Chapter 34. What if they had trusted in God? So what would have happened if the colonists had trusted in God? Well, they would have paid their taxes, and there would have been no revolution. Aha, you may be thinking, so it's a good thing the colonists rebelled against Britain; otherwise, the colonies would have never gained their independence, and there would be no United States. Look at what a great country came into being as a result of the Revolutionary War.
I'm hoping that this is not what you're thinking, because if you are, then it shows that you too don't fully trust in God. I don't mean to be harsh, but if we think for one minute that things worked out better because the colonists disobeyed God, then there is a serious problem with our Christianity. Things always work out better when we handle matters God's way. Often things don't work out the way we want them to, but they always work out for the greater eternal good.
But look at how great a country the United States is, you may protest. Yes, the United States is a great country in many ways, but if matters turned out this well doing things man's way, imagine the outcome if the colonists had done it God's way. If it was God's will for the United States to be independent, and I feel certain it was, then the United States still would have obtained its independence. But it would have obtained its independence without ever lifting a sword against fellow Christians.
I can say this confidently because Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a host of other countries all obtained their independence from England without bloodshed. If the colonists had done everything God's way from the beginning, there are a number of things we know would not have happened. To begin with, the settlers wouldn't have annihilated the Indians and taken their land.
Rather, the settlers would have paid a fair price for the land they lived on and would have lived peacefully alongside the Indians, as William Penn's first settlers were able to do. Next, there never would have been slave trafficking between the New World and Africa, nor would there have been liquor trafficking with the Indians. If the colonists had fully trusted in God, there would have been no religious persecution in New England and no oppression of non-resistant Christians by the revolutionaries.
If the revolutionaries had trusted in God, they wouldn't have mistreated the loyalist Christians who stood by God's laws on submission to the higher powers or governmental authorities. And, of course, if the colonists had done things God's way, there would have been no war in the first place. For that matter, there would have been no Stamp Act riots, Boston Massacre, or Boston Tea Vandalism. Instead, the colonists would have brought their complaints before Parliament in a peaceful manner.
Parliament's willingness to repeal the Stamp Act and all but one of the Townshend tariffs shows that Parliament was not unreasonable and unresponsive. Christians are called to be peacemakers. To be peacemakers, we must always try to see the viewpoint of the other person. Furthermore, we peacemakers can't make unreasonable demands ourselves. But the revolutionists weren't peacemakers.
By taking the position that Britain had no power to tax the colonies, the revolutionists claimed a privilege that no country on earth has ever granted to its colonies or territories, including the United States government itself. This was a particularly unreasonable and unlawful position because England specifically reserved the right to levy tariffs in the colonial charters.
We must also remember that the entire conflict with Britain grew out of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that gave the Indians their Bill of Rights. That proclamation was not only a reasonable and just article of legislation; it was the right thing to do. The Indians had lost enough of their land; it was time to treat them fairly. That should have been obvious to anyone truly born of Christ. Where does our allegiance lie?
When the American Revolution broke out, the colonists had to decide what came first in their lives: their Christianity or their politics. Which kingdom had their ultimate allegiance? The kingdom of God or the thirteen colonies? One had to take precedence over the other. And except for the non-resistant kingdom Christians, most of the colonists demonstrated that politics came before Christianity in their lives.
They hated their fellow Christians who held to a different political view, and they were willing to kill them. During the American Revolution, Anglicans murdered Anglicans, Calvinists murdered Calvinists, Catholics murdered Catholics, Lutherans murdered Lutherans, and Presbyterians murdered Presbyterians. They would die for their earthly kingdoms and kill fellow Christians for such kingdoms. Their actions demonstrated that the kingdom of God took a subservient place in their hearts.
But such subservience is totally unacceptable to Christ. If He and His kingdom aren't first in our lives, then we aren't fit for His kingdom. He said, "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Matthew 10:37. If we are to love Him more than our parents and children, we certainly must love Him more than our country. Jesus commanded us to love our enemies and not to resist evil.
