The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Wilkerson

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Michael Wilkerson shares his newest book: Puritans, Pilgrims & Prophets: How the first generation of English settlers shaped the future of a nation (Why America Matters). More at: stormwall.com

Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla protein powder, and a mushy banana for your mind? Drink it all town. It's numby. I wop, vanilla. I wop, I wapanilla. Here comes Eric Metaxis. Hey there, folks.

Welcome to the program. And I don't know what Alvin just said, but it's wrong. Okay, it's May 27th, Tuesday, which means yesterday was Memorial Day. How can that be? How can that be? It's already Memorial Day is over? What? We're in the summer?

And I'm not wearing seersucker. Very important point. to make before we get on to the news of the day. The biggest news is that you're supposed to wear white and seersucker on Memorial Day through to Labor Day, not before Memorial Day, not after Labor Day. Searsucker, white, all right, you got that, write that down. And remember, you have a small window. It's called the summer season. And, uh, uh, we're, Roger Stone, our dear friend, he hasn't been on the program in a while, probably because he owes me money and he doesn't, he's ashamed. That's not true.

I love Roger so much. He is such a, he's brilliant. He's a polymath and he's a genius on politics and on men's fashion, genius. And so he put out a thing the other day, I guess it was Friday saying Searsucker season coming up Monday. So I had to mention that. And we've got to get him back on here. It's nuts. Okay. Some important information. First of all, before I get to the biggest news, in hour one today, I'm talking to my friend Mike Wilkerson. Mike Wilkerson has written a couple of books. The new one is about the Puritans, the generation before the revolution.

I keep mentioning, I'm working now on a book about the American Revolution. And the antecedent to that era is what he writes about. So we'll be talking about that all through our one today. Exciting that he's written a book about it. In hour two, we're going to play a conversation that I had with our friend Phil Robertson, the duck commander, Phil Robertson, who was a friend of mine. I was absolutely blown away to find out, I guess was it Sunday night that his son, Jace posted on X that he had been to be with Jesus. And I got to say, no kidding, folks, there are very few people in my life.

I can think of almost no one whom I loved and respected as a father figured to me, the way that I did Phil Robertson. There was something about that man that, you know, if he was actually your father, you probably wouldn't appreciate it in the same way because that's just the way life is, right? So his son's probably thinking, yeah, dad, you know, like they saw the worst of him. I didn't see the worst of him. I saw the best of him. And that's why it is sometimes with an uncle or a grandfather. You don't see the worst of them.

You just see the good. And I had that privilege. I loved him. I really loved him. And I think he picked up on that. eventually. I think he was initially, I know he was initially really skeptical of me. Like, who's this metaxus, this New Yorker? You know, it's so funny to me. I can, I completely understand that. You know, Yale graduate, Manhattan, New Yorker, you know, with the, with the horn room glasses,

who is this guy? He's the antithesis of who I am, Phil Robertson. And yet, he eventually saw who I was and my love of Jesus and my love of Phil and everything he stood for. And I got to say, It was just such a privilege to know him and to call him friend. Just a huge privilege. I even had the privilege. I posted a little bit about this on X and I posted about this on my Instagram account. I even had the privilege of going duck hunting with him. Yes.

In his blind in Louisiana, I. I drug my daughter along with me for that. Since I didn't have a boy, I just got the one kid and I drug her along. So she will have that as a memory getting up at 4 a.m. going in the dark, what seemed miles into the swamp and going into the duck blind and sitting there for hours and duck hunting with Phil Robertson. Wow. So he was a Christian hero and I got to say when I, well, there's so much else I want to say in hour two, at the beginning of our two, I'll share more before, actually before. So in hour one, a couple of minutes, I'll be speaking to my friend Mike Wilkerson about his new book, which is great, very exciting. In hour two, we're going to play a rerun of a conversation I had a little bit over a year ago with Phil Rowe. Maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago, couldn't even be that long, with Phil Robertson, whom I loved. And we know where he is. What a joy.

So we'll be talking more about Phil Robertson in hour two and my memories of him. So a few announcements that are kind of burning. This Memorial Day weekend, I spoke at Ocean City Tabernacle. Sunday morning spoke at two services, Ocean City Tabernacle in Ocean City, New Jersey. And I have to say, it was uncommonly special. It was really something. I don't know what it was that day. I guess it was the answer to prayers because we really prayed that God would speak.

