December 18, 2020 Show with Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin on “Strangers & Pilgrims on the Earth: Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims (1620-2020)”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, in downtown

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 18th day of December, 2020, and I'm so thrilled to have back on the program one of my favorite guests to interview.

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His name is Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, and I'm sure that most of you in our audience are very familiar with Dr.

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Haken, but for the sake of those of you who are not, he is a professor of church history and biblical spirituality and director of the

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Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and today we are going to be addressing his book,

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Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims, which he has edited and contributed to, and we're also going to add to the topic,

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The Puritan Movement in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Michael Haken. Yes, it's great to be with you, Chris. Thank you very much. And if you could, first of all, just briefly let our listeners know about the

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Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Yeah, the Andrew Fuller Center is named after probably the most important Baptist theologian in the last quarter of the 18th century, all through the 19th century, and probably the early part of the 20th century.

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He stands at the threshold of the modern missionary movement. His close friend William Carey, very well known, went to India, but he did so with the theology of Andrew Fuller, which was an evangelical

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Calvinism, committed to the free offer of the gospel, committed to taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, and committed to planting robust Baptistic Congregationalist churches.

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And the Center basically provides a context in which we have conferences, some of them around Fuller, some of them more broadly.

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We did an online conference this past year on the theology of angels in the history of the

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Church. And we also do some publications. The Center is linked to a major publishing venture, publishing the works of Andrew Fuller in a critical edition.

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And we also do occasional publications dealing with various themes that relate to Baptist history.

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And the conference often deals with larger Church history themes, but the publications that we do are focused on Baptist history, and that partly because there are not a ton of publishers focused on Baptist history.

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And we believe that we've got a very rich heritage that we want to preserve and pass on in its legacy.

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Great, well praise God. Now tell us about a publisher that may not be very familiar to many in our audience.

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This is the publisher of the book we are going to be addressing, Strangers and Pilgrims of the

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Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims, from 1620 to 2020. And I'm speaking of H &E

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Publishing. Tell us something about this publishing company. Yeah, so H &E is a relatively new publishing house, two younger brothers in their thirties,

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Chance Faulkner, Corey Hughes. Corey's a pastor, Chance is a deacon. Based in Ontario, Peterborough, Ontario to be exact.

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They have a vision for publishing contemporary, but also past literature of broadly reformed

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Calvinistic stripe, theology, church history, biblical studies, spirituality.

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They really have taken over a publishing house that I was involved in for quite a number of years called

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Joshua Press, which we, I founded with two other brothers, a sister back in around the year 2000.

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And for a number of years, Joshua Press was managed by the kind of arm of Ligonier in Canada called

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Sola Scriptura Ministries. And then more recently with the demise or the closure of Sola Scriptura Ministries, H &E have taken it over, but they've been adding to the backlist.

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They've not only taken over the backlist of Joshua Press, but they've been, you know, rapidly increasing it.

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They're probably publishing about 20 to 25 volumes a year, which is really quite large.

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The print on demand through people like Lightning Source in Tennessee is a godsend to new publishing houses like this, because they don't have to invest a large amount of money in stock.

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They print the books as they need them. And so the recent book, the Mayflower Pilgrims, it came at the idea from a pastor in England named

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John Clements, who pastors the oldest non -conformist congregation in the entirety of the

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British Isles. It's a church in Norwich where a number of the Mayflower Pilgrims came from.

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And the pastor, most famous pastor there was William Bridge. Anyway, John Clements gave us the idea.

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He did some of the initial work in contacting people, and I was thrilled that H &E took it up and published this fabulous collection of essays.

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Now explain the full title of the publisher. H &E stands for Hesed and Emmet, and the website, just to let our listeners explore what you have available at that publishing ministry,

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H -E -S -E -D -A -N -D -E -M -E -T .com,

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HesedandEmmet .com. Tell us about what that means. Yeah, those are Hebrew words that speak of the loving kindness and goodness of God, and God's mercy.

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And the whole idea of a publishing house and the use of this vehicle, which is a vehicle despite the onset of the web, it's still a very, very important vehicle for getting the gospel out, as well as the encouragement of the saints.

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And Hesed and Emmet is just a tremendous, as I say, a tremendous venture in so many ways.

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It's the only Reformed publishing house in Canada. Wow. A lot of, and it's true of not only

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Christian, but also just a bigger, a lot of Christian publishing houses, a lot of our independent publishing houses have been taken over by larger companies like HarperCollins, etc.,

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and this is the only, this is the only Reformed, and you know, there might only be one or two other

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Christian publishers in the Canadian scene. We are deeply dependent upon the United States and Britain, and so it's great to have this, as it were, in our backyard, that is publishing some

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Canadian authors, Canadian Christian authors, who might not be able to get published in the larger American market.

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Well, speaking of Canadian authors and theologians and apologists, our mutual dear friend,

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Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, sends his warm Christian greetings to you.

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Great. And tell us also about Roy M.

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Paul and John Clements. Well, actually, I believe you already mentioned John Clements, I think, didn't you?

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I did, Joe. So John Clements is, as I said, a pastor of, it's called the Old Meeting House in Norwich.

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I've been there, I've preached from this pulpit that would have seen people like Philip Doddridge, William Bridge preach from.

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It's just a gorgeous meeting house. It's in a very, very old part of the city. The day that we went there,

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I was driven by a very close friend who lives about an hour away from the city. And when we got into the city, it was very difficult to navigate because of the very narrow and literally medieval streets.

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And so John gave us a very warm welcome that weekend. I did a conference there. So he was really the inspiration for it.

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John is desirous of our prayers. He has a very small congregation. There is attempts by some of the local city council to want to take over the property and really shut the whole thing down.

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And so he's really seeking to revitalize that church. And so if our listeners can pray and maybe even help financially, but especially prayer, that God would save men and women that could join the congregation.

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Roy Pohl helps me at the Andrew Fuller Center. He's a research assistant. Spent an entire career in pharmacy, has degrees in chemistry.

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And then in his mid -fifties decided he would retire and did a theology degree, a master's in theology, and then went on to do a

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Ph .D. in Jonathan Edwards Studies. And has written probably the finest book on Edwards' ministry to the

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North American Indians in Stockbridge. That's an area of Edwards' ministry that is really up until probably the last 20 years has been really ignored.

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And Roy did a whole study of the Stockbridge Indians, Edwards' ministry to them.

