Strangers and pilgrims

What is the true history concerning the "Pilgrims"? There are lots of different accounts from different sources putting together a view of the past and the motivation of the players. And then there are "revisionists" like Howard Zinn, with a political agenda, creating false narratives skewed by personal prejudice and bias. The question we all should be asking is "What is the truth?"

The progressive Pilgrim

The Pilgrims in America were not called pilgrims until almost two hundred years after they arrived. When someone used that term they probably drew it from Hebrews 11:13 and 1 Peter 2:11.

The early American pilgrims called themselves friends and everyone else strangers. While they studied the Bible and sought to follow The way of Christ they began their immigration to America with a progressive, or socialist approach. They would soon discover, after great suffering and the loss of many lives, that was a mistake economically, practically, and biblically. As they confronted the hardships of the wilderness and the challenges presented by the diversity of the indigenous people already in America they would come face to face with the fallacy and faults of their own imagined faith. Some would discover other errors in their own hearts and minds and repent. Some would not. We are all pilgrims facing many of the same choices today.

The original forefathers of this nation were not those who signed Constitutions but the people who came here long before struggling and striving to make a new life for themselves and their children. They were the people who risked all so that their posterity might have a better life. They did not come for ease and comfort.

Knowing that it would be hard they were still willing to endeavor to persevere. They needed to learn to accept the responsibilities and burdens of a free society by bearing the duties and obligations of individuals within that society. It historically has proven a good plan to learn those skills of a free society in the wilderness.

The interpretation of the Native American Confederacy would set the destiny of their own society.

The forefathers of this nation included everyone who came for any reason and also those people who were here already. They were all pilgrims in this life and strangers to each other. But life has a way of teaching us that which we have not yet learned in this modern mix of mankind. Only with the travail of hardship and sacrifice can a free nation be born.

Those who immigrated to America from Europe were not unlike the migrating tribes of America. They were composed of good and bad individuals with a variety of ideas, a multiplicity of intents, and an ever-morphing moral character.

Natives of America were both ancient immigrants and often nomadic. They warred amongst themselves, enslaved, or killed their perceived enemies, but also had their own prophets and wise teachers. The Native American Confederacy was to guide the original inhabitants of the land to peace. The Bible too was meant to guide men to righteousness and the Kingdom of God in all that he does.

All a man sees or reads is filtered through the strings of his own heart. Though we are given the wisdom and the instruments of peace we will not find that peace on papers or the recorded word of prophets nor in their symbols and strings of beads.

"Peace is lodged in the heart" of man or he shall not have it at all.

Signing the Mayflower Compact in 1620 was not forming a government. In fact, it was an agreement to prevent the formation of a government. It was a social contact between two societies, who were both Strangers and pilgrims. Painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris 1899.

The Mayflower Compact

Over the course of time, our nation, with new members and new ideas and the new wilderness of modern civilization, has been re-formed for good and bad until our view of history becomes more fiction than reality. To take an insightful look at the roots and realities of our nation's beginning in the days of the Strangers and pilgrims may give us a new view of our own pilgrimage on this planet and the strangers we have become to our own ancestral forefathers.

The more we know about the people of the past the richer our understanding of the present may become. If we look at ourselves in the present with the same critical eye that we use to gaze at the populations of our past the better we will be able to prepare the future of our children.

"The Politics of Thanksgiving Day" by William Loren Katz desires that the reader sees William Bradford’s account as a mere "claim" and "fable" and "an early example of 'Euro think'".

Kats and others like Howard Zinn or the 1619 Project get away with this bias account because they appeal to the prejudices, jealousy, envy, and hate of the masses who are ignorant of the whole history and they desire to believe these simplistic and even false accounts rather than research the details to know and understand the whole truth.

Zinn and his advocates are not merely revisionist but actual fabricators, through projection and omission, of a false historical account which is a product of an agenda.

History is the individual story of people, good and bad, collected without prejudice or bias into an image of the past. True history is not the story of an artificially produced collective identity based on modern intersectionality labels to promote personal prejudices and failed social agendas.

The pilgrims and those native Americans who embraced them as allies were more concerned with survival than things like "intersectionality". They both feared annihilation by other larger native American tribes that had already shifted away from the wisdom of their prophets and had begun engaging in a "manifest destiny" philosophy appearing in their own interpretation of the White Pine confederation.

The "intersectionality" is a form of tribalism that eventually underminds the essential bonds of a free society.

The same distortions are found in the handling of the Mayflower Compact. One historian wrote, " The Mayflower Compact stands as a document and an idea that rivals Magna Carta and The Declaration of Independence."

The Mayflower Compact, Magna Carta, and The Declaration of Independence are completely different documents written in different contexts, for different purposes, and from different points of view. If you do not know those details you will not understand the documents.

History is not what you want it to be but it is actually what happened in the past. That is often difficult to find out since accounts may vary and often carry with them their own prejudices and bias. The details are hard to obtain and when historians simply omit them the lord of lies shall rule our thinking with confusion.

I even heard a pastor state during the Thanksgiving holidays that when the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact it was a great moment in American history where men came together and decided to “give their leaders the power to make laws.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. This thinking may stem from changes wrought in our modern public education system that has often expressed a different view of history than those who actually lived it.

It is also a view born out of a false biblical doctrine that suggests that all governments are instituted by God.

