have this colony. King James I grants permission for you to have this colony. King George II grants permission for you to have this colony. Well, this was not the king granting it because there was no king on the boat, so they granted themselves. They said, we, the hereby undersigned, having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith a voyage to plant the first colony on the northern parts of Virginia, do form a civil body politic. And so they mutually covenanted themselves together under God. And this was a revolutionary idea. It was no longer the king granting them permission to have a government. They were granting themselves to form a government under God. This was the first government document made in the New World. This was the blueprint for several of the other colonies, specifically Connecticut. And then Connecticut's Constitution was the blueprint for the U.S. Constitution. We're getting into familiar territory as we're hearing the real story behind Thanksgiving, as presented by William Federer at a VCY rally in November 2006. And we'll be returning in just a moment to continue the story as they landed on the shores of Northern Virginia, which of course turned out to be modern-day Massachusetts. A reminder that as you order a copy of today's Crosstalk program, instead you'll be receiving the entire message from that rally. Just simply let us know that you want the William Federer Rally from November of 2006 on the real story behind Thanksgiving. Whether you want the video in DVD or whether you want the audio in CD form, to do so you may call us during regular business hours at 1-800-729-9829. That's 1-800-729-9829. You may also order the rally by going directly to our crosstalkamerica.com website. and clicking on the Crosstalk store and searching for the real story behind Thanksgiving and it will bring up the ordering information for the William Federer rally from November of 2006. Again, that's at crosstalkamerica.com. We'll be back in just a moment with the next segment of this program featuring the message from that rally by William Federer on the real story behind Thanksgiving. Right here on Crosstalk. Stay tuned. George Washington said, ìIt is impossible to rightly govern the world without God in the Bible.î Andrew Jackson said, ìThat book, sir, is the rock upon which our republic rests.î Theodore Roosevelt said, ìA thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.î Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ìI take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces.î These and over 2,000 other direct quotations revealing the godly heritage of America can now be found in America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations by William Federer. This volume of over 800 pages cites founding fathers, presidents, statesmen, state constitutions and court decisions. This reference tool is available for a donation of $22 to VCY America. Call 1-800-729-9829. Ask for America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations. Welcome back to today's special edition of Crosstalk, as we're listening to William Federer, a best-selling author, a nationally known speaker, President of AmeriSearch Incorporated, and an expert on America's biblical heritage, as he tells us the real story behind Thanksgiving. This was presented at a VCY rally in November of 2006. So far, we've gotten to the point where the Pilgrims are just about to come ashore in what became their colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Now we return to William Federer and the real story behind Thanksgiving. The French and the English and the Dutch used to fish along the eastern coast of America. And they would sometimes lure Indians onto their boat, and take them captive, and teach them their language, and then have the Indians show them where the good fishing spots are. these Indians became hostile and so they didn't like these ships from the Europeans coming over and there were cases where three years before the Pilgrims landed a French ship was shipwrecked right at Cape Cod And the soldiers, I mean all the sailors got ashore. And William Bradford writes that the Indians never left watching and dogging them till they got the advantage of them and they killed them all but three or four whom they sent from one sachem to another making sport with them and treating them worse than slaves. It was a dangerous place to come over here. They risked their lives. Just three years before the Pilgrims landed, this French ship was wiped out at that very spot, but something happened. The entire tribe there at the Cape Cod area had been killed by a plague. Now, chances are the plague was because they didn't have immunity to European diseases, which like smallpox and stuff, but nevertheless, they had been wiped out. But lo and behold, right before that happened, One of those ships that stopped by lured one of the Indians on board by the name of Tishquantum, Squanto. And he was taken and sold as a slave in Spain. And the story is that he was purchased by some monks and they gave him his freedom. And he hitchhiked his way across Europe. I mean, we're talking the early 1600s. This Indian wandering around