Watchman on the Wall

Watchman on the Wall: Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and swrc.com. God is still on the throne and prayer changes things. Today, we'll learn about the miracles that happened during the Revolutionary War.

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Liz Cutshall: Thank you for joining us today for Watchman on the Wall and Prophecy in the News and Southwest Radio Ministries. We are so blessed to be starting the month of the 250th anniversary of our nation as a nation. For July 1st, welcome. I wish I had fireworks to go on behind me. Maybe we will. I'm Liz Cutshall, the Communications Director for Southwest Radio Ministries and Prophecy in the News.

Today we are so blessed to have William Bill Federer. He is a Christian apologist and a historian. I like to think of him as America's historian. He is here today to visit with us, especially thinking in terms of moments in history that were particularly miraculous in American history. We are pleased to share his two books, his and his wife Susie Federer's books, called Miracles in American History.

They are amazing and miraculous in their own way. Thank you, Bill, for joining us today. You connect history to today with timeless biblical principles. You're not just a historian, although that would be an incredible accomplishment, but you are also a Christian apologist and you connect history, government, and biblical principles. May I ask you why and how that came to be?

Bill Federer: I was teaching a Bible class and thought I would go to the library and check out a book about what the founding fathers said about the Bible. I couldn't find one, so I decided to read through all the colonial charters, state constitutions, messages and papers of the presidents, acts of Congress, and Supreme Court decisions. I compiled them all in a book called America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations.

It went on to sell a half million copies. Focus on the Family sold lots of copies of it. Then that opened the door for me to write more books. My wife and I together have been doing this for about 30 years. The books Miracles in American History are probably the most popular. They are times in our country's past where there's a crisis, they pray and have courage, and things turn around.

The word for testimony in Hebrew is Eduth. It implies not just repeating what you saw like a testimony in a court, but it's referring to the testimonies of what God has done in the past. It is God repeating it, God duplicating it, God doing it again. When you hear a testimony of what God did in the past, it builds your faith that God will do it again. That's why we love to share these stories, so that when we face the crises of our day, we'll be able to have faith. God got us through the past. If we turn to him and repent, he will do the same for us again today.

Liz Cutshall: I believe that's what King David did. As a younger man, he thanked God for bringing him this far and then remembered all the things that God had done for him. He certainly set a good example and so do you. Thank you for compiling these. Since we are talking on July 1st about the roots of America and miracles in American history, could we perhaps just jump in? Could we start with the American Revolution and some miracles that you think are really important to us today that occurred back then?

Bill Federer: The Declaration of Independence mentions God four times: "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," "laws of nature and nature's God," "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world." That's actually a prayer in our declaration and a "reliance on protection of Divine Providence."

People forget the same Continental Congress that did the Declaration had a day of fasting. We recommend the 17th of May, 1776, as a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, where we confess and bewail our manifold sins by sincere repentance and amendment of life to appease God's righteous displeasure and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain pardon and forgiveness.

One of the stories is New York. The harbor fills up with 400 British ships and 32,000 British troops. We have to remind ourselves that Britain is the most powerful military on planet Earth and we were totally unorganized. Washington appoints chaplains to every regiment and then he says the general trusts that every officer and man will live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country. He writes to his younger brother, "We expect a very bloody summer of it at New York. We are not either in men or armed prepared for it. If our cause is just, as I do most religiously believe it to be, the same Providence which has in many instances appeared for us will still go on to afford us its aid."

The British have 400 ships. They find a loyalist who shows them where to disembark where the Americans can't see them. The British march all night long through Jamaica Pass and they attack Washington from behind on the morning of August 27th, 1776. It is the largest battle of the entire Revolutionary War. It is the entire American army. There's no second string. If it's over here, it's over. 3,000 Americans die. Only 300 British.

The sun goes down and Washington's pinned up against the river. He decides to ferry his troops across the East River to Manhattan Island. He's doing it as quiet as he can, moving the soldiers, the cannon, and supplies, and then the sun starts to come up and he's only moved half the army. Now he's a sitting duck. He doesn't have enough troops left to fight and then the ones stretched out across the water.