But we'll get that video up to send out with my newsletter, which goes out today and Friday. That was just so, it was very special, very patriotic, very moving. I also want to mention our. Our campaign with CSI. I have asked for it to be extended this week because for whatever reason, we had a really slow start and it's supposed to end yesterday. But we've kept the banner up because I know that there are many of you who have not participated, most of you have not participated. And I want to give you a chance to do the right thing. It's a beautiful thing, beautiful thing.

So you have to go to metaxis talk.com at the top of the page. You'll see the banner. You get to free a slave. you get to participate in freeing slaves. Nothing more amazing than that, that you get to do something about it, not just feel that it's wrong, not just pray about it,

but actually put your faith into action, however you like. MetaxistalkisTalk.com is the website. Metaxistococococcom. At the top of the page, you'll see the banner. We need your help, so please help us out however you can. We don't care how much. care that you participate. And I mean that. Okay, a couple more announcements, and I'll say more about

this after we talk to Mike Wilkerson in hour two. But on June 22nd, I am going to be preaching at the King's Church in New York City. So mark your calendar, if you know anybody in New York or can get there. June 22nd, New York City. I'll be preaching there, signing books. And on the evening of June 22nd, our friend Ken Fish is doing a healing and deliverance service up here in Connecticut. Bethel, Connecticut, the church is his vineyard. Bethel, Connecticut, his vineyard. That's the evening 6 p.m. June 22nd. That is just crazy.

You've got to come. If you can come, you've got to tell your Connecticut friends. It's a big deal, folks. He doesn't get up here. He doesn't get up here. So it's a cool thing. And then finally, before we get to Mike Wilkerson, and again, an hour or two, we've got a lot of more updates that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet. But a few days ago, Pastor Russ Johnson in Seattle, now he's a firebrand, a man of God.

I've ministered with him up at Columbia University with Sean Foyt. He's one of those maniacs for God, like the kind of pastors we need in America. he had an evangelistic service in Seattle. They were attacked by Antifa, who are nasty, sick people. Let's face it, very sick people. And the mayor of Seattle stood with Antifa against the Christians, said some genuinely bigoted things, genuinely bigoted things. The mayor of Seattle is the problem in Seattle.

These are messed up people leading these broken, broken cities. And we need to stand against them and speak against them. Shame on the mayor of Seattle. You wouldn't even believe what he said, how sick it is. But it's good that we know what's going on. All right. Don't forget, metaxis talk.com. The banner's top of the page.

Metaxistalkis talk.com. Hit that banner. Metaxistock.com. We'll be back with Mike Bulkerson. There's been a national focus on eating only the healthiest of foods. And that's great news. balance of nature. Their method of producing a vibrant nutritional supplement is second to none. While so many others use chemicals and additives, balance of nature is made solely from whole food

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Now just 2998. All sizes available at a discount rate. These are premium sheets at prices you won't find anywhere else, but they won't last long when they're gone. They're gone. So don't wait. Go to mypillow.com. Use promo code Eric or call 800-858-0-263. 8-563 to grab this exclusive deal. That's Mypillow.com promo code Eric or call 800858-0-263. promo code Eric. Folks, welcome back. Today we get to talk about America. I have my friend Mike Wilkerson on the program. He has a new book out called Puritans, Pilgrims and Prophets, how the first generation of English settlers shaped the future of a nation. Michael Wilkerson, welcome back. Hi, Eric. Good to be with you. What is this book about in the nutshell version? Well, so this is a continuation of the wide, America Matter series. So you know and you read the first book, Why America Matters, a case for a new exceptionalism. And what I'm doing here is taking a bit of a deeper dive and it'll be part of a series where we go through each major epoch in American history and talk about why did it matter? What happened? And I was very excited to do Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets, because it focuses on that first generation of mostly English settlers who came to the United States for all kinds of different reasons.

They came from, or two, I should say, James now Virginia to Florida to the Caribbean. But a large portion came to New England. And of those who came to New England, they were largely Puritans who were seeking something more than glory or gold. but seeking God. And that's the story that I set out to tell in an approachable way. Well, it's important, of course, because it sets up, I keep saying I'm working on a book about the American Revolution, and you think, why did that work? Why did the American Revolution happen? It happened because of what it happened in the 150 years preceding 1776, which laid a foundation that had simply never existed in the history of the world. And that's effectively what you're writing

about in this new book, Puritans, Pilgrims and Prophets. So talk about that. What was this, the first generation of Americans? What values did they have that prepared the way for the birth of America? Well, I get very excited about this because it's such a fascinating time in our history. So please interrupt me if I'm just carrying on too long. But the first thing that struck me and the question that I asked in the book is, why would an entire generation of English men, women, and children, some 80,000 people over 20 years give up their lives and livelihoods, their homes, their families, their friends, their country, basically forsaking everything that they knew, everything that they took comfort in to travel for months on some slow, dangerous journey

without any material comfort and a probability that they were going to get sick or be malnourished and possibly even die, all to go to. an unmapped, unsettled, undeveloped, land without city or town, leaving London to go to the shores of New England was a daunting task. And rumors were that the wild beasts were more savage and populous than the natives, both of which were rumored to be hostile.