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He contacted, he went down there, he went to interview contemporary members of the tribe.

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One of them, one of the elders said to him that one of the great, it's interesting how they remember

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Edwards. They remember him as just a man sent from God. And that their tribe would not exist were it not for the impact of Edwards' short ministry there.

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A number of them, quite a number of them were converted. They've maintained a Christian witness over the years. And that's in real contrast, if you ever go to Northampton, Edwards' name there is all but forgotten.

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I remember going into a bookstore in Northampton where Edwards spent the best part of nearly 30 years, and just inquiring as to where Jonathan Edwards' church was.

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I didn't know it, but the church was probably about 150 yards away. And the woman said, never heard of the man.

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I have no idea where his church might be. That reminds me of years ago when

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I worked for a major radio station, WMCA 570

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AM, which is a part of the largest Christian radio network in the world,

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Salem Media. A Christian radio station from, or in,

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I should say, London, England, which was the very first Christian radio station in London, England, because as you probably know, for years the

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UK banned religious radio for some reason.

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And this person was the first general manager of that first radio station in London, Christian radio station.

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And he was visiting our station to speak with the advertising sales team, which

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I was on. And I said to this man in the conference room, you know,

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I always wanted to visit London. I always had an earnest desire to visit the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. And the man looked at me and he said, pardon? I said, the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle. I'm sorry, I'm not following you. I said, you know where Charles Adams Spurgeon was the pastor in the 19th century?

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I'm still not following you. Never heard of him. I was like, excuse me? And this guy was the general manager of a

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Christian radio station in London. Never heard of Charles Spurgeon. That's very sad.

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Well, I'm going to read a commendation for your book by a mutual friend of ours that I've known for many years.

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In fact, I was involved in the launching of Dr.

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Joel Beakey's first radio program in the 1990s. And Dr.

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Beakey has said this about your book, for many Americans the word pilgrims brings to mind little more than the

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Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, and eating turkey. However, the history of the pilgrims is actually a story of Reformed Christians who embraced convictions that led them to separate from the

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Church of England, fleeing persecution to establish a colony on the wild shores of the

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New World. This well -written and helpful collection of biographical and historical essays highlights both the foibles and courage of these

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Christians who played a major role in the foundation of the new nation. Implicit practical lessons relevant to the calling of contemporary

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Christians who strive to live biblically and faithfully abound in this enlightening book.

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Wow, that is some powerful commendation from Dr. Joel Beakey, President of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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And by the way, folks, he will be our guest on Monday, the 28th of December.

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So that's just a couple of weeks away, and we hope that you tune in for that interview.

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It's been a while since Dr. Beakey has been on the program, so I look forward to his return. What was the most compelling factor that led you to write this book to begin with?

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I think it was a very contemporary event. In the past couple of years, history has become a major controversial issue.

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It probably always has been in some respects, but it's been very much in the media. And the

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New York Times, about a year or so ago in 2019, established what they called the 1619

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Project, which argued that the real history of the United States is bound up with an event in 1619 at Jamestown in Virginia, where a number of Africans were sold as slaves, the first time it happened on American soil.

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And they argued this is the real story. This is the central founding story of America.

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In other words, America, right from the get -go, has been a slaveocracy, and racism has been bound integrally into the warp and woof of the

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American story. And the implications is we've got to go back and restart the whole thing all over again.

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And when John Clement suggested the idea of celebrating the landing of the

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Pilgrims in 1620, in 2020, it soon became evident to me that here was a way of responding.

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I'm not a contemporary culture warrior by any means. I'm a historian. But it's a way of responding to,

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I think, a misreading of American history. Obviously, there are myths that have grown up surrounding the

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Pilgrims, those remarkable men and women. But any narrative of the development of America as a nation that does not include this as a central feature is really missing what has been a very key part of the

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American journey. And so this book, in some ways, is a contemporary response, looking at history, hopefully, from a historical perspective.

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Obviously, we're not distorting history. We're remembering it rightly. But looking at history, and really kind of setting aside that argument of the

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New York Times, that there are other ways of viewing American history that are, I think, more valid.

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And without wanting to say, yes, obviously, slavery and racism have been there, and they're problematic issues.

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But that's not the heart of America. And so this book, then, is an attempt to demonstrate that the foundations of the

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American experiment and the American journey and American history find a very powerful kind of foundation in the colony that is planted by these

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Pilgrims in the 1620s. Now, if you could clarify for us, why specifically were the

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Pilgrims, those that became to be known as the Pilgrims, why did they have to flee

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England, and why were they being persecuted by the Church of England? This was already after the

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English Reformation. So why did they become such enemies of the

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Church of England, and for what specific reasons were they persecuted? And also, how were they persecuted?

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Yeah, so you really have to go back to the beginning of the English Reformation. The English Reformation has really kind of two streams.

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The one stream which we regularly remember is the spiritual stream that runs with people like William Tyndale and the translation of the

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Bible into English, and men like Thomas Cranmer and Hugh Latimer, just remarkable preachers who are burned at the stake for their faith.

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The other part is political, and Henry VIII, in whose reign the

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Reformation comes to England, will break with the Church of Rome over issues not related primarily to the

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Reformation, but the issues that relate to whether or not he could legitimately get a divorce from his first wife, whom he was deeply frustrated with because she couldn't bear a male child, which he ardently desired, lest England fall into civil war, which it had done just prior to his father's reign, thirty years of just very, very bloody civil war, which decimated the

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English aristocracy known as the Wars of the Roses. And Henry grew up with this deep fear that if England was not governed by a man, a woman, he had two daughters, could never be able to control the

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English aristocrats. And he makes himself the head of the

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Church, and this is where he breaks with Rome in the early 1530s, and grants himself his own divorce.

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Well, that title, the head of the Church of England, basically is passed down to all of his heirs, so the present queen is still the head of the

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Church of England. And not surprisingly, in the 1500s, the monarchs,

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Henry VIII, and then especially Elizabeth I, his daughter, and then subsequent monarchs,

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James I, Charles I, they wanted a religious uniformity in England. They did not, they were the head of one church, and so the argument really was, if there is one king, or monarch, there's one church.

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We've got one law, one king, one monarch, one church.

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But the Reformation opened up all kinds of avenues, and one of them had to do with church government.

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Is the model of church government, which the Church of England maintained, which was an

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Episcopal model, that is, bishops ran the church, and bishops appointed other bishops, and bishops appointed ministers, is that the biblical model.

