Happy 400th, Jamestown!

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This coming week will be the only opportunity for Americans – amidst a year-long series of events – to actually “celebrate” the 400th anniversary of the founding of America at the Jamestown, Va., settlement, because all of the official “commemorations” have determined the arrival of the Europeans actually was an “invasion.”

Doug Phillips

The actual “celebration” is being put on by a ministry organization, Vision Forum Ministries, whose president, Doug Phillips, has warned against the revisionism that is taking place in the nation’s history.

Actual celebrations were held at the 200th, 250th, 300th, and 350th birthdays of the settlement, but they now are being denigrated as inaccurate and incomplete by government-sponsored events, he said, even though the official Jamestown site managers have documented for WND that the primary goal of the trip that sent settlers to the New World in 1607 was to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, Phillips said, the historic site “is a battleground for America’s future.” He said the issue is that officials are trying to remove references to Christian influences and Christian heritages from the story of Jamestown’s history.

“We are in the midst of an epic battle, a struggle over the history of this country. Those in the press corps and in the academic corps are massing to rewrite what once was undisputedly the work of the Lord in the life of this nation, to reduce it to modern mythology,” he said.

Vision Forum’s events, the Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of America’s Providential History, launch on Monday and continue through the week.

They will include boat tours on the historic James River, storytelling events, symposiums on Jamestown’s “Legacy of Providence and Perseverance,” faith and freedom tours of the region, family fun events such as balloon rides and fireworks, dramatic presentations and a multitude of references to the true, Christian history of the region. They will take place in a number of historic locations in the region, including the historic property belonging to the Tyler family.

The week’s grand marshal is Harrison Tyler, the grandson of the 10th president of the United States and a direct descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. His grandfather, President John Tyler Jr., was at the 250th birthday celebration of the settlement, said:

Here amid the graves of our ancestors, we renew our pledges to those principles of self-government, which have been consecrated by their examples through two hundred and fifty years; and; and implore that great Being who so often and signally preserved them through trials and difficulties, to continue to our country His protecting guardianship and care.

In 1907 at the 300th birthday party, that president’s son, Lyon G. Tyler, participated, along with three million others, one out of every 29 in the entire United States.

Even in 1957, among the official events was the erection of a Christian cross, to remember those who suffered and perished in Jamestown. It’s marked, “To the Glory of God.”

This year, Harrison Tyler, 78, is allowing events to take place on the ancestral family homeland. There, on the banks of the James, will be unveiled the only monument being erected in honor of the 400th anniversary, “The Jamestown Children’s Memorial: A Multi-generational Vision of Honor,” put up by Vision Forum.

Officialdom has decided against allowing anything such as the monument from 100 years ago, which says:

Lastly and chiefly the way to prosper and achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God the giver of all goodness, for every plantation which our heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out.

The new monument, a carving of an open Bible on a pedestal, will state:

We, the grateful children of the twenty-first century, in gratitude to the Lord our God for the mercy and kindness bestowed upon the American people through His providential direction and care of our Jamestown forefathers, do hereby erect this monument on the four hundredth anniversary of the Jamestown settlement.

It also cites the legacy of Jamestown: “The Bible in America, Christian Worship, Gospel Conversions, Scripture-based Common Law, and Republican Representative Government,” and features a quote by a Jamestown founder, Richard Hakluyt, who said “Wee shall by plantinge there inlarge the glory of the gospel, and from England Plante sincere religion, and provide a safe and a sure place to receave people from all partes of the worlds that are forced to flee for the truthe of God’s worde.”

The fourth side quotes Exodus 20:12: “Honor Your Father and Mother that Thy Days May Be Long Upon the Land which the Lord They God Giveth Thee.”

This year, the official events, instead of celebrating, “are telling us we need to mourn and lament the actions of our Christian forebears,” Phillips said. The New York Times called the events something to mark Jamestown, “a town which disappeared into the mud,” and the Virginia Gazette noted the nation is spending millions of dollars and “entirely too much energy” to mark events accomplished by “a bunch of British buffoons who knew nothing of what they were doing for the sake of Christianizing Indians.”

The official statements have called the founding of Jamestown a “holocaust” and a “lynching.”

However, “the truth is these imperfect but nonetheless Christian settlers came to a world dominated by … warring tribes” under the influence of spiritualism, Phillips said.

“They brought with them the Gospel of peace, Jesus Christ, and a dominion vision for establishing a land of freedom,” Phillips said.

“Why did the settlers come? The answer is simple: They came because they were commissioned to do so under the premise of the Great Commission,” Phillips said.

Officials at the settlement recently distributed a memorandum to guides who provide information about its history that the primary purpose of the settlement, in fact, was to spread Christianity.

The change came after WND reported those guides were gagged from talking about the location’s historic Christianity, a situation revealed when Pastor Todd Dubord’s tour group was told over and over the Jamestown settlers were dispatched primarily to make money for the Virginia Company of England.

The new memorandum is titled, “Teaching about English Motivations for Settlement in Virginia,” and asks the dozens of guides who work at the site to “include all three major motivations for settlement in your tour and program presentations, from now on.”

“The first motivation mentioned in the 1606 charter is to spread the Christian religion. The statement below is made by or on behalf of King James to the major investors in the Virginia Company,” the memo said.

Wee, greately commending and graciously accepting of theire desires to the furtherance of soe noble a worke which may, by the providence of Almightie God, hereafter tende to the glorie of His Divine Maiestie to suche people as yet live in darkeness and miserable ignorance of the true knoweledge and worshippe of God and may in tyme bring the infidels and salvages living in those parts to humane civilitie and to a setled and quiet governmente…

The memo said it obtained the documentation from two primary sources, the original charter granted by King James to the Virginia Company on April 10, 1606, and the London Council of the Virginia Company’s “Instructions given by way of Advice,” dated between Nov. 20 and Dec. 19, 1606.

Joseph A. Gutierrez, Jr., senior director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, said the new instructions include the necessary balance of religious and secular interests.

“We take our responsibility to share history very seriously and constantly solicit input from visitors, educators, and a host of people on how we can do a better job. We appreciate the fact people care enough to take time to communicate with us,” he said.

While the presentations to some visitors may be improving in accuracy, Phillips said, the official “commemoration” information is “horrific and shameful.”

“They are doing the best they can to minimize references to God,” he said, citing bookstore offerings that promote “spirit gods” but are a vacuum when it comes to a representation of the historical Christian record.

The Jamestown Settlement is run by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation for the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is adjacent to the Historic Jamestown, run by the APVA Preservation Virginia and the National Park Service.

DuBord has documented similar efforts to edit Christianity from the historic references at the U.S. Supreme Court and Jefferson’s Monticello estate, and also has that research, as well as his Jamestown research, available on his church website.

To obtain Pastor Todd DuBord’s research on this issue, as well as research into the editing of Christian references at the U.S. Supreme Court and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, visit the Lake Almanor Community Church website.

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