His Chief of Intelligence, Major Ben Tallmadge, writes, "As the dawn of the next day approached, those of us who remained in the trenches became very anxious for our own safety. When the dawn appeared, there were several regiments still on duty. At this time, a very dense fog began to rise off the river and it seemed to settle in a peculiar manner over both encampments. I recollect this peculiar providential occurrence perfectly well. So very dense was the atmosphere that I could scarcely discern a man at six yards distance. We tarried until the sun had risen, but the fog remained as dense as ever." Washington continues to move the troops. He's on the last boat that leaves. The fog lifts, the British charge, and nobody's there. It was the last chance the British had to capture the entire American army all at once. Washington later says the hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in the course of the war that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith.

Then there's a traitor, Benedict Arnold. He's the hero of the Battle of Saratoga. He's actually more popular than George Washington at this time. He's wounded and made the military governor of Philadelphia. As the war hero, he has everybody making over him, including a young woman named Peggy Shippen. They fall in love and get married. Her family is loyalist. She nags him for a year saying, "If you were in the British Army, they would appreciate you." He gets put in charge of West Point and he decides to surrender West Point to the British.

He decides to do it on the day George Washington is coming to visit West Point. So it'll not only surrender the fort, it'll surrender Washington. He meets with a spy, John Andre, and Andre's dressed as a civilian going back to the British lines. Some American guards stop him, search him, and they make him take off his boot. In the heel of his boot is the map of West Point. He tries to talk his way out of it. They don't believe him. They arrest him.

General Nathaniel Greene writes, "Treason of the blackest dye was yesterday discovered. General Arnold, who commanded at West Point, was about to give the American cause a deadly wound if not fatal stab. Happily, the treason had been timely discovered to prevent the fatal misfortune. The providential train of circumstances which led to its discovery affords the most convincing proof that the liberties of America are the object of Divine protection." Ezra Stiles, as the president of Yale, said a providential miracle at the last minute detected the treacherous scheme of traitor Benedict Arnold, which would have delivered the American army, including George Washington himself, into the hands of the enemy.

The Continental Congress has a day of Thanksgiving, October 18th, 1780. "Remarkable interposition of His watchful Providence in rescuing the person of our Commander in Chief and army from imminent dangers at the moment when treason was ripened for execution. It is therefore recommended a day of public Thanksgiving and prayer to confess our unworthiness, to offer fervent supplications to the God of all grace, to cause the knowledge of Christianity to spread over all the earth." I just think it's interesting. Here they are thanking God Washington wasn't captured and they want to thank God that the knowledge of Christianity will spread over all the earth.

Liz Cutshall: Amen. Thank God for you telling us about that. I don't remember that from my high school history classes. Today we are with Bill Federer, America's historian and a Christian apologist who combines history and politics along with biblical knowledge and principles. We're so thankful to have him here today on Watchman on the Wall and on Southwest Radio Ministries and Prophecy in the News. Today we are also just so excited to be once again offering Miracles in American History. It's two volumes that are just full of wonderful miracles and exciting moments in American history where God stepped in and made all the difference. I know that Susie included in one of these volumes about the women that made such a difference in the American Revolution, the courageous women, she calls them. Could you tell us a little bit about the roles that Betsy Ross and Molly Pitcher and other courageous women played in the Revolution?

Bill Federer: Women were called camp followers, but that term does not do them justice because they did everything. They scavenged for food, they cooked the food, they sewed the uniforms. They even used their own warm clothes to sew clothes for the soldiers. At Valley Forge, 2,500 soldiers died. 500 women died at Valley Forge freezing.

Molly Pitcher, whose name was Mary Ludwig Hays, at the Battle of Monmouth, would go from dugout to dugout with a pitcher of water giving the soldiers a drink because it's over 100 degrees and they're fainting. Calvin Coolidge tells the Daughters of the American Revolution the importance of women in the working out of the destiny of mankind. As there were fathers in our republic, so were their mothers. Who has not heard of Molly Pitcher, whose heroic services at the Battle of Monmouth helped the sorely tried army of George Washington?

June 28th, 1778, her husband faints of heatstroke. He collapses and is carried from the field. She puts down her pitcher and she takes his place loading the cannon. She fights the rest of the battle loading the cannon. At one point, a British cannonball flew between her legs, tearing off the bottom part of her petticoat. Molly remarked, "Well, that could have been worse," and went back to loading the cannon.