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And in the 1570s and 1580s, you have the emergence of what we call Presbyterianism, and then

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Congregationalism. Presbyterianism is that the elders are the authorities under God, and the

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Congregationalism is that the congregation is. And the pilgrims were Congregational. And essentially, what they wanted to be done, they wanted to be left alone in peace to worship

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God as they read the scriptures. They believed in believers' churches, that people had to make a professional faith to become a member of the church.

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They were horrified by the Church of England, where every Tom, Dick, and Harry who was born within 20, 30 miles of a geographical radius around a parish church was baptized in that church at eight or ten days old, and automatically a member of the church.

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And again, this didn't fit, and rightly didn't fit their model of New Testament church life.

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And they would have been content to remain in England, but in the 1590s, there was vicious persecution.

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Some of the key leaders were hung, really for sedition, because of the union of church and state, to violate, to start your own congregation was basically a treasonous act.

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And by the early part of the 1600s, many of these congregations could really, it got to the point that they felt they could no longer stay in England.

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And with deep regret, they left England and headed initially for Holland. And Holland at this time was a haven of religious toleration.

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And it was, it really, it's known as the Dutch Golden Age. There was the fabulous wealth that had been brought into the

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Dutch homeland through commerce, and a lot of trade, and along with that, there had come a significant degree of religious toleration.

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And so many of the religious refugees, the pilgrims, ended up in Holland.

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They could have stayed there, but inevitably, as they stayed in the

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Dutch context, their children as they grew up were speaking Dutch, and no longer speaking

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English. And it wasn't because of lack of toleration but because they were fearful that their children would lose their

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English heritage. And language, we tend to forget this, but language is the bearer of culture.

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My father, for instance, is Kurdish, but he didn't teach a word of Kurdish to me, and so his culture hasn't come down to me.

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When he married my mom, who was Irish Catholic, we were raised in an Irish Catholic home, with English as the mother tongue.

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And so the Dutch, the early pilgrims were deeply fearful of losing their entire culture, and getting really kind of swamped by a

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Dutch, it would have been a Dutch Protestant culture, but it's still Dutch. And so that's what prompts them about the possibility of going to the

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New World. England was a bit slow to follow the lead of Spain and Portugal, but eventually, by the late 1500s,

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England is beginning to explore the possibility of planting colonies in what we now call

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America. And they originally were intending to go to Virginia.

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And that's where they were actually given land, but they got blown off course.

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And when they realized, by the time they had made landfall, in November of 1620, it was far too late to pick up and try to go to go down the coast to Virginia.

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And so they ended up staying in what we now call Plymouth in Massachusetts. Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break, and we'll pick up right where you left off when we return.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own about the

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Mayflower Pilgrims, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S

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A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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If you're asking a theological question, for instance, and you are in disagreement with your own pastors, or maybe you're even a pastor who has developed the doctrines or theology that is in your place at odds with your own fellow elders or your denomination, something like that, we could understand why you would want to remain anonymous.

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But if it's just a general question about history and theology and doctrine, then please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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We'll be right back with Dr. Michael Hagan and more of our discussion on the Mayflower Pilgrims right after these messages from our sponsors.

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For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

37:28

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

37:43

Welcome back. This is Chris Armisen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the entire two hours today, with a little bit less than 90 minutes to go, is

37:52

Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen. We are discussing his book, Strangers and Pilgrims on the

38:00

Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020.

38:06

And if you have a question you'd like to ask, our email address is chrisarmsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

38:14

Give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

38:19

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. And we have a question from Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

38:28

He wants to know, in your description of the pilgrims, they almost sounded like they could have been

38:34

Baptistic, were they? No. No, they weren't. Baptists come out, well, one stream of Baptists come out of the pilgrims, but these pilgrims were

38:47

Paedo -Baptists. They would have baptized children. But they would only have baptized children of members of their congregations.

38:56

So the parents had to have been able to give a testimony of conversion. So this is kind of the original

39:03

Congregationalist vision, that they weren't going to baptize the children of anybody who simply turned up in their midst.

39:13

The people whose children they baptized were full -fledged members of the congregation. But once you raise the question about the legitimacy of the state church, which they did, it inevitably then raises the question about the legitimacy of the infant baptism that the state church gave.

39:34

And it was a man named John Smith in the early 1600s, very familiar to all of the pilgrims, who raised that question.

39:43

The question was, none of the pilgrims really wanted to raise the question, because inevitably it brought the respecter of the

39:51

Anabaptists, who had a very bad name in Europe, because of events in the 1530s where they had taken over a town, a number of very violent

40:01

Anabaptists had taken over a town on the border of Holland and Germany named Munster, and basically declared that adult baptism was the norm, and everybody in the town had to get baptized as an adult, otherwise they'd execute you.

40:21

And it was a byword for anarchy, bloodshed, rebellion. And that kind of stuck to the term

40:29

Anabaptist. And so the congregationalists, who we know as the pilgrims, were very reluctant in raising the question, even though we believe that the state church in England, the

40:42

Church of England, is not a legitimate church, they didn't want to therefore say, well, the infant baptism is not a legitimate baptism, because all the original pilgrims would have been baptized as infants in the state church.

40:56

But John Smith was of such a mindset that he was not afraid of asking the question. And that's where we get the first Baptist group,

41:03

English Baptist group, based initially in Holland, and then they would eventually, instead, they would go back to England instead of coming to America.

41:14

Well, thank you, Harrison, and please make sure we have your full mailing address in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, because you are getting a beautiful gift from H &E

41:26

Publishers, and that is this book, Strangers and Pilgrims on the

41:31

Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020, by Dr.

41:36

A .G. Haken. And thank you very much for your excellent questions today.

41:43

We also have a listener who happens to be a loyal listener and a very generous supporter of this program financially,

41:53

Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina. Hello, brothers. Why was Virginia where the pilgrims wanted to go originally?

42:02

Was this because other settlers had already been there? Yes, yes. So there was already a trading company based in London that had links, commercial and land links to Virginia.

42:18

And so the idea was that the pilgrims would end up somewhere near Jamestown.

42:25

But of course, as we know, that did not happen. And providentially, the whole foundation of New England, which is a very different, the early years of colonial

42:36

New England are very, very different, obviously, than colonial Virginia. And the development of colonial

42:42

New England as a Puritan colony would probably not have taken place if he had ended up close to Jamestown.

