The Real First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving as a Christian Worldview Story

Non-rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it.

Are you gonna bark all day little doggie, or are you gonna bite? We're being delusional.

Delusional, yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me. What? What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies. Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick.

That's a joke, pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the Gospel Heard Around the World. Thank you guys for tuning in. Very exciting and interesting show today. We're gonna talk about Thanksgiving, the real first Thanksgiving.

The real first. Which is actually a really cool thing to do a week after Thanksgiving just to prepare you for next year. So you guys will know going into it what it's actually all about and the whole history.

Yes, we're a week after Thanksgiving. Yes, but very important information and really cool stuff, believe me, because I think we're too often distracted by how the modern education system, modern educational system, has talked about the first Thanksgiving.

The first people that came over, the communities planting, what they believed about the world, the Christian worldview, all that stuff. So, there it is. I'm Pastor Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That is Luke the Bear right there.

Luke the Bear. There you go. I'm sorry about that. Okay, here we go. So go to ApologiaStudios .com to get more. A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Studios .com just so you guys know. As you see right here on Apologia Studios channel, whether you're on Facebook or you're on YouTube, you'll see that we have all of our content, whether it's doing evangelism, whether it's teaching, whatever the case may be, and Abortion Now stuff.

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The Pilgrims, Separatists, and the Real Meaning of Thanksgiving

All right. Well, I'm a super excited about this episode just to kind of give some history behind this. The reason I wanted to do this, it's funny because I saw the article, and it was like, I think it was Wednesday of last week, right before Thanksgiving, and I think it was Time, if I remember correctly, it was a Time magazine article, and it was like this completely bogus, like social justice leftist view of Thanksgiving.

And so I immediately hit up our guest, who I'm going to introduce in a second, Zach Lautenschlager, who has an awesome last name and an even more awesome beard. He's a good friend of ours. We've known him, oh gosh, about a year and a half, I think now, and we've done a lot of work with him behind the scenes.

We're going to be doing a lot more work with him behind the scenes as well, hopefully in the near future. Zach was out here, taught a leadership class for us here, I think about a year and a half ago, and I couldn't help but notice his incredible knowledge of U .S. history from a Christian perspective, and I'm like, wow, like he has some really cool stories.

So I immediately hit Zach up, I was like, hey, would you love to come on the show and talk about the real Thanksgiving? He's like, yeah, absolutely. So that's kind of what spurred this on, but Zach, I'll go ahead and let you introduce yourself to our audience.

Thanks, brothers, it's a pleasure to be here. I'm Zach Lautenschlager, I serve as the vice president in my day job as the National Association for Gun Rights. Yeah, yeah, right on. Members nationwide, and it's good work.

Recently relocated to Utah. No, I'm not LDS, it's a great state, and many Mormon and LDS friends, so it's a pleasure to be here. We're part of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church attending Berean OPC here in Coffield.

It's Jason Wallace's church. What's that? Jason Wallace's church, correct? That's correct. Yes, in fact, there are two OP churches here, Jason Pastors, Christ Presbyterian, down in Magna, but then he also preaches up here.

We're in between pastors right now.

Yeah, you look like a pilgrim. I just want you to know that. Legitimately. Yeah, you look like you could be sitting at the first Thanksgiving table. An Irish pilgrim. Yes.

I gave my wife a hard time. I'll brush the beard out and kind of get the John Smith look. He wasn't a pilgrim. Although, do you know that they did try to hire him before they hired Miles Standish? Oh, really?

Did not know that. It was actually Smith who had mapped all of Cape Cod. And that was before they left Holland, left Leiden. They contacted Smith and asked him, and he was actually interested, but when they got to know him, they said, boy, look out, that guy's a little bit of an egotist.

They were afraid he'd become a tyrant. And so they hired Miles Standish instead, who has a very interesting history. Standish was a similar background. He fought in the Netherlands at the same time Smith did.

I don't know if they knew one another. But just some fun connections there. But yeah, I do enjoy the facial hair.

