The Mailman, the Preacher, and the Orphan

The Mailman, the Preacher, and the Orphan
In the 1600s, a mailman, a preacher, and an orphan decided to follow God and change the world! They preferred the ways of God over the ways of society! The Spirit of God filled these men up to eventually become the Pilgrims. They were freedom fighters who did not conform!

With a country divided, the Republican risk and morality being redefined, it’s time to gather round a camp fire, get back to basics, and spark the revival that this country so desperately needs.
This is the American Camp Fire revival with Cook Cameron.
As I was saying, I was reading through American covenant again today.
And and, uh, just by way of of recap, remember we were talking about how the world is really messed up right now and And, uh, it just seems to be choked down with so much people wanting to take advantage of other people, and that really started right back in the very beginning when god created the world in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and Cain kills Abel and people start treating each other so wickedly and evilly and and and god sends a flood.
And then there’s Noah, and he’s kind of like the the new Adam, and he hits the reset button and starts over with the human race.
But but they go south and head down a a road of death and destruction and rebellion against god.
Then god raises up Abraham and creates a brand new nation.
Israel and there’s Moses and his laws and everything that they need, including the very presence of god, to destroy tyranny and to uh, produce freedom.
But the the the selfishness has taken root so deeply into the heart of mankind that he cannot break free from it.
And into that world of the Roman empire, which had had had swallowed up the nation that god had used to liberate the world.
With the wrong view of god, the wrong view of man, on to the stage steps Jesus Christ.
And he comes in as god in human flesh and lives a perfect life the life that you and I could not live and through his his life and his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.
He makes it possible for men and women like you and me to be free.
Not first from external chains, but internal chains in our heart.
I can be free from the power of my own selfishness and pride and and and wicked desires that can set me free to love god with all of my heart like I was created to and set you to free you free to love god with all of your heart and love your neighbor.
And and consider others more important than yourselves.
That internal freedom then results in freed people freeing their their communities and freeing their nations.
This is the story of liberty.
And the Bible was was written and collected and put into the hands of of men who then would use it to try to enslave people in a religious way.
And you get organized institutional churches that that went bad.
And where we pick up in the story here is where during a time where the world was in darkness with regard to liberty and truth.
God assembled an unlikely cast of 3 characters, a postman, a preacher and an orphan who had no idea what he was gonna do with them and their lives They had no power.
They had no money. They had no influencer position, and god used them to change the world.
And they were the 3 leaders of the pilgrims. Check check this out.
The first one, his name is William Brewster. He was a mailman.
He took over his dad’s job.
The queen had him as the male man in England way back in the 1600, and he took over his dad’s job.
And He loved the Bible.
He was able to read it because it had been printed and and and and and translated into English, and and he was realizing that god and what he said about the world and about religion and about about about life was different from what he was hearing at the church.
The church seemed to be getting it wrong, and he loved the Bible, and he loved hearing the Bible preached by men who who heard from god, who who had the spirit of god in their hearts and could interpret and understand it and apply it to their life and this led him on fire and he began to be set free in his own heart.
And so he decided to make the tough decision of breaking away from the English church, the state government church, the government was in bed with the with the church.
And and and that was all corrupt.
And so he broke away and began to gather together people and form a brand new church.
A small little congregation and would even pay preachers out of his own pocket to preach the word of god in the bible to him and to others.
And they and they and they did this in his home in a little town called screwby England, and they had to hide because friends who were doing the same thing were being killed by the government because they were reading the bible for themselves.
Rather than just going to the approved church services.
But but they were being set free, and so he had to hide.
And I could just picture William Brewster and and and those with him hiding in his house or or maybe under the floorboards of the horse stalls.
By candlelight reading their bibles, blowing out the candles when the when the soldiers would come by looking for the separatists who had separated from the church, hoping to be concealed by the the sound of the horses and the hooves above their heads, hoping that they wouldn’t get caught.
The church that Brewster form was formed by a covenant like this, like our forefathers made, a sacred promise with god to to love him and to follow his ways with all of their heart.
Listen to this. It says here that that this small group decided to shake off the yoke of bondage as the lord’s free people and join themselves by a covenant of the lord.
Into a church family.
That’s like us, like like the family of faith, being set free in fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all of his ways according to their best efforts, whatever it would cost them trusting god to assist them.
They believed that even if the church and the government wasn’t on their side, god was on their side if they did all they could to follow his ways.
I mean, this was this was liberty in their hearts, and they believed that ultimately it would free them from the external prisons and and and everything that was on the outside, but it had to start in the inside.
The postman becomes a spiritual leader for the pilgrims, and we’re gonna hear more about that in just a minute.
The second unlikely character that steps on to the stage at time is John Robinson.
John Robinson is a Cambridge University educated minister who falls into obscurity because he was canceled censored and discredited by the queen because he didn’t want to conform to all of the requirements of the government church and wanted to be able to read the Bible and speak the word of god to the people so that they could hear directly from god through his word with his spirit in their hearts.
And so he he was virtually unknown.
But little did he know that god had plans for him to join up with William Brewster in Scruoby in the secret congregation and become the official pastor of the pilgrims.
The pastor of the pilgrims.
And this pastor John Robinson reminds me so much of my friend and pastor Rex Holt, who lives in Texas.
Listen to what it says here in in in this history book about him.
Pastor John Robinson, so much like my pastor Rex, his love was great toward them.
And his care was always bent for their best good both for soul and for body.
For besides his singular, his, uh, his unique abilities in divine things that is preaching the word of god nourishment for their souls, wherein he was excellent, he was also very able to give directions in civil affairs.
That is in the day to day current events. That is in in in educational affairs, economic affairs.