42:52

Well, thank you, Grady. And make sure we get your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina, because you are also getting a free copy of this wonderful book,

43:03

Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims, 1620 to 2020.

43:11

And by the way, you might find this humorous, Dr. Hagen, but when somebody saw my promotion for this interview today on Facebook, they replied, so Dr.

43:23

Hagen actually remembers the pilgrims? Wow, I don't think

43:35

I've ever had that hearty a laugh from a guest on this program before. Well, before I go to any more listener questions, and I will get to as many as I can before the end of the program, so just be patient a little.

43:52

I just want to make sure that I get some other content in the program here. Can you go through some of the slanderous stereotypes that have been hurled, tragically, against the pilgrims, and why you believe these are nothing but stereotypes, or slanders?

44:14

Yeah, I mean, they've been accused of being joyless individuals who only ever dressed in drab colors, that they were killjoys, legalists, those sorts of things, whereas if you actually probe into their lives, we don't have tons of records of the earliest pilgrims in terms of each of them.

44:41

We have works by people like William Bradshaw and so on. It's anything but.

44:49

These are men and women who have experienced the joy of salvation.

44:55

They know Christ. They are desirous of religious liberty, to worship as they believe that God has laid down in His Word.

45:08

They're not killjoys. Now, as the Puritan colonies do develop, there does develop elements of a legalistic culture, and this is always a great danger in a culture where Christianity is the dominant, or any religious perspective where Christianity, but in this case

45:29

Christianity, is the dominant theological viewpoint. The danger is that the culture gets reshaped.

45:40

That's not a danger. It gets reshaped along Christian lines, and it's very easy in a context like that to fall back into almost like the state church of England, where people are expected to act as Christians who aren't

45:56

Christians. But that's down the road. I mean, these earliest people coming over, they are genuinely born again.

46:08

They are born again. They are people who know the joy of Christ, of salvation.

46:15

The larger Puritans being, they often, they dressed in drab colors like blacks and browns and grays, the argument being.

46:30

Actually, that's not true. It's the Quakers who tended to have very, very drab colors in clothing.

46:40

John Owen, one of the men that the Pilgrims, their descendants anyway, would love, we have stories of him wearing orange leather boots with a red cloak.

46:56

Wow! And somebody saw him once in Oxford and said,

47:02

I saw John Owen today and he was quite, quite a figure with his orange leather boots and red cloak.

47:10

So our perspectives on the Pilgrims and the broader group that they come from, the

47:15

Puritans, is being influenced by a large amount of propaganda, really propaganda that was issued in the 1660s and onwards that was designed to destroy the credibility of these people.

47:31

And the reality is we've, our culture has tended to buy it. So that if, you know, if I said to you,

47:39

Chris, you know, you really are really kind of Puritanical. My suspicion is that you initially wouldn't take that to be a compliment.

47:47

You'd probably take it as a negative remark. And it was

47:53

T .F. Lewis, I think, who said in the mid -20th century in his, that fascinating book,

47:59

The Screwtape Letters, he said on one occasion, in one of the letters where Screwtape, the devil is, the devil in there is talking to his junior devil in Wormwood.

48:08

He said something along the lines of, one of the great successes we've had in the last 400 years is what we have done with the word

48:17

Puritan. And Lewis' specialty was the very period where the

48:24

Puritans and the Pilgrims emerge, 16th century literature. And he knows that that term was used initially by the opponents of the

48:33

Puritans and how it's been used in Western culture since then.

48:40

And so the Pilgrims then get blamed for all kinds of things. They're also blamed, this is more recent, as being kind of imperialist and white supremacist.

48:54

And again, nothing in that book could be further from the truth. They obviously have, in the 60s and 70s, they have conflicts with some of the

49:05

First Peoples or Native Americans. But the initial contact is very peaceful.

49:15

And for the best part of probably 40 years, there is peace between the number of Massachusetts tribes and the

49:23

Pilgrims. Did they not even permit interracial marriage between whites and Native American Indians?

49:31

That's a good question. I don't know. That's a very good question. I think that that is the case, but I can get back to you on that.

49:41

So again, this is where history is so important.

49:49

It's just very easy for a lot of people in contemporary culture to imbibe their view of the past from hearsay, from various websites that, you know, are not designed to pass on an accurate view of our forebears.

50:07

And it's very easy for stereotypes to be passed down. We have, and we'll take one more question before we go to our midway break.

50:18

In fact, I think what I'd like to do, so I don't have to interrupt you in mid -sentence, I will have,

50:24

I will read this question to you and then we'll have you answer it when we come back from our midway break.

50:30

And this is from Eric in Mahomet, Illinois. And he has to say,

50:39

I have a relative who is descended from the strangers, the non -Pilgrims aboard the

50:46

Mayflower. What do we know about the interaction between the strangers and the Pilgrims?

50:52

Were there any conversions to Christ through the Pilgrim's Gospel witness? So we'll have you answer that when we come back from our midway break.

51:00

And folks, I hope that you're patient with us during this midway break because it is longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they are required by the

51:14

FCC to air their own public service announcements and other local things that localize

51:21

Iron Trip and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida. So while they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

51:31

Therefore, I'm asking you to use this time wisely. Please write down as much of the information as possible that is provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them.

51:44

And sometimes, if you're unable to actually patronize one of our advertisers, if you can't buy any of their products or use their services or visit their churches because of where you live and so on, please reach out to them and just thank them for sponsoring this program.

52:03

That might go a long way because, folks, we absolutely positively depend on the financial support of our advertisers to exist.

52:12

So please try to keep them happy, try to patronize them as much as possible, and at least reach out to them and thank them for sponsoring this program.

52:21

Also, use this time to write down questions for our guest, Dr. Michael A .G.

52:27

Hagen, on his book, Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth, Remembering the

52:32

Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020. And our email address is

52:37

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

52:44

And please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr.

52:49

Michael Hagen after these messages from our sponsors. Was your business shut down during the

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Here's what

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Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, had to say about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio recently.

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Good to be back, Chris. I always enjoy our time. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for 30, more than 30 years.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much joy are you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air so I don't have to brag about myself.

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Tell your friends and loved ones about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, airing live Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

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Eastern Time, at ironsharpensironradio .com. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the

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I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for the recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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And before we return to our guest today, Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen on his book,

01:08:12

Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020, we just have a couple of important announcements to make.