Well, you're in good company, because we love it here, too. Yes. Indeed, brothers. That's right. It's a pleasure.

So, you know, there's a lot of revision, and there has been for a long time, obviously. If you don't like God, and you don't like his word, then you really don't like American history either. And so, of course, you're going to want to rewrite it or reinterpret it and judge those who perhaps did love God and did try to serve him in past more harshly than we would judge others.

So, you know, we can meet some of our fellow Americans who perhaps share a more Marxist worldview. We're going to look at Che Guevara and praise him for fighting for liberty and freedom, even though the dude was an executioner.

He was Castro's executioner. And then we're going to look at, you know, at William Brewster or Bradford or Miles Standish and say, what terrible people, because, you know, because they happened to be, you know, they fought the Indians or were allied with one tribe against another.

And so, you know, it's always correct to look back and say, well, there is no golden age. We don't believe in a golden age. I certainly don't, not of anything. We're talking about fallen sinful human people.

And I get excited when I see the grace of God and the providence of God working in their lives, because we look at that and we say, well, cool. Maybe God can work through my life, too. Maybe God can use me in my time.

You know, when I was growing up, I grew up a homeschool kid, and I used to opine that I was not born 200, 300, 400 years ago, because I love those times. But I have come to recognize that our time is just as exciting, and there are glorious opportunities.

That's why I'm privileged to work in politics full-time. It's what I do with the National Association for Gun Rights, but also with my full-service consulting business. I run campaigns, I run legislative operations, and I fundraise.

And I love American history. And so the opportunity, no matter what God has called us to do, to learn the principles that work and to apply them in our own lives, to lead our, if we're men, to lead our wives, or to prepare to do so.

If women work in, not only working with your husband, but working with him to lead the family. That's part of it. It is a leadership team from my perspective, and to follow and serve as we are all called to do.

You know, and for kids who hopefully are watching, it is such an exciting time. It is such an exciting time to be alive. Yes, there are challenges. Yes, there are dangers. But that's that's what makes it cool.

That's what makes it cool, and it's certainly not a boring time by any stretch of imagination.

Absolutely not. Well, let's talk about that thirst, that thirst, that thirst to Thanksgiving, that first Thanksgiving.

It's an interesting point, right? Because the Pilgrims are always painted as dour, sour-faced. You know, we love, we hate fun. Right. That's hogwash. Number one, they weren't even Puritans. They were Separatists.

Brownists is what they were called originally for the first 200 years. And so there was drinking at the first Thanksgiving. If they had anything alcoholic to drink, I guarantee they drank it. We don't know for sure if they did.

But they loved good music. They loved good beer. They loved good things. Miles Standish wore a red cape. And so, you know, I think that the foundation of the whole thing, you know, it's easy to go back too far, maybe, and all history is interconnected for me.

So I have a hard time just talking about one thing. But we hear, usually you kind of hear two things. If you grew up in a Christian world, you hear that the Puritans came, or the Pilgrims came here for religious freedom.

And we think, oh, that's so they could pick what church they go to. No, the reality is it's so that they could live life the way God believed it should, the way He believed God had commanded them to live it.

And not be thrown into jail, where they would starve to death, because you weren't fed in prison. Someone had to, someone from outside had to feed you. And there were, there were Brownists, and that's what they have been called, people who followed a pastor, a separatist pastor named Brown.

They were thrown in prison and starved to death, or they were, had to go into hiding. William Brewster, one of the first leaders of the Pilgrims, published documents propounding the gospel, expounding on the gospel, and criticizing those in authority who were, who were commanding unbiblical and tyrannical things, and he had to go into hiding.

So, you know, from that perspective, it's so much more than just, oh, so you can pick a church and read your Bible. No, it's so that you can live life. And that's, that's why they left England. Of course, then you've got the other side, who loves to talk about the fact that, no, they're really just evil capitalists who came to enslave and abuse and, you know, and kill Indians and, and hurt people.

And rape the land. And that's, that's the other side. And, and neither, neither are the case. These are people who read their Bibles and said, hey, God expects us to apply this to every area of life. And so we're going to start doing this.