Beseeching and Binding

What was really occurring on the Mayflower and in the minds of these courageous but different men and women may be lost to history. There was a lot more intrigue and conflict than what is commonly taught in modern school books.

Most of the Separatists did sign the Mayflower Compact, but only a few of the Strangers would put their hand to it. Yet it was the Separatists who desired the document. Not to bind themselves but to assure the Strangers of their own loyalty and to ensure that the Strangers would remain with the separatists.

That fact alone should demand further investigation.

The Separatist had struggled for many hard years sacrificing their lives and fortunes trying to escape from the “dread Sovereign Lord, King James” or, for that matter, any King but Christ. They were seeking to establish a free Church. In previous attempts to escape from England to Holland some had their property seized and were put in prison.

While the Separatists were willing to say "Farewell, Rome. Farewell, Babylon", others would only say "Farewell, dear England! Farewell the Christian church in England, and all the Christian friends there."

Much was going on in England and the world. There would soon be a civil war to establish a Republic in England. A king would lose his head. Men were being brutalized and burned at the stake for their religious beliefs. The King James bible, among others, was being published. Religious and civil controversy lingered around every corner. There was a whole new world that presented an opportunity for wealth and power to some and freedom under God for others.

The Separatists saw another opportunity or maybe had a higher standard, or a more impassioned zeal concerning the teachings of Christ and were willing to seek what they saw as the Gospel of the Kingdom. They were willing to give up comfort and security and risk all to follow their faith and free His Church from kings and popes. Wherever they went their moral character won them friends, admiration and respect. But their religious zeal to live in the world but not of it was often persecuted with jealousy or contempt.

People were often suspicious of these Separatists because of their “congregational” beliefs, which were the antitheses of the centralized, exercising authority of Rome or the Church of England. They were often suspected of conspiring because they would accept no head of the Church but Christ; not even the King. They believed the Church of England could not be reformed.

When the pilgrims and the Captain insisted on staying in the wrong place where they had landed the Strangers began to suspect there was something amiss and were voicing "discontented and mutinous speeches."

While good conspiracies are always hard to prove - especially 400 years after the fact - there can be no doubt that if the Strangers, consisting of more than half their party, were going to leave them and head south to where they were supposed to have landed, it would have spelled disaster and death for the Pilgrims.

Stephen Hopkins, a loyal subject of the King, was recruited by the Merchant Adventurers to provide governance for the colony. He had been to America before and proved himself resourceful enough to make the threat of going south to where they were supposed to land a reality.

The Separatists had conspired to escape the authority of the king before. There was some evidence that they were conspiring again. Brewster, a leader of one of their congregations, had disappeared for some time before the Mayflower began its voyage and their landing in New Plymouth and demands to settle there outside of the jurisdiction of their Patent seemed to confirm those suspicions in the mind of some of the Strangers, who were loyal to King and the Company.

They had all signed contracts, which resulted from the Virginia Company issuance of the First Peirce Patent, with a company of merchants who were financing this venture in the new world for the purpose of making a profit. But there were other merchants who were desperate to find dedicated upright souls like the Separatists. Men who would have the courage and conviction to make their fortunes and investments secure were hard to find. They would not mind seeing the Virginia Company finance the Separatists' journey to the New World, only to eventually reap the reward of that settlement for themselves.

There were several agreements binding different companies in the New World. All these institutions were subject to the office of King James.

A plan

Because the Pilgrims landed outside of the jurisdiction of Jamestown and the Virginia Company of London they had no legal “paper” giving them permission to settle in that location.

The Separatists had spent years trying to negotiate a favorable contract with the Virginia Company. There were a number of unexplainable events that had taken place that could lead an astute historian to suspect that landing in Plymouth was no accident, but the result of a plan.

Yet, so many things had gone wrong. The turning back of the Speedwell, the late departure from England and arrival in the New World, and the hope of any aid that might have been arranged secretly was diminished with their late arrival and the apparent absence of expected assistance. If there had been alternate resources arranged in secret by the Separatist leader with another company they now failed to appear the pilgrims would need the Strangers.

Had there been secret offers from other entrepreneurs that could work to their advantage if they settled in the wrong place? Were they expecting to find aid nearby or somewhere that they could have reached it if the Speedwell had made the trip? If Hopkins and the majority took off and went south they would have little chance of surviving. In any case, without mutual effort, the settlement might not only fail, but they might all perish in the process.

The Strangers were not seeking the same liberty as these religious zealots and suspected them of trying to escape what they believed was a rightful sovereign power. The Separatists knew they would need to establish some agreement with the Strangers by mentioning the “dread Sovereign Lord, King James” to ensure some sort of loyalty in the life-and-death task before them.

The Mayflower Compact was an interim agreement to govern their mutual conduct to keep the strangers there and working with them. Under the given conditions it likely appeared attractive even to the Separatists.

Compact of doubt

They would all need something to bind them together since the company Indenture and Patents no longer applied. By words of the Mayflower Compact were trying to prove to the Strangers that they were in mutual agreement. This was done to keep themselves from any discord or abandonment that could lead to the death of the entire community. They could not know that half of them would be dead by the end of their first year. The truth was, before they were done, it would be their personal sacrifice, committed honor and practiced virtue that bound them all as a people - not a Compact on paper.