01:08:21

This Monday, the 21st of December, the

01:08:27

Monday before Christmas, we are going to have a first -time event here on this program.

01:08:33

In all the years that I have hosted this program, even though I have interviewed both

01:08:39

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and our mutual friend, Pastor Bill Shishko of the

01:08:47

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Deer Park, Long Island, New York, known as The Haven, I've interviewed them both many times.

01:08:56

But for the first time ever on Monday, December 21st, they are both going to be filling in for me as co -hosts and as guest hosts of this program.

01:09:08

I will not be on the program. It will be hosted, as I said, by Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Deer Park, Long Island, New York.

01:09:21

So please mark your calendar to listen to that. I can't wait to hear what they have to say myself.

01:09:27

And I hope that you are blessed, and I'm absolutely certain that you will be. And folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves,

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So please help me rectify that situation for you. I have lists of Biblically faithful churches all over the planet

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Biblically faithful. So if you are in that category, or you have a loved one who is, or if you're going on vacation somewhere and you want to find a good church, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:13:32

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put, I need a church in the subject line. That is also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr.

01:13:40

Michael Haken on our theme today, Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020.

01:13:48

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And Dr. Haken, you likely remember that we got an email from Eric in Mahomet, or Mahomet, I'm not sure how they pronounce that in Illinois, but he says,

01:14:04

I have a relative who is a descendant of the strangers, the non -pilgrims aboard the

01:14:09

Mayflower. What do we know about the interaction between the strangers and the pilgrims? Were there any conversations, or I'm sorry, were there any conversions to Christ through the

01:14:20

Pilgrim's Gospel Witness? Yes, they obviously constituted an important part of the voyage.

01:14:28

Most of the crew members wouldn't have been Christians. In fact, very few of them were. On the voyage over,

01:14:35

William Bradford remembered one of them mocking the pilgrims because they were seasick, and telling them that he'd have the pleasure of dumping their bodies overboard at sea if they died.

01:14:51

In an ironic providence of God, he was one of the first to die. He ended up getting dumped overboard.

01:15:00

Once they got to what we call Plymouth, it was

01:15:06

November. It was too late for the ship to turn around and go back to England. Sailing the

01:15:11

Atlantic in those months between November and March, then and now, is brutal.

01:15:18

You can hit waves that are 20, 30 feet from the crest of the wave to the trough.

01:15:25

The crew members decided to stay with the pilgrims.

01:15:30

A number of them fell ill, as did the pilgrims. The pilgrims nursed them. The Mayflower eventually went back to England in April of 21, carrying on board a large number of beaver pelts.

01:15:48

The beaver trade in the New World was really opening up for England. Some of the company decided to stay on.

01:15:57

They were the strangers who stayed on. By doing so, they must have been willing to give themselves to living in a community that had now drawn up what is known as the

01:16:09

Mayflower Compact. They knew very well that they were going to be part of a

01:16:17

Christian community that was living according to this compact that was drawn up. It's a very important document, really in some ways a step on the road to the founding documents of the

01:16:29

American Republic. They would have been very well aware of what they were committing themselves to, which means that probably a number of them, and I'm not sure how many, would have been favorable to the

01:16:44

Christian message. If not favorable, maybe even converted. It would appear that some of them were indeed deeply impacted by the pilgrims.

01:16:56

When the time came to stay in what we now call Plymouth, instead of going back to England, they stayed.

01:17:05

The rest of the crew went back to England. Well, thank you, Eric. Please make sure we have your full mailing address in Mahomet, Illinois.

01:17:16

We will have CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, one of the sponsors of this program, mail this book out to you that we have been discussing today,

01:17:28

Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth. We want to thank CVBBS .com

01:17:34

for always shipping out our listeners from Win Books and Bibles and other things, shipping these products out to our listeners at no charge to our listeners or to you, or to us,

01:17:47

I should say. And I also want to thank again H &E Publishers for generously providing these books.

01:17:57

And don't forget about their website, Hesedandemet .com. And we have a listener in Alabama who has a question.

01:18:11

We have Ted in Moundville, Alabama who says, how would Dr. Hagen categorize the chief differences between the pilgrims and the

01:18:23

Puritans who did not emigrate to America? I'm wondering not only theological differences, but also the social, sociological, and perhaps even psychological characteristics that distinguished those

01:18:37

Puritans who made the trip across the Atlantic. Wow, that's quite a question.

01:18:45

It's an excellent question. There are differences between the pilgrims and the Puritans. Many of the

01:18:52

Puritans still in the 1620s would have been quite happy with the idea of a state church.

01:18:58

And it would be another 25 years, it's not until the 1640s, that that begins to unravel in what we call the

01:19:05

English Civil War. So the pilgrims were completely disenchanted with the idea of the state church.

01:19:14

And they did not see it as the role of the magistrate to interfere in the internal life of a congregation, dictating who could be ministers, dictating who could be a part of the congregation, etc.

01:19:30

Many of the Puritans who stayed in England believed that the Church of England was still capable of reforming the

01:19:38

Church of England. Many of them theologically would be in Presbyterian, and so they would obviously differ from the congregationalism of the pilgrims.

01:19:50

And also they were much more optimistic that they could still bring about a reformation of the

01:19:58

Church of England. And so when James I, for instance, becomes king in 1603, he was

01:20:05

James VI of Scotland, inherited the throne of England because he was the closest surviving relative of the childless

01:20:12

Elizabeth I, they were thrilled to bits, the Puritans.

01:20:18

And because James had been raised in Presbyterian Scotland, what they didn't know was that James hated the whole

01:20:27

Presbyterian structure. He'd had to deal with about 3 ,000 Presbyterian elders in any discussion of church life, and he greatly looked forward to the idea of coming to England, not only becoming the king of a much more prosperous nation at that time, but also only having 20 bishops that he could sit down in a room and tell them all what to do, and they'd carry out his wishes, he hoped.

01:20:54

And so he was not at all favorable to Presbyterianism. And the

01:20:59

Puritan hopes would be again dashed, and eventually they would find themselves involved in a civil war in the 1640s and 1650s, and the

01:21:10

Church of England was never reformed. And so the pilgrims, in that sense, had a far -reaching, a much better understanding of where things were moving in that regard.

01:21:27

The men and women who came across the Atlantic are just remarkable individuals, both the pilgrims and then the later

01:21:38

Puritan emigrations beginning in the 1630s and running through to about 1640 or so.

