The answer to this question is generally accepted to be “For Religious Freedom.” Yet, that’s not entirety of the reasons given by William Bradford in his book, Plymouth Plantation. After escaping the religious persecution in England, they first landed in Holland. Here, they were able to worship freely. Yet, Holland gave them something they didn’t expect. Their children were being influenced by entertainment and a secular culture that was working against the godly training given by their parents. Thus, they were starting to lose their children to the world. With this major consideration, the Pilgrims loaded up the Mayflower and set sail for a new world where there would be opposition from cannibalistic savages and unexpected challenges of living in a foreign land. Their trip would take them across the Atlantic crammed tightly into a tiny vessel. Yet, it was all worth it in their eyes in order to preserve their multi-generational heritage.
What are you willing to do to save the souls of your children? To what lengths are you willing to go to make sure that modern, pagan society doesn’t influence your children adversely? Do we really think that our modern American society is less obtrusive than 17th century Holland? If they were willing to set sail across the ocean in a tiny wooden boat to escape the cultural evil influences of their day, shouldn’t we at least do the minimum of ditching our televisions and bringing our children home to educate them? Sometimes I wonder if those efforts are truly enough. You can’t go anywhere in public without exposing your children to harmful influences. Billboards line the freeways promoting promiscuity, drunkenness, and materialism. Televisions broadcast their propaganda when you are simply trying to dine out as a family.
There has to be a solution to this mess. There’s no undiscovered land available to go colonize now. Yet, we must be willing to do what’s necessary to preserve a multi-generational heritage for our own children. We must persevere. Failure is not an option.
8 comments:
Thank you, thank you, tank you! I truly share your thoughts. I am planning to write an article about this subject and many others concerning this country. It has strayed so far away from God and I believe He is tired of it. God has abundantly blessed America, yet the people refuse to give Him credit for it. They say "we" are the most powerful nation on earth, "we" are the richest nation on earth; but the Bible says, "...for it is He Who gives you power to get wealth , that He may establish His covenant which He swore to you fathers ..." And like you said, our children are being led astray begining with allowing prayer to be taken out of our schools. Thank you, God bless you.
Do you know of any books to read to my kids on this? We are going to study it in homeschool this year. It is hard to find much information on the subject to Holland being a bad influence on the children, and why the pilgrims came. Most people don't even know they came from Holland.
Thanks!
Do you know of any good books on the Pilgrims living in Holland and why they left to come to America. I would like to study this for our homeschool history this year. It seems hard to find much true information on the Pilgrims coming from Holland.
Thanks
Here is a link to a special that Vision Forum is currently running on this topic:
Click here.
The book that I referenced in this post, Of Plymouth Plantation is an excellent source for quoting the Holland reference. These are the words of William Bradford, who lived the history. So he should know what he's talking about. As a side note, I prefer reading history from the people who made the history. That way you get their biases instead of modern historians'.
Your conclusion says that we have no undiscovered land to colonize but we didn't even explore the whole world yet. So there are some land that we can colonize on still.
Elton...
Interesting. Where might that land be? Is it inhabitable? Maybe that's the solution after all. :-)
Mike
Good morning Mike. Excellent blog. I was looking to pick a topic for a short research paper for a history class I am taking online. After reading your blog on why the Pilgrims left America I decided to use this as a topic. It reminded me of my life as my parents left Cuba in their early 30s for America. They left properties of 100s of acres of tabacco and a bakery. All to get away from the government and the religious preference of Santeria, which was becoming the norm as people felt oppressed. We left to Spain having permission to leave Cuba but not enter the US and stayed three years later. We arrived in Madrid at 2 am not knowing a soul in that country. With God's grace we made it, it was difficult but we made it. We arrived in the US in 1974 and are living the American dream, but mostly God's will. I cannot thank my parents enough about the sacrifices they made much like the Pilgrims to leave an oppressive government and set out to a new world where they knew no one or the language, but did it for their kids mostly and trusting in God always. Thanks Mike for this great remimder. Any references you could add that I may be able to use on my paper would be great. I will add your blog to my Favorites list. To Him be the Glory, Gonzalo Garcia
Thanks for your comment Gonzalo. You asked for additional references. Here is a link to a sale on Plymouth Plantation, packaged with two other good resources. I hope you will find them helpful. Click here.
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