The First Thanksgiving

"The First Thanksgiving" by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, 1914

The first Thanksgiving celebration wasn't a feast at all—no turkey, no harvest and no Pilgrims. That's right: Contrary to popular belief, the first Thanksgiving in the New World was actually held one year and 17 days before the Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth, England, and not a single morsel of food was involved.

Capt. John Woodlief and 37 other settlers held a short religious service on Dec. 4, 1619, the day they arrived at Berkeley Plantation in present-day Charles City, Virginia, after a two-and-a-half-month voyage. The group of young men, which included a shoemaker, cook, sawyer and gun maker, had set sail from Bristol, England, aboard the ship Margaret. On the first Thanksgiving Day, they knelt down and gave thanks for their safe arrival in accordance with their charter, which stated, "Wee ordaine that the Day of our ship arrivall at the place assigned for Thanksgiving to Almighty God." President Kennedy officially recognized Berkeley Plantation as the site of the first Thanksgiving in 1963.

Berkeley Plantation is the site of other American firsts: George Thorpe, an Anglican priest, brewed the first bourbon whiskey in America in 1621, and Benjamin Harrison III created the first commercial shipyard in 1691. The Harrison family built the three-story Georgian manor house on the hilltop site overlooking the James River in 1726. It had the first pediment roof in Virginia and was built with homemade bricks.

Berkeley Plantation was also home to many important figures and events in our nation's history. Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and three-time Virginia governor, lived in the manor house. It was also the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, who gave the longest inaugural address but served the shortest term. Gen. George McClellan's Union troops made the plantation their home during the Civil War. You can still see an old cannonball lodged in one of the outbuildings today! Berkeley Plantation is also home to the familiar tune "Taps," which Gen. Daniel Butterfield composed while camping at Berkeley.

Even though this year's annual Thanksgiving festival has already passed, you can still celebrate the first Thanksgiving with a visit to the site where it all started. (Mark your calendars for next year, though. Virginia's First Thanksgiving Festival is always the first Sunday in November.) This historic plantation on the banks of the James River lies halfway between Williamsburg and Richmond, and it's a spot you won't want to miss.

Follow guides in period costumes as they lead you through the basement and first floor of the original manor house, furnished with a collection of 18th-century antiques. Then, guide yourself through the lush grounds, complete with five terraces of boxwood gardens and a monument to the first Thanksgiving. Experience the same Berkeley hospitality that the first 10 presidents enjoyed at the renowned Coach House Tavern located just 100 yards from the manor house.

By Cara Sutermeister

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Bringing things up to date - A Prepared Bride

I began this blog by writing out a series of teachings that I believe are much needed in the church today. It involves preparing the Bride of Christ for His soon return and the marriage that follows. I am listing below these teachings. Each can be read on its own or as a continuation of the series.

It is my hope that we, as the Body of Christ, will be awaken from our slumber or our "seeking-riches-stupor" and recognize our condition, repent and ride the wave of the worldwide revival that would follow.

Introduction Rev. 19:6-8

Introduction Continued Rev. 21

Manifest Presence

The Four Walls - Introduction

Worship - Introduction Part 1

Worship - Introduction Part 2

Loving God Spiritually

Loving God Intellectually

Loving God Emotionally

Loving God Actively

Loving Yourself - Part 1 Phillippians 2

Loving Yourself - Part 2 Psalm 139

Loving Your Neighbor - Part 1: Luke 10

Loving Your Neighbor - Part 2 Fellowship

Under Authority

Go

The Father is looking for a prepared bride for His Son. When the Son returns, He will gather His prepared bride to Himself. Each day we have the same choice as the young ladies waiting for the wedding feast in Matthew 25 to be prepared and enter in or to be foolish and be left outside.

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The Persecuted Church

This past week was the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church. According to the Voice of the Martyrs:

Around the world today Christians are being persecuted for their faith. More than 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith since 33 AD. This year an estimated 160,000 believers will die at the hands of their oppressors and over 200 million will be persecuted, arrested, tortured, beaten or jailed. In many nations it is illegal to own a Bible, share your faith, change your faith or allow children under 18 to attend a religious service.

Hundreds of men and women are in prison serving sentences that range from a few months to life. They are not criminals who have robbed or murdered other citizens but Christians who were put on trial for their faith in Christ and found guilty. They could have avoided prison by simply denying allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, they are literally “doing time for God.”

You can be an encouragement to many of these prisoners by writing letters to them and to government officials on their behalf. The VOM Prisoner List, called “Doing Time for God,” will give you instructions and addresses for a ministry to Christian prisoners in restricted countries. This is a wonderful opportunity to spend time praying, writing and entering into the fellowship of sufferings with these Christian prisoners. You will be “doing time for God” by sharing His burden for those who suffer for His sake.

It is very difficult to get accurate, up-to-date information out of many of the restricted nations where VOM works. We have done our best, through in-country contacts and other sources, to make this list as complete and accurate as possible. It is not an exhaustive list of Christians in prison in a given nation. The information was accurate at the time of posting, but circumstances for a given prisoner may have changed.

“I was in prison, and you came to me”
---Jesus (Matthew 25:36)

Here is a list of some of those currently in prison for their faith.