01:21:48

You know, to spend six to eight weeks in the hold of a ship that would measure maybe, you know, 30 feet by 50 or 60 feet max, oftentimes not able to go up aboard ship because of maybe dangerous weather and the danger of interfering with the crew.

01:22:13

There is a hardiness, really a remarkable hardiness. I've read a number of books over the last few years on those emigrations, and what just strikes you is just the significant courage of these men and women who would become founders of America.

01:22:34

And not everything about the American character can be explained by those emigrations, but there is a lot that can.

01:22:44

And that's why the founding of Plymouth and then Puritan New England is such an integral part of the

01:22:51

American story, the way in which the character and courage and hardiness of these individuals would give shape eventually to a much larger body politically, political body that we call

01:23:09

America. And the men and women who stayed in England, who we know as Puritans, they obviously are also characterized by a degree of remarkable courage, especially in the stances that they would take against ruling authorities.

01:23:26

But there is something psychologically about these men and women who are prepared. Once they cross the

01:23:32

Atlantic, they're essentially giving up everything that they've known. A few of them, generally speaking, ministers, would go back.

01:23:43

So we have one Puritan leader, Hansard Knowles, who becomes a key Baptist. He comes to Boston in the 1630s, and he'll eventually go back.

01:23:52

Hugh Peter, who is a very, he was a radical Congregationalist, he comes to the

01:23:57

New World and would go back. But for most of the people, they are not going back to Britain.

01:24:06

And the courage that it takes to leave everything behind you, family, everything known, familiar, the whole of that culture, and now to create a

01:24:24

New World, psychologically there's a strength of character there that many of the

01:24:32

Puritans who stayed in England obviously did not have. And that isn't to lessen our admiration of those who stayed in England, but there is a psychological type of courage, a willingness to venture out into the unknown, which

01:24:48

I think has characterized American culture down through the centuries. Well, thank you,

01:24:56

Ted. And please make sure we have your full mailing address in Moundsville, Alabama, because you have just won a free copy of Strangers and Pilgrims on the

01:25:06

Earth by our guest today, Dr. Michael Hagen. And keep your eye out in the mail for a package from CVBBS .com,

01:25:15

because they are the ones shipping it out to you. CVBBS .com. We thank

01:25:21

H &E Public Publishers once again for providing us with these books that we've been given away. We have

01:25:28

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who said,

01:25:34

Was not Pocahontas a Native American who lived amongst the Pilgrims, and did she not intermarry with one of them?

01:25:42

I guess this is coming from the earlier question about, or actually I brought it up, about intermarriage.

01:25:48

Yeah, no, she's further south. She's in Virginia. She's not part of the

01:25:54

Massachusetts scene. She's down in Virginia with the Jamestown colony.

01:26:01

And she does, yes, and actually is converted and goes to England, where I believe she met

01:26:10

James I. But it's been a long time since I've kind of visited the story of Pocahontas.

01:26:17

But yes, she's part of that world that is in Virginia and the

01:26:22

Jamestown colony, and part of the Virginia Company, which was the company that financed and provided land for those settlers in Virginia.

01:26:34

Thank you, Susan Margaret. You've also warned strangers and pilgrims on the earth. So make sure we have your full mailing address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

01:26:42

So CVBBS .com can ship that out to you. We have Joseph in south -central

01:26:47

Pennsylvania who says, I have friends who are Seventh -day Baptists, and when

01:26:53

I did some research on this rarely heard denomination, I have come to learn that some of their congregations are the oldest active congregations in the

01:27:06

United States. Are the Seventh -day Baptists a group that sprang out of the pilgrims, and were there any among the pilgrims?

01:27:16

No. The Seventh -day Baptists would be a group that emerges in the 1640s, initially in England.

01:27:24

There are two streams of Baptists. The first stream is John Smith, and they're known as the

01:27:31

General Baptists. And John Smith was a Separatist. He could easily have been a pilgrim.

01:27:37

Many of the pilgrims who came over knew John Smith. They had met him either in England, in Lincolnshire, where he was for a good period of time.

01:27:46

And then in the first decade of the 1600s, he emigrated to Amsterdam, where they also would have had interaction with him.

01:27:55

During his time in Amsterdam, he becomes attracted by Armenian theology, and also changes his views on infrabaptism, and becomes a

01:28:05

Baptist. And his congregation, his

01:28:10

Baptist congregation, will go back to England in 1612, under the leadership of one of his fellow elders named

01:28:17

Thomas Helwes. The second stream of Baptists is the

01:28:22

Particular Baptists, who are the much more important stream, because basically, pretty well every

01:28:28

Baptist congregation in the English -speaking world today has its origin in this group.

01:28:34

They are Calvinistic. They would have believed in particular redemption, that Christ died for his people, the elect.

01:28:41

And they emerge in the 1630s, again out of discussions regarding the validity of the state church and the validity of infrabaptism in the state church.

01:28:53

In the late 1640s, with the advent of the

01:28:59

English Civil War, there was enormous liberty for the presses.

01:29:05

And you start to find questions being raised that would never have hitherto been raised, and one of them being, is

01:29:12

Saturday, is Sunday the legitimate day for worship? And a small group that includes men like Edward Stennett, Henry Jesse, who was a very important figure for the

01:29:27

Particular Baptists, as they came to be known, they become convinced that Saturday is the legitimate day of worship.

01:29:34

And so the Seventh -day Baptists in America, and there are no

01:29:40

Seventh -day Baptist congregations left in England, they... Really? No, no, they've all gone.

01:29:46

Their roots go back to the 1640s in England, and some of them emigrate as Puritans to Boston and so on.

01:29:54

And so yes, some of these Seventh -day Baptist congregations are the oldest, some of the oldest

01:30:00

Baptist congregations in America. In their early years, and by early years

01:30:07

I mean 1640s to about 1820s, they were all being

01:30:12

Calvinistic. And the Congregational and Church Government, Believers' Baptism, the only thing they differed on was the day of worship.

01:30:23

The earliest group of Seventh -day Baptists, like Edward Stennett, actually believed that worshiping the

01:30:29

Lord on Sunday, the eighth day, the Lord's Day, as we call it, was actually the sign of the beast.

01:30:35

Wow. I guess that's where the Seventh -day Adventists later got it from. Yeah, yep.