The original Mayflower Compact did not survive but I am pretty sure God's signature is not on that document or any other government document created by the hand of man. Governments are allowed by God, but they are instituted by men, not God. And many governments, even those created by the consent or by the voice of the people, are not only contrary to what God desires for men but in truth are historically a rejection of God.

Institutions of God

That is not to say that there is no government that is instituted by God. But simply put, except for the rarest of exceptions, most governments instituted by men are fundamentally flawed because men are flawed. The Pilgrims, like many before them and since, were simply trying to find their way back to a state of righteous liberty under God with varying degrees of success and failure.

God seems to have instituted the governing relationship and union of man and woman. But binding people together in groups of families to form nations governed by rulers seems to be an invention of Cain and Lemech, if not Nimrod himself. Most of these city-states were established by contracts and consent at first and later by brute force. What God established, besides the family, was the Ten Commandments which contained a prohibition against making contracts and covenants.

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Audio Pilgrims and social compacts. The free assemblies of ten elders is CORE in a free a Church plan commanded by Christ.
http://www.hisholychurch.net/kkvv/x3folder/140113societypaths04Core.mp3

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Institutions of man

Throughout the Bible we see stories of God and His prophets delivering men out of the hands of governments that are making laws and ruling over the people. Once the full extent of God's disapproval of this addiction of men to consent to rulers and grant more and more power to men is understood, it would seem strange to find any faithful minister of Christ praising the idea of giving men the power to make laws and rule over them.

From Nimrod to Egypt or Saul to the cry of the Pharisees there is little biblical evidence praising the voice of the people when they relinquish rights granted by God and allow men rule over those rights.

The Mayflower Compact was not a “forerunner of the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution.” There is some serious question as to why passengers on the Mayflower even felt it was needed or what effect it actually had. The idea that this was the beginning of government or granting the power of any men in that place to rule and make laws for everyone else is absurd.

History is replete with men who learned to govern themselves and those who would govern their brothers or neighbors. The success stories include men who were self-sacrificing and full of virtue, and the history of the failures is born of another ilk.

In the days of early American settlements men came here for a variety of reasons and diversity of moral values. Some came for wealth and adventure, some for liberty to sin and some for liberty to serve God.

Phineas Pratt in his own narration of his arrival on these shores in 1622 said, “In the time of spiritual darkness, when the State Ecclesiastical of Rome ruled and over ruled most of the nations of Europe, it pleased God to give wisdom to many, kings and people, in breaking that spiritual yoke.”

The Separatists who came on the Mayflower were the Brownists of Leiden. Robert Browne taught that a congregation should autonomously run its own affairs. He and his brother had obtained preaching licenses from the authorities but Robert burned his in protest. By 1579, he was openly criticizing what was called the Church, its administration and leadership in Cambridge and was promptly arrested and jailed.

During 1583 a Proclamation banned the buying, selling or possession of his writings which led to the hanging of John Copping and Elias Thacker for selling Browne's “seditious” writings on faith and the Church.

There had been a melding of the right arm of civil or royal government with the will of the Church for some time in England. Since men of the Church began to crown other men over their brothers, kings felt it profitable to enforce the will of men claiming to be the Church and servants of God.

These claims were beginning to be questioned by the people. They believed that the real Church was cut from a different cloth than that of those who claimed the office and often put their lives on the line just to ask the question,

• “What does the Church established by Christ really look like?”

Other questions arise as we attempt to answer that:

Some Questions

• What was the bondage of Egypt, and why were we to never go back there again?
• Have people given consent to a social compact that might enslave them, like in the days of Egypt?
• Why would the slothful be under tribute?
• Why did the Corban of the Pharisees make the word of God to none effect?
• Why did Jesus say "Call no man Father upon the earth"?
• Why did Jesus say not to be like the rulers who called themselves Benefactors?
• Why did Peter say covetous practices would make us Merchandise and curse children?
• What did Jesus list off as the Weightier matters?
• Why did Jesus command that the people sit down in Tens?
• What is Religion and what is Pure Religion?
• What was Public religion and the imperial Cult of Rome? How did it differ from Pure Religion practiced by early Christians?
• Why did the Church have a Daily ministration?
• How do the Modern Christians differ from the early Church who followed The Way of Christ?
• What were the deeds of the Nicolaitans, and why did God hate those deeds?
• What was the Christian conflict with Rome?
• Are modern Christians actually workers of iniquity?
• Do people today make covenants with the gods of this world because they love the wages of unrighteousness?
• What is the difference between the Baptism of John the Baptist and the Baptism of Herod or Constantine or Rabbinical Baptism?
• Israel was not to have a golden calf but what did that mean?
• What were the altars of earth and stone?
• What are lively stones?
• Was the Sabbath a way or a day?

More Questions

• Were those rituals of ancient societies merely mindless acts of superstition, or were they metaphors?
• What are the rituals of the Church, and do they point to The Way of Christ and God?
• Could Welfare systems of the world be Snares and Traps?
• And what does this all have to do with Nimrod, Cain and Caesar who called themselves Benefactors but exercise authority one over the other?
• What was the Mark of Cain and the Mark of God and even the Mark of the Beast?
• Did Constantine start a different Church not of Christ?
• Why did the people have to sew Breeches for the Levites?
• What was early Israel like before the Voice of the people rejected God?
• Why were they organized by Tens?
• How was the Early Church funded, and what did they use the funds for?
• Did it operate by force or Freewill offerings?
• Do all governments of the world operate according to the ways of God?
• Or do they operate according to the ways of Cain and Nimrod?
• Who were the Nicolaitans, and what did they do that included the error of Balaam, and why does God hate their deeds?
• What was Christ trying to tell us about the Fathers of the earth and who are they?
• And who is The Beloved Anarchist?
• What do you want to do about all this?