Europe gets to England. and tries to get passage back to America, but he's in England for like nine years. And he works, he works as a fisherman, and works out at the docks, and finally gets somebody to drop him off in Newfoundland, and then finally gets somebody else to drop him back off on the shores of America, and he gets off right before the Pilgrim's Land. And he gets off and he sees that his whole tribe had been wiped out. Now imagine how depressed he must have felt. That here, for years he had been away, and he just wants to get back home, and when he finally gets there, it's a ghost town. Everybody's dead. So what does he do? He goes and lives with another tribe. And he's there for that winter. Well, unbeknownst to him, that winter is the winter that the pilgrims come. And out of all the eastern seaboard, where they could have landed and had Indians that didn't want them there, they landed at this one spot where there are no Indians. And so they get off. And that first winter, they begin chopping wood, and building their buildings, and the men would sweat, and it would get cold, and they would catch a fever, and they'd keep working, and the fever would turn into ammonia, and then they would die. One would die, two, three, four, five, a dozen, two dozen, three dozen, all the way. Half of the pilgrims died that first winter. They started with 102. By the next spring, half of them had died. Only five couples retained their original spouses. And the next couple years after that, the widows would marry the widowers and put families and start mixing back together. And they would not have made it through another year, but that spring, out of the woods walks Squanto. And he comes and talks to them in perfect English. Could you imagine how totally dismayed these pilgrims were? Here they are 3,000 miles away from civilization. This Indian walks out of the woods and says, oh, how are you guys doing? He goes, oh, you're from London? Oh, yeah, I used to live in London. You know, and then he's like, you know, and then besides that, this Indian happens to know everything about the area where they had landed. Oh, I grew up here. Yeah, right on the other side of that hill is a spring. And if you go over there, and Squanto showed him how to catch fish. They said, oh, we're trying to catch fish. He said, we can't do it. He goes, oh, spawning season's coming up. You better get your nets ready. You're going to harvest them. Well, they get out there, and they just harvest these fish. And then he teaches them how to plant corn. They said, oh, we tried planting. We can't do that. He goes, no, no, what you do, you take the corn, and you put four fishes over it and guard it for a couple weeks till the fish decompose and fertilize the ground. And you want to keep the wolves from dragging the fish away. And once it's fertilized, they have a great harvest. And then he taught him how to go down to the riverbanks and take the young men with their bare feet and squeegee in the mud until they get eels and they catch the eels and they eat them. I mean, you gotta be real hungry to do that. But anyway, then he taught him how to take the corn and put it in a pot and shake it over a fire and make what? Popcorn, that's from the American Indians. He taught him how to catch beavers. Now this is important because nobody ever asked the question, who paid for their boat ride to America? They borrowed money from Thomas Weston for their boat ride to America. It took them 40 years worth of beaver skins to pay off that trip. Think of that. Now, those of you that are in debt, you know, sometimes we think, oh, God can't use me till I'm out of debt. You know, it always seems that God's people are always in debt, but you can't let that hold you back from doing his will. And that's what the pilgrims did. They finally, but the most important was that Squanto put them on good terms with the other Indian tribes. That entire first generation never had any Indian problems. Why? Because Squanto was their interpreter. And a couple years later, in 1622, William Bradford writes that they were exploring another area, and a sleeting, freezing rain began to come down while they're in a small boat, and he says, we put in at Mammamoyik Bay, and made a shelter on one of the islands. And he says, here Squanto fell ill of Indian fever, bleeding much at the nose, which the Indians take for a sign of death. And then he prayed and he begged Governor Bradford to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishman's God in heaven. His death was a great loss. Mrs. William Bradford writing this, you know, you see the Disney film and it almost has him converting the pilgrims to their Indian religion. No, the pilgrims were living their Christian faith in front of him and he saw it and by the time he was done, he says, I want what you guys have. Pray for me that I go to the Englishman's God in heaven. Well, because Squanto had put them on such good terms with the Indians, and taught them how to plant. That first Thanksgiving, that first November, the Indians came, and they brought deer and turkey, and the pilgrims made the food that they had brought, and they had their first