One soldier, Joseph Plumb Martin, writes, "A woman whose husband belonged to the artillery was attached to a piece in the engagement. While in the act of reaching a cartridge, having one of her feet as far forward as the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else and continued her occupation." When Washington heard of it, he awarded her a warrant as a noncommissioned officer, Sergeant Molly. There's a historical marker in Philadelphia regarding her.

There's lots of women. Nancy Hart was one in Georgia where her husband's off fighting and the British come to her cabin and shoot her turkey and make her cook it. She serves them some corn whiskey so they wouldn't be real alert. While they're not looking, she's gradually moving all their muskets from one side of the cabin to the other where her daughter's hiding. One British soldier sees this, and the daughter cocks the gun, hands it to the mom, and she shoots the soldier dead. The daughter cocks another rifle, hands it to the mom, and she says, "First one to move's dead," and they all are frozen at gunpoint until her husband returns and she insists that they all get hung.

Another was Deborah Champion, a 22-year-old girl. Her father was the Commissary General for the army and needed to get a message to Washington, but the British had guards on every road. So Deborah dresses as an old woman and hides the important papers in the skirt of her big fluffy dress and goes past the checkpoints. Another is a Lydia Darragh and she was a Quaker. She'd listen through the walls and get the plans and tell them to her son who'd tell George Washington. One, Anna Strong in New York, hung up her laundry in a certain formation to send a signal across the Long Island Sound to Connecticut where the Americans are looking through a telescope to try to figure out what the British plans are. Who would have thought a woman hanging her laundry would be sending messages and would be a spy?

Liz Cutshall: I am so glad to hear about the miracles that God did through the women during the Revolution as well. If we can kind of fast-forward a little bit, I believe that I've read that George Washington wrote to the Continental Congress frequently to encourage them and give them messages from the field during the Revolution. Meanwhile, they're going to decide the future of the states and hopefully to become the United States. What was going on in Philadelphia at this time that ended up creating the United States?

Bill Federer: Philadelphia was the capital. The British actually occupied Philadelphia for like eight months. They had to move the capital. The British took over Philadelphia and then the British were chased out. During that time, Washington's at Valley Forge. The Continental Congress was constantly having days of prayer, days of Thanksgiving, days of fasting.

Even Ben Franklin, when we were doing the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, called the Treaty of Paris, it starts off "in the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity." The treaty that ends the revolution starts off in the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity. Then we have the Constitutional Convention and we're writing the Constitution. They were having a deadlock and Ben Franklin, the oldest guy there, said, "During our contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this assembly for divine assistance. Have we forgotten so great a friend or imagine we no longer need his assistance? Those of us who were engaged in the contest must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor." Then he moves that every session should be opened with prayer. Here's Franklin acknowledging we had daily prayer here and we saw God's hand moving and coming to our rescue.

Liz Cutshall: And we all thought that Ben Franklin was a pagan.

Bill Federer: He was raised Presbyterian. There was a church problem. There was a pastor, Samuel Hemphill from Ireland, and he was like a New Light. He was all excited about Jesus and all excited about getting involved, but the church fathers voted him out. Ben Franklin was involved in this. He said he was a great preacher but a lousy writer so I lent him my pen. Franklin wrote a half dozen articles and published them on his behalf in the Pennsylvania Gazette.

When he was voted out, Franklin dropped out of church. He said the new minister visited him and he agreed to go. He said, "I went five Sundays in a row, but all he did was dissect the finer points of our denomination." He said, "I found some of them incomprehensible like predestination," and so he said, "I absented myself from divine service." Now he gave to every denomination and every church. He never discouraged anybody from going to church. In his autobiography, he talks about imitating Jesus.

Back then, his friend was George Whitefield, the Great Awakening preacher, and Ben Franklin printed all of George Whitefield's sermons. George Whitefield was one that came up with a novel idea. Each colony was started by a different denomination. Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was Puritan, Rhode Island was Baptist, New York was Dutch Reformed, Connecticut and New Hampshire were Congregationalists, Maryland Catholic, and Delaware, New Jersey originally Swedish Lutheran and Pennsylvania Quaker. They did not get along. When they came together for the first Continental Congress, there was a motion for prayer and the delegates from South Carolina and New York did not want to hear a prayer from somebody of another denomination. Sam Adams stands up and he goes, "I'm no bigot. I can hear a prayer of any man of piety at the same time as a patriot of our country."

