About a year ago, Chicago-based Pastor Erwin Lutzer had written a fascinating book titled When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany. I have read all 141 pages now on three separate occasions. Fascinated every time, I just cannot get over the fact that everything he had written about Nazi Germany is taking place here inside the United States; the English settlers of yesteryear would be ashamed.
In 1621, fifty-one English settlers, along with members of the local Wampanoag people, celebrated their harvest with a three-day festival. The English were pilgrims who sought religious freedom. Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim and the only person to write a first-hand account of the Thanksgiving of 1621 is quoted as saying, “And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
Pastor Lutzer was likely not a student of our pilgrims, but it is obvious that he understood their religious minds, kindness, and sacrifice. I have simply listed two of his chapter titles in an attempt to get people to grasp how on point Pastor Lutzer was in this magnificently written document. Yet those chapters are not enough as it is encouraged on this Thanksgiving feast to embrace discussion pertaining one incredibly disturbing account founded on page 21 of his book.
Chapter Four, titled Propaganda can change a nation seems like a no-brainer, yet “We the People” have done nothing to stop main stream media propaganda. Look at Chapter Five, titled Parents-not the state-are responsible for a child’s training, then observe the catastrophic circumstances we have placed our children in because of dependence of state schooling versus the real education that should come from within the family unit. I’ll get off my soapbox.
What strikes me, and virtually brings tears to my eyes every time I get to page 21, is the recounting of Christians attending church during the peak of Nazism. Train tracks were in the immediate vicinity of their church. Parishioners would hear the train coming knowing Jews were inside like cattle being shipped to face their ultimate fate. They would hear the cries of the Jewish people yet did nothing but sing hymns of worship to fade out the sounds of horror–but what else could they have done? What would you have done?
Needless to say, Jews and Christians alike are being shipped on a very unique geo-political track here inside the United States today. No, I am not comparing the atrocity of the Holocaust to what is taking place today inside America–but then again, maybe I am.
The Holocaust was genocide–an ethnic and or religious extermination. It was induced by mass propaganda, hate, an evil legal system that served little justice, indoctrination, and comprised of too few heroes. Today’s American government is doing everything in its power to exterminate a Christian-Judeo society–a society it fears knowing such persons are some of the most patriotic, Constitutionally savvy followers of our founding fathers’ passion to see America remain the “Land of the Free.”
On this Thanksgiving, our founding fathers should not be observed in the more traditional sense of persons like Washington, Edison, Payne, Hamilton, or the like but rather the pilgrims such as Edward Winslow. The American Pilgrims embraced all persons living in “America.” These persons included even those who did not follow the footsteps of Jesus like the Wampanoag Indians. Yet followers of Jesus and the non-believers were capable of embracing one another in feast only later to bring non-believers closer to God.
Our moral code, a code induced by religious faith, is deteriorating. Without that moral code, the nation will inevitably collapse as it did in Nazi Germany. There are so many lessons to be learned, but we must become students first willing to read, listen, and study. America is not lost–yet.
The German parishioners who lived a life of regret hearing the horrors of Jews being shipped to their death and doing nothing to stop the tragedy of genocide is something that should never happen again. So the question is, “what can we do to stop the attacks on patriotic Christian-Judeo Americans inside the United States today?” “What can we do to ensure the United States never forgets the Christian-Judeo God which it was founded under?” If we do nothing, we are no different than the German Christians who did nothing to prevent the fall of their nation, but if we act like the Pilgrims, we can embrace those who gravely believe differently than us to re-build our great nation.
Kerry Patton is a Senior Analyst for WIKISTRAT. He has worked in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, focusing on intelligence and security interviewing current and former terrorists, including members of the Taliban. He is the author of “Sociocultural Intelligence: The New Discipline of Intelligence Studies” and the children’s book “American Patriotism.” You can follow him on Facebook.