And then very quickly discovered that in their culture, that was not acceptable. And so they started looking for other places. Of course, they went to Holland first, and we know they stayed there. And then eventually they embarked on two ships.

One of them started to sink, possibly through sabotage. And so they all crowded on the main flower, 102 people on a 60 foot. No, excuse me, 120 foot vessel. So you're talking just absolutely standing room only where they spent two months, two months standing room.

That's insane. Good grief.

Barely room to lay down. And of course, you talk about living that close with that many people, 100 people on 120 foot ship. Wow. They're seasick. They get diseases, you know, they get stomach complaints and illnesses that that go with with everything that goes with that.

They come with everything goes with that. And so that's what the voyage was like. It was not easy. It wasn't horrible. And it wasn't that different from any other seafaring voyage other than you have a lot of passengers.

And that was one hundred and two passengers plus the 40 man crew. OK. So two months at sea. Then they land. And of course, they were headed for the Virginia colony where they had authority. Of course, Virginia went all the way up to almost New York.

And so they got blown off course and they made landfall at Cape Cod, which is the hook that sticks out. If you look at a map of Massachusetts, that's the bottom part of Massachusetts. They landed there and they spent another month out on that basically on that sandbar or most of them on the ship.

While the men, some of the men explored and found trying to find a place, they went aboard, went ashore on Cape Cod. And there were already inhabitants there who came out and were, you know, were aggressive.

There was there was no there were no fatalities on either side. Either side. But it's an important point to note that the pilgrims didn't just show up and say, well, let's kill everyone here and take their land.

Right. Yeah. Which is basically what you hear from. Right. Exactly. No, that's ridiculous. They landed and said, oh, there are people here. Let's go someplace else. It wasn't that hard. Now, yes, they were concerned about being attacked because the relationship between Europeans and Native Americans at this point was not good.

You have to recognize it had been a hundred years. There have been a hundred years of of back and forth. Some of it good, but a lot of it bad on both sides. And there were many Europeans who did come here and did do evil things and stole and hurt people.

That's true. But what makes the pilgrims unique and remarkable is that their attitude was completely different. They respected the people here. And so they looked for a place where let's find a place where there's nobody living right now.

Maybe nobody has a claim on this land. And so they went inside Kitkat Bay and landed at what is now Plymouth. The name the Indian name for the place was Patuxet. And it was abandoned. There were some clearings there.

They were tumbling down buildings and there were lots and lots and lots of of graves and even exposed remains because that village had died. Possibly wiped out by disease. Most likely, we don't know. The only surviving Patuxet resident that we know of was Tisquantum.

There may have been a few others that were recorded in history. He went down in history and was popularized in the 1900s, excuse me, 1800s as Squanto. And so they found this land where there was, you know, it was open and there were five or four or five rivers coming down to the sea.

And so and there was a hilltop that was good for defense. Ready made. So they decided to settle there. Now, many people know the name William Bradford. He was the second governor of Plymouth Colony Bay.

Right. Plymouth Bay Colony, excuse me. And so he's about 35 at this point between 30 and 35. And while he's while they're there on that expedition where they found Patuxet, which become Plymouth, Bradford's 26 year old wife and they have a little boy.

She falls overboard out. And this is early December. It's about now. Wow. And dies. She drowns. And he doesn't find out about it till he gets back or other people perish there. And those were the five deaths at sea.

One died on the voyage. They roll where they land at Patuxet. They unload the stuff. They start building shelter. But it's now Christmas. They started building the common building on Christmas Day on the 25th.

Of course, they wouldn't have recognized that as Christmas. That was a that was important to them because it had become a forced holiday. Right. Yes. So that was the day they started building. And now, of course, over the winter.

And this is something that we all hear about. Right. Everyone hears that a lot of them died. Well, 102 people, 45 of them perished during that winter.

During that first winter in that first winter.

Wow. There were only three families that did not suffer some death in the family. Wow. Several families that were wiped out to one. One man, one woman, a child who was left. Now, to our ears, that is just almost unimaginable.