America was established a Christian nation on the state level. Their fear was the federal government would pick one denomination and make it the national one, which is what every other country in the world had done. England was Anglican, Scotland was Presbyterian, Holland was Dutch Reformed, Germany was Lutheran, Switzerland Calvinist, and Italy Catholic. That was their only frame of reference. They thought America's a new country, we're going to pick one denomination, and they wanted to prevent the federal government from picking one because the states were jealously attached to their own Christian denominations. That's something that's often misunderstood by people that don't know history.

History is constantly being rewritten these days. There's actually a socialist tactic called deconstruction where you separate a people from their past, get them into a neutral where they don't remember where they came from, and then you brainwash them into the future you have planned for them. It's actually a sales technique. If I was a toothpaste salesman, the first thing I'd do is tell you negative things about the toothpaste you're currently brushing with. "You're still brushing with that stuff? Haven't you heard it'll eat the enamel off your teeth?" And so you're repulsed by it. Now I have you in a neutral, you're open-minded, what are all the toothpastes out there? And then I give you my pitch for this brand-new tartar-control breath-freshener toothpaste.

So it's a drive neutral reverse. They go into the classrooms and they tell the kids negative things about the founding fathers. They took land from Indians, they sold people into slavery, and the kids are repulsed by them. Forget the fact your founders gave you a government where you're in charge, that the people got to rule themselves. Forget all that. The founders are bad. Everything they did was bad. So now the kids are in a neutral and you could say, "Hey, there's nothing special about our Christian founding. Let's have a comparative religion class and we'll start with Islam, we'll study all the others, and we won't have time to get around to Christianity." And then they give their pitch for socialism, communism, transgenderism, Islamism. They portray the past negatively, get the kids into a neutral, and then they portray whatever they want to go positively.

Europe went through this. It went from a Judeo-Christian Europe with Catholic cathedrals, Protestant Reformation, and Jewish neighborhoods to a secular Europe with the French Revolution and its free sex and no morals and anything goes. Now it's turning into an Islamic Europe with Muhammad being the number one name for newborns. The whole secular, transgendered LGBTQ agenda is simply a temporary transition phase. It's just a creative way to cut ties with a Christian past before it's quickly co-opted by an Islamic future. But once you understand this tactic, then you can push back. Hopefully, enough people will wake up and we'll push back and say, wait a second. We want to maintain a country where number one, everyone's made in the image of God. Everyone is equal because this God is not a respecter of persons. In America, you're worth something because you're made in the image of God, regardless of what group you belong to. The government's purpose then is to guarantee to you your creator-given rights.

Liz Cutshall: Thank you so much, Bill, for sharing that word of hope especially with us and the word of truth, biblical truth about our country. This is a good spot to leave things in as we are just getting to 1776. Thank you so much, Bill. We look forward to talking to you again tomorrow.

Watchman on the Wall: Has God intervened in the history of the United States? Discover the answer with the Miracles in American History collection from Southwest Radio Ministries. This inspiring collection includes four DVDs and two books that explore remarkable moments where God's providential hand can be seen throughout our nation's story. Volume one examines the Revolutionary War era and the extraordinary events that helped secure America's freedom.

Volume two explores independence, the Barbary Pirate conflicts, and the War of 1812. Volume three covers the Battle of New Orleans, the Bank War, cholera outbreaks, the Civil War, the founding of the Red Cross, George Washington Carver, World War I, and the Great Depression. Volume four continues with World War II, the Korean War, the Apollo space program, and other incredible stories of God's providence in modern history.

You'll also receive Miracles in American History, volumes one and two, two fascinating books filled with inspiring accounts of faith, courage, prayer, and divine intervention that helped shape the American story. Get all four DVDs and two books for a gift of just $110 with shipping included. Order today at swrc.com or call 1-800-652-1144. That's swrc.com or 1-800-652-1144. Tomorrow on Watchman on the Wall, discover the remarkable stories of God's providence during the Barbary Pirate conflicts and the War of 1812. Don't miss this fascinating look at the miracles that helped shape America's history.

Southwest Radio Ministries: Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by faithful listeners like you. Visit swrc.com.