And so that in itself, the fact that they were willing to set out on this adventure, leaving everything behind, should capture all of our attention because there was something that they were either leaving or going to, and it turns out it was a mix of both. They were leaving some things in England, including the years before the English Civil War, religious controversy, political controversy, challenging economy. But really, there was something more. You know, ever since, and you know a lot about this, you wrote a biography of Luther, so you'll understand that Europe was in the middle of a spiritual revolution. Renewal is a better word. I guess they call it the Reformation that was founded on the continent, but found its way to the shores of England.

And even within England, there was an awakening. There was a coming back to God, to a form of purity, to a form of scriptural integrity, at the same time that literacy rates were abounding. And these English men and women, most of them Puritans, some of them what we call pilgrims today, who were separatists, who had left the Church of England, that'd gone to the Netherlands as political and religious exiles to find some freedom, had determined to come to New England because they believed that like the Israelites of old, God had called them to leave the land of slaves. in this case, England, and take possession of this promised land that God had prepared them to possess. And one of their leaders, John Winthrop famously described it is, you know, we're called to create a city on a hill, a godly community that would be established on biblical principles that will serve as a beacon of light to the rest of the world, including Europe that has now fallen into the darkness of war and civil, political, religious strife.

And that's the story that I set out to describe, to tell. Why did they come? Who were they? And you asked a question, you know, what were the ideals that they brought? And I think it comes down to a few things. One, the ideals of the Protestant Reformation, which we talked about, the Renaissance, this recapturing of knowledge and awareness of the classical period, of the philosophers of the ideals, the scientific revolution, which by 1600 was already beginning to pick up steam, if not in full swing. And later, although not really touching this generation, the Enlightenment, but those ideas.

And with them, ideas of self-governance, of the right of the individual, of political liberty, of local government, making decisions locally, autonomy, and freedom of conscious. were all the ideals that they carried with them on this trip and sought to establish in the new world? Well, part of why I'm fascinated with this is because it is inescapably Christian. This is God working in history, which, you know, I have said that the emergence of America is God's hand in history, a nation where people could govern. themselves, where they have no king but Jesus. It's simply unprecedented in the history of the world. And I've written about it in my book, if you can keep it. I don't go too much into the roots of it,

which is why I'm fascinated with your book, because we need to understand this. How did this happen? And by the way, is it true? I know that there are many people listening who would have a problem with this because immediately they would say, it sounds like manifest destiny, sounds like triumphalism. It's not, folks. Every good thing can be tainted with excesses or with counterfeits. And so the idea that like, hey, we're here and we're going to crush everybody and we're going to win. That's not God's idea. But the idea, nonetheless, that God is working in history, I think we have to talk about that.

And I think we have to say, Mike, and I know you must in the book, there is no doubt when you just quoted John Winthrop, who's, of course, quoting Jesus, that their interpretation of what they were doing was that God had called them to do this new thing and to begin a new way of living, a kind of liberty free of the tyranny of King James, for example, who was throwing them in prison because they didn't tow his theological line. So this is an amazing moment in the history of the world. And it begins with people whose interpretation of the Bible for the time was radical. It's absolutely right. And I think there is no doubt when you look back at the history of this period and you look at what the individuals wrote and spoke about and said that this was

what they were doing. They were coming to New England from a deep spiritual commitment and belief that they were called and chosen to create this city on a hill, this model kingdom, model of the kingdom, a kingdom of God, a kingdom of God on Earth, where they would shine the bright light of Jesus Christ into a dark world. And they knew that Europe was in a very bad way. So both in England, as you talked about with King James and really around the continent, nations were being torn apart by the religious controversies of the time, by the political strife of the time.