To find the answers, we must seek and strive to do what Jesus said the way He said to do it... Including attending to the Weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith which include caring for the needs of our neighbors and the widows and orphans of our society through Pure Religion in matters of health, education, and welfare. We are NOT to provide for the needy of society through the Covetous Practices and the men who call themselves benefactors but who exercise authority one over the other like the socialists do.

The Way of Christ was like neither the way of the world of Rome nor the governments of the gentiles who depend on those fathers of the earth through force, fear and fealty who deliver the people back in bondage again like they were in Egypt. Christ's ministers and true Christians do not depend upon systems of social welfare that force the contributions of the people like the corban of the Pharisees which made the word of God to none effect. Many people have been deceived to go the way of Balaam and the Nicolaitan and out of The Way of Christ and have become workers of iniquity.

The Christian conflict with Rome in the first century Church appointed by Christ was because they would not apply to the fathers of the earth for their free bread but instead relied upon a voluntary network providing a daily ministration to the needy of society through Faith, Hope, and Charity by way of freewill offerings of the people, for the people, and by the people through the perfect law of liberty in Free Assemblies according to the ancient pattern of Tuns or Tens as He commanded.

The modern Christians are in need of repentance.

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"Follow me!" —Jesus the Christ.

• One of the most important things to do is to become involved in a network of Charitable Practices. Everyone should want to join a Living Network of Love and Charity.

• If you think you have a calling to be a Minister of God or you might want to dedicate your life to Christ as an Ordained Minister of His Holy Church, contact us to start the process of discipleship and become the benefactors who exercise only love, NOT authority.

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Q and A
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It was a short step from questioning the Church to questioning the kings and magistrates who wielded the sword in its defense. Millions of people had been mutilated and murdered in defense of the doctrines of the organization calling itself the Church appointed by the prince of Peace. Most of the people in England bowed to the King or the Pope as the head of the Church and those who bowed to Christ alone as the head of the Church were suspected of heresy if not treason or both.

“The Brownists believe that every congregation should constitute an independent, self-governing body, and should use no forms of prayer.” William “Brewster helped establish the Separatist Church of Scrooby, which believed that the foundation of the Church was God's Spirit.”

It was these congregationalists, like the Brownists, who were calling themselves “Separatists”. They were a minority on board the Mayflower. The Separatists called the others on board “Strangers”. The Strangers called themselves "loyal subjects" of King James and members of the Church of England. In fact only 27 of the adults were Separatists. Of the of the original 102 settlers 32 were children and the remaining 43 adults were Strangers.

In the Mayflower Compact, there is no reference to giving any leaders the power to make law, tax the individual or force compliance to arbitrary laws made by elected leaders. There is a recognition of the “dread Sovereign Lord, King James” and there is an agreement to “mutually” work together as a “Body Politick” for the “Preservation” of all “by Virtue” “for the General good of the Colony”.

This compact was a social contract, which is an “agreement, or covenant by which men are said to have abandoned the ‘state of nature’ to form the society in which they now live...” It “Assumes that men at first lived in a state of anarchy where there was no society, no government, and no organized coercion of the individual by the group. By the social contract men had surrendered their natural liberties in order to enjoy the order and safety of the organized state.”

The reference here to anarchy will confuse a modern citizenry that believes the term is synonymous with chaos. Anarchy has acquired as many definitions over the years as the word government. “A social state in which there is no governing person or group of people, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder).”

“Anarchists are those who advocate the absence of the state, arguing that common sense would allow people to come together in agreement to form a functional society allowing for the participants to freely develop their own sense of morality, ethics or principled behaviour. The rise of anarchism as a philosophical movement occurred in the mid 19th century, with its idea of freedom as being based upon political and economic self-rule.”

This is not to suggest that there is or should be no law, but simply none enacted by men alone to regulate the individual lives of the people or their God-given rights. The creator of the universe put in motion basics laws that govern the disciplines or science of nature and therefore society in a natural state. Sometimes those laws are written on stones or paper by and through the opinions of men. Unless they are also written on the hearts and minds of men alternative systems may be required. The compacts and constitutions are often established in the vacuum of a virtue-less society to its own detriment.

Early Israel had no kings to exercise authority one over the other. And when Jesus appointed the kingdom to His disciples they were told not to “exercise authority one over the other” like the other governments instituted by men. These ambassadors of Christ were claiming there was another king, one Jesus, and were governing and providing for themselves without applying to the benefactors of the Roman or Pharisaic governments.

The governments instituted by men as an alternative to the Kingdom of God are often accomplished with Covenants, Compacts and Constitutions. For those systems to be lawful they must be created by some form of consent.

A social contract is when a man casts in his lot with other men, abandoning his original Natural State under God, in exchange for the social security offered by an organized corporate body or State. With the surrender of his “natural liberties”, he becomes part of a larger whole with certain advantages and disadvantages.

This contracting of rights, often in exchange for benefits, is done at the cost of liberty. Through his trust in this larger body politic, he becomes a partaker of the whole body or nation. He has created this new State with his own hands.