01:30:41

But within a generation or two, most of the Seventh -day Baptists realized their commonality theologically with the

01:30:51

Calvinistic Baptists, or Particular Baptists, as they were then called. And you'd often find, like I'm thinking here of St.

01:30:58

Joseph Stennett, who was the son of Edward Stennett, he would have a congregation he'd worship with on Saturday, and then

01:31:05

Sunday he'd be free to go around and preach for Calvinistic Baptist churches. Well, I heard the same thing about Samuel Stennett, who had a very strong friendship with John Gill, the great 18th century

01:31:18

Baptist preacher in England, and great theologian and commentary writer, and I heard that they did pulpit exchanges with each other.

01:31:27

Yep, Samuel Stennett would have been, he's a great, he's a grandson, a great -grandson of Joseph Stennett I.

01:31:36

Him, right, too. Of Stennett, yeah. So the Seventh -day

01:31:41

Baptists are not a well -known group, but they are very much part of the early Calvinistic Baptist history.

01:31:48

In fact, Samuel Stennett was one of the preachers at John Gill's funeral, and his funeral message is actually available from Chapel Library in a booklet form.

01:32:01

Yep, yep. We have Christopher in West Virginia, who was a great -grandson of a pastor in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:32:14

I have even heard a very strange thing from leftists here in America about the pilgrims, believe it or not, that allegedly they were cannibals.

01:32:25

Have you ever heard this, and where on earth did this slanderous rumor come from? I have never heard this.

01:32:32

That's complete rot. Obviously in the early weeks of the winter of November 1620, and going into the spring of 1621, things were very dire, because they didn't have time to plant, and if it hadn't been for some of the

01:32:55

Native Americans, they would have died, all of them. The Native Americans provided them with some food.

01:33:02

The idea that they would have eaten their own, if they had run out completely of food, is horrifying.

01:33:12

And given their Christian commitments, that is a completely ...

01:33:19

fails to understand the history, and is total slander. Yeah, that's just ...

01:33:27

I can't describe that with any stronger words than simply rot and garbage. That's, yeah.

01:33:33

And that's one reason why we need to do history, is because there is bad history out there.

01:33:42

Yeah. What about the commonly held accusation and blame that is hurled against European settlers in the

01:33:56

North American continent, that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Native Americans because of the spread of disease.

01:34:04

Is that true? Yeah, some of that is true. Native Americans, as with Native people in Central America and South America, had no contact with pigs.

01:34:19

And the various breeds of pigs that were used for feeding and animal husbandry techniques and methods in European culture, which meant exposure to things, you know, obviously cattle as well as various other forms of livestock, including pigs.

01:34:39

And pigs are a bearer of significant diseases, which is one reason why nobody would ever have a slice of ham that is rare.

01:34:49

You know, you have rare steak, but you'd never dare have rare ham, because of the incidence of disease, the possibility of disease in pigs.

01:35:02

Well, the exposure of the Europeans over the centuries had given them immunity to various diseases to some degree, things like smallpox and so on.

01:35:11

And so when they came to America and brought some of these diseases with them, they had no idea the impact that this would have on Native Americans.

01:35:25

And it was unwitting. They were not intending this, but significant numbers of Native Americans had no immunity at all to various European diseases.

01:35:41

In some ways, the Americans had lived here in America, the

01:35:46

Native Americans had lived here in the Americas, really kind of in a bubble. They'd been completely unexposed to the diseases that had ravaged

01:35:57

Europe over the centuries, coming from either Africa or from the

01:36:03

Middle East and further east to the Central Asian plains.

01:36:11

And so when the Native Americans were exposed to the European diseases, it brought havoc among them.

01:36:19

So that is true to some extent. That was not intentional. Yeah, and you could hardly blame any human for that kind of a thing when it was unintentional.

01:36:30

No, no, not at all. And definitely not with the early pilgrims.

01:36:37

They were very conscious of how much they owed the Native Americans in those early years.

01:36:44

They would not have survived as a colony if it hadn't been for the Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts Indians that they met.

01:36:54

By the way, I just happened to Google pilgrims or cannibals, and there are quite a number of sites that come up.

01:37:05

So this listener was not pulling that out of thin air or inventing it. Wow. As I say, that's one reason why we do history and why it's important that history be properly done by students of history and historians, is because there is so much bad history out there.

01:37:27

Yeah, that's appalling. Now, before we move on to the

01:37:32

Puritan movement and the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, I just want to make sure that you include in our discussion anything further that you want to say of importance about strangers and pilgrims on the earth, remembering the

01:37:48

Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020, and I'm really interested about the 2020 part.

01:37:56

I guess you mean that the remembrance is going on until today, but if you could.

01:38:03

We have, as I said, there's about 20 articles in there, 20 essays. Some of them deal with the context, the historical context out of which the

01:38:14

Puritans came, some of the early Pilgrims came, some of the early Puritan leaders. So mine deals with,

01:38:20

I have an article on William Bridge, who is in Norwich, in Norfolk. Some of them deal with the context in Holland.

01:38:31

The opening essay is by Martin Lloyd -Jones. Obviously, it was not requisitioned. It was done about 60 years ago, but it's never really seen print widely, and so we obtained permission from one of his daughters to publish that.

01:38:49

And then some of the articles deal with the actual voyage across the Atlantic. What was that like? Some of them deal with the early settlement, social conditions.

01:39:01

The two other types of articles that are important is there's two or three of them that deal with the legacy, the political and religious freedom, the legacy of religious freedom that the

01:39:16

Puritans, the Pilgrims leave us, and that's where the 2020 comes in. How did the

01:39:22

Pilgrims influence us today? And so one of the essays looks at the Mayflower Compact and how that was a very, very important political document at the outset of American political life.

01:39:36

One document that is, one essay that's very important is Priscilla Wong's essay on the women, the experience of the women crossing the

01:39:47

Atlantic and their experience of the New World. And these are the

01:39:53

Pilgrims' wives, and they very, very few of them have left any written record.

01:40:01

And so it's important in our day that we remember not only the men, but also the women who, again, just remarkable hardiness of character and fortitude that is exemplary.

01:40:16

One of the reasons why we study history, in addition to the fact that we have to do it properly, is to derive models for imitation.

01:40:26

And the Puritans are just remarkable men and women. So those would be, yeah,

01:40:33

I'm very thankful for this opportunity to speak about the book and your encouragement of, in commending the book and so on.