But in the same moment, you had this remarkable technological transformation led by the printing press and printing technologies, making it possible to start to communicate ideas at much greater speed than it ever happened before. We had microscopes and telescopes being introduced in the world for the first time, printing technologies. and it was really also the age of exploration where around the world people were bringing resources to the continent. But importantly, and the Puritans really focused on this, biblical literacy. For the first time, you had an entire generation of people who actually had access to the Bible in a language that they could understand, and they placed a very high importance on

knowing the Bible, knowing what the Word of God said, understanding their role in the world. And there was this very deep sense of mission that came out of that, a sense of vocation, a sense of calling, a sense that God had ordained them to do something that was worth any hardship, any challenge that they were willing, that they were going to have to face. Folks, the book is called Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets. talking to the author Michael Wilkerson. We'll be right back. Welcome back, folks. We're talking on Michael Wilkerson. He lets me call him Mike. We've known each other a long time. He has a new book out in his Why America Matters series. The first one was pretty long, and it was really, really

terrific, Mike. As you know, I said, I almost couldn't praise it enough because you're talking about some very important things and you do such a great job. So this is a follow-up book that deals specifically with the era of the first generation of English settlers to the United States, to what was then not yet the United States, Puritans, pilgrims, and prophets. So let's get into it more. You talked a moment ago about technology. And I think it needs to be said because I think this is a principle that everybody needs to be aware of. Suddenly, you have the printing press. People are to some extent able to think for themselves, able to read new ideas, able to read the Bible. They had not been,

nobody had been able to read the Bible before this generation. I mean, I talk about it in my book on Martin Luther, there were no Bibles. The monks didn't read the Bible. It was such a valuable book to create a book. It's not like everybody could have one. And so you have to say up front, it is right. to say that, oh, there's a danger. If everybody reads the Bible for himself, people are liable to make wrong conclusions from the Bible. So that is a very real danger. But that's the danger inherent to freedom. In other words, it is a danger. If everybody gets to vote, it means idiots and evil people will get to vote. But it is the risk you take, and I believe it's the risk

God took when he created us with free will. There's no other way to do it. There is a risk involved. And so you have the enemies of this wanting to crush dissent and say we don't want people to read the Bible for themselves. We don't want them to have the freedom to create their own church. The Church of England is the only church. And King James persecuted the group that we now call, you know, the pilgrims.

he was not, he felt, and let's be honest, Luther, you know, a hundred years before felt we've got a crushed dissent. We've figured it out. We've got the right way. So this idea of liberty is threatening to some and it does have real dangers. But ultimately, it is God's way. And we have to be willing to risk the mistakes and the dangers. And we're, we're they. today. It's still a principle that a lot of people say, no, I don't want to give people the right to vote because what if they don't vote the right way? So this is, it's really extraordinary that we're still dealing with this and that they were dealing with it 400 years ago. You know, one of the things you mentioned was how the printing press changed access to scripture. You know, the Bible was no longer just for a priestly class. Families could read it in their homes. And in fact, one of the things I read repeatedly was, was how the Bible was clearly the most prized possession when they traveled, when these families

traveled. And by the way, there were a lot of families. It wasn't just men, you know, going to try to trade or go on military expeditions. These were actual families going to try to live and build that they would bring the Bible with them. With the advent of the printing press came the ability of people to actually start to write and express their views. And what I realized, in reading about 17th century England was that the government at the time felt extremely threatened by this. And so you see John Milton writing

about most famously known for his Paradise Lost, but he also writes this seminal tract that defends free speech and freedom of the press called the Aeropagitica. Aeropagitica. Eriopagitica. Thank you very much. In response to this licensing order

where the government basically said, all right, you have to have permission. You have to get prior restraint. Authorities have to approve anything that you write before they're published. But Milton defended the liberty, the freedom to know, to utter, to speak, to argue freely according to conscious. And he didn't use just, he didn't really use biblical defenses for this. He used classical Greek and Roman civilization to say, this is fundamental.

You know, let truth and falsehood grapple, whoever knew truth be put to the law. worse in a free and open encounter. And he argued, moreover, that government censorship was a rebellion against God because he had imbued men with free will and free thought and the ability to argue it out. And without that ability to wrestle with ideas, good and bad, one wouldn't grow into a fully formed human, couldn't become an adult, if you were constantly told what to think, how to think, and that that was degrading to a free people. It was actually a form of slavery. This argument around freedom of speech censorship, limitations on one's ability to worship, to express a view, to speak or preach publicly. You couldn't go out and share your faith in the

gospel without licensing, without permission from the government. All of this was part of the background here that led to this strong desire for a whole generation of Christian believers to want to find a new home and a new chance to establish a free society. Well, this is very important stuff. And it's interesting because, again, we're talking about principles. And I like on the program here to talk about principles because we have to learn how to think, not what to think, how to think. And so it's kind of like you can think of it as overprotective parents.

