Notes from History

Today was Lesson 6 of the Truth Project entitled "History: Whose Story?" at South Canyon Baptist Church in Rapid City.

Here are a few of my notes from the lesson:

The lesson begins by examining history as God's story:

Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do. - isaiah 46:9-11

The lesson examines history from the perspective that it is a narrative of God's work, and his plan of redemption to save his creation which was damaged in The Fall.

The lesson uses a series of numbers to illustrate that the individual numbers, and combinations of those numbers (such as 8:59 being a time, 1859 being a year, 1 being a number, 11 being not just two ones, 911 being either nine hundred eleven or nine-one-one or nine-eleven, etc), have different meanings based on what we've been taught and our experiences--in other words, our present perceptions and concepts are shaped by history.

And if someone can "rewrite" history, they can "rewrite" our perceptions, concepts and opinions of the present and the future.

An example provided by the Truth Project leader, Dr. Del Tackett, was the book "I Rigoberta Menchu," written by a Guatemalan woman who received a Nobel prize for it's Marxist accusations...which later turned out to be fraudlent.

However, that didn't stop Marxist promoters like Marjorie Agosin, who plans to keep using it to "teach our students about the brutality of the Guatemalan military and the U.S. financing of it." Whether the book is true or not: ""Whether her book is true or not, I don't care." Apparently truth will not be allowed to get in the way of the Leftist agenda.

Want to see a brazen, in-your-face example of historical revisionism? Here is the text of the 1620 Mayflower Compact from Yale Law School's Avalon Project:

IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.

Now see how some of those "icky Christian" parts have been "revised" out of the text in various modern places such as How to Become a U.S. Citizen by Debra R. Shpigler



Or The Susan Constant and the Mayflower by Minnie G. Cook at JSTOR:



Or at your taxpayer-funded ostensibly objective PBS:

"Having undertaken … a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts … [we] covenant … ourselves together … to enact … laws … for the general good of the Colony; unto which, we promise all due submission and obedience

Even the audio clip embedded in this PBS piece "revises" out any reference to God or the Christian religion (click here to listen).

America is not a Christian nation, and has no Christian heritage, we hear some say today. No wonder, with revisionism like this at work!

Why would revisionists want to "revise" our Christian heritage out of history? It robs God of the credit he's due, for one thing. It also removes a reminder, a foundation, a cornerstone that we as a people might look to for guidance about where we should be going. If we never WERE a Christian nation, why should we be worried about whether we're one NOW? And if we WERE one at one point, but we're not NOW, and we have problems NOW that we didn't have THEN, then maybe we should look back or go back to that Christian period for answers? If you're an atheist or secularist who despises America's Christian heritage and doesn't want to live under the slightest influence of Christianity, does this sound like a good reason to rewrite history?

The Truth Project lesson points out that historical revisionism has been going on against God's truth since nearly the beginning. After all, what was the first thing Satan said to humans: "Did God really say...?"

Two powerful quotes were provided to illustrate the importance of history, and the tremendous power revisionism can have over the present and future. One as from George Orwell, of the famous 1984 and Animal Farm: "He who controls the past, controls the future." And Karl Marx: "A people without a heritage are easily persuaded."

You don't get very much truth from Karl Marx, but he hit the nail on the head with this one. If a fiction writer and the atheistic father of communism can get it, why do so many conservatives and Christians seem so oblivious to this???

Even this morning I read a horrifying example of historical ignorance at the New York Times. The article is about Susan Jacoby and her new book The Age of American Unreason. I don't agree with everything this woman says (she is herself a victim of historical revision, since she believes Christians are hostile toward science), but some of the examples she cites as her motivation to write the book are illustrative of this ignorance. For instance, a woman on a national game show who thought Europe was a country, and didn't know "Hungry" was a country (she meant Hungary). And this discussion of Pearl Harbor:

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

The Bible is filled from front to back with admonitions to remember things, to remember the past, to remember the truth, to remember what we have seen.

Here is one powerful example, one that speaks not only to ancient Israel:

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.

Does that sound like America? A nation founded by devout Christians, trusting God and reverencing him in all they did, from the founding of the first colonies, to the victory of the American Revolution...who then became fat and happy and came to believe we had done this all on our own, by the strength of our own hands, by the great wisdom and reason of our own minds? Those final verses scare the daylights out me as an American, to see the arrogant, self-centered nihilism of our people.

I don't think a week goes by (sometimes, for a spell, not a day goes by) that I don't argue with someone who seems to genuinely believe that America was not founded by Christians, that our government was not established on Christian principles, that ours was not (at least until recently) a nation that was Christian in character and flavor. Every bit of the mountain of evidence which speaks of America's Christian heritage is at first ignored, and if it is shoved in their faces, they make every attempt to reason away why the obvious cannot be what it seems.

Those same revisionists want to not only blot out the direct evidence of God's hand on America, but the indirect evidence as well. America is far from perfect, and has committed some terrible evils, including slavery of black people, and some of the despicable ways we've treated Native Americans, especially in the west. But they completely ignore the tremendous good that God has wrought through America, the tremendous freedoms, opportunity, comfort and affluence God has brought about through this country, the innocents and suffering we have rescued around the world.

We should certainly be able to acknowledge America's sins and imperfections in history without dwelling endlessly on those sins as if no good ever came from this nation. Yet that is what we hear from the "blame America first" crowd. They never have anything good to say about this country that provides them freedom, safety, and more comfort and opportunity than any people enjoys anywhere around the world throughout human history. From them, there is nothing worth mentioning about America except her sins.

Ultimately they want to blot out God's truth altogether. That's what the postmodernist moral relativism is: there is no truth. It (in their minds, at least) disarms the truth of God by saying, "Well that may be true for you, but not for me." In their minds, they believe that if they can simple "reject" that truth, then that truth has no power over them.

What a terrible surprise they will receive if they wake up in eternity having continued to believe that.

This lesson points out the important reason why we must take the time to be students of history. We must understand where it is we came from, both the sins and the triumphs in our heritage, to properly understand where we are today and where it is we're going.

There is a higher purpose for humanity, especially for the Christian. Don't miss out on it by letting a Leftist historical revisionist rob you of your heritage and your very history.