Thanksgiving. and it went on for a day. At the end of the day, the Indians rolled up in their fur skins and just slept on the ground, and the next day they were still there, so the Thanksgiving went on another day. You know, those of you moms that have guests over for Thanksgiving, you know, and then the third day they were still there. The first Thanksgiving went on for three days, and the young boys had arm wrestling and They left their bows and arrows outside of the, you know, the camp they didn't bring. The chief wouldn't come because he still was a little bit leery, mesozoic. But they had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that set the tone for it. Now, just immediately after that, another shipload of pilgrims arrived with no supplies. So these pilgrims in their second winter had to take what they had stored and they had to ration to make sure they made it through the second winter. It got so bad that at one point they had to give every person five kernels of corn a day. So the next time that you're having a time of struggling with your meals, think of that. And then they made it through that second winter. And then William Bradford talked about how one of the problems they were having was communism didn't work. They had their plot of land, and they were saying, OK, we need everybody to go out and plant. And the one guy said, oh, I'm sick. And the mom would say, oh, I got this baby. I got to take care of it. Nobody wanted to go out and plant. So William Bradford said, scrap communism. Everybody gets their own plot of land and whatever grows on it. Everybody's out there saying, OK, I'm going to plant. And she's got the baby on the hip, and she's planting. And that next year, they had a huge harvest. And so that year, in 1623, they had their first Thanksgiving where they actually had a proclamation. for it. And we see that this was the beginning. Now other colonies were formed, but they were what's called royal colonies. And they didn't try to set up their own government, they were just appointed by the king and they just did what the king wanted. Each colony was founded by a different group. So Virginia was founded by the Church of England. In its charters, which I have in here, it talks about how all the churches need to follow the ecclesiastical laws of the Church of England. So in Virginia, they chased out the Quakers. They wouldn't allow the Quakers in there. Massachusetts was started by Puritans. The Puritans in England, they didn't like the church government being controlled by the state government. They didn't like the fact that the king would send spies into the churches. They didn't want their church being controlled by the state government. But once these Puritans got to America, 20,000 of them came across. We just had 102 pilgrims, but 20,000 Puritans came across. They settled in Massachusetts. Once in Massachusetts, they realized they were the government. And so they felt, well, maybe it's not such a bad idea that the state government control the church government, because we can make sure that the churches don't get off into heresy. Roger Williams was a pastor that came across from England. And Roger Williams was preaching that the state government should be separated from the church government. And they didn't want that to happen. and so the general court of Massachusetts sent soldiers to the little church that Roger Williams was at and kicked him out from being pastor and chased him so he went and lived with the pilgrims for four years and then Roger Williams came back to Salem, Massachusetts and was the assistant pastor at a church and then when the pastor died he became the main pastor. Well the general court of Massachusetts again sent their saying we don't want you to have him as your pastor. And the people said, well, we're going to choose them anyway. And so the general court says, OK, well, if you do, we're going to basically excommunicate your town. You can't do business. You can't buy land. You can't do anything. And so even Roger Williams' wife was saying, look, you're getting a little carried away with this. And so they were going to arrest Roger Williams and send him back to England. And three days before they arrested him, he fled. And he fled and founded Providence, Rhode Island. And he founded the first Baptist church in America. and there in Providence, Rhode Island, he has word that Massachusetts was going to annex and take over Rhode Island. So he goes to England and gets a charter, but one of the unique aspects of history is that you had to get the king to approve there wasn't any king because those Puritans that were left over in England had a civil war Oliver Cromwell was their governor and they captured the king and they chopped off Charles the first head so there was no king in England the Puritans controlled it and so Oliver Cromwell was the king was the Lord Protectorate and his Secretary of State was Sir Henry Vane so Sir Henry Vane signed the charter for the colony of Rhode Island which did not require the church to submit to the king so it was a unique charter and so Rhode Island was a colony that was predominantly Baptist And it was unique because all the