By striking hands with that corporate State, a man goes under a new authority, abandoning his natural liberty, to be captured in the web of his own creation, often in hope of gain.

In 1620, the Pilgrims attempted to establish the “City of God”, ironically based upon a social contract, the Mayflower Compact, with “Strangers”. Although the Compact was short-lived and granted no real centralized authority, there would be other agreements which would bring people into subjection.

The Bible warns us over and over again about making contracts with others that bind us to service or subjection. And these warnings continued throughout the New Testament. Because these warnings are disregarded or ignored by the modern Church, some people, through social compact, give the state the power to take from its members for the welfare of society. That power has been deemed a foolish rejection of God. “It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.”

This was not the terms nor purpose of the Mayflower Compact. It was not a delegation of power but a mutual plea for cooperation for the good of all. While the written compact was signed in hope of binding their loyalty one to another, it would be the blood, sweat and tears they would shed together that would forge the true bonds of society. The whole story of these pilgrims, both Separatists and Strangers, may never be entirely known.

One thing is clear that they came to change the wilderness and were changed by it.

John Smith the Savior

More than half the problems the early American settlers would face were the ideas they brought with them. The names of the leaders of the colony were listed by King James and sealed, not to be opened until 24 hours after landing. His choices, for the most part, were poor ones that would almost destroy the colony. Some would fail to lead, or lead badly and even betray the colonists for their own interests. But fortunately, one man would make a difference and was saved from death because his name was on that list.

This man was a leader and would save the colony more than once. His life was more of a swashbuckling hero and adventurer than even Hollywood could make believable. The colonists may have all perished or suffered the fate of Roanoke except for the virtue, courage, industry and practical wisdom of one man; John Smith.

Smith had desired to go to sea at 13 but was kept from doing so by the trustee of the family estate after his father died. He was apprenticed but left that station with ten shillings and threepence in his pocket to pursue a “grand tour” of Europe. He served three years in the army of Holland. He perfected his horsemanship and became a master at arms. While traveling to Flanders he was robbed of his money and luggage by four men. Forced to sell his cloak to pay his passage, with one penny left he pursued the thieves, overtook them, wounding one, and forced the leader to confess.

On a trip to Loretta, the ship he was on was filled with religious pilgrims who thought they were about to sink in a storm. And as he was the only heretic, the rest attempted to save themselves by throwing him overboard as a Jonas. He saved himself by swimming to shore.

He caught passage on a ship headed to Alexandria Egypt. But along the way, they ran into a Venetian vessel which allowed them to seize it as a spoil where he was given a share in the prize. He continued to travel from Italy to Albania, fought for the Emperor against the Turks where he again distinguished himself for bravery and strategy, invented a night-telegraph, and was the Captain of a Transylvania Calvary regiment.

During a prolonged siege of Stoll-Weissenburg, the Tur-Pacha, to break the stalemate, challenged any Christian officer to fight his champion Osmanlis. Smith slew him before the audience of both armies only to be attacked by a second larger Turk carrying a battle-ax. Smith was stunned with the first blow, but he was still able to run this second challenger through and cut off his head. Before he was done three heads would roll and the city capitulated.

Eventually, in a later battle in 1602, Smith was wounded, captured by Tartars, and then sold into slavery. While a slave in Constantinople the Greek mistress of his Turkish master fell in love with him. This led to him being sold again to another Pasha in Crimea who forced him to labor with the other slaves in the field with chains about him. In one severe beating, the chains broke loose and he dispatched the Pasha, buried him in the hay, stole his horse and, with only a small bag, he traveled a grain road out of the Ottoman lands into Muscovy then on to Polish-Lithuania. He traveled across Europe and on to North Africa, finally returning to England in 1604.

These adventures continued in the Jamestowne settlement. He irritated Captain Newport on their ocean voyage to the colony. Because of his disrupting political opinions, the Captain intended to hang John on their arrival. His hanging was thwarted by the intervention of Rev. Robert Hunt and the discovery, on the opening of the secret orders after their arrival, that Smith had been named as one of the council members by King James himself.

Then there was the swashbuckling account of a running gun and sword battle with dozens of Indians. With his scout tied to him, he boldly surrendered when surrounded waist-deep in a swamp and demanded of an audience with the chief to be judged. Emperor Powhatan found him fascinating but appears to have ordered his skull crushed only be saved at the last minute by thirteen-year-old Pocahontas, one of the chief's favorite daughters.

John Smith did not only supply courage and character to the early settlers but he earned their respect and admiration despite his often brash opinion. He often sustained others with his own tireless labor during the times of famine and illness.

But there was a more fundamental problem amongst the form of governance indulged in by these new world settlers. It was believed by some that “colonists were indolent because most of them were indentured servants..."

Many of the others who came were gentlemen and it was thought they were also slothful. But it may have been brashness that led historians to write that these gentlemen, “were imprisoned by their own self-imposed limitations... of traditional roles and by the shame that they would feel if others saw them engaged in physical work.”

Archeologists have uncovered evidence that everyone did work but simply not with the enthusiasm required to satisfy Sir John Smith.

The real underlying problem was that they all were “expected to toil ... and contribute the fruits of their labor to the common store.”

King James only provided that “Lands were to be held by the same tenures as in England.” He believed that the king owns his realm as a feudal lord owns his fief. This view is the antitheses of the freedom and the divine right of every man to possess a freehold title in the land.