It's why Paul said that we shouldn't even take a fellow Christian to court. He said it's better to be defrauded than for Christians to sue one another, let alone kill one another. 1 Corinthians 6:6. Each side praying to the same God. At one point during the American Revolution, the Continental Congress called for a day of prayer and fasting. Across the ocean, King George called for the very same thing. The clergy on both sides of the ocean were telling their soldiers that they were doing God's will.
The "born again" Christians in America enthusiastically supported the revolution while their "born again" counterparts in England were condemning the revolution. Most of the American revolutionary leaders were church-going Christians. So were most of the loyalists and British soldiers. King George III was a church-going Christian who spent hours every day in prayer. He never took a mistress, and he and his wife enjoyed a genuinely happy marriage that bore fifteen children.
After the English people devoted themselves to a day of prayer and fasting in 1776, the English army routed Washington and his troops at New York and Long Island. To the English, this was proof that God was on their side. But of course, every American victory was proof to the Americans that God was on their side. And on and on it went. John Wesley decried the situation. "See, here are thousands of our brave countrymen gathered together on this plain.
They are followed by the most tender and feeling emotions of wives, children, and an innumerable multitude of their thoughtful, humane, and sympathizing countrymen. Then turn your eyes and behold a superior number of their brethren at a little distance, flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, who only a few years ago emigrated to the wilds of America. These also are followed with the most tender feelings of wives, children, and countrymen.
See, they advance toward each other, well prepared with every instrument of death. But what are they going to do? To shoot each other through the head or heart, to stab and butcher each other, and hasten, it is to be feared, one another into the everlasting burnings. Why so? What harm have they done to one another? Why, none at all. Most of them are entire strangers to each other, but a matter is in dispute relative to the mode of taxation.
So these countrymen, children of the same parents, are to murder each other with all possible haste to prove who is in the right. Now, what kind of argument is this? What a method of proof! What an amazing way of deciding controversies!" Things that might have turned out differently. In the end, the colonists chose not to place their full trust in God, and they used the world's violent means to obtain their independence from Britain.
The precedent they set is that violence is an acceptable means to settle differences. If they had obeyed Christ and trusted in God to establish a new nation His way, perhaps the French and Russian revolutions would have followed more peaceful paths as well. Although I feel certain that it was God's will for the American colonies eventually to become an independent country, I don't think it was His will for them to become independent when they did.
I say that because I think God first wanted the slave issue to be settled before the colonies became independent. As things turned out, slavery ended in the United States only after the horrendously bloody civil war that left 600,000 to 700,000 soldiers dead and at least another half a million wounded. And just as has been true in the American Revolution, the clergy on both sides of the civil war assured their soldiers that God was on their side.
Revival meetings were held in the camps of both the northern and southern armies. However, somehow those revivals did nothing to hinder those new, born-again Christians from slaughtering one another. Americans have the mistaken idea that somehow such a war was normative and that only war could have ended slavery. But that is not at all the case. The United States is the only country on earth that had to fight a war to end slavery.
In 1772, while the American colonists were complaining that they were being made into slaves because of the Townshend tariffs, Britain abolished real slavery in England and Wales. Portugal had done so back in 1761, and Spain abolished slavery in Spain and all its colonies, except for three islands, in 1810. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. That act freed over 760,000 slaves, all without any bloodshed.
Americans often feel morally superior to the peoples of Mexico and Central America. Yet Mexico abolished slavery in 1810, and the Federal Republic of Central America abolished slavery in 1824. Before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, all of the European powers and all of the Latin American countries except Brazil had abolished slavery. In each instance, it was done without bloodshed.
I firmly believe that had the American colonists waited on God to obtain their independence, slavery would have ended here much sooner and without war. In short, no one should imagine that things turned out better for the United States because the colonists disobeyed God's laws. Things always turn out better when we do things God's way. Up to this point, we've been talking about past events. We've seen that so many colonists failed to trust in God, and we've looked at the consequences of that.
Now let's talk about us.