01:40:41

So thank you. Oh, my pleasure. I could have you on many more days to discuss this book.

01:40:47

And when we come back from our final break, which will be much more brief than the others, we'll begin a conversation on the

01:40:55

Puritan movement in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. And if you have any questions, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:41:03

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01:41:11

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

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And Dr. Michael Haken, you wanted to make sure that we switched gears at least for a part of our discussion and include the

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Puritan movement in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. So, if you could, why is this an important matter we should discuss?

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Well, I think it's because the pilgrims don't step out of nowhere as it were.

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They have a historical context. And that historical context goes back really along two lines.

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One is the desire to find a proper type of church government.

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But the other is very vital to us. Not that that isn't. And that is religious liberty.

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And the pilgrims then represent a trajectory that begins with a number of Puritan figures back in the 1580s, 1590s.

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Men and women who wanted religious liberty. They wanted the freedom to worship

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God as they saw fit. They didn't want to be unruly members of the larger

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English society. They were prepared to obey the magistrates in all legitimate requests.

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But the issue of religious liberty was something that was dear, became increasingly dear to their hearts.

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And they were a very, very small minority of men and women. And their views would have been regarded as really very, very odd.

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Increasingly, we're in a context today where this is going to become a burning issue.

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The liberty of Christians to worship

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God and to live their lives in peace as good members, good upstanding citizens, et cetera, in the context of the

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American Republic and not just the American Republic but other Western democracies.

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These issues are right on the heart of modern life and the tensions of modern life.

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And in the 1990s, with the fall of the Iron Curtain, there were historians like Francis Fukuyama, the

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Japanese -American historian who talked about the end of history and that Western democracy had won.

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And here we are now, 30 years later, and it doesn't appear that way. What it appears is that the democracies that we have prized, and at the heart of them is religious liberty.

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Religious liberty is not just window dressing. It goes to the heart of what democracy is.

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And democracy is in retreat across the world. And increasingly you see authoritarian strongmen being advocated, emulated.

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The Chinese, the Xi Jinping, where you have a fairly robust economy but increasingly authoritarian political state, is being presented as a model against the

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West and American democracy. And so we live in very challenging times.

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And for me as a historian, I'm not a political historian per se, but I'm a church historian.

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And how can I speak into this world? Well, one of the ways is to remind those who hear me, read me, etc.,

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of the cost that some of our forebears paid for religious liberty. And that religious liberty is, as I say, it's not window dressing, it's not just a minor issue, it's at the heart of the liberties that we enjoy as citizens of a democratic society.

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And when a society moves against religious liberty, it's really undermining that whole understanding of a democratic culture.

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So the pilgrims then speak to us, men and women who are prepared to risk all for religious freedom.

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Praise God. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know why did the

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Puritans so harshly persecute the Quakers? And can we actually consider

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Quakers a legitimate Christian group?

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It is tragic to see how today the main denomination of Religious Society of Friends has actually become full -blown in support of homosexuality.

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Although I know that there are evangelical offshoots of that group. Should we view, historically, the

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Quakers as bonafide Christians? Yes, I think so.

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The Quakers have gone through a lot of transformations over the years. In the 20th century, they've made certain subjects central to their raison d 'etre.

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Passivism, for example. In more recent years, things like environmentalism, animal rights.

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Not surprisingly, I wasn't aware of the homosexual issue, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

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The separation from mainstream Quakers, and what we call evangelical

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Quakers, begins in the 19th century when the evangelical awakenings, the Second Great Awakening, impacted the

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Quakers, among others. And some of them became really full -blown evangelicals, except that they didn't have the ordinances of baptism and the

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Lord's Supper, and that their meetings would be a little different from, say, Baptist or Methodist meetings.

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The early Quakers, I think, looking at the way the Quakers developed in the early years, they shared with the

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Puritans a deep fascination in the work of the Holy Spirit. The Puritans are a movement that can be looked at from a number of angles, and one of them is this deep interest in the ongoing work of the

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Spirit. How does He save people? How does He apply the Scriptures, etc.? And the

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Quakers took that to an extreme, and exalted the Spirit over the written word, which the

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Puritans never did. And they had some very early weird years.

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By the 1670s, 1680s, they're beginning to settle down in many ways.

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And there is an evangelical stream of Puritanism that emerges in the 18th century and 19th centuries that is very spiritually healthy.

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But there is also a long line of Quakers that get caught up in various social projects which come to the fore, especially in the 20th century.

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So Quakerism today is a shadow of its former self, and there are large -scale parts of Quakerism today that, as you indicated, would be off the map in terms of their

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Christian commitment. Was the listener correct in saying that the Puritans harshly persecuted them?

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Yes. In part, yes. And in Boston for...

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So again, once Puritism gets established in the New World, by around late 1600s, 1700s, the very thing that they came to escape, to enjoy, religious liberty, they didn't give to others.

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And Baptists and Quakers felt the brunt of that. Yeah, I've even heard that Baptists on occasion were drowned in a mock baptism.

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Is that true? Not... No, there's no examples of that as far as I know. Baptists were whipped in Boston.

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Obadiah Holmes was whipped in 1651 on Boston Common. There were

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Quakers who were hung. Mary Dyer was hung in the 1670s, probably.

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Again, around the time of the Salem Witch Trials, when there is a paranoia that grips

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Massachusetts and maybe parts of Connecticut as well. So, it's an irony, and it's a sad irony, that these men and women who came for religious liberty and found it, didn't give it to some others, like the

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Baptists and the Quakers. Well, we are out of time, and I could speak for hours and hours with you, brother, and I'm looking forward to your return to the program in the future,

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God willing, in the near future. I want to make sure our listeners have this website again for H &E

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Publishing. It's hesedandemmett .com H -E -S -E -D -A -N -D -H -E -M -E -T .com

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And you can purchase all of the books published by Hesed and Emmett from cvbbs .com,

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who actually sponsor this program, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. If they don't have what you're looking for in stock, they will order it from Hesed and Emmett.

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I want to thank you so much, Dr. Hagen, for being such an extraordinary guest as always. If you could hang on the line, because I do want to schedule you for another interview.

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I want to thank everybody who listened. Don't forget about Monday's program being hosted by James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Bill Shishko of the

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Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Deer Park, New York, who are filling in as hosts of the program.

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I want you all to have a blessed and safe and joyful and healthy and happy weekend, and Christ -honoring

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Lord's Day, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.