other colonies had requirements for faith, but this one didn't. And that's because they understood that true religion was from the inside out, not forced by the government from the outside in. We're hearing the real story behind Thanksgiving as presented by William Federer at a VCY rally in November of 2006. We'll return in just a moment with the final portion of this message as it's available on our Crosstalk program today. Of course, ordering today's program will bring you the entire message from that rally. Details at the close of the program. We'll be back in just a moment. This is Crosstalk on VCY America. For the Worldview Week in Minute, I'm Brandon House. Our website is worldviewradio.com. Have you noticed all of the lawlessness at the highest levels of our government? The FBI, we have a former CIA director who admitted to voting for a communist presidential candidate, Gus Hall. That was John Brennan. You've got James Comey and Mueller as FBI director giving awards to known jihadis, the highest FBI awards to known jihadis. You've got an unconstitutional, illegal impeachment inquiry that has not followed the rules of Congress. All of this is lawlessness at the highest levels. But you know there's also lawlessness at the street level, right? Did you know this is a communist tactic? well-known and it's called pressure from above and pressure from below. It's all designed to have lawlessness at the highest levels of government and at the street level. And this chaos eventually will cause people to want to surrender to socialism to have a normalization of society. Welcome back to the final segment of this special edition of Crosstalk with a message by William Federer at a VCY rally in November of 2006 on the real story behind Thanksgiving. We'll have one more segment we'll bring you during this portion of Crosstalk but it's not nearly the entire message which is well over an hour long. So if you're interested you can ask for today's Crosstalk program or the rally from November of 2006 William Federer on the real story behind Thanksgiving Call during office hours at 1-800-729-9829 to make those arrangements. Again, that's 1-800-729-9829. And now here's one more excerpt from the real story behind Thanksgiving, as presented by William Federer. Many presidents declared days of prayer. Many presidents declared days of fasting. Did you know that John Adams declared a day of fasting in 1799 during a threatened war with France? James Madison declared a day of fasting during the War of 1812. Lincoln declared a day of fasting during the Civil War. Even Woodrow Wilson declared a day of fasting and prayer in 1918 during World War I. But then we had different presidents that declared days of Thanksgiving. As a matter of fact, the first one was the president George Washington now George Washington declared the first National Day of Thanksgiving the same week that we passed the First Amendment so here the First Amendment which today is being used to get rid of God The First Amendment was passed that same week Washington declares a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God, thanking him for the First Amendment. And so you had different presidents declaring, but it was Abraham Lincoln that made it an annual event. and so every president from Abraham Lincoln until now has had an annual national day of thanksgiving to almighty God and I put those in this book treasury of presidential quotations you get to read what Grover Cleveland said and Harry S. Truman said it and Dwight Eisenhower said they all declared days of thanksgiving to almighty God And it's interesting, they weren't thanking the Indians. I mean, they were thankful for the Indians, but their days of Thanksgiving weren't to just have a thing to thank the Indians, and that's what they teach in public schools. You know, this is James Madison. He's the guy that wrote the First Amendment. He should have a clue what the First Amendment meant. When he was president, we had the War of 1812. The British began to attack, so he declared a day of prayer. The British burnt the White House. Fasting and prayer, we're getting serious here, they're burning our Capitol. And then when we won, he declared a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God. So here's a president that introduced the First Amendment declaring three proclamations acknowledging God. Certainly he didn't think his amendment was to keep God out. You know what's interesting? The British charged into our Capitol on August 25th of 1814. And they began to burn the White House, burn the Library of Congress, burn the Capitol. Then the sky became dark and black, and the wind picked up till it was hurricane strength. And it began to knock over chimneys on the British and knock over walls. And even reports were that it lifted up the cannons of the British and began to throw them yards away. And then lightning began to flash down and hit the British, and it began to hail on them. So it was a miracle that our capital was saved. Then the rains from that hurricane began to put out the fires and extinguish them. Ladies and gentlemen, we are a country that has a heritage of God. And even Franklin Roosevelt, and