You have to understand that that was very tough for them. That was that was extremely high, extremely high mortality rate. But you are talking about a different time. And in Europe during this time and for hundreds of years before this, it was not uncommon for large numbers of people to die.

Bradford himself was an orphan. His father died when he was very young. And so he was with his mother and then he went to live with his grandfather who died. And so then he went back to live with his mother and her new husband.

And then she died. And by the time he was 10, he was an orphan. And so he was actually taken in by William Brewster. And Brewster had also taken in other children, some of whom died on the voyage, but who had no place to go.

And so he took them in and took care of them as best as he could. And some of his own children perished as well. So these are remarkably compassionate people. Yeah. And so all throughout this period, when they're looking for land and looking for places, they came across these big stores, big piles of corn that had been carefully, you know, talking about maize, they've been carefully prepared and buried and that were good for food.

And so they didn't know what they were. They said someone left all this out here and there's no one around. And so they looked around, they couldn't find one. They said, we're going to starve and took the corn.

It turns out that was part of the burial ritual for the tribe. And so when they found that out, they actually went and paid everything they could to that tribe for the corn. Wow. And paid them for it.

So through that winter, it was very terrible. They didn't know. All they knew were the terrible stories of people being attacked and killed and eaten and whatever. There were all kinds of stories, many of which were false, some of which, you know, there were terrible incidents on both sides leading up to this point.

And so they would bury their dead at night and disguise the graves. And, you know, many of us have heard those stories. Yeah. And so this is this is the winter. Well, by March, the Mayflower has to return.

And so then, you know, they're on their own and it's starting to get warmer. There are some greens to eat. You know, people aren't quite dying the same, at the same weight. And so then you have eventually you've got this tall, dusky man clothed in native garb who walks into the middle of their town and says, welcome, Englishmen in in good English.

And it kind of blew their minds. And so they go out and this is Samoset. He is actually from a tribe that lives that was originally from the area that became Maine. And he was a sanctuary chief. And he was kind of attached to Massasoit and was one of his advisors.

And so Massasoit sent him down to talk to the to talk to the pilgrims and to say, OK, you know what, what do you why are you guys here? What's going on? And so they found out what they were. And Samoset, the Abenaki, he was treated well.

They invited him in. They sat down. They talked with him. They showed him respect. And they, you know, they just talked about what was going on. And so he went back and reported to Massasoit, this is who these people are.

So Massasoit sends Tisquantum, who also speaks English, because Tisquantum is.

Massasoit, Samoset, and Tisquantum as Peacemakers

Actually. No, we lost audio there.

So, of course, that's when you have planting the corn with the fish and start to have plenty. And so what happens through this summer, the the pilgrims are the brownists who are led by William Brewster, who is a diplomat.

He's a diplomat. He was part of the diplomatic corps for England. And so God placed him in this situation where he understood diplomacy. And so he sat down with Massasoit as a king, which he was, and treated him with respect and negotiated with him.

Eventually, they actually, after Bradford became governor, they signed a compact or treaty that said that if anyone attacks Massasoit, that the brownists or the Englishmen would help them and vice versa.

And so, interestingly, they bound themselves to that tribe, which you can tell from a diplomatic perspective, that makes sense. They're out there in the middle of nowhere. They need food. They need support.

And so but they do have good fighters. And that's something else that we really don't think about. Everybody, I think, has seen or a lot of people have seen the picture of the pilgrims going to church.

And one of them's got his arquebus, his big musket on his shoulder. Right, right. But we don't really think about the fact that these guys were trained. That's why they hired Miles Standish. And Miles Standish was a genuine badass.

He was never officially part of their church, but when they were all sick, his wife perished. He never got the sickness. And he nursed at one point. He was one of the few people, maybe one of two or three out of 60 or 70 who could stand up.

The rest were so sick they couldn't even get out of bed, literally. And so he spent all his time feeding them over that winter. And he really became one of them and was well loved by them. He and Bradford were great friends.

And he actually became friends with many of the Indians as well, many of the Americans. So I lost track of the name of the Indian warrior who he fought side by side with for years and eventually lived in his house.