This precept of men ruling over other men was first enforced by Cain. This predilection for power over the populace has plagued mankind from Nimrod to Caesar into our modern age. It is not the plan of God but is allowed by God to punish the wicked who desire it.

A more insurmountable obstacle to their success was the corporate theory of socialism where they were expected to “contribute the fruits of their labor to the common store”. This socialist approach to frontier life in the wilderness would kill more of the settlers than any other single aspect of their endeavor. The governing concept of the “common store” led to the philosophy that would become a central theme of socialism under men like Henri de Saint Simon, Louis Blanc, and Karl Marx. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It would contribute to the “starving time” where, of the 500 settlers at the colony, only 60 would survive the winter of 1609-10 after John Smith was sent home to England to recover from gunpowder burns.

The young men of the colonies who were most able and fit for labor and service objected to being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." This was because, "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were a part of the common stock and "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock."

Industry and initiative were hampered and deterred. Pure Christians should be willing to work together without jealousy or envy. Perfection in the moral character of man may be desired but it may never be established by force.

By 1622, Bradford, and others "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop."

• “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was born out of a misunderstanding of the Biblical text concerning Acts 2:44. The abuse of this scripture can only be achieved by turning a blind eye to Leviticus 25:10, Proverbs 1, Matthew 20:25, Mark 10:42, Luke 22:25 to say nothing of Deuteronomy 25:4 or 1 Corinthians 9:9 and 1 Timothy 5:18

Feeble attempts to justify a common purse with verses like Acts 11:29 avoid the right of free determination granted by God to every man as a responsibility in the exercise of love and charity. It further takes Matthew 25:15 out of the context of that parable.

In a socialist state the desire for benefits derived at the expense of thy neighbors' labor is a covetous practice.

But also the avarice and sloth of any man may rob his neighbor. Even in the Apocrypha, Maccabees paints a picture of a society where every man owns his own labor and the fruits of that labor.

John Smith countered these interpretations by proclaiming with confidence and determination the Biblical principle from 2 Thessalonians 3:10, "He who will not work will not eat."

Socialism is an attempt to force charity, which is not charity, but cuts out the heart of charity and lobotomizes the benevolent mind of society.

Charity is a choice. Without the right to determine what is charity and what is not charity members of a society are no longer at liberty to choose righteousness, and freedom dies. It has been said that socialism only works for Saints and Angels, who have no need of it. The Pilgrims and strangers of these colonies were neither. They were men and the wisdom of the prophets was recorded in the Bible for those who would read and see it.

The difficulties of the time, the variety of ideas and leaders and the blend of cultures all played a role in the events and changes to be rooted in American thinking.

The Nativity of Oppression

This is an example of racist hate speech produced by groups like the SanCopha League who would be better off listening to men like George Washington Carver and Booker T Washington. Many native Americans were murdering, raping, and enslaving each other long before the European arrived. Some had policies of oppression and even human sacrifice. Many Native American tribes such as the Creek and the Choctaw were slaveholders. Tribes such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Catawba, and Creek tribes fought on the Confederate side.

The desire to divide people by race, describe the character or morality of people by race, or organize people in some form of intersectionality by race is racist. We can and should only measure and judge individual people according to their present character and personal deeds and past actions if we truly desire equality.

The historical fact is some European whites protected, defended, and befriended native people and some also abused them. But it is also a fact that some native tribal people were killing, invading, enslaving, raping each other from one end of the Americas to the other while there were also good moral native Americans who were more than worthy of our praise and gratitude. Some of the white settlers and native Americans, African people were both good and band or righteous and wicked or moral and evil within the same lifetime.

Dividing good and evil by race is the definition of what a racist does and that is both unproductive and a snare of the heart.

The Aztecs as a nation were killing and enslaving people by the tens of thousands because they had the power to do so until the Spanish came with more power and aided some freedom fighting Aztecs and their neighbors in overthrowing that brutal regime. This as all possible because of Columbus, who may have been an answer to those brutalized victims' prayers.

Each generation, each man and each woman must guard themselves against the spirit of lies and prejudice which leads to tyranny. Even a modern voter in a democracy may have the seed of tyranny growing in their heart when they wield the power to oppress their neighbor and force him to pay for the benefits they want.

Columbus is dead. He has crossed the great divide that we all encounter sooner or later. Was he Saint or sinner? Probably a little of both from time to time.

Nature's Genocide

There is a great deal of false history concerning colonization, migration, and native Americans. Howard Zinn, other questionable or incompetent historians, and of course the victim mentality of the left would like to think the Europeans came over and annihilated the indigenous people in a bloodthirsty genocide.

That simply is not true. Most native Americans died from diseases that also killed millions of white Europeans. Their culture could not sustain the rapid spread of those diseases. Similar die-offs had already occurred in Europe until the people developed natural immunity.

Most of the native Americans died of diseases. It is true that Europeans had inherited a more robust immune system from years of travel and interactions. This means Europeans had already died by the millions because of plagues and disease before they immigrated to the Americas. Diseases are simply a force of nature and our immune systems meet that challenge or they do not and we die.