Uh, I mean, that’s like the stuff that’s going on.
Maybe the protests the riots, the medical issues, the immigration issues, the government issues.
He could help them with those things.
He didn’t just you know, pigeonhole himself or silo himself in in in, uh, parables and bible studies about personal devotional issues He talked about the issues of the day and to foresee dangers and inconveniences.
And so was every way as a father unto them. This minister was like a father to the pilgrims.
Teaching them how to grow up in their faith and be mature and complete, not only in spiritual matters of the soul, but in civil matters of culture that would change their world.
The the next character in in the story is William Bradford, this is a young orphan who is actually a farmer.
He’s a farm boy who ends up reading the bible and he is so arrest by what he reads.
It’s so different from what he saw in what he called the fake churches that he withdrew from those churches and he engaged with the family of the faithful.
Again, that’s us. The the the family of faith, those who knew the truth and were living in liberty, that he kept close to them and to the written word of god as the rule of his worship.
Although his his friends provoked rage all the time in ways imaginable, trying to reclaim him from it.
His friends were trying to drag him back into the fake churches and stop him from doing what ultimately was going to change the world, but he didn’t let them.
He stood strong. And he said, nevertheless, to keep a good conscience.
He didn’t wanna wake up in the middle of the night with a guilty conscience that he was doing the wrong thing.
He wanted a good conscience before god and to walk in such a way that god had prescribed in his word.
When god says, don’t do this. He’s saying, don’t hurt yourself. When he says, do this.
He’s saying, help yourself the blessing He wanted to walk in the ways that god promised would lead to his blessing.
And these are ways in which uh, the ways in which I must prefer before all of you, my friends, and be above life itself.
I prefer the ways of god over all of my friends and even over my life itself.
That’s the kind of friend that I wanna have.
Savage friend, speaking truth, not caving in to peer pressure, and political correctness.
He had steel in his spine.
The spirit of god had filled his sails and he was fueled by faith, and courage, and the promises of god.
These three guys were amazing.
And William Bradford ends up learning from William, uh, William Brewster who was educated at Cambridge University, he learns so much, become so educated, learns the Bible so well.
He actually becomes so skilled that they appoint him to become the governor of the pilgrims.
He’s like the president of the pilgrims.
Are you getting the idea that the pilgrims were actually a small little congregation of Christians.
These were not little religious fuddy duddies.
These were the out of the box thinking savage, uh, thinking courageous freedom fighters who stood for what is right because they’d been set free inside of their hearts.
They loved their country, but they loved their god even more.
And he ended up writing his own journals, which became the original source documents for everything that you and I know about the pilgrims and about Thanksgiving.
There’s others too, but primarily it was this orphan Farm Boy, William Bradford, who becomes the Governor of the pilgrims and writes the journals that teach everything you and I can know for sure about the pilgrims, because he was one of them, the governor, and Thanksgiving.
If you’re not sure what happened when the pilgrims came over here, if you’re wondering whether you wanna uh, go with the 16 19 deal, or you wanna go with the 17 76 deal, or you wanna go with what really happened in 16 20 or 21, read governor Bradford’s of Plymouth Plantation, and you’ll find out from his own journals from the original source documents what actually happened.
These three Unlikely characters were assembled by god on the stage of the world at just the right time to plant the seeds of liberty that would ultimately form the greatest nation of liberty the world’s ever known.
A postmaster an obscure minister and a little farmer.
And you know why they were able to do it? Because they followed the apostle the apostle Paul’s words.
Who said, do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
There’s a pattern in this world.
Don’t you think that we are being told to conform to?
Even today, conform, conform, conform, do what everybody else is doing. Don’t ask questions. Don’t think for yourself.
Just do it. And if you don’t, you’ll be canceled. Be careful. You’ll be censored. Be careful.
You could be deleted. Be careful. Confirm. Confirm. And everything will be okay. They say.
God says, I have the key to liberating your heart and your family and your your your faith and your community and your nation, and I will liberate the entire world if you’ll do things my way.
Be trans formed by the renewing of your mind. Think differently.
Get rid of the stinking thinking as my pastor Rex likes to say and replace it with truth.
Truth that comes from god’s word in the Bible.
And you’ll be set free to love your neighbor as yourself to pray for your enemies and to bless those who persecute you.
And in doing that, god will use you to change their hearts.
In his time for his purposes, and you can trust him because he’s the great author of the story.
He’s the great director of the play He is the producer of history. It’s his story.
And this great director and author and writer and producer and director of of of lighting with the sun and the moon and the stars does not need an academy to give him an award.
He already has the full accolades of heaven and the angels and the praise of the saints of earth, who have been transformed by him and his word.
And that includes you and me and the family of faith.
Let’s pray tonight and and, uh, thank god and ask him to use us like he did those 3 unlikely characters 1500 years ago.
Or 500 years ago, 500 years ago.
Our father in heaven, you are the god, uh, of heaven and earth.
You are the beginning in the end you know, how the story starts and how the story finishes.
You are the author and the perfecter, the finisher of our faith.
God, you have us on the stage of the world at this time, use us for your purposes, bring liberty to our hearts, to our homes, and to our nation.
We love you, lord, and we pray in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you guys.
Uh, again, Keep praying for each other.
I read the comments after we hang up here, and, uh, it’s just beautiful to see how many of you just just are rushing to the sides of those who are in need of prayer and comfort and healing.
It’s a beautiful thing to see.
And for those who are not yet part of the family of faith, this is a great opportunity for you to bear testimony to the things that god has done in your life, the things that you’ve seen and you’ve heard, and to show your love for one another.
Keep gathering people around the campfire.
We we want it to spread all over this nation.
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