He became part of Standish's household. And they lived together at the end of their lives and were always great friends. So eventually, of course, you've got the whole story, right? There was there was plenty.

And so they had a harvest festival and a day of Thanksgiving. And many people parse it out and say, well, actually, no, the first Thanksgiving, the first official day of Thanksgiving wasn't until later, like the next year.

And that was when Thanksgiving was proclaimed. But it's just foolishness to look at a bunch of brownists or separatists and say these guys didn't give thanks at the harvest festival, that this was somehow more sort of the English pagan thing, which is laughable.

It is. Soon after that, it was about four years later, another group of Englishmen came and actually set up the first colony, what would become the Massachusetts Bay colony. And eventually, and when you look at an old map, everything south of Boston down to basically on Cape Cod and over toward Rhode Island was the Plymouth Bay colony.

And then Massachusetts Bay colony was north of there. And that's where Boston was set up. But when these Englishmen arrived, of course, the Plymouth Bay went up and tried to strike up a relationship with them and to have good relations.

And it turns out that the Massachusetts tribe was they had bad relationships with these guys. And history shows that these Englishmen had no respect for the native peoples. They lied, they cheated, they stole, they killed some of them.

And so it was a very bad relationship. And it's remarkable. You have the same, it's not exactly the same tribe. The Massachusetts were a separate tribe. They were not allied or under Massasoit's leadership, but similar culture.

And it's important not to paint with too bright a brush either. I'm trying not to do that. People tend to say, well, you've got the Indians and you've got the Europeans. And these are two groups. No, not at all.

That's kind of the point. You had you had a group of Englishmen who came and they sat down with the Indians and they treated them with respect, treated them as equals and superiors and brought what they had to the table and said, what can we do to benefit one another?

And for that time, all the way until in the 1700s, when finally King Phillips won. But you had excellent relationships there that were built by Brewster and his diplomatic skills. And then you have other Englishmen come and settle 20 miles away with the next Indian tribe with a similar culture.

But they are they are institutionally and geopolitically separate and they can't get along with them at all. And eventually Massasoit tells Standish, you need to strike first because these guys are not just going to kill these Englishmen.

They think you're all alike. They're going to come kill you next. Right, right. And so it was actually at Massasoit's urging that Standish went up and launched a preemptive attack on them and attempted.

And it wasn't very successful. It was in one sense, they did scare the Indians, the Massachusetts tribe badly, and they showed them that don't mess with us. And that was beneficial. But they'd already kind of done that.

There was a sachem or under chief to Massasoit who had tried to rebel. And so Massasoit called on his European allies and they went out and put down and said, you can't do that. And actually chased the guy down.

And there was a scuffle ensued and a couple of his followers were killed. And Standish actually killed one of them with his own hands, grabbed the knife out of the guy's hands and stabbed him with it.

Wow. When they attacked him. So they do things like that when they went up to take care of Wagonsit, that was up by Boston. Eventually they were jumped and Indians jumped out and had the drop on them basically.

And Standish leapt forward, grabbed the weapon out of the closest guy's hand and started fighting them. So it was it was remarkable. And, you know, in hindsight, many of the those who hate God's law, those who don't want to, don't want to see anything as, you know, as a good Christian history, who criticized Standish for his role in going up and launching that preemptive strike.

They failed to mention, most of them, that that was actually at Massasoit's, at another Native American's urging and that they did so because of their contractual obligation. Now, we question whether it was a good idea.

Standish was by nature aggressive. He was a little guy. He was not very big, but he was a fighter and he knew that he could win fights by by starting it if he had to. And he did. And so was it a good idea to go up and do that?

Maybe not, because after that, the all the other tribes outside of the Wampanoag's, Massasoit's outshed, they basically vacated the land. And up to this point, the Englishmen had started to establish good trade and there was benefit.

And both sides really, there were things of value being traded. And after that, trade pretty well died for several years because there was no one there. And so that was not a good thing, but it was also not a good thing for for the relationships.