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Jabez book devastates China house churches

An example of what happens when we export our "prosperity gospel" to another culture.

BEIJING — The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson, one of the best-selling non-fiction books in the past ten years, has gutted China's house church movement, say observers.

"Chinese Christians used to sacrifice everything for Christ. Now they only want God to bless them," says one Chinese elder who has served five prison terms for planting churches. He and others say China's Christians have "grown soft with navel-gazing" and have lost their tolerance for persecution.

Copies of The Prayer of Jabez began circulating in China in 2001. Many Christians began "talking endlessly about God expanding their borders and keeping them free from pain," says one Chinese pastor whose weekly prayer meeting shrunk to half its previous size.
"Instead of asking God to strengthen the Chinese church they pray for personal fulfillment. They ignore all the Bible except Jabez," he says.

Sun Young, 24, says he and other Christians are tired of hearing only about "the way of the cross."

"Jabez changed my life. I pray every morning, 'God, let your hand be with me and keep me from harm,'" he says.

Unlike his parents, he does not want to suffer for Christ, but rather hopes to flourish in his personal giftings. "Jabez showed us a new way," he says.

According to 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 Jabez was "more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, 'I gave birth to him in pain.' Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, 'Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.' And God granted his request."

As the Jabez book spreads to China's interior, the house church movement, once a model of Christian endurance, is bracing for even greater loss of members.

All content © 2005 LarkNews.com. All rights reserved.

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Fire in my Bones

It's Getting Really Weird Out There
by J. Lee Grady

In many charismatic ministries today, basic Christian morality has been hijacked.

How would you feel if your pastor announced from the pulpit that he had uncovered a “new revelation” in the Bible? His discovery: That a church leader can have more than one wife.

Hopefully, you and everyone in the building would run, not walk, out of that church and never come back until the pastor had been replaced. But I am afraid too many of us gullible charismatics might stay in the pews—and eventually give the guy a standing ovation plus a $10,000 love offering.

That’s how strange it is getting out there. Something has gone terribly wrong in our movement. Everywhere I turn I find that leaders of so-called Spirit-filled churches are making bizarre choices that compromise basic Christian integrity. Some examples:

Here is the rest of the article.

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Changing Tides

by Ralph D. Winter, US Center for World Mission

In American history have more local churches been more interested in having a hand in the mission cause. Waves of high school and college students are fanning out across the globe in the hundreds of thousands. Churches in the USA are now fielding 350,000 short-term volunteers annually.

Really, can anything be wrong with this?

Yes – if a highly sensitive, delicate, specialized task like missions is seen as something a volunteer can do in two weeks.

No human endeavor is as full of unforeseen, apparently unreasonable or certainly baffling obstacles. No role requires more intelligence, stability of heart and life, and more dogged endurance than the role of a serious missionary.

The final goal of missions is to win people to Christ and to glorify the Father, but the immediate obstacle is that cross-cultural missions occurs in places where you can’t win people to Christ the way it is done at home. That first task is to understand the un-understandable, to penetrate the baffling complexities of mysteriously “different” situations. Only then can “winning people to Christ” begin effectively.

It simply isn’t true that short term volunteers can help much with the complexities of that initial breakthrough, which is the most crucial mission task.

Suppose a local hospital were short on surgeons. Would it invite volunteers to pitch in for two-week turns in the operating room?

Suppose a legal firm were to lack attorneys. Would it ask local churches to send in two-week volunteers to help?

Suppose the Air Force lacked pilots. Would they call upon short-term citizens to help out?

If pioneer mission is a complex, specialized enterprise, volunteers are not an alternative to in-depth missionary wisdom.

I know of one congregation of about 400 which in ten years got almost its entire membership overseas to visit its “adopted people.” No standard agency was in the picture. In ten years little more than a few wells were drilled. No thrilled followers of Christ have resulted. Little or no understanding of the cultural context of the tribe has been employed or resulted. Even if $1 million of the Lord’s money had not been mainly wasted, think of the disheartened congregation that can see no real results after a decade of earnest and expensive, but largely futile, effort.

By contrast, one missionary family in another place, with little money involved, but with advanced understanding of the tribal culture has sparked a movement which, over the years, has created tens of thousands of devout, Bible-reading followers of Christ. In-depth knowledge does make a difference.

Ralph D. Winter is the editor of Mission Frontiers magazine and the general director of the Frontier Mission Fellowship.

New Tribes Mission

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We just don't know what's next!

When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. Eccl 7:14 NIV

We do not and cannot know what is next therefore it is futile to worry. But even more important, it is imperative that we take full advantage of the present, of our current situation, whether good or bad, easy or difficult, mountain or valley.

Our God is sovereign and has chosen a destiny for each us. We must choose weather we will say "Yes" to His will or not.

Since we don't know what's next, we need to apply ourselves, wholeheartedly, to what is in front of us - those opportunities to do, to learn, gain wisdom. If we do and when we do, we can move on to what's next because the Father is not going to entrust us with more if we are not faithful with the little we have! Read the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25!

Therefore, whatever your hand finds to do, do it as unto the Lord. (Eccl. 9:10)

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To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?

Rohirrim


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Take the quiz here.

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