02-18-2020 Paul Strand CBNNEWS
America
celebrates the birth of George Washington this weekend. Washington – known as the Father of our Country – and other Founding Fathers based their shaping of the nation on a foundation laid by the First Fathers. Some of the most influential were the Pilgrim First Fathers who arrived in the New World in 1620.
Plymouth, Massachusetts and its Pilgrim re-enactors are going all out this summer for this 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival.
Recreating the Landing & the World of the Pilgrims
Paul Jehle of the Plymouth Rock Foundation and also a Pilgrim re-enactor will even preach an old Pilgrim sermon.
He informed CBN News, “There’s a string of town events taking place beginning in April. But we’re doing an event June 28 to 30 emphasizing the faith of the Pilgrims. What truly brought them here to the New World. The inspiration they had from the Scriptures and the believers. And most people are unaware of the fact that it was a church plant that founded New England in 1620.
“And so we’re going to be emphasizing that. Re-enacting a Pilgrim church service, historic tours, seminars, workshops, a dramatic musical, and actually re-enacting the landing in front of Plymouth Rock on Tuesday, June 30,” he added.
Jehle pointed out these Pilgrims were fervent disciples, dedicated to the God of Liberty who promised His truth would set them free.
Part of the Reformation Revival
“The first freedom that they really began to be cognizant of was internal liberty, liberty of conscience, freedom from sin. That’s why they said God began to reform their lives by His grace,” Jehle explained. “And this was the most important thing the Pilgrims began with. Because they were a remnant as a part of a great revival known as the Reformation. So here they were, at the peak of that revival, and they were very conscious of this.”
While God gave them spiritual liberty on the inside, they were persecuted in England and granted no religious liberty on the outside. They saw the potential for enjoying that religious liberty in the New World. After storms blew them to the isolated Cape Cod coastline, the Pilgrims had to come up with their own form of government and gave the future America civil liberty in the form of the Mayflower Compact.