A contributing factor to the immune system of Europeans was domesticated animals, common in Europe but rare in the Americas. Milkmaids did not get smallpox because they received a natural immunity from their interaction with cows with cowpox. That same immunity passed to others through the Milkmaids. This fact of Milkmaid immunity led to the production of the first vaccine, but vaccines do not create the same herd immunity as nature. Immunity is often a product of culture but seldom without suffering.

There were no trade routes that could carry diseases from other populations in the Americas until the coming of Europeans so immune systems were not well developed amongst native Americans. They did have their own diseases like American leishmaniasis, American trypanosomiasis (Chaga's disease), roundworms, pinworms, tapeworm, treponematosis, tuberculosis, arthritis, syphilis, cancer, endocrine disorders, dysentery, pneumonia, rickettsial and viral fevers, goiter, and pinta to name few. South American natives seemed to be immune to wild poliovirus but white Europeans were not so many died or became immune.

Native Americans had little immunity to smallpox, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever, trachoma, malaria, typhus fever, typhoid fever, influenza, cholera, bubonic plague, and probably gonorrhea and leprosy but then millions of whites and blacks died of the same diseases.

Native Americans were descendants from a limited homogenous gene pool. There are estimates that 80-90% of the entire Native American population was lost to these diseases alone. People who make the claim that a hundred million American Indians died due to genocide are engaging in hate speech.

It has also become popular to enumerate the actions of war between European settlers ane native Americans as "barbarous atrocities". Books like the American Holocaust ask, what kind of people would do such horrendous things to others, but does not put those crimes in a historical and cultural perspective. The truth is warfare amongst Native Americans was also filled with "barbarous atrocities" to each other which continued against Europeans.

If you want to know the truth you must be willing to know the whole truth without prejudice, bias, or hate.

Still Strangers and Pilgrims

Today, some think we are still "strangers and pilgrims on the earth" without a city. But that does not seem to have been the consensus in the early Church. Of course, they were doing things much differently than modern Christians who seem to have lost their way or at least the way of Christ.

The early Christians had a city. But it was not a fixed city on the land like London or New York or Los Angeles which will crumble into the ground someday. Theirs was a city of light and righteousness.

To find that city of light you cannot just leave the "city" you are in today. You have to repent and seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness by striving to attend to the weightier matters of the law according to the way of Christ.

Hebrews 11:13 "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of [them], and embraced [them], and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city."

The word city is polis in the Greek.

Polis

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." Matthew 5:14

The word commonly translated city in the New Testament is the word Polis which may not mean a town or city as we think of the term today. It may mean a juridical community.

A "polis" (plural: poleis) was not always a place but could also be something that you were a part of like a community. "It can also mean citizenship and body of citizens."

According to Dr. Gerard Casey Professor Emeritus of University College at Dublin a polis was neither a city nor a state but a sort of fellowship. In Aristotle's Politics, it is suggested that a polis is something more than a collection of individuals seeking safety in life and gain in the exercise of trade. It was “a union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life by which we mean happy and honourable life" A polis might not have members as we think of citizens of a State but the individual was a member of a family which formed a community of aggregated families in the common pursuit of happiness.

In another Polis the people might give up some of their freedom and power of choice to the State in order to obtain protection or benefits. In such a polis the people would be persons who would be less and less free as more and more power of choice was vested in the State or Polis.

A "polis" was the social structure of a community in the ancient Greek world. Although poleis were each a unique cultural and political unit, a common feature included religious beliefs. Since Religion was the manner in which you conducted and provided welfare for a community the Corban of groups like the Essenes, Mandaeans or "Nazarene".

The Pharisees and Rome provided civil polis systems of welfare called Corban too but those types of welfare systems made the word of God to none effect.

Dr. Moshe Berent wrote:

“Though the notion of the free, or self-governed community, originated in ancient Greece, the Greek polis seems to pose a problem for the modern post-Hobbesian concept of sovereignty. For the latter presupposes that of the State, that is an agency which monopolizes the use of violence, as an instrument by which sovereignty is constituted. Yet, the polis was not a State but rather what the anthropologists call a stateless community. The latter is characterized by the absence of ‘government’, that is of an agency which has separated itself from the rest of social life and which monopolizes the use of violence. In stateless societies the ability to use force is more or less evenly distributed among armed or potentially armed members of the community. Being stateless, then, in what sense can we say that the polis was sovereign? On the practical level the Greek polis had a very limited ability to control and direct legislation. The decentralised nature of Greek society and the absence of coercive apparatuses meant that the laws had to be identical with the customs of the community or else that decisions had to be shared by a wide consensus, which imposed a severe limitation on the ability of the poleis to change their laws or initiate changes in the community.”

This description of the ancient Polis government is where the leaders are only titular and not "lawmakers". It ascribes more to the Libera res Publica of ancient Rome before the rise of emperors and the virtual death of the Republic. If the leaders of society are only servants who cannot exercise authority one over the other the people remain free.

These voluntary societies were supported by the generosity of the people rather than the force commonly used in modern governments today. The character of the society created by such a Republican form of government was not only different but often more common than the modern historian would lead us to believe.

Tacitus in his description of ancient Germania writes, “The communities are wont, of their own accord and man by man, to bestow upon their Princes a certain number of beasts, or a certain portion of grain; a contribution which passes indeed for a mark of reverence and honour, but serves also to supply their necessities.”