And so we always hear when you talk about the first Thanksgiving, you always hear big, bad, evil Europeans come beat up on poor, defenseless, happy Indians.

Right, right. That's a common narrative.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's it's pilgrims dancing with wolves, right? It's the same story over and over again. It's Avatar, it's dances with wolves, it's whatever. And that is such a ridiculously false narrative.

Yeah, it it pays disservice to the Native Americans. What do you mean by that? Well, there is the the big picture that you get is that these were very simplistic, happy people who never did anything bad, but also were were not very smart.

They didn't really pursue their own. They didn't build themselves up. They didn't they didn't they didn't have trade. They didn't have things that go on that normal people do when you watch, for example, dances with wolves.

And I grew up there. I grew up with the Lakota Sioux. They sold my people, my ancestors homesteaded there and bought land from them. And dances with wolves shows them to be somewhat simple. You know, they just they just aren't happy living out there in the Stone Age.

And that's not true. They made with what they had. They traded. They had they invented things. They did all kinds of things that that normal people do that we do. They weren't so very different. They're not aliens.

Right. And that whole narrative just paints everybody with a broad brush and says that, well, you know, this is this is everything has to be consistent with a persecution narrative because that has that has benefit for for political ends.

Right. And that's that's where that goes. So, you know, the first Thanksgiving, when it came right down to it, it wasn't super it wasn't super elaborate. There was meat and there was some grain. And the Indians did bring a popcorn.

That's not quite as we would see it. It was probably brought in leather bags. It's probably somewhat chewy because it wasn't freshly popped. Yeah. And there were games, the idea of there being, you know, some kind of sports on Thanksgiving, even though football could be a distraction and may keep us from actually thinking about the past and what this means.

It is a part of Thanksgiving. Traditionally, there were there were races and there were shooting contests. And so it is a proud tradition. Yeah, I'm certain. And it is a tremendous part of American history.

But then we have to look back and see that that idea of the people gathering together and corporately giving thanks to God when being called to do so by civil leadership is something that we still practice sometimes to this day.

Yeah. And that is that is you can trace it up to when you become a national holiday and Lincoln and all the students discussions with with with all of that. But this this part of American history is is deeply significant.

And it's so important not to look at history, number one, as these super simplistic interests. And, you know, and everyone was the same. But it's also important not to look at it sort of as this inevitable move that things are going on.

And we have small people who do small things. What's called the great man theory, right? There are a few great people who make decisions and that's all history hinges on that. That is also a false narrative.

That's that's popular. I mean, it was popular among Christians in the eighteen hundreds. I'm still popular today. We tend to think of history in these big chunks and that's not how it is. There are small individuals like us who make decisions that eventually some of them end up being very influential.

Yep. So decisions that we make on a daily basis, we don't know which ones are going to be sure. You know, some decisions are small, but we can talk about we can talk about Massachusetts history. And why did the Battle of Lexington Concord happen on Lexington Green instead of somewhere else?

It's because there was a there was an unheard of sergeant who made the decision to turn left instead of right when he got to Lexington Green, he happened to be at the head of the call. So those kind of decisions, we can look back at what happened at the first Thanksgiving and see those decisions as well.

Right. You can see people who like Brewster and Bradford who were reading their Bibles and saying, you know what, what we do at the at the state church, what we would call Anglican Church today on Sunday morning is not what God commands us to do.

And you know what we do in our homes based on what we learn there from our understanding is not what God commands us to do. We need to live differently. Now, once they came to North America, they did hope and they openly hoped that God would do something with that.

This was tremendous sacrifice. They, Bradford later wrote that they have reports that the natives here would capture you, cut you up while alive, cook parts of you while you watched and ate it. Wow. That was the report that they had and they didn't know any better.

Turns out that probably didn't happen. Certainly didn't happen to the pilgrims, but that was the that was what they faced. Besides the, you know, the normal stuff like starving to death. And they wrote and said, we hope that upon these, upon our feeble effort, basically, I'm paraphrasing, but upon our feeble effort, we hope that God will do something great.