Like if overprotective parents, if they're protecting their kids from what's out there too much and not helping them at some point process. the evil ideas, the bad ideas, then when that kid gets out there into the real world, suddenly they're going to encounter these bad ideas, and they're not going to know how to deal with it. And so we have to train ourselves how to think. And so when we come back, we'll talk more about this. Michael Wilkerson is the author of Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets. Welcome back talking to Michael Wilkerson. The new book is Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets, how the first generation of English settlers

shaped the future of a nation. So this is really such a seminal moment in the development of the United States, in world history. And it's fascinating, Mike, because it brings up all these issues, right? What is liberty? How much liberty is too much liberty?

When does a surfeit of liberty become a kind of tyranny? So we're not talking about liberty that becomes anarchy, but you had people, obviously, in the old world, saying, well, we don't want people to think for themselves to start their own churches, and we don't want that much freedom. Even Luther did not, he didn't get that.

He didn't get that. And he said, yeah, you can be a member of the Lutheran church. You can be a member of this church, but don't start your other church. And there's always truth in that, right? In other words, there were people who adopted Luther's thinking who took it too far. I write about that in my Luther book. And they were just basically these nutcases, you know, the peasants war. You take these principles, then you take a,

them too far. So these things can go too far, but they can also not go far enough. And so the question is, can we figure out what that balance is? And you and I believe that the Puritans, Pilgrims and prophets that you talk about in your book, they were trying to get this right. But you know and I know, Mike, that they also got it wrong, right? In other words, when they created the Massachusetts Bay colony, if you didn't think the way they thought, you were in trouble. So they didn't believe in religious liberty. They believed, just like Luther, they believed in religious liberty for themselves, but they didn't get the principle. And so you get people like Ann Hutchinson and others dissenting, being persecuted and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony, famously Rhode Island was Roger Williams.

Roger Williams of Rhode Island. So it's just fascinating how this develops culminating, I guess we would say, in 1776. So one of the things that's so interesting is on the one hand, yes, you see this pendulum swinging between toleration and restraint or censorship. But starting with the Magna Carta through the glorious revolution in 16, what is the 68 or 86, excuse me, so over a 400-year period, the pendulum is swinging, but the arrow, the trajectory is towards greater liberty. Not just in England, but in America, it does culminate in a revolutionary war and a war of independence. But nonetheless, we are moving towards that. And in many ways, the ideas that sprung out of English soil for free speech, for liberty, grew in the United States.

And what's sad to me today is to see here in the 21st century, in England, in Britain, in the United States, we're losing these lessons. We're now going backwards to argue. Oh, no, these are dangerous ideas that should not be shared. the government should have a right to restrain you from hurting yourself or others with your dangerous ideas. And somehow the nation, both nations in a way, have lost their own spiritual and intellectual history and their collective memory of what enabled freedom to begin with. Well, right. The left in this country, bizarrely, horrifyingly, ironically, has come out against free speech. And of course, under the Biden administration, they were persecuting

Christians and American patriots. But in England today, under the new lunatic prime minister, Kier Starrmer, exactly this is happening. It's, it is unbelievable that this is happening. It's infantilizing because what it is doing is saying that individuals don't have the ability to think on their own, that they need the government. to tell them what they can and can't do. Well, that's exactly the way to prevent humans from growing and becoming adults when they don't develop their critical thinking skills to debate, inquire, defend, to consider whether an idea is good or bad on its merits,

but rather be told and spoon-fed what they should believe, what they should think. Underlying all this is one of the greatest dangers that we face, which is the threat to free speech, the threat to freedom of conscious, freedom of worship and the freedom to express those ideas. Very few governments over time have ever allowed a direct attack on the sovereign, on leadership, but it's the ideas itself that we now deem to be problematic, to be troublesome. And this is the fight that we still have today. And it's very similar to what was going on in England in the 17th century, believe it or not. Well, it is amazing

when you brought up John Milton's Aeropagitica. I mean, that's kind of the seminal tract on free speech. And it comes out of England. It comes out of these Puritan ideas, the best concept of Puritan ideas. These are deeply Christian ideas, folks, this idea that God gives us free will, and he knows we can use it for ill, but he entrusted to us nonetheless. And so it is a tricky balance. And it's amazing to me that, you know, the country that gave us the Magna Carta and the glorious revolution of 1688 has gone to be where it is today, as you said. But it's interesting to me as I write my book on the revolution to think how they got it wrong during the revolution. They basically backslid under George III into, you know, parliament and the king being tyrannists,

not respecting the rights of the American colonists. It's fascinating that they got it so wrong. They were arrogant. And eventually, I think, they did see it when they lost the colonies. But it is interesting because you see these things kind of go back and forth and back and forth. In some cases, moving ultimately in the right direction, in some cases, as we see in England now, having moved dramatically back in the wrong direction. I mean, they were far more progressive and tolerant, you know, two centuries ago than they are today. No, it's absolutely right.