The word 'of their own accord' is from the Latin 'ultro' meaning 'voluntarily'. “[O]ur modern reliance on government to make law and establish order is not the historical norm.” See Orders

Jesus uses the same word polis in Matthew 5:14, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." He is instructing his apostles and followers to be that light and city as he continues in Matthew 5:16 "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

The people of Israel were strangers and pilgrims but the Hebrews passage is talking about the city that actually is given to us, not as a location, but as something to be a part of since we are not to be "of the world".

The word politeia from polites which is from polis is translated freedom and commonwealth.

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Hebrews 12:22 "But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant..."

Jesus appointed His Church to be the Benefactors of the people with out exercising authority one over the other. They cannot do this without the people taking back the responsibility of being the children of God and the citizens of His city of light.

Separating oneself from the world does not keep us from being strangers to God.

We are given clues as to how to prepare ourselves for His citizenship in Hebrews 13:12-16:

"Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased."

The early Christians did not just separate themselves from the world but were a government of love expressing that love through the Daily ministration of righteousness and the daily sacrifice of their charity.

Paul tells us that in Philippians 1:27:

"Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;"

The word "conversation" is politeuomai which means "to be a citizen" which means "to administer civil affairs" of that city of light.

We are told in Philippians 3:20:

"For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:"

The word conversation here is again politeuma which is defined "the administration of civil affairs or of a commonwealth".

Christ preached a kingdom, a government, where men were not bound by oaths and contracts but by coming together in one accord through the law of love for one another. This meant they attended to the Weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith which include caring for the needs of our neighbors and the widows and orphans of our society through Pure Religion in matters of health, education, and welfare. We are NOT to provide for the needy of society through the Covetous Practices and the men who call themselves benefactors but who exercise authority one over the other like the socialists do.

The Way of Christ was like neither the way of the world of Rome nor the governments of the gentiles who depend on those fathers of the earth through force, fear and fealty who deliver the people back in bondage again like they were in Egypt. Christ's ministers and true Christians do not depend upon systems of social welfare that force the contributions of the people like the corban of the Pharisees which made the word of God to none effect. Many people have been deceived to go the way of Balaam and the Nicolaitan and out of The Way of Christ and have become workers of iniquity.

The Christian conflict with Rome in the first century Church appointed by Christ was because they would not apply to the fathers of the earth for their free bread but instead relied upon a voluntary network providing a daily ministration to the needy of society through Faith, Hope, and Charity by way of freewill offerings of the people, for the people, and by the people through the perfect law of liberty in Free Assemblies according to the ancient pattern of Tuns or Tens as He commanded.

The modern Christians are in need of repentance.

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"Follow me!" —Jesus the Christ.

• One of the most important things to do is to become involved in a network of Charitable Practices. Everyone should want to join a Living Network of Love and Charity.

• If you think you have a calling to be a Minister of God or you might want to dedicate your life to Christ as an Ordained Minister of His Holy Church, contact us to start the process of discipleship and become the benefactors who exercise only love, NOT authority.

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This is why we see in Ephesians 2:19, 22:

"Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner [stone]; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit."

Many think they have come out, but that command was to His people who were already walking in the citizenship of God the Father. They were not just saying "Lord, Lord" but they were doing the will of the Father. It was those people baptized in water and in fire who had gathered in congregations of Elders connected in a Network of charity according to the ancient patters of tens, hundreds and thousands and were fitly framed together ... unto an holy temple in the Lord.

The ministers of Christ are the servants of Christ who serve the people in righteousness. They do not come to exercise authority one over the other. They are the living stones of His Altars and Temple who come in His name practicing Pure Religion, not in the name of Nimrod practicing Public religion.

The ministers cannot perform the service of the living temple of God without the loving sacrifice of the people moved by the Holy Spirit in their hearts and in their minds. The early Christians were doing that and because of that Christian conflict they were persecuted, yet persevered. It was these people who believed in Christ and kept his commandments and it was these people whom he called My people.

"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Revelation 18:4

There is no point in claiming to have come out if you are not diligently walking in the ways of Christ and His appointed Church. Those who say they are His people but have not repented nor are they administering civil affairs of His Kingdom of God and city of light fall short of the Gospel of the kingdom.

CORE

Social compacts, Mayflower Compact, Squanto. Capitalism is the way of the Kingdom. Pure religion. Prepare for hard times. Congregations of record, witness, testimony. Corporation Sole. Elders, kings, natural family. Holy matrimony vs. marriage by the state. Unincorporated association, free assembly. Christ's way is the only way. Daily ministration. Baptism of Jesus Christ vs. baptism of Herod. Corban, compelled offerings. Contract with God written on hearts and minds. Faith, hope and charity and the perfect law of liberty. World constitutional orders and systems of government. Pentecost, network of elders. Socialist way. Ministers, elders, international network. Repentance. Daniel 9:13 Iniquity. Rituals. Kingdom of God is within you. Be doers of the word. Corban. Sacred Purpose Trust - minister owns responsibility. Sacrifice of the red heifer, helping and not oppressing. Isaiah 28:10 - Precept upon precept. Evidence of the Lordship of Christ. Altars of earth (clay) - adama. System of edification. Written testimony, actual testimony. Congregation, church. Altars of stone. Separation of church and state. Black's Law Dictionary. Pentecost, Feast of Tabernacles. .Bonds within and between families. No common purse of rights. Christians in Conflict. Legal entity of Christ. Bishops, episcopos, archbishops. Liturgy

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