I did a book on Franklin Roosevelt, he declared a day of thanksgiving to God. Franklin Roosevelt wrote the foreword for a New Testament that was given out by the millions to World War II soldiers, and Franklin Roosevelt He had a day where he acknowledged the 400th anniversary of the printing of the English Bible. And he said, we cannot trace our rise as a nation without reckoning the place the Bible has occupied in the advances of our republic. I'd just like to remind you, someday you're going to be dead. Just thought I'd leave you on a little encouraging note. Someday you and I will be in heaven, and we won't be able to come back to earth, because we'll be up there. But, imagine this, imagine when you've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, with no less days to sing his praise than when you've just begun. Imagine being in heaven 10,000 years and you get a chance to meet Moses. That'd be pretty cool, wouldn't it? Walk along the streets of gold, you meet Moses. Maybe he'll invite you over to his place. Imagine you get there, and he's probably got one of these fireplaces where the logs don't burn out. You know, get it? The burning bush didn't burn up, and the logs in the fireplace didn't burn up. And I heard one preacher say, in heaven you'll travel as fast as you think, and I'll probably show up late. My wife will say, where were you? I'll say, I was thinking about something else. But imagine getting there. It'd be a big room full of people like this. And as the evening goes by, you just can't contain yourself anymore. And you just say, Moses, what was it like? I mean, you're the guy. I've read all about you, but you're right here in front of me. What was it like being there? And he'll say, well, you know, when I was on earth, you know, Pharaoh and his chariots were charging in at us, going 30 miles an hour with these razor-sharp swords, and they were going to slice us to ribbons, and I didn't know what to do, so I just held up my rod and said, God, use me to deliver my people. And the waves came down and destroyed Pharaoh and his chariots. Then we're going to look around the room and see David, and say, David, David, tell us, what was it like being there? I mean, you're the guy, you have read all about you, what was it like? And David will say, well, you know, I was just 17 years old, and this guy named Goliath was mocking our God and mocking our faith, and the grownups were too afraid to do anything about it. They stood around for 40 days. And I said, if they're not gonna do anything, I'm gonna do something. So I go out there with my sling, and I hit him in the head, and I take his own sword and chop his head off. And then we're gonna see the apostle Paul in the room, and he's gonna tell his story. And we're gonna see Deborah and Gideon and Samson, all the great saints of old. Finally, the room's gonna get quiet, and everybody's gonna look at you. They're gonna say, you, tell us your story. What did you do when you were on earth? What were they saying about God in your country? What were they saying about the faith, about the Ten Commandments, about marriage that God instituted in the first part of Genesis? Tell us about what you did to stand up for the life that God created in the mother's womb. Tell us, what did you do when you were on earth? You know, I'd hate for any of us to be in heaven and Jesus to say, come here. And you come and there's a screen and you see all kinds of miracles and great things happen and throngs of people coming to the Lord and Him saying, this is what you could have done if you'd have been just a little more sold out to me and realize you can't go back to earth and do another thing. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you're still on the earth. You're still on the track, the football field. You're still there. This is the opportunity that you and I have that you'll be able to talk about for eternity what you do for the Lord in your life here. We've been listening to portions of a message by William Federer on the real story behind Thanksgiving, as presented at a VCY rally in November of 2006, in which he went all the way back to the Roman Empire and brought things right down to our day today. This message, of course, is much too long to be contained in today's Crosstalk program. However, if you order today's Crosstalk, you'll obtain instead the entire message as it was delivered at that rally. You may do so by requesting today's Crosstalk or the November 2006 V-C-Y Rally when you call toll-free 1-800-729-9829 during regular business hours. It's available on CD and it's available on DVD video. You may also go online to our website, crosstalkamerica.com. Go to the Crosstalk store and you can order them online as well. This is Gordon Morris. Thank you for joining us. You've been listening to Crosstalk, via satellite and the Internet, from VCY America. Views expressed may or may not be those of this station. For a CD of today's program, send a donation of six dollars or more to VCY Tape Ministry, 3434 West Kilbourn Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53208, or download by RSS or podcast from crosstalkamerica.com. And join us again for Crosstalk.