And we go back to this era of the Puritans and England on the, eve of the Civil War. And one of the things that Milton associated with this censorship was the rise of the Catholic Church, not as a religious institution, but as the dominant political force in Europe. And so the tension has always been between the centralizing, tyrannizing impulse of power and the desire of free humans created, imbued with inalienable rights by a God who loves them and cares to them, them to be free and they the idea of the garden the idea of the promised land of every man at peace under his own fig tree and drinking from his own vine with no one to do their do them harm what do I mean by that this idea that autonomy of belief or sorry autonomy of governance that rather than

centralizing decisions and power the part of what the puritans were saying is let's let's bring it down to the level, to let us choose our own priests and pastors, let us decide who are our ministers, let us decide who are our mayors, town mayors, governors of the colonies and various areas, as opposed to having England top down imposed from a distance on them things that they did not know or understand. We'll be right back talking to Michael Wilkerson. The book is Puritans, Pilgrims and Prophets. Talking to Michael Wilkerson, the book is Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets.

how the first generation of English settlers shaped the future of a nation. So, Michael, I want to have you back because there's a lot here. But in the few minutes we have left, let's talk about the last word of the title, prophets. Why do you say prophets? Well, because it turned out that the faith that the Puritans had was a living one. They didn't believe that God was constrained to a book. It was very different than what would later be called Dias or those who believe that,

yes, there was a God. He was out there, but there was nothing for him to say to us. or for us to say to him beyond what was already written in scripture. The Puritans had a strong belief in what we today would call the active work of God, the charismatic, the prophetic. They believed that God was active in their lives. They believed in miracles. They believed in divine healing.

They believed in divine provision. And they believed in a spiritual world in which the godly world and the demonic were engaged in a, a conflict. And that's been a lot, all of what I've just said has pretty much been scrubbed from the history books to talk about about this era. But it was the spiritual world and spiritual life was a central, central feature of Puritan life and Puritan understanding of what was happening around them and of their own ability to survive and thrive in this, in this untamed wilderness. Now, I know, of course, that, you know, the Quakers and then the Shakers and others believe that God would speak to them. Did the Puritans, you know, when we think of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they were incredibly religious in the positive sense and the negative sense?

I mean, they were, you know, people of the book. They lived and breathed the scripture and living their faith. But were there examples of them hearing from God? Because I can't think of that. You said it's been scrubbed. It is. And so one of the next generation, believe it was Cotton Mather, basically wrote a book that documented that entire history. So he took, and I'll have to find the reference, because it's also a very difficult title and written in Latin.

but where he chronicles from the first landings, the miracles that had occurred in England, including, as I mentioned, miracles of healing, miracles of deliverance, miracles of provision, like what we would see in the feeding of the 5,000, where out of nowhere this came. And so they absolutely believed in the divine account. Sorry, the book is called Magnalia Christiamericana, written in 1702, 700-page history of the colonies for a century. And I write that he describes several miraculous healings, sudden complete healing of a paralytic cases of individuals on death bits from fevers or fully restored to health, etc. And he goes on and talks about this. And in another book called Wonders of the Invisible World, instances of supernatural deliverance,

from individuals who are afflicted by demonic oppression or witchcraft. So all of these beliefs, all of the realities of the spiritual world, were active and present, and certainly in conflict with, you know, Native Americans who were active in some of these occult practices. And that comes up time and time again in encounters between the settlers and the natives, which is a subject for another time. Well, I mean, this is so fascinating. We're just scratching the surface.

But, you know, I think, at the heart of this conversation is this idea that America, at her best, only, is utterly Christian. It's an amazing concept. When you look at the roots of liberty, the roots of our founding, there's just no doubt about it. And it's something it's very important we understand it and don't misunderstand what we mean by that. The book is Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets. And Michael Wilkerson, thank you for coming on. And of course, we've got to have you back because there's more to talk